“How long did it take them to react to you?” the colonel asked.
“About an hour. Less, if you make allowances for the speed-of-light delay for them to spot us.”
“Did they try to communicate with you?” Kris asked.
“There was a lot of activity on the radio frequencies, but none was aimed at us, and we didn’t identify anything as an effort to raise us. Once it was clear the ships were headed our way with a bone in their teeth, we did make an effort to open communications with them. If there was a reply, we couldn’t identify it in the clutter.”
“You said a bone in their teeth,” Kris said. “How hot was their pursuit?”
“Three gees. I jacked the Hornet up to 3.5 gees and got out of there just as fast as I could.”
“Did you see any evidence of them in your next system?” Kris asked.
“Kris, when I got into the next system, I was very tempted to point the Hornet at the closest jump and see where it led me.” He swallowed hard at the thought. Only time would tell if it would have been better for the Hornet to disappear like the lost Flying Dutchman rather than come home with her report.
That decision might yet have to be made.
“Instead, I kept the boat at 3.5 gees and headed for the second jump like I was supposed to. We jumped out of there before we spotted any activity at the last jump point.”
He took a deep breath. “I don’t know if they didn’t pursue us or what. What I do know is that we didn’t see hide nor hair of them in any of the systems we crossed to get here.”
“We’ve got to leave immediately,” Admiral Krätz snapped.
“I’ve still got a ship out there,” Kris said. From her point of view, there was now even more reason not to leave the Intrepid out here alone.
“We need to get this information back to our governments,” Admiral Channing said.
“Nelly, has the Mercury been taping this report?”
“Yes, Your Highness. She has been recording this and adding it to the report you filed with her.”
“Good,” Kris said. That took care of home as much as she could. She wasn’t finished with Phil. “Commander, tell me more about this huge base ship. Did you get anything more on it?”
“It’s dense. More dense than either of Wardhaven’s moons. Much more dense than old Earth’s moon. Almost as dense as, say, a planet.”
“And they needed thousands of reactors to power it.”
“Power it and propel it. It was leaving a plasma stream behind it that had to be seen to be believed.”
“How fast?” Kris asked.
“It was doing about half a gee acceleration away from one jump point and headed for another.”
“So it was going somewhere,” Kris said.
“Definitely.”
“Space rovers,” Penny said.
“But we don’t have a picture of who or what is at the helm of this ship. Ships,” Kris corrected herself.
“Nothing, Commander. I’ve got recordings of what they were transmitting, but no one aboard the Hornet could make any sense of them.”
“Pass them to us,” Kris ordered. “Nelly, tell Professor mFumbo that he doesn’t have any higher priority than extracting something useful from this data stream. I very much want to watch any video they have. Very much.”
“Kris, we’re getting the Hornet’s take,” Nelly reported. “The boffins are already working on it. I’ve got my kids on it as well.”
“All of them?” Kris said. “Even Dada?”
“Yes, Kris. And Cara knows about our situation. She’s been peeking through the front door of the Forward Lounge for the last ten minutes.”
Sure enough, the two swinging doors into the lounge were showing a crack. Cara was lying on her belly, furtively watching them.
“We have to get that child a battle station.” Kris sighed.
“Really!” Cara said, jumping to her feet.
“In the scullery,” the colonel grumbled.
“I can do more than that,” Cara insisted.
Kris stared at the overhead; to the best of her knowledge, there were no standard operating procedures for getting into a war with space aliens. The Navy had a standard answer to almost everything else imaginable, but not this.
A hasty review of her actions did not make her proud. She’d bobbled her start out of the gate. She should have thought to go to General Quarters immediately, and not needed Jack to remind her. The order and counterorder to the Mercury were more of an embarrassment than a mistake. Still, what she’d done since felt right.
“Okay, folks, let’s get organized. Phil, bring the Hornet down to join the fleet. Hermes, come alongside the Wasp and take aboard our gizmo for peeking into the next system. No, hold it. That won’t work,” Kris caught herself. “The Hornet was doing fifty thousand klicks per hour, and the periscope only shows you what’s in the closest system.
“Hermes, get the coordinates from Commander Taussig and jack yourself up to maximum gees and duck back into his last system. I’d like a report on whether anything is behind him.”
“Do you think that’s smart?” Admiral Krätz asked.
“We can either sit here wondering if hostiles are going to come charging through that jump point or we can go look,” Kris snapped.
“Or we can get up speed and get out of here ourselves,” the Greenfeld officer suggested.
Kris did a quick and silent survey of the people whose opinion she valued. None of them looked interested in hiding under the bed.
“As I’ve said many times before, Admiral, you are free to do what you wish with your battle squadron. I reserve the right to do with PatRon 10 what I choose. Nelly, see that Hermes gets under way for a fast run into Hornet’s last system of call and return.”
“Could you at least see that the Hermes’s computers are rigged for destruction,” Admiral Channing said. “I would suggest that we all prepare our navigational systems to assure that if we fall in battle. our enemy will be unable to extract navigational information from our wreckage. That ship that attacked the Wasp certainly made sure that we could draw nothing from its databases.”
“That sounds defeatist,” was Admiral Krätz’s observation.
“It’s only defeatist until somebody defeats us. Then it sounds pretty smart,” Admiral Kōta said. “I’ll have my division heads draw up a list of what should be rigged for complete destruction. We’ll also put it on a fail-safe to make sure we don’t have any accidents.”
“I’ll also have the remaining two courier ships see that all reaction tanks are topped off,” Kris said. “We may need to run for it in a hurry.”
KRIS, SHOULD WE TELL THE OTHER ADMIRALS WHAT WE KNOW ABOUT THE FUZZY JUMPS? IF WE HAVE TO LEAD THEM INTO ONE OF THEM TO GET AWAY FROM THE ALIENS, IT MIGHT HELP IF THEY KNEW WHAT WE WERE DOING BEFOREHAND.
THAT COULD WELL BE A SMART MOVE, NELLY, BUT IT ALSO MEANS GIVING AWAY SOMETHING I’M NOT SURE I WANT TO GIVE. I’D RATHER KEEP THAT ACE UP MY SLEEVE FOR A WHILE LONGER.
WE MAY NEED THOSE FUZZY JUMPS, KRIS, TO GET OUT OF A BIG MESS.
NELLY, WE DON’T KNOW IF THE ALIENS ALREADY KNOW ABOUT THE FUZZY JUMPS. AND IF THEY DON’T, I DON’T WANT TO LET THEM SEE US VANISH INTO SPACE THAT HOLDS NO SUCH OPTION TO THEM.
I FEAR THAT WE WILL HAVE SOME REALLY TOUGH DECISIONS AHEAD OF US, KRIS.
TRUST ME, NELLY, I KNOW THAT WE DO.
Jack cleared his throat. “Could I ask you, Commander, to rethink one of your recent orders?