She opened her eyes, and found that the skipper was staring at her. He had one of those “it's time to go” looks on his face, but he didn't say a word.
Kris gave him a short nod of thanks for the courtesy of his silence, and said, “Captain Drago, let's see how far the
Wasp
can jump.”
“As you wish, Your Highness. Lieutenant Kann, if you will, bring us smartly to one gee and let's see how much speed we can put on this boat before we hit that jump.”
“Aye, aye, Skipper,” Sulwan said. “Bringing her smartly to one gee. Course for the Jump Point Fuzzy Beta. Let's see if we can pole-vault this puppy all the way across the Iteeche Empire.”
61
“Chief,” Kris snapped, and knew immediately that she'd made a mistake. “Nelly, where are we?”
“There's activity in the system,” the new lieutenant announced a bit breathlessly before going on. “I think it's ours,” he squeaked excitedly.
“Kris, we made it to Alien 1,” Nelly announced. They were in the system with the devolved aliens that Auntie Tru and Kris's real great-aunt Alnaba were studying.
“I told you that eighteen revolutions per minute counterclockwise would give us just the right direction,” Nelly said proudly.
The computer had called it on the nose. The speed had given them the distance to jump clear across the rest of the Iteeche Empire. The rpms had pointed them in the right direction. Then again, maybe the new fuzzy jump points were a bit more controllable than the old ones.
Kris breathed a sigh of relief. She was joined in that by everyone else on the bridge and, most likely, the
Wasp
.
“Unknown ship in system, identify yourself,” came from the main screen. A bigger-than-life image of a quite earnest young lieutenant in U.S. Navy blues glared from that vantage point.
Captain Drago waved Kris's way, allowing her the honors.
Kris stood and faced the screen. Her khakis were stained and rumpled from several days' wear. She stank. The water Engineering had been able to produce still stank of ammonia and methane. What they drank was triple-treated, and still only met Cara's “yuck” standard.
All that might be true, but she was still Princess Kristine Longknife, a lieutenant commander in her grampa's Royal U.S. Navy, and the woman who led the great Fleet of Discovery.
And that was what Kris said to the young officer.
After which the screen went blank.
Vicky had joined Jack on the bridge. She giggled. “Do you often affect men that way?”
“I guess I should have brushed my teeth this morning,” Kris admitted.
“I don't like the smell of this,” Jack said, “and I'm not talking about your body odor.”
“I agree, Jack, I don't think this is some kind of joke.”
The young man reappeared on the screen; this time he looked like he was holding a dead rat at arm's length. “You will exit this system immediately and report to Admiral Santiago on High Chance. If you deviate in any way from that direct course, I am authorized to use deadly force.”
“Hold it,” Kris said. “We've been struggling for the last I don't know how long to get back to human space. We're just looking for a dock, some food, a bit of water and reaction mass.”
“I am not to talk to you about anything other than getting you to High Chance. Can you identify the jump point out of here?”
“Mister,” Kris drawled, “we discovered the jump point into here and did the first explorations below, remember?”
The young officer showed red at the collar as he remembered the system's recent history, but he went doggedly on. “Then you can point your ship at the jump point. My patrol craft will follow, and if you attempt to escape, I will disable your engines.”
“Kid,” Captain Drago growled, “the
Wasp
's engines
are
damn near disabled. You throw even a hard word at them, and they're likely to quit on us. You be careful. Relax. We will follow your directions to the letter.”
The screen went blank. The fast patrol boat fell in behind them, and they made for Jump Point Alpha. It was a slow trip because the skipper held the
Wasp
at .75 gee.
It gave them plenty of time to think. Jack rambled up to Kris's Weapons station and leaned close enough to whisper. “That's an FPB. Remember them?”
“All too well,” Kris said. She'd commanded twelve mosquito boats like that one when six huge battleships charged into the Wardhaven system and demanded its surrender. Because of several mistakes at the high command level, those twelve boats were all that stood between Wardhaven and a bombardment that would have put it back in the Stone Age.
Somehow, Kris had held them off.
“Isn't there another system between Alien 1 and Chance?” Jack asked.
“Yes, there is,” Nelly said, while Kris was still trying to get that answer out of her own muzzy brain.
“Would you have taken one of those teacups through a jump point?”
Kris shook her head. She hadn't taken one of them out of Wardhaven's orbit.
“What do you think of us bugging out after we jump into the next system? Not going to Chance?”
“You don't like the sound of our orders to High Chance?”
“Don't like the sound, smell, sight, taste, and touch of it,” Jack said. “When some young lieutenant starts ordering around a Princess Royal and, maybe worse, a senior officer, there's something he knows that we don't.”
“Yes,” Kris agreed, “but what?”
Jack just shrugged.
“Any suggestion where we'd go?” Kris asked. “Although there are some six hundred planets in human space that I haven't been banned from, I can't think of any that would welcome me with open arms. None at least that have any decent ship-repair facilities.”
Again, all Jack could do was shrug.
Despite Jack's carrying on their conversation at a whisper, the bridge had fallen silent enough to hear a sigh drop.
Kris glanced at Captain Drago and raised an eyebrow.
He shook his head. “I can't recommend that the
Wasp
attempt any more jumps than it takes to get us somewhere where we can have some serious work done on her. I tend to agree with Jack that we are not headed into a good situation, but, like you, Your Highness, I can't think of anything we can do but do what they want.”
He paused for a moment. “After all, what
they
want us to do is what I was desperately hoping we
could
do.”
The
Wasp
made the two jumps. As Kris expected, the FPB did not follow them.
However, two cruisers were waiting for them when they entered the Chance system. The
Wasp
immediately set a course for High Chance, and the cruisers, one in Helvitican colors, the other in U.S., followed them silently.
The lack of greeting and the total silence carried its own foreboding.
Alone, unacknowledged, the
Wasp
went where it was ordered.
62
The
Wasp
docked where it was told to, well aft on the station. No other ships were using a pier below the middle of the spaceport. The instructions to the ship had been short and forceful, and had called for no response.
That didn't mean no one tried to talk to the
Wasp
.
The main screen on the bridge suddenly came alive. A civilian was staring wide-eyed at them. “Are you the
Wasp
? Did you fire on the aliens like you said you were going to? Where are the rest of the ships?”
“Cut that off,” Captain Drago ordered. “Communications, what just happened?”
“Sorry, sir. We've been intercepting something like that every couple of seconds. There are about thirty or forty people trying to call us. Some are newsies. Some I have no idea who they are. Anyway, I'm sorry, we'll make sure that doesn't happen again.”
“Glad to know that we aren't totally forgotten,” Vicky said. “Me not being under your orders, maybe I should talk to some of them.”
“Please don't,” Kris said. “I don't want to remind you, but you are presently under my protection. You really want to leave the
Wasp
and check into the local Hilton?”
“I wouldn't last an hour,” Vicky muttered. “Okay, I've reconsidered. You stay my best friend forever. Wherever you go, I go. Only, without your Chief Beni, how safe are you going to be? Have you thought of that?”
“I'll make you a bet,” Kris said. “Two seconds after we dock, I'm going to be under so solid a lockdown that a flyspeck can't get in.”
Vicky made a show of thinking that over, then shook her head and smiled evilly. “No way I take that bet.”
A few minutes later, the
Wasp
tied up to its assigned pier. Moments later, fresh air, water, and other amenities began to flow into the ship.
“You better keep our sewage on board for a while,” Kris suggested. “No one has come down with the alien's equivalent of Montezuma's revenge from those two sweet kids, but you never can tell.”
“And it may buy us a bit of time before we're crawling with newsies,” the skipper agreed.
“Skipper, there are an admiral and a planetary governor on the pier along with a Marine guard detail. Do I let them aboard?” came from Gunny on the quarterdeck.
“I'll dispatch the princess to talk to them. Don't open the hatch until she gets there. Your Highness, you want to get into a biohazard suit?”
“Great idea, Skipper. Jack, you want to come with me?”
“I wouldn't miss this for the world.”
“Nelly,” Kris said on the way to her quarters, “is my report ready to download?”
“The short version and the middling-long version, I can squirt to anyone in a few seconds, Kris. But the warts-and-all version, that takes up a lot of bandwidth and time.”
“Could you load a copy of that on flash storage?”
“I'll have a copy ready in your room.”
Back in Kris's cabin, she found Abby laying out a set of khakis. “These are the least wrinkled and smelly. I tried to wash out a pair of panties and bra in the bathtub, but they stank worse afterward, and I have no idea how the ammonia and methane would have felt after you wore them for a few hours.”
Kris nodded. “Thanks for thinking about me.”
“I ain't had much to do but think about you. And visit those cute kids down in the nursery. Cara just thinks they are the cutest things, even if they won't let them out of the quarantine bubble to play with her.”
“She's a good kid. You take care of her.”
“And you take care of you,” Abby said, adjusting Kris's gig line.
Then she gave her a hug. A wide-open big one. “We'll find you, Kris. No matter where they send you, we will find you, and we will come for you.”
“Don't come too soon,” Kris said. “Take your time. Don't play into anything they've set up to get you, too.”
“Gamma didn't raise any dumb kids,” Abby assured her, and helped her pull on the blue moon suit.
Done, Nelly pointed out a tiny flash-storage cube. Kris palmed it before she left. Nice, these new suits had pockets.
Kris met Jack in the passageway, moon suited up himself.
“Let's go see how they welcome the conquering hero.” Then Kris reconsidered her words. “Make that surviving broken-down sailor.”
Jack hummed something that sounded a bit like “When Johnny Comes Marching Home,” but maybe wasn't.
At the quarterdeck, the usual formalities were a bit awkward in the moon suits, but Kris made sure to follow tradition. Gunny opened the hatch just enough for Kris and Jack to slip through, then shoved it closed again.
Kris easily spotted Admiral Sandy Santiago. Governor Ron Torn of Chance came as a surprise.
Kris marched as smartly as the roly-poly suit allowed, presented herself to the admiral, and snapped a salute. “Lieutenant Commander Longknife reporting as ordered, ma'am.”
The admiral returned her salute and quipped dryly, “I wasn't expecting to see you so soon.”
Kris turned to the governor. “Ron, how's the wife? The kids? They must be growing like weeds.”
“Don't try to change the subject,” he demanded, then changed it himself. “What are you doing in those biohazard suits?”
“We've got aliens aboard,” Kris said with solid pride. “So far, there's no sign that they have any bugs that like us, but we got them in quarantine, and I thought you might want to have us be careful for a while longer.”
“You've captured aliens!” both the admiral and governor exclaimed.
“Yep, two of them.”
“They're talking to you?” Ron said.
“Yes, and no,” Kris said, letting a pained look cross her brow. “They've got teeth coming in, and I think what they're saying translates into âTeething is the pits.' You want to see a picture?”
Without waiting for an answer, Kris pulled a picture out of one of the pockets of her blue suit and waved it at Ron, proud as any grandparent.
Ron stepped back in horror. Then he focused on the picture and his horror turned to puzzlement. “They look just like my kids looked when they were babies.”
“That's what Gunny said when he found them. The species will not talk to us, will shoot at us every chance they get, and they look just like us. How's that for ugly?”
“We are not supposed to talk to you, Kris,” Admiral Santiago said. “My orders are very specific. You will only be debriefed on Wardhaven.”
“Those are not my orders,” Ron said. “Kris Longknife, you are under arrest for crimes against humanity. You will come with me.”