“Captain,” Nelly said, “I assure you that we can load the data in the unused space of your machines, and they can process it during the time they are sitting idle. If you get any warning from your pickets, we can wash the data from them in a matter of seconds.”
“But you’d lose it all,” Jacques said.
“Sir, if we are running away from here, will it matter that we lose the data we need to make contact with a species that is growing more distant by the second in our rearview mirror?” Nelly said, dryly.
“You have a point,” Jacques admitted.
“Remember, you will still have the original data stored for later reload somewhere else,” Kris pointed out. “Assuming that once we bug out of here, we have any intentions of coming back.”
“Now that is an interesting question,” Drago said.
“Which one?” Kris asked.
“Do we want to leave a calling card to tell the aliens we’ve seen where they came from? That we’ve visited their old stomping ground and, what? Left it alone? Blown their little trophy room to smithereens? What are we going to do, Your Highness?”
“I haven’t decided yet,” Kris said. When she got a surprised look from everyone present, she hastily added, “No. Really. I’m still thinking.”
“But you are thinking about it,” Drago said.
“Yes. What kind of calling card would you leave?” she asked her flag captain and retired admiral.
“I’d lase that damn pyramid from space for two, three orbits. See just how big a hole I could make where it now stands,” he said without blinking an eye.
“That’s one option,” Kris said. “Some might take it as a declaration of war.”
“And blowing two of their mother ships to hell ain’t?” he shot right back at her.
“But that wouldn’t break the cycle of killing,” Amanda said. “Unless someone is willing to be the Optimistic Fool and try something out of the usual, all we have left is everyone’s doing the same old same old. Look where that’s gotten us.”
“Another good point,” Kris said.
“Besides,” Jacques put in, “what you’re looking at down there is both the greatest biological collection of different evolutionary trails and the last vestige that whole planets ever lived. I’d hate to see it blasted to dust even if it was a message I thought needed delivering.”
Kris frowned as she found herself agreeing with him.
“So, which is it going to be?” Captain Drago asked with a raised eyebrow.
“As I said, I haven’t decided yet,” Kris said. “However, I have decided that I want to make contact with the locals and I want to make that contact as quickly as possible before some blood-drenched joker drops in here to mount his latest trophy. Captain Drago, if you don’t have major problems with it, I’d like to have Nelly mount all the data from the language scouts in the spare space on our ships’ computers.”
“I’ll have my network support team start working with Nelly right away.”
“Thank you, Captain,” Nelly said.
“Don’t make me regret this momentary lapse in good judgment,” Captain Drago growled.
“I will endeavor greatly to see that you don’t,” Nelly said. Was there a bit of a laugh somewhere in her voice?
“Jacques, I do have a question for you,” Nelly said.
“Yes?”
“Which group of naked, abandoned raiders are you intent on passing yourself off as being from when you make contact with the most recent set of marooned raiders?”
“I haven’t decided,” he said.
“Which explains why your kisses has been so scratchy of late,” Amanda said. “I wondered why you quit shaving.”
“Part of the price of falling in love with a field-going anthropologist,” Jacques said.
“Why, oh my heart, couldn’t you have gone pitter-pat for some nice economics major with a briefcase and a boring day job?” Amanda asked no one in particular.
“I thought that might be the case,” Nelly said. “Kris, I have enough matrix, even after you shot up some of it surviving your third alien battle. I’d like to generate the new child and give it into Jacques’s care.”
“Amanda, will you be jealous, dear?” Jacques asked.
“Of course I will be, honey,” came with not-so-sweet undertones, “but I’ll just have to muddle along with my own pet computer. Though, who knows, with me jealous of you, and you wandering around bare-ass and flirting with every other mud-caked native down there with big boobs, I just might find that nice guy with the boring day job up here.”
“There are no boring day jobs up here,” Jacques pointed out.
“Don’t you hate it when they’re right?” Kris said with a sad smile for Amanda.
“If he gets a Nelly-class computer, I want ice cream. Chocolate ice cream with nuts,” Amanda said glumly.
“Both of us do,” Kris said, and adjourned the meeting.
Jack and Jacques left for Marine country to examine what could pass as minimal gear for going native. At Jack’s collarbone, Sal was already going through the drill for bringing a new computer up to speed, no doubt with a large helping hand from Nelly, who was strangely quiet at Kris’s own collarbone.
The pantry off the wardroom did prove to have a supply of chocolate ice cream with nuts and other crunchy things and no one with the gumption to tell the admiral, princess, and viceroy that she couldn’t raid the wardroom’s supplies.
The two young women dived into their consolation prize as their men, no doubt, contemplated the joyous life of a caveman.
“What is it about men that they don’t value chocolate properly?” Kris asked.
“Who’d want a world without chocolate?” Amanda asked back.
“Or good dentistry?”
“Or proper pain control when you’re having a baby?”
“You can’t be thinking of having a baby,” Kris said. “You’ve got the same birth-control implants in you that I’ve got in me.”
“Yes, but they wear out, dearie,” Amanda said, taking a dainty and ladylike small bite of the much-praised ice cream.
“And they will be replaced,” Kris said, using the full authority of her command.
“I’m a civilian,” Amanda pointed out.
“In a combat zone. Check your paperwork. When you signed on, you signed a reserve commission. You cause me too much grief, and your civilian days are over.”
“I need more ice cream,” Amanda said.
“So do I,” Kris said.
Their next spoonfuls were not at all small and dainty.
17
A week later, Kris, Amanda, and Penny watched as Jacques made his first try at making contact. Jack was dirtside with a squad of Marines hiding well back, but no more than two minutes away at a gallop.
If things went bad, some aliens would be seeing if sleepy darts worked on them. If they didn’t, matters would get bloody fast.
Jacques had settled himself beside a watering hole that the half-naked tribe frequented. Using a shard that he’d chipped off of a bit of flint, he’d cut himself a reed, then cut several holes in it. Blowing into it, he got some notes of a not-too-far-off-key nature.
He was making music as the five men cautiously approached the stream from the other side. He stayed where he was, squatting on the muddy bank. They stayed hunkered down in the high grass on the other side. The scout bugs caught their conversation. Their thirst was driving them to the water. Fear of the stranger was holding them back.
At the moment, they were frozen on the sharp edge of indecision.
Then the oldest woman of the group came up. ~The babies are hot and cranky. We need to bathe them in the river to cool them. The mothers must drink water to make milk for the babies. Do not stand around looking like unenlightened trees.~