“What about your heavy escorts?”
“The Terror and Triumph took some encouragement, but I think that bomb got a lot of people interested in being anywhere else but at your side, dear lovely princess, so they’re moving. Oh, I did kind of bribe them. I’ve shipped five of the bodies from the Constant to each of them.”
“Any of the other wreckage?” Kris asked, not sure how she was going to like his next answer.
“No, ma’am. No other pieces of the puzzle. As I see it, we’re missing enough of that dang ship. No need to encourage chunks of it to go missing.”
Kris breathed a sigh of relief. Phil was good. Give him an order, and you didn’t have to ask twice to see if it was well done.
“Very well, Commander. You are authorized to depart. When do you expect to be back?”
The young officer shrugged. “Look for me when you see me coming.”
“Most of the fleet will be here, waiting for you.”
“Most of it?” Taussig asked, though Kris could see the question in every eye around her Tac Center.
“I think it’s time for the scouts to start scouting,” Kris said.
“Have fun,” Phil said, and the screen went blank.
There was a brief pause while everyone around Kris caught their breath, then Jack asked, “Just what do you have in mind?”
Kris had Nelly open a map of the local star systems on-screen.
“The alien ship, of such shattered memory, might have come from somewhere around here,” Kris said, pointing at the star map on the screen. “We ought to do a recon of local space to see if there is anything to see.”
She let that sink in for a few seconds. “The nice part about this is that we don’t have to go blasting off into the jumps at high speed, spins, and accelerations. We can take the jumps at a slow pace. We can even use the boffins’ latest toy to take a look before we leap. While the scouts do their snooping, we can leave the battleships swinging around themselves here. Who knows, maybe they’ll find the mad bomber. Or decide it’s too boring and go home.”
“That sounds like a plan,” Jack agreed.
A second thought crossed Kris’s mind. “Nelly, send to PatRon 10. While we’re doing this walk-around, have all ships set their reactors to produce as much antimatter as they can safely make.” Antimatter powered the launches and auxiliary power units on the ships. It also could be used in some of the weapons on the corvettes. The Wasp had acquired eight high-acceleration, 12-inch torpedoes since her last yard period. Usually they were loaded with high-explosives warheads. However, if you really wanted to make things go boom, an alternate antimatter warhead could replace the standard issue.
That idea had come to several different people after the Battle of Wardhaven. Humanity had enjoyed a long peace. Some of her children were just starting to study war again. The 12-inch high-acceleration torpedoes were the first fruit of that attitude.
Kris doubted they would be the last.
“You really want to go loaded for bear,” Jack said.
“Maybe it will be unnecessary. Then again, it’s nice to have a few extra aces up your sleeve if life doesn’t come at you like you planned.”
Jack nodded, and Kris had Nelly call the admirals. She had a plan. Hopefully, they didn’t have ones of their own.
17
Eight star systems in seven days.
Eight times the Wasp tiptoed up to a roiling tear in space and cautiously slipped a diminutive periscope through the jump point.
It was all very careful. All very safe. And somehow, Kris found it all very boring.
The boffins were depressed and delighted. Depressed because, try as they might, they could not broaden the instrumentation on the video view of the system before they jumped into it. All you got was a black-and-white picture. No color.
To their delight, they had developed a second instrument. This tiny sensor gave them a full report on the electromagnetic spectrum. If there was radio or TV in use somewhere around the next sun, the Wasp would know it before it jumped.
Each sensor had to be sent through the jump one at a time. That was fine by Kris and Captain Drago. To the boffins, it was abject failure.
While the scientists promised to do better, Kris stood by on the bridge as Captain Drago took the Wasp safely into eight new systems.
It was nice to enter eight new systems knowing that there wasn’t a nova on the other side. Or a battle station waiting to gun you down.
Eight systems in seven days and not a nerve gone taut once.
Of course, it was also eight systems in seven days and nothing to show for it. Not a scrap of metal. Not a hint of a passage. All the gas giants had a steady hold on their moons. All the rocky planets were rocky, dead, and silent.
The boffins had gotten excited about one star. It was huge, weighing in at over three hundred times the weight of Mother Earth’s Sol. And it put out enough radiation, visual and otherwise, to fry them if they got too close. Apparently, the alien Three had made accommodations for that. Their jump was way out from the star . . . and the next jump was very close by.
The scientists were quite upset with the star chart. If it had just told them the weight of this sun a couple of million years ago, they could have verified just how much the huge star had shed in the meantime. They seemed to hold Kris personally responsible for that failure of the chart her grampa Ray found on Santa Maria.
Kris didn’t bother issuing an apology.
So, after eight star systems and seven days, Kris sat quietly, enjoying a lone supper in the wardroom. She was dining alone because her staff had taken to avoiding her. She hadn’t hunted any of them up to ask why, and no one had come close enough to Kris to let her pose the question.
It was quiet, and boring, and she was kind of enjoying it.
Of course, it would be nice if Jack dropped by. Even if it was to argue about something.
No threats to her. No reason for Jack to argue with her. No Jack.
Such was Kris’s life.
Judge Francine approached Kris with a dinner tray. “May I join you?”
Immediately, Kris found herself doing an examination of her latest high crimes and misdemeanors. All she could think of were the usual mortal and venial sins. “Of course,” Kris managed to stammer without sounding excessively guilty.
The elderly lady had been a giant on the bench before she retired. In real life, settling herself across from Kris was a woman barely five feet tall. Still, she took her chair with all the gravity of a judge taking her place at the bench.
Kris didn’t need to ask Nelly about Justice Francine. In high school, she’d learned of the legendary Judge Francine. She’d spent most of her life on one high court or another.
When the old jurist applied to join the boffin crew of the Wasp, Professor mFumbo had been ready to reject her out of hand. Kris had stepped in personally to grant her a berth. Father always said that one of the few things about his job that made it worth having was being able to make a dream come true for someone who had done their part for the people.
And that good deed had allowed Kris to draft the experienced jurist into helping her with a legal problem . . . or twelve.
“Are you enjoying your stay on the Wasp?” Kris asked. She didn’t usually have to hunt for an ice breaker. Most everyone who approached her had a hidden agenda they couldn’t wait to broach. Being the one tongue-tied was unusual for Kris.
“Matters are certainly better than they had been,” the gray-haired woman answered darkly. “Those cases you had me handling on Kaskatos were nothing short of brutal. Those poor local jurists were totally unprepared to hear crimes of such depravity.”