“Yes, Your Highness. But if I am right, you are going to be the one eating crow . . . or being eaten by crows. Of an honorable level in the pecking order.”
“That’s a chance I’ll just have to take,” Kris said, and found most of the bridge crew giving her weird looks. “What’s the matter, you’ve heard me and Nelly argue before. There’s nothing new about her talking back. Really.”
Heads shook slowly. The looks didn’t go away.
“Her jokes certainly haven’t gotten any better,” Captain Drago drawled.
At Kris’s neck, Nelly cleared her nonexistent throat. “I told you, Kris, you really need to upgrade the computers of the people around you. They’d be much more productive.”
“Shut up and send my message,” Kris ordered.
Nelly shut up, and Kris turned away from the screen. Maybe Nelly had a point. Maybe Kris would get some respect if the rest of this bunch had to deal with something like Nelly twenty-four hours a day. Certainly not Nelly. How many Nellys could the Wasp handle before it became totally dysfunctional?
Today, one was too many.
“Message sent,” Nelly reported.
Kris stood behind Penny’s fire-control station. All four lasers continued to be aimed at four different sections of empty space. At her station, Sulwan held her finger ever so lightly on the shields’ button. A flinch and the Smart Metal™ umbrella would come up on the aft quarter.
“I’ve got a messenger pod flashing,” Sulwan said, not taking her eyes off her board or her finger off shields.
“I ordered Abby to load what we know about the Iteeche and get it on the way to Wardhaven soonest,” Kris said. “Since the Greenwald cruisers vaporized our jump buoy, a messenger pod looks like the best way to get the news out. Can you launch it without its looking like a threat to the Iteeche?”
Sulwan kept her eyes riveted to her board. “Chief, plot a course to the jump that even a paranoid Iteeche wouldn’t find threatening.”
“I didn’t know that Iteeche got paranoid,” the chief said as he used the sensor board to plot a course that stayed wide of the Death Ball.
“My pappy swore every swimming one of them was hatched that way,” Colonel Cortez offered.
“I want that pod out of here,” Kris said.
The chief proposed a course, Kris and Drago accepted it, and Sulwan uploaded it to the pod.
“We heard anything from the Iteeche?” Kris asked.
“Nope,” came from the chief and Nelly.
“Launch,” Captain Drago said, and the pod rocked away at four gees acceleration, heading up and out from the sun and slowly arcing around toward the jump.
Kris found a seat. The Iteeche were taking more time than she liked. “I thought with us using mostly their own words, this wouldn’t take so long,” she muttered. “What’s taking them?”
One of the nacelles on the Death Ball lit up.
The messenger pod vanished.
Sulwan hit the shields button.
Captain Drago pursed his lips. “Which of you was it that suggested the Iteeche might be riding around in a former warship? I think we can scratch the ‘former’ part of that.”
Kris, why are all our lasers POINTED anywhere BUT AT The ITEECHE?
Because I ORDERED THEM. We Don’T fire unless I say we fire.
I Don’T like THAT. DID you happen To NOTICE ThaT They FIRED on our MESSENGER POD.
I NOTICED, AND I Don’T like IT. BUT I’M NOT GOING To START a war OVER IT.
Well, I hope you noTice when They START a war, ’cause I’D sure HATE To Be The LAST To FIND OUT.
“There’s a message coming in from the Iteeche,” the chief announced.
5
“ Do not shoot us,” came over the guard link in a half-computer, half-not-human voice. The English words were stripped of all grammar and declension. Stripped of everything but the plaintive cry for nonviolence.
“Please do not shoot us,” it repeated.
“Why not?” Kris demanded in plain English.
“Why not what?” shot back at her before she could add, You shot at our messenger pod.
Kris bit her tongue to slow herself down. A good thing, because she swallowed the first three snapbacks that reached her lips. “Why not us shoot you?” she finally said. That should eliminate all ambiguity.
“We not shoot you. We not shoot, others shoot us,” was so lacking in emotion that Kris had a hard time keeping feelings out of her own reply. She paused so long, trying to figure just what to say that the other side added, “We not shoot you.”
“You shot our messenger pod,” Kris snapped.
“Yes, we did.”
That hung in the bridge air for a moment. Kris turned to her team. Jack and Colonel Cortez frowned in puzzlement. Penny looked up from her board where the Iteeche ship still was not in her targeting crosshairs. “At least they’re honest,” she said.
“But what good would it do to deny shooting the pod when the wreckage hasn’t even cooled?” Kris said.
“I’ve known some folks who could tell such a barefaced lie,” Abby said, entering the bridge in a businesslike shipsuit.
“Nelly, are you using their words for our replies?”
“I’m not using anybody’s words. They’re talking English. I’m talking English. Didn’t Grampa Ray say that the Iteeche demanded that we always talk to them in their language, even when we thought they were hearing our English just fine?”
That was one for the human side, but it just meant that any mistranslation would be their fault. If a war started over this confab, that it was their fault wouldn’t warm Kris’s heart.
“Okay, then I’m going to keep this as simple as I can,” Kris said, facing the screen front on. “Why did you shoot our messenger pod? Please give us a reason.”
“Sent,” Nelly said.
“Time the response,” Kris ordered. A count started in the lower edge of the central screen. It got past three minutes before a reply came back.
“I am sorry the pod was shot. It was necessary.” The voice this time was less artificial. Now it sounded more like a man talking. Apparently, this meeting had caught someone less than fully prepared.
Kris wasn’t at all satisfied with that reply. She thought for a moment, then said, “Why was it necessary to shoot the pod and you be sorry about it?” The others nodded.
“I like the last part,” Penny said. “In the negotiations, the Iteeche never seemed emotional about anything. This has to be the first Iteeche ever to say he was sorry.”
“Send it, Nelly,” and she did.
The reply clock was up to five minutes before the Iteeche said anything. And what it said sent jaws dropping.
“Do you have aboard a Longknife, spawn of the chosen Ray Longknife?”
“That changes the topic,” Kris muttered, not sure she liked this sudden twist.
“You did kind of announce yourself,” Jack pointed out, “Princess Longknife and all.”
“I did, didn’t I.”
“Might as well admit it,” Captain Drago said.
“Oh no I don’t. Abby, is this guy a friend of yours? He’s changing the topic on me. Just like you do anytime I try to have a polite conversation with you.”
“Don’t blame me, honey child. This fellow picked up all his bad habits a long way from my momma.”
“Why did you shoot our messenger pod?” Kris repeated. “Nelly, send that back.”
“Done, ma’am.”
The reply clock had hardly reset itself before “Is there a Longknife, spawn of the chosen Ray Longknife aboard? I must talk to her.”
“Interesting conversation we have here,” Jack said. “Kind of like most talk-talks with a certain princess I know. You say one thing. She talks about what she wants. Be interesting to see who gives way this time.”