Redoubtable Read Free Page A

that balloot.”
    “I know, I know, but I just thought you ought to know that the Wasp is rigged to do a gas-giant dive, but it’s not really meant to. Us having a nice quiet midwatch, I figured now would be a good time to mention it.”
    “It’s mentioned! Now what’s strange about that balloot?”
    “It’s veined, I think.”
    “Veined?”
    “Yeah, it’s got these lines running across it. I noticed them about an hour ago. They’re getting more and more pronounced.”
    Kris stared at the visual image of the unidentified craft. Basically, it was a big bag with the bare hint of the runabout’s tail end sticking out from behind it. “I don’t see anything?”
    The chief tapped his board. The image grew to take in the entire forward screen. Kris still didn’t see anything.
    “I said it’s just a hint of something running up and down and across the balloot. They come and go.”
    “Nelly, can you make anything out?” Kris asked.
    “If you go to infrared,” Kris’s computer suggested, and the screen changed colors as the examination slipped from the visual spectrum to heat, “you can just make out lines running across the balloot that don’t have quite the same temperature as the fabric behind them. They are slightly colder than the balloot and the reaction mass in it.”
    “I was about to show her that,” the chief said.
    “I know you were,” Kris said. The chief and Nelly were both experts in sensors. And often in competition.
    Sometimes that was good.
    Sometimes.
    “There’s also a hint of the lines on radar,” the chief added. “When you combine the hints on visual . . .”
    “And infrared . . .” Nelly cut in.
    “And radar,” the chief finished, hands flying over his board, “you get the same set of lines, and they come through better.”
    Now the balloot was clearly crisscrossed.
    “Are they reinforcements to the fabric?” Kris asked.
    “None of the balloots from any company in human space have them,” Nelly said.
    “On a close pass to a gas giant, anything like that would disrupt the flow of plasma. They’d burn off. Might even burn up the balloot,” the chief added.
    “So they were put on after the pass. Why?”
    “Commander, your guess is as good as mine,” the chief admitted. Nelly seconded the human opinion with her silence.
    Which left Kris staring at one lonely bit of information, which, balanced against the huge silence from all other sources, did not make her happy.
    At the end of her four-hour watch, Kris knew nothing more than she had when she started. As Princess Kris Longknife, commander of Patrol Squadron 10, that really bothered her.
    However, as Officer of the Deck, a quiet watch was a good watch. As Kris was relieved at 0400, she tried to congratulate herself on having successfully stood a watch without starting a war or even firing a single shot.
    It was getting to be a very pleasant habit.

2
    Kris was in the wardroom later that morning at 0730. She spotted Penny, her intel lieutenant, at an empty table and joined her.
    “How was your watch?” Penny asked.
    “Uneventful,” Kris said.
    “Unusual,” Penny answered.
    “I’m trying to turn over a new leaf. No one tries to kill me. I try to kill no one. Did you have a chance to look at those news accounts I sent you yesterday?”
    Penny gave Kris a wary eye. “Who is this Winston Spencer and why is he sending you news feed?”
    “He’s written some good stories from the Navy perspective. Digs deep, so he usually gets more about us right than he gets wrong. You remember that news dump my brother, Honovi, gave us last time we were at Wardhaven that pretty much showed me that being out here on the Rim left me totally in the dark about what was happening back home? I’d prefer not to give my brother that kind of a club to beat me with. So I asked Spencer to send me stuff he found interesting. Admiral Santiago recommended him.”
    Penny continued to eye Kris, as if weighing the words . . . and not finding