That stopped the air loss, but the side of the ship was warping in and out.
“All of you, lay a hand getting a sheet of metal over that hole,” the petty officer snapped.
Two sailors undid the lashings on a pile of six steel strips, Jack and the colonel slid one strip out, and the sailors tied back down the other five.
Movement while they did this was wild; the Wasp continued on its bucking ride, leaving them weightless one moment and double their weight the next.
Four of them managed to wrestle the sheet up without cutting off any hands or heads . . . but it was a close-run thing. The metal sheet reached from the deck to just a bit short of the overhead. The petty officer quickly welded the lower half of the sheet in place. A moment later, she’d tossed a rope over one of the hooks Kris hadn’t noticed that now circled the overhead.
Jack boosted the petty officer on his shoulder as the colonel raised her on the rope and belayed it across his rear.
Secured as best as the ride allowed, the petty officer ran a welding bead up the one side of the sheet, then over the top and down the other side. As she got more and more of the patch in place, the hull worked itself less and less.
Done, she settled back to the deck. “What are all you looking at? Help me get this torch kit lashed down, and let’s get back on the deck.”
Kris’s brain trust snapped to, and in only a moment, she was back facing Jack.
“That was well done,” she said.
“Look at all the fun you missed by not doing a tour as an assistant division officer,” Jack said.
“Yes,” Kris said. “Think of the things I could have done if I hadn’t been stopping Turantic from going to war with its neighbors, or dodging battleships around Wardhaven or hurling cabers on Chance.”
“We must all bear our burdens,” the petty officer said.
Someone among the sailors snickered.
“Make that two cakes of soap for you, Henderson.”
“I didn’t say nothing.”
The petty officer gave him the look.
And then the Wasp did something a ship was never meant to do, and they had to do the welding drill all over again.
And a third time.
And a fourth time.
Somewhere in there, one of the sailors lost his lunch. Then Cara. Then just about the entire crew, except for the petty officer.
Kris was eyeing the two remaining reinforcement sheets and wondering if this would ever end when the ride got less rowdy and Sulwan came on the public address.
“All hands, we’re done. I’d love to tell you that we gathered up enough fuel to get us home, but the skipper says that isn’t so. We will, however, be matching orbit with our containers, so we can get things back together and get a good meal and some sleep tonight.” She paused for a moment, and then added, “Commodore Longknife, the skipper sends his regards and asks if you will please report to the bridge.”
48
“I’m not sure the Wasp can take another beating like that,” Captain Drago said softly, as he and Kris put their heads together.
“Can we modify the ship’s launches to do the next refueling run?” Kris asked. “That pirate ketch we captured on Kaskatos had less power than one of our launches.”
“I don’t know,” the captain admitted. “They had a balloot designed for their size. We’d have to cut down our balloot to fit a launch.”
“Maybe we could make two or three smaller balloots,” Sulwan put in.
“But once we start tearing it apart,” the skipper said darkly, “we’d better hope the glue holds together. There would be no turning back.”
“I think we ought to try doing it once without cutting up anything,” Kris said. “I’ve flown just about every kind of small craft there is. If you could rig a balloot to three launches, Nelly and I could give it a try.”
The skipper had started shaking his head as she spoke, and he just kept on shaking it. “You saw, or at least felt, how much the Wasp was thrown around during our pass. Imagine what those atmospheric currents would do to three boats flying in close formation. You could all three end up as a blot of grease on some gas giant.”
“I’m a Longknife. We’re always looking for a new way to get ourselves killed.”
Jack didn’t look too happy at that, but he kept his silence.
“I’ll have a couple of my officers and leading chiefs look at the idea,” the captain finally said. “Now, do you have an opinion on our course home? We’re about as far out on the rim as we can get.”
“The star maps we have don’t seem to be helping us much. We have no idea from one jump to the next where we’ll end up,” Kris said.
“The maps I have,” Nelly said, clearly defensive, “do a fairly good job of telling us where a jump will take us when we enter them at a slow speed. We can even be doing one hundred thousand klicks an hour and have a good idea where we’re heading. But it’s anybody’s guess where we will end up when you really put pedal to the metal.”
“Where’d you pick up that phrase?” Kris asked.
“Cara got it from some of the car racers back home. I like the sound of it,” Nelly answered.
“If I can help it, the Wasp won’t be accelerating at over two gees until our next overhaul,” Captain Drago said. “Neither the engines nor the hull can take it. However, we could keep one gee up as acceleration and not spend half our time decelerating. That could put a lot of speed on the boat. We could probably make at least one of those seven-league jumps before we have to start decelerating to refuel.”
“Wouldn’t we be in better shape if we fully refueled at this star, then took several long leaps?” Kris asked.
“Yes, Your Highness, but I want to get out of here before anyone drops in. I think the Intrepid knocked those last two alien ships for a loop. I don’t think they were aware of anything going on in that last system when we jumped, but how much of the farm do you want to bet on that?”
“Good point. How soon can we get out of here?”
“The nearest jump point is one of Nelly’s fuzzy ones. We can reach it in a day. Assuming we don’t decelerate, we should be doing close to a hundred thousand klicks by the time we hit it. Assuming we survive the jump, we’ll see where it puts us.”
They spent most of the next day patching the Wasp back together as well as they could. The engineers continued doing their own maintenance on the engines and reactors. The Wasp got under way as smoothly as she ever did and slipped through the next jump point right on time.
To find themselves sharing a system with a huge reddish super giant.
“Anyone got a guess when that dude will go supernova?” Captain Drago asked.
No one on the bridge ventured a guess.
“Chief, tell me the best way out of here, and do it fast.”
“There’s another one of those new jumps pretty close by.”
“Sulwan, get the coordinates and get us headed there.”
“Doing it, Skipper.”
Kris waited at her station on Weapons for the immediate hurry to calm down. “How far did we jump?” she asked Chief Beni once he was finished with navigation.
“It looks like close to nine hundred light-years,” he said. “We’re still cruising along the outer rim of the outermost arm of the Milky Way. Nelly, do you have any idea where this next jump would take us?”
A star map appeared on the forward screen. “I think we are here,” the computer said. A green dot appeared along the Scutum-Centaurus Arm. “We’re still about as far from Earth as we can be and not go next door for sugar.”