“Some of us have been dirtside long enough to pick up stories of the early days of your colony,” Pipra said.
“Lies, all lies,” Granny said, smiling as she lied through teeth.
“A reputation is a great thing,” Kris said, herself grinning. “Don’t waste it. Put it to use. You can never tell when you’ll need it to scare some kids into going to bed on time.”
“I’ve had a few Sailors bring me up to date on you, kid,” Granny said.
“And doubtless they traded you some good sea stories. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to transfer my flag back to the Wasp and see if I can talk my security chief into coming with me.”
That brought another round of canards which Kris strove not to participate in. While she was letting that wash over her, she had Nelly ask Penny if she’d like to be included in this trip. She did and asked if she could bring along Masao. Kris agreed.
An hour later, Abby had Kris packed and a half dozen Sailors lugging several hand trucks full of gear from the Princess Royal to the Wasp.
A corporal and two privates brought along all of Jack’s gear.
Next morning, they were away from the pier at 0730.
36
They had already left a buoy at the jump into the system where the battle took place. Now they headed for the desperate jump they’d taken out of the system. They passed close to the still-tumbling wreck of the alien mother ship.
A thorough scan showed no new changes in the wreck. Maybe they’d scared the bastards off. Kris could only hope.
They dropped off a buoy on the other side of the jump. The vacuum there still glowed from the wreckage of so many alien ships and the little bit that was the Fearless. They followed the same course and acceleration to the next jump. At this speed, they could not leave a buoy. It would have to be covered by another ship.
They made the same long jump they had last time. This system had seen no fight, so they sped on, picking up speed, but at a slower acceleration. The old Wasp’s engines had started to show wear from heavy use.
The next jump brought them to the system where the limping Intrepid had fought its last fight, struggling to buy time for the Wasp and Hornet to make their escape. Once again, the scientific measurements showed a much more crowded and warmer vacuum.
The Intrepid had died hard.
This time, the new Wasp headed for the closest conventional jump. The Hornet had taken that one, letting the old Wasp slip away through the new fuzzy jump before the aliens had a chance to take notice. They had to guess a bit. The Hornet probably also had to slow down its acceleration. Still, they put on forty revolutions a minute and crossed their fingers.
The jump took them close, Captain Drago’s low whistle said way too close, to a gas giant.
“There’s a lot of vaporized ship out there,” the sensor team reported. “Can’t tell how much at this point, but there was a fight here.”
“Nelly, could Commander Taussig have done a loop around the gas giant and come back at the aliens following him?”
“I’ll have to back the system up a few months. It’s impossible to say where this jump was then. They do wander. However, it does look like he could have used several of the moons as well as the gas giant itself to help him break. It might have added some fuel to his tanks as he did it. It would have been a lot harder on the Hornet than any of the cloud dancing we did.”
“But his ship didn’t have all the containers the old Wasp had,” Captain Drago pointed out. “It would be easier for him than for us.”
“Is there any ship in this system?” Kris asked Senior Chief Beni, ret.
“I show no active reactors. No squawkers are talking to me.”
Kris let that walk around in her gut for a second. She didn’t like it, but it might be what she would have to take home with her. Two of her corvettes had fought the aliens, and both had died. If a fight had taken place here, the odds were that it had cost the Hornet’s crew all they had. Jack maneuvered his egg over to hers, once more at Weapons on the Wasp, and rested a supporting hand on her shoulder.
She gave his hand a squeeze.
“If I were stuck out here in this corner of the universe, I’d choke my squawker,” Jack said. “Is there any way to interrogate a squawker that’s been turned off?”
“Our Identification, Friend or Foe has three levels,” Captain Drago said. “On, off, and passive. What were the codes we were using on the old Wasp?”
Senior Chief Beni needed a moment for his computer to call up the old code and send it. The interrogatory went out at the speed of light as they broke at two gees toward the gas giant. Minutes went by. Ten. Twenty. Thirty.
“Are there any planets in the Goldilocks’ zone?” Kris asked, trying to fill time as the clock went longer and longer.
“There are three,” the chief reported. “One a bit close to the star. The other’s a bit far out. There’s one about in the middle, but it’s on the other side of the sun at the moment.”
“So it might need a long time to reply to our message,” Jack said.
“Yes,” the chief answered. “Hours. A day.”
The time passed slowly as the Wasp decelerated, aiming to graze past one moon, then another as she swung around the gas giant. Time for a reply from the closer planets came and went.
“I’ve got something,” the chief didn’t quite shout, waking Kris as she dozed in her egg.
“What?” Kris demanded.
“It sounds like the reply code,” Chief Beni said. “It’s weak and a bit garbled, but it’s got four of the right alphas and numbers.”
“Captain Drago, will you please set a course for the other side of this sun?”
“Happily, Your Highness. Very happily.”
With a sigh of relief and hope, they set a long, slowing course for a responder that had hardly responded at all.
37
“That’s the Hornet,” Captain Drago said, as they closed on their target.
“What’s left of her,” Kris agreed. Half the engines were shot away. The hull had been holed clear through in three, maybe four places. The ship now tumbled in space, derelict.
The docking bays were empty. The longboats were gone.
“It appears to have been evacuated,” Kris said. “Comm, broadcast on the longboat frequencies that we’re here.”
That brought no reply. Ahead of them, the planet turned. They continued broadcasting as Captain Drago brought them into a parking orbit a hundred kilometers from the hulk. The planet remained silent, refusing to give up its secret.
“Sensors,” Kris ordered, “get with the boffins and map that planet. Somewhere down there are four longboats and a gig. They can’t have disappeared. Find them.”
What they found was a planet that looked like a pit of hell. Or maybe what Earth itself looked like when giant dinosaurs roamed it. The huge landmass that rolled below them was covered with dark swamps and marshes. Huge creatures chased the smaller ones, and rarely did they evade becoming dinner.
“How could humans survive down there?” was a question Kris heard far too often as the mapping progressed.
“Even if the humans haven’t, monsters don’t eat longboats. Find me the boats, guys. Find me those longboats.”
The search continued.
It was near the end of their sixth orbit, over nine hours after they began, that the morning beneath them coughed up an island. A volcanic central core rose almost to the clouds, surrounded by sandy beaches and reefs. There, drawn up on the water’s edge of a lagoon protected by the reef, were the four missing longboats and a smaller gig.