“Good joke, Nelly,” Kris said.
Captain Drago just made a face.
“If I have us in the right system, and we took this jump at dead-slow speed, we’d go about fifty light-years over and a bit more inward. A longer jump, say with us making fifty thousand to a hundred thousand klicks an hour, would take us a lot farther, say about another eight hundred light-years.” Nelly paused for her listeners to absorb this.
“I’ve been analyzing our long jumps, and I think I’m starting to see a pattern. If our next jump was a fast one and followed that pattern, I estimate that we’d jump to about the middle of this arm and in a line that would take us to somewhere a couple of thousand light-years along the outer rim. but at least we’d start getting back toward Earth. If that direction holds true, my guess would be that if we hit our third jump at three or four hundred thousand klicks an hour, maybe more, we could end up well into the center of the Outer Arm, and generally headed home.”
Nelly paused for a second. “Assuming you want a guess from a computer.”
“Just so long as you warn us that it’s a guess,” Kris said, while Captain Drago scowled.
“This is just a guess,” Nelly went on, “but if we could maintain that speed for a second long jump, we might get as far as the Sagittarius Arm or even the Orion Arm. That would put us just a hop, skip, and a jump from human space.”
“Who taught this computer how to use nonempirical language?” the skipper demanded.
“Cara,” Kris said.
“That kid,” the captain grumbled.
“But you humans relate better to nonempirical more often than when I give you an answer to the thirteenth decimal place,” Nelly said.
“We prefer to pick when we want it simple and when we want it precise,” Drago said.
“And guessing where in the galaxy we are going to drop in when we are stumbling around like a drunken sailor is going to improve how if I talk about thousands of light-years using the third decimal place?” Nelly shot back.
“The gal does have a point,” Kris said. “Precision isn’t all that useful when we’re guessing at the basic point.”
“And you had to remind me, didn’t you?” the captain said with a sigh.
Kris shrugged.
“If we could make two of those long jumps,” Kris said, “before we have to slow down and refuel . . .” Kris left the thought unfinished.
The captain clearly was also thinking along that line. “Sulwan, if we went to half a gee acceleration?”
“The Engineering team would be delighted, and we’d still be making some two hundred thousand klicks an hour when we hit the next jump.”
“That might get us two of those long jumps. Course, we might need to give up showers and flushing the toilet to find enough reaction mass to slow down.”
“Our final jump might also have us dropping into the Iteeche Empire or one of those systems where their ships have been vanishing,” the skipper said slowly.
“Choices, choices,” Kris said. “Who shall we start a war with today?”
“That is not funny, Kris,” Jack said.
“I didn’t mean it as a joke,” Kris said. “At least if we drop in on the Empire, we’ve got our own Imperial Representative.”
“Who, I understand, is not in good repute at the court just now,” the skipper said.
“Where’d you hear that?” Kris asked.
“I know everything that goes on aboard my ship,” the captain said darkly. “And if I don’t, I have supper every once in a while with Abby, and she fills me in on what I missed.”
“And here I thought I didn’t have to worry about that woman leaking now that I wasn’t going to balls anymore.”
“It’s a fact of life with your maid,” the skipper said. “If she doesn’t leak something, she’ll pop.”
“Now who’s cracking jokes,” Nelly said.
“I’m a human. I get to crack jokes. You’re a computer. I worry about the jokes you might crack. I’m not all that sure they’ll be funny.”
“I am learning from an expert.” Nelly sniffed.
“Who?” the captain demanded.
“Kris,” Nelly said.
“I rest my case. Now, why don’t you two, or three, run along and get some chow and take a shower. I may be cutting back on both in the very near future.”
“Isn’t our water recycled?” Nelly asked.
“Yes. I’m more worried with the beer, wine, and spirits that are still on board. Is it better to allow them to be recycled into piss, or should I pour them directly into the reaction tanks?”
“I knew there was a reason I left you in command of this wreck,” Kris said.
“She wasn’t a wreck when you left me in command. We had to work real hard to get her into this fix.”
Kris let the skipper have the last word. She headed for chow, only to find that even Cookie was having a hard time making what he had in his larder look all that worth eating. A request for any of the crew qualified in space to lend a hand shoring up damaged compartments got her attention, and she was about to tap her commlink and ask Captain Drago to let her get in some honest work when Jack put his hand over her commlink.
“I know what you’re thinking, and I will not have you squished like a little green bug because some rough-cut steel gets out of control of a teenage sailor.”
“In our situation, everyone has to do their part. I should, too,” Kris insisted.
“That’s what worries me. Every seaman recruit who thinks they know how to handle themselves in a half gee is headed there. I know that Senior Chief Mong knows how to handle things. I’m worried about Marine Private Knucklehead or Seaman Recruit Vacuum-for-brains who has more enthusiasm than experience.”
Jack paused, then went on. “You and I need to find someplace private where we can talk.”
“About what?” Kris asked, suddenly not sure she liked the idea that she had nothing to do, and Jack was going to have a talk with her. From the thunderclouded look on his face, he’d been saving this up for a long time.
“Let’s find someplace we won’t be interrupted,” was all he said.
They ended up back in the space they had occupied for the refueling pass. Everyone seemed to have gone elsewhere, leaving them a large, empty space all to themselves.
Once there, Jack went to one side of the compartment. Kris found herself gravitating to the opposite end of the room, as far from Jack as she could get.
The space still smelled of hot welding and Goo, along with human sweat and a bit of terror. There was no place to sit, and with the Wasp changing its course and acceleration at odd moments as it matched orbit with its containers, Kris found herself holding on to one of the tie-downs that still held its bottle of Goo.
Finally, she turned to face Jack. “What’s eating you?”
“This lust you have for getting yourself killed,” he snapped.
“I didn’t have any good choices,” Kris said in her defense. “I couldn’t let the bird people die when I could do something about it. I thought you agreed with me.”
Jack was shaking his head before she finished. “I didn’t say your enthusiasm for getting us all killed, I said your personal lust for getting your own little body slammed, smashed, and burned before my eyes.”
“Oh,” Kris said. This was going to be personal. She would have preferred to argue about what she’d done for the whole human race. Talking about herself . . . now that could bring up a whole mess of snakes Kris preferred to ignore.
“I haven’t done anything lately, Jack. Nobody has thrown a bomb at me or taken a shot at me. Vicky has more of that coming at her than I do of late.”