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  “Comm, send to Intrepid,” Kris snapped. “Decelerate hard and place a boarding party aboard that ship. It fired at the Princess Royal, and I want to know why and in whose name it did so.”

  “Aye, aye, ma’am,” came back immediately, and Kris’s squadron began a delicate dance as they came through the jump to discover not at all what they had expected.

  “I surrender the conn,” Kris said, letting out a breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding. She’d leave these problems to her skippers. They weren’t finding anything nearly as bad as she had.

  “I have the conn,” Captain Ajax said firmly.

  “I’ll be in my quarters,” Kris said. “When you have a report on the Princess Royal’s damage and can be spared from the bridge, Captain Ajax, please report to me.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” was cold and with sharp edges.

  Kris left the bridge and climbed the ladder to Flag Country. She was not happy that she had jumped, literally, into running the P. Royal, but damn it, the crew was green and not responding to this first whiff of gun powder fast enough.

  NELLY, HOW LONG DID THAT BATTLE TAKE? IT SEEMED LIKE FOREVER.

  EIGHTEEN SECONDS, KRIS, FROM OUR COMING THROUGH THE JUMP TO THAT BATTLESHIP BLOWING UP.

  ONLY EIGHTEEN SECONDS?

  YES, MA’AM.

  Maybe I did jump the gun? Kris thought.

  In her day quarters, she found Jack and several nannies trying to soothe a very unhappy Ruth. Kris opened her arms for the child, and everyone was smart enough to give Ruth to her. Opening her shipsuit, Kris settled into a rocker and began nursing her infant. Ruth settled down for a bit of comfort food. Kris soon found herself alone in her quarters as all did the smart thing and left her to herself.

  “Nelly, lower the lights.”

  “Do you want to talk, Kris?”

  “No, Nelly. Just lower the lights.”

  22

  Jack was the first to risk knocking at her door. Only after he identified himself did she say, “Enter.”

  He must have asked Sal for a rocking chair because one appeared, he settled into it, and they rocked quietly for a long time.

  “Look at us. Just like an old married couple,” Jack finally said.

  “You think we’ll survive long enough to qualify for a pension?” Kris asked.

  “We’ve survived another day,” Jack answered.

  “The day is yet young.”

  “I’ve never seen you move so fast,” he said after letting them digest that.

  “I’ve never had everything I love so much on the line.”

  “Is that what it was? Fear for me and Ruth?”

  “Say terror, and you might be closer.”

  Jack let her consider her own words for a bit.

  “Do you think we could go back and leave Ruth with someone?” Kris finally said. “Maybe Child Protective Services?”

  “Not my mom or yours?” he asked, risking just the hint of a smile.

  “I didn’t realize what I was getting her into.”

  “Didn’t you? You wanted three squadrons. You accepted that extra armor. You drilled the squadron. You are no passenger. You are loaded for bear.”

  “I sent my flagship through the jump first.”

  “I’ll admit that was stupid,” Jack said, giving her a sidelong glance. “I chalk it up to force of habit.”

  “Will Ruth survive my cleaning up my act?”

  Jack let that question hang there before changing the topic.

  “As for going back, I’d think what we just ran into says things up ahead are way too bad for us to waste any more time before we do something about it.”

  Kris scowled at Jack, but she couldn’t argue with his logic. Still, she wasn’t quite ready to give up. “Likely you’re right, but why do me and mine have to pay the price for everyone else’s being in such a mess?” Kris asked, and tasted more vehemence in her words than she’d intended. No. More than she wanted to let out.

  What she’d said was exactly what she felt.

  “I’ve been with you close to six years. Not one day has been easier than today,” Jack told her flatly.

  “But I’m tired of days like today.”

  “And you’ve been telling everyone who will listen that after this last one, you quit. Well, that’s later. This is now. Suck it up, Soldier, and soldier.”

  Jack put a lot of force into his words, but he kept his voice low. Ruth had fallen asleep at Kris’s breast.

  Kris took a deep breath, and let it out slowly.

  Okay, once more unto the breach.

  “Nelly, get the nannies in here.”

  A moment later, Li O’Malley paraded the five others into Kris’s day quarters. That they couldn’t even keep out of step as they reported to her, backs ramrod straight, told Kris that Grampa Trouble was looking after her again.

  “Li, I want Ruth’s bassinet converted to a high-gee station unless something else is required. I want it programmed to switch to a survival pod as well. At least one, and preferably two of you should be in bed or sitting in a station ready to convert to high gee or survival pod at all time.”

  “Aye, aye, ma’am,” rang like you’d expect from a Gunny.

  “Work with Nelly to see that these changes are made. If you have any ideas for changes in equipment or policy, pass it to me through Nelly.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Now, put Ruth down for a nap. Nelly, have Agent Foile report soonest with his team.” Kris handed off the infant, corralled her breasts back into her nursing bra, and was just zipping up her shipsuit when the Secret Service team reported.

  “As you have seen from the assassination attempts and this last bushwhack, someone really doesn’t want me showing up on Greenfeld,” Kris said.

  The agent nodded.

  “I want you to go over the records of this ship’s crew with a fine-tooth comb. Check financials again. Look into their families. Is there a grandmother that needs an operation to keep her alive? Is there anything out there that might be used to get hooks into any Sailor, Marine, officer, or civilian aboard the P. Royal?”

  “We’ll get on that right away,” Foile said.

  “Also, I want to know any applicable chatter from any source aboard ship. If someone says Joe is acting strange, I want Joe looked into.”

  This got a frown from Foile. “How much do you want us digging into private matters?”

  Kris didn’t need to be hit over the head with the word private.

  “Mahomet is your computer expert, isn’t he?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Mahomet, you may work with Nelly to access any means of communication aboard. This is the Navy. Folks accept the needs of security.”

  “If you say so, Your Highness,” didn’t show that Foile was convinced.

  “Yes, I say so. The safety of the ship is paramount, and we can’t say what an effort to kill me won’t do to the ship.”

  “She does have a point,” Jack said.

  “What do you Navy types say, ‘logged and noted’?”

  “Exactly. Now, I expect the skipper of the Princess Royal to walk through that door any moment now, if you will tackle the elephant I’ve assigned you . . .”

  The Secret Service team headed for the door.

  “Kris, Captain Ajax would like to report to you at a time convenient for you.”

  “Tell her, Nelly, that she always has the number one slot on my schedule.”

  Apparently, their schedules were in sync because Rick and Leslie had to stand aside to allow Ajax in.

  She reported to Kris crisply. “I have the reports you asked for.”

  “Good, would you mind if the general stayed in our meeting?”

  “I have no problem with that.”

  “Would you care to sit down?
” Kris offered.

  “No, ma’am, I’d rather stand,” told Kris this would be a rough meeting.

  “Kris, we have a problem,” Nelly said.

  For a moment, rage at this interruption flashed on Ajax’s face, but only for a moment. She quickly molded her face to Navy bland.

  “What’s our problem, Nelly?”

  “The damaged battleship has been drifting toward the jump. A moment ago, its maneuvering jets lit off for a few seconds, and it’s now headed straight for the jump.”

  “Damn,” Kris growled, and stood. “Comm, get me the captain of that bushwhacker.”

  A moment later, a man in a nondescript uniform filled Kris’s screen. His bridge looked like it had seen better days.

  “This is Admiral Longknife. Why have you corrected your course to take you through that jump?”

  “Are we headed toward the jump?” the fellow said, almost sounding sincere. “Our maneuvering jets just burped. We didn’t know what they had done. You made a wreck of this ship. So, are you going to blast a helpless wreck out of space?” sounded a bit like a plea but more like a challenge.

  “Offscreen,” Kris said.

  “You going to blast them?” Jack asked. It looked like Ajax wanted very much to know the answer to that question.

  “After a day like today, I’m sorely tempted,” Kris growled, but held on to her temper. “Comm, get me the skipper of Intrepid.”

  “Captain Grayhorse,” came a moment later from a man with silver hair and high cheekbones that told Kris of his Native American ancestry from old Earth.

  “Captain, I want Intrepid to chase down our wayward bushwhacker.”

  “Immediately, ma’am.”

  “You will go to four gees deceleration, then accelerate back toward the jump at four gees.”

  “Yes, ma’am. Defense, take us smartly to Condition Zed. Helm, warn all hands to prepare for four gees. Admiral, what do I do with that old battleship when I catch her?”

  “Despite the temptation to blow her out of space, I very much want to talk to her captain and maybe a couple of her crew. However, my talking to them will not involve you accepting any risk to your ship or crew.”

  “Understood, you want them alive if possible, but you don’t want any of us dead.”

  “Yes.” Kris paused. “I expect that when you get through that jump, your quarry may be already under way and have her lasers loaded.”

  “I expect she will, ma’am, but no old tub like that is going to scar the paint on Intrepid. We’ll get you people to talk to. I’m thinking of trimming the reactors off that ship the way you trimmed that raider’s tail when you rescued the Hornet’s crew.”

  “So you read that.”

  “Ma’am, I’ve read all your reports. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have some wayward children to collect.”

  “Good hunting,” Kris said, and turned from the now-blank screen.

  “Would you care for a seat now?” Kris offered again.

  Captain Ajax looked at Kris and seemed to be taking the measurements of all the paradoxes that was Kris.

  “Yes, I think I will take that chair,” she said, and, with a shake of her head, settled into a rocker like Kris’s just as soon as Nelly produced it from the floor. “I’m not sure I like the idea of stuff showing up like that,” she said, eyeing the chair.

  “Haven’t doors been showing up between Sailors’ staterooms?” Kris asked.

  Ajax raised puzzled eyebrows.

  “We had a rash of them on Alwa Station,” Jack said, “until we gave up trying to forbid them and chose to regulate them.”

  “Oh, so that was what some of our Sailors brought back from talking to a couple of the Wasp’s crew in bars.”

  “You going out to Alwa?” Kris asked.

  “I hoped to,” Ajax said.

  “Be ready for a different kind of Navy,” Kris said. “Now, about our present situation?”

  23

  Captain Ajax took a deep breath and let it out. She didn’t start talking until her third breath.

  “The Princess Royal suffered only minor damage. Despite the short range, most of the lasers fired at us either missed or were absorbed by the crystal armor I had stowed forward. We took only two hits where we weren’t armored, and those both were handled by the Smart Metal’s programmed active defense. Steam disrupted the laser beams.” Here Ajax paused.

  “It is also very likely that the two beams that hit us were unsteady and wobbled away from the hit. Even though we weren’t rotating ship, the beams seem to have slashed a scar across the hull.

  “It sounds like the lasers were loose in their cradles,” Kris observed.

  “Yes, ma’am. We seemed to have been attacked by the gang that can’t shoot straight.”

  “Thank God for that,” Jack said. “What the hell were they?”

  Captain Ajax had a quick answer to that question. “Two Mars class battleships, if you can believe it. Each is supposed to have twelve 14-inch lasers with twenty 4.5-inch quick-firing secondaries if the history books are to be trusted.”

  “Don’t those date back to the Unity War?” Kris asked.

  “Since before it, Admiral. One would think they’d all been blown up by the Iteeche or scrapped, but there are plenty of them still in reserve coasting along behind stations.”

  “And someone,” Kris said slowly, nodding as she spoke, “dragged those two old tubs out of mothballs, patched them up enough that they could keep space out long enough to get in our faces and fire a few quick shots off at us as we came through a jump.”

  “So it would seem,” Jack said.

  “I would recommend that the Princess Royal not be the first through any jump from now on,” Ajax said.

  “Recommendation accepted,” Kris said. “Better yet, whatever cat sticks its nose through a jump does it at General Quarters and armored to Condition Zed.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Ajax said, and tapped her commlink, checking one problem from her can of worms.

  She took another deep breath before going on to her next worm. “The Weapons station on the bridge was vacant because the duty officer had stepped away to the head.”

  “That shouldn’t have been allowed to happen,” Kris said gently.

  “How do you handle that on Alwa Station?” was an honest question, nothing snide in it.

  “I honestly don’t know,” Kris admitted. “No doubt Admiral Kitano tackled that problem while I was off having fun blowing stuff up, and it never got up to my level again.”

  It dawned on Kris that her irregular promotion pattern and general lack of experience at all levels of the chain of command might not have been the best preparation for her present four stars.

  “Do you have a gunnery officer, and where is his station?” she asked Ajax.

  “Gunnery has a plotting room that takes in the feed from all our sensors and gives it back, both to the lasers in their casements and to the fighting position on the bridge.”

  “If Guns is in his plot, why do you have a weapons station on the bridge?”

  “Admiral, I’ve always wondered about that,” Ajax admitted. “It seemed redundant, but every frigate comes with the bridge position.”

  Jack chuckled. Kris scowled at him. He just shook his head. “You see what that is, don’t you?”

  “No, I don’t.”

  “That’s your position on the old Wasp,” Jack said, and turned to Ajax. “You have to understand, the King didn’t want Kris doing all the wild things he did as a JO. He got her a contract captain to run her ship around space and trim her sails occasionally. It never worked that way,” he said, glancing at Kris.

  He was still barely suppressing a laugh. Barely.

  “But with Kris the only official Wardhaven Navy officer aboard, she set herself up in a weapons station on the bridge. That way, if the W
asp ever had to start a war or something, Kris lobbed out the first official shot. You see?”

  “No I don’t,” Ajax said.

  “The first frigate followed the practice we had on the old Wasp. So did the Sacura. I suspect that every frigate has Kris’s weapons station on the bridge from force of habit.”

  Kris wasn’t dense. Not normally. But today, she must be making an exception. Now she did get it. She started to laugh and had to bite her lip to stop.

  “And I used to think the old Navy was hidebound,” Ajax said. “I guess the new Navy can be just as caught up in doing things the same old same old.”

  “It would seem so,” Kris admitted. “Nelly, send out to the squadron a query about the weapons position on the bridge, how it is used, and how it interfaces with gunnery plot. The report is due day after tomorrow. Until that time, both gunnery plot and the bridge weapons position are to be manned at all times.”

  “Message logged and acknowledged, Kris.”

  Kris found herself studying Captain Ajax even as the woman was studying her right back. “No, I do not intend to swing from a trapeze onto your bridge every day.”

  “I was wondering about that. You came on like a bull in a china shop.”

  “More like a momma bear whose cub was threatened,” Jack put in.

  “Yes, much more like it,” Ajax agreed.

  Kris shrugged. “Someone was shooting at us. We weren’t shooting back. I really didn’t like that.”

  “Yeah,” Captain Ajax admitted. “That was a nugget’s mistake. It won’t happen again. And, ma’am, thank you and your computer for saving our necks.”

  Kris smiled, fondly remembering incidents that had not been fun at the time. “Nelly and I have saved quite a few ships and crews. Strange that, more often than not, we were not forgiven for it.”

  “For myself, ma’am, it’s hard to accept that I and my crew can be replaced by you and that shiny thing around your neck.”

  “I am not shiny,” Nelly put in.

  “And don’t let her start telling jokes,” Jack added.

  “I don’t think I got nearly enough warning when they told me I’d be your flag captain,” Ajax said.

  “Don’t feel special,” Kris grumped. “I never get nearly enough warning before Grampa Ray drops me into these things.”