Redoubtable (22 page)

29

“
Kris
, we have a problem,” the captain reported over the net to her Tac Center. “We are in the system our unknown bogey jumped to, but there’s no ship in sight.”

“Professor mFumbo,” Kris said to the head of her scientific team. He sat at the foot of the table today. “This looks like a job for your boffins.”

He grinned, pure white teeth showing against his ebony skin. “This is hardly what we brought our galactic-spanning observation systems on board for, but we are glad to be at Your Highness’s service.”

Of late, he’d been avoiding Kris’s title. Something about the way the last vote had gone in the Parliament of Wardhaven for the science budget. Apparently, Kris’s father’s latest budget had redeemed the Progressives in the professor’s eyes.

An hour later, Kris was none too sure if the boffins didn’t need redemption in her own eyes.

The science contingent was a unique part of the
Wasp
’s crew. At least initially, the
Wasp
carried a hundred contract sailors, a hundred Marines, and a hundred scientists.

After Kris’s most recent failure to be elsewhere when a bomb went off . . . made more insulting by the fact the bomb hadn’t actually been aimed at her . . . Grampa Ray, King Raymond I to most everyone else, had seen to it that the crew of the
Wasp
got seriously larger.

Jack’s Marine company had been reinforced up to two hundred purposeful trigger pullers. In addition to them, an MP platoon had been added with a plethora of technicians very skilled at investigating crime scenes . . . and in helping Chief Beni identify scenes well before they had a chance to become crime scenes.

The crew of sailors had more than doubled, this time with real live sailors who wore white hats and saluted officers . . . not the contract types that Admiral Crossenshield, the head of Wardhaven’s black ops, had fitted out the
Wasp
with initially. Since one of the new ship departments was a medical division fit for a battleship, Kris really had no complaint.

During all of this, Professor mFumbo’s boffins had gone about their business, using the
Wasp
’s various meanderings to do their research . . . whatever that was. Occasionally, Kris got invited to dinner in boffin country. There they would regale her with their stories of discovery and observation.

Rarely did Kris understand a word, but the boffins did set a magnificent table.

However, because of that research, the
Wasp
was a veritable pincushion, sprouting antennas and receiver dishes that no other self-respecting scout ship had. At the moment, they were rising from where they often hid when the
Wasp
masqueraded as a simple merchant ship. Today, the boffins would apply all that extra weight that Captain Drago was wont to complain about to a problem that had a real-time application.

“Give me an hour,” Professor mFumbo had told Kris.

An hour later, he was back with two associates in tow. One was as tall and thin as the other was short and round, and they didn’t bother to find a seat but floated in zero gee at Kris’s elbow, apparently quite comfortable to hang there.

“We have some good news,” the tall one started. “And some bad news,” the short one finished.

“Tell me about the good news,” Kris said.

“We were able to identify an exhaust trail of a freighter in the system,” Short said. “Unfortunately, our instrumentation was good enough to identify two exhaust trails,” the taller one added.

“Two trails,” Kris echoed,

“Two trails,” one said. “Going to two different jump points,” the other finished.

Since they hadn’t bothered to give themselves names, Kris was tempted to christen them Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum. Assuming she could keep straight which one she named Dee from the one she named Dum.

“So,” she said slowly, “one freighter entered this system. We know when it did and we know it wasn’t here when we arrived here. How do the two trails fit our time frame?”

“Very well,” they both said. “The Beta Point is the farthest from our location. Its thicker trail fits that of a medium-size freighter traveling at 1.25 gees and exiting the system well before we arrived,” said Shorty. “While the thinner trail would fit the same ship making .89 gees to the closer jump and passing through it just before we got here,” finished the thin one.

“That really doesn’t help us,” Jack said.

“Well, I’m
sorry
about
that
,” the thin one snipped. “I’ll have you know that no other particle observatory would have spotted either one of those trails,” the round one finished.

“Thank you. Thank you,” Professor mFumbo said, ushering his prima donnas out before any more feathers could be ruffled.

Kris let out an exasperated sigh. “Nelly, would you get Captain Drago for me, please.”

“I’ve been listening,” the captain said on net. “Nelly warned me that I might want to hear something and save you from having to listen to it twice.”

“Thank you for saving our ears from that horrible fate,” Abby said dryly.

“Can you add anything to this, Captain?” Kris asked. “Do your space legs, or the hairs on the back of your neck, or maybe your feminine intuition tell you something that the best scientific minds in human space couldn’t.” Kris did not mean that sarcastically. She didn’t doubt that the
Wasp
carried the best smarts money could hire. It was just that today, she really needed answers, and those smarts had not given her anything to go on. At least anything she dared to go on.

And Kris had dared a lot.

“Sorry to be of so little use,” the captain said, “but I’m just as stumped as they are. The momma that raised these pirates and slavers didn’t raise any dumb kids.”

“Don’t you just hate it when that happens,” Abby added.

“So, we’ve got two doors, both with trails leading us up to them. Behind one is a pirate lair, or at least the trail to one. Behind the other is . . . what?”

“Likely nothing,” Jack said.

“I wouldn’t be all that sure of that,” Commander Fervenspiel broke his long silence. “This system has been ripped up and taped back together. We can’t even be sure that the jumps we’re looking at are the ones the Three put here. In the few spare seconds I had before I grabbed my hat and raced to catch your fast-departing
Wasp
, I did glance at what we knew of this system.

“I didn’t raise the question when your very competent computer did the briefing on the system, but our charts from the time of the Three show that there were two jumps in each of the two solar systems. Now there are only three in the system they share. Something happened to the missing one.

“Now maybe it got swallowed up by one of the stars, or maybe it got hurled out into deepest space. I don’t know. But we also shouldn’t assume we know anything about where these jumps now go. It may never have happened before. At least not to any ship that was able to report back to us, but these jumps could lead you right into the heart of a star or something even worse.”

LIKE THE BIG UGLY THAT ATE THE ITEECHE SCOUTS, Nelly whispered softly in Kris’s skull.

“Are you always this cheerful?” Abby asked.

The commander made a shallow bow to the maid from where he sat. “I assure you, Lieutenant, this is one of my better days.”

Since Abby was still wearing the colorful skirt and off-the-shoulder top that she’d worn dirtside this morning, the commander was tipping his hand that he’d had, as he raced for the
Wasp
, taken time not only to glance at a map but also to see what Greenfeld intel had on the people he’d be dealing with.

“Can’t a girl keep any secrets,” Abby sniffed, pulling up her top to restrict the view to a more matronly amount of skin.

“Folks, I got a ship here,” Captain Drago said, “that’s just drifting in space. From the way the air circulation has kicked into higher gear, I suspect a lot of the crew doesn’t yet have their space legs, and more of our fine lunch is being wasted. Could we have a decision here?”

“What’s the closest jump point?” Kris asked.

“Alpha,” the captain answered. “The one with the thin trail that seems to mean that our bogey just managed to get out of here ahead of us. It wouldn’t have if I hadn’t slowed the
Wasp
down. I’m not sure that means anything.”

“Anyone who read any kind of file on you, Princess,” Commander Fervenspiel said, “would know that Captain Drago was hired to add a bit of caution to your inclination to go headlong into your next challenge.”

“Damn, so you guys have a file on me, too,” Captain Drago said. “That will teach a shy, retiring soul like me to get too close to one of those damn Longknifes.”

The Greenfeld commander struggled to swallow a bad case of the guffaws and succeeded.

Kris shrugged. “Let’s say there’s an equal chance that the ship headed for either jump. You say Alpha is closest.”

“Yes,” said the captain.

“So we could head over to Alpha, and if it was the wrong one, we’d have a quicker trip to Beta.”

“Yes, Your Highness, but you should realize, this jump and the two others really form an equidistant triangle. There’s really not that much to choose from.”

“So I’ll choose, and let the consequences be on my head. Go for Alpha.” Heavens knew, Kris had made enough decisions and suffered through the consequences. It really didn’t seem to matter whether she made the right decision or the wrong one, the consequences were just as often lousy as they were good.

“Would you mind turning down the lights?” Kris asked her crew. “If I’m going to suffer the consequences of whatever I just decided, I’d rather do it after a nap. Wake-up call was way too early this morning.”

“We’ll all be back here thirty minutes before we get to Jump Point Alpha,” Jack assured her.

“You do that.”

Kris was none too sure she could actually sleep. She kept seeing Cara in the hands of people who seriously didn’t deserve to have their hands on a little kid. Still, there was little Kris could do about that just now, and she didn’t want to have everyone fussing over her while they all waited out whatever would happen next.

To Kris’s surprise, she did fall asleep.

Cara
didn’t know whether to be glad or scared when the elevator door in the central spindle swung open, and a bare-foot sailor pushed two buckets out along with a small crate. He looked around the room, then put on an ugly smile and headed for Cara and the young sailor cuffed with her.

“You two won’t cause me any trouble,” he said smiling through missing or yellowed teeth. He stank like no one Cara had ever met, even in Five Corners.

Anyone smelling that bad, the gangs would have thrown in the open sewer.

The sailor pointed something at Cara’s cuff and it clinked open. Then he did the same to the one on the young woman.

“You two,” the sailor ordered. “There’s water in those buckets. See that everyone gets a cup. One cup. No more. No less. Don’t you get too close to any of these big guys, you see. If they get their hands on you, don’t expect me to risk my neck saving yours.”

He turned to take in the rest of the room. “You got two buckets of water. You spill them, you go thirsty. Be nice to these girls. I plan to,” he said with an ugly chuckle.

“Hand around the water. Then see that everyone gets one ration bar. One and only one, you hear.”

Cara nodded. So did the woman.

“You be nice to me,” the sailor said, leering at the woman, “and I could arrange a nice meal for you.”

“If I get my hands on you,” began the sailor who had been holding the girl.

“But you can’t, and you won’t, so shut up,” the sailor spat.

“What do we do about the bathroom?” Cara asked.

“You got a bucket, don’t you?”

“But it’s got water in it,” Cara said.

“Now it does. Give everybody a drink, and it won’t.”

“But here, with everyone looking,” Cara said, incredulously.

“I don’t see a problem, little girl. Where you’re going, you’ll do a lot of stuff out with everyone looking . . . and you’ll be glad to do it. If you ain’t, you’ll be real sad,” he said, and turned back to the elevator.

Cara waited until the elevator had closed on him. Then she turned to the free woman. “You start with your boyfriend,” she said. “I’ll go the other way.”

Cara hated the pirate. Hated him and everything he said. Still, she was careful with the water. She stood well out of reach, making both the men and woman stretch out the chains on their cuffs before she put the full water cup in reach.

Some of the people said kind words to her, showed they understood her fear and caution. A few of the men and even two women cussed her out and threw the empty cup at her when she refused to refill it for them.

Cara said only kind words for all, but in her mind she was remembering some of the lessons she’d learned in Five Corners, lessons that had surprised even Uncle Bruce. She was also remembering the moves that he’d shown her. Moves that built on and refined the ones she’d learned on the streets.

She could use them if she had to.

She knew how to kill if she had no other choice.

Still, she hoped Uncle Bruce and Captain Jack and the rest of his Marines would come before anything really bad happened. She’d seen the shadows in Auntie Kris’s eyes when people talked of some of the things she’d done.

People died at the princess’s orders.

Cara was pretty sure she could kill if she had to. That didn’t mean she wanted to.

“Hurry up, Aunt Abby. Hurry up.”

30

Kris
woke well before Jack came to wake her. She’d read a story about what happened before Grampa Trouble and Gramma Ruth were married. They’d been captured by slavers.

Twice.

Gramma Ruth said she never claimed her husband was smart. She did say she’d trust him with her life. Apparently, among those scumbags, Grampa Trouble had earned Gramma’s respect.

Anyway, Kris had read the story when she was a kid. It had sounded exciting and romantic. Later, in college, she’d come across a mature-rated media version of the same experience. She’d watched half of it before she turned it off. Maybe her great-grandparents had gone through something like that. Still, watching people you shared flesh and blood with suffer through brutal captivity . . .

It wasn’t something Kris Longknife wanted to watch.

It also wasn’t something she wanted a twelve-year-old girl to live through.

Better to stay awake and not dream.

“Stand by for zero gravity,” the M1C announced to all hands.

“We going to send through a jump buoy first?” Kris asked the bridge watch.

“Yes,” Captain Drago answered. “But one that squawks very weakly that a ship will be coming through in a minute. Any ship nearby will get our message. No need to blast it all over the system.”

It had only happened once, that two ships had tried to share the same jump point at the same time. Once had been enough. Within the realm of human space, a network of buoys marked each jump. Before any ship jumped, a buoy went through to announce it was coming. As a scout ship, the
Wasp
carried a load of buoys to expand that network.

A small object launched out from the
Wasp
. Without slowing down, it boosted straight for the small bit of twisted and twisting space that was the jump point. Without halting, it went right through.

“Now we wait sixty seconds,” Captain Drago announced.

On the wall of Kris’s Tac Center, Nelly opened a small window with a countdown clock. Sixty seconds went quickly.

As did another sixty seconds.

And another.

“I don’t think that puppy’s coming home to momma,” Abby observed, as the timer hit +154 seconds.

“Ah, Captain, what’s Plan B?” Kris asked.

“I was kind of counting on you and your brain trust to come up with one for us,” the captain drawled.

“We’ll get back to you in a minute,” Kris said. “Or maybe ten.” She looked around the table and met blank stares. “Or an hour,” she said, and broke the connection.

“Okay, crew,” Kris said, “why would a jump buoy not come back?”

“Maybe someone on the other side of the jump was waiting for it and shot it to bits,” Jack said.

Kris nodded. That was her first guess. One she suspected that some big ugly was doing to Iteeche scouts. “I don’t recall anything like that being tried during the war,” Kris added.

“No one was all that interested,” Commander Fervenspiel said. He raised his hand with all fingers and thumb showing. “First, you have to float around a jump point, spending all your time in zero gee,” he said, pulling in his thumb. “Second, you have to worry just a little bit about what would happen if the jump point suddenly decided that where it wanted to be was where you are.” He pulled in his pointer at that and made a fist. “Between those two, you don’t need any more. It’s a tactic that sounds brilliant to a lubber. Not so brilliant to the sailor who has to do it. Better to fight it out orbiting some planet once you’ve got a bit of notice.”

Kris nodded. So did Jack. “One ship standing blockade suddenly facing a couple of dozen coming through. Not such a good idea.”

“But we do have this missing buoy,” Abby pointed out. “Did somebody give it a better option and take it out for a beer?”

Chief Beni looked like he’d be glad if someone offered him a beer. “Should we spin off a nanoscout and send it through?”

A few months earlier, Kris had gotten just such a request from an Iteeche friend. She’d passed on it. If there was something big and mean on the other side of the jump, she didn’t want to make it a present of humanity’s best tech before we had any idea what we faced.

In theory, the jump in front of them was several thousand light-years away from where the Iteeche were losing scouts. One would think they were not connected. However, never having been a galactic overlord bent on conquering the universe, Kris wasn’t yet ready to conclude she knew exactly where the bad guy’s realm was and wasn’t.

“Good idea, Chief,” Kris said, “but let’s hold that one in reserve for the time being.”

“What’s that leave us?” Abby asked.

“I hate to open my mouth,” Professor mFumbo said, clearly reluctant. This was a totally new aspect of his personality and one that Kris had never seen before. “However, Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum do have some expert thoughts on just this problem.”

“Tweedle Dee and Dum?” Kris echoed, not willing to admit that she had given them the same names but not surprised that someone else had.

“You know, the two particle physicists I introduced you to earlier. We call them Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum, but never to their faces, I assure you. No question they are strange, but also no question they are brilliant.”

“And if we talked to them,” Kris said, “what would they tell us?”

“It’s better that I let them tell you themselves.”

“God help us,” Abby remarked.

“Really it is,” the professor said. “May I call them?”

“Do so,” Kris said. “I’m dying with curiosity.”

A few minutes later, the two drifted in, righted themselves, and began.

“How big,” one began, “is a jump point?” the other ended.

“Look at your own ship, the
Wasp
. . . When we came aboard it, the ship was much thinner . . . but you added several layers of containers . . . and the ship grew wider.

“Yet every time it entered a jump point . . . no matter what its beam . . . the jump point takes it in.”

The two of them paused to examine the reception their dissertation was getting. Kris saw round eyes, glazed over, staring back at them. Her own eyes probably weren’t any better.

Undaunted, they continued.

“The same goes for the length of ships . . . Take a battleship. It enters the jump point . . . and it exits the jump point . . . At no time is the ship half-in . . . or half-out . . . No matter how long a ship is . . . one has never had its bow sticking out of one jump point . . . and its stern still entering from the other side.”

Kris eyed Jack, who was eyeing her right back. “They’ve got a point,” she whispered. He nodded agreement.

The two scientists beamed.

“We call them jump points . . . and a point is supposed to have zero dimensions, just coordinates . . . but our jump points do a very poor job of staying at their coordinates . . . and swallow ships with much larger than zero dimensions.

“More interesting . . . is their attitude toward . . . the ships . . . A ship is either in the point . . . or out of it . . . in this system . . . in the point . . . and then in the next system . . . Never two . . . only one.

“Before the point . . . in the point . . . through the point . . . no matter how large . . . or long.”

“So,” Kris said thoughtfully, “if we were to attempt to push a fiber-optic cable with a camera on it through a jump point . . .”

“That experiment . . . was actually attempted . . . in the early days of space travel.”

“I never heard of it,” Jack said.

“You aren’t . . . a physicist . . . and since it failed . . . we don’t like to talk . . . about it.”

“What happened?” Kris asked.

“The experimenting ship . . . pushed a fiber-optic camera cable toward . . . the jump point . . . The cable never . . . went through the jump . . . It just kind of . . . bent itself . . . around the jump point . . . and ended up showing . . . the space on the . . . other side of the jump . . . in the same system.”

“No jump,” they said together.

“So are you again telling me that you have a very interesting bit of science, but you can’t help me a damn bit with my problem today.” Princesses were not supposed to talk like that. Whoever made that rule had never had a day like Kris was having.

And they’d never listened to these two.

“We might be able to do something,” they both said

“What?”

“We’ve been wondering . . . if Smart Metal™ . . . might allow us to . . . outsmart the jump points.

“We’ve never had . . . access to any Smart Metal™ . . . but we wonder . . . if we made a single-molecule camera . . . attached it to a different type of Smart Metal™ . . . optimized to carry the signal . . . a kind of wire . . . and had a single- . . . molecule receiver at this end.

“Maybe that would trick . . . the jump point . . . into seeing the first molecule . . . as a separate unit . . . the wire as also separate . . . and the last molecule the same.

“One would be . . . on the other side . . . the wire in the point . . . and the transmitter here.”

“Give these folks some Smart Metal™ and get the best minds on programming Smart Metal™ working with them,” Kris ordered.

Smart Metal™ was an invention of Grampa Al’s Nuu Enterprises. It allowed naval starships to be large with comfortable private quarters one day and shrink down into a small, heavily armored man-of-war the next. Kris had once seen a spaceship converted into an air vehicle and landed on a planet . . . and had a miserable time getting everything back in order on the spaceship. The material was programmable, but programming it just right was often the problem.

Oh, and it had almost killed Kris on at least one occasion. Several times if you counted the sudden-onset, engineering casualty problems that the initial class of Smart Metal™ ships were prone to.

Kris was glad the problem of producing a Smart Metal™ probe for the jump point before them was someone else’s problem.

Two hours later, a tiny object jetted away from the
Wasp
. It paused just short of the jump point and appeared to do nothing.

The screen on the wall of Kris’s Tac Center changed to show a black-and-white picture of wavering space.

“The bandwidth . . . between the camera . . . and the transmitter . . . is very narrow.”

“Sorry about that,” both the scientists said together.

“Now let’s see . . . what we get.”

The picture didn’t show much change for a few seconds. Then suddenly the roiling view of twinkling stars disappeared. In its place was . . . not much of anything.

“I always wondered . . . what null space . . . looked like.”

“Null space?” Kris said.

Professor mFumbo, who had joined them again only moments before the probe was launched, smiled from ear to ear. “They are the first to get a picture of it. They can name it what they bloody well choose.”

Kris was not about to dispute that right.

“Ready to go . . . the rest of . . . the way?” the boffins asked no one in particular.

Apparently they were asking each other, something that struck Kris as amazing if they actually needed to. With no further words, the picture changed.

Changed and vanished so quickly that if you’d blinked, you never would have known a different picture had been there.

“Nelly, get that picture back.”

“I’m already working on it,” Nelly snapped.

“What the hell is that?” Jack said, as a snapshot appeared on the screen. Wispy tendrils in different shades of gray formed all sorts of patterns that said very little to Kris.

“Have you ever seen the inside of a fusion reactor?” Professor mFumbo asked.

“Can’t say that I have,” Jack said.

“The inside of a sun, then?”

“Never even wanted to,” Kris said.

“I’ll wait for others to weigh in with their ideas,” the professor said, “but I think we ought to search the sky for a nova. I will bet you ten Wardhaven dollars that this jump will take you right into the heart of that nova.”

Kris leaned back into her high-gee chair, hardly necessary since the ship was in zero gravity. “You think someone knew that was waiting on the other side?”

“I doubt if anyone knew what was through that jump,” Commander Fervenspiel said. “I will bet you that they knew that nothing that went in there ever came out. Cunning, these scumbags.”

“Captain Drago, make best speed for Jump Point Beta.”

“I don’t know what that is,” Captain Drago said, “but I am one happy man that we did not go charging in there.”

“I think I’ve learned a good lesson. Look before I leap,” Kris said.

“Good lesson,” Jack said aloud. “Very good lesson.” To just Kris he added, YOU THINK THAT MAY BE WHAT IS EATING THE ITEECHE SCOUTS?

“Can we find the nova this jump leads to?” Kris asked aloud. To Jack she added, I HAVE NO IDEA. YOU REALLY WANT TO BET HUMANITY’S FUTURE THAT THE PROBLEM IS AS SIMPLE AS THAT?

Jack offered only a shrug for a reply.

Professor mFumbo and Commander Fervenspiel pushed off from their chairs to drift in front of the star map on the wall. As the
Wasp
slowly put on acceleration, they settled to the floor, their fingers roving from star to star.

“Nelly, please highlight the star this jump point is supposed to go to.”

“Kris, I don’t know which star it goes toward. I know where the star
was
that it went to.” A dot began flashing on the map, about equal distance between three different stars.

“None of them look like novas,” Kris said.

“They’re fifty to a hundred light-years from here,” the commander pointed out. “One of the problems with instantaneous transportation is that what you look at may be quite a few years out of date from what you leap to.”

“At least two of these suns are very old,” Professor mFumbo noted.

Kris nodded at them. To Jack and Nelly, she thought, I THINK I’VE DISCOVERED HOW TO GET A PEEK AT WHATEVER IS BEHIND THOSE KILLER JUMPS THE ITEECHE HAVE FOUND. NELLY, GET A COPY OF THE DESIGN FOR THOSE PROBES. GET SEVERAL COPIES AND SAVE THEM IN A WHOLE LOT OF PLACES.

I AM ALREADY DOING IT, KRIS.