Phil nodded. “You got an inventory for me?”
“Yes, we do, Kris,” Nelly reported, “though it’s kind of vague in several places.”
“Understood. Pass it to Phil.”
“I’ve got it, Commander,” he said in a moment.
That settled one set of problems. Phil Taussig came from a long line of Navy admirals in both Wardhaven and several other Rim world Navies. He would not be allowed to go missing. If he disappeared, there would be hell to pay until a full explanation was made.
Kris didn’t want a posthumous accounting for Phil’s family, she wanted to reduce the temptation for anyone to even try.
“Lieutenant Song,” she called.
A startled young woman jumped to her feet and braced. She’d been an ensign on one of the fast patrol boats that defended Wardhaven when six unidentified battleships showed up and demanded Wardhaven’s surrender. On one of the few that survived. If Kris couldn’t trust someone who’d fought with her at the Battle of Wardhaven, whom could she trust?
“I want the Hermes to take over as the courier ship back to Santa Maria. You will place your ship at Commander Taussig’s disposal.”
“Yes, ma’am, Your Highness,” she said, snapping a salute. Indoors. Uncovered. And sat down.
Kris often had that impact on the young. The ensign would get over it in time. People who served with a Longknife did.
If they survived the experience.
“You have any questions, Phil?”
“No, ma’am,” he said easily. “Get the wreckage back to Santa Maria. Turn it over to the Institute. Leave the hassling to the civilians. May I suggest that I contract for any ships and supplies that I can find in Santa Maria orbit and get them moving out here with me and the Hermes?”
“Logistics is always the first order of business,” Kris said.
Beside her, Colonel Cortez mouthed the same words himself and smiled. Kris was learning.
A glance around the room showed a lot of Navy officers who’d gnawed enough on this bone and were ready to get gone. Kris asked the usual final question of a meeting. “Anything further to discuss?”
Most everyone shook their heads. In the back of the room, Professor mFumbo stood up.
“Professor. Do you have something to add?”
“Not to what has been said, Your Highness. But I would like to draw the attention of everyone present to certain portions of the reports my scientists have put together. It might be unnecessary. All of you may have read every deathless word of prose we men and women of science have laid before you. Then again, you might not have.”
Kris noticed eyes around the room already glazing over.
“Please go on, Professor.” Quickly.
He must have read her mind. “Something or someone stripped away ten to fifteen percent of the mass of this gas giant. They did it in the last fifty to a hundred years.”
Glazed eyes suddenly opened wide. The room got very quiet.
“Those are our findings based on the strange situation of this gas giant and its moons. I should hedge that statement with careful scientific nuances. It might have lost eight percent. It could have lost twenty percent. It could have suffered this strange reduction as recently as forty years ago or it might have happened one hundred and fifty years ago.”
“What you are saying,” Kris said, “is that something took very big bites out of that gas giant within my grampa Ray’s lifetime.”
The professor nodded. “Bites the size of three to seven Earths. Yes, that is what I and my boffins are trying to tell you.”
Kris let that sink in. She let the silence stretch for a while because, at least in her head, it was not sinking in. It floated, like a yellow ducky in her bathtub when she was a kid. Only this yellow ducky was huge, and there was no way she could shove it under the water.
Her thoughts spun. What finally came out was No. Not possible. It can’t be happening to me and my world.
With effort, she limited her gibbering to the inside of her own skull.
KRIS, THIS IS APPALLING.
ME HAVING TROUBLE BELIEVING IT?
NO, KRIS. WHAT HE JUST SAID.
YES, NELLY, THIS IS APPALLING, Kris agreed, accepting her computer’s understatement and failing to find anything better, or was it worse, to offer Nelly.
Kris had no idea when the full impact of this would be absorbed. Probably, it was best to end this meeting and let people go their own ways to digest this new lump of knowledge.
“Is there anything else in your report you want to make sure we notice?” Kris said. Say no. Say no. Please say no.
“Yes, there is one more thing.”
Stupid me. Ask a question, and you’ll get the answer you don’t want.
“Go on, Professor.”
“We have established that there were 132 people on the alien ship. We think we have drawn up an accurate schematic of its design.” The professor aimed his wrist unit at the main screen and it switched away from where it was frozen on the final frame of the explosion.
Suddenly, the ship was whole again. Quickly, the skin of the ship peeled back, showing the insides: living quarters, work spaces, storage rooms, the bridge. Most of those areas were left empty in the drawing, but their purposes were written in.
“On that ship, there were about twelve cubic meters of pressurized living space for each of the men, women, and children aboard.”
“Sleeping quarters two meters by three meters by two meters tall,” Kris said. It was about a quarter of her own living quarters. “Ugh.”
“Pardon me for correcting you, Your Highness,” the professor said. “I did not say sleeping quarters. That allotment is the total room for their sleeping and wash space. It includes their contribution to their work spaces, public rooms, and hallways. We’re still debating whether or not they even had hallways. Even in the command center.
“The only space not included in this allotment was a small hold full of rare-earth ores recently extracted from the moon. That hold and Engineering. That would include the reactors and the pressurized tanks for reaction mass. I should point out that we found several bunks in Engineering in what we think was the control room.”
“Oh. My. God.” Vicky said.
Around Kris, the room bubbled at a low boil as, once again, people struggled to come to terms with what any rational human being would consider impossible.
It was Penny who slowly rose to her feet. She went to touch the ship on the screen. The Navy officer whispered something that Kris didn’t get, but apparently Mimzy, Penny’s computer, did.
An image of the gas giant appeared on the screen with the alien ship. On the screen, the giant regained ten percent of its mass, swelling noticeably.
“What kind of species could suck up ten percent of a gas giant? Then, having that kind of reaction mass to move themselves and their creation, would cram their population into a ship, allowing only twelve cubic meters to an individual?”
The room fell silent as Penny spoke.
When she finished, there was a pause. A brief one. Then the room exploded as a number of people made off quickly for the restrooms.
Others headed for the bar, giving loud voice to their need for a drink.
14
Kris sat in her chair, staring off into space. Literally. The forward screen was back to the view from the external monitors. Stars flew by. The moon occasionally came into view. More often, the gas giant that had caused this struggle with cognitive dissonance made its own appearance.