Daring

54

Kris waited until she was back in the privacy of her own cabin before she demanded Nelly launch into that little talk that she’d failed to schedule sooner.

“Talk to me,” Kris said, as the door clicked shut.

“Good, we have a screen I can use. It is so often easier to show you humans something than it is to explain it. Don’t you find words so limiting?”

“It’s show-and-tell time, Nelly. What are the beans that you are working so hard on not spilling.”

“I am not avoiding this topic, Kris. I just didn’t think we should be discussing it on the bridge.”

Clearly, Nelly was not going to let Kris have the last word on this. Kris kept her mouth shut and, for good measure, blanked all thought from her mind.

Denied more argument, Nelly brought the screen in Kris’s room to life.

“We used the cloud-dancing run that the Wasp made as a model for a simulation of your three launches making a run. Clearly, no two runs will ever be identical, but we do have all the vectors that were applied to the Wasp, and we then applied them to your proposed flight. You crashed forty-seven times in the first twenty minutes of the flight.”

On the screen, the three launches spread out in a rough triangle with the balloot in the middle. They were pulled apart. They crashed into each other. They wrapped the cable around themselves and were cut in half. Kris had never thought you could die in so many different ways in such a small amount of time.

“So, Nelly, how else could we fly that refueling run?”

“We tried using longer cables or shorter cables.”

“How’d that work?”

The screen showed more simulations of crashes or launches coming apart. “All of those were worse. We’d guessed right the first time on what would be the best array. Problem was, there wasn’t any survivable array. Kris, individual craft are not meant to fly that close together. Not in lousy air like this. Not tethered together. Yes, I know aerial demonstration teams do some really nifty stuff, but they are not tied together, and they never fly in bad weather.”

“Nelly, I’ve got Jack to tell me what I can’t do. You’re job is to tell me how I can get away with what I want to do. Bad computer. No donut.”

“We did come up with something,” Nelly started.

Kris cut her off. “Who is this ‘we’ you keep talking about?”

“Well, those boffins Tweedle Dum and Tweedle Dee, who came up with the idea of how to use Smart Metal^TM to peer through jump points, are still on the Wasp. They really got intrigued by the complexities of programming Smart Metal^TM. We worked with them and the three programmers they found. They were still on the Wasp, too.”

“There’s still a ‘we’ in there, Nelly.”

“All my kids worked on this with me, Kris.”

“Okay, and what did you come up with?”

“If you use cables made of Smart Metal^TM, it is possible that you can do this. But you will need a lot of really smart and really fast computers working to reprogram the stuff in micro real time.”

“How many and what type of computers?”

“Me and all my kids, Kris.”

That stopped Kris in her tracks. “They’ll need to ride along in the launches?”

“We will all be as much at risk as you will be, Your Highness. Noblesse oblige for all of us.”

“Jack and Penny and the rest of the crew won’t have to go, will they?”

“That’s a tough call, Kris. We’re used to working with and through one particular human. Yes, in theory, all we’ll be doing is working with the cables, shortening them and lengthening, but I don’t know if it would be a good idea to ‘juggle our elbows’ so to speak. I just won’t know until we’ve done it.”

“And then, we’ll either have pulled it off, or we won’t.” Kris chewed on this for a long moment. “You won’t need Cara and her Dada.”

“When it comes to programming and mathematical calculations, Dada is just as fast as the rest of us.”

“But you can’t ask a kid to take this risk. Can’t you at least put Dada on one of the bosun’s mates flying the launches?”

“Kris, Charlemagne used to draft thirteen-year-old kids into his army.”

“In those days, they only drafted boys,” Kris pointed out, then wished she hadn’t.

“Why don’t we talk to Abby and Cara about this?”

“What are you going to do about your two kids that don’t normally have partners?”

“Professor Scrounger in supply has worked with one. My other child is going through the psychological profiles of the women on board to see if one matches close to Amber Kitano. If one does, they will fly the refueling mission.

“Kris, you need to face up to one painful fact. This flight either works or the Wasp will very likely be left here in orbit, unable to get under way. The possible fate of those who fly with you is no worse than the sure death by starvation, asphyxiation, and madness that waits for the rest if we fail.”

“Nelly, I knew you were going to say that next, and yes, I know that’s why we’re making this mad flight. Now that you’ve let the cat out of the bag, said the words I really didn’t want to hear, give me a few minutes to get used to it, okay?”

“Yes, Kris.”

On the screen, the three launches flew. Now the cables lengthened when they got knocked around, or took up the slack when they were nearly slammed together. The launches were wrapped in a collar of Smart Metal^TM, so when they flipped over entirely, the cable end ran around the collar and did not wrap around the ship, cutting it in half.

On the screen, in the simulation, it worked.

Would it work in a real, rapidly changing flight?

No way to know until she dared it.

And Kris would have to bet not only her life but the lives of everyone who mattered to her on one wild throw of the dice.

There were times when life really stank.

“Nelly, as soon as the Wasp drops out of high-gee deceleration, I want you to call my team together. Scrounger included. Cara included. Tell them I need to talk to them in my Tac Center.”

“I will do that, Kris. What shall I do now?”

“Leave me alone and let me see if I can sleep after this little talk.”

“There was a reason why we did not have this little talk sooner.”

“Thanks for nothing, Nelly.”

“You are welcome for nothing, Kris.”