Defender

15

Kris went straight to the bridge as fast as she could bounce off one wall and hit another. She need not have hurried. Captain Drago had nothing new to report.

“They are squawking the exact minimum required by law,” the skipper said. “Their name, their home port, and that they are U.S. warships.”

“All of them, even the big ones?” Kris asked.

“Yes, but who would put just twenty guns on a battlewagon that huge. Oh, they also have 5-inch secondaries. Our gravity anomaly detector says those huge ships are heavy, but no masses like thick armor. Kris, these ships don’t make any sense.”

“So they’re something new. Jack wondered if they were transports to take the entire colony home. Could they do that?”

“Not empty enough,” Senior Chief Beni said, shaking his head. “There’s a lot of heavy stuff inside those ships, but it’s not where an armored belt belongs.”

The bridge crew looked around at each other, but Kris only saw faces as blank as hers.

“Captain, does your Navy experience include anything like this?” Kris asked.

“No, but I asked Cookie what he thought. He said, back in the day when he was a boot ensign, General Longknife’s flag came into a system, just as silent as this. No signal at all. The local admiral and every commanding officer pushed the panic button. Said it was something like a no-notice showdown inspection. Every elephant was running around like a chicken with his head cut off trying to make everything perfect.”

“An interesting mix of metaphors,” Kris said. “What happened?”

“The sector admiral ended up sacked, as well as the admirals commanding the Navy base and Navy yard. Several squadron and division commanders found themselves on the beach along with quite a few captains.”

Kris considered that for a long minute. Then shook her head. “We’ve got no admirals to sack and we’ve already been booted about as far as we can go and still be in the same galaxy. No. Something else is going on.”

She thought for a long moment as the bridge stayed silent. “Prosperity. What kind of a name is that for a warship?”

“There have been a few of them,” Nelly said. “Usually small auxiliaries.”

“Are you sure the Enterprise isn’t the Free Enterprise?” Kris asked slowly.

“You think your Grampa Al has something to do with those two?” Jack asked.

“Call it a hunch, but Prosperity and Canopus just don’t seem cut from the same cloth.”

“There have been several repair and depot ships named Canopus,” Nelly put in.

“And Princess Royal,” Kris said. “What kind of name is that?”

“The Royal Navy,” Nelly said, “I mean the British wet royal navy had a battlecruiser named Princess Royal at one of the greatest sea battles in history.”

Kris still scowled, but Jack was grinning.

“It would honor one of the fightingest captains in a long time,” he said.

Yesterday, Kris would have thrown him a kiss for that kind reflection of her. Maybe a lot more than a kiss. Today, she settled for a smile.

And turned her thoughts back to her problem. She needed more information. The ships were not talking.

“Nelly,” Kris said, “have you tried to contact those ships on Nelly Net?”

“No, Kris, all my kids are here.”

“All but Katsu-san’s Fumio-san.”

“He was on the Sakura,” Nelly said.

“Question, did it head back to Musashi direct or stop off at Wardhaven?”

“Wardhaven’s closer than Musashi,” Captain Drago said.

“Nelly, send to Katsu-san, ‘Ohio, Katsu-san. Doumo arigatou gozaimasu. Did you help design these ships? The new large frigates look just like the fast and heavily armed war wagons I’d want in a fight. The big ones like the Prosperity are a bit too big, don’t you think?’ Send that Nelly to Fumio-san and let’s cross our fingers.”

Nelly started a timer. It looked like it would take a while for the message to get there and more for a reply to get back. Frustrated, Kris headed for her quarters for a shower and a change of uniform.

Abby arrived on the second liberty launch, fussing about having a good night’s sleep interrupted. Cara was none too happy. She’d found kids her own age delighted to find out what computer games were and someone willing to share with them.

Kris considered the joy of sharing a shower with Jack and, in her lone frustration, scrubbed herself pink. Abby had her dress whites, complete with orders and medals laid out. Getting dressed in zero gee was no fun, but Kris got herself fully and properly uniformed before heading back to the bridge, just as the timer was coming up on an hour.

“Nothing, so far,” Captain Drago reported.

Kris settled at her station at Weapons and put her feet in loops so that she could stand if she needed to talk to the engineer from Musashi.

The main screen continued to show the stars above, the green-and-blue planet below. A third liberty launch was on approach while the first back was already dropping down for another load of disappointed Sailors.

Then a portion of the main screen changed to the cheerful face of Kikuchi Katsu, the senior engineer of Mitsubishi Heavy Space Industry and designer of the Wasp.

“I am so glad to see you again, Princess-san. We hurried here as quickly as we could. The Sakura broke its long journey at Wardhaven to give your King Raymond the joyous news that his wife still lives.”

Kris would not have wanted to be a mouse in that room.

“But your brother had already done so much to get frigates under construction at Nuu Docks. First the Intrepid and Fearless, only a bit bigger than your Wasp. But they were also working on something to take the new 20-inch guns that several planets of your United Society had been testing but saw no reason to build. Believe me, now they do, and the other four ships are larger frigates with six 20-inchers forward and four aft.

“Your honorable brother persuaded my most honorable father and your most honorable grandfather to take the question of our competing patents to arbitration. Your king and your most honorable grandfather agreed to merge the two big frigates building in each of the three large battleship slips. I added more to them and turned two of them into the Prosperity class armed transports. I can make them back into two large frigates each, but they are also loaded with mining and factory equipment and people to run them. You will have both warships, freighters, and lunar factories when I am done. Also, the Canopus will be a space station for Alwa until the moon base sends up enough material to make a normal station. Then it, too, will become frigates and ships for mining.”

Kris could imagine the horse trading that had gone on. Still, while Kris and the Sailors and Marines had fought and died to keep the bastards from strip-mining the system, Grampa Al was stepping right in, no need to thank me, and grabbing for everything. Kris was grateful for the new warships but none too sure the colonials would care for the price they’d pay.

A voice was heard from offscreen, and Katsu-san turned. “I am talking to Princess-san Longknife. Why?”

A hand reached in to pull his computer, Fumio-san, from around his neck, and the signal was broken.

“How dare they manhandle one of my children!” Nelly exploded. “I expect a full apology from them, or they won’t be able to trust any computer on their ships.”

“Nelly, please calm down,” Kris asked her computer. “We’ve got a lot of problems here, and I don’t really think they will harm either Katsu-san or Fumio-san. They need them too much. Spinning one ship into several has got to take genius, and I don’t know anyone else who could even try it out here.”

“We’ll see,” Nelly said.

“Promise me you will take no action without telling me,” Kris insisted.

“All right,” Nelly said with a pout.

“Are any of you aware that I’ve been following this?” Granny Rita said, butting in.

Kris chuckled. “I am glad I can honestly say that we didn’t order you to be included in this, but I’m not at all sorry you heard.”

“Is my boy Alex a bit grabby?”

“A selfish miser might describe him quite well,” Abby said, joining them on the bridge.

“Granny Rita,” Kris said, jumping in before Abby’s attitude toward wealth could tie up the conversation for the next hour, “I remember hearing that you had some nanos that you used to leach minerals out of mountains and other sources. Did you just take the stuff, or did you share it with the Alwans? Maybe agree to pay royalties?”

“Let me get Ada in here, but I think we gave the Alwans thirty percent of what we took out back then. Now that we have to get more invasive when we go after minerals, and they like the stuff we make, they want forty percent for their share. Same for our heavy manufacturing. They don’t much care for our dams and smelters, but they want forty percent of what comes from them.”

Kris had heard one word that kind of made it hard to hear the rest of Granny Rita’s report. “You ‘gave’ the Alwans thirty percent. Was that documented in a treaty?”

“Honey, we weren’t even making paper in those days. As for the Alwans, a pledge made in front of two elders is binding. They still haven’t really gotten the idea of writing things down.”

“Granny Rita, the kind of men your little Alex likely sent on this expedition won’t give a second’s thought to anything not signed, notarized, and filed in court.”

“My father was a hardheaded businessman, but not hard-hearted,” Granny said.

Penny stepped forward. “Granny, Alex is a tough case. His dad never had much time for him. You went off to war and never came back. He buried his first wife before the blush was off the marriage. He doesn’t expect anything from the world but what he can grab with his own two hands and hold on to tight. He’s surrounded by a lot of equally hard cases. We think a few of them have even taken shots at Kris when she got in the way of what Alex wanted for Nuu Enterprises, Limited.”

“That wasn’t the way my dad, Ernie Nuu, ran the business,” Rita said, her voice gone hard.

“Granny,” Kris said, “I need you to get some sort of document that records the present forty percent or the previous thirty percent. I’m not expecting that they brought a judge to set up shop here, so we may have some leeway in interpreting this document, but I need something if I’m going to stop what I see coming at us at one and a half gees.”

“You think you can do something if I get a paper?”

“She’s a Longknife,” Jack put in. “Never count her out.”

“We’ll see what I can do,” Granny Rita said. “When’s Raymond due in?”

“Ten, twelve hours. I’ll probably tie him up for a few hours making my report.”

“Don’t count on tying Raymond up. If he’s all set to charge down here, the best you can do, kid, is run alongside him. Don’t get in front. His horns can be dangerous.”

“Trust me, Granny, we’ve butted heads and crossed horns before. I’ve learned when to butt back and when to run.”

“Good luck,” Granny Rita said.

“And good luck to you,” Princess Longknife said. Then she turned to Captain Drago. “Are we prepared to receive the king?”

“Not yet, but we’re on schedule to be there right on time. I’ve taken the liberty of messaging the Fearless and Intrepid. Both of them look to be about our own tonnage. I’ve sent them the design for spinning out a crossbeam and swinging us around each other. I never knew a skipper who didn’t like the idea of putting some weight on his crew. However, the Canopus is spinning itself out. I think it may arrive in orbit already prepared to serve as some sort of space station.”

Kris raised an eyebrow at that.

Senior Chief Beni at Sensors had the forward screen switch to the approaching fleet. It ran down the four leading frigates; two were significantly larger than the other two, then the two huge something-or-others, trailed by something that was going from huge to titanic.

It was growing longer as well as uniformly wider. “Yep, that’s starting to look like the tin can of a basic space station,” Kris said. Having blown one up and defended another, space stations and their structure were no stranger to her.

“Hey, I think they just popped their first dock out,” Jack said.

“They’ll need to balance things just right,” Drago said. “Three docks for us smaller frigates. Then some way to get those four big war wagons balanced without putting them too close to each other. As for those last two. God, I’d hate to have the job of balancing them. If they get out of sync, they could twist the whole station in knots.”

“I’d let those two swing around each other. Spin off a couple of their ships, and get smaller before I dared attach them to the station,” Kris said. “Captain Drago, please send to Monarch, in the clear and wide open enough for the Canopus to copy, ‘my respects and fealty to His Majesty. I respectfully suggest the Prosperity and Enterprise swing themselves bow to bow around each other while the rest of us dock on Canopus.’”

“Comm, send as requested,” the skipper ordered.

Kris settled down to watch the incoming ships for the time it would take a message to cross the space between them. This message would take more time. The Monarch’s communications folks would have to authenticate the message, then walk it to wherever King Raymond I was hanging out. That might add ten to twenty minutes to the elapse time between Kris’s sending and her getting a reply.

Of course, she had no idea where the legendary Ray Longknife hung out when he was pulling a no-notice showdown inspection. Or coming to call on his long-lost wife.

Kris spent time gnawing her lower lip, trying to figure out which she’d prefer to deal with, Ray Longknife, come full legend to inspect a command and see if it could be found wanting, or the family man, so out of practice, to face a woman who had been through a mill of horrors and successes, and was little like the woman he’d once known.

Of course, the man going to meet Rita was nothing like the one she’d sailed off from on a near-suicide mission eighty years ago.

“What are you thinking?” Jack asked as he glided up to take a handhold on Kris’s station.

“I’m remembering all the reasons I joined the Navy. How much I wanted to get out of family things,” she said, seriously, then half snorted. “Not even shipping out to the other side of the galaxy is far enough to get away from my family.”

Jack managed to surreptitiously squeeze her hand while officially getting a better handhold on her station. “Our family doesn’t have to be anything like the families we’re from,” he whispered.

Kris allowed him a smile, but with the entire bridge watching, she had to direct it at the forward screen and hope he saw it reflected back at him.

Her seated, him standing, they waited out the time lapse.

The Canopus continued its metamorphism from huge freighter to space station. At one time, she took on a spin, but only briefly. With the ship decelerating at one and a half gees, there was a clear down aboard. The spin would have made it rough for all hands.

“She spun smoothly,” Captain Drago said. “I’ve been aboard a ship that wasn’t balanced when the skipper put on battle revolutions. She damaged some delicate equipment, and we had a new skipper not ten minutes after we docked. Canopus did that test well.”

The screen came alive.

The king himself was scowling down at Kris, bigger than life.

“My, aren’t you being formal, ‘respects and fealty.’ Not a bad thing to amend to a message where you’re trying to teach your old grampa how to suck eggs. We’ve been planning this for several weeks, kiddo. Trust us to get it right. Longknife out.”

Kris blinked several times.

“Well, that answers where the king is hanging out,” Jack said. “If that wasn’t the bridge of the Monarch, I’m a boot learning how to box the square.”

“Well, I feel put in my place,” Kris said. “I guess they did pay more attention to my reports than I thought.”

“Don’t bet on it,” Senior Chief Beni said from Sensors. “There’s suddenly a whale of a lot of communications going on between the Monarch and those two overweight slugs. It’s not in standard code, but my Nelson is having no problem cracking it. Thank you, Nelly, for the loan of one of your kids.”

“What’s the message?” Kris asked.

“The first message was from the Monarch and contained your instructions for spinning out a pole from each bow to spin around on. The later messages are between the two slugs. Between their cargo and the amount of reaction mass they have left aboard, they are quite a few tons different and the distribution is all balled up. Their skippers are debating how to redesign the swing system to account for that, if it’s even possible.”

“And they wanted to dock those two disasters on the Canopus!” Captain Drago said.

“So Raymond doesn’t want you to teach him to suck eggs, but he’s only too happy to learn how, huh,” came from Granny Rita.

“Apparently,” Kris agreed. “How are things going on your end?”

“It turns out that five years ago, our Minister of Mining and Industry signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the Representative of the Association of Associations for Maintaining Harmony with the Heavy People for Gifts and Arcane Knowledge. You know, our mining guy and their tax man.”

“If you say so,” Kris said.

“Anyway, their G and AK guy is young and has taken on more of our ways, so the idea of committing to paper something as important as them getting a forty-percent take of everything didn’t sound nearly as strange to him as it did to a lot of the other elders.”

“Did the memo only deal with Alwa?” Jack asked.

“Funny you should ask,” Granny Rita said, “You know, we were trying to get them to help us get back up to the Furious and bring down the reactors.”

“Yes,” Kris said, hoping she knew where this was going.

“This Alwan knew they’d want part of the energy from the reactor, so he pushed to have the memo cover everything in the Alwa system. Since most elders don’t recognize the existence of anything over the horizon, this bird was quite far-looking.”

“Well, thank you, Granny. Would you please send up a copy. Your new computer should show you how to do that.”

“Already asked it. It should be showing up any second.”

“I have it,” Nelly said.

“How are your other preparations going?” Kris asked.

“Fine. Fine. We’ll have a party fit for a king,” Rita assured her.

Kris rang off. Nelly projected the memo in front of Kris.

“You think the ink is dry on those signatures?” Abby asked.

“You would question the honor and integrity of my Granny Rita?” Kris said in shock. Shock with a large cup of skepticism in it.

“In a second,” Penny said.

“We’ll let the lawyers argue over it,” Kris said, dismissively. “Skipper, are we ready for the king?

“As ready as we’ll ever be.”

“Your Highness,” came in a carefully cultivated voice.

“Yes, Professor Joao Labao,” Kris said.

“We have several preliminary reports back from our survey and analysis of the alien base ship. Is there any chance you will have the time or desire to hear them before meeting your king?”

“Meet me in my Tac Center,” Kris ordered, “just as fast as you can glide down here.”

“On my way, with full graphics and graphs.”

“Nelly, get my entire team to the Tac Center. Skipper, would you care to attend?”

Captain Drago actually looked just a bit distressed. “I’d love to attend, but I think it better I keep an eye on the Wasp’s developments for a royal visit. Nelly, would you be so kind as to record the discussion and provide me with a copy?”

“I would gladly do that, Captain,” Nelly said, most ladylike.

KRIS, THE CAPTAIN IS STARTING TO WARM TO ME.

THEN DON’T DO ANYTHING TO SCREW UP, Kris said as she drifted from the bridge to her Tac Center.