“Still, it was good to have that plot added to my board and nice not to have it talked about on net, so, yes, Nelly, you’re forgiven for messing with my ship.”
“I just asked the board to plot the course. The board did all the work,” Nelly said. “It did it most rapidly.”
“Nelly, are you complimenting my standard Navy-issue gear?”
“It did the job required of it.”
“I think your computer is learning tact.”
“I hope so,” Kris said as she headed for the hatch.
“You going into that den of thieves next door?” Jack asked.
“Looks like it.”
“I better tag along.”
“I thought you were on terminal leave.”
“Yeah, I am, ain’t I. But I don’t like the looks of that mob they let in. It sure would be a shame for you to get this ragtag and bobtail collection all formed up, then miss the show because someone put a bullet in your elbow. Pinked you in your little toe. You know, that kind of thing.”
“You know, if I didn’t know better, I’d think you were concerned about me.”
“Nope, just worried about my professional reputation. Me being so close when you get tagged, I’d never live it down.”
“Yeah, right,” Kris said. But it did feel good to have Jack at her side, doing that thing he did that seemed to be looking every which way at once.
On his own pier, Roy had organized chaos into groups that were examining small chunks of the problem. He circulated between them. Kris caught him in midcirculation and brought him up to date on the major ship movement about to take place.
“Crap, I was kind of hoping those love boats would stay tied up not too far from me and my docks. So they’re out of here.”
“Looks that way.”
“Good Lord but that’s gonna be a lot of noise, not to mention heavy metal moving around,” he said, slowing down. “Albert. You might want to hear this. You too, Gus.”
Two middle-aged types. Albert a tall, thin woman, Gus a short, round man, detached themselves from different groups to join Kris and Roy. As Kris repeated her situation report, several others gravitated into their circle.
“Neat,” a young woman said. “Plenty of mass. Plenty of magnetic excitement. Where’s the sun and moon?”
“Nelly, give the woman a schematic of the system.” And one appeared in front of Kris.
“If the whole mob pulled away at the same time, you’d have Wardhaven between the bastards and you for fifteen, twenty minutes,” Gus said, pudgy fingers tracing Nelly’s hologram.
“You could sort yourselves out, form on their reverse side, be in their shadow by the time you got out from behind Wardhaven,” Albert said.
“They’d head for Alpha jump,” Kris said, “and standard battle tactics would have us head for the moon.”
“No surprise there,” Gus said, “but you’d have their background noise again to use to sort yourselves out, get the larger ships in front, the smaller in their shadow. We could have a whole lot of different . . . and extraneous . . . noise from several sources covering so much of your signal that . . .”
“Yes.” Albert nodded. “Those liners would add a very nice bit of cover to the symphony. If we tweaked our signals in the J band. The L and P. We could have them so confused.”
Kris left them to their confusion and headed for Luna’s boat. “You set?” she asked the merchant skipper.
“As set as can be. Appreciate you letting us have some of them Foxers and Army WP. I know you would like us to hang back out of range, but that ain’t what I got in mind.”
“Nelly’s developed some bone-jarring evasion schemes.”
“Yeah. A mite rough for these old bones, but those new brain buckets they dropped on us might save what smarts I got left, and I do like the rig your Nelly did to my high-g chair. Where was she when I was a young sprout, kicking up my boots?”
“I was a young chip, learning to count, and couldn’t tell a random number from an imaginary one,” Nelly put in.
“Damn, she’s even telling jokes. Can you cook?”
“No.” Nelly sounded truly brokenhearted.
“Well, you learn how to cook, and I’ll think about marrying you. Cooking and singing.”
“Don’t encourage her to sing.”
“Singing. I could learn to sing.”
“I think I’ve created a monster, if you ain’t done it first, honey.”
“I’m afraid I did it long ago,” Kris said and took her leave, Jack at her elbow. They walked along the piers where the other yachts, both armed and rescue boats, were fitting out.
“It’s getting more and more complicated,” Jack said.
“With more people involved. Just look at the crews of these boats.” There were civilian and merchant marine, Navy and Coast Guard Reserve, mixed together as if they’d been press-ganged to crew boats that had started with one mission in mind, then switched to another. But whatever job they’d drawn, they’d taken to it with a will. Despite van Horn’s warning about friction, or maybe because of his ham-handed words, Kris hadn’t had a single problem.
Here and there she paused to talk to officers and crew; no one asked her when it would start; they knew the physics of space travel as well as she did. No one asked if they’d sail. With or without authorization from their government, these men and women were committed. Had been for two or three days.
“We’re ready, ma’am.” “You bet, Your Highness,” “We’re behind you,” sounded good.
She found Gabby and Cory at the end of a line of unarmed civilian tugs, two reserve comm tech 2/c’s working to get their hijacked boat ready for the next day.
“You’ll be trailing the main force,” Kris told them. Nelly provided a hologram that explained it. “When we’re behind the moon, we don’t want them to do something to surprise us.”
“Right, tomorrow, all the surprises are on those bastards.” The kid laughed.
“That’s the general idea,” Kris agreed. “You’re our link to let us know. If the sensors on the base detect changes in the hostiles, they signal you. You relay it to us. I can’t think of anything more critical tomorrow.”
“Besides blowing one of those battleships out of space,” the old man said.
“We’ll do that. You just tell us what we need to know.”
“You can count on us.”
Kris gave them a jaunty thumbs-up and headed back.
“You’re feeling guilty,” Jack said beside her, his eyes still roving. Habit? No one here would harm her.
“More like burdened. They’re so sure I’ll come up with the right plan, get things just right so we win this thing. They must know how bad the odds are.”
“Doesn’t look it from where I’m standing,” Jack said.
“Faith is a wonderful thing. They have faith, and I’m stuck hoping I can come up with the perfect attack plan.”
“I think that’s called the burden of command.”
They were back in Roy’s domain. Carts, long tables, and black boxes made up an impromptu assembly line, complete with a quality control station. A woman there rejected someone’s work. “Try holding it together next time with bubble gum.”
“How’s it going?” Kris asked Roy.
“Fine, fine. Couldn’t be better. Oh, one thing, if we want the armed yachts to fake it as PFs, maybe it would be good if the PFs occasionally come off looking like yachts. We’d like to put some noisemakers on them. Something that you’d switch on for just a short time that would make you sound like a yacht.”
“Wouldn’t that give our location away?” Kris backed away, folded her arms across her chest.
“Yes, it would, but not much, and not for long. Do it just before you do a radical course change. But if, for just a second or two, you were making noises like your average, garden variety yacht, someone might be less interested in shooting you. We’re making the yachts look meaner. Why not make the PFs nicer?”
The idea had logic. It j
ust kind of limped when you added that you’d be doing it by making nice noise that someone could home in on. “Put the noisemakers aboard. I’ll leave it to the Captains how much they use them.”
“Fine, fine. Just remember, you go swagger around looking all mean and nasty, and you’ll be first in line to be swatted.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Kris said. “Nelly. Could you mix that kind of noisemaker into your evasion plan?
“Doing it, Kris. No problem. I have also accessed the section of the spectrum they are looking at simulating and agree with them. Our design was intentionally worked on to quiet noise in that area. A little noise down there would make us look much more like a regular civilian vessel.
“And you can’t hide like a needle in a haystack if you’re all shiny. I see your point. Maybe we need some hay seed.”
Done there, Kris and Jack headed for the PF boats . . . and a surprise. Most of the crews were camped around their gangways. They’d brought air mattresses, chairs of different sorts. It wasn’t at all the shipshape Navy look.
“No one going back to barracks?” Kris asked.
“Don’t want to leave the boats,” Chief Stan explained. “Most of our trouble started because some yahoo got on board and messed with our engines while we were away. Nobody, but nobody is getting on my boat tonight.”
That brought determined nods up and down the pier. Several of the officers were there; many weren’t. A check showed that Kris’s mention of the Hilton’s availability had sent a few off to check it out. Kris wondered who would be paired with whom, then decided she didn’t need to know. She did notice that Phil was among the missing. She hoped he made a better choice than Babs.
Kris settled among the 109’s crew when they offered her a chair. “We’re ready,” Fintch assured her.
“If she don’t land us on another golf course,” Tononi said and got slugged for it.
“Just so long as we make a hole in one,” the Chief quipped.
“Just so long as we get this over with.” Fintch sighed. “I mean, I’m not all that excited about taking on six battlewagons, but this waiting is a big pain in my butt.”
“We got the target when we went after it,” Kris pointed out.
“Yes, ma’am, Your Highness,” Fintch agreed, “and I’m sure we’ll do better tomorrow.”
“We’re a better boat than we were for that run,” the Chief pointed out. “We got better high-g protection. We got rockets to make them keep their heads down. We got a couple a dozen ships riding out there with us, right ma’am? They ain’t gonna know what hit them when Eight goes flashing by.”
“We’re going to hit them hard,” Kris agreed. “And we’re going to punch holes in them for other boats to knock bigger and wider. It’s not just us out there. Everything Wardhaven can muster, Army, civilian, you name it, will be out there, trailing us. We knock ’em down. Then they’ll put ’em out.”
It sounded so nice. Kris had been working for this every moment since she came up the elevator. It should work.
But how many of these fine, wonderful people would be here to talk about it tomorrow?
Don’t go there. Not now. Not tonight. If you survive, you can worry about it. No need to let this last night be burdened by tomorrows that might never come. Someone brought out a harmonica; a gal on 110 had a guitar. They sang songs for a while. A couple of the guys complained this was too much like summer camp. They wanted a football game.
The Chiefs scotched that. “And who’s gonna fill your slot if you’re in the sick bay tomorrow with a broken leg, busted head?” That ended that. The Chief of 110 came up with a rousing song that sounded evil enough to have been drunk to for a couple thousand years. One young lad recalled he had a bagpipe in his quarters. Despite threats from half the crews, he headed off for it. Kris thought of how the Fourth Highlanders of Lorna Do approached their business of breaking heads, hearts, and other things, and happily joined in.
An hour or three later, she knew she needed some sleep and turned to go. The Chief was at her elbow, nodding to Jack.
“You’re around the Lieutenant a lot, sir. Are you—”
“I’m her Secret Service agent. Or was, when she rated one,” Jack answered. “I was at Tom and Penny’s wedding and followed them up when the Lieutenant here decided to do something. I’ve just been doing what I could.”
“You been keeping her safe, anyway,” the Chief nodded.
“Something like that.”
“You going out with us tomorrow?”
“Nope. I keep her out of trouble dirtside. You got to take care of her up here.”
“We’ll take good care of her, sir. Damn good care of her.”
They walked in silence for most of the distance to the Halsey. “You know, I think the Chief mistook me for a boyfriend,” Jack finally said.
“Or a stalker,” Kris offered, trying out an evil grin.
“Never considered that as a career option. Might take it up if your old man doesn’t win or I don’t get assigned back to your detail. Stalker. Not a bad job.”
Kris suppressed the urge to reach out, take Jack’s hand in hers. “Don’t stalkers have to be unwanted? Kind of hard to think of anyone who wouldn’t want to have you on their trail.”
“I know a few bad types that didn’t want to see my face.” Jack tried his go at one of Tommy’s lopsided grins. It didn’t look right on him; his grin righted itself into just a nice friendly type. Unfortunately, they were at the Halsey’s brow. Kris went through the formalities of coming aboard ship, went to the CIC, found it empty except for a duty watch.
“Anything new?” drew a negative reply. Jack trailed her to her room but quickly opened his own door. For a second, Kris considered inviting Jack in for drinks, for talk, for . . . But he was quickly in his own room, and the door closed between them. She opened hers, hit the light switch, and stopped.
There, on her bunk were laid out two uniforms. One was the usual blue shipsuit. Next to it were pressed and starched dress whites. But someone had already gone to the trouble of affixing her shoulder boards, putting on her few medals. The Order of the Wounded Lion was there, only moved to the right pocket. On the left, where a command insignia would have been . . . there was one.
Kris blinked, studying what showed there. Ten, fifteen years back, when first the PFs had been suggested, someone had proposed a command insignia for PF squadrons. When the boats were all decommissioned, the insignia had been disestablished. The Commodore had somehow laid his hands on one and had been known to wear it on special occasions.
Present uniform regulations did not allow for it.
Now three small ships on a field of lightning bolts sailed serenely across Kris’s left pocket. A gift from the Commodore? A surrender to her usurpation of his command? Clearly, someone had gone to an effort to have her wear that.
Gently, Kris moved her whites carefully to the small desk beside her bunk and quickly got ready for bed.
The clock on the desk said she’d been trying to sleep for three hours. Maybe had slept for two. Kris was wide awake, or at least awake enough to be haunted by visions of what lasers could do to small ships. Human flesh. Herself.
“Kris, will I survive today’s battle?” Nelly asked softly.
Kris was out of bed, yanking on the blue shipsuit as she answered. “Unless we get blasted to bits, I expect you will.”
“I would like to make a long message to Tru before we sail.”
“All the things we’ve talked about?”
“Those, and something else.”
“What?” Kris paused at the door.
“Kris, I have been nudging at the edges of the small rock Auntie Tru gave me from Santa Maria. Never when you were fully engaged. Certainly not for the last few days. But I have been trying to look into its insides. And I think I see things.
“Maybe it is what you would call a dream. Maybe not. I think I see stars. Star maps. Only, some of them are different from the maps your great-grandfather Ray had made when he was st
ill attached to the stone on Santa Maria. I do not know why the maps might be different. It just looks that way to me. There are other things. Images of what I take to be the Three and the cities they built. They are lovely.
“Kris, I would not want what I have seen, or think I saw, to die if I die. Let me send them to Tru. Then, if something happens to me, at least I will have done more with my time with you than just count numbers and keep track of your stocks.”
Kris stood there at the door. Nelly clearly had not obeyed her order to not touch the stone slice imbedded in her matrix of self-organizing processing material. But she had also not failed Kris in anything important. Nelly had done what she had insisted she could: sneak a peek into the heart of the possible data source without Kris suffering any disastrous side effect. The teenager had defied Mother but gotten home safe.
“Yes, Nelly, just before we sail, send by landline all the data you want to Auntie Tru. Send her a full backup of what you are. Tell her that, if anything happens to you, to be sure to activate you again. Register a change to my will that money is to be made available to Trudy Seyd to pay for your restoration.”
“Thank you, Kris. I appreciate that. Maybe your brother Honovi will have a girl that could put me to good use.”
“Oh, Tru will find someone to keep you working hard.”
“But no one like you. Take care, Kris.”
“Take care of yourself,” Kris said and opened the door.
Sandy was hunched over the battle board in the dim light of CIC. The duty watch went about its work around her. Kris pulled a stool out from the battle board across from Sandy and sat down.
“Thought you’d be asleep,” Kris said.
“Tried. It’s overrated. Thought you’d be in whites,” the destroyer skipper said without looking up.
“Will be, after I shower later. The whites your idea?”
“Part mine. Part the Commodore’s. I think the old fellow likes you.”
“He’s trusting me with his squadron, and I know he loves those boats. You see anything new?”
Kris Longknife: Defiant: Defiant Page 25