“Sorry Princess, but we want you to breath the air awhile, let us test it for the creeping uglies, then we’ll let you in.”
Which meant Kris, Abby, and Gunner Jennifer were still there when Jack, Beni, and Doc came through the hatch.
“Don’t look,” Jack growled, as he hurriedly pulled on the same style white long johns. Kris didn’t look . . . very much.
About as much as Abby didn’t look . . . much.
Jennifer didn’t even turn away. “I usually have to pay for a show this good.” Beni went beet red.
“Captain, I told you we wouldn’t have to go through full decon,” Doc shouted at no particular speaker visible.
“Hey, be glad I’m taking you back. If one more member of the crew had voted the other way, we were going to leave you down there until a real expedition came along.”
“You wouldn’t have done that,” Kris said, trying to make it more a definite statement than a question.
“Who cast the decisive vote?” Abby asked.
“I did” came from about five voices on net.
“Well,” Abby drawled, “if there’d been just one of you’all, I might have had to be nice to you.”
“Where do you want to go next?” the captain and navigator said together.
“The planet that sent the last message to this one, or so we think,” Kris said, loosening the first button of her top and moving along to the next one.
“You really want to go there,” Captain Drago said.
“I really do,” Kris said, trying to coo as she toyed with that second button. Now, how do they do this in the movies.
“I do, too, Princess, so that is where we’re going.”
“Aw, Captain, you could have at least waited to see if that second button came undone,” Abby grouched.
“How am I supposed to learn to be a femme fatale if no one lets me practice on them?” Kris tried to pout.
“In case you haven’t noticed, Kris,” Jack drawled, “fatal is what you do.”
“Fatal I don’t have to work at. It’s the femme fatale I need to get a handle on,” Kris insisted.
Kris was still defending her right to explore other aspects of her nature when Captain Drago ended the quarantine.
The Resolute was already at 1.5 g’s by the time Kris was back in a shipsuit and on the bridge. There was just time for chow and a general briefing on what they found before the ship hung motionless before another jump point. Again, a buoy went through first. This time it returned with no radio noise, but some decent shots of a planet, several moons, and what looked like orbital habitats. Very sophisticated.
“I think I make out ships in orbit,” a laser tech with a surprising skill in photo interpretation said, highlighting several bodies in space, smaller than habitats. “Look at the size of those space elevators.”
Kris whistled, along with everyone looking. “And look at the number of them. Six I can count from just this side alone!”
“Is this place active?” Jack asked, eyeing Kris like he was about to haul her back to her room and lock her away.
“No way to tell from these photos,” the tech said.
“Captain Drago,” Kris said. “If you please, will you take the Resolute through the jump at minimum speed.”
“Honey,” the navigator said, “you crawled faster than I’ll move this tub. That is, if you say we’re going, Captain.”
Drago eyed Jack. The two of them seemed to be doing that male telepathic thing Kris hated. She could almost hear Jack shouting “Run, run, run for our lives” in mental silence.
Then Drago grinned. “I could never go back without seeing what we’ve found. Sulwan, my girl, petite steps. Tres petite.”
The buoy went through first. They gave it time to settle down at a comfortable distance out of their way, then Sulwan goosed the Resolute through, just a tad after doing the same for the five scouts Kris had out ahead of the ship.
A brief disorientation, and then they were there. Kris was out of her seat, hanging over the helmsman, eyeing his close-in scan, glancing up at the expanding picture coming back from their deeper sensors. “The buoy’s there,” the helmsman reported. “And all five of the scouts.”
“Four,” Kris said as the left one winked out of existence.
“Right a nudge,” Captain Drago ordered, and it was so.
“There goes the next left one,” Kris said.
“Halt the ship. Take all way off her,” Drago ordered.
Kris thought they were going about as slow as they could. Still, she bumped the forward screen as the ship stopped more suddenly than she was ready for. Than Jack was ready for. He plowed into the navigator’s station.
“The ship is marking time in space,” the helm reported.
“Princess, do you have any more of that magic stuff for scouts. I’m not going anywhere but back through that rabbit hole until I’ve got lots and lots of bugs out in front of me.”
“Abby, grab all our Smart Metal and goo and meet me in Engineering.”
Kris paddled aft; Jack right behind her, rubbing a shoulder. “You ought to put some ice on that,” she said.
“I ought to get another job,” he grumbled, but did stop off in the galley and when he caught up with her in Engineering, he had a sack of ice taped to his shoulder.
“Nelly, make them plenty and dumb,” Kris said. “We want a cloud of these ahead of us whenever we move. They’ll tell us all we need to know when they vanish.”
“And if we want to do further exploring?” Nelly asked.
“You can reform them into something bigger, smarter.”
An hour later they were back on the bridge as the Resolute began a slow approach to what they called Alien 2.
“You have a problem with that?” Captain Drago asked. “Maybe you wanted it named Kris.”
“Why not,” Jack drawled as he settled into a seat. “The planet almost killed us, and Kris gets us almost killed a lot.”
“You wrong me,” Kris said, innocently. “What have we found out so far from visual scans?”
“Interesting planet,” Captain Drago said. “Take the moons. Three of them, about equal in size. All tidal locked on the planet and each in the same orbit. Offset one third of the orbit from each other.”
“Unless this is the strangest accident I’ve ever heard of,” Jack said, “someone is moving moons around this system.”
“Very likely,” Sulwan said. “I’d love that power plant.”
“We think we’ve spotted large cities on the planet,” the photo tech said. “Not absolutely sure. There’re no lights showing on the night side, but when we get sunlight, it sure looks like man-made structures . . . huge ones.”
“But no lights?” Kris said.
“Dark is dark. Sunlit is, well, what we see.”
“Infrared? Radioactive readings. Anything hot?”
“Sorry, Princess. It’s as quiet as if hatched yesterday.”
“Except we’re missing those two probes,” Jack and the captain said at the same time.
“So something is active.”
“Somebody forgot to turn a few things off.”
“Assuming they left.”
“Seen enough, Kris? Can we go home now?” Jack said.
“No, I didn’t make up all those scouts to guide us back through the jump,” she said, taking a seat next to the captain. “If you will, sir, see if you can find us a closer orbit that this planet doesn’t object to.”
“Sulwan, take charge of the scouts our employer has so graciously allowed to us. Put half of them ahead of us. We’ll use a few as a string back to the jump. I think the Marine does want to assure a line of retreat.” Jack gave a sour nod. “Then send the rest exploring. See if there is any other place safe around here for us.” Six hours of sweat and bad language later, they had the Resolute in a planetary orbit about halfway between Alien 2 and one of its moons.
“I really don’t want to go any closer than this,” Drago said. “We’ve got six layers of y
our bugs out around us. If something changes its mind about letting us hang here, we ought to get the first hint and have time to bug out.”
Kris eyed the situation from behind the helmsman, found it good and turned to the photo tech. “How good are your sensors?”
“I’ve got quarter-meter resolution from here.”
“I must thank Penny when we get home for hiring such a versatile crew. Or should I thank Abby now?”
“Don’t know what you mean by that, Princess,” the captain said, not looking her way.
“So, let’s see what there is to see.”
There was plenty. The moons were airless, but splotched with structures connected by what looked like a rail system. And they had large structures orbiting them that looked innocent, strange, and dangerous all at the same time. “Are those laser weapons?” Kris asked pointing at protrusions jutting from the nearest satellite.
“They don’t look like anything we’ve got,” the Resolute’s chief gunner answered. “God herself only knows what they are, and she quit talking to me about the time I left home.”
“You see any other signs of weapons?” Captain Drago asked.
“Boss, I feel like this whole place is one big rifle range and I’m the sitting duck, sir. If you want my opinion. And I know you don’t.” Then she added another “sir.”
“Thank you, Thong, and if you see anything new that makes you feel less safe, let me know,” Kris said, before turning back to Sulwan’s sensors, now ably assisted by the photo expert. “What can you tell me about the planet?”
“A lot more. A lot less, Your Highness,” Sulwan said. “There are twelve space elevators evenly spaced around the planet’s equator. Several of them look to be rising right out of the sea. At least three of them have what look like huge floating cities around them.”
A picture appeared on the main screen. The scaling next to it said the floating structure was several hundred kilometers across. “Is it free-floating or anchored in shallows or what?”
“You make the guess, Kris. I tried with radar to ping the bottom of that ocean. No joy. Radar went out. It didn’t come back. But that ocean sure looks deep to me.”
Kris couldn’t argue. No basis for any opinion. Kris suddenly had a suspicion she knew what a newborn felt like getting its first look around. Only this newborn was gawking at a whole world, not just the inside of a nursery. Oh, and this newborn had better not cry . . . or piss her pants.
“But there is one thing,” Sulwan added. “See that, there, that elevator station.” Kris watched as what looked like static electricity leaped out from the tip of the orbital station and lost itself in the blackness of space.
“What was that?”
“I have no idea, but six of the stations are doing that.”
“Looks dangerous.”
“Maybe. Or maybe the six stations not doing that are the dangerous ones. Pay your money and take your chances. Me, I’m betting on not going near any of them.”
“Not this trip,” Kris agreed. “Okay, we’re learning a lot about this place we don’t know. Let’s see what we do know. Can anyone give me some numbers? What part of this place is city, rural, wilderness?”
Numbers came up on the screen. Someone had even added Wardhaven’s stats as well as Earth’s. The place had a bit more land than either Earth or Wardhaven. Much more urban than Wardhaven, but not as much as Earth. Arable land matched well. Same for wilderness.
“I don’t get it,” Jack said.
“Don’t get what?” Kris asked.
“Santa Maria was worn down to the bedrock. What evidence of the Three that we found was mostly underground and nano in size. Alien 1 is all rubble and overgrown. What’s this planet doing looking like you might find a warm supper on the table?”
The bridge fell silent in the face of that one. Kris gnawed on it for a while . . . and came up empty.
“Can I say something?” Nelly asked.
“The floor is wide open for observations, opinions, and guesses,” Kris said.
“Santa Maria’s moon showed no evidence of habitation,” Nelly said slowly. “There was nothing left in orbit from the Three.”
“Yes, Nelly, that’s right,” Kris said.
“Our review of what you are calling Alien 1 was cursory, but there was no evidence of any active systems in orbit.”
“I think you’re right about that,” Sulwan said.
“Here we see orbital stations at the top of elevators,” Nelly went on. “There are clearly some things still operating or we would not have lost our scouts. I notice only one major weather system on the planet, and it seems to be limited to one of the wilderness areas. There are other weather systems, but they are providing very gentle rains to the arable lands and urban areas. May I venture a guess that the weather control system is still protecting this planet from violent change. Anything that could move moons into this planet’s orbit might also be able to arrange it so that tectonic plate activity also was negated. I do not know any of this. But they do seem to be reasonable assumptions.”
“They most certainly are,” Kris agreed. “Nelly, you have drawn some very reasonable conclusions. Tell Auntie Tru how you came to them next chance you get to send her a message.”
“I will,” Nelly said, almost giggling with glee.
“If what Nelly says is true,” Abby said from the hatch of the bridge, “then we might be looking at the ultimate achievement of the Three. One of the last places they were at before they did whatever they did to go away.”
“Yeah,” Captain Drago agreed. “But I don’t think the last one out remembered to turn everything off. I like the idea of leaving on the weather controls. Hell, I’d like to live where they got weather controls. But did they leave on anything like those cleaning things that almost turned you to stone?”
“Strange as this may sound, my dear Captain,” Kris said with a cheerful grin, “I agree with you. Let’s spend the next six hours taking pictures from a safe distance, then tiptoe our way out very carefully and make like no one was ever here.”
Of course, Kris knew that was impossible. They had been here. Every crew member on board must be seeing dollar signs dancing in his or her head. Kris had spotted what looked like ships in free orbit around the planet as well as others tied up to the stations. Stations that were not rotating to give them something like gravity. The Three must have had artificial gravity. That would change humanity at least as much as the jump points had. That would be worth trillions.
To whoever could figure it out.
And like every other invention humanity had come up with, it would be twisted to something deadly. What would gravity waves do if you aimed them at a ship? Would ice armor be any defense against them? Questions. Questions with no answers. Who knows, Wardhaven had ships in free orbit. Maybe they didn’t have controlled gravity. But High Wardhaven rotated to give Kris a feeling of up and down. No. There was something here.
And that was only what she saw at a glance.
“I’ll be in my room,” Kris said, kicking herself off from the helm and swimming for the hatch. Abby made way, but said nothing. She also didn’t follow Kris, but edged onto the bridge to get a better view.
Kris had gotten what she wanted.
Now, what did she do about it.
8
Kris hunkered down in her stateroom while they tiptoed out of Alien 2’s system and boosted direct for the next jump with Alien 1 glowing green and blue beneath them. Surprise of surprises, she was left alone. No interruptions from Jack. Kris wondered if he, too, was contemplating her leadership challenge.
At OCS, they’d handed out case studies for the future junior officers to study, analyze, and report back solutions for. None came close to what Kris now stared at. Then again, those challenges were for boot ensigns. The hairy monster Kris faced was for a Naval District Commander. One for one of those damn Longknifes. It involved a princess and a major stockholder in Nuu Enterprises. And each hat made the problem tougher.
Kris had the greatest discovery since humanity put its nose into space. An entire mature civilization’s leavings lay out there for the taking. Assuming you lived through taking it.
And assuming you figured out what you had your hands on.
The material of that building on Alien 1 could make every laser weapon in human space as obsolete as the arrow. Add in the prospects of finally getting control of gravity, and weather, and moving moons around . . . Kris shivered. She held the key to a great leap into the future for all humankind.
Slight correction. She and everyone on this ship.
Let anyone on this ship blab a word of this, there’d be riots. Stocks would plummet on the off chance that this or that might be worthless tomorrow, if not sooner. And that was before every crazy dreamer with access to a starship headed for Alien 2.
And likely got themselves killed trying to be first.
Or broke something critical trying to get to something else.
Yes, Kris had a leadership problem. As Commander, Naval District 41, she could probably declare this entire trip Top Secret . . . and then some. But this crew was civilian. Well, she’d drafted Jack into the Marines. She could draft this entire ship into the Navy and slap them with the Secrets Act.
Would the crew accept their new status with a smile? Or see it as Kris Longknife, Nuu stockholder, grabbing the wealth they saw as rightfully theirs. There was a limit to how far you could push people before you ended up taking a long walk out a short airlock. Kris, of all people, understood mutiny.
Princess, trillionaire, Naval District Commander. All that power. You would think a girl could solve any problem that came her way with power like that. And if she wasn’t careful, she just might find herself very dead from it.
Kris Longknife: Resolute Page 14