Redoubtable (21 page)

“I assure you, the senior port captain has developed a marvelous memory,” the admiral said with a not-at-all-pleasant grin as he belted himself into his seat. The shuttle was already pulling away from the pier. “He’s full of recollections that weren’t in his harbor log. Which is good, because every record on that station is now gone. So is the network. My people are putting in place a temporary network, but it can’t replace what is missing. And it seems that there is very little equipment available on St. Petersburg. At least, equipment for sale to the Navy.”

“And what is our dear senior port captain remembering?” Vicky said, settling down beside the admiral and keeping them on topic.

“He verified what you found out. Certain shuttles from Sevastopol have docked directly with freighters, no inspection, no verification of their claimed bills of lading. He also says the last freighter to receive such visits suddenly dropped out of dock and made for Jump Point Eva early this morning. About half an hour after you went dirtside.”

“Is this freighter still in system?” Kris and Abby demanded in the same breath.

“Sadly, no.” the admiral said, shaking his head. “From the looks of it, the freighter put on higher than normal acceleration, say one and a quarter gees. It also went through Jump Point Eva at a very brisk clip just about the time we discovered that we had a special interest in this freighter. Less than an hour ago, I’m sorry to say.”

“Where does this Jump Point Eva lead?” Kris asked.

“I really don’t know,” the admiral admitted ruefully. “It’s not one that we use. We do know that it leads to a worthless system, out beyond the Rim. There are three jump points in that system that have never been explored.” The admiral shrugged. “Planets like St. Pete out here on the border usually have one or two jump points that lead out into the unknown. As you’re aware, the Sooners are the only ones who use them.”

“We should send a destroyer after that freighter,” Vicky said.

“I have one standing by,” the admiral said. “It can be under way in fifteen minutes from my orders.”

Kris shook her head. “I appreciate your offer, but it would be better if the
Wasp
took up the chase. Checking out new jump points is what we do. We’re equipped for it.”

“How much trouble can it be?” Vicky said. “You duck through a jump point. Look around. Duck back through if there’s nothing interesting.”

Kris had sat in on the meeting where the Iteeche told King Raymond, Grampa to her, that something was chewing up their scouts and not spitting back enough for them to even examine. Jack was the only other person on the admiral’s barge cleared to even know that the other meeting had happened. Kris opted to do a little tap dance.

“It’s not as simple as you make it sound, is it, Admiral? Scout ships go out and never come back. The
Wasp
knows how it’s done. Do you have a Greenfeld scout handy?”

“The princess is right about scouting taking a special effort,” the admiral agreed. “And no, my squadron has no ships with a scout load aboard. We have plenty of problems just now. Discovering what’s out there is way down my priority list.”

“We’ll make a full report on what we find,” Kris was quick to offer. “Do you want to send along an observer?” Kris offered, trying to cover her concern by meeting any of theirs before they voiced them.

“If you don’t mind, I would like to send one of my officers,” the admiral said.

Vicky brightened.

“Not a communications lieutenant. The princess is right, scout ships do disappear. There are a lot of jumps with a simple red check beside them. A ship went there. Nothing came back. Don’t open this Pandora’s box. I’d have a hard time explaining to your father if I let you go chasing off with Kris, and you vanished into one of those red jumps.”

“Her grandfather lets her,” Vicky pointed out.

“You try telling your father that you want to do something just because a Longknife is doing it. See how far it gets you,” the admiral growled.

Kris figured now would be a good time to change the subject.

“Admiral Krätz, I need to ask a favor of you.”

“Another one? You are getting to be very demanding for someone not quite an enemy. What is it that you want from me now? Half my squadron?”

Yes, but Kris hoped to sneak up on that slowly. “I expect that the
Wasp
will trace that freighter to a pirate base. There is no way the
Wasp
can take down a full-fledged pirate planet. I figure we’ll be facing ships, shore facilities, armed strong points, farms, the whole nine yards.”

“I agree with you,” the admiral said.

“I would like to send a general order to Patrol Squadron 10 to concentrate at your High St. Pete station and wait for me to get back.”

“Your squadron at my station, huh?” the admiral said, rubbing his chin.

“We’re just half a dozen converted merchant ships,” Kris pointed out.

“A dozen of your tiny fast patrol boats wiped out six super dreadnoughts.” Now he raised an expressive eyebrow.

“I can hardly disagree with that. I commanded those mosquito boats,” Kris reminded them.

“Do you think your
Wasp
and your converted merchant ships can take down a full-size pirate base?”

Now it was Kris’s turn to chuckle. “I seriously doubt it.”

“So you do want half of my battle squadron,” he said, grinning from ear to ear.

“And all spare Marines that you can throw in,” Kris quipped. No need to hold back. Going with too few could cost them dearly.

“Nothing shy about you,” Vicky said dryly.

“I can’t say the admiral put the idea in my head, but when he laid those cards on the table, you can’t blame a girl for putting them to good use.”

“Who gets the planet?” the admiral demanded.

“You put up most of the troops, you get all of the real estate,” Kris said quickly.

“We are likely to do most of the bleeding,” the admiral told Vicky.

She grinned. “So, the Longknifes provide all the support for Kaskatos. We’ll balance it with Pirates Paradise.”

“Pirates ticket to hell,” Admiral Krätz rechristened it.

That seemed to settle that. The admiral’s barge’s antimatter engines went to full power, and further conversation became impossible anyway.

The noise level didn’t prohibit Kris calling ahead to Captain Drago.

“I expected you to want to get under way in a hurry,” he said. “We have retrieved all our shore parties. The reactors are heating reaction mass. If we’re not under way five minutes after you cross the brow, I’ll apply for the job of skipper on the Peterwald yacht.”

28

The
Wasp
’s acceleration was pegged at 1.75 gees as it blasted for Jump Point Eva. Kris planned to stay off her feet for the trip. True, normally she could have handled the extra weight with no problem. At least she could have before that last trip to the hospital. Being just off canes, Kris decided not to push her luck.

Besides, she could get a very good picture of what was going on from her Tac Center. From there, she had most everyone she needed within easy reach.

Chief Beni converted the wall to Kris’s right into a map of their present system. The freighter had gone through Jump Point Eva at slightly less than ten thousand klicks an hour. The
Wasp
had the freighter under observation when she did that, which was good. With all the station’s data files wiped and burned, there was no other equipment to track that ship.

In tables next to the system map was a list of everything Nelly knew about the freighter. She’d done quite a bit of rummaging through the main database dirtside on St. Pete. Nelly had found that that particular ship had made six calls on High St. Pete in the last six months.

And it had a different name and different papers every time it docked.

Of course, it had taken a sleuth of Nelly’s skills to crack that subterfuge. Using some of the routines she’d passed along to her child Mimzy, Penny’s computer, Nelly did some serious digging. Primary records were no help; they insisted the ship had never been to St. Pete’s before. However, Nelly didn’t take that for the answer. Digging deep into repair work done in the last six months showed spare parts ordered for the ship’s reactor. For safety purposes, those orders required that the serial numbers on the huge turbines be listed.

And that connected the
Cushion Star
to two other ships with the same turbine numbers but different names. Tracing other orders from those two connected Kris’s freighter of interest to three other port calls made by ships with other names but serial numbers or warranties that connected them, one to another to the next.

“Good work, Nelly,” Kris said.

“Can we dig up where this ship of many names went those different times?” Jack asked.

“That gets interesting,” Nelly said.

“Is there anything about that tub that isn’t?” Abby said.

“Three of the times that ship left, it used one of the main jump points out. Adele or Barbie as the Greenfeld folks called them. But twice, the record doesn’t say what jump it used.”

“Bet you it was headed for wherever it’s going this time,” Kris said. She found no one willing to put money down.

“Talk to me, Nelly, about this system we’re headed for,” Kris said.

“I can’t add much more to what Admiral Krätz told us,” Nelly said out loud. “It’s got three jump points, the one we’re coming in from and two out.” KRIS, THERE’S ALSO A FUZZY JUMP POINT, BUT I FIGURE YOU DON’T WANT ME TALKING ABOUT THOSE WHILE COMMANDER FERVENSPIEL IS ON BOARD.

Commander Fervenspiel had come on board only moments before they pulled in the gangplank and sealed locks. He’d arrived with no luggage and joked that he’d need to borrow someone’s toothbrush if this excursion lasted too long.

Kris took it as good provenance that he had come so quickly and with no more backup than the standard Greenfeld Navy commlink on his wrist. She felt safe assuming that what she saw was what he was. Abby vouched for him as an honest sailor and an up-and-comer in the Greenfeld Navy.

It looked to Kris like Admiral Krätz was serious about getting a job done and had sent a serious man to help them. Still, he was from the Peterwald side of humanity, and there were some things the Longknife half didn’t share with that half.

Like the fuzzy jumps that the alien Three had made using a more advanced technology late in their time of road building across the stars. Kris’s ship had gear that could see those jump points. Few others did, and they were all Wardhaven ships.

Paranoia ran deep in Kris’s family. They liked to have a few secrets up their sleeves.

NELLY, TELL CAPTAIN DRAGO WE DON’T TALK ABOUT FUZZY JUMPS WHILE COMMANDER FERVENSPIEL IS WITH US.

I’LL TELL HIM, KRIS, BUT I THINK HE’S ALREADY PASSED ALONG TO HIS WATCH CREW A WHOLE LONG LIST OF THINGS NOT TO MENTION IN THE GREENFELD OFFICER’S PRESENCE.

GOOD, BUT PASS IT ALONG TO HIM ANYWAY. I DON’T WANT HIM THINKING I’M GETTING FORGETFUL IN MY OLD AGE.

YES, KRIS.

Meanwhile, Nelly had gone on describing the system they’d be jumping into. Its main sun was much too hot for humans to enjoy being around, and to make matters worse, it had a spare.

Two huge gas giants orbited close to the primary. So close that one completed its orbit in a couple of days, the other in only a few weeks. Way out at a distance that took a hundred years to complete a single orbit swung a red dwarf. It, however, had a few rocky planets of its own that orbited it. And hidden in among those were the three jump points that Kris was interested in.

Somehow, the red dwarf and three of its rocky planets kept the jump points corralled into a rather small area, at least in galactic terms. With reasonable acceleration, they were all less than a day apart. Less if a skipper put pedal to the metal.

“These two stars were in their own separate systems according to the original star map that Colonel Ray Longknife discovered on Santa Maria eighty years ago,” Nelly said. “The collision and the resultant conglomeration took place in the two million years since the original star road was laid out by the Three alien species that bequeathed us the jump points. This system was checked in on once by an explorer ship from the Society of Humanity. When they found it was so different from what it was supposed to be, they scratched it off the interesting list.”

“What’s the date on that exploration?” Kris asked Nelly.

“It’s an early one. Very likely the encounter with the Iteeche also had something to do with us not choosing to look any further.”

SPEAKING OF ITEECHE, AND JUST BETWEEN YOU AND ME, NELLY, IS THERE ANYTHING HELPFUL ON THAT MAP OF HUMAN SPACE THAT THE ITEECHE SHOWED US?

YOU MEAN THE MAP KING RAYMOND TOLD ME NOT TO RECORD AND YOU TOLD ME TO IGNORE HIS ORDER AND RECORD IT ANYWAY, KRIS?

YES, NELLY. I SAID IT MIGHT COME IN HANDY.

NO, THE ITEECHE DON’T KNOW OF ANY HUMAN SETTLEMENT OUT IN THIS DIRECTION.

SO, THE PIRATES HAVE GIVEN ALL OF US THE SLIP.

IT LOOKS THAT WAY, KRIS.

Captain Drago chose that moment to check in. “We’ll be turning the ship in a few minutes, Commander. I need to know if you have any preference about the speed we make through the jump point.

The
Wasp
had been accelerating away from St. Pete and building up speed to a very brisk clip. Depending on where it flipped ship and turned its acceleration into deceleration, it would arrive at the jump point at a speed of the captain’s own choosing. And the speed and conditions of the ship as it went through the jump point could have a major impact on whether or not they ever saw a human port again.

Bad jumps were rare these days, but only because ship captains had learned to treat jump points with respect.

“What are your preferences, Captain Drago?” Kris said, answering his question with one of her own.

“I know we have the speed at which that beggar took the jump. We have it down to within half a klick of his actual speed. Still, Commander, this is a rarely used jump, and we’re going into a really strange system. Besides that, we have no idea what other systems this jump is attached to.”

That was a major part of the problem with jump points. Depending on your speed and the rotation on your ship, you might go to any number of systems. The gravity of those systems had an impact on how the jump moved around all of the star systems it was in. Thus, it was never easy to tell exactly where a jump was. Hit it wrong, and nothing good came of it.

Most of the jump points used by human ships had been known and studied for hundreds of years. If you took them at a few klicks an hour, there was little to no risk.

Jump Point Eva was neither well used nor well studied. Just because one ship captain treated it with little respect, should another captain do the same?

Kris definitely didn’t need on her conscience that she’d told an experienced sailor how to plot his course.

Certainly not if that course went sour.

“Captain, I fully expect that you will use your own professional judgment. Everyone on the
Wasp
wants to rescue Cara, but every one of us wants to be alive to do that.”

“I’m glad you are of that opinion, Princess. I plan to slow down and take the jump at no more than five thousand klicks an hour. I hope that is satisfactory to you.”

Kris glanced at where Abby sat at the table, across from the Greenfeld commander. Probably so the intelligence officer in her could keep a good eye out for any similar behavior from him.

Abby frowned at the thought of Cara being in slavers’ hands a moment longer than she had to be, but nodded. “It’s better to get there a few minutes later than not to get anywhere at all.”

“That will be fine, Captain.”

“Thank you, Princess,” and the captain rang off.

“Is there anything else we need to know?” Kris asked. When no one offered anything, she tossed out something that had been hanging at the back of her mind.

“What about our Dave the businessman? Do we have him, or did Admiral Krätz hold on to him?”

“We have him,” Jack put in. “He’s presently enjoying the hospitality of our brig. Him and the senior port captain.”

“How are they getting along?”

“Not so poorly. Both of them looked too well fed to be moved by the offer of a hamburger with all the trimmings.”

The Greenfeld commander looked intrigued by that, but, unable to crack the code word . . . or believe anyone would use “hamburger with all the trimmings,” for torture . . . he went back to his basic blank face.

“We’ve tried leaving them alone in cells next to each other. That gets them talking, but they mainly bitch at each other for getting them in this fix. Everything points to these two being very far down the food chain. They’ve been used, glad for the money it got them, but they really have no idea what they were involved in.”

“Cutouts,” the commander said.

“Who have been very well cut out,” Abby added.

“They can still be used as examples to others,” the commander said, darkly.

“What you do with them when this is over is your business,” Kris said. “For now, it looks like we’ve got nothing further to do.”

Which meant all they could do was wait.

Jack took the time to produce a high-gee ship’s station and insist Kris move to it. The chair was mobile . . . at a slow pace, but Kris wasn’t going anywhere. It did allow her to lean back and let the cushioning make the 1.75 gees more bearable.

It was nice of Jack to think of the chair. Nice and bothersome. That Kris’s team was looking out for her bodily comfort felt very good. In a bad kind of way.

That they had to look out for the mess she was in pointed out that she had gotten herself on the wrong end of a nearly life-ending situation. Of that, she didn’t like being reminded.

Still, that the people around her cared enough for her to take care of her did feel good, in a deep down and heartwarming way.

It was nice to be with these people. It was easy to understand why Vicky envied her for them.

It made times like these go better.

Right up to the moment that Captain Drago took the
Wasp
through Jump Point Eva at five thousand kilometers an hour, ready to slap on acceleration at a moment’s notice.

But the
Wasp
keep coasting in zero gee for minute after minute.