“None at the moment, Admiral.”
“Then send to squadron. ‘Set course for Jump Point Beta. On my mark, you will begin a 3.5-gee acceleration.’”
“The message is sent,” Drago reported. “We have acknowledgments.”
“Mark,” Kris said.
In her day quarters, dust motes that had been floating in zero gee began a dive for the deck.
“Captain, set a course and speed that will get us to Jump Point Beta with a velocity of four hundred thousand klicks on the squadron. Be prepared to adjust that speed based upon our observations of the renegade’s speed as it enters the jump.”
“Aye, aye, Admiral. Nelly, if you will work with my navigator, I would appreciate the effort.”
“Most certainly, Captain,” Nelly said most primly, then added, “Captain, Admiral, I foresee a small but not insignificant probability of a collision at extremely high speed with an asteroid or ship if we follow a course direct from here to Jump Point Beta. May I recommend that we adjust our course to take us outside the plane of the Alwa System. It will add time, but be safer.”
Kris raised an eyebrow to Captain Drago. He nodded. “Nelly, send to the squadron, ‘Conform to flag’s movement,’ then adjust our course up or down.”
“I believe down would be the safest course.”
“Tell my navigator to do that,” Captain Drago said.
“Is there anything else I’m missing?” Kris asked her crew.
“Someone will have to inform the aliens,” Jacques said. “I visited with them for a bit yesterday, checking on some language issues. They find the eggs confining and want to know when they can get out of them. I told them soon.”
“Then I will have to tell them later,” Kris said, “but not now.”
She paused to compose her thoughts. “Nelly, send to Admiral Kitano. ‘We are in the system in a high-energy state. We will take over pursuit of the hijacked freighter. Please clear the area around Jump Point Beta for our use. Be advised that more reports on the investigation of the alien home world are to follow. Please pass along to me any report on your present situation. Longknife sends.’”
“That ought to cause quite a stir,” Jack said.
“We’ll see,” Kris said. “Nelly, have you and your kids sifted through all the reports we have? Select out the most complete and informative. Send all their executive summaries first, with the rest to follow. See how much we can get out before we go through Beta Jump.”
“Working on it, Kris. I assume this is a second priority to navigation?”
“Correct, Nelly. Catching Sampson is our number one priority.”
“We can handle it all, Kris,” Nelly said, and if she’d had them, she would have been busting her buttons.
There was a long wait before the first message came in from Canopus Station, and it was a visual of Admiral Kitano.
“Oh my God, you folks are coming in fast! We have a problem,” and she proceeded to fill Kris in on the problem she already knew about. Kitano was about halfway through the explanation when a lieutenant brought her a message flimsy. She glanced at it and laughed.
“So, you’ve already picked up on what I’m telling you and, as I should have known, are reacting to it. Okay, you have the right of way. We will keep the space around Jump Point Beta clear for you. Good luck and Godspeed or more.”
The admiral paused to take a deep breath. “Viceroy, I’m glad you had good luck at the alien home world, but we’ve had the worst luck here. Some of the old Rooster elders have taken to civil disobedience. They wander into roads, purely by accident, they insist, but our trucks don’t dare do more than fifteen or twenty klicks for fear of running someone down. The rains didn’t come again, so even though we’ve got plenty of farm gear to plant with, we can only use land we can irrigate.”
The admiral paused to catch a tired breath. “Someone put sand and gravel, even some large stones, in the intake for the viaduct. We got most of the big junk out, but we couldn’t get it all. We’re a good ten percent down on our water flow.”
Kitano glanced offscreen as if looking for words. “We’ve tried talking to them, but all we get is a stubborn insistence that we go back to the way things were. We tell them that there are aliens coming to really mess with their world, but they say they’ve heard enough of that, I think the word they use is something like ‘fairy tale.’ There are a whole lot of us down here about ready to pull our hair out. If that could be done, I think your friend Armstrong would be bald.”
“There have been some ugly incidents between the Alwans that follow the Associations and those that live in the deep woods. So far it’s just pecking at each other, but Granny Rita says she expects bodies to be found any morning now. Sorry to dump this on you just as you’re chasing off after my screwup. If you want my head, I’ll hand in my resignation. I hope you’ll let me keep the P Royal, she’s a sweet ship. Kitano, out.”
And the screen went dead.
“And I thought we had problems,” Kris muttered.
33
Kris dismissed her team to their duties.
“Do you want me to stay, love?” Jack asked.
“Nope. I think you better start looking into ways to board a ship at high vectors. Maybe even with high-gee acceleration still on the ship.”
“You think Sampson will be that stupid?”
“There is no limit I place on Sampson’s folly,” Kris said. “I won’t make that mistake again.”
“Can you loan my Marines the pinnace?”
“Hmm, you have an idea there. That might work. Touch base with Captain Drago. Now, General, I need some time to think.”
“Let me know when you want me around. I’ll come running, Admiral.”
Jack left. Kris reclined her egg. What she really wanted to do was get out and pace the deck. That was what admirals did when they needed to think, wasn’t it? Nelson paced the deck, didn’t he?
Not at 3.5 gees, he didn’t.
Kris reclined, stared at the overhead, and thought.
Hard.
She thought of the hall beneath the pyramids. She’d sworn that not one more head would be added to that gory collection. In her mind’s eye, she saw a Rooster in a glass cube. Would she have to take one of them back there and rub their noses on the glass?
Dare I go back after the calling cards I left?
She hadn’t planned to go back at all, not sooner, not later. But she hadn’t expected to come back and find her rear area in an uproar.
Why won’t someone just let me fight my battles in a nice clean way?
Kris almost laughed. How many statesmen or generals had asked the same question? No doubt, she wasn’t the first. Hopefully, she wouldn’t be the last.
“Nelly, send to Admiral Kitano at your earliest convince. ‘Resignation rejected. I doubt I could have done a better job myself. We will talk more when I get back with Sampson’s guts for garters. Longknife sends.’”
“I’ve already sent it, Kris. Passing along communications is something I could do in my sleep if I ever did sleep. I didn’t bother you before, but now that you asked, we are on course to the jump. We will not intercept Sampson there, but will be about ten hours behind her.”
“Thank you, Nelly. If something big shows up, break in on me, but I do want to think.”
“Do you want to talk about it?”
“Aren’t you busy?”
“I’ve learned to delegate, Kris. My kids complain that I spell delegate D.U.M.P.”
Kris enjoyed a chuckle. “A good joke.”
“Captain Drago liked it. Mimzy and Sal are working on the course corrections. Kris, I took the opportunity to brief Professor Labao on our problem. He has his boffins breaking out the best sensors they have to help us track Sampson and see what final adjustments she makes at the jump.”
“That was good initiative, Nelly,” Kris said.
“So, what is worrying you, Kris?”
“We’ve learned a lot about the aliens.”
&nb
sp; “We have.”
“Do I need to report all this back to human space?”
“Didn’t the king say you shouldn’t report back?”
“Yes, we want to leave as few trails as possible. But could any of the stuff that we learned help out back home?”
“Why is this suddenly bothering you?”
“The problem they had on Alwa while I was gone, Nelly. Will what we found help motivate the Alwans to stand with us?”
“I don’t know, Kris. What do you think?”
“Nelly, I’m sorry, but I don’t want to be asked what I think; I want more input.”
“I’m sorry Kris, I can extrapolate trend curves, but jumping from one possible fact to another possible fact is just not what I do.”
“Nelly, is Penny busy?”
“No. Would you like me to invite her and Masao into this conversation?”
“Please do.”
A few minutes later, Penny’s and Masao’s eggs rolled into Kris’s day quarters.
“What’s up?” Penny asked. “Nelly said you were thinking dark thoughts and needed a blank wall to bounce them off of.”
“I said I needed input, not an echo chamber,” Kris said.
“Maybe she said something like that,” Kris’s best friend said. “Some of it could have gotten lost in translation.”
Nelly did not leap to defend her honor but remained quiet.
THANK YOU, GIRL.
I KNEW WHAT THE TWO OF YOU WERE DOING, KRIS. I’M NOT FLESH AND BLOOD, BUT I’M BEGINNING TO UNDERSTAND IT BETTER.
“I’m trying to decide whether or not to ignore my king’s instructions.”
“If they’re Ray’s, no doubt you’ll ignore him,” Penny said.
It was hard to tell, with Masao in an egg, but he might have looked shocked at such familiarity with the throne.
“The king said I should not send a lot of reports home. We don’t want to blaze a trail from here to there.”
“Right,” Penny said. “You don’t want to lay too much yarn out for the cats to play with, as my grandmother used to say. Sooner or later, they’re bound to make a mess.”
“But there’s all this new stuff we’ve found out about the aliens,” Kris said.
“Yes, it is a lot of new information,” Masao said, “but does it really change anything? They want to kill us. They don’t consider us worth talking to. Now that we know they consider us vermin in their eyes, I don’t see that it has changed anything.”
Kris told them about Dr. Meade’s discovery of the atrophied portion of the aliens’ brains and her theory of what that might be causing.
“Is that certain?” Masao asked.
“Nelly, do you have her latest work?” Kris asked.
“I have access to her notes, Kris. She hasn’t been able to add to her research while we’ve all been in the eggs. She is working on a new series of tests to further examine her hypotheses. Her main problem is the aliens’ lack of vocabulary. She can’t ask them to think of God, pray, or play a national anthem. Trying to create a response when her subjects don’t seem to have any handles to hang it on is very difficult.”
“So, even if this is so, what would you do with it?” Masao asked.
“What if we could figure out a way to reactivate it?” Kris said, posing the option that tasked her. “What if we could seed them with, I don’t know, a revival?”
“What if you did, and the Enlightened One grabbed hold of it and we ended up facing billions of crazy fanatics?” Penny asked back
“We are facing billions of crazy fanatics,” Kris said. “What’s the difference?”
“It could get worse. Right now we’re facing billions of obedient slaves,” Penny said. “We came up with 20-inch lasers, and now 22-inch lasers. They came up with the idea of putting rocks on their noses for armor. It seems to me that free men and woman are ahead to date. Do you really want to risk a change to that?”
“I’d really like to not have to kill another thirty or forty billion. No, next time we’ll get hit by three times as many, make that ninety to a hundred and fifty billion, maybe.”
“The blood does get deep,” Masao said, with a cough.
Kris stared at the overhead for a long minute.
“Why did this come up now?” Penny asked.
“We’re likely going to have to chase Sampson across a quarter of the galaxy before we catch her. I was thinking of sending a report home. Maybe with you on the Endeavor. What do you think?”
Now there was another long pause.
“I’d really rather not go home yet,” Penny said.
“Can I ask why?” Kris said, wondering what she’d stumbled into.
“I like my job here. I like my life here, Kris, believe it or not. If you send me home . . .”
“Masao could go with you.”
“And if he did, where would that put us? Maybe I could talk the king into letting me take the Endeavor back to Alwa. Maybe Masao could talk the Musashi Navy into letting him stay attached to the Alwa mission. Maybe we’d get a no to all that.”
“All of us on Alwa could be blasted away tomorrow,” Kris pointed out.
“But we’re two for oh, aren’t we? Call me crazy, Kris, but this is my home, and I kind of like it here.”
“You’re crazy,” Kris said.
“Coming from a Longknife, I’ll consider that a compliment.”
“Okay, then we agree, Sampson doesn’t get to go back to human space. If I have to drag her and her people home in chains, she comes back with me.”
“You’ll get no argument from me there,” Penny said.
“But do you need to report?” Masao said. “That is the question. Do you think that knowing what is happening here on the other side of the galaxy would make it easier for your king to raise a fleet?”
“That is one of many questions,” Kris said.
“I have no idea, Kris,” Penny said. “If we were at a decent acceleration, I’d say flip a coin.”
“I’d probably argue with the results,” Kris said, dryly.
“If you don’t like the coin toss,” Masao said, “you should argue with it.”
“There is one thing,” Penny said.
“Yes.”
“Phil Taussig and his survivors from the old Hornet. I know they’re on the new Hornet now, but if you are still thinking of sending someone back, you might make him the offer.”
“And if he turns me down like you just did?” Kris asked.
“Then you might have more reason not to send anyone.”
Kris let them go back to whatever they’d been doing.
“Did they help you more than I could?” Nelly asked.
“No, they didn’t.”
“But you feel better talking to them?”
“I can’t say that I feel better after talking to them face-to-face. We spent most of the time flat on our back, staring at the ceiling.”
“Overhead,” Nelly corrected.
“Whatever,” Kris said.
“But the human talk meant something to you.”
“They refused to take the free ride home, Nelly. That said a lot to me.”
“Irrational.”
“Human.”
“Yes, human,” Nelly agreed.
“I’d better go tell the aliens that they’re going to be in their eggs a bit longer than expected,” Kris said.
“I could have Gunny or Doc Meade do that for you.”
“No, I’m the chief or the wisewoman, or the wild woman, whatever. I got them into this mess. I better explain it face-to-face.”
“In your egg, reclining at 3.5 gees.”
“Not rational,” Kris said.
“But very human.”
34
Kris found the tame aliens in their eggs, huddled together. The Marines had backed off as much as Condition Charlie let them. The drop bay was a lot smaller.
Come Condition Zed, the unique equipment on the longboats would be boxed up like Mother MacCreedy’s best whiskey and
that Smart MetalTM would be shipped off to reinforce the hull’s armor. Of the drop bay, there wouldn’t be enough left for a broom closet.
Kris would have to come up with another place to park her charges if it came to a fight.
She rolled up to the graybeard. He was reclining in his egg, but he spotted her and brought it up a bit. ~When can I hunt again?~
~It will be many sunsets.~ Kris had learned that if it was good news you brought, you used “sunrise,” while bad news got the “sunset” treatment.
~Why can I not hunt again?~
Now a lot of the tribe had raised their eggs up to get a better look at Kris. A Marine sergeant edged away from the wall and rolled up behind her.
NELLY, TELL THE MARINES, THANK YOU, BUT STAY COOL.
DONE, KRIS.
The Marine sergeant didn’t back away, but he came no closer.
~What do you do when someone grabs your knife and runs away with it?~ Kris asked.
~I run after him and take it back,~ the old man said. ~If he is a child, I show him the right path for his feet. If he is a man, I knock the right path into him.~
~A woman has grabbed one of my ships for walking among the stars and ran away with it. I am running after her. I will knock the right path into her.~
~Hmm,~ was the graybeard’s only response.
The wisewoman turned her head in her egg to better look at Kris with deep black eyes. Kris returned the gaze, unblinking. Had she given away that she was not all-powerful? Or was the woman more interested in how one might run away with a ship to walk among the stars?
Maybe you should have let the boy die, girl.
That wasn’t going to happen, Kris answered her own doubts.
Kris returned to her quarters. They would hit the jump in the middle of their night. For now, she’d better catch a nap.
“By the way, Nelly, does that freighter we’re chasing, the Sisu, have any lasers?”
“Yes, Kris, it has a pair of short-range 18-inch pulse lasers.”
“But if she’s waiting for us on the other side of the jump, range won’t be all that important, will it?”
“No, Kris, but Sampson has a lot of energy on her boat. Turning it around and getting back to the jump to hit us as we come through would not be a likely prospect. With seven ships following you, it certainly would not be a winning proposition.”
Kris Longknife: Tenacious (Kris Longknife novellas Book 12) Page 21