Tenacious

4

Abby was in the passageway outside Kris’s quarters.

“You want to see me?” Kris said, as she and Jack came to a halt in front of Kris’s erstwhile domestic.

“It don’t seem to me that you’re going to need your hair done for any balls on this alien home planet. Anybody after your skin is going to be doing it with monster warships, not assassins. I could be wrong, but it looks to me like your latest promotion has kind of done me outta my job.”

“I’ll never fire you,” Kris said, none too sure where this conversation was going. That was not an unusual state of affairs whenever Abby finally condescended to a serious talk with Kris.

“I’ve been working with Pipra Strongarm for the last month when you didn’t have nothin’ for me to do, you know.”

“Idle hands are the devil’s workshop.”

“I don’t need no idle hands to be working for him,” Abby said.

“So, you want to stay here with Pipra and try your hand at business. Tell me, is it you or that brat of Nelly’s around your neck that she wants?”

Abby had inherited one of Nelly’s kids. The maid’s relationship with Mata Hari had been off and on. Apparently it was on at the moment and didn’t involve any sneaky stuff.

Then again, Kris would never bet against sneaky where Abby and her computer were concerned.

“She likes us both,” Abby spat. “The degree I earned back on Earth was in business management, and Pipra is finding it hard to put together a staff that understands the mess we’re in.”

“And you have survived around one of those damn Longknifes long enough to know just how bad the messes can be,” Kris agreed.

Abby cast Kris a look. “You have to admit that this mess kind of outdoes your usual.”

“It does,” Kris agreed. “Who else will be wanting to stay behind?”

Kris would bet Wardhaven dollars to donuts she knew the answer to her question, but she wanted to hear it from Abby.

“Sergeant Bruce has gotten his next stripe. He’s a Gunny now, working dirtside as much as up here. Whoever Jack leaves in charge here will need the help of at least one of Nelly’s kids. Cara will also stay with me. Her fourteenth birthday is coming up, and while she still thinks of herself as the first member of the Marine Corps Auxiliary to the Wasp’s Marine detachment, Pipra and the boffins are seeing that she gets a good education. And we are using Dada for stuff on the business side.”

“Nelly, do you have any problem with this?” Kris asked.

Nelly had had definite problems with the idea of one of her kids being handed off to a business tycoon, either the head of Mitsubishi Heavy Space Industry or Kris’s Grampa Al. Especially Grampa Al. Survival, however, made for different decisions.

“I have no problems with Mata working with Ms. Strongarm. She shows a refreshingly creative and ethical approach to our situation. I’m glad to see Dada doing more than playing computer games with Cara and being an educational device. I’m also glad to see her being brought up to speed with more complex challenges. Kris, we’ve already discussed this, and I agree these three should stay behind and help where they can.”

“I figured you had, Nelly,” Kris said. “Otherwise, Abby would not have known how and when to just happen to run into me and present me this proposal. Okay, Abby, you’re still my employee, and don’t forget that, but for now, you’re on loan to Pipra. Have fun and charge her all the market will bear in consulting fees.”

“I wouldn’t charge a penny less,” Abby said, and stepped aside.

Kris and Jack were finally able to enter their quarters.

Some people might find it hard to think of a ship’s stateroom as home, but for Kris, her quarters on the Wasp was the closest she’d come to a home since joining the Navy and doing her level best to get ship duty. Her day quarters were quite spacious. Clearly, with her ashore, someone had shrunk her night cabin down to next to nothing. Wasn’t it nice having Smart Metal^TM that you could push around with an app?

An app that had caused a near revolution in what the crew could do with their quarters.

Kris and Jack had been neither the first nor the last to merge their quarters and set up housekeeping together, official or otherwise.

With no shore stations to ship anyone to for punishment, and no one to replace them with anyway, discipline among the Sailors and Marines on the far side of the galaxy from the nearest human space was . . . delicate. When contract personnel and the scientists aboard began using an app to open doors between quarters, it had brought on a Navy leadership challenge way past epic proportions.

Kris had followed the Navy Way of handling it. She’d convened a committee of senior chiefs and ships’ executive officers and told them to fix it. After a sleepless night of gnawing at the problem of commanding a lot of young, healthy, and unattached troops who might die at any moment and would have to depend on each other for their own survival, the Alwa Defense Sector had written its own fraternization policy.

It had survived the test of its first battle. Kris could only hope her innovative approach to human relations in the crucible of war would continue to hold together.

Pipra was already seated at the conference table that dominated Kris’s day quarters. As usual, Kris’s desk was clean though she suspected her in-box had reports and messages stacked up past the virtual overhead.

Before Kris could settle into her chair at the table, Pipra was reeling off problems at the mines, fabricators, mills, and everywhere in between. Jack gave Kris a smile and a shrug before he took their small travel bags and disappeared into their quarters. Quickly back, he gave Kris a jaunty wave and allowed that he would check in on the Marines while Kris attended to business.

As he left, Captain Drago sauntered in. Had he planned for moments like this when he arranged for Kris’s admiral’s cabin to be just off his own bridge? The first time Pipra paused for a breath, he asked Kris, “You enjoy your vacation?”

“Too short. When can you get the Wasp underway for a month-long voyage of exploration?”

Pipra glanced at what she was about to read from and put it aside. “So you are going to do this crazy visit to the alien home world I’ve been hearing about.”

“Since I didn’t know I was going to do this crazy thing until six hours ago, I’m intrigued that you knew about it before I did,” Kris said.

“Well, everyone knew that your scout ship was back and that it found the alien home world. You being one of those damn Longknifes, I figured you’d be chasing off after it.”

“First, I’m your CEO, not a damn Longknife,” Kris said, but softened it with a smile. “And second, from what our scout found, the home world has been abandoned by the alien space raiders for some time.”

“Then why are you going?” her senior vice president shot back.

“A good question. So you don’t think I should go?”

“No, I didn’t say that. Information is power. Knowing where these crazy, bloodthirsty whatevers came from might tell us something. I’m just wondering if now is the time to do it?”

“And a better time would be?” Kris asked.

“There won’t be a better time or a worse one,” Captain Drago put in. “You pay your money, and you take your chances. Me, I figure sooner is better. My best guess is those alien observers will need time to report back. Then more time while they think about what they saw. With three huge clans thinking on that, it may take them quite a while to decide on anything.”

“There may be only one person who matters on each of those base ships,” Kris said.

Captain Drago dismissed that thought with a wave of his hand. “Even in a dictatorship, there are currents of opinion that have to be considered. I never heard of a system that didn’t have competing power blocks that had to be weaseled and browbeaten into doing something.”

“I hope you’re right, Captain, because I’m betting that that’s the way it is. Please ask Commodore Kitano to drop in at her earliest convenience. I’m going to steal her squadron, what’s left of it, and leave her with the hot potato of Acting Commander, Alwa Defense Sector.”

“I don’t think she’ll be too bothered by being left behind. Her Princess Royal is one of the ships that took so much damage that it’s tied up to the pier awaiting more Smart Metal.”

“It is?”

“Yep.”

“Skipper, we’ve got action at one of our close-in systems,” came from the bridge. Drago trotted out of Kris’s quarters. She followed him, with Pipra at her elbow.

“How could the aliens jump into one of the systems so close?” Pipra asked.

“They couldn’t, not the last time we saw them,” Kris said grimly, wondering just how much of a fight she could put up against whatever was headed her way.

“Talk to me,” Drago ordered his bridge crew.

Old Chief Beni was on sensors. “The reporting buoy is in the next system. It jumped immediately into ours to holler a warning. The receiving buoy ducked back into the other system to gather more information.”

“The next system? Didn’t we make a long jump into that system on our own voyage out here and use it to slow down in before jumping into this system?” Kris said, trying to keep Pipra from panicking. Maybe keep herself from panicking, too.

“Did the reporting buoy say anything about the arriving ships?” the captain asked.

“No, sir, it just reported ships in the system,” the chief answered. “It didn’t say which jump they used or how many of them there were. A reactor shows up, and it jumps in and reports. We’re lucky it was the next system out, or we’d be having all kinds of delays for the information to travel across the system by speed of light. If it’s the sixth system out, it might take us a couple of days to even know it happened.”

“The good news and the bad,” Pipra said with a nervous laugh. “It’s close enough to not make us bite our nails while waiting. And, if it’s bad news, we won’t have to worry too much before it kills us.”

The skipper scowled at the businesswoman, but said, “Chief, when will we get an update?”

“The second buoy is supposed to jump back into our system and give us a report in five to fifteen minutes, depending on how much it’s learning. Sir, it’s already happened. We’re just waiting to hear what the automatics did hours ago.”

“Yes, Chief, I know,” Captain Drago said, not enjoying the reminder.

“Report coming in,” Chief Beni announced. “Fifty-nine groups of reactors have been identified. They match human production models.”

Kris turned to Pipra. “It appears that our reinforcements are arriving early.”

Pipra, with no need to appear fearless in the face of the Sailors on the bridge, leaned back against the bulkhead and let out a long sigh of relief. “Give me a minute. I’m not sure my legs will support me.”

“When you feel up to it, we have further problems to juggle. Food, general production, and rearmoring ten of my plucked chickens.”

“Yes,” Pipra said, a bit breathless, “and it looks like we’ll have the time to do something about all of those.”

“Food,” Kris said, remembering that her salvation also meant more mouths to feed. “More ships mean we need more food. I hope they brought along their own supplies. Chief, can you tell me how many of those reactors are warship types and how many are freighters?”

“No, ma’am. Sorry, but I can only tell you what I’m told, and they’re busy telling me what we ordered them to get fast and easy. If you want a specific question answered, I can send it off. It will likely take twenty, thirty hours to get an answer. More than likely, if you just wait, you’ll get the answer in a couple of hours, anyway.”

The retired chief had one of those looks on his face that senior NCOs used for particularly dumb questions from officers.

“No, Chief. No rush. Just tell me what you know when you know it.”

“Will do, Admiral.”

Back in Kris’s day cabin, Pipra was on her phone, telling her chief associates that help was coming. If information was power, it was a power whose Sell By date could be very short.

Kris settled at her conference table and drummed her nails for only a few seconds before her business subordinate rang off and got down to work.