Kris granted them their desire but assigned engineers from her own watch to keep an eye on them. As well as Marines to do the same, only armed.
When the rest of the engineers stepped forward to help with their new fourth reactor, Intrepid also took them up on the offer. And detached Marines to keep them straight up.
The extra Smart MetalTM was also much approved of by Penny when she got half of the Sisu’s hull, scantlings and fittings. Nelly and her kids had to work hard with both the Wasp’s and Intrepid’s ship maintainers to get the stuff smoothed into their own structure.
Kris thought long and hard on it, then decided to keep the ship at Condition Baker for the one-gee acceleration and deceleration down to the fourth planet.
She delegated to Jacques and Amanda the job of explaining to the newly recruited aliens that they were going to war. “Don’t say who with, just let them know that we have run into someone who owes us their head,” Kris said. “See if they can get the concept.”
An hour later, Nelly reported back that the aliens didn’t have a problem with the Sky Gods fighting other Sky Gods. The path of the People was often bloody. Why shouldn’t the path among the stars be red as well?
Kris shivered at the thought but took her blessings where she found them.
With fuel topped off and enough reaction mass both for the trip sunward and plenty extra to pad their armor with cooling liquid and dispersant to vent if hit, they began a carefully measured one-gee burn for the Cat Planet. If things went as planned, they would flip ship at midcourse and go into orbit just as the alien fleet was rounding the sun and decelerating toward them.
Their presence did not go unnoticed. As Nelly pieced it together from the local news, a ten-year-old amateur astronomer with eagle vision spotted them against the gas giant as they accelerated away. He lost them after that but caught sight of them again when they flipped ship to start their deceleration burn.
Once their engines were pointed at his planet, he reported the eight moving lights on their amateur astronomy network, and the kitty litter hit the fan, so to speak.
Some of the largest telescopes were brought online to track them as they rocketed in. With eight sets of engines burning bright against the stellar backdrop, the cats went crazy.
“We’re getting questions aimed at us from everyone and his dog,” Nelly said.
“That’s a joke, right? Dog?” Kris said.
“Yes, it’s a joke. Not a good one?”
“No, Nelly. Very good. So, who wants to know what?”
“The questions are all the same: What are we doing here and what are our intentions? They come from all sorts of media outlets. Every one of their hundred fifty-seven governments, no one hundred and sixty-two. There were a couple of small ones we missed. Or maybe they’re that new. It’s hard to tell with precision. Oh, and there must be a million news organizations begging for an exclusive. I guess news organizations are the same wherever you are in the galaxy.”
“Is that all of them?” Kris asked.
“Well, the boy who first spotted us is using a friend’s radio to ask us where we came from and why we are here.”
“A kid, huh?” Jack said.
“A kid,” Kris repeated.
“Both of them, the astronomer and the radio operator,” Nelly said.
“But if we reply to them, everyone will get it, right?” Kris asked.
“No doubt, Kris. Even if we tried to send it on a tight beam, I’m not sure their antenna could pick it up. It’s very primitive technology.”
“How sure are you that you understand their language?”
“Languages, Kris. We’ve identified fifty-three being broadcast so far. There may be some weak signals we’re ignoring.”
“What language are the kids calling us in?” Jack put in.
“One of the dozen or so major ones. The one that calls themselves Sasquans. I’ve got over fifty thousand hours of recordings, both radio and TV. I’m 99.99 percent sure of the words for ‘We come in peace. We mean you no harm. You are about to be attacked by starships coming around your sun. We will protect you as best we can.’”
“Have they spotted the alien warships coming around the sun?”
“I don’t think so. There is a lot of encrypted radio transmissions. Some are pretty easy to crack, but others are on throwaway ciphers. There just isn’t enough there for me to hack it, Kris.”
“Send the message. You better not append ‘Longknife sends.’ Longknife is rather aggressive, or so I’ve been told.”
“The name, or just you?” Nelly asked.
“Not funny,” Kris said.
“But a good bit of sarcasm,” Jack added.
“Message sent,” Nelly reported.
“Now we wait and see what happens next. Nelly, will the BEMs get the message you just sent?”
“I sent it on a wide beam, Kris. Very likely, they will get it, too.”
“Send it again. This time append, ‘Longknife sends.’ Do the cat folk have military ranks?”
“Yes, Kris. They have air, land, and naval ranks. If your next question is, do I know what Vice Admiral translates to, yes, I do.”
“Then make it ‘Vice Admiral Longknife sends.’”
“Do you want ‘Princess’ added, too?”
“Do they have a lot of royalty down there?”
“I don’t think so. Most of the governments are democratic, or pretend to be. I’ve identified several presidents for life and something called ‘The Leader of the People.’ Three of them leading three different peoples. Also two of them are shooting at each other but not officially at war. Kris, it’s a mess down there.”
“‘Vice Admiral’ will be enough.”
“Sent a second time. I’m sending it repeatedly.”
“Now we see what happens,” Kris said.
40
The fecal matter really did hit the air-redistribution system when Kris’s message arrived at the planet.
Within ten minutes of Kris’s message showing up, it was in all the news-distribution media that her squadron could copy. There were also references to something called print media.
Nelly had to look that one up in her archives and was shocked to discover that trees were sacrificed to make paper specifically so that information could be printed on it and sold.
“What a waste of those lovely forests,” she told Kris.
Nelly dug deeper into the media from the locals’ airwaves and found examples of forests being cut and bulldozed. “Why are we even fighting for these people?” Kris’s computer asked. “They’re destroying their own planet.”
Kris sent Nelly to search the ship’s own historical archives of Earth in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. The computer returned much chastened.
“Well, at least it appears to be something that your type can grow out of.”
Most of the new queries aimed at the squadron were more of the maddening same demanding to know who they were and where they were from.
There was even one asking Kris what she used to assure she had a glossy coat.
Kris ignored them all. All except two. One was from the kids. They thanked Kris for answering them and hoped they might meet whoever she was and that she would win the coming fight.
“Children are so innocent,” Penny said.
“Read the other message,” Kris suggested, and handed her friend the one that had come in on a very powerful tight beam.
“How do we know you are what you say you are? How do we know that the other ships are our true enemy?” Penny read aloud.
“Where did this one come from?” Kris asked Nelly.