“I was in the retrograde movement with Vice Admiral Longknife,” Taussig began. “We ran because there was nothing else to do, and the human race had to know what had happened on the other side of the galaxy. I put my ship between the aliens and Princess Longknife so she could get The Word back. And when she did, she came back for me and my crew. She had to fight an alien ship that outweighed her ten to one, but she did save us.”
“I would have come back,” Sampson snarled when Taussig paused for air. “I would have come back with a court-martial board to try that whore.”
“No, Gunny,” Kris said. He looked ready to slug the defendant in the mouth.
“Ma’am,” he said.
“I may need to amend my charges against you, Miss,” Taussig said. “Actions unbecoming and prejudicial to the service seem more and more appropriate.”
Sampson didn’t wait for Captain Taussig to pause for a breath before launching into a torrent of curses and invectives. Even when Kris hammered her gavel for silence, she raved on.
“Gunny, remove the prisoner. See that she is put in a cell separate from the others. Even they don’t deserve this kind of grief. And no, Gunny, I don’t want to see a mark on her.”
“Ma’am,” was a bit ambiguous. Kris wasn’t sure whether Gunny felt that her implied order was uncalled for, or out of order, all things considered.
It took two strong Marines to usher Sampson from the drop bay.
“That didn’t go as planned,” Kris said, standing.
“It never does, Kris,” Penny said, joining her. “That’s why my old man said Justice was blind.”
“Yes,” Kris said, still not sure she like the way her friend had jobbed her.
“What is it with that gal,” Taussig said, joining the main table.
“Nelly, the last time I had a run-in with Sampson, I ordered a full checkup on her before she left the brig. Did a doctor look her over?”
“Yes, Kris, but, if I may point out, the kind of exam that the doctor could do in the brig and the kind of exams that Dr. Meade did with the aliens have a level of magnitude in difference.”
“Good point, Nelly. Please ask Dr. Meade to do a full workup, to include anything she can do to look into that woman’s brain. There’s got to be a screw loose.”
“A bucket of screws,” Jack growled.
“Now, with that distasteful matter done, Captain Taussig, you were too sick last time to share my table. Cookie has found a stash of steaks. Could I interest you in one with all the trimmings?”
“I think you could. I understand congratulations are in order. Jack, you lucky dog you.”
“I’ll woof to that,” Jack said, and they adjourned to the wardroom.
38
The steaks were good, and it gave Kris a chance to lay a proposal before Captain Taussig.
“Captain, there was no way that I could allow Sampson and a mutinous crew to take the Sisu back to human space. However, there is the matter of you and your crew’s survivor leave. We’re a good bit of the way across the galaxy. Would you like to take your ship the rest of the way?”
“Excuse me if I’m missing something, but why me and not them?” he said around a nice rare piece of dead cow.
“I can keep these aliens across the system off your tail,” Kris said. “Turnabout being fair play.”
“That would be much obliged,” he admitted.
“But if you did get caught, I trust you would blow the reactor and give them nothing.”
Phil Taussig leaned back in his chair. “We didn’t blow the reactors last time because there was hardly anything left to blow. We did destroy our computers. I don’t know if you noticed that.”
“I figured you did, but I didn’t have time to check it out,” Kris admitted.
“Yes, if we got caught, I’d blow the reactors. After seeing that house of horror, there is no way I want my head or body in their trophy room.”
“Do you want to go? If you do, I’ll send along a full report of what we found.”
“Do you think that would make any difference in the way your great-grandfather, my king, is building ships?”
“I can’t say that it would. I can’t say that it wouldn’t,” Kris admitted.
“So, it boils down to the original question. Do I and mine want to take this chance to get off the tip of the spear and back someplace that might or might not be safer?”
“Yes.”
“No,” he said right back.
“No?”
“No. No way. No how, Kris. Admiral. Viceroy, whomever I’m talking to. We’re out here, and we’ll stay out here, if you don’t mind.”
“I’m always glad to have fighting skippers,” Kris admitted.
“Kris, I have a message from Dr. Meade to you,” Nelly said.
“What does she have to say?”
“The examination Lieutenant Commander Sampson had earlier was very cursory. She’s just completed a full body scan, and the woman has a cancerous brain tumor. It’s a rapidly growing one, and she’s glad she managed to catch it right now. In another week or two, it would have been inoperable.”
“You may have just saved that woman’s life,” Penny said.
Kris considered that for a long moment. “I wish I could say that I felt better about that,” she finally admitted.
“I’ll wait to see how she acts when the tumor’s gone,” Taussig said. “There are bad actors, then there are people with an excuse for acting bad.”
They ate in silence for a while on that thought.
“Kris, would you like an update on the new alien planet?”
“Thank you, Nelly,” Kris said, then explained to the others at the table with her, “I’ve had her hold reports on the new aliens until we settled this problem with Sampson. I take it that the nasty aliens are still staying put, Nelly?”
“If they so much as budge, you will hear, even if you and Jack are . . .”
“Thank you, Nelly,” Kris interrupted.
“You’re welcome, Kris.”
Around the table, Penny was in a coughing fit. “Sorry, I was drinking when Nelly started giving way too much information.”
The recent defense counsel finished by taking a long drink of water.
“You may report now, Nelly,” Kris said, when Penny was settled and the rest were no longer looking at her and Jack in that most familiar way.
“We flung off a probe before we finished braking. It will use the fifth planet to brake before going into orbit around the fourth. The boffins are trying to use as much natural slowing as they can to avoid any bright lights. They suspect this civilization has enough technology to notice a sudden bright light in the sky.”
“I wonder what they’ll make of a fight between us and the bug-eyed monsters?” Taussig asked no one.
Nelly had mastered the rhetorical question. She let it go.
“The probe is not there yet, but the fourth planet is throwing off enough electronic media for us to do a major analysis of them without putting anything on the ground. There are several wars raging right now. It appears that the planet is just coming out of a colonial period. Do I need to explain what that is?”
“No, Nelly,” Kris said. “We all know what it means when folks one place think they should tell folks some other place how to run their lives.”
“The wars right now are being waged using conventional weapons, but, Kris, these people have fissionable atomics for power and hydrogen-enriched atomics for weapons.”
“Oh, so our bug-eyed monsters do indeed have a hot one on their hands,” Jack said, with a chuckle.
“And they have chemical weapons, too,” Nelly added. “Several of the larger armies have access to nerve gas and have fighting uniforms designed to handle the problem of it on the battlefield.”
“This just gets better and better,” Penny said. “Who are these people?”