The rocket motors also slammed the Wasp forward and to the right.
That proved to be a good idea because the aliens did indeed have more lasers ready to come online. Even as their aft end crumbled under the Wasp’s fire, they were reaching out to pierce their attacker.
Fortunately, their attacker wasn’t where she had been.
In front of them, the supposed rocky face of an asteroid converted itself to defensive shields to protect the Wasp from the next shot.
But the next shot never came.
It started aft, and the explosion then shot through the ship. In seconds, what had once been a good-sized scout ship was nothing but a sprinkle of glowing bits.
“God in heaven,” Penny said.
“Was that us, or did they have another dead man switch?” the skipper asked no one in particular.
“I can’t tell you, sir,” was all Kris could say.
“I think there’s something still there,” Sensors said. “Give me a moment; there’s a lot of junk out there, but I think it launched a small boat just before it started firing.”
“Do we finally have some survivors?” Kris asked, then did something about it. “Jack, we need to deploy some Marines. There’s a small boat out there, maybe full of survivors. Maybe, I don’t know, someone who wanted to live rather than fight to the death.”
“Could it also be a booby trap?” came back from the Marine officer.
“Anything is possible. Just, if they’re alive, I’d really like to talk to them.”
“Understood, Commodore, keeping my Marines alive is secondary to getting them alive. We can do that.”
With an order from Captain Drago, Sulwan applied precious reaction mass to braking the Wasp and edging it toward the small alien spacecraft.
Kris watched the alien carefully but tapped her commlink. “Please broadcast on a narrow band, back to the ice giant, a recall message to Launch 3. If it’s still out there, let’s let them know that we want to hear from them now.”
“Aye, aye, ma’am,” came from the comm watch.
Captain Drago eyed Kris.
“I’ve got to at least try to find them.”
The skipper nodded.
Kris went back to watching the craft as they closed in on it. It made no attempt to dodge them but continued to drift in space. That could mean a lot of things. Kris tried to concentrate on the good and leave the bad to Jack and his Marines.
“That’s close enough,” the skipper ordered.
“Jack, you can launch your Marines.”
“We’re taking Launch 1. I’ve got Gunny with me.”
Then the silence began to stretch.
Kris didn’t much care for the first words that broke it.
“We got a situation here,” said Gunny Brown.
“What kind of situation?” Kris asked.
“The hatch to this boat is open a good ten centimeters.”
“How’d that happen?” Kris demanded.
“Your guess, Commodore, is as good as mine,” the old NCO answered.
“Will you look inside?”
“That’s what I’m doing, ma’am. It’s kind of ugly. There appear to be two bodies, young, I’d say a male and female. Oh. What have we here?”
The silence stretched.
Kris waited.
“I think I know why these two fled the scout when the shooting started,” Gunny said. “I’m holding a makeshift survival balloon with two of the cutest little babies you’d ever want to see.”
“Babies?” Kris echoed.
“Yep, if they were my kids, I’d say they’re about six months old and in need of feeding or a diaper change from the squalling.”
Kris had prepared herself for a lot of things, but this was nowhere near even the bottom of her long list. The Wasp and its crew had always met the demands she put on it, but a nursery? A nursery for orphans?
A nursery for alien orphans!
“Skipper?”
“I know, Your Highness, I will have one of the compartments close aboard the spindle converted into a nursery. We’ll canvass the crew for anyone with experience or the desire to be a nanny.”
“Thank you, Captain Drago.”
Out in space, Launch 1 came alongside the craft. The baby bubble was immediately transferred to the longboat. Then the Marines jury-rigged a collar to attach the alien craft to the launch and began a careful return to the Wasp. Once back, the alien craft was locked down outside and the launch recovered. The Marines, though they had not shared an atmosphere with the aliens, still were subjected to full decontamination procedures.
The babies were quickly hurried into isolation before they were changed. Their parents had taken along a bag with baby essentials in it. The surviving boffins immediately subjected it to a thorough analysis.
The diapers were cloth, very much like cotton. “We can match them.”
The rubber pants were made of some sort of plastic. Again, they could be replaced.
The formula was the big question mark. It seemed to be based on something like milk, with a lot of extras. The boffins were confident they could duplicate it from the Wasp’s shrunken supplies. That assumed that something humans called milk could be digested by someone with such different DNA.
First, they would use what the presumed parents had brought.
Kris left them to their work.
Which left Kris with nothing else to do but watch as the bridge crew prepared to blast for the other fuzzy jump point in the system.
She tapped her commlink. “Communications, have you heard anything from Launch 3?”
“Nothing, Your Highness. We’re guarding every frequency Chief Beni might use. We haven’t raised so much as a hum or a click that might be them.”
Kris closed her eyes as the breath went out of her. She wished she was like Penny. At a moment like this, she’d say a prayer and feel better for it. Instead, Kris struggled to bring in a deep breath, then let it out slowly.
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 metha
ne 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.”
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