Daring by Mike Shepherd Page B

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.
    â€œWe can’t take many more like that,” Sulwan reported.
    â€œLet’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.
    â€œI 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.
    â€œChief, talk to me about what just happened. Professor mFumbo, what can your experts report? Was that a reactorcontainment failure?”
    â€œI 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.”
    â€œThis is interesting,” the chief said.
    â€œEverything is interesting,” Kris said. “What’s making your bunny jump?”
    â€œThe 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.”
    â€œYes,” 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?”
    â€œI’m afraid we have found nothing of interest. Or maybe the more proper answer is that I am glad to report we have not.”
    â€œCaptain 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.”
    â€œAin’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.”
    â€œThank you,” Kris said. “Nelly, have my staff meet in my Tac Center.”
    â€œThey are already headed there.”
    â€œAsk the galley to bring around coffee and sandwiches. I’m hungry, and I think it’s going to be a long