Tenacious

49

The ship’s moaning around them woke Kris in time for breakfast. They quickly showered. Jack kissed her very black-and-blue spots where she’d been shot, then found some cream to put on them.

It seemed he now had a supply of medical ointments and drugs for all the particulars that ailed her.

Husbands were nice.

They made it to the wardroom while the officers were still eating.

“What’s with the racket?” Jack asked, as they found a space at Captain Drago’s table.

“We’re pulling the Smart Metal out of the Hornet and re-

spinning it into the Wasp. The Hornet’s hull was barely holding out the vacuum by the time the shooting stopped. Their wardroom and mess, along with most everything else, got smashed up pretty bad, so you may notice some new faces at our tables.”

Captain Phil Taussig of the Hornet arrived as he spoke. He had a bandage over one eye and an arm in a sling, but he was balancing a plate full of eggs and bacon with great aplomb.

“Welcome aboard,” Kris said.

“I can’t tell you how glad I am to be aboard. I seem to be making a habit of this. Coming aboard your flag in a roughed-up state. I’ll try to avoid it in the future.”

“If you need a port, we’ll provide the storm,” Nelly said.

“That was a joke,” Kris said.

“Of course.”

Phil took a bite of his bacon and made a face. “I’m not complaining, but this is a bit on the strange side.”

“Locally grown,” Drago said. “Just arrived last night.”

Phil took another bite. “Not bad. Will it mess up my gut anything like the last local rations I had to share?”

“I have it on the best of confidences,” Captain Drago said, “that this chow is as good for you as any you got from your mama’s breast.”

“I was a bottle baby,” Phil said, “much to my wife’s delight in my adult fixations. So, we have ourselves some locals that are really glad for something our princess did. Isn’t that unusual.”

“No doubt, and totally,” Captain Drago agreed. “But there is no accounting for tastes, and we are enjoying their, no doubt, short-lived appreciation.”

“Don’t I ever get credit where it’s due?” Kris asked the overhead.

“No,” “Nope,” and “Not likely” seemed to be the table’s consensus. At least it was from the general and captains. There were a few lowly lieutenants at the foot of the table who kept their own counsel, and, no doubt, tried not to be shocked by the carrying-on of their seniors.

“How’s the reaction mass coming along?” Kris asked.

“Much better than I expected,” Captain Drago said. “Thank heavens for Smart Metal, again. We’ve rerigged several of our longboats into water tenders. They drop down and pick up as much freshwater as their antimatter engines can lift. By late today, we should have enough aboard to allow us to motor quite stately out to that other gas giant you were interested in. By tomorrow morning, I expect to have enough for a safety margin that will warm the cockles of even an old nanny such as myself.”

“Gas giant?” Phil said, swallowing his dried eggs and bacon.

“I want to clean out the last of this rat’s nest,” Kris said.

“They sent twenty-two of their twenty-four ships,” Drago said. “That leaves two, plus whoever they have keeping their hands warm around the four large reactors we’ve spotted over there.”

“What do we have left to fight them with?” Phil asked.

“That’s what I’m waiting to find out today,” Kris said, “and no, Phil, if we don’t have enough firepower, we go home. I’ll even allow for a fifty-percent safety margin.”

“Do we know these dudes well enough to know what fifty percent is for our safety margin?” he asked with a grin.

“You’ve been with me too long,” Kris said with a sigh.

“And, I’d like to point out, I’ve survived all of it. So far.” Phil looked around. “Drago, is there any wood to knock on?”

“It’s all Smart Metal,” the skipper of the Wasp reported.

“I have a real wooden desk,” Kris said. “You can drop by after breakfast and knock on it. You can also try your hand at figuring out what a fifty-percent safety margin is.”

“I think I will.”

So it was that Jack and Phil ended up sitting around Kris’s conference table studying the schematics of the revised and readjusted ships when Penny and Masao dropped in.

“Is that what the new ships will look like?” Penny asked.

“I have no idea what they will actually look like from the outside,” Kris said, “but this is what they will be packing and what will be pushing them through space.”

“Each ship is different,” Penny said after a quick glance at the boards.

“It all depends on what the BEMs left us after the last fight,” Jack said.

“The Wasp-Hornet looks to be in the best shape,” Kris said. “Between the two of them, we can patch together eight forward 20-inch lasers. We have two of the Wasp’s reactors and one from the Hornet to go with the one from the Sisu. We only have three aft lasers. The bad guys were aiming for the stern, and it was hard on reactors and aft batteries.”

“Any chance we can move one of those lasers aft?” Phil asked.

“Not in the time I’m willing to take,” Kris said.

“Sorry about the stern,” Penny said dryly. “I had armor shuttling back and forth from the bow to the stern depending on which way you had us going. So, what will our armor thickness be?” Penny asked, herself likely to be responsible for the defensive station in the next fight.

“Even at Condition Zed, we’ll only have eighty-five percent of the planned defensive depth.”

“How much hell will I have to protect us against?” Penny asked no one, then went on, “What about the Royal-Connie?”

“Aside from getting the best name in this lash-up,” Phil said, taking over the story, since he was standing in front of that pair of ships’ schematics, “it looks like there are only seven lasers surviving from their forward batteries. Aft, we have two lasers and three reactors. Pretty heavy casualties for those two. The armor belt will only have sixty percent of the norm.”

“That’s kind of thin,” Penny said.

“The Intrepid-Bulwark has another good name,” Jack said. “She also has seven lasers forward. Her reactors are in the same state as the Wasp’s, with two of her own good, one of the larger reactors from the Bulwark, and the borrowed one from the Sisu. Aft, she has three lasers. Her armor has again been thinned down a bit. Sixty percent. Maybe fifty-five, depending on how small we make the ship in Condition Zed.”

“The Congress-Endeavor,” Kris said, taking back the story, “sounds somehow dirty. Or maybe Jack’s just having an evil influence on me.”

Jack allowed that he might, and Phil congratulated him on that.

Kris went sternly on. “Only two of the Endeavor’s six lasers survived—one fore and one aft. The casualties among the Alwans were high. Only one of her reactors is still workable. The Congress is in pretty good shape. Four lasers forward and two aft. Two of her reactors are also online. Almost all of the armor they have is from the Congress, and it’s only going to give fifty-five percent of the depth she had in the last fight.”

Penny fixed Kris with a jaundiced eye. “And you want to take this collection of patchwork wrecks into another fight?”

Kris winced. “But there are only two warships over there. For all we know, the reason they stayed behind was that they are not fit for space. We need to wipe this bunch out, once and for all.”

“But if they are combat ready and looking for a fight to defend what’s left of their wives and kids . . .?” Penny said.

“Then we approach them carefully. Come to a halt well out of range and use the advantage our 20-inch lasers give us.”

“Does that sound like a plan to any of the rest of you?” Penny demanded.

“Pretty much,” Phil said.

“Have any of you considered that the more time we spend with this crazy woman, the more likely we are to trot along eagerly with her next insane idea?”

“Yep,” “Pretty much,” and “That’s what I see happening.” That last came from Masao and was accompanied by a broad smile.

“You men!” Penny said, but her show of exasperation was mellowed by a growing grin as well. “Okay, count me in, too.”

Through the day, the schematics of the four compound frigates began to grow on Kris’s boards as chiefs and Sailors went about rationalizing and resolving some of the more difficult problems of pulling gear from one ship and mounting it on another. Storerooms, quarters, water mains, and air ducts had to be moved around as reactors were slipped from one hull to the next. Slowly, a single hull began to take shape that men and women could live in, fight in, and, if necessary, die in.

Kris had made the decision to merge her squadron’s eight ships into four. With that decision made, she found herself mainly an observer as chiefs and Sailors did the work under the supervision of the division heads. Occasionally, a decision got passed higher up.

Phil left most of the calls to his Executive Officer, but occasionally the XO would call him. He’d listen, then politely excuse himself from Kris’s day quarters to consult with Captain Drago on his bridge. They’d talk, resolve the problem, and pass it down.

Kris never had a question passed up to her level. She wasn’t sure just how she felt about her new, rarefied rank that left her twiddling her thumbs as all those around her stayed busy.

When she tried to involve herself in Amanda and Jacques’s work, she found them pretty much ignoring the aliens on board so they could study the society sprawled across the planet below them.

“It really is amazing,” Amanda said. “They have little or no computers, but their economy is complex and global. I know that, historically, we humans did something like this back on Old Earth, but I’ve never had a chance to closely observe a mash-up like this. It’s like I’m in a time machine.”

Kris went back to her quarters and watched as more spaces vanished or were moved around in her ships.

As supper approached, Phil ducked out to talk to Captain Drago for a moment, then both of them presented themselves.

“Admiral, you are invited to a dinner in your honor in the Forward Lounge,” Captain Drago said.

“Dinner in the Forward Lounge?” Kris said.

“The uniform is dress blues with all your medals and decorations,” Phil added.

Kris gave them both the evil eye. “What’s going on here?”

“We will see you in an hour,” Drago said.

“Don’t disappoint us,” Phil added, as the two left.

Kris found her day cabins suddenly emptying as Penny and Masao also vanished away.

“Jack, Nelly, what’s going on?” Kris demanded of the only two who were still with her.

“Nothing mutinous, my love,” Jack said, grinning his most lopsided grin ever.

“So you’re in on it. Et tu, Nelly?”

“Your Latin pronunciation is atrocious, Kris, but yes, I do know, and no, I won’t tell you.”

“Honey, you just have time to shower and get dressed,” Jack said, bowing and ushering Kris toward their night quarters. “Shall we?” was not a question.

“So, just time to shower and get dressed. Not a second for something else?” Kris said with a sly grin.

“Be a good girl, and we shall see.”

“But you always say I’m best when I’m naughty,” Kris said.

Jack sighed. “Naughty and nice, in one long, tall package.”

So she was.