Nelly put a red dot on Kris’s target. With sincere regrets for starting the next alien war, Kris closed the firing switch for Laser 1.
On the screen, a laser reached out for the alien.
On Kris’s board, an outside camera followed the shot. There, at least, the crud around the ship gave them something for the laser to relate to. A red beam cut right where Kris wanted.
One sphere took the hit along the top of its curve.
The alien didn’t slow. It just kept coming.
“Hit it again,” Captain Drago said. “Aim for the engines.”
“Already setting up for it,” Kris said, and moved her crosshairs aft.
Before Nelly could cover the target with a dot, the alien shot a second time.
Once again, the shield did its job.
“We can’t take many more like that,” Sulwan reported.
“Let’s see how good they are at damage control,” Kris said as she punched Laser 2.
On the main screen, and on Kris’s view, a red beam reached out for the aft end of the alien ship—and sliced right through it.
Behind it, the glow of the rocket motors sputtered, the ship wobbled on its tower of fire.
“I got ’em,” Kris said.
Then the spheres of the ship rippled as an explosion ran its full length, from bow to stern. Huge chunks of the different spheres flew in all directions.
Kris had seen ships die violent deaths. It was not something she ever wanted to get used to. But this explosion looked very different from any of the other ones.
“Chief, talk to me about what just happened. Professor mFumbo, what can your experts report? Was that a reactorcontainment failure?”
“I don’t think so, Kris,” the professor reported. “My experts here say that was some kind of chemical explosion. We’re running our high-speed cameras back over it. I can tell you more in a few minutes, but the explosion doesn’t appear to have been initiated in the last sphere where you hit it. Rather, it started at the opposite end of the ship and moved aft.”
Kris nodded. “That was what it looked like to me, as well. Let me know as much as you can as soon as you can.”
“This is interesting,” the chief said.
“Everything is interesting,” Kris said. “What’s making your bunny jump?”
“The moon. That hot spot where the ship just launched from. It just got very hot. Explosive hot. Whatever they were doing there, I think someone just blew up all the evidence. And unless I’m very mistaken, they used the exact same sort of explosives on the moon as they did on the ship.”
“Yes,” Kris said. “How very interesting.”
10
Lieutenant Commander, Her Royal Highness, Kris Longknife, leaned back in her chair, reviewing in her mind what had just happened. Had she just become the one of those damn Longknifes who shot up the first alien contact humanity made in the last eighty years?
Lately, she’d spent some time wondering how her great-grandfather’s generation could have made such a hash of its encounter with the Iteeche. No “Hi. How are you?” Just shoot, shoot, shoot.
It looks like I owe Grampas Ray and Trouble apologies.
Kris tapped her commlink. “Professor mFumbo, have your boffins spotted anything else in this system that we need to shoot, dodge, or otherwise be aware of?”
“I’m afraid we have found nothing of interest. Or maybe the more proper answer is that I am glad to report we have not.”
“Captain Drago, I’m going to withdraw to my Tac Center. Please feed all ship data to that location after first making copies of that data and copying them out to several backup locations. Those of you on the bridge, you may want to make an extra copy of your board’s data and hide it in your sock drawer. It may come in handy when you write your memoirs of today, if you don’t need it earlier at my court-martial to prove that there were no changes to your data by me or anyone else.”
“Ain’t it great to be a part of history,” Sulwan observed dryly, but the navigator was already downloading her board to a memory chip . . . and had several more on her board ready to be filled.
Captain Drago looked around. “I’ll order a crate brought up from supply.”
“Thank you,” Kris said. “Nelly, have my staff meet in my Tac Center.”
“They are already headed there.”
“Ask the galley to bring around coffee and sandwiches. I’m hungry, and I think it’s going to be a long night.”
“Cookie is already putting together a tray for us, Kris,” Nelly reported.
With a sigh, Kris stood and began to make her way off the bridge. Behind her, a gunnery mate second class slipped into her vacant station and began to download Kris’s data.
Her team was waiting for Kris by the time she reached her private retreat. Captain Jack Montoya, Royal USMC and head of her security detail, had taken the seat to her left. There he had a clear view of the door and anyone trying to enter. Professor mFumbo held down the other end of the table. He’d come alone.
Abby, officially Kris’s maid, was to Jack’s left, fiddling with the tray of goodies . . . and also where she had a good line of sight on the door. Abby was a crack shot who even the Marine detachment’s Gunny Sergeant could only match shots with.
Penny, the staff’s intel expert, had taken the seat to Kris’s right, which put her back to the door. If something evil got as far as that without her knowing it was coming, she’d consider her job a failure and the mess something for the Marines to clean up.
To Penny’s right was Colonel Cortez, Kris’s defeated foe and ground-tactics advisor. Right now, he pursed his lips in reflection. “I’ve never been around when a galactic war got started, but that sucker didn’t leave you any choice but to shoot. Very aggressive behavior.”
“I’m glad to hear that somebody else feels the way I do,” Kris said. “But I need to know what actually happened back there and who was doing what to whom. There are too many unknowns and unthinkable things that leave me scratching my head. I do not like that. Not at all. Penny, will you take the lead on forensics?”
“I expected you’d want me to. I’ve had Mimzy capturing some of the raw feed off the boffins’ video take. The wreckage is in much bigger chunks than I would expect had a reactor failure been involved. With luck, we’ll have something bigger than atoms to examine. Professor, I hope you’ll excuse me for having my computer do what one of Nelly’s kids can do so well.”
The professor scowled at the request for forgiveness. He had been offered one of Nelly’s “children” when Kris’s computer got the biological urge to gestate. His initial experience had been something less than sterling, and he’d returned the gift.
He and Captain Drago, both.
The boffin could not be happy to have Penny using the same secret weapon that he had declined in order to steal a march on his people.
“Do what you will. But remember, what might look like something at first blush to an amateur may have a totally different meaning when examined patiently by a trained expert.”
“A good point that we will keep in mind,” Kris said. “So, Penny, what are your first observations?”
“Give me a minute,” Penny said, her unfocused gaze aimed in the general direction of the overhead. Penny’s ivory skin seemed to pale almost to translucent as her breath slowed.
Usually, this kind of first glance would have been done on one of the wall screens for all to see and comment on. Instead, Penny held whatever output she was getting to just herself and her pet computer, Mimzy. The computer feed colored the contacts of Penny’s eyes but was private to her.
The minute Penny had asked for stretched into two. Then three.