Furious

64

Captain Drago ordered refueling after breakfast. That involved separating the Wasp into two ships. This time, the smaller, single-engine half did the cloud dancing. The Sakura did the same. Kris mentioned she’d like to go along.

Jack said nothing, but the look on his face told her all she needed to hear. She dropped out of the expedition. Katsu insisted he should go, “just in case.” He returned several hours later, white as a sheet. “We don’t pay the guys who get our reaction mass nearly enough. Not nearly enough.”

Kris had been busy while the two fragments were gathering reaction mass. “Where do I get one of those?” was on several lips, including Brother’s. Kris gave Mitsubishi Heavy Space Industry a full promo, pointing out that the cost of the Wasp, assuming mass production, could be the same as a Typhoon-type fast corvette.

“There are nine construction slips at Nuu Yards on High Wardhaven, three of them battleship-size from the Iteeche War,” Kris pointed out. “They could be turning out a dozen of these frigates every four months. They cost less, have a smaller crew, and are just as good as a battleship.”

“But how much will Mitsubishi want for the modified Smart Metal?”

“I have no idea,” Kris said, “but I hope squabbling over money doesn’t stop Grampa Ray from getting the fleet he wants.”

Honovi just shrugged, as if Kris really didn’t understand the real world.

The Vulcan came alongside, and the two frigates stopped their circling long enough for some heavy stuff to be brought over. Wardhaven had had more recent experience in shoot-outs, and Kris had considered the Wasp too lightly armed.

Now the repair ship sent six twin batteries of 5-inch secondary lasers over to both frigates, and Katsu found himself very busy making adjustments. Kris wanted the Wasp expanded, not just to accommodate the Marines and boffins more comfortably but also to carry enough reaction mass to make all the jumps to the other side of the galaxy without refueling. Grampa Ray’s gifts didn’t just extend to the Hellburners and secondary guns. Both frigates got two dozen of the fast-acceleration missiles with antimatter warheads as well as plenty of foxers and chaff pods.

Next fight, Kris would be loaded for bigger bears.

While shipfitters roamed the Wasp, Kris took Senior Chief Beni to lunch and asked him if he’d like one of Nelly’s kids. Professor Labao just happened to be in earshot and asked if he could be included. Captain Drago was also within hearing, but he declined with haste. “Watch out for the nightmares,” he warned.

“What nightmares?” the chief and professor asked together.

“I do not make mistakes twice,” Nelly assured them, as they adjourned to the ship’s electronic-maintenance shop so Nelly could guide the chief in creating the headgear his son had designed to help her kids commune directly with their humans. Kris corralled Katsu and included him in the upgrade.

An hour later, Kris left three new man-machine interfaces. The old sea dog was deeply intent; the professor and the engineer looked downright euphoric.

The Wasp’s crew was also augmented by quite a few Sailors from the old Wasp. That included the old Marine company at full strength, leaving Kris with two Marine companies on board. While Captain Drago grumbled and had Katsu expand his ship, Abby was quite happy to have Sergeant Bruce in easy reach. Nelly was also glad; Bruce brought Chesty with him.

Now all six of her surviving kids were home.

Two days later, the frigates got under way for Jump Point Beta at two gees while the U.S. cruisers herded the merchant ships toward Alpha at one gee.

The Wasp and the Sakura hit the jump at two hundred thousand klicks, spinning at thirty-five RPMs clockwise and goosed up to 3.5 gees. Nelly was quite pleased with the results.

“We jumped right over the Iteeche Empire and we’re within five light-years, both in azimuth and range, of my projections. This system has three of the new jumps. Aim for the middle-distant one and let’s hold four gees. We’ll take this one at thirty-five RPMs counterclockwise and tack toward the edge of the galaxy.”

Nelly guided them on a course that first headed them toward the edge, then more inward of the galaxy. After the next jump, they were up to seven hundred thousand klicks, and they made their way to the next two jumps at a pleasant one gee.

The Wasp had started out at thirty-five thousand tons. The Hellburners had added thirty thousand tons; these were slightly smaller than the first ones. Tests had showed that the antimatter hadn’t gotten to all the neutron material, and rather than waste three thousand tons of the stuff, these missiles were smaller. At sixty-five thousand tons, the two frigates had then added thirty thousand tons of reaction mass spread around in a whole lot of medium-size tanks. A conventional ship could never have done that.

More and more, as the Wasp grew and shrank around Kris, she was sure she was riding the wave of the future.

On the far side of the galaxy, Nelly ordered them to four-gee deceleration, and they came to rest in a system closer to the rim but only one slow jump from where the Intrepid had located the new civilization.

Kris ordered the two frigates to a gas giant. The Sakura Jr. headed down to do some cloud dancing and capture needed reaction mass. The Wasp Jr. trotted over to the jump that should take them to the bird people and poked the periscope through.

Everyone held their breath while Senior Chief Beni went through the electromagnetic spectrum. “There’s radio and TV signals from there. They’re in the bird format. None of that impenetrable space-raider crap. I think you folks did it.”

That brought a cheer and a sigh and a lot of other hard-to-name feelings. Too many good men and women had died so the people in that next system could live.

Kris found herself whispering a prayer of thanksgiving to any god listening.

“Kris,” Nelly said. “My kids and I have been going over the original traffic that came back with the Intrepid. Yes, I know we should have done this sooner, but we’ve been kind of busy until now.”

“Spit it out, Nelly,” Kris said.

“The Intrepid thought they’d just made their first space launch. I’m not sure that’s entirely right. They may have been returning to space. And the rig that they used. There were no close-ups of it. And what we saw was very grainy. Optics is not their strong suit.” A picture appeared in a window of the bridge’s main screen.

It was way past blurry. “Can you clean that up, Nelly?”

“We’ve tried, Kris. The bottom is clearly an old-fashioned liquid-fuel rocket, obsolete since before humans got serious about leaving Earth. It’s what’s on top that has us puzzled.” Nelly zoomed in, and the picture got even worse.

“I can’t tell anything about that,” Kris said.

“Yes, I know, Kris, but it’s about the right length and width for the kind of gigs they knocked together during the Iteeche War to move a few people from ship to ship or ship to planet.”

“Do we have a picture of one of those gigs?” Jack asked.

“Yes, but not really,” Nelly said. “It’s from an archive that no one thought we’d ever need. It’s been compressed six or seven times. The metadata is vague.”

“So is the picture,” Kris said. She looked at the two pictures and could tell nothing about either. She told Nelly so.

“Yes, Kris, I know they don’t look like much, but our analysis says there is a fifty-percent chance that they are one and the same. Usually, I don’t bother you with fifty-percent probabilities, but this one . . .”

It was unusual for Nelly to be at a loss for words. Very unusual.

“Let’s get this fueling over with and see what’s over there,” Kris said.

Twelve hours later, they took the last jump at dead slow with the frigates rock steady.

Once in system, they put on one-gee acceleration toward the source of all their curiosity.