Read Online Daring by Mike Shepherd - Free Book Online Page B

away from the screen, not that she could ignore it. She focused on Penny. “You’re sure they blew up the ship themselves.”
    â€œThe explosion started in the forward sphere,” she said, and the screen’s view changed to show the entire ship, again. It began to come apart, starting, as Penny said, with the forwardmost of the spheres, then the second, then the third. The aft sphere, Engineering from all appearances, was the last to go, and seemed to fly into the least number of pieces.
    â€œI think they expected their destruction to involve the reactor,” Penny said. “That’s just a guess, but if the reactor had blown, it would have taken the fragmentation and dispersal of debris to a whole new level.”
    Kris nodded. She had already done a postmortem on a ship where the reactor finished off its destruction. The wreckage had been little more than atoms and molecules. Her ongoing nightmares, however, were much more substantial.
    â€œSo, Princess,” the professor said, “your hit on the power plant seems to have resulted in our having wreckage to examine that they did not intend for us to have.”
    â€œIt looks that way,” Kris said.
    â€œLook at those bodies. No space suits,” Abby said, pointing at the picture still on the wall screen. “No survival pods. They all were in a shirtsleeve environment, then some bastard opened that ship to vacuum for all of them.”
    â€œI don’t think survival was ever the intention,” the colonel said. “I’ve heard of ‘Victory or Death’ as a battle cry, but in all my study of human history, I’ve never encountered anything like this.”
    Kris could only shake her head. “This is our first human encounter with someone else’s history. I know we humans have had our nasty and desperate times. I think we’ve found someone or something willing to take nasty and desperate to a whole new level. God help us.”
    Those who shared her room seemed unable to expand upon that observation. Kris looked at her options and found only one to start with.
    â€œNelly, tell Captain Drago that I would like for the Wasp to make orbit around that moon so that we can examine both what our alien was doing down there and recover as much of the wreckage as possible. I’ll want to ship as much of the wreckage and bodies back to human space as we can.”
    â€œThat will involve unloading one of the cargo ships,” the captain answered Kris immediately.
    â€œI figured as much. You said it would take two or three days to refuel.”
    â€œRefuel and resupply the ships from the replenishment ships, yes, Kris.”
    â€œWe might as well put our time to multiple uses. Penny, put together a short report on what just happened and flash it to the rest of the fleet whenever we get a line of sight on one of them.”
    Most of the fleet was on the other side of the gas giant. With the Wasp trying to make orbit around the target moon, the two elements of Kris’s fleet were likely to make “ships passing in the night” seem downright familiar. “I’m sure they’re curious.”
    â€œI bet they are,” Penny said, and went silent as she began to arrange her data drop.

11
    Kris would have preferred that the other ships of the fleet had stayed in low orbit around the gas giant while they took on reaction mass. However, she was discovering the difference between leading a fleet and commanding one.
    Where she led, they followed.
    What she wanted, they considered.
    And frequently ignored.
    The admirals flipped to see whose flag got refueled first. As it happened, the order came out Fury , Haruna , Swiftsure . And, in that order, they all refueled, then climbed out of the gas giant’s gravity well to join the Wasp orbiting the small moon.
    And hunting for the odd bits of wreckage.
    Since the battleships had large crew-transfer boats . . . some even looked like