29
There are moments in your life when you know, even as you live and breathe them, that you will never be the same again. Kris had survived several such moments.
She knew about moments in the lives of her family members when they must have known that the future of their planet would never be the same. Grampa Al’s decision to abandon politics after Eddy died was one of them. Father’s decision to throw his hat in the ring for Prime Minister was another, despite Grampa Al’s rage against it.
Kris had listened to their furious argument from her hiding place on the stairs. She’d seen these things done, if somewhat messily.
Kris had read of moments in Great-grampa Ray’s and Trouble’s lives when they must have known that the future of the entire human race would never be the same, depending on what they decided next.
As a teenager, Kris had dreamed of living just such a moment.
As a young woman, Kris was starting to get an idea of just how foolish her younger self had been.
A tiny voice inside Kris was laughing hysterically. You got what you wished for, kid. God help you!
It was at moments like this that Kris wished she’d been raised to believe in the power of prayer.
Kris shook off the musings that must have tied up a whole five seconds. On the screens, admirals were still giving the star map a puzzled look, so she must not have taken too much time.
“Nelly, do I have this right? The assumed hostile and the assumed friendly aliens are only three slow, easy jumps away from each other.”
“Yes, Kris. And the jump Commander Taussig reports seeing the hostile alien headed for at half a gee acceleration is the one that will take them to within two jumps of the other civilization’s system. They appear to be headed straight for the star system of the bird people.”
“Oh sweet Jesus,” someone said.
So this was it. The moment Kris had been born for. This was the decision for which history would either praise or pillory her.
“Nelly, get me the skipper of the Vulcan.”
“Online, Commodore.”
“Vulcan, how soon can you begin rigging the corvettes of PatRon 10 with the neutron torpedoes?”
“We are ready now, ma’am. We have finished the prework. Give us twelve hours alongside the ships, and we’ll be ready to load the torpedoes. Say no more than twenty-four from your word to start to them being armed and ready.”
Admiral Krätz might not have figured out the meaning of the star-map display, but he knew what Kris was talking about. “Longknife, you aren’t seriously thinking about taking on that huge alien mother ship,” he bellowed.
“Admiral Krätz, I was not thinking about taking on the mother ship. I was looking at my options. Now that I find I have options, yes, I am now thinking about what three chunks of neutron stars might do to that ship.”
“It would be a hell of a fight,” Phil Taussig said, a feral grin on his face.
“You can’t do that,” the Greenfeld admiral sputtered. “Not even a Longknife can declare war on an alien race all by herself. No. You can’t do it. I won’t let you do it. And don’t you go telling me that you’re not in my chain of command.”
He pointed a finger right at the camera so close that it looked wider than the rest of his body. “You have your orders. Go home. All your ships are here. You must go home.”
He paused, took in a deep breath, and finished. “If you do not follow your orders, so help me God, I will declare you rogue. A pirate to your own allegiance. I, and I would hope all of my associates, would be duty-bound to shoot you down like the dog you are.”
The pause after that grew quite pregnant. Pregnant enough to spawn an elephant. Kris let it grow for quite a while before she took a sledgehammer to it.
“Thank you, Admiral, for letting us know so clearly your opinion on this matter. As you suspect, I am coming to the conclusion that I must disagree with you.”
“Captain, power up the main battery,” the Greenfeld admiral ordered.
“Georg,” Admiral Channing of the Helvitican Confederacy interjected, “don’t you think we ought to give Her Highness a chance to explain herself?”
“No!” the Greenfeld officer snapped. “Once she starts talking, she’ll run you around in circles until you don’t know what you’re doing, and before you know it, you’ll be following her. She’s one of those damn Longknifes.”
“But I’m just a little one, remember,” Kris said, holding up two fingers just a centimeter apart. Not too long ago, that had been Admiral Krätz’s opinion of her.
He did not see the humor.
“Commander, this is Chief Beni. The Greenfeld battleships are powering up their lasers.”
“Thank you, Chief. I thought you were helping Vicky’s people.”
“I am, ma’am, but there’s no way I can be in a system with powering-up 18-inch lasers and not notice it. I’d have to be dead, dumb, and blind.”
“Thank you, Chief. Nelly, send to all PatRon 10. Do not power up lasers. Take no hostile actions. I see no reason why we can’t talk this thing through.”
“Admiral,” Vicky said at Kris’s elbow, “just a reminder. I’m on the Wasp. Please don’t shoot at me.”
“Get the hell off that ship.”
“Ah, Admiral,” Vicky said, “weren’t we talking about the chance that hostile ships might come charging into this system at any time. Do you really want me in a launch when they do?”
“You are learning too damn much from that Longknife pain in the neck.”
“Can we all please slow down and take a deep breath,” Admiral Kōta said. “I think we are faced with an important matter, and I, for one, would like to think it through very carefully.”
“Thank you, Admiral,” Admiral Channing said. “I’d really prefer that none of us went off half-cocked. In either direction, Commander Longknife, Admiral Krätz.”
“I warn you, if you let her talk, she’ll have you all wrapped around her little finger before you know it,” Krätz grumbled.
“Gosh,” Vicky said coyly, “and I thought I was the one that usually had a couple of guys wrapped around my little finger.”
“Down, girl,” Kris said. “Can we take a look at our options without anyone getting killed?” she asked everyone on-screen.
“I think it’s pretty clear,” Krätz snapped. “We can go home, or we can follow this little hellion and attack the bug-eyed monsters, starting a war between humanity and God only knows what.”
“Georg, I have a fairly good idea of what that is,” Admiral Kōta said. “From the looks of it, the monster is headed for a budding civilization. If we do nothing, they will strip the planet of everything needed to support life. I, for one, do not like the idea of standing idly by while that happens. I put on this uniform to stop such atrocities, not watch them happen.”
“But what will be the price for humanity?” Admiral Channing asked.
“They came for them, and it was not my problem,” Kris quoted. “And when they came for me, there was no one else left to stand with me.”
“So you want to shoot first,” Krätz snapped.
“I’m not sure I’ll have a chance to shoot second,” Kris said. “But hold it, hold it. I don’t want to go off hunting until I have some idea of who it is I’m hunting.”
“What?” “Huh,” and “I thought you’d made up your mind already,” came in answer to that.
“Folks, all I did was see if I had some weapons that might be able to make a dent in something the size of what Phil reported. By the way, Vulcan, lie alongside the corvettes and begin installation. Your twenty-four hours started five minutes ago.”
“Aye, aye, ma’am.”
“There you go,” Krätz snapped.
“Admiral, please don’t shoot up the Vulcan. Let’s look at what we’re facing. A ship attacked the Wasp with no defiances given, no warning at all. I don’t take that for a declaration of war, but it does tell me that there is stuff out here that shoots first and doesn’t care about asking questions later.”
“Yes,” Admiral Kōta said.
“Secondly, we found a planet stripped. Its civilized species wiped out. We found the remains of a few of the people we think did it. The connection to the ship that shot at us is tenuous, but it is there.”
“I can follow you,” said Admiral Channing.
“The Hornet came back with a report of one huge ship. We have audio and video from that ship that we have not yet been able to decode. I’d really like to see who or what is on that ship before I make any decision about what we do here.”
“I agree with you on that,” Admiral Kōta said. “I would prefer not to start shooting only to find out that, say, the planet we’re worried about has an unstable star and the ship approaching it is on a rescue mission.”
“I’m glad someone is thinking about that,” Krätz grumbled.
“Nelly, would you please get me Professor mFumbo,” Kris said.
“Kris, he says he’s busy. Go away.”
That brought a chuckle from the admirals on-screen . . . and from Kris’s staff around her.
“Can they do that?” Vicky asked.
“They can get away with anything they can get away with. Nelly, put me through to the very busy professor.”
“You got him.”
“Professor, we need your input.”
“I’m busy,” he snapped, then seemed to reconsider the question. “What kind of input?”
“On taking all humanity to war,” Kris said.
“Oh my God, what are you talking about, woman?”
“I think you have his attention,” Vicky said.
“I think I do, too. Professor, we think the ship you got that video from is about to attack and destroy an entire civilization. We need to have a peek at what the people inside it look like. We’d love it if you could match some DNA off that video to some that we have on file, but I doubt even our boffin team can do that. In its place, I’d really need to see the video the Hornet recorded Real Soon Now. Time is of the essence.”
The professor came on-screen in a new window. “ And this may determine if we go to war with them?”
“Pretty much, Professor. I don’t mean to make you feel pressured or anything.”
“Don’t be ridiculous, young woman. You’re telling me if the video take from the big ship shows people like we found on the ship that attacked us and the bodies on that murdered planet, you plan to attack them.”
“Let’s say that if there is a match, we’ll have to seriously consider what we do next.”
The professor ran a worried hand through his hair, the first time Kris ever remembered him showing any sign of stress. “The data is in a format that we have never seen before. It doesn’t fit any logical structure. I’ve cracked coded video, but this goes far beyond a coding.”
“Could it be they don’t want strangers reading their stuff?” Kris said.
“Most definitely,” the professor said.
“Nelly, have you got any suggestions?”
“Kris, my kids and I have been doing everything we can think of to crack those videos. Nothing elegant works. Nothing brute force works. It is very frustrating for us computers to find such limits to our abilities.”
“Have you asked the chief to look at it?” Kris asked.
“No. He’s busy,” Nelly answered stiffly.
And besides, Nelly, you don’t want to get him involved, Kris added to herself.
“Nelly, interrupt the chief. Maybe he and the Greenfeld tech types might have a different twist on it.”
“Yes, ma’ am.”
Nelly didn’t sound very happy, but she obeyed. Kris glanced around her team. “So, ladies, gentlemen, and alien, until we have something from the ship to look at, I suggest we go about our business. Admiral Krätz, weren’t you about to move your squadron over to Jump Point Dora so they could shoot up any bug-eyed monster that edged its nose through the jump?”
“Yes. I guess I can move over there.”
“Kris, do you mind if I stay aboard the Wasp?” Vicky said.
“You aren’t seriously worried about being in a launch, are you?”
“No. I can hardly be, since I had my best friend, Maggie, ride the barge back over here while all this was going on. But I have this serious concern about my admiral taking a potshot at you. My being here just might make him have second thoughts before he does something you’d regret.”
“Come to think about it, I do have a spare bunk you can use.”
“Thanks.”
“Are we really just going to sit on our hands?” Jack asked.
“Consider yourself lucky, old boy,” the colonel said. “The poor working stiffs of the Vulcan will be slaving away in a few moments, out to arm your little corvettes with monster killers. And the Greenfeld battleships will soon be tracking that jump point, their itching trigger fingers eager to blast anything that comes through the jump. Me, I’m curious, Your Highness.”
He paused while everyone turned to give him their full attention. “Does that monstrous mother ship punch through the jump point with all her little monsters tucked in tight, or do they go charging through the jump ahead of her?”
“A very interesting question,” Kris said. “It might make for a very disappointing ambush if the little monsters were out front. Phil, any idea how big the little ones that chased you were?”
“Several million tons, according to our measurements of their gravity distortions. Their mass per cubic meter was not shabby either.”
“Each one as big as a couple of the admiral’s battleships, huh.”
“From what I saw, they don’t do anything small,” the Hornet’s skipper said. “But I can say this. They were all tied up alongside. They had no patrols out when I came across them. Admittedly, they were thirty-two hours away from their last jump and a good fifty hours away from their next one.”
“Is it possible,” Kris said, “that they are hungry? If they’re heading for their next feeding frenzy, it may have been quite a while since they last gobbled up a planet. They may be conserving resources.”
“You’re guessing,” Jack said.
“I’m examining possibilities,” Kris said. “That’s all we can do until we get a look at who’s running that monster ship.”
“Dear Lord,” Abby kind of prayed, “I hope the picture we get of those cusses are of little green ladies with twelve fingers.”
“Amen,” said Penny.
“We can hope,” Kris agreed.
“Until then, we wait,” the colonel said.
“I am good at twiddling my thumbs,” Ron said, and proceeded to do that with four hands and a whole lot of fingers and thumbs.
“How do I top that?” Vicky asked.
“You can’t,” Kris said. “Care for a bit of chow? I understand the wardroom is serving steaks tonight. It’s the last of the fresh meat, so we better get it while it’s good.”
So, like old friends, the team decamped for chow. Even Ron. Jack and the colonel got behind his kind of chair and pushed it along to the wardroom.
That left Kris to contemplate her fate. Could she really order an unprovoked attack on the huge mother ship? Would she have a second chance if she didn’t? Could she stand to live with herself if she stood by and let them massacre the avian people?
A gal could go crazy letting her mind race through those questions time after time.
But she had friends.
And waiting out the possible countdown to war with good friends almost made it endurable.