Daring

48

“I’m not sure the Wasp can take another beating like that,” Captain Drago said softly, as he and Kris put their heads together.

“Can we modify the ship’s launches to do the next refueling run?” Kris asked. “That pirate ketch we captured on Kaskatos had less power than one of our launches.”

“I don’t know,” the captain admitted. “They had a balloot designed for their size. We’d have to cut down our balloot to fit a launch.”

“Maybe we could make two or three smaller balloots,” Sulwan put in.

“But once we start tearing it apart,” the skipper said darkly, “we’d better hope the glue holds together. There would be no turning back.”

“I think we ought to try doing it once without cutting up anything,” Kris said. “I’ve flown just about every kind of small craft there is. If you could rig a balloot to three launches, Nelly and I could give it a try.”

The skipper had started shaking his head as she spoke, and he just kept on shaking it. “You saw, or at least felt, how much the Wasp was thrown around during our pass. Imagine what those atmospheric currents would do to three boats flying in close formation. You could all three end up as a blot of grease on some gas giant.”

“I’m a Longknife. We’re always looking for a new way to get ourselves killed.”

Jack didn’t look too happy at that, but he kept his silence.

“I’ll have a couple of my officers and leading chiefs look at the idea,” the captain finally said. “Now, do you have an opinion on our course home? We’re about as far out on the rim as we can get.”

“The star maps we have don’t seem to be helping us much. We have no idea from one jump to the next where we’ll end up,” Kris said.

“The maps I have,” Nelly said, clearly defensive, “do a fairly good job of telling us where a jump will take us when we enter them at a slow speed. We can even be doing one hundred thousand klicks an hour and have a good idea where we’re heading. But it’s anybody’s guess where we will end up when you really put pedal to the metal.”

“Where’d you pick up that phrase?” Kris asked.

“Cara got it from some of the car racers back home. I like the sound of it,” Nelly answered.

“If I can help it, the Wasp won’t be accelerating at over two gees until our next overhaul,” Captain Drago said. “Neither the engines nor the hull can take it. However, we could keep one gee up as acceleration and not spend half our time decelerating. That could put a lot of speed on the boat. We could probably make at least one of those seven-league jumps before we have to start decelerating to refuel.”

“Wouldn’t we be in better shape if we fully refueled at this star, then took several long leaps?” Kris asked.

“Yes, Your Highness, but I want to get out of here before anyone drops in. I think the Intrepid knocked those last two alien ships for a loop. I don’t think they were aware of anything going on in that last system when we jumped, but how much of the farm do you want to bet on that?”

“Good point. How soon can we get out of here?”

“The nearest jump point is one of Nelly’s fuzzy ones. We can reach it in a day. Assuming we don’t decelerate, we should be doing close to a hundred thousand klicks by the time we hit it. Assuming we survive the jump, we’ll see where it puts us.”

They spent most of the next day patching the Wasp back together as well as they could. The engineers continued doing their own maintenance on the engines and reactors. The Wasp got under way as smoothly as she ever did and slipped through the next jump point right on time.

To find themselves sharing a system with a huge reddish super giant.

“Anyone got a guess when that dude will go supernova?” Captain Drago asked.

No one on the bridge ventured a guess.

“Chief, tell me the best way out of here, and do it fast.”

“There’s another one of those new jumps pretty close by.”

“Sulwan, get the coordinates and get us headed there.”

“Doing it, Skipper.”

Kris waited at her station on Weapons for the immediate hurry to calm down. “How far did we jump?” she asked Chief Beni once he was finished with navigation.

“It looks like close to nine hundred light-years,” he said. “We’re still cruising along the outer rim of the outermost arm of the Milky Way. Nelly, do you have any idea where this next jump would take us?”

A star map appeared on the forward screen. “I think we are here,” the computer said. A green dot appeared along the Scutum-Centaurus Arm. “We’re still about as far from Earth as we can be and not go next door for sugar.”

“Good joke, Nelly,” Kris said.

Captain Drago just made a face.

“If I have us in the right system, and we took this jump at dead-slow speed, we’d go about fifty light-years over and a bit more inward. A longer jump, say with us making fifty thousand to a hundred thousand klicks an hour, would take us a lot farther, say about another eight hundred light-years.” Nelly paused for her listeners to absorb this.

“I’ve been analyzing our long jumps, and I think I’m starting to see a pattern. If our next jump was a fast one and followed that pattern, I estimate that we’d jump to about the middle of this arm and in a line that would take us to somewhere a couple of thousand light-years along the outer rim. but at least we’d start getting back toward Earth. If that direction holds true, my guess would be that if we hit our third jump at three or four hundred thousand klicks an hour, maybe more, we could end up well into the center of the Outer Arm, and generally headed home.”

Nelly paused for a second. “Assuming you want a guess from a computer.”

“Just so long as you warn us that it’s a guess,” Kris said, while Captain Drago scowled.

“This is just a guess,” Nelly went on, “but if we could maintain that speed for a second long jump, we might get as far as the Sagittarius Arm or even the Orion Arm. That would put us just a hop, skip, and a jump from human space.”

“Who taught this computer how to use nonempirical language?” the skipper demanded.

“Cara,” Kris said.

“That kid,” the captain grumbled.

“But you humans relate better to nonempirical more often than when I give you an answer to the thirteenth decimal place,” Nelly said.

“We prefer to pick when we want it simple and when we want it precise,” Drago said.

“And guessing where in the galaxy we are going to drop in when we are stumbling around like a drunken sailor is going to improve how if I talk about thousands of light-years using the third decimal place?” Nelly shot back.

“The gal does have a point,” Kris said. “Precision isn’t all that useful when we’re guessing at the basic point.”

“And you had to remind me, didn’t you?” the captain said with a sigh.

Kris shrugged.

“If we could make two of those long jumps,” Kris said, “before we have to slow down and refuel . . .” Kris left the thought unfinished.

The captain clearly was also thinking along that line. “Sulwan, if we went to half a gee acceleration?”

“The Engineering team would be delighted, and we’d still be making some two hundred thousand klicks an hour when we hit the next jump.”

“That might get us two of those long jumps. Course, we might need to give up showers and flushing the toilet to find enough reaction mass to slow down.”

“Our final jump might also have us dropping into the Iteeche Empire or one of those systems where their ships have been vanishing,” the skipper said slowly.

“Choices, choices,” Kris said. “Who shall we start a war with today?”

“That is not funny, Kris,” Jack said.

“I didn’t mean it as a joke,” Kris said. “At least if we drop in on the Empire, we’ve got our own Imperial Representative.”

“Who, I understand, is not in good repute at the court just now,” the skipper said.

“Where’d you hear that?” Kris asked.

“I know everything that goes on aboard my ship,” the captain said darkly. “And if I don’t, I have supper every once in a while with Abby, and she fills me in on what I missed.”

“And here I thought I didn’t have to worry about that woman leaking now that I wasn’t going to balls anymore.”

“It’s a fact of life with your maid,” the skipper said. “If she doesn’t leak something, she’ll pop.”

“Now who’s cracking jokes,” Nelly said.

“I’m a human. I get to crack jokes. You’re a computer. I worry about the jokes you might crack. I’m not all that sure they’ll be funny.”

“I am learning from an expert.” Nelly sniffed.

“Who?” the captain demanded.

“Kris,” Nelly said.

“I rest my case. Now, why don’t you two, or three, run along and get some chow and take a shower. I may be cutting back on both in the very near future.”

“Isn’t our water recycled?” Nelly asked.

“Yes. I’m more worried with the beer, wine, and spirits that are still on board. Is it better to allow them to be recycled into piss, or should I pour them directly into the reaction tanks?”

“I knew there was a reason I left you in command of this wreck,” Kris said.

“She wasn’t a wreck when you left me in command. We had to work real hard to get her into this fix.”

Kris let the skipper have the last word. She headed for chow, only to find that even Cookie was having a hard time making what he had in his larder look all that worth eating. A request for any of the crew qualified in space to lend a hand shoring up damaged compartments got her attention, and she was about to tap her commlink and ask Captain Drago to let her get in some honest work when Jack put his hand over her commlink.

“I know what you’re thinking, and I will not have you squished like a little green bug because some rough-cut steel gets out of control of a teenage sailor.”

“In our situation, everyone has to do their part. I should, too,” Kris insisted.

“That’s what worries me. Every seaman recruit who thinks they know how to handle themselves in a half gee is headed there. I know that Senior Chief Mong knows how to handle things. I’m worried about Marine Private Knucklehead or Seaman Recruit Vacuum-for-brains who has more enthusiasm than experience.”

Jack paused, then went on. “You and I need to find someplace private where we can talk.”

“About what?” Kris asked, suddenly not sure she liked the idea that she had nothing to do, and Jack was going to have a talk with her. From the thunderclouded look on his face, he’d been saving this up for a long time.

“Let’s find someplace we won’t be interrupted,” was all he said.

They ended up back in the space they had occupied for the refueling pass. Everyone seemed to have gone elsewhere, leaving them a large, empty space all to themselves.

Once there, Jack went to one side of the compartment. Kris found herself gravitating to the opposite end of the room, as far from Jack as she could get.

The space still smelled of hot welding and Goo, along with human sweat and a bit of terror. There was no place to sit, and with the Wasp changing its course and acceleration at odd moments as it matched orbit with its containers, Kris found herself holding on to one of the tie-downs that still held its bottle of Goo.

Finally, she turned to face Jack. “What’s eating you?”

“This lust you have for getting yourself killed,” he snapped.

“I didn’t have any good choices,” Kris said in her defense. “I couldn’t let the bird people die when I could do something about it. I thought you agreed with me.”

Jack was shaking his head before she finished. “I didn’t say your enthusiasm for getting us all killed, I said your personal lust for getting your own little body slammed, smashed, and burned before my eyes.”

“Oh,” Kris said. This was going to be personal. She would have preferred to argue about what she’d done for the whole human race. Talking about herself . . . now that could bring up a whole mess of snakes Kris preferred to ignore.

“I haven’t done anything lately, Jack. Nobody has thrown a bomb at me or taken a shot at me. Vicky has more of that coming at her than I do of late.”

“Quit changing the subject, Kris,” Jack snapped. “I’ve been biting my tongue and keeping my silence ever since we got ourselves stuck in a burning aircraft with a canopy that wouldn’t open.”

“Oh,” Kris whispered. “That time I almost got us both killed.”

“Yes, that time,” Jack said. “I woke up with the smell of smoke in my oxygen system and you not answering my calls and a canopy that wouldn’t budge. All I could think of was that you’d finally gone and done it, gotten yourself killed, and my heart was breaking.”

“Heart?” Kris whispered. Was Jack really talking about something intimate to the two of them, not just a day in, day out job?

“Don’t change the subject,” Jack growled. “You didn’t have to fly that mission. We could have given it to anyone. Hell, even a drone could have flown it.”

“A drone would not have dodged those missiles the way I did,” Kris said, jumping to her defense. “And besides, I saved your precious Marines when I saw what they were heading into. I saved most of your company.”

“There you go, changing the topic again.”

“Well, damn it, what is the topic, Jack!”

Jack took a deep breath before he went on. “I can’t stand to watch you going out day after day trying to get yourself killed.”

“I’m not trying to get myself killed.”

“Well, it sure looks that way from where I’m standing,” Jack snarled.

“I do what I have to do,” Kris shot back.

“You do not!” came right back at her. “Any reasonable person, with the sense God promised a billy goat, would find other ways to get what she wants done that didn’t involve her going out and sticking her head in every lion’s mouth that comes along.”

Jack paused long enough to slam his hand against one of the metal patches they’d help weld to the Wasp’s hide. At half a gee, his feet lifted off the deck, and he had to force himself back down.

“Kris, you do have choices. If I hear you say one more time that you don’t have any choice but to go out and nearly get yourself killed, I’m going to scream. You have choices. If you’d spend a few extra seconds thinking about what you’re about to do, you’d see those choices and maybe do something different.”

“Do them instead of trying my hand at flossing some passing lion’s teeth, you mean,” Kris said, giving him the kind of look through her eyelashes that some actresses used to good effect.

“Don’t you go trying to make me laugh,” Jack said, but a hint of a smile was creeping around the edges of his mouth.

“I like you when you smile,” Kris said.

“You’re changing the subject.”

“Okay, I’ll stay on your topic. What does it matter to you whether I’m one of those Longknifes that dies young and gloriously? From the look of Grampa Ray, I’m not sure that living a long life is all it’s cracked up to be. He’s getting way too good at dodging his problems and ignoring his conscience.”

“We are not talking about your relatives,” Jack said.

“Then answer my question. What does it matter whether I splatter myself over the next gas giant we come to, trying to get reaction mass for the Wasp? You won’t be in the launch with me. You won’t have to take my bullet. It will be just me and Nelly.”

“And I don’t get a vote on the matter, either,” Nelly pointed out.

“You stay out of this,” both Kris and Jack said.

“Fine. Okay. I’m just the computer, but when are you going to answer the girl’s question, Jack?” Nelly said.

Kris raised an eyebrow to add her own emphasis to Nelly’s question.

Jack scowled and looked at the hatch like he wanted to walk out on the both of them. Down in Engineering, they were having trouble maintaining the acceleration. They’d pop up to more than half a gee, then just as suddenly fall well below it. If it was the engines, they were in trouble. If it was the quality of the new reaction mass, they might survive it. Whatever it was, Jack risked falling flat on his face if he tried stomping out on her.

He must have realized it about the time Kris did, because that tiny hint of a smile was back. Then he sobered up.

“I’ve had to watch you die twice in the last couple of months. First when we peeled what that bomb left of you off the marble floor on Texarkana. I had to do it again when I woke up ahead of you after you crashed”—Kris started to object and Jack waved her back—“after you did that superb bit of flying that set us down so smoothly in the middle of a swamp. My heart won’t take much more of this.”

“I’m sorry I’ve stressed you,” Kris said curtly. “It wasn’t all that much fun for me. And if I may point out, it was me helping you limp away from that Greenfeld pile of junk before it blew. My heart got a bit of a workout, too.”

Jack shook his head ruefully. “Right. Heart. It pumps blood as Nelly would tell you. Kris, I don’t care what you do to my blood pressure or my pulse. That’s all part of the job.”

He paused and took a deep breath. “Kris, I’ve made the worst mistake a bodyguard can make. I’m supposed to care for your body, but it’s you I care about. And you keep right on breaking my heart.”

That wasn’t something Kris saw coming.

Now it was her turn to talk, and nothing came to mind.

Nothing at all.

What she wanted to do was launch herself across the room at Jack. She had never wanted to bury herself in anyone’s arms like she wanted his arms around her.

She didn’t, of course. Halfway across the room, Engineering was likely to hiccup and drop Kris on the deck. Hard. Probably put her back on crutches.

Now wouldn’t that be a fun one to explain to the Wasp’s medical team?

And even if she did get across the room with no harm done, it just wouldn’t do to have some sailor duck his head through the hatch to find the commodore and her Marine skipper locked in a romantic embrace.

Especially with her being one of those damn Longknifes.

Wouldn’t do at all.

Damn!

“I’m sorry you feel that way,” came out sounding so lame.

“No, that’s not what I mean,” Kris immediately countered her own words.

“Jack, did you have to pick now to drop this on me?” came across way too argumentative.

“You’ve been rather busy since you crashed into that mud bank, Kris. I haven’t been able to get a word in edgewise.”

Kris chuckled wryly. “Yeah, you’re right. Way too busy saving the world or destroying it.”

Jack shrugged.

“Jack, when we get back, do you think you and I could have a quiet dinner. Candlelit, maybe. Could we try to talk this out, because, you see, I don’t know what I’d do if you weren’t in my life.”

“Oh,” sounded like Jack was as surprised to hear that as Kris was that it had slipped out.

That one word hung in the air between them for quite a long time.

Kris couldn’t tell if she was just starting to open her mouth, or Jack started first, but it didn’t matter.

The hatch opened, and Colonel Cortez ducked his head in. “Oh, that’s where you two are. We’ve been looking all over for you. Did you turn Nelly off?”

“No. I’m on. I’m just not taking messages,” Kris’s computer answered.

“Oh,” the colonel said, clearly not understanding what this was all about.

“Jack was just counseling me on my risk-taking,” Kris said. “As usual, he thinks I’m in way over my head. And, as usual, he’s right.”

“We can continue this later,” Jack said. “Like you said. When we get back to human space.”

“Good,” Kris said, through a dry throat and a pounding pulse. “I’d like that. You have some good points I should really take to heart.”

Jack raised an eyebrow at that.

“Engineering has solved the problem with the Wasp’s new reaction mass. We should be settling down to a reliable halfgee acceleration,” Sulwan announced to all hands. “Now you can safely get some serious repair work under way. Sorry about asking for volunteers when it was too hazardous to do anything. Now, if you really are interested in some messy work, let us know.”

Jack eyed Kris.

“I’ll pass on that,” she said.