Daring

by Mike Shepherd

  The ride got rough.

  Then it got worse.

  Kris found her target pipper jumping all over the place, though she managed, just barely several times, to keep it inside the circle.

  Inside her head, she could almost hear Nelly shouting orders to her kids.

  That couldn’t be true; it had to be her imagination.

  Kris had always considered Nelly an adjunct to her own thinking. Now she realized that Nelly was using her in a manner that Kris had no idea of, or control over, to help her communicate, or organize, or do something.

  Kris struggled to keep her hands and feet working the controls as her mind merged with the boat. She felt more than experienced each jump, each knock, each bounce up and down. Around her, the boat’s structure complained as it was twisted and pulled. She could feel each complaint, each scream as composite and metal were pushed to their limits, then left to fall back as the air they swam through forgot about the intruder for a moment and did something else instead.

  Kris felt her brain settle into a trance. She and the boat were one and the same, going through this together, no break between where one ended and the other began.

  Behind her, someone lost their lunch. She doubted it was Jack, but she had no time to check. Her eyes were on the instruments, taking their feed in, passing it though her brain and out to her feet and hands with nothing more than a hint of direct processing.

  She lived, therefore she flew.

  “Balloot is half-full,” the copilot said. “We’ve almost completed our orbit. We’ll have to go around again to fill it up.”

  “Let’s see if we can avoid that. Nelly, is the balloot’s mouth fully open?”

  “No, Kris, it’s only about a third open.”

  “Open it more.”

  “That wasn’t in our plan,” Nelly said.

  “My reading of this boat’s stress says it won’t take another orbit. What do you say?”

  “The boat is still together,” Nelly said. “But I can’t feel it the way you do. If you say go for it, I’ll do it, Kris.”

  “Do it. Folks, the balloot is going to get more lively in a second. Get ready to ride herd on it,” Kris said on net.

  A moment later, Kris felt the extra drag on the boat even before the instrumentation recorded it.

  “We need to strengthen the cable,” Nelly said. “We need to shorten it.”

  And the red circle Kris had to stay in got smaller even as the pipper bounced wildly about inside it.

  It was hard to say what it was, a storm, an updraft, whatever it was, one moment Kris had the boat right side up, the next moment, it was upside down.

  Nelly made sure the Smart MetalTM did the right thing. Rather than wrapping itself around the launch like any normal cable would, the connection point between the cable and the collar just slid around the boat.

  Kris managed to right the boat without flying them outside the red circle . . . just barely.

  “Maria is out cold,” Jack announced. “She bounced her head off the bulkhead pretty badly.”

  “I’ve got at least one other human off-line,” Nelly said. “It’s degrading our programming speed.”

  Then it happened.

  They flew into a wall.

  A jet stream traveling at nine hundred kilometers an hour is not a wall in the air. Not exactly. But if you’ve been handling torrents of air going hither and yon and suddenly run into a stream of air moving with a single purpose and great speed on a course at nearly ninety degrees from your course, it can sure feel like a wall.

  Launch 2 was a few hundred meters in the lead when it hit the wall and took off sideways. Kris and Launch 1 were next. Launch 3 must have been trailing them by nearly a half kilometer.

  The Smart MetalTM was able to stretch to keep Launch 2 attached. It barely managed to keep Launch 1. There was no way it could handle Launch 3 as the distance to it suddenly unwound.

  The cable to Launch 3 let go.

  Kris immediately went into overdrive, her hands and feet pushing controls as she fought to keep the balloot from being ripped away from the two launches that still had a tenuous hold on it.

  “Tighten the line,” Kris ordered Nelly. “Reel that sucker in.”

  “I’m doing it, Kris. I’m switching what’s left of Launch 3’s cable to strengthen 1’s and 2’s.”

  “Keep the balloot’s lip open,” Kris demanded. “We aren’t going to go through all this to get back with nothing to show for it.”

  “It’s open right now. I’ll switch metal there once you two boats get yourselves back in formation.”

  “Launch 2, hold your course as best as you can,” Kris said. “I’ll form on you.” As best as I can, she added under her breath.

  “Nelly, give me a course.”

  “Try this.”

  Kris flew it

  “I’m shortening up the cables,” Nelly said. “I’ve got the balloot fully open. Do you think it’s calmer in the jet stream?”

  “Maybe it is,” Kris allowed, “but when we hit the other side of this puppy, all hell’s going to hit us.”

  “Any suggestions?” Jack asked.

  “Maybe if we fly out of the top of it,” Kris suggested. “Launch 2, prepare to take it upstairs.”

  “Roger. We’ll try to climb out of this mess.”

  “Nelly, give us a climbing course.”

  The screen in front of Kris moved. Kris applied power and followed the pipper up.

  “How much reaction mass do we have?” she asked.

  “It looks like seventy-five percent,” her copilot shouted.

  “Anything more is icing on the cake. Nelly, have you heard anything from Launch 3 since we lost it?”

  “No, Kris, all the ionization down here makes radio communications out of the question.”

  “Launch 3 was the old farts, wasn’t it?” Jack asked.

  “Yes. If anyone can find his way back to the Wasp, it’s Chief Beni,” Nelly said, sounding more hopeful than confident.

  “Let’s get this balloot back to the boat. Then we can worry about one launch,” Kris said, hating herself for being so mission-oriented at a moment like this. But that was what she was expected to do.

  You look for the better of two goods, you avoid the worst of two evils. You are practical.

  She hated herself for what she’d become.

  Get out of your head. Fly this boat.

  Kris flew. They did manage to get above the worst of the jet stream before they exited it. Kris was half-tempted to take them back down and try to fill the balloot to the rim, but she remembered all the comments she’d heard of late about her bucket of luck being down to the bottom.

  “Nelly, can we match orbit with the Wasp from here?”

  “If we work at it, Kris.”

  “Let’s do it before this poor old boat breaks in half.”

  “We did lose pressurization a while back,” the copilot pointed out.

  “We did? I didn’t notice.”

  “There was a horrible groan back here,” Jack said. “I thought we were going to fly all apart.”

  “She wouldn’t dare,” Kris said.

  “On you, maybe,” the copilot said. “I’m pretty sure she would have done it without a second thought on me.”

  Kris enjoyed a tight chuckle. The flying was getting easier, which was to say it was just horrible, not suicidal. “How’s Maria?” Kris asked.

  “Coming around,” Jack and Nelly said.

  That was confirmed a moment later by sounds of puking on net.

  And then choking.

  “Jack!” Kris called.

  “I’m working on it.”

  Kris didn’t have to look, she could feel the boat move under her as Jack unbuckled himself from his seat, worked his way to the emergency equipment bin, and found a survival pod. By the time he came back forward, Penny had released Maria from her seat. Both of them then stuffed the petty officer into the pod, where she could remove her helmet and try to catch her breath throu
gh all the vomit.

  Jack, being Jack, most likely also stuffed some other gear, like wipes and burp bags in with her. Jack was just that good.

  “Nelly, have you lost Sheri?”

  “No, she’s still on the wireless net. She’s doing her best to work through Maria’s problems. We’ve still got all four of us working that wire, Kris.”

  “Good.”

  A few minutes later, Nelly reported that she was closing the mouth of the balloot. “It’s eight-two percent full. We’ve got all kinds of stuff in there besides hydrogen and helium. That ought to provide the Wasp with some decent reaction mass, and some water.”

  “Good,” Kris said, keeping the pipper in the middle of the flight path and trying not to think of what lay behind her.

  She tried not to think, but it wasn’t working.

  She’d never asked for the battleships to come along on her search. She would have happily settled for a few corvettes or other little boys like PatRon 10’s, but no. They were sailing with a Longknife, so they came loaded for bear.

  And something a whole lot bigger than a bear bit their heads off.

  And now, even as she was running for home, she couldn’t keep her team together. The chief had joined her at the Battle of Wardhaven. He’d been the best Captain Santiago had, and she’d passed him along to Kris when she needed him.

  Yes, he was always looking for a way to avoid a fight and find a beer. He wasn’t the poster boy for a Navy career, but he was good at what he did, and that was what made him indispensable to Kris.

  But he had gotten too close to one of those damn Longknifes, and now he was dead.

  Colonel Cortez had made a mistake that should have landed him in jail for a few years. Yes, he deserved to sit and contemplate the sin of trying to steal an entire planet for the money interests who hired him. But he didn’t deserve to die for it.

  He’d gotten too close to a damn Longknife, and it had killed him.

  And Professor Scrounger, when he signed on to be the miracle worker for the Wasp’s supply department, had just been looking for a way to keep his ex-wives in the manner they had become accustomed to. Ask him, and he’d tell you all about it.

  Only now you couldn’t. Like so many others who rubbed elbows with Longknifes, he was dead, and those damn Longknifes just kept rolling along, gathering people to them and dropping the dead bodies by the wayside.

  Stop this, girl. You keep this up, and you’ll be blubbering in your helmet.

  Yeah, let’s at least wait until I’ve got a pillow I can soak.

  Right, and get back to the Wasp. The recirculation system needs all the water it can get.

  Kris tried not to laugh at her dramatics and her own comeback.

  Still, she chuckled.

  “What are you laughing at?” Jack said. “I could use something at the moment.”

  “Nothing,” Kris said. “Nothing that’s funny.”

  “At the moment, I’d settle for a bit of irony,” Jack said.

  “If I find any, I’ll pass it along,” Kris said.

  Twenty minutes later, they matched orbit with the Wasp.

  “Kris,” Nelly said, “I have a burst message. An unknown ship just shot through one of the two old-fashioned jump points into this system. Captain Drago asks you to please come alongside and deliver the balloot without using the radio.”

  57

  Kris had a million questions, none of which could be answered at the moment. She left it to Nelly and her brood to bring the balloot alongside. Nelly was good, she almost plugged the balloot’s off-loading pipe right into the Wasp’s transfer station to the reaction tanks.

  Once the sailors had the balloot tied down, Kris quickly brought Launch 1 around to catch the hook into the drop bay.

  She felt rather insensitive handing Maria off to the first sailor who glided onto the launch, but the petty officer was headed for sick bay, and Kris wanted to be on the bridge, if not immediately, then ten minutes ago.

  “What have we got?” she demanded as she shot onto the bridge and caught a handhold on her Weapons station.

  “We don’t know,” Captain Drago said. “Where’s the chief?”

  “Down there somewhere. We hit something like a jet stream sideways, and it ripped us up good. Two of us held on, so you have reaction mass. We haven’t heard from Launch 3. It had the chief, the colonel, and your scrounger.”

  “That’s not good,” the skipper said. “Nelly, can you make anything of what sensor feed we got? We’re not using any net we can avoid. Plug yourself directly into the Sensor station if you don’t mind.”

  Kris shoved off from Weapons and grabbed a handhold on Sensors. Nelly had a wire into the station a second later. Quickly, it replayed a ship entering the system.

  It didn’t look like anything Kris had ever seen.

  “It doesn’t match anything in All the Worlds’ Fighting Ships,” Nelly quickly answered. “The engines and power plant don’t match anything our intelligence says the Iteeche have. They also aren’t much like the aliens that have tried to shoot us up. However, if anything, they are closer to those aliens than anything human or Iteeche.”

  “But not a match,” the skipper said.

  “They match nothing I know of,” Nelly said. “I take it you don’t want me to use any active sensors?”

  “Don’t you even think of doing that. We’re a hole in space. They’re decelerating and can’t likely get a good read of what’s behind their plasma jets. They don’t know we’re here, and I like it that way.”

  “What’s on your mind?” Kris asked.

  Captain Drago rubbed his chin. “We could just sit here, quiet-like, and let them pass us by. Or we could come charging out gunning for them, assuming there’s a chance of us getting a shot at them and surviving the fight. I haven’t thought of a third option.”

  Kris mulled those options over for a second. The first one sure looked good.

  “What was the ship’s speed when it came through the jump point?” she found herself asking.

  “Hard to say for sure on passive sensors,” Sulwan answered, “but looks like it was doing some sixty-five thousand klicks an hour. She’s decelerating at about 1.5 gees.”

  Without Kris’s asking, Nelly opened a small window on the forward screen. It showed the present system as a tiny dot against a large star chart. Iteeche space was marked in yellow. Then a large red circle appeared.

  Its diameter was well beyond Iteeche space.

  “Nelly, add in the three systems that have been eating Iteeche scouts.”

  Nelly did. The three flashing red systems were all inside the circle.

  “So they made a big jump from outside Iteeche space,” Kris said. “They’re slowing down in this system, and will, I’ll bet, use it to make a series of small jumps to check out the neighborhood. Just like I had PatRon 10 do.”

  “It certainly looks that way,” the skipper agreed.

  “Nelly, where will the two old-fashioned jump points in the system take this bogey if she tries them nice and slow?”

  Nelly showed two systems within twenty light-years. “Neither one is occupied,” she reported.

  “And from those systems?” Kris asked, really, really wishing she could keep her mouth shut and do something stupid for a change. Hadn’t her friends paid enough for the Longknife legend this trip?

  More systems lit up. “Several of them have large Iteeche colonies,” Nelly said.

  THIS IS FROM THE MAP I DON’T HAVE, KRIS.

  No one on the bridge asked for clarification. If Nelly said it, it had to be true.

  In all her life, Kris had never more wanted not to say something, but words tumbled slowly out of her mouth. “So what we have here is an alien scout ship. She did a big jump to a base system, and now she’s likely going to nose around. And if she does, she’ll find a large chunk of the Iteeche Empire.”

  Kris paused, then went on. “Question for the class. If she does get back, how long before a mother ship like the last
one we just saw follows? But if she doesn’t get back, will they just write her off, or will they immediately send another scout?”

  “There’s no way for us to answer any of your questions, Your Highness,” Captain Drago said. “So, Commodore, what are your orders?”

  Once more, it came down to what could a Longknife pull out of her hat. Kris suppressed a sigh. Her hat was empty. Her pot of gold was drained. Everything she had or ever had been had been poured out in the last few weeks.

  Wasn’t there anyone else to take responsibility for this mess?

  “Sulwan, if I did want to take a potshot at that alien, how could I do it?”

  The navigator had been working with her board at a furious rate since Kris came on the bridge. Now she looked up, seemed startled by the use of her name, and blinked groggily at Kris.

  “I figured someone would be asking for my opinion,” she said. “Our 24-inch pulse lasers are good for forty thousand klicks. Our 5-inch long guns can reach out maybe a bit longer, but I have this wild suspicion that they wouldn’t do much damage to anything bigger than a torpedo. Anyway, the direct course from Jump Point Alpha to Jump Point Beta won’t put that ship anywhere close to within range.”

  Kris liked what she was hearing, but her mouth had a mind of its own. “What kind of activity could put us within range?”

  “I knew you’d ask, and it all depends.”

  “You want to explain that?” her captain asked.

  “Not really. Did any of that silly metal you used to hold on to the balloot come back with you?”

  “We did not lose that much,” Nelly put in. “You had lost a lot in the fight, but there’s still about half of what you started with.”

  “Well, then I guess we can try making like a rock again,” Sulwan said. “Two orbits from now, if we were to make a hard, 3.5-gee burn, while we’re behind this noisy ice giant, we could go from a nice round orbit, if I do say so myself, into a rough slingshot course that would put us headed out in the general direction of the alien.”

  Sulwan paused for a breath. “If they are real dumb, and don’t notice that no asteroid flew into a pass at this ice giant, but just take for granted that one came out the other side, they might let us drift up close to them. We’d have to stay real, real quiet, and we’d have to use the armor for a disguise, but we could close to thirty-eight thousand klicks of them.”