“Yes, Captain,” came back from all hands.
“Good. Commodore Longknife, I’d like a word with you in my quarters. And bring that damn computer of yours as well.”
“Yes, sir,” came in two-part harmony.
NELLY, DOWN GIRL.
BUT HE ASKED FOR ME!
YES, HE DID. NOW ENJOY THE VINDICATION AND KEEP YOUR MOUTH SHUT UNLESS HE TALKS DIRECTLY TO YOU.
THAT’S WHAT I INTENDED TO DO, KRIS. I AM NOT AS INEXPERIENCED AT HUMAN AFFAIRS AS SAY CARA.
GOOD.
Kris and the captain stayed in their seats until Sulwan took the spin off the Wasp. Moving around in even a quarter gee was not to be tried when the ship was spinning like a top.
Captain Drago’s in-space cabin was a tiny thing, with just enough room for a desk and a bunk. He took the desk chair, and Kris found a handhold to keep her in place as the Wasp settled on its course and went to free fall.
Standing there, holding on, seemed rather tiresome, so Kris pulled her legs up and sat cross-legged in midair. She smiled at the thought that she must look like some sort of genie.
Captain Drago allowed himself a dry smile. “I’m glad to see you’re getting your space legs.”
“Or space seat,” Kris quipped.
“There you humans go, telling jokes and not letting me in on the fun.”
“Nelly, you said you’d only talk when talked to.”
“Oops, sorry, Your High-Handedness.”
“I’m glad your pet rock is in fine fettle,” Captain Drago said. “Nelly, show us our course so far.”
His wall screen suddenly became a view of the Milky Way from above. Human space was tiny, but it was marked with HOME in a font that was fit for a classic hand-embroidered sampler. From it were a series of white dots, taking them from Wardhaven to Santa Maria to their wanderings. The battle was marked with a flashing red dot, and their flight since then was green.
“Thank you, Nelly,” the captain said. “What is your estimate of where the next two jumps will take us if we keep up this speed?”
Their present location sprouted a cone of probability that widened even more as it extended a second time for that jump. It showed them getting close to human space. It also gave them a twenty-five-percent probability of landing somewhere in the Iteeche Empire.
Captain Drago gnawed his lower lip as he studied Nelly’s estimate. Then he turned to Kris. “I hadn’t planned on refueling in this system. Still, I don’t much like the look of it, either. Choosing not to refuel is one thing. Not having a choice to refuel is something else entirely different. You have an opinion?”
“Captain, I’ve left the ship driving to you,” Kris pointed out.
“But you’re the princess who needs to make a report to the king, my dear. It wouldn’t do to have us declare war on some bug-eyed monster and you not get home to warn the home front of what’s coming our way.”
“They aren’t bug-eyed monsters,” Nelly pointed out. “In fact, they look amazingly like you humans.”
“Thank you for pointing that out,” Kris said. “Whatever they look like, they’re acting like bug-eyed monsters. And that is what I’ll call them until they’re kind enough to tell us what they want us to call them. Right, Captain?”
“It’s a human thing, Nelly,” the captain said.
Kris found his rather amazing acceptance of Nelly’s viewpoint startling. But then, he couldn’t value her for setting his course and keep thinking of her as a rock, could he?
“Thank you, sir,” Nelly said.
“Captain, for what my views are worth, I suggest we take each jump one at a time. If we go through the next jump, and there are several large gas bags, then we slow down and refuel. If the next system is the same as this system, we keep on going.”
“The probability of there being two rocky systems in a row is quite low,” Nelly put in helpfully.
“The mere fact we’re still alive means we’ve used up a whole lot of good luck, Nelly,” the captain pointed out. “We can’t expect the princess’s pot of gold to keep sprinkling us with the good stuff forever.”
“I don’t have any magic supply of luck,” Kris snapped in good humor.
“Don’t tell me that,” the captain snapped right back, though with a broad smile on his swarthy face. “Without that bucket of luck, you and Ray and Trouble would have been dead long ago.”
Kris chose to let the captain have the last word concerning her notional luck and left him staring at Nelly’s map of hopeful outcomes of the next two jumps.
Hungry, she dropped down to the wardroom to find chow was bread made before the last jump. With no weight on the ship, even the vaunted Cookie was reluctant to try his hand at baking fresh bread. The last of the deli-cut meats had been slapped on with the last of the condiments.
Kris took a turkey sandwich and found that Maggie and Vicky were there before her. Rather than avoid the grand duchess, Kris asked if the seat across from them was taken. Maggie glanced at her young friend and interpreted a minuscule blink of an eye as, “No, please sit down.”
Kris did.
She took a bite of her sandwich. The bread was not up to Cookie’s usual high standards. As she chewed, she eyed Vicky.
The not-so-grand duchess took a sip from tea that no longer steamed.
“You enjoying the hangover?” Kris asked in a voice even she knew was way too cheerful.
“What good is a doctor who can’t cure agony like this?” Vicky whispered.
“When the agony is self-inflicted,” Maggie said, “it only seems right that the path through it should be on your own. But I must point out that I did give you the best medicine available for what ails you.”
“You lie,” the Greenfeld scion mumbled.
She sipped her tea, then managed to raise her eyes to level with Kris. “I hear we’re going to be the real Flying Dutchman.”
“Not from anyone of the bridge crew. The captain strictly forbids it.”
“You have, have you?”
“Not me. Captain Drago.”
“I thought you outranked him. Something about papers and all.”
Kris quickly explained about the rearrangement of commissions on the Wasp but that she had left the experienced captain in his chair.
“You are a whole lot smarter than me,” Vicky said. “I’d have leapt at the chance to sit in the command chair.”
“And ended up like your brother,” Maggie said darkly.
“No doubt,” Vicky said, and sought solace in her tea.
“So where are we going?” Vicky asked.
Kris could almost hear the silence fall in the room. What she said next would be spread from one end of the ship to the other in five minutes. Maybe less.
“We’ve got enough speed on the boat to make a long jump, and since the next jump point is in easy reach, we’re saving our reaction mass. That will let us make two more jumps if we want to before we have to slow down and refuel. If the next system looks like a good place to gas up, we may do it there, or just keep going. I like life when it leaves me lots of choices, don’t you?”
“Speak for yourself,” Vicky grumbled. “This morning I am none too sure that life is all it’s cracked up to be.”
“What do you expect when you’re coughing up a hairball from the hair of the dog that bit you,” Maggie said.
“See the kind of concern I get when I’m on death’s door,” Vicky complained.
“You put yourself on that door, and you’ll walk yourself back from it and think twice about going there again. Right, Your Highness?” Maggie said.
“The agony and the puking was the only thing that cured me,” Kris admitted.
That and the joy of skiff racing from orbit. It was amazing what life had to offer when you weren’t looking at it from the bottom of a bottle every waking moment.
Kris left the wardroom and headed for her bunk. She hadn’t gotten there when Nelly said, “Kris, Captain Drago sends his thanks for you spreading the word that we’ve go
t several more jumps in this old girl.”
“He could have announced it to all hands.”
“Yes, Kris, but he suspects that its leaking out from you was a much better way to go. Overhearing it in the wardroom seems to lend more credibility to countering the Flying Dutchman myth than the captain himself saying so. I really think you humans are all crazy,” Nelly said.
“Very likely so,” Kris said, letting herself into her empty stateroom. “Nelly, I need some help from you.”
“Just ask.”
“Is it really impossible to fly three shuttles in formation with a balloot between them?”
“Kris, what with the air currents, the launches will be knocked all over the place. The chances of keeping the balloot open enough to gather anything are slim, and there’s the bouncing around. You’re bound to fly into each other, or rip something loose as you get knocked farther apart than your cable allows. Kris, it’s not a mission, it’s a quick suicide.”
“Okay, I understand. You’re right, Nelly. Now, given all that, how do we do it, because I don’t think the Wasp can hold up if it does another dance with a gas giant. Do you?”
“I think the chances of the Wasp’s surviving a refueling pass are about equal to three shuttles managing the same, Kris. Neither one works.”
“Sorry, Nelly. I will not end up dead in space this close to home. We must refuel. We will refuel. You put your kids together, get any help you need from any of the boffins left aboard, and you figure out how we do this. You’re the Great Nelly. Let’s see some of that greatness.”
Nelly called Kris a bad name, but she was very quiet as Kris strapped herself into her bunk.
52
Kris was locked in tight at her Weapons station as they went through the next jump.
And for good cause.
They landed dangerously close to Iteeche territory, and . . . maybe worse . . . the area where the Iteeche scout ships had vanished. Kris hoped that the flaming-hot datum they’d left way the other end of the galaxy would attract aliens away from this corner of space, but you could never tell who had gotten The Word, and who hadn’t.
Nelly was wrong about the odds of hitting two rocky systems. Or maybe Nelly was right and Captain Drago was also right about Kris’s having exhausted the Longknife supply of luck.
“All rocks,” Chief Beni reported. “Not even a small gas bag in sight.”
“Jump points,” the captain snapped.
“Only one other new fuzzy one,” the chief replied.
“Give Sulwan a course heading. Navigator, aim us there, and spare the reaction mass.”
Sulwan’s usual prompt response was slow in coming. She worked her board for a long time. Then muttered a few curse words and started all over again. Finally, she broke into a victorious grin and turned to face the captain. “Sir. If we use .05-gee acceleration and the proper vectors, we should make the jump in eighteen hours, Captain.”
“Do it, ma’am,” he ordered, and it was done. Then the skipper turned to Kris.
“Does that computer of yours have any kind of idea where we are?”
“Nelly?” Kris said.
“This is interesting,” the computer replied.
“What’s that mean?” Kris said, discovering that her stomach could get an even more sinking feeling than it had habitually had since that huge mother ship entered Kris’s life.
“Well, we’re getting back into the area where our chart should be more accurate. This star system is on our charts, both your grampa’s and mine and that other one we don’t talk about.”
“That sounds good, Nelly. Why the long face?” Captain Drago said.
“Well, there should be a whole lot more star system here. At least nine planets, some really huge, and I only count four dinky rock ones. There also ought to be several old-style jumps and another fuzzy one besides the one we’re headed for. Somebody robbed this system blind in the last million or so years.
“A thirteen-billion-year-old universe,” Sulwan said with a sigh, “and something in the last million years wrecks this system and makes a mess of my fine navigation. Don’t you hate it when that happens?”
“Yes,” Captain Drago snapped. Clearly, the situation was way beyond where he wanted to hear jokes.
“Captain,” Nelly said timidly.
“Yes.” His words were sharp, but not quite sharp enough to take a head off . . . if Nelly had one.
“I think next jump, if you have Navigator Sulwan hold our revolutions to twenty per minute clockwise, that we should jump closer to the middle of the probability cone rather than the outside.”
“Wouldn’t that put us likely in Iteeche territory?” the captain said.
“Yes, sir. But we’re more likely to get help there than we are out in vacant space,” the computer said.
The captain gnawed his lower lip some more and glanced at Kris.
“We do have an Imperial Representative if we have to do some talking. And you said it’s essential that we make a report to King Raymond. The risk seems worth it to me,” Kris said.
“Be it on your head,” he said. “Sulwan, hold our revolutions to twenty clockwise next jump.”
“Yes, sir.”
An acceleration of .05 gee is close enough to zero gee to hardly make a difference, but it’s far enough to make moving around a potential pain. The high-gee carts were brought out, locked down at stations, and most of the crew spent their time sleeping at their battle stations.
Kris ordered her laser crews to stay at their battle stations with no more than half sleeping at any time.
There was something about the hairs on the back of her neck. Maybe it was the not-quite-zero gee. Maybe it was being this close to Iteeche territory.
Or maybe it was just that her hair was growing out during this long cruise, and she needed a haircut.
Whatever it was Kris stayed at her battle station and waited for whatever came next.
But the only thing that came her way was the next jump, exactly eighteen hours later.
53
“We’ve got a gas bag nearby,” was the first thing Chief Beni reported after the jump.
“We’re in Iteeche space,” was the next thing Kris heard. That came from Nelly.
“Pass Sulwan the coordinates of our refueling stop,” the captain ordered.
Sulwan was already working on a course. She did not look happy. “We’ll need to decelerate at 3.2 gees if we’re to make orbit.”
“Engineer,” the captain said. “Can you give us 3.2 gees deceleration?”
“If that’s what you need, that’s what you’ll get. How soon?”
“High-gee deceleration in one minute,” Sulwan announced to all hands. “Three-point-two gees as fast as we can make it happen.”
“You’ll have it in sixty seconds,” Engineering assured them.
“Good,” the captain said, then went on. “Are there any ships or colonies in the system?”
“No,” both Nelly and the chief reported at the same time.
“Thank a merciful Allah for a small favor,” Sulwan whispered. Hers was very likely only one of many prayers whispered around the ship. Kris even offered up a thanks To-Whom-It-May-Concern.
Then they got down to the real work at hand.
Decelerating at 3.2 gees put everyone in high-gee stations for the duration of that burn. The engineers monitored the consumption of reaction mass and advised Captain Drago that they would need to tap into the ship’s water supply.
“Any trashy novels, worn clothes, anything you’ve been thinking of getting rid of, now would be the time to dump them,” was passed through the boat.
“Princess, would you mind touching base with your Iteeche associate and letting me know how close this system is to a main shipping lane?” Captain Drago asked. “Also, let’s get the word out to all hands that once we park this wreck in orbit, I want us to go back to being a hole in space. If something drops through one of those jump points, I don’t want them spotting us before we spot t
hem.”
“Aye, aye, Skipper,” Chief Beni said, and started checking his board for any noisemakers on the ship. He hadn’t had an active sensor going since they ditched their pursuers.
Kris decided now would be a good time to pay a visit to Ron, and got her high-gee station rolling toward Iteeche country. That was no mean feat.
The Wasp was in desperate need of a yard period, and steering a motorized lounge chair through the ship was not the breeze it had been in days gone by. Kris, however, did manage to arrive at her goal with only a few new scrapes on her paint job.
There was still a Marine guard outside the hatch at the entry to the Iteeche quarters.
He called inside and got immediate permission to enter. That was nice, but maneuvering Kris’s high-gee station over the knee knockers was slow going. However, with her bum knee, Kris was not about to try walking around at over triple her weight.
Inside, it turned out the Iteeche were not taking chances either. All three of them were floating in tubs of water.
“How long will we be stuck in here?” came from the translation computer that Kris had given Ron. Who complained was hard to say. Floating naked in supportive water, the three of them didn’t look all that different.
No, Kris could tell them apart. Ron was clearly the younger, lacking many of the wrinkles that covered the others. His coloring was also healthier, although Kris would be hard put to explain that conclusion.
Of the two older Iteeche, one had tossed Kris a casual salute, a touch of one of his four arms to his forehead. She’d bet money the respectful one was Ted, the Navy officer. That left only the Army officer to be the one complaining.
“We expect to make orbit around the closest gas giant in less than twenty-four hours,” Kris said.
“Will we have to go through another one of those smashups?” the grumpy one demanded.
“He means the shake, rattle, and roll when you refueled the ship,” Ted corrected from his Navy experience.
“We’re going to try to avoid that this time,” Kris said.
“Then how are you going to capture the reaction mass?” Ron asked.
“It’s going to be interesting, but we hope to fly the balloot through the upper atmosphere using three of the ship’s launches.”
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