Daring (6 page)

Kris suspected that whatever information they brought back could be kept secret for, oh, maybe twelve seconds.

Following behind the
Wasp
, PatRon 10 accelerated at one gee in echelon with Kris's flagship: the
Fearless
, and
Intrepid
in close, the resupply ships
Surprise
and
Surplus
. . . already rechristened by the fleet Misplaced and Misfiled, formed a square with the messenger packets
Hermes
and
Mercury
. Kris had no intentions of leaving a trail of communication buoys behind her at every jump point she used. Once the fleet took leave of Santa Maria, communications back to human space would be by ship.

The rest of the fleet trailed behind PatRon 10. The four battleships of Greenfeld's BatRon 12 followed in a fighting square, their four auxiliaries trailing them in a square of their own. The Musashi and Helvitican warships formed another fighting square, the
Haruna
and
Chikuma
to the right, the
Swiftsure
and the
Triumph
to the left. Behind them came the two supply ships they had contracted for at Wardhaven once they'd realized what they were getting into.

Lieutenant Commander Taussig's
Hornet
pulled up the rear with a message packet that was also a last-minute addition, the
Kestrel
. This rear guard was responsible for riding herd on any of the trailing ships. If their jump point did a last-second juggle, and the large, lumbering battleships couldn't find where the jump had gotten to, the
Hornet
would see that they got through.

All of the battleship admirals assured Kris this really wasn't necessary. The sensor suites on all their ships were just as upto-date as anything Wardhaven had.

Maybe that was true. Still, Taussig was back there with the
Hornet
just in case.

Matters went well as the fleet quickly crossed Santa Marian space. They accelerated for the first half of the trip, then flipped and decelerated for the rest. They were making fifty thousand kilometers an hour, with twenty clockwise revolutions a minute down the long axis of the ship as they sped toward Jump Point Beta.

With thirty seconds to go, the navigator goosed the
Wasp
up to three gees acceleration.

One after another, twenty-three ships vanished into the unknown.

7

“How far did we go?” Kris asked expectantly.

“I'll tell you when we find out,” Nelly answered.

“What's the new system look like? Any sign of life?” Kris added, eyeing the blank screen of her Tac Center.

“You will know when we all know,” Nelly snapped. “Now, will you quit juggling my elbow and let me process what's coming in?”

“Nelly's in a bad mood,” Kris said, glancing around at her team.

“Kris, things take time, even for a Longknife,” Jack said. His eyes were on the screen as it slowly filled up with a sun and three huge gas giants. It took a minute more for a half dozen small rock planets to blink onto the screen.

“The
Kestrel
is through,” Penny said, her breath coming out in a sigh. “Everyone made the jump.”

That was a relief to all. The
Wasp
had dropped its acceleration to half a gee. Until they spotted a jump point, there was no course for the fleet to follow. Throughout the ship, on the bridge and in boffin country, sensor teams pored over a whole raft of instruments. Slowly, the products of all that effort flowed onto the four screens that covered the bulkheads of Kris's Tac Room.

They had jumped over 750 light-years.

None of the planets orbiting the soft yellow sun was in the life zone, where water could survive in all three of its lifegiving options: gas, liquid, and solid. Life as we knew it was unlikely here.

The usual telecommunication frequencies were silent. No one was transmitting radio or TV messages. Laser communications also seemed absent. The boffins would continue monitoring for a sudden change, but, for the moment, technology showed no evidence of ever having touched this system of cold rocks and colder gases.

Per the jump-point map Grampa Ray had found on Santa Maria, two jump points were supposed to be in this system. After ten minutes of searching, the bridge reported they had located both of them.

Kris reviewed the two options they offered. Some of the best astronomers and astrophysicists had been called in to develop a list for Kris to choose from. One jump led to an old red dwarf, slowly moldering away into a quiet death. The other led to a giant star, a prime candidate for something explosive like a nova ending its life. Not the thing Kris wanted her ships to find at the end of their next jump. The red dwarf also offered several jump choices that should be equally safe.

Or at least had been two million years ago, when the aliens blazed this trail across the stars.

To get long leaps between stars, you had to leap before you looked.

On Kris's orders, the fleet set a course for the jump that led to the red dwarf. As luck would have it, it was the closer of the two.

As before, they accelerated until midcourse, then began the deceleration. Once again, they flipped at the last minute and hit the jump at what at any other time would have been considered a suicidal speed, with ships accelerating and spinning like delicately balanced tops.

In two weeks, they'd made ten nail-biting jumps, and were over fifteen thousand light-years from Santa Maria. They'd trotted through ten lifeless and uninteresting systems. For a Fleet of Discovery that had launched with such great expectations, they had very little to show for all their effort.

Then the eleventh jump changed everything.

8

“Your Highness, we need to spend a couple of days refueling in this system,” Captain Drago said as they shot into their eleventh new star system.

“You think so?” Kris answered.

“That last jump dropped the
Wasp
's reaction tanks to below half-full, Kris,” the captain said. “I'd like to orbit a gas planet and have the courier ships do some cloud dancing.”

This was no surprise; they'd done it a week ago after the fifth jump. Every ship in the fleet needed reaction mass for acceleration and deceleration. Ships like the
Wasp
and the battleships, even the freighters, weren't designed for the knocking around that came while trawling for fuel in the upper atmosphere of gas giants.

“Pick a big one and make it happen, Skipper. Once we've refueled the fleet, I want to dispatch one of the couriers back home to bring them up to date. All we've got to tell so far is a lot of nothing, but I suspect they'd like to know that.”

“We were lucky last time and only took two days, Princess. It could take longer this time.”

“I don't have a problem, Captain. Whatever is out there will still be out there when we're ready.”

A gas giant wasn't too far from their jump point. The fleet decelerated toward it at 1.3 gees.

Kris was on the bridge as they approached orbit. The
Mercury
had already deployed a balloot and was dropping away for its first run at skimming the outer atmosphere of the planet.

At Sensors, Chief Beni shook his head. “There's something wrong with my instruments,” he muttered.

“That would be unusual,” Kris said.

“Yes, and I've checked them. I can't find anything wrong with them, but this can't be right?”

“What can't be right?” The chief now had Captain Drago's attention.

“There are eleven decent-sized moons around this puppy. According to my readouts, they have wobbled a smidge farther away from the planet than they were just after we came through the jump.”

“They are in unstable orbits?” the captain said.

“If what I'm reading is right, they sure are. It's not a lot, but then, we've only been observing them for a few hours. Let me check with the boffins. Just a minute.”

Kris was at her usual station, Weapons. She'd brought it up more out of habit than any expectation of a shoot. She doublechecked her board; all four of the
Wasp
's 24-inch pulse lasers were locked and loaded.

“Hey,” the chief looked up in surprise. “One of the moons has a hot spot.”

“A volcano?” Kris asked.

“Maybe,” the chief muttered, his eyes studying his board. “What's this? A bit of electromagnetic activity as well?”

“Talk to me, Chief,” the captain said.

“It just showed up as the moon's rotation brought it into view. I'm on it, sir.”

“Stay on it, Chief.”

“I've got Professor mFumbo calling me. Could someone else take the call?” the chief said, not breaking concentration.

“I've got it,” Kris said. “Bridge here, Professor. We're kind of busy just now.”

“I am answering Chief Beni's call about these damnable orbits. Yes, all the moons orbiting this gas giant are dancing a very strange polka.”

“Any ideas why?” Kris asked.

“No idea. I've never heard of this happening before. It's as if this giant used to have a lot more mass and lost it, and now its gravitational hold on its moons is adjusting to the sudden weight loss.

Captain Drago scowled at the forward screen. The
Mercury
was about to take away some more of the planet's mass as it filled its balloot with gases that would be transferred to the ships of the fleet to use as reaction mass for their fusion reactors. The fleet would need a lot of mass to refuel.

Still, what they removed would hardly matter to something as big as this gas giant and its moons. Kris took a deep breath as she considered what kind of force could make such a difference.

“Chief, talk to me about that hot spot,” Captain Drago said.

“Nelly, pass all that we've gotten to the fleet,” Kris told her computer.

“Kris, I've been doing that. The other ships of the fleet have a lot of science aboard, too. Our data is just verifying what the other are concluding, as well. The
Haruna
has gone to General Quarters.”

“Pass the word to PatRon 10. General Quarters, Guns. Unknown cause.”

“Done, Kris.”

On the
Wasp
, the General Quarters' Klaxon began to sound.

“We're the closest to that moon, Captain Drago,” Kris said. “Would you close on it, please.”

Of all the ships in PatRon 10, only the
Wasp
had a contractor for a captain. He was older, more experienced, more mature. He drew his check from Admiral Crossenshield's black-ops funds. He was here, Kris didn't doubt, at King Raymond's specific order to see that Kris didn't do any of the damn fool stunts that he and Grampa Trouble had done before they reached old age.

Someday, she expected he would countermand one of her orders. She waited to see if today would be that day.

“Sulwan, put us closer to that unknown event,” he ordered.

“Aye, aye, sir,” the navigator replied.

“Your Highness, the
Intrepid
is nearby,” Captain Drago observed.

“Yes, right,” Kris said, properly instructed. “Nelly, invite the
Intrepid
to join us in this little side trip.

“Done, Kris.”

On the screen, two dots broke from the strung-out line of ships still decelerating, aiming for a lower orbit of the giant. The
Wasp
and
Intrepid
, however, stretched their vectors to match the high orbit of the moon in question.

“Can somebody give me an idea of what we're heading into before we actually ram that damn moon?” the captain snapped.

“It's a rocky planetoid with no iron core. Its surface is a cold mix of vapors, some water, some methane, lots of crud,” the chief said. “Liquid, not gas. I don't think there are any lakes; the moon's surface looks pretty rough.”

“We boffins concur,” Professor mFumbo said.

“One small spot is showing hot,” the chief went on after a hasty breath. “I'm trying to get a visual, but that heat seems to be steaming off the volatiles. Radar . . .” He paused. “Radar isn't coming back. Something's driving our radar nuts.”

“Active or passive?” Kris and Captain Drago said at the same time.

“I can't tell. I've got some sort of electromagnetic crap coming from there, but it's not organized like anything I've ever seen.”

“Can you laser range it, get a picture that way?” Kris asked.

“I'm lasing it.”

“Nope, nothing,” he said a moment later. “Laser can't get through the vapors.”

“Is there a gravity well?” Kris asked.

Every mass sets up its own gravity well. The very sensitive atom laser on the
Wasp
, designed to track twitchy jump points, was the most sensitive instrument for measuring variations in that weakest of the four natural forces. Weakest, but most important. Just ask any two-year-old trying to defy gravity with each step.

“Checking,” the chief said. A long moment later, he nodded. “There's something solid there. There's definitely more mass under that hot spot than there is in the rest of the moon.”

For fifteen long minutes, the rest of the fleet decelerated into lower orbit and went about beginning the process of refueling. Meanwhile, the
Wasp
and
Intrepid
cut back on their deceleration and swept toward a much higher orbit, one that would take them on a quick flyby of the mystery-shrouded moon.

Sulwan, good navigator that she was, guessed before Kris asked her that she'd like to know if they could transform their present course into an orbit around the moon. “Even decelerating at 3.5 gee, that option is already gone. We'll need at least one orbit to match that moon. Maybe two if I miss a window.”