Kris glanced further into the daily reports. Sick bay had only two Marines in it, victims of a handball game that had ended with a violent collision. With no one taking shots at Kris, the Marines were also being spared the odd collateral damage of being too close to “one of those Longknifes.”
It really was nice being so far from human space.
NELLY, REPORT SHIP’S STATUS, Kris said in her head. Her own board said everything was fine. Nelly’s assessment would guarantee that nothing lurked deep below the surface, waiting to spoil Kris’s otherwise-quiet morning.
In the blink of an eye, Kris was listening to ALL SYSTEMS WELL WITHIN THE NORMS. EVERYONE IS SLEEPING AS WELL AS THEY NORMALLY DO AT THIS TIME. CARA IS STILL UPPLAY-ING A GAME, Nelly added, addressing the precise status of the twelve-year-old who Kris more than suspected was the most important person aboard the Wasp as far as Nelly was concerned.
SHOULDN’T SHE BE ASLEEP? TOMORROW’s A SCHOOL DAY.
I CAN JUST START IT A BIT LATE, AIN’T NO BIG THING.
Kris blinked . . . When had Nelly started using contractions? Or “ain’t”? Nelly’s computer-perfect grammar was supposed to be teaching proper grammar to a sixth grader!
Further thoughts on that were interrupted by the chief.
“We’re coming up on the jump point in two minutes, Lieutenant. What are your orders?”
Kris weighed the first, and probably only, command decision she’d make this watch. “If we just sit here, everyone’s going to wake up weightless,” she mused. That was not a problem for the sailors and Marines. But a third of those occupying the Wasp fit neither of those categories. Kris had a large scientific contingent, and even a judge brought out of retirement and empowered to apply the law to anyone for anything Kris chose to dump in her lap.
Several of the boffins besides Judge Francine did not take to microgravity all that well. Usually, the Wasp was under way at one gee or tied up to a space station with something like normal gravity. How would they handle sleeping the next four hours in zero gee and waking up in it?
Kris knew the answer to her next question, but she asked the chief anyway. “We don’t have any jump buoys, do we?”
“As a matter of fact, I see four of them ready to launch on my nav board,” the chief answered, to her surprise.
Kris’s own copy of the nav station showed nothing, so she slapped off her seat belt and walked over to Beni’s station.
As she expected, it had extra space lit up. Kris recognized it . . . a defensive battle station.
Apparently, Sulwan Kann was ready to activate all the necessary defenses of the Wasp if she got into a fight. The woman truly was Captain Drago’s right-hand man.
Kris went down the left side of the nav board, finding armor, foxers, maskers—everything needed by a ship fighting for its life. Four of the foxer launching tubes showed blue. Beside them was a notation. JUMP BUOYS.
“I guess if we aren’t faking it as a merchant ship, there’s no reason not to launch the smaller ones,” Kris said. Nelly, ask CAPTAIN DRAGO WHAT OTHER WEAPONS SYSTEMS THE WASP IS NOW CARRYING.
YES, MA’AM. I WILL ALSO SEARCH THE REPORT FROM THE LAST YARD PERIOD AND SEE IF IT TELLS YOU ANYTHING.
YOU DO THAT, Kris said. Four months out, and Kris still didn’t know just what her supposed command had hidden away in some corner storeroom.
“Zero grav in fifteen seconds,” the chief reported. Over the public-address system, a similar announcement went out . . . at a whisper . . . as the hour of the morning called for.
Kris hustled back to her station and belted in. Once the Wasp was at a dead stop five klicks from the jump point, she ordered, “Flip ship.”
Chief Beni rotated the Wasp smartly along her long axis. Now the bow faced the tiny bit of roiled space that was all that showed of the portal across seven light-years of space.
“Chief, send a buoy through the jump. Have it announce that we’ll be following in five minutes.”
“You think that is a good idea?” the chief asked. But he was grinning, and his attention was on his fingers as they went through the motions of launching the buoy.
“Weapons are full,” Kris answered. Her command board had been extended to include everything important from the weapons board. She’d done that about fifteen seconds into the watch. She didn’t expect to use the four twenty-four-inch pulse lasers hidden under the Wasp’s civilian brightwork, but . . .
Kris eyed Beni’s back as he finished his prep. “What are you afraid of, Chief?”
“I work for this Longknife woman, ma’am. It pays for me to always be afraid, ’cause she never is,” he said. But his grin got wider as he said it.
“Launch the buoy, Chief,” Kris said dryly.
“Aye, aye, Lieutenant. Buoy launched.”
Now they waited for five minutes. Around Kris, the ship continued its somnolence. The engineering watch checked in to ask if they’d be needing to put on a full-gee acceleration anytime soon, were told to expect it, and went back to tending their teakettles.
The minutes dragged by, Kris did a second and third check to make sure the twenty-four-inch lasers that the Wasp officially didn’t have were at full charge. They were and continued to be.
Much to Kris’s relief, Captain Drago did not appear to summon a full bridge crew and take her command away. Kris wasn’t quite sure why that would bother her, but she knew it would.
Five minutes gone, Kris ordered a short burst from maneuvering thrusters and the Wasp edged through the jump.
Kris felt only slightly disoriented as her ship was yanked from one star to another one seven light-years farther from Earth. With only a blink, she studied her board.
There was the jump buoy. Farther out, some thirty thousand kilometers, was a ship.
Then a laser blew the jump buoy to bits.
2
“Jinks ship,” Kris shouted. “Raise armor.”
“Jinksing pattern two initiated,” Chief Beni answered, and the ship shot up, then left, then up again. “Shields up.”
Kris mashed her commlink, ignoring that her call for armor had once again been changed to “shields up.” “Battle stations. Guns,” Kris ordered. “All hands. Battle stations. Guns.”
That done, Kris concentrated on aiming her lasers up the rear end of a very strange ship. A ship unlike any ship she’d ever seen—except on vids.
An Iteeche Death Ball was breaking toward Kris’s jump point, its vulnerable engines wide open to the Wasp’s lasers.
That was stupid. You could say many things about those four-eyed bastards, but the Iteeche were never stupid.
Kris’s shield took a hit. Smart Metal™ vaporized to ablate away what heat the metal was not able to spread quickly to the entire shield and then radiate into space.
“There are two more ships out there. I make them cruisers,” Chief Beni reported. “Greenfeld cruisers from the way their lasers are heating up. Your Highness, I think they’re the ones firing at us. Or at least shooting at the Death Ball and missing.”