“Sometimes I even surprise myself,” Kris admitted.
Now only one problem remained. If the next jump went right, she’d be arriving a good hour before the exodus of the trading, or traitor, fleet began. How would she handle that?
It was a sure bet that giving commands naked would not carry the full power of her convictions. The egg hardly could be better. She steered back to her cabin and, despite weighing three times normal, managed to put on undress whites with ribbons. If she had to make a statement, she’d have all of her history backing her up.
And, of course, there would be the Longknife thing. She’d use everything in her quiver before she’d use the 18-inch guns.
She motored back to the bridge a good thirty minutes before the jump. Katsu was right. The seams in the uniform, to say nothing of the belt and clutch backs on her ribbons, were a real pain. Clearly, for the foreseeable future, until someone came up with a seamless shipsuit, the new battle dress would be bare-ass naked in an egg.
That was bound to cause talk.
The time came for the jump. Since it was to be a more conventional jump, Kris ordered a messenger buoy sent through three minutes before the Wasp. Its message was simple. Ship coming through. She’d let the folks on the other side stew about what ship and whose.
At the right second, they entered the jump doing fifty thousand klicks an hour and with the ship rock steady.
63
On the other side of the jump, Kris found herself face-to-face with the flagship of Grampa Al’s fleet, The Glory of Free Enterprise. It was accelerating at 1.5 gees and already doing 75,000 klicks per hour. It was also just out of the 18-inchers’ range at 120,000 klicks.
With the Wasp decelerating at one gee from 50,000 klicks, and the Enterprise accelerating up from 75,000 klicks, there would not be a lot of time to talk.
Kris opened her egg and stood up to face the forward screen. “Glory of Free Enterprise, this is Princess Kris Longknife, Commander, Royal U.S. Navy. You are ordered to change course away from this jump and begin deceleration immediately.”
A hard-bitten middle-aged man in full merchant-marine greens showing four stripes stared at Kris from the main screen. “I take my order from the old man himself, Alex Longknife. No girlie whelp is going to boss me around.”
“Be advised, this ‘girl’ has four 18-inch lasers targeting your bucket. You’ll be in range in ten seconds. What part of your boat do you want me to slice off first?”
“What kind of ship is that?” he was heard to mutter.
“This is the frigate U.S.S. Wasp, and this is your final warning. Change course or be fired upon.”
“You wouldn’t dare.”
Kris stepped back and slipped into her Weapons station. Nelly had Laser 1 locked on the bell of the starboard-most rocket engine. THIS SHOULD ONLY NIP IT, BUT IT WILL KNOCK IT OFF COURSE, AND THEY’LL KNOW THEY’VE BEEN HIT.
“Cease deceleration. Flip ship,” Kris ordered, and the Wasp did. “Fire one.”
A second later, the scowling skipper on the screen was knocked sideways as his ship’s engines lost their careful balance.
“I dared,” Kris said. “Fleet following the Free Enterprise, decelerate and change course, or I will disable your engines.”
“This is Captain Christoph Guisan in the Pride of Zurich, and I fly the flag of the Helvitican Confederacy. You will not fire on me.”
“Captain, Admiral Channing died fighting per my orders. I will fire on anyone who risks making those heroic peoples’ deaths be in vain. Don’t cross me.”
NELLY, TARGET THE ENGINES OF THE NEXT THREE SHIPS IN LINE.
ALREADY DOING IT, KRIS.
Kris started a slow five count in her head.
At the count of three, the next ship in line flipped and started decelerating and steering off to port. By the five count, all the ships were flipped, decelerating, and doing it in directions that would take them well away from the jump.
Kris still had a problem. She was rapidly heading in the opposite direction from the others. If she didn’t do something radical, she’d be out of range, and these ships could thumb their nose at her and go back to their original course.
She sat back into her egg. “Captain, put us into a four-gee deceleration. I want to stay in range of those ships as long as we can.”
The orders were quickly given. As Kris expected, those ribbons and the belt really hurt. She’d be bruised in the morning. Too bad she hadn’t worn her spider silks.
And then, Jump Point Alpha began to spit out ships halfway across the system.
It took thirty minutes before their first message came through. It was brother Honovi demanding that the ships stay in the system.
“You’re late to the party, Bro,” Kris sent, then attached a copy of her conversations with the merchant skippers.
An hour later, Kris got a happy message from her brother. “Sis, the media types are really eating up your message. Did you really shoot up Grampa Al’s pride and joy? Where’d you get the 18-inch guns? Let’s rendezvous at the system’s big gasbag. I’m ordering the merchants to meet me there.”
Kris waited until the various flags’ merchant ships began to set course for the gas giant, then was relieved to switch back to a one-gee acceleration.
Kris was right. She was bruised on her belly and breasts. Which begged the question. Now that they were back on a warship, how could she manage to have Jack kiss them and make them well?
Kris sighed, recalling the way the poor girl who had gotten pregnant was treated on Haruna. Maybe, once this cruise was over, she and Jack could take a month’s leave in an out-of-the-way place that had never heard of a damn Longknife.
Yeah, right.
But this cruise had hardly started and Kris needed to get ahead of matters before the alligators started chewing on her rump. She called a staff meeting in her new Tactical Center.
As she settled into her place at the head of the table, she found herself staring at one whole wall that was totally blank. No lovely wooded mountain in a morning mist. “I guess not everything handled four gee as well as other stuff,” Kris said.
“That is not made from my Smart Metal,” Katsu was quick to point out.
“I’ll see if I can find a repair technician among the crew,” Captain Drago said.
Kris went to the first item on her list. “We’re going to be meeting in orbit, which means a whole lot of no gravity. Do you think we could arrange to swing ourselves around the Sakura and get some down aboard the Wasp?”
Kris quickly explained to Katsu Admiral Krätz’s idea of having two ships pass a long beam between them, head-to-head. As they swung around each other, you got a stronger and stronger sense of “down” the farther you were from the center of the beam.
“We can do that,” the engineer said happily.
“That will make us the most likely venue for a meeting to butt heads,” Kris said. “Do we have a Forward Lounge?”
“It’s there but very empty,” Captain Drago said.
“We’ll tell them to bring their own bottles,” Jack said.
Kris nodded. “Moving right along, how are we set for food on a long voyage?”
“Cookie brought on three months’ worth of good chow and another three months’ of beans, other dried goods, and canned meats. I figure everyone can eat in either the wardroom, chief’s mess, or crew mess. There aren’t that many of your boffins.”
“You could store more,” Katsu offered helpfully.
“Maybe we can buy some stuff off these ships,” Penny suggested. “They aren’t going anywhere but home.”