Cara made that easy. “I saw the latest remake of it. Where part of the crew has been infected by the brain-eating bugs, and they’re chasing everyone who isn’t brain-dead so they can stuff them in the reactor.”
Abby sighed. “As if the brain-dead ones would know how to set a course for home once they had dumped enough flesh and blood into the reactor. That story makes no sense.”
“But it’s scary as all get-out,” Cara said.
“That’s today’s kids,” Penny said with a full-fledged Irish sigh. “Forget about romance, just scare the willies out of them. What’s the latest generation coming to?” She finished with the question elders had posed to every next generation for, oh, the last five hundred.
Cara sniffed, very much the imitation of her aunt. “Don’t you find the idea of being stranded in space with nothing left to feed into the reactor but your own blood just the worst thing that can happen?” she demanded of her elders.
“I don’t know,” Abby said, applying herself to the hash Cookie had made with canned beef and dried potatoes. “For me, the worst will be when they tell us to quit taking showers or flushing the toilets ’cause they need to feed all the ship’s water into the plasma chambers. Plasma chambers, Cara, that’s where they blend the reactor feed with the reaction mass to power those big engines pushing the Wasp around space. The ignorant writer couldn’t even get that straight for their stupid movie.”
Poor Cara couldn’t react fast enough to all that was coming at her. She’d hardly gotten out an “Ew” at the thought of no flush toilets before she was torn between defending her movie or actually learning more about how a real starship worked.
She ended up sitting there more confused than motivated.
“My, my,” Penny said. “I thought you’d be fine with that. No doubt by then they’ll be serving free beer and wine with our supper. What with all the water having gone wherever it is that reaction mass goes, what else will there be to drink?”
“Beer and wine,” Cara’s eyes lit up. “Will I get to drink it, too?”
Kris put a quick stop to that. “I’ll make sure Cookie saves some water for all the underage folks aboard.”
“But I’m the only underage person aboard the Wasp!” Cara cried.
“Oh, right, so he won’t have to save a lot,” Penny said with a wide grin.
“You’re just pulling my leg.” When none of the grown-ups chose to respond to that, she focused on Kris. “You’re younger than Auntie Abby. What scary movies did you like to see when you were my age?”
It wasn’t movies that scared Kris when she was Cara’s age, it was real life. Would somebody kill her like they did her brother? Would Mother or Father notice how brandy was disappearing from their liquor cabinet? Could life between Mother and Father get worse than it already was? No, Kris didn’t have to go to a movie to feel she was in a horror show.
But she needed an answer. She found one ready at hand.
“My father taught me well before I was your age that there were more horrible things in real life than any movie could ever hope to create.”
“What was that?” Cara asked, breathless at the prospect.
“The most horrible thing in life, my father said,” Kris said, drawing out the line, “is some brainless, inexperienced politician getting his hands on the reins of government.”
Penny and Abby laughed.
Cara looked like her goat had been thoroughly skinned. “That’s not real horror.”
“Oh, yes it is,” Kris insisted. “Back then, I was sure Father was talking about someone in the opposition. Horror of horrors, I now know that it may include some of the people you most need to make the whole shebang work, ally or opposition.”
“That is a horrible thought,” Penny agreed.
“And what kind of people will we need to get things done when we get back with this little story of ours?” Abby asked, all serious in a flash.
“Any kind we can get,” Kris agreed. “I’ll be glad for anyone who will lend us a helping hand.”
“So you’ve figured out what we need to do when we get home?” Penny asked.
“Be ready to face these monsters when they come calling,” Kris said simply. “What else can we do?”
“Honey child,” Abby said, “you are way too old to think that human beings can’t think of a whole passel of things to do that have nothing to do with what they ought to do.”
That brought a sigh from all four of them. Even Cara.
50
The prospects of the Wasp becoming another Flying Dutchman increased as they whipped through the next jump at 500,000 klicks per hour and found another new-style jump in their next system. Sulwan headed the Wasp toward it, now at only half a gee, and forecast that they would be making somewhere between 650,000 and 750,000 klicks when they went through it.
Chief Beni announced they’d covered over three thousand light-years and that there was nothing of interest in this system. Kris stood down her gunners yet again.
Nelly sounded tickled pink that her estimate of how far they would jump and where was proven to be right. She gave out an official guess that at their speed and with a twenty rotation counterclockwise, the next jump should take them into the Norma Arm of the galaxy, well away from the outer rim and aimed toward home.
Of course, they’d be coming home right through the heart of the Iteeche Empire. Hopefully, they would either miss it entirely or, if they ended up meeting anyone, it would not cause a problem.
There was a lot of hoping and wishing in that course of action.
Kris was more exhausted than hungry for whatever Cookie had managed to mix up from what was left in the ship’s drystorage supplies. Kris did wonder if there were any famine biscuits in the back of the larder and whether they’d be reduced to eating them.
She wondered but did not ask. Between Cookie and Captain Drago, she figured that more experienced heads than hers were thinking through those matters.
She needed to get a good night’s sleep. Sooner or later, she was going to have to face Grampa Ray, King Raymond I to most, and talk him into following through on what she had started.
She didn’t even want to think about what might happen if he wasn’t interested in backing her up. Did they still throw Christians to the lions?
For one of those damn Longknifes, they might bring back the good old days. Who could tell?
Kris had hardly gotten out of her clothing . . . it was amazing how much a princess could perspire while sweating through an unmapped and maybe hostile jump . . . when there was a knock on the door. Kris grabbed for an old Wardhaven U sweatshirt and opened the door a sliver.
Vicky Peterwald stood there. She had a half-empty bottle of whiskey and was sucking it well past half as Kris watched.
“They’re all dead,” Vicky finally said as she let the bottle fall from her lips.
Just the fumes left Kris wanting a drink. That was not good.
“Yes, Vicky, they’re all dead,” Kris said softly. “Most likely. Some might get back.”
“Quit lying. They’re all dead,” the grand duchess snapped bitterly.
A sailor hurried by, doing the weird thing that was neither a run nor a float that half a gee demanded. Clearly, this was not the kind of talk that two girls of Kris and Vicky’s stature needed to have where any passing crew member could pick up this or that snatch of conversation.
“Come in, Vicky.” Kris would have loved to ask her to leave the bottle outside, saving Kris from the temptation of taking a swig. She would have loved to, but she didn’t. Vicky looked more attached to that bottle at the moment than she was to life.