Quite a few of the patches needed to be reworked. Several more hull sections showed strain. They had made it through the refueling pass, but Captain Drago feared they'd fail on him when he could least afford it.
Likely at the worst of times and worst of places.
But just as the
Wasp
was a good ship taking care of her crew, so she had a good crew to take care of her. Every day Kris realized that Captain Drago knew so much more about running a ship in space than she did.
It was humbling.
All Kris could do was be glad she'd made the right choice and not done what she oh so wanted to do. There were reasons why it took years of hard work to make a good ship driver.
She hadn't put in those years. She would be as big a fool as Hank Peterwald to think that she could fill those shoes just by tying up the shoelaces.
The jump point was one of Nelly's new fuzzy points. That meant that they didn't have to worry about it taking a zig or zag at the last minute and making them miss.
Or rather, they had less to worry about. A jump point was a jump point, and they all wanted to kill you.
At least that was what Sulwan insisted.
Kris was at her Weapons station as they took the jump. At Nelly's suggestion, they reduced their rotation to the more traditional twenty revolutions per minute clockwise. The transition from one point in space to another point went smoothly.
Then came the little matter of where had they gotten to.
First things first. “The system is quiet,” Chief Beni reported. “All sensors report nothing but normal radiation. We're sharing this system with a pleasant yellow dwarf.” Mother Earth had survived in the warmth of a pleasant yellow dwarf for several billions of years. They should have no problems as they transited the system.
“Jump points, Chief?” the skipper asked.
“Give me a moment,” he said, still concentrating on his instruments.
“We went about nine hundred light-years,” Nelly reported. “We're still going counterclockwise around the rim of the Milky Way, but we edged in a bit, just like I expected.”
“Very good, Nelly,” Captain Drago said, but it was the chief he concentrated on.
“Sorry, sir. For a minute there, I thought I was picking up something in the radio spectrum. If I was, I can't get a bearing on it. Maybe it's something from a nearby solar system. Da Vinci, make a note for future reference, there may be an intelligent species close to this system.”
“It's done, Chief,” his computer, a son of Nelly, replied.
“Chief, I sure would like to aim this tub at a jump point, and I don't have a lot of reaction mass to spare.”
“Yes, sir. Sorry, sir. I kind of don't want to get bushwhacked without warning, sir, but I understand where you're coming from, sir.” The chief paused for a moment, ignoring the skipper's scowl. Then he went on.
“There are three jumps in the system. Only one of them is a new type. It's also the closest. Sulwan, here come the coordinates.”
“I got them.”
“You know,” the chief went on, “is it just me, or don't the new points seem to be closer together than the old ones? Do you think the Three alien species that built them figured out they were wasting a lot of time traveling from one jump to the next and did something about that with the new jumps?
“I tend to agree with Chief Beni,” Nelly said. Kris's eyebrows shot up, to be quickly joined by all those around the bridge at this unusual agreement between the two rivals. “However, I don't yet think we have a sufficiently large test sample to be too confident of that conclusion, but it's a good possibility.”
“Thank you, Nelly,” the chief said.
“I have adjusted our course,” Sulwan reported. “If we maintain one-gee acceleration, we can expect to jump in fifteen hours. We should be close to three hundred thousand klicks an hour by then.”
Once they were sure they had the system to themselves, Kris secured the Weapons Division to a minimum watch and dropped down to the wardroom for chow. She couldn't decide whether she wanted to run into Jack or had better avoid him.
He cares for me. Maybe as much as I care for him.
What did that mean? Did it mean anything that mattered?
Kris was no high-school kid walking the halls blinded by her first puppy crush. She was the commander of PatRon 10, or at least what was left of it. She had a report to make to the king concerning the death of billions of aliens, the loss of just about all of her first command and the likelihood that the whole human race was now at war with an alien race they knew nothing about.
Yes, that was all true. Still, it was wonderful to know that someone in general, and Jack in particular, cared about her.
Kris scrupulously avoided even thinking the word “love.”
Until she heard more from Jack about the actual extent of his feelings for her, that word was strictly off-limits.
But it was nice to think about the possibility that the word had some application to the present situation.
Down, girl. Remember, that word is strictly out of your vocabulary. Not available for usage. He said he is glad you're still alive and wants you to stay that way. That doesn't necessarily mean that L word.
Kris was saved from further ruminations on
that
word when Abby, Cara, and Penny joined her for dinner. It turned out, Cara had her own problem to share with them.
Once she was settled at the table, she leaned toward the three adults, and whispered, “Is it true? Could we become another Flying Dutchman, just like in the vids?”
“Which one?” Penny asked. “I've seen three remakes of that horror show.”
Kris knew the classic story of the Flying Dutchman, back when he sailed a windjammer on Earth's oceans. Clearly, Cara was all wound up about the recent adaptation of the story to starships and jump points.
“I don't know,” Cara gushed. “We've got enough alcohol on board. I guess no one would have to go into the reactor without something to numb them.”
“No one is going into the reactor,” Kris said. “Drunk or otherwise.”
“Which version of the movie do you like the best?” Cara asked the three women.
Kris hoped this topic of conversation would go nowhere, but unfortunately, Penny did have to encourage the girl.
“I loved the one where the actress, what was her name, bravely went into the reactor herself, after she'd fed in the body of her boyfriend who died when, oh, what was the accident that killed him?”
“You clearly remember the movie very well,” Abby said dryly.
“Well, it was a while back,” Penny admitted. “I was an impressionable young thing, and it seemed oh so romantic.”
Kris suppressed a groan at the word, but kept her silence.
Cara made that easy. “I saw the latest remake of it. Where part of the crew has been infected by the brain-eating bugs, and they're chasing everyone who isn't brain-dead so they can stuff them in the reactor.”
Abby sighed. “As if the brain-dead ones would know how to set a course for home once they had dumped enough flesh and blood into the reactor. That story makes no sense.”
“But it's scary as all get-out,” Cara said.
“That's today's kids,” Penny said with a full-fledged Irish sigh. “Forget about romance, just scare the willies out of them. What's the latest generation coming to?” She finished with the question elders had posed to every next generation for, oh, the last five hundred.
Cara sniffed, very much the imitation of her aunt. “Don't you find the idea of being stranded in space with nothing left to feed into the reactor but your own blood just the worst thing that can happen?” she demanded of her elders.
“I don't know,” Abby said, applying herself to the hash Cookie had made with canned beef and dried potatoes. “For me, the worst will be when they tell us to quit taking showers or flushing the toilets 'cause they need to feed all the ship's water into the plasma chambers. Plasma chambers, Cara, that's where they blend the reactor feed with the reaction mass to power those big engines pushing the
Wasp
around space. The ignorant writer couldn't even get that straight for their stupid movie.”
Poor Cara couldn't react fast enough to all that was coming at her. She'd hardly gotten out an “Ew” at the thought of no flush toilets before she was torn between defending her movie or actually learning more about how a real starship worked.
She ended up sitting there more confused than motivated.
“My, my,” Penny said. “I thought you'd be fine with that. No doubt by then they'll be serving free beer and wine with our supper. What with all the water having gone wherever it is that reaction mass goes, what else will there be to drink?”
“Beer and wine,” Cara's eyes lit up. “Will I get to drink it, too?”
Kris put a quick stop to that. “I'll make sure Cookie saves some water for all the underage folks aboard.”
“But I'm the only underage person aboard the
Wasp
!” Cara cried.
“Oh, right, so he won't have to save a lot,” Penny said with a wide grin.
“You're just pulling my leg.” When none of the grown-ups chose to respond to that, she focused on Kris. “You're younger than Auntie Abby. What scary movies did you like to see when you were my age?”
It wasn't movies that scared Kris when she was Cara's age, it was real life. Would somebody kill her like they did her brother? Would Mother or Father notice how brandy was disappearing from their liquor cabinet? Could life between Mother and Father get worse than it already was? No, Kris didn't have to go to a movie to feel she was in a horror show.
But she needed an answer. She found one ready at hand.
“My father taught me well before I was your age that there were more horrible things in real life than any movie could ever hope to create.”
“What was that?” Cara asked, breathless at the prospect.
“The most horrible thing in life, my father said,” Kris said, drawing out the line, “is some brainless, inexperienced politician getting his hands on the reins of government.”
Penny and Abby laughed.
Cara looked like her goat had been thoroughly skinned. “That's not real horror.”
“Oh, yes it is,” Kris insisted. “Back then, I was sure Father was talking about someone in the opposition. Horror of horrors, I now know that it may include some of the people you most need to make the whole shebang work, ally or opposition.”
“That
is
a horrible thought,” Penny agreed.
“And what kind of people will we need to get things done when we get back with this little story of ours?” Abby asked, all serious in a flash.
“Any kind we can get,” Kris agreed. “I'll be glad for anyone who will lend us a helping hand.”
“So you've figured out what we need to do when we get home?” Penny asked.
“Be ready to face these monsters when they come calling,” Kris said simply. “What else can we do?”
“Honey child,” Abby said, “you are way too old to think that human beings can't think of a whole passel of things to do that have nothing to do with what they ought to do.”
That brought a sigh from all four of them. Even Cara.
50
The prospects of the
Wasp
becoming another Flying Dutchman increased as they whipped through the next jump at 500,000 klicks per hour and found another new-style jump in their next system. Sulwan headed the
Wasp
toward it, now at only half a gee, and forecast that they would be making somewhere between 650,000 and 750,000 klicks when they went through it.
Chief Beni announced they'd covered over three thousand light-years and that there was nothing of interest in this system. Kris stood down her gunners yet again.
Nelly sounded tickled pink that her estimate of how far they would jump and where was proven to be right. She gave out an official guess that at their speed and with a twenty rotation counterclockwise, the next jump should take them into the Norma Arm of the galaxy, well away from the outer rim and aimed toward home.
Of course, they'd be coming home right through the heart of the Iteeche Empire. Hopefully, they would either miss it entirely or, if they ended up meeting anyone, it would not cause a problem.
There was a lot of hoping and wishing in that course of action.
Kris was more exhausted than hungry for whatever Cookie had managed to mix up from what was left in the ship's drystorage supplies. Kris did wonder if there were any famine biscuits in the back of the larder and whether they'd be reduced to eating them.
She wondered but did not ask. Between Cookie and Captain Drago, she figured that more experienced heads than hers were thinking through those matters.
She needed to get a good night's sleep. Sooner or later, she was going to have to face Grampa Ray, King Raymond I to most, and talk him into following through on what she had started.
She didn't even want to think about what might happen if he wasn't interested in backing her up.
Did they still throw Christians to the lions?
For one of those damn Longknifes, they might bring back the good old days. Who could tell?
Kris had hardly gotten out of her clothing . . . it was amazing how much a princess could perspire while sweating through an unmapped and maybe hostile jump . . . when there was a knock on the door. Kris grabbed for an old Wardhaven U sweatshirt and opened the door a sliver.
Vicky Peterwald stood there. She had a half-empty bottle of whiskey and was sucking it well past half as Kris watched.
“They're all dead,” Vicky finally said as she let the bottle fall from her lips.