Daring (14 page)

Thus was Kris informed that the other scouts were returning.

Forewarned, Kris didn't expect any surprises waiting for her at the battleships as the next few days and familiar systems passed quickly.

Of course, Kris was wrong.

A simple code could only carry the messages that were preplanned for it. For example, “I love you,” had not been included as an option in the code. Similarly, “We've all voted to go home and we expect you to come along peacefully with us,” was also not available.

Yet that was the first thing Admiral Krätz announced to Kris when she jumped back into the system that had caused them so much trouble.

The Greenfeld admiral had set the situation up to present his case as forcefully as possible. He had the other admirals on net with him. Upon first seeing them, Kris had not offered to have them come aboard the
Wasp
.

None had suggested that they gather on one of their ships.

Apparently, the last blowout on the
Wasp
had ended any party inclinations among the gathered fleet.

Kris listened as Admiral Krätz made his case. The other admirals nodded along. The argument boiled down to a few simple points. Things have changed since we left human space. The present situation is not what was intended when our governments sent us. We must return to our capitals and receive new orders.

Kris nodded. “If you feel that way, then I suppose you must return. My government's orders, however, give me full authority to conduct a reconnaissance.”

Actually, Kris didn't have any written orders. Never had a collection of Navy ships gotten under way with less paperwork to back them up.

Once this voyage was over, the Judge Francines of the world would have a field day for years to come.

But, until Kris docked her squadron once more at High Wardhaven, what PatRon 10 did was pretty much up to Kris.

“We're going back,” Admiral Channing said. “Certainly your small ships can't go on with no backup.”

“Admiral, before you arrived at Wardhaven, my intent was to sail my small ships with no backup. You might not have noticed, but the only U.S. ships here are scouts.”

“How could we help but notice,” Admiral Krätz grumbled.

“You have your orders. I have mine. My squadron sails on,” Kris said with finality, and had Nelly cut the link.

“Vicky is on the line. Do you want to talk to her?” Nelly asked next.

“Put her through, but if all she does is try to talk me into following her admiral, we might have communication difficulty.”

“Hi, Kris,” Vicky said. “You find anything interesting?”

“My astronomers are in ecstasy, but of bug-eyed monsters, not so much as a hair. How have things been here?”

Vicky snorted. “A lot of scared people telling each other how scared they are and how much more scared they ought to be.”

“Really?”

“Well, in the senior wardrooms that's all I hear. Among the junior officers and the younger enlisted ranks, I think there's a lot more excitement. Then again, being the grand duchess, they might just be telling me what they think I want to hear.”

“There is that problem. Have there been any more bombs going off?”

“None since you left, but then we've been taking serious precautions. I think the bomber might have slipped aboard the
Terror
and beat it for home.”

“Is that just a guess, or is there any meat on that bone?” Kris asked, before Jack and Penny climbed all over her to get to the commlink.

“We did find a problem. I don't like the fact that our security still hasn't gotten to the bottom of it, but there appear to have been six or seven people aboard the ships of BatRon 12 who were never here.”

“Never here?” Kris said.

“Some
one
was here using any of the six sets of papers whenever it served his purpose. None of those people has been sighted since that bomb went off on the
Wasp
, so we're thinking your Commander Taussig wasn't the only one who was in a hurry to shove off for Santa Maria.”

Kris glanced at Jack. He and Penny were using their new computers to go down the list of the
Wasp
's crew. From the looks of it, they'd be busy for a while.

“Have you heard about Admiral Krätz's wanting everyone to go home?” Kris asked.

“Yeah. It took him quite a while to get the other two admirals to agree to that ‘unanimous' decision. Admiral Kōta really doesn't want to leave.”

“He didn't have anything to say when Krätz told me they were going home, and they expected me to follow along behind them like a lonely puppy.”

“I told them you wouldn't call it quits. Kris, could I ask a favor?”

Kris had a strong hunch she knew where this was going. “You can ask. I can't promise that I'll do it.”

“If Admiral Krätz bugs out, can I stay with you on the
Wasp
?”

Jack's head came up so fast from what he was looking at that Kris hoped he didn't suffer whiplash or brain damage. He was shaking his head a mile a minute.

Kris gave him a smile. One with plenty of teeth. “Vicky, I'll have to think about that. You know how risky what we're doing is. If I got you killed . . .” Kris left that thought hanging in the air.

“Kris, you know my dad has a new wife. And I'm going to have a new brother. I figure that bomb was from her family and meant for me. It's been fun while it lasted, being the main heir to the Peterwald empire, but let's face it. I'd be safer chasing after a bug-eyed monster to put my head in its mouth than I'm going to be back home.”

“Vicky, I really have to think about this. I don't see anyone going anywhere real soon. We've got time to decide this.”

“Okay,” Vicky said. “But you will get back to me. You promise.”

“I promise,” Kris said.

Vicky cut the commlink at that, saving Kris from having to do it herself.

“Kris, you have another call coming in,” Nelly said.

“Good Lord, I was never this popular in high school.” Kris sighed. “Who is it this time?”

“Commander Phil Taussig,” Nelly announced. “The
Hermes
just jumped back into the system. Oh, and there are two, no, three. Make that four big freighters following the courier ship. Oh, and the two battleships are also back.”

“Put him through,” Kris said.

The screen filled with the happy face of one handsome young Navy officer. “Hello, Commodore, I bring greetings and gifts from your grampa, our king.”

“Does he know about the situation we have here?”

“Ah, no. They're way behind the information cycle,” the commander said with a large grin. “The local government on Santa Maria was none too happy with the gift you sent them. They passed a resolution that I should tell you to come back. And they sent off a fast courier to Wardhaven to get the king to support them.”

“And?” Kris said, when her subordinate wasn't immediately forthcoming with what happened next.

“These supply ships were already in orbit with orders to join you at the earliest opportunity. So, being a harebrained young officer with way too much initiative, I grabbed them and ran.”

“I think I'm glad to see you,” Kris said.

“Oh, you're glad to see me. You don't know how glad you are to see me.”

“Tell me why I am more glad to see you than I realize,” Kris said cautiously.

“Did you recently broach the subject with your grampa as to why the Iteeche War was not fought with nukes?”

“I did. Why?”

“Because three of these merchant ships following me have Marine guards locking down a special weapons magazine.”

“Nukes?” Kris said.

“Nope, something better. You know what a neutron star is, don't you?”

“I think so,” Kris said.

“Well, your grampa, our king, has sent you a couple of neutron torpedoes.”

“What?”

“I'll explain it when I can report to the
Wasp
. Better yet, I'll bring along a scientist who can explain it all better than I can.”

“I hope you will,” Kris said.

19

Kris didn't invite the admirals over, but their barges showed up right behind the gig that brought Commander Taussig aboard the
Wasp
. She invited Taussig and the woman who accompanied him to her Tac Center and had the admirals directed toward the refurbished Forward Lounge.

“Is anyone refusing to go to the lounge?” Kris asked Nelly.

“No. But they brought a lot fewer people. And all three of them have their own security details. They're patting down each other and doing a first-class security sweep of the place.”

Kris could only chuckle at the visual that brought to mind. “Have Gunny Brown post a security detail at the hatch of the Forward Lounge. Also have Chief Beni join them and do a security sweep to his own high standards,” she told Nelly, as Jack looked on approvingly.

“I already suggested that to the chief. He likes to have a drink or two in the lounge after work. He wasn't very happy while it was out of commission. He's already got three senior Marines helping him make sure their watering hole does not end up in the body and fender shop again.”

“Good,” Kris said with the first real laugh she'd had in a long while.

Kris found her usual team had filed into her Tac Center as she and Nelly talked. It was not unusual for Professor mFumbo to absent himself half the time when she called. Science has its own schedule, he was quick to point out. Today, he sat eagerly in his place at the foot of the table.

Captain Drago was also there.

Kris let everyone settle in, then asked, “So, what is this gift my great-grandfather has sent our way? A neutron torpedo?”

“I'll leave it to the doctor to explain the contraption,” Lieutenant Commander Phil Taussig said. “All your grandfather asks is that you not start a war with the dang contraption ‘if she could avoid it.' His words, not mine.”

“It is not a dang contraption,” the young woman said, standing. “I am Nikki Mulroney. Some of you might have heard the story of my grandmother, Your Highness. She found the ‘vanishing box' on Santa Maria that your great-grandfather, King Raymond, used in the war between humanity and the Control Computer there, eighty years ago.”

“So it really happened,” Penny said.

“Oh yes. It has been allowed to become little more than a legend, but my grandmother pointed the box at mountains and made them vanish.”

“And you have the vanishing box working again?” Kris said. That the box existed might or might not be a legend. Every story agreed that the power supply had been exhausted in the final battle with the rampaging rogue computer.

“Ah no. We do not have the vanishing box working,” the scientist said. She licked her lips before going on. “We do have something working that might be something like that instrument.”

“How something like it?” Kris asked.
And how many bushes are we going to beat around to get a straight nonscientific answer out of you?

“We can
not
make matter vanish. However, we can manipulate matter at an ever-increasing distance.”

Which told Kris everything . . . and nothing . . . all at the same time.

“What kind of matter can you manipulate?” Penny asked before Kris could say something like it.

“Initially, all we could lift was a feather.”

“Excuse me if I say that's not all that exciting,” Jack said. “What can you lift now?”

“Only a few cubic millimeters.”

“That doesn't seem like much,” Kris said.

“You are correct,” the scientist agreed, with precision. “However, there was a second project being funded on Santa Maria. It involved a nearby neutron star. When we used the one project to see what we could do with the other one, we got surprising results. We succeeded in chipping a half cubic millimeter off the surface of that neutron star.”

“Half a cubic millimeter,” Kris finally said, when no one else would risk saying anything.

“Close to 150 tons of matter went flying off into space,” the boffin said.

That got a low whistle from the audience.

“What happened to it?” Professor mFumbo asked. “How did being free of the gravitational pull of the neutron star impact that mass?”

“It departed at nearly a third the speed of light. When it hit a cinder of a planet destroyed when the star went nova, it made quite an impact.”

That got low whistles from Jack and the colonel. Half a millimeter was tiny. At one-third the speed of light, even something that small was bound to leave a mark.

“No, I mean did the matter. No,” Professor mFumbo sputtered to a halt. Kris had never seen him at such a loss for words. He took two breaths and started again.

“What was it made of?” the professor said slowly.

“Ions and electrons,” the newly arrived self-proclaimed weapons expert answered quickly and simply.

He nodded. “Okay, did this half cubic millimeter of ions and electrons expand once it was free of that gravity well?”

“No,” the woman said. “As best as our instrumentation could tell, it departed the star in a compact, half-millimeter bullet, and it was the same size ten minutes later, when it impacted the planet.”

“Have you run further tests?” Kris asked. She had finally gotten what Professor mFumbo was getting at. The neutron star's gravity crammed down the ions and electrons on its surface until there was really no space between them. That made for quite a dense solid. What happened to that matter after the heavy impact of the gravity was removed was a very good question.