“All meetinged out.”
“Hope you saved something. I moved my gear into your quarters and let Drago have my space back.”
“There has to be some advantage to being all the way across the galaxy from people who make silly regs.”
“I’ll set up a Marine command center tomorrow. Could I borrow one of your screens?”
“Half of what I have is yours.”
“One screen will do. I’ll do my Marine work there.”
“But you’re sleeping beside me?”
48
Without the sortie, Kris was stuck with administrative work the next day. The prospects seemed less onerous after waking up beside Jack and showering and dressing together before dropping down to the wardroom for breakfast.
Granny Rita didn’t let Kris finish her bran muffin and juice . . . of an unidentified variety . . . before she had Nelly get her a list of what each ship had and started arguing over what priority to land them.
She didn’t like it when she heard that the Altair would unload first. She was still grumbling as Kris explained why. Longknifes, even former Longknifes, could be a real pain.
Kris oversaw getting the flow of material dirtside started, then touched base with Admiral Benson, ret. He was already pulling his hair out. “Have you any idea how much energy it takes to get Smart Metal flowing?” Kris admitted she didn’t. He told her.
“Have you asked the folks on the Musashi half of the station if you can have one of their huge reactors?” Kris asked.
“Will you ask them? I don’t want to seem too needy and, you know.”
Kris knew very well how it was with businessmen. She put on her CEO of local Nuu Enterprises hat and had tea with a kind old gentleman, Hiroshi, the manager of the Mitsubishi yard. It turned out that he expected to surrender three of his many reactors. He was just waiting for someone to tell him where to send them.
Kris connected him with Superintendent Benson, and they were soon best of friends, since Benson only coveted one of those reactors.
Kris’s next stop was Pipra. She now had a very spartan office next to the Thai restaurant. Wasn’t Smart MetalTM nice. “That was one hard-assed twist you took to drafting those ships and their crew,” was her greeting for Kris.
“I need them. At least one of those ships is going to be a frigate and go scout the alien home world.”
“Still, you might have offered them a bonus for staying on.”
Kris paused to consider that. “Good point. I keep forgetting that money is a motivator for your sector of the economy.”
“Don’t make it sound dirty; it’s getting you lasers.”
“How’s that coming?”
“We’ve started shipping the parts for a couple of them up to the station.”
“You’ll get most of the ships when they’re unloaded.”
“It will help. How long do you think we have?”
“I don’t know,” Kris said. Then Nelly cut in.
“Kris, they want you back at the command center.”
“Why?”
“Another jump buoy just got popped.”
“I’ll be right there. Get the commodores headed that way as well.”
“Ask a stupid question,” Pipra said, “get the answer you don’t want to hear.”
“Please keep this under your hat,” Kris said. “At least until I get back to you with something more definite than we lost a buoy. I don’t even know which one.”
“I’ll keep quiet until lunch. Having the latest news gives me points. You must know that.”
What Kris knew was that Father did his best to keep news away from the news.
She headed for the Wasp and found herself walking briskly beside Commodore Miyoshi. “Is this it?” he asked.
“We’ve got six layers of buoys. This could be a fifth one out or another of the farthest ones.”
“Or they could have done a big jump like we did.”
“It’s hard to get a base ship moving very fast. Would you want to risk twenty, thirty billion people on a bad jump?”
“I know what I’d do,” Commodore Miyoshi said. “I don’t know what they’d do. What’s a bad jump for folks that are born and live their whole lives in space?”
“Good point, but they’re after us. Jumping all to hell and gone won’t do us any damage. Let’s quit guessing and see what’s happening.”
They crossed the brow to the Wasp just as the other commodores arrived. It was a silent group that entered Kris’s day quarters. Jack was there, as was Penny. Captain Drago entered from the bridge as they came in from the passageway.
Kris’s screens lit up. “We’ve lost another buoy,” said Drago. “It’s one of the outer ones.”
“That’s good,” Commodore Miyoshi said.
“Maybe not so good,” Kris said. “Nelly, am I right? Does that system lead to the Beta Jump Point?”
“Yes, Kris.”
“Nelly, get me Pipra.”
“On the line, Kris.”
“Pipra, I’m glad you’re not out gossiping about what you heard. Tell me, how are things coming at digging in a Hellburner base on the gas giant’s moons near Beta Jump Point?”
“I thought the aliens were coming in the Alpha Jump again.”
“Looks like they are keeping their options open. We need to get a base near Beta.”
“We haven’t started.”
“We need to start right now.”
“That’s going to slow down the mining and transportation for more lasers.”
“Can’t be helped. Lasers aren’t going to dent a mother ship. Get the drilling operation moving to Beta. Change the unloading priorities. Push the Altair, but concentrate on one of the others as much as you can. Ignore the other two. Once you get the second unloaded, respin it into two transports and get them out to the mines for ore. Then we can do the third and fourth.”
“Granny Rita is not going to be happy. She wanted specific stuff out of all four of them in her own order.”
“Leave Granny to me. Whether or not we survive the next attack depends on this.”
“Understood, Longknife. There goes my lunch. Now you’ve fixed it so I won’t have a chance to gossip about all my inside tidbits.”
“You can tell everyone whose day you have to ruin by changing their priorities all about how you learned it from rubbing elbows with that damn Longknife.”
“You took the words right out of my mouth. Pipra out.”
“That young woman is downright insubordinate,” Hawkings said.
“She’s a civilian. They don’t have to be subordinate. And whether or not we win the next battle depends as much on what those civilians do as what we war fighters do. Get used to it.” Kris paused a moment to let that sink in, then went on.
“Captain Drago, run though the situation with these warning buoys for the new members of our command staff.”
“Nelly, could you please call up the system where we just lost our buoy?” the captain said.
Nelly did. It showed a worthless system with three jumps. Two led into it. One led inward toward Alwa. “The buoy we lost was this one.” One of the outer jumps lit up. “Immediately upon its falling silent, the buoy at the inbound jump slipped out of the system and started the report coming in.”
“Could it tell how strong the force entering the system was,” Commodore Miyoshi asked, “or how many reactors jumped in?”
“Our jump buoys have been modified,” Penny put in. “Yes, they identify reactors, so even if they aren’t shot up, we know they’ve been visited.”
“The bastards, however,” Kris said, “always shoot. Shoot and never talk.”
“Would it help if you knew how many reactors had jumped in the system?” Nelly asked.
“Definitely,” Kris said, as the commodores nodded.
“I can do a software mod and add that capability to the buoys. It might take a few days for the upload to reach the outer buoys.”
“Is there a downside to the change?”