“Aye, aye, sir.”
Kris tracked the bridge conversation from her own admiral’s bridge. Her space was now more formally a bridge. It was a fiction that impressed the visitors, and she had three of them. Two old felines, an admiral and a general, and the young translator Zarra ak Torina.
They sat at Kris’s conference table now. Seated on stools, the seniors’ tails nervously lashed back and forth.
I DON’T THINK THEY LIKE SPACE, Nelly said.
WOULD YOU WANT TO BE GOING INTO A BATTLE TOTALLY DEPENDENT FOR EVERYTHING, EVEN THE AIR YOU BREATHE, AND COMPLETELY DIFFERENT FROM ANY FIGHT YOU’D EVER BEEN IN?
KRIS, EVERY BATTLE WE GO INTO IS DIFFERENT FROM ANY ONE WE’VE EVER BEEN IN.
Kris almost heard a chuckle at the end of that.
“We’re still two days away from any serious fight,” Kris told the two. “Nelly, please show our visitors the likely outline of the battle.”
“Yes, Kris,” Nelly answered primly.
Nelly was no longer a secret though Kris suspected that the general considered her some magic talisman.
Nelly quickly showed the status of the gas giant and its moons ahead of them. The planet had a dozen moons, large and small, as well as a ring system.
“The two surviving alien warships are orbiting this small, planet-size moon. The reactors are also in orbit, so we assume they have built some sort of habitat in orbit rather than a ship. If they should choose to come out to fight us, as we choose to come out to fight them, they’ll have to make their decision tomorrow. Their likely course is thus,” Nelly said, and several appeared on the screen.
In one, they dived down, grazed the giant, then shot up to intercept Kris’s ships faster and farther out. In the second, they swung around the second largest moon and intercepted Kris well before she got to where their habitat orbited. In the third, they rose up from that moon’s gravity well and headed straight for Kris as she made her final approach.
“You can forecast your enemy’s course of action that accurately?” the admiral asked.
“Gravity defines what can be done,” Kris said. “In our ancient days, wind and currents defined what ships could do. Does your history have something like that?”
The admiral nodded. “I knew old admirals who lived by wind and waves. It has been nice to tell a helmswoman to go there, and the ship does. The next generation may look back fondly on the control my generation had.”
“But the next generation will have the stars,” Kris said.
SHE TRANSLATED THAT AS “STRIDE THE STARS” WITH A HINT OF STALKING FOR THE POUNCE IN IT. KRIS, ARE YOU SURE WE WANT TO GIVE THESE PEOPLE THE STARS?
NELLY, I’M DESCENDED FROM NATIVE AMERICAN WARRIORS WHO LIKED NOTHING BETTER THAN A LITTLE HORSE RAID. MAYBE STEAL A WIFE, TOO, WHILE HE WAS AT IT. YET, TODAY, I HATE WAR AS MUCH AS THE NEXT ONE.
BUT YOU FIGHT THEM SO VERY WELL.
ENOUGH, NELLY.
“Which of these paths will your enemy follow?” the general asked.
“I have no idea. We have a saying. ‘You can plan your battle as much as you like, but your enemy gets a vote as to how it will go down.’”
“We have a saying much like that. ‘You may hunt the long-toothed one, but she may also be hunting you.’ So, you will prepare for all three of these?” the admiral said.
“And a fourth. What if they choose to stay in orbit and not come out?”
“That might be the worst option for you,” the admiral said.
“You spotted the problem,” Kris answered.
“I watched your battle. You’re, ah . . . You call them lasers, right?”
“Yes,” Kris said.
“Light. Who would think that light could kill someone?” the general grumbled.
“It seems that we have, but didn’t know we had,” the admiral admitted. “At least some technical students have created them in their classrooms, but they take up way too much energy and do very little harm.”
“And a baby takes a lot of work and shows nothing of the warrior skills she may have someday,” Kris pointed out.
“And the first steam boilers were hardly able to cruise around a pond,” the admiral said, nodding.
Kris was grateful. These folks shook their head when they meant to shake their head and nodded when they meant to nod. That made it easier for her.
Kris nodded back.
“Knowing how you power and arm your ships will make it easier for us to avoid a lot of wrong turns with nothing to show for them,” the admiral said.
Kris chose not to react to that.
“Yes. That may or may not be all it is cracked up to be,” the admiral said, and laughed. For the felines, a laugh was something that began deep in the throat and came out more as a loud purr than as a human laugh.
Kris expected that she could get used to it.
Phil Taussig arrived. He was supposed to take the visiting firewomen off Kris’s hands for a tour of the ship ending in the Forward Lounge. Mother MacCreedy had laid in a very large supply of beer and a single-malt that aficionados said could easily hold its own against any scotch in human space.
Kris’s opinion of scotch was that it shouldn’t be forced on anyone, in or out of human space, but she kept her opinion to herself.
Once Phil left, Kris settled herself at her desk and did admiral things. The report from Amanda and Jacques on the culture of the cats was interesting but not complete. Kris doubted it ever would be. Whatever they were at present would not be what they were ten years from now.
The synthesis of the reports on the original aliens and their home world was ongoing as well. Kris put it aside and ducked out to Captain Drago’s bridge.
Yes, the repairs and modifications were coming along. Yes, the lasers were online. Yes, the engineering spaces were being reorganized. No, there wasn’t a problem bringing in the larger reactor from the Hornet to work with the Wasp’s two smaller ones.
Not spoken, but bubbling near the surface, was a strong hint that one admiral ought to take herself somewhere else and not bother the working people.
Kris returned to her own spaces.
She used her boards to take a walk through the four ships. It did look like the problem of sorting out two damaged ships and making them into one battleworthy hull was coming along nicely. She had Nelly check the engineering reports and verify that there had been no reactor excursions or burbles in the flow of plasma to the engines during the gentle, one-gee, cruise out.
“Kris, go find something to do,” Nelly suggested. “When the fight comes, you’ll fight it. They’ll fight it. Relax. Go jump Jack’s bones or something.”
“Computer, behave yourself.”
“I’m not a computer. I’m Nelly, and I was never taught by my loving, caring semiowner to behave, so there.”
Kris went back and tried to lose herself in the reports on the original aliens.
There was nothing new. No surprises. Her team had about squeezed everything there was from the data. They were refining it, but so far had not found, or stumbled across or fell into anything that changed what Kris knew about them or had made a wild guess at.
Kris decided she should go down and spend some time with the twenty aliens she’d recruited.
Down two ladders, around three passageways, and Kris was totally lost.
“Nelly, where are they keeping the original aliens.”
“Take a left at the next cross passageway. Go down the next ladder you come to. Ask me for directions again when you get there.”
Kris did.
Or she started to.
Kris had read in the after-action report that half of a Musashi Marine platoon had been hit when an alien laser slashed through the hull. Twelve were dead and more wounded. Somewhere she’d noted that the Wasp had opened a memorial chapel to those Marines, but Kris hadn’t noticed where it was.
She walked by it.
It was open.
The tori gate had no doors. Anyone, at any time, walking by could not help but see the twelve pairs of boots, twelve rifles, and twelve pictures standing along the far wall.