Daring (10 page)

Once again, Kris had succeeded in bringing the room to absolute silence.

She let it stay that way, so the two options could sink in, before opening her arms in a question. “Does anyone see a third option?”

The question hung in the air for a very long minute. No one came up with another way of looking at the data.

After a long pause, Admiral Krätz stood. “I hope you'll excuse me if I change the topic. But what will you do with the
Constant Star
's load of wreckage and bodies?”

“I'm sending it back to Santa Maria with the
Mercury
. Santa Maria has a major research center devoted to trying to unravel the mystery of the Three alien races who built the star jumps. That looks like a good place to handle the further examination of what we have here.”

The newly Imperial admiral from Greenfeld glowered at Kris. “And what is to keep those ships and their cargo from vanishing before they ever get to Santa Maria? How will we know that they have not been hijacked off to some secret U.S. base where no one but Royal experts ever look at them and never tell us a word about what they find?”

At that, the room exploded with words.

13

Kris allowed herself a deep sigh; she hadn't seen that one coming.

This voyage had its problems, but everyone had stayed focused on why they were there. The alien encounter had thrown them a wild twist. They had come looking for surprises and had, up until a second ago, been doing a fairly good job of juggling the strange.

Then again. The Fleet of Discovery hadn't had anything to fight over.

The Greenfeld admiral stayed on his feet as the room boiled around him, then he raised his voice to boom above the racket. “I intend to detach my battleship, the
Terror
, to escort the
Constant Star
. That will make sure some ‘pirate' doesn't make off with it and its cargo.”

At that, the room really got noisy.

Admiral Channing shot to his feet. “So it can vanish into one of Emperor Harry's secret bases. No you don't. I'm going with it.”

The Helvitican Confederacy had held a vote to see if they should join King Raymond's United whatever. Grampa Ray had lost resoundingly. Kris figured the Confederacy didn't much like what Grampa Ray was doing.

Then again, they hadn't even bothered to vote on joining the Greenfeld Alliance. That was understandable since Chance, the last planet to join the Confederacy, had just barely avoided being violently taken over by a Peterwald.

Kris's help and a lot of spilled blood had left Chance free to choose its own way in human space. They'd chosen the Helvitican Confederacy and, it seemed, the Confederacy remembered why.

Kris held up her hands to try to gain some quiet to think. “Hold it. Hold it. HOLD IT.” The volume of her voice jumped as Nelly jacked it up artificially.

The room quieted down though it was nowhere close to silent.

“Okay. I see we humans have a trust problem. Admiral Krätz, I can understand your wanting to make sure the
Constant Star
gets where it's going.
I
want to make sure it gets where it's going.”

Admiral Kōta jumped in. “And where might that be?”

“Santa Maria,” Kris snapped. “Specifically, the Institute for Alien Research.” Kris knew of the place. It had been established almost as soon as Grampa Ray got back from that lost colony. For the last ninety years, it had been humanity's cutting edge at researching exactly who and what were the Three alien species who had built the jump points across the galaxy. Two million years ago, they had vanished.

On Santa Maria, the Three had built some sort of adult learning center. When they left, they forgot to turn it off. Apparently, the artificial intelligence running the place had gone senescent in the two million years during which it had no students. What it would have done to the several million peaceful citizens of Santa Maria when it discovered them was something Kris didn't want to contemplate.

Grampa Ray and a handful of veterans from the recent Unity War had been there, thank heavens, when the AI and the Santa Marians discovered each other. As Grampa Ray liked to say: “One supercomputer. One company of Marines. Betterthan-even odds for my side.”

“The Institute for Alien Research has the best human minds available for unraveling aliens,” Kris said. “Most of your governments have universities with visiting professors at the Institute.”

“Isn't it run by a Longknife? Ray's sister?” Vicky said.

“Aunt Alnaba transferred to the efforts on Alien 1,” Kris said. “I think a professor from Earth has taken her place.”

“Dr. Ernst Kanaka,” Professor mFumbo put in. “A very good man. Wrote the paper about what we think we know about the Three's power system.”

“And what happens after the wreckage reaches Santa Maria?” Admiral Kōta asked.

“I honestly don't know, Admiral. But it has been my experience,” Kris went on, “that once scientists get to chewing on a problem, they fight like wolves to keep it.”

“I wouldn't say that,” the professor said in clear disapproval of Kris's analogy. “However, I do think the Institute would be open for visits from a large collection of scientists. That is the way it has operated.”

“Isn't Santa Maria kind of vulnerable, hanging out there alone, halfway around the galaxy?” Vicky asked.

“A third of the way around from human and Iteeche space,” Kris corrected. “And fifteen thousand light-years from here. Looks to me like it's the safest place to be right now.”

From the way heads nodded and shook, it was clear Kris was not going to get any consensus on that. Then again, she didn't need any consensus. She just needed to get the
Constant Star
's load of wreckage off her hands and her fleet back to doing what it was out there to do. Discover.

“Let's see, Admiral Krätz, you want to send the
Terror
back to Santa Maria.”

“Yes.”
You're not going to change my mind
hung there with the single-word answer.

“Admiral Channing, you would like to have one of your battle cruisers in the escort. What about you, Admiral Kōta?”

“Admiral Channing and I only have two ships each. We can't both afford to send separate escorts.”

The two admirals flipped for the privilege of sending a ship along with the
Terror
. Channing lost. Or won. Anyway, the
Triumph
would fly wing on the
Constant Star
.

Which left Kris's royals the least represented.

The
Constant Star
was a late addition to the Helvitican Fleet. Even though it was leased at Wardhaven, Kris knew nothing of the captain and crew. Just as bad, the
Mercury
was a recently captured pirate schooner crewed from the Wardhaven, er U.S. Navy. Still, the captain and crew were a blank to her.

“Commander Taussig,” Kris said.

“Right here, Your Highness,” Phil said, standing from where the other skippers of PatRon 10 were over near the bar. The other ships of the squadron were dry, just like the rest of the fleet.

The
Wasp
, however, was different. With its mixed crew of civilians and service personnel, there were several contractormanaged restaurants and public rooms. Kris had never felt the need to place those watering holes off-limits to any of her crew. Indeed, she'd often used the Forward Lounge for semiofficial purposes, just like now.

Most of the visiting Navy folks had taken advantage of the bar already; her skippers were no exception.

“Phil, I got a job for you.”

“Mother of God help me.”

Kris smiled at his reply but went ahead with her orders. “Please form a detail from the
Hornet
and establish a Royal presence on the
Constant Star
. I'm holding you personally responsible for seeing that everything on that tub is turned over to the Institute for Alien Studies.”

Phil nodded. “You got an inventory for me?”

“Yes, we do, Kris,” Nelly reported, “though it's kind of vague in several places.”

“Understood. Pass it to Phil.”

“I've got it, Commander,” he said in a moment.

That settled one set of problems. Phil Taussig came from a long line of Navy admirals in both Wardhaven and several other Rim world Navies. He would not be allowed to go missing. If he disappeared, there would be hell to pay until a full explanation was made.

Kris didn't want a posthumous accounting for Phil's family, she wanted to reduce the temptation for anyone to even try.

“Lieutenant Song,” she called.

A startled young woman jumped to her feet and braced. She'd been an ensign on one of the fast patrol boats that defended Wardhaven when six unidentified battleships showed up and demanded Wardhaven's surrender. On one of the few that survived. If Kris couldn't trust someone who'd fought with her at the Battle of Wardhaven, whom could she trust?

“I want the
Hermes
to take over as the courier ship back to Santa Maria. You will place your ship at Commander Taussig's disposal.”

“Yes, ma'am, Your Highness,” she said, snapping a salute. Indoors. Uncovered. And sat down.

Kris often had that impact on the young. The ensign would get over it in time. People who served with a Longknife did.

If they survived the experience.

“You have any questions, Phil?”

“No, ma'am,” he said easily. “Get the wreckage back to Santa Maria. Turn it over to the Institute. Leave the hassling to the civilians. May I suggest that I contract for any ships and supplies that I can find in Santa Maria orbit and get them moving out here with me and the
Hermes
?”

“Logistics is always the first order of business,” Kris said.

Beside her, Colonel Cortez mouthed the same words himself and smiled. Kris was learning.

A glance around the room showed a lot of Navy officers who'd gnawed enough on this bone and were ready to get gone. Kris asked the usual final question of a meeting. “Anything further to discuss?”

Most everyone shook their heads. In the back of the room, Professor mFumbo stood up.

“Professor. Do you have something to add?”

“Not to what has been said, Your Highness. But I would like to draw the attention of everyone present to certain portions of the reports my scientists have put together. It might be unnecessary. All of you may have read every deathless word of prose we men and women of science have laid before you. Then again, you might not have.”

Kris noticed eyes around the room already glazing over.

“Please go on, Professor.”
Quickly.

He must have read her mind. “Something or someone stripped away ten to fifteen percent of the mass of this gas giant. They did it in the last fifty to a hundred years.”

Glazed eyes suddenly opened wide. The room got very quiet.

“Those are our findings based on the strange situation of this gas giant and its moons. I should hedge that statement with careful scientific nuances. It might have lost eight percent. It could have lost twenty percent. It could have suffered this strange reduction as recently as forty years ago or it might have happened one hundred and fifty years ago.”

“What you are saying,” Kris said, “is that something took very big bites out of that gas giant within my grampa Ray's lifetime.”

The professor nodded. “Bites the size of three to seven Earths. Yes, that is what I and my boffins are trying to tell you.”

Kris let that sink in. She let the silence stretch for a while because, at least in her head, it was not sinking in. It floated, like a yellow ducky in her bathtub when she was a kid. Only this yellow ducky was huge, and there was no way she could shove it under the water.

Her thoughts spun. What finally came out was
No. Not possible. It can't be happening to me and my world.

With effort, she limited her gibbering to the inside of her own skull.

KRIS, THIS IS APPALLING.

ME HAVING TROUBLE BELIEVING IT?

NO, KRIS. WHAT HE JUST SAID.

YES, NELLY, THIS IS APPALLING, Kris agreed, accepting her computer's understatement and failing to find anything better, or was it worse, to offer Nelly.

Kris had no idea when the full impact of this would be absorbed. Probably, it was best to end this meeting and let people go their own ways to digest this new lump of knowledge.

“Is there anything else in your report you want to make sure we notice?” Kris said.
Say no. Say no. Please say no.

“Yes, there is one more thing.”

“Go on, Professor.”

“We have established that there were 132 people on the alien ship. We think we have drawn up an accurate schematic of its design.” The professor aimed his wrist unit at the main screen and it switched away from where it was frozen on the final frame of the explosion.

Suddenly, the ship was whole again. Quickly, the skin of the ship peeled back, showing the insides: living quarters, work spaces, storage rooms, the bridge. Most of those areas were left empty in the drawing, but their purposes were written in.

“On that ship, there were about twelve cubic meters of pressurized living space for each of the men, women, and children aboard.”

“Sleeping quarters two meters by three meters by two meters tall,” Kris said. It was about a quarter of her own living quarters. “Ugh.”