Defender

5

For the next quarter hour, they circled the wreck.

Then the alien got sneaky and reversed course.

The Wasp also quickly flipped ship and took off in the opposite direction.

Unfortunately, that gave away that they had better situational awareness than the hostile. He noticed that quickly enough and started shooting up the hulk with all those lasers the aliens seemed to oversupply their ships with.

In fifteen minutes, they’d lost so many sensors that they could no longer communicate with them by tight beam. Rather than lose more of Nelly’s next child’s brainpower, they closed their net down.

“He’s going to switch his direction real soon,” Drago muttered.

“So let’s change the game. How about hide-and-seek.”

“Explain yourself, Princess.”

“There’s a big hole in the wreck. I’d hate to take the love-boat-size Wasp in there, but at Condition Zed, we’re pretty small.”

“Nelly, have you mapped that hole?” the captain asked.

“No, but Professor Labao’s computer has.”

“Lay in a course to back us into said hole next time we pass it. Be careful with my ship, Nelly. I like it just the way it is.”

A few seconds later, Nelly flipped the Wasp, slammed on the brakes with a three-gee deceleration, and brought the ship to a dead halt in space. In a human blink, she swung the ship around, aft end to the hole in the hulk, and did a little twisting dance as she backed it into a hole that was doing its own bit of rock and roll.

There was no crunch of metal.

They were hardly in the shade of the hole before the alien ship slid by a good thirty thousand klicks out. Not only was he changing his direction, he was also edging out to get a longer horizon.

“Now what do we do?” Drago asked.

“Nelly, deploy visual sensors to the right and left, above, and below our hideout. Whatever direction he comes from next time, I want to get enough warning to accelerate out after he passes and get a shot at his engines.”

“Doing it, Kris. By the way, Kris, we got the full coverage of that ceiling I wanted and one of the nanos discovered a boot with the leg still in it. We should be able to get DNA off it.”

“Good! Now, Nelly, where are my visuals?”

“Coming online.” The forward screen divided to show what was ahead of them as well as a large cross in all four major points of the compass.

“Kris, dear,” came Granny Rita’s voice over the net, “I do hate to joggle your elbow again at a time like this, but the Alwans would like you to make a new try at contacting the alien. They feel that the demonstration you have given should persuade it to surrender to your will.”

“Sorry, Granny, it ain’t gonna happen. This is the fifth time we’ve run into these bastards. The only one that didn’t end with one side annihilated was the one where our ship managed to run away. Fights with these people are to the death. Tell your friends to get used to it. Either they die, or we die, and I’m busy doing everything I can right now to make sure they’re the ones dead.”

“Thank you, love, I had to try.”

NELLY, WHAT ARE THOSE CRAZY BIRDS TALKING ABOUT?

SORRY, KRIS, I CAN’T FOLLOW THEM. THEY ARE USING TOO MANY SOCIAL REFERENCES TO THINGS THAT HAPPENED IN THE PAST. LANGUAGE IS MORE THAN EACH WORD.

ENOUGH, NELLY.

The alien was getting smarter. He’d adjusted his orbit by fifty-five degrees. Kris barely caught a glimpse of him as he headed for an orbital crossing that wasn’t too far from their hideout. He was also blasting away at the wreck, using his firepower to swat at anything and nothing.

“There’s a chance that one of his wild shots may blast our hole,” Nelly said. “Should I back us deeper?”

“No,” Kris and Captain Drago said at the same time.

“Get ready to boot us out of here on my order,” Kris said. “Jink the way you think you have to, Nelly, but get the forward end of the Wasp aimed at that bastard.”

“Jinking pattern standing by,” Nelly said.

Kris forgot to breathe as the alien slid close to their hole but didn’t pass directly over them. The cave did take a near hit. A girder collapsed across the exit.

KRIS, Nelly started.

RAM IT, Kris ordered. DRAGO CAN COMPLAIN TO ME ABOUT THE DING. NOW GO!

The Wasp leapt into a three-gee acceleration, then warped its bow around to chase the alien across the sky.

The crosshairs on the lasers settled on the now-targetable aft engineering space. Kris fired three, holding just Laser 4 in reserve.

Two of the lasers slammed into the ship but seemed to do nothing. The other one did critical damage to one of the reactors. The ship began to slew around as a couple of the rocket engines vented plasma. Its lasers were suddenly aimed at empty space, but they kept right on firing even as the rear of the ship began to vaporize.

Kris put her last 18-inch laser into where she would have put one of the two forward reactors, the ones that powered the life support and the lasers. Her guess was good. The hit loosed demons that gobbled up the bow of the ship.

Its lasers only died as the entire ship converted itself to a ball of expanding gas.

Nelly cut acceleration to a single comfortable gee as the bridge crew silently took in that they would live. The aliens were dead, paying the full price for starting this fight. The humans would live to see another sunset. They would taste dinner. They still had the chance of finding someone who might love them back as strongly as they loved them.

“Is it over?” Granny asked over the net.

“It looks that way,” Kris answered. “Nelly, do you have a visual on the jump point?

“Yes, Kris, and it’s quiet. I’m launching two standard low-tech buoys to take up station on either side of that jump. It will tell us anything we need to know while we drop back to the wreck and pick up the nanos we left behind.”

“Do we have to?” the new navigator asked.

“Those probes are Smart Metal that we can use for armor and matrix that Nelly intends to use for her next child,” Kris said. “Yes, we will return and pick them up. Who knows? Some of the nanos may have data we didn’t get a chance to download while we were fighting for our lives. Battles can be so distracting,” Kris said through a grin.

“I am so glad that Your Highness understands the hunger of her scientists for discovery,” Professor Joao Labao added on net.

That drew boos from several of the bridge hands, but they were careful to keep their comments low and see that their mikes were off.

Thirty minutes later, Nelly reported that all her probes that were still able to move were back on board.

“Navigator, set course for Alwa,” Captain Drago ordered. “One point five gees, if you please. All hands, we will maintain battle stations until we exit this system. Defense, we will maintain Condition Zed until the same. Commodore Rita Nuu Ponsa, if you feel that the one and a half gees is too much for your delegation, you may invite them to stay in their gee tanks. Since we won’t be jinking, I believe that we can pop the lid off the tanks and let them breathe on their own.”

“Thank you, Captain. Please have someone get us out of these coffins.”

Kris rolled her egg for what would have been her Tac Center.

Jack made to follow.

“You can park that egg wherever you want, Jack, but not where I’m going. Granny is not presentable and, if I have to pop this egg open to help her and her Alwans, I won’t be either.”

Jack eyed Kris as if to say, “And I’d be seeing what that I haven’t?” but kept his reply to a gentlemanly, “Aye, aye, ma’am.”

Penny rolled her egg after Kris. “I can lend a hand.”

HOW COME THE ALWANS GET TO SEE YOU NAKED AND I CAN’T? Jack said over Nelly Net.

BECAUSE I SAY SO, AND LET’S SHUT THIS DOWN. I DON’T WANT TO SCANDALIZE THE COMPUTERS.

KRIS, I FIND HUMAN SEXUALITY VERY INTERESTING, BUT HARDLY SCANDALOUS.

NELLY, SHUT UP. JACK, SHUT UP. PENNY, LET’S GET THIS OVER WITH.

So they did. Kris found it interesting the way the Alwans looked anywhere else but at the naked humans who helped make their lives less claustrophobic.

To no apparent question from Kris, Granny whispered, “I’ll explain later.”

The sigh as the Wasp edged through the next jump had to be measured on the Richter scale.