There was a pause. JACK ACKNOWLEDGES THEM. More of a pause. JACK SAYS THE TUGS HAVE THEM AND WILL COMPLY. JACK SAYS BE CAREFUL.
HE DOES, DOES HE? TELL HIM TO BE CAREFUL HIMSELF.
HE SAYS HIS ONLY RISK IS KILLING ONE REPORTER.
TELL HIM THAT'S NO RISK, IT'S A NATIONAL SERVICE.
HE SAYS YOU DO YOUR JOB, HE WILL DO HIS JOB. OUT.
Kris leaned back in her chair as the ships around her accelerated in obedience to her orders. She'd placed her bets on some pretty slim data. Hunches really. She tried not to grit her teeth. She did her best to look loose, confident to those around her on the bridge. She had committed every ship that Wardhaven had in its defense. Every last one. Had Grampa Ray ever done anything so outlandish? Betting the entire future of Wardhaven on a single throw of a very small pair of dice.
Suddenly Kris knew what it must have been like to confront President Urm with nothing but a briefcase bomb. Or face an entire Iteeche fleet inbound for a planet and your defense forces outnumbered four to one. Or to know at that final battle that all of human existence hung on what you'd done last week, would do in the next few moments, and it might not be enough.
How had Grampa faced those burdens and stayed sane? One thing Kris did know. He had. And if he could, so could she. She tightened her belt… again. They were coming out from around the moon, accelerating at a full g … again. The battleships were there … again, on her board.
''Anything new?'' she asked.
''The same old same old,'' Penny answered.
''They're showing the same noise they were,'' Moose said.
''Let's see if we can teach them something new,'' Kris said.
***
The Admiral studied his battle board. The enemy was coming out from behind the moon in a different formation from the one it had been in when it entered.
''The six in the rear now lead,'' the Duty Lieutenant told the Admiral what his eyes already saw, ''but we can not tell you anything more about them. The eight now trailing them still seem to be led by the Halsey. While behind the moon, they did send a tight beam message to the single runabout trailing them. It relayed it to High Wardhaven. We do not know the content of the message, but based on it, a dozen tugs got under way and are going into orbit now. Intel identifies them as rescue and salvage.''
''Good, good,'' the future governor chortled. ''Let them keep the space around Wardhaven clear for our trade vessels. Don't want too much mess, now do we.''
The Admiral slammed his fist down on the battle board. ''I'm not worried about scrap iron in orbit. I am worried about those ships. Can't anyone tell me something about them?''
The Duty Lieutenant worried his lower lip. ''When they did their flip over on the way to the moon, there was an anomaly. Intel didn't report anything on it, but my technicians identified it. It was a fusion reactor ship. Small, yacht size, sir. Hiding in the shadow of the fleet ships.''
''Why didn't you mention that?'' the Chief of Staff demanded.
The Duty Lieutenant stiffened. ''I was waiting for intel to report it, sir. I kept waiting.''
''And they never did because it didn't fit their picture,'' the Admiral said. ''And they do like a nice, complete picture. Right up to when it falls apart.'' He tapped his board, where the two freighters made their way toward him, toward Jump Point Barbie. ''Sing to me,'' but all he got was silence. He sat back. Soon enough he would have plenty of noise. Then he would make his decisions. God help him if he decided wrong.
17
Kris blanched, fighting the flashback. The memory of going for ice cream for her and Eddy. Two men walked past her; they smiled. They had signs hung around their necks that said Kidnapper, but a ten-year-old Kris smiled and waved at them. They waved back. She kept skipping toward the ice cream stand.
When she came back to the duck pond with the ice cream, Nanna was dead, and Eddy was gone.
That was when Kris usually woke up screaming. It happened every night until Kris learned to sneak out to Mother's wine cabinet, Father's wet bar. The dreams came back after Grampa Trouble started her drying out. Judith, a miracle of a psychologist, had helped Kris go back to that day, relive it in all its horror… and recognize that there was no one there with signs around their necks. No one that even looked like the men who stole her brother, and with him her childhood.
Strange. Kris had attended parts of the trial. She'd even attended their hanging. Father had almost lost his chance to replace Grampa Al as Prime Minister by the tactics he used to keep capital punishment on Wardhaven's books long enough for those three to swing. Only with Judith holding Kris's hand had she been able to take the dream men's images back to that day and realize she had never seen them in the park.
There was nothing she could have done to save Eddy.
Kris bit her lip, willing away the old pain. Helplessness was the least of her problems today. With Judith, Kris had written the final page of her personal history of that horrible day. Nothing she could have done would have saved Eddy.
When the historians wrote about today, Kris's actions would be all over everything. She shrugged; the difference between ten and twenty-three. Between being the Prime Minister's bratty granddaughter and Princess Longknife.
The difference between me losing a brother to Peterwald and Peterwald losing a battle fleet to me. Kris grinned.
The worry time was over. Now was the time to do. On her board, two freighters went to maximum acceleration—charging the battleships. Around them, three runabouts joined in.
The freighters exploded in a cloud of rockets launched.
''Blast the freighters,'' the Admiral ordered.
''The orders are out, sir. We're trying, sir,'' the Duty Lieutenant said.
''Then why aren't they gone?''
''Too may targets, sir. There are rockets all over the place, sir, and the central defense command hasn't sorted them out and allotted priorities yet, sir.''
The Admiral shook his head. Every laser was slaved to the central defensive computer on his flagship to assure that the best use was made of all defensive guns … and that they didn't engage each other in fratricidal firing. A great idea, which was not working under the pressure of a sudden massive attack.
The Admiral mashed his commlink. ''All ships, engage incoming rockets on your own. Revenge will engage the large enemy ship closest to Wardhaven. Ravager will engage the one close to the jump point. The rest may have the small runabouts. Now shoot the damn things.'' Acknowledgments came in.
Killing the attackers was easily ordered. Not so easily done. The freighters were smaller than they appeared, just a long spine with bits of hull and structure here and there. The engine rooms aft seemed to be the largest target, and the Admiral assumed his ship's gunners would aim for them.
But the damn merchant ships would not hold still to be swatted properly. The triple turrets of the Revenge shot out, but the freighter had done some kind of rolling loop. In the meantime, it had launched more rockets in a growing cloud of metal headed toward the Admiral's command along several courses, some straight, some elliptical, some in spirals that changed with each loop. ''What are those things?''
''I don't know, sir,'' the Duty Lieutenant said. ''They do not fit any of the naval weapons in our database, sir.''
''Try Army weapons.''
''Yes, Admiral.''
A short pause. ''Most of them are not showing up, sir.''
Out in space, the first freighter had been hit, but the 18-inch Naval laser seemed to have gone through it without fazing it in the slightest. The other ship had been winged in one engine, but that was only making it a more erratic target. And its wild gyrations did not seem to slow its additions to the growing cloud of missiles. A runabout launched a volley of four rockets.