“Nelly, get me Captain Drago.”
“I got him, Kris.”
“Hello, Your Highness,” he said cheerfully. “I was expecting a call from you.”
“What’s a strange ship doing off our bow?”
“There’s nothing strange about the Sandpiper. She’s here to replace the Mercury. The king thought we might need another courier boat.
“What’d it bring?”
“Who said it brought anything?”
“Admiral Crossie would not pay for a fourth courier ship if it didn’t carry something twisted and sneaky and, I don’t know, special for him.”
“See for yourself. Longboat 2 will be reeled in right after you.”
Kris was seated right behind the two bosun’s mates running the show. She watched over their shoulders as they attempted the new maneuver it took to land on the Wasp. Usually when a ship was in orbit, a longboat just nestled into a docking bay. But a ship wasn’t usually doing flips with another ship while both of them zipped along in orbit.
Now they did.
As it turned out, it wasn’t all that hard.
To watch.
The Wasp let out a long line with a loop at the end.
The longboat snagged the loop with a hook it now dropped from its nose. The hook was retracted once it had the loop solidly in hand.
Then the Wasp reeled in the longboat.
Easy.
If you didn’t have to do it yourself. Though neither of the youngsters piloting the boat said a word of complaint, Kris noticed both of them wiping sweat from their brows.
“Well done,” she told them.
“Piece of cake, Commander,” the senior of them said.
Kris waited while the admirals exited her launch. They were admirals, and she was a lieutenant commander, so seniors go first even if it is your flagship and you are a princess. Once aboard, she had Penny lead them to the Forward Lounge while she waited to see what surprise the unholy trinity had popped on her.
The next longboat docked with no more difficulty than the last. Some people were spending a lot of time in the simulator, no doubt. It took a while for the hatch to open, but when it did, who should clop out but Ron, Kris’s favorite Iteeche.
“What are you doing here?” she demanded, unsure whether to offer a hand to shake or see if she could actually manage a hug for something with four arms, four legs, and a whole lot of elbows and knees.
She did get both her arms around the trunk of her friend though it was a bit of a problem bending over his four-jointed pelvis. An Iteeche was not like the human’s mythological centaur. His body trunk rose from somewhere closer to his center of gravity, as befits a creature that swam for a lot longer in the sea and owed its ancestry more to something like a squid than to a quadrupedal land critter.
Ron hugged back, doing something that almost sounded like a human laugh.
“I could ask what you are doing here,” he said through the translator Kris had given him the last time he’d dropped by human space.
“I’m hunting for whatever’s eating up your scout ships,” Kris said.
“You are a far distance from where they went and did not return.”
“Well, yes. We call incidents like exploding scout ships a hot datum. They draw attention. We don’t want to draw any more attention to those spots. Anyone who comes nosing around them might keep nosing and bump into you. I want to come at them from the other way around and draw their attention this way.”
“You humans are very twisty in your minds. I think I like that.”
“Well, you arrived just as I and some of the fellow voyagers were about to hash over something that happened to us in this system.”
“Nothing bad I hope.”
“It’s me you’re talking to, Ron. I’m a Longknife. Bad things happen around Longknifes.”
“The way they do around Chap’sum’We,” he said, giving the ancient name of those who chose his chooser.
He paused to introduce Kris to those who had come with him. Teddon’sum’Lee Kris already knew. He still wore the gray and gold of the Imperial Iteeche Navy. The other wore black and red. Kris missed his name on the first fly, but Nelly promised that she caught it. He was from the Imperial Iteeche Army.
“No green-and-white advisors this time?” Kris asked.
“I do not speak for the Emperor,” Ron said. “Officially, I and my associates are still on an Iteeche scout ship. Depending on the outcome of this voyage, we will be welcomed with praise, or the Cup of Apology.”
Kris knew more about the Iteeche than any human alive, which was not saying a lot. However, after spending a long two months hiding Ron in human space, she did know that the Cup of Apology was filled with a slow-acting and painful poison.
Apparently, the aliens Kris had just witnessed blowing themselves to bits weren’t the only ones operating in the “do or die” mode.
“We are meeting in the Forward Lounge. You should feel right at home.”
Ron and Ted nodded agreement in their strange, four-armed way. The Army officer was busy using all four of his eyes in an effort to catch everything going on within sight. He’d get over that in time.
Kris led off.
She was halfway to the lounge when Captain Drago fell in with her party.
“Ron, we have your quarters waiting for you. I see there are only three of you now. They should be more roomy this trip.”
“Thank you, Captain,” Ron said.
“I thought you off-loaded the Iteeche’s containers,” Kris said.
“No. Admiral Crossenshield suggested that I shouldn’t. He also suggested that I not mention that fact to you. He said something about surprises being good for Longknifes. Every once in a while.”
“I thought you were the captain of my ship.”
“Ninety-nine times out of a hundred I am. You must allow me that other one in a hundred, Princess. It is not easy to serve two masters.”
“Or three or four,” Kris added, darkly.
“I am just a humble ship captain. You are the damn Longknife, Your Highness.”
Since they were at the hatch to the Forward Lounge, Kris let the captain get the last word in.
With three admirals already in the Forward Lounge, Kris didn’t rate an “Attention on Deck.” Still, as she and her Iteeche friend entered the lounge, all conversation came to a roaring halt. The room had pretty much arranged itself as it had the first meeting. Kris’s PatRon 10 officers held the ground nearest the bar . . . which was doing a fair business tonight. The Imperials were as far from the Royals as they could be, and the Helviticans and Musashi occupied the neutral middle. Jack had saved her the table nearest to the forward screen.
Kris headed for it, the Iteeche right behind her.
All hands, of the human variety, took this first opportunity in eighty years to get an eyeful of their previous mortal enemy. While Ron and Ted kept their eyes straight ahead, the poor Army officer looked like he wanted to bolt. His head swiveled through the full 270 that it could. What with his four eyes, that pretty much covered everything from front to back.
Halfway to her table, Kris chose to have mercy on her fellow sailors. “Admirals, ladies, gentlemen, may I introduce the Imperial Representative Ron’sum’Pin’sum’We qu Chap’sum’We. He’s kind enough to answer to Ron. He is the reason we are making this voyage of discovery. I’m glad he could join us.”
The admirals came forward to be formally introduced. All of them managed not to wince as they shook the hand Ron offered them. Vicky also presented herself. She did a bit of a curtsy and winked at Kris.
“Kris insisted she had not met you or anyone of your species. I’m glad you’ve made her an honest woman.”
“I can understand her, ah, subterfuge,” Ron said with a bit of a bow. “The powers that be make great demands on their messengers.”
“Does he have a sense of humor?” Vicky asked.
“Oh, yes,” Kris said. “It just takes a while for it to come out.”
/> Vicky pursed her lips in some doubt.
Kris got to the front of the room where Jack, Penny, Abby, and the colonel awaited her. Three of the barkeeps arrived, pushing the heavily carpeted arrangements that had served the tall Iteeche as chairs during their last visits to the Forward Lounge. Kris gave the thoughtful help a thankful smile.
The amenities finished, Kris turned to face a roomful of officers, most of whom outranked her and the majority of whom came from associations that wanted nothing to do with Grampa Ray’s United whatever until Crossie sent them his little home video of that recent family get-together between Grampa Ray, Trouble, and the “boy” Kris had brought home to dinner.
Kris cleared her throat. “I wasn’t sure how to start this briefing. Most of you have seen the report of what happened. I doubt you want me to go over it again. However, now that we have been joined by Ron, the Iteeche who first brought us the news that there was something powerful out here in the galaxy that was shooting first and not bothering to ask questions, I think we should start with a review of what I did on my summer vacation.”
That drew a dry chuckle from the humans. Ron gave her a blank stare. Since he gave it to her with four eyes, it was something to behold.
“Nelly, roll the video take,” Kris said.
The screen behind her changed. The sight of the Intrepid, hooked to a pole a couple of thousand meters long, swinging against a star field with a moon and gas giant occasionally coming into view vanished. Filling the screen in its place was a view centered on the moon’s hot spot, a ship rising from it.
It took five minutes to go through the executive summary. Now it had Penny’s voice-over to explain what was happening to anyone whose eyes balked at admitting what they saw.
“I am sorry, Kris,” Ron said into the silence at the end of it. “I know you do not enjoy violence.”
“She didn’t have any choice,” Admiral Kōta said before Kris could.
“I find myself wondering,” Kris said. “While, admittedly, everyone may not be as big a fan of talking as I am. Still, it’s hard to believe anyone would prefer a knock-down, drag-out firefight to a bit of calm, quiet conversation. The actions of the captain of this ship leave me groping for an explanation.” She paused before going on.
“We’ve completed a biological scan of all the bodies. Every one of them shares similar genetic material. It appears that this ship was crewed by a family or clan. What would cause a grandfather/captain to consign his own children and grandkids to the cold vacuum of space?”
Around Kris, several in the room groaned. Lots of heads shook.
“I’ve got to file some kind of report on this encounter. I’m struggling to get my mind around it. To have something to say. My first guess is that whoever we are dealing with here really hates or is terrified of the strange. They could be the most xenophobic population of conquer-or-die types we’ve ever dreamed of. Worse than our worst fictional imaginings. There is, of course, a second possibility.”
“What worse option could a Longknife come up with?” Admiral Channing of the businesslike Helviticans asked.
“We’ve never seen a ship like the one they had,” Kris said, having Nelly flash back on the screen the best picture they had of the alien ship. “I’m unaware of any ships in human or Iteeche space that are strung together from conjoined spheres.”
Many in the room nodded.
“Could there be someone else out here? Someone who builds spaceships very much similar to the way we build ours? Could that someone be so nasty that our grandfather here did not hesitate for a moment to kill his beloved kids and grandkids rather than risk the chance of them falling under their control?”
Once again, Kris had succeeded in bringing the room to absolute silence.
She let it stay that way, so the two options could sink in, before opening her arms in a question. “Does anyone see a third option?”
The question hung in the air for a very long minute. No one came up with another way of looking at the data.
After a long pause, Admiral Krätz stood. “I hope you’ll excuse me if I change the topic. But what will you do with the Constant Star’s load of wreckage and bodies?”
“I’m sending it back to Santa Maria with the Mercury. Santa Maria has a major research center devoted to trying to unravel the mystery of the Three alien races who built the star jumps. That looks like a good place to handle the further examination of what we have here.”
The newly Imperial admiral from Greenfeld glowered at Kris. “And what is to keep those ships and their cargo from vanishing before they ever get to Santa Maria? How will we know that they have not been hijacked off to some secret U.S. base where no one but Royal experts ever look at them and never tell us a word about what they find?”
At that, the room exploded with words.
13
Kris allowed herself a deep sigh; she hadn’t seen that one coming.
This voyage had its problems, but everyone had stayed focused on why they were there. The alien encounter had thrown them a wild twist. They had come looking for surprises and had, up until a second ago, been doing a fairly good job of juggling the strange.
Then again. The Fleet of Discovery hadn’t had anything to fight over.
Silly me.
Now we’ve got our familiar baggage on the table, and it’s back to business as usual.
The Greenfeld admiral stayed on his feet as the room boiled around him, then he raised his voice to boom above the racket. “I intend to detach my battleship, the Terror, to escort the Constant Star. That will make sure some ‘pirate’ doesn’t make off with it and its cargo.”
At that, the room really got noisy.
Admiral Channing shot to his feet. “So it can vanish into one of Emperor Harry’s secret bases. No you don’t. I’m going with it.”
The Helvitican Confederacy had held a vote to see if they should join King Raymond’s United whatever. Grampa Ray had lost resoundingly. Kris figured the Confederacy didn’t much like what Grampa Ray was doing.
Then again, they hadn’t even bothered to vote on joining the Greenfeld Alliance. That was understandable since Chance, the last planet to join the Confederacy, had just barely avoided being violently taken over by a Peterwald.
Kris’s help and a lot of spilled blood had left Chance free to choose its own way in human space. They’d chosen the Helvitican Confederacy and, it seemed, the Confederacy remembered why.
Kris held up her hands to try to gain some quiet to think. “Hold it. Hold it. HOLD IT.” The volume of her voice jumped as Nelly jacked it up artificially.
The room quieted down though it was nowhere close to silent.
“Okay. I see we humans have a trust problem. Admiral Krätz, I can understand your wanting to make sure the Constant Star gets where it’s going. I want to make sure it gets where it’s going.”
Admiral Kōta jumped in. “And where might that be?”
“Santa Maria,” Kris snapped. “Specifically, the Institute for Alien Research.” Kris knew of the place. It had been established almost as soon as Grampa Ray got back from that lost colony. For the last ninety years, it had been humanity’s cutting edge at researching exactly who and what were the Three alien species who had built the jump points across the galaxy. Two million years ago, they had vanished.
On Santa Maria, the Three had built some sort of adult learning center. When they left, they forgot to turn it off. Apparently, the artificial intelligence running the place had gone senescent in the two million years during which it had no students. What it would have done to the several million peaceful citizens of Santa Maria when it discovered them was something Kris didn’t want to contemplate.
Grampa Ray and a handful of veterans from the recent Unity War had been there, thank heavens, when the AI and the Santa Marians discovered each other. As Grampa Ray liked to say: “One supercomputer. One company of Marines. Betterthan-even odds for my side.”
“The Institute for Alien Research has the best h
uman minds available for unraveling aliens,” Kris said. “Most of your governments have universities with visiting professors at the Institute.”
“Isn’t it run by a Longknife? Ray’s sister?” Vicky said.
“Aunt Alnaba transferred to the efforts on Alien 1,” Kris said. “I think a professor from Earth has taken her place.”
“Dr. Ernst Kanaka,” Professor mFumbo put in. “A very good man. Wrote the paper about what we think we know about the Three’s power system.”
“And what happens after the wreckage reaches Santa Maria?” Admiral Kōta asked.
“I honestly don’t know, Admiral. But it has been my experience,” Kris went on, “that once scientists get to chewing on a problem, they fight like wolves to keep it.”
“I wouldn’t say that,” the professor said in clear disapproval of Kris’s analogy. “However, I do think the Institute would be open for visits from a large collection of scientists. That is the way it has operated.”
“Isn’t Santa Maria kind of vulnerable, hanging out there alone, halfway around the galaxy?” Vicky asked.
“A third of the way around from human and Iteeche space,” Kris corrected. “And fifteen thousand light-years from here. Looks to me like it’s the safest place to be right now.”
From the way heads nodded and shook, it was clear Kris was not going to get any consensus on that. Then again, she didn’t need any consensus. She just needed to get the Constant Star’s load of wreckage off her hands and her fleet back to doing what it was out there to do. Discover.
“Let’s see, Admiral Krätz, you want to send the Terror back to Santa Maria.”
“Yes.” You’re not going to change my mind hung there with the single-word answer.
“Admiral Channing, you would like to have one of your battle cruisers in the escort. What about you, Admiral Kōta?”
“Admiral Channing and I only have two ships each. We can’t both afford to send separate escorts.”
The two admirals flipped for the privilege of sending a ship along with the Terror. Channing lost. Or won. Anyway, the Triumph would fly wing on the Constant Star.
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