''Sensors, is that a single reactor?'' Kris asked Chief Beni, her own man, who was running that station just now.
''Looks that way, ma'am,'' he muttered, then did something to his board. ''But I'm still looking.''
Kris slaved her board to his. Beni might be leadership challenged on liberty, but with anything electronic he was a wizard. Just now, he used only passives, listening but making no noise that would tip a pirate's hand that the Wasp was anything but a soft, defenseless carrier of wood and drawer of water.
Then again, a pirate would be doing its own best to look as innocent as a lamb … and hide the wolf within. At the moment, they were even in the lamb department. Or one might actually be what it claimed.
''Hmm, ain't she a mite bit underpowered with a single Westinghouse 1500 series reactor?'' Chief Beni mused to himself, and jacked up the gain on a couple of his short-range sensors. ''Seems like there's a whole lot more neutrinos coming out of that single reactor … and they're spread out over a whole lot more space. Those engineering spaces looked a bit luxurious for just one teapot. Skipper, I make two Westinghouse reactors. And expect they're 2200 series at that. You got a wolf trying to fake it in woolies.''
''Damn,'' Captain Drago said.
''Straight,'' Kris added.
''Your orders, Your Highness.''
So King Ray didn't know these people nearly as well as Kris did. And this bunch had no problem following this Longknife into the mouth of hell. In a fast countdown to a fight, Drago wasn't looking to Abby, he was asking Kris.
She swallowed the first thing that came to mind… Let's kick some pirate butt. Instead, Kris muttered a much more sedate, ''Let's make sure someone like Helvetia isn't also trolling for pirates. Wouldn't want Grampa Ray faced with a media blitz ‘cause two good guys shot each other up.''
Someone on the bridge snickered at Kris's familiarity with a man everyone else knew as King Raymond of the United Sentients.
And somewhere on net came a ''Damn, one of those Longknifes can grow up.'' It sounded familiar.
''That you, Jack?'' Kris asked Captain Jack Montoya of the Royal United Sentient Marine Corps, who now commanded the rump company aboard.
''Not me, ma'am, not a chance. Though I do admit sympathy for the conclusion.''
Further discussion was suspended as the ship looming over them opened communication channels. ''Hello, stranger, this is Compton Maru out of Orama. What ship are you and where you from? Where you bound?''
Captain Drago took the commlink. ''This is the Lucky Seven Horse out of Hampton, and I'll tell you where I'm bound when you tell me where you been.''
That elicited a laugh, much as Kris expected. Profits were razor thin out here and a good way to go broke was to follow in the wake of another ship, trying to sell your cargo in an already satisfied market or buy up cargo that had already been shipped.
Kris might be Navy and Drago … whatever he was … but they'd spent enough time in bars among merchant captains to learn that much of the trade.
The laughing voice became serious. ''You tell me something interesting, then I'll tell you something more interesting.''
''Sounds fair,'' Drago said. ''Our last stop was Magda's Hideaway.'' It really had been. ''They took all our agricultural implements and were still hungry. They didn't touch our heavy machinery. Somebody got there first.''
''That little burg ain't growing anywhere near as fast as its founding fathers thought it would. If they ain't careful, they're going to get overextended on their loans,'' the voice from the larger freighter observed.
Kris let them ramble, and took the ship above her apart layer by layer—as much as passive sensors allowed. If the ship had lasers, no capacitors were charged. Dead in space, the ship was no longer running plasma through its engines. Its only power source was a trickle off the racetrack of hot plasma. That kept the ship's main battery charged.
''Could you power a laser directly from the main storage battery?'' Kris asked the chief.
''You shouldn't be able to, ma'am,'' was the answer she expected. ''Power cables aren't designed for that surge. However, a small three-incher might dribble something out. Couldn't pierce much ice armor, but then, we're just a thin-skinned merchie,'' he said, with a wicked grin.
A knife might not be much, but in a fistfight, it could run the table. But a guy pulling a knife in a gunfight was in for a surprise. A big one.
''Where you been?'' Captain Drago asked.
''We're just coming back from Xanadu,'' the other claimed.
''Trying to trade among those crazies?'' Drago asked.
They'd already learned about Xanadu, the supposed home of the Abdicators. They were a bunch of nuts who insisted all humanity had to go back to Earth and hide from the coming alien hordes that would wipe us out. They'd been noisy forty years ago, then had gotten kind of few and quiet. Kris now knew why.
By some twisted logic, the leader of the Abdicators had moved all his followers far out beyond the Rim. Supposedly to hide. Considering how insanely crazy their beliefs had been before, Kris was none too sure she wanted to know what they'd become out on their own for half a century.
''They may be crazy, but they have money. They bought everything I had. I'm hauling my containers home empty except for some with wines and proto-pharms they sold me. If you got the range, they're a good place to drop by. Where you headed?''
But whoever was doing the talking over there must have figured he'd done enough babbling to distract the captain of the Lucky Seven Horse.
On Kris's board, a capacitor appeared, going from green to yellow to red as it sucked power from the ship's main battery.
''Evade,'' Kris shouted, but Nelly had already activated a jinks pattern in the helm. The Wasp danced left, right, up, down, and a feeble three-inch laser burned empty space.
''What the hell,'' came from the other ship on an open mike, then it went dead.
A red wash in the engineering spaces showed both reactors on the other ship coming to full life, overpowering whatever cover they had been hiding behind. The pirate ship shot away from the jump point, following a twisting course that danced its engines in and out of a direct shot from the Wasp.
A half dozen laser capacitors went from not there to yellow to red as they sucked up a charge.
Then the sensor board got hazy.
''They're trying to jam,'' Beni observed, did something to his board, and some of the jamming went away.
''Shields,'' was Kris's next order.
And she hated herself for it.
A slight bulge on the nose of the Wasp hid one of her two innovations. On order, Smart Metal™ deployed like a huge umbrella, rotating as it went. It both hid the ship behind it and provided a defense against lasers.
During drills, Kris had first ordered, ''Raise. Metal,'' or ''Raise. Defenses.'' Someone on the back of the bridge had whispered, ''Shields. Up,'' quoting from a long-running space opera. The bridge crew had a good laugh, but from then on, no matter what order Kris gave, the answer from Defensive Systems was always, ''Shields. Up.''
''Shields. Up,'' now answered Kris. No one laughed.
''Keep backing ship,'' Captain Drago ordered. ''Guns, let me know when you're fully charged.''
That was the Wasp's other secret. For three hundred years fusion reactors had produced the plasma that rocket motors streamed out to move the ship. That plasma, on its way to the engines, passed through magnetohydrodynamic coils that generated electricity for the ship and its weapons.
The Compton Maru had gotten under way, exposing its vulnerable engines because otherwise it couldn't charge its lasers.