Daring by Mike Shepherd Read Free Book Online

was that the orbit that any particular jump point took around any individual star tended to be a bit erratic as the impact of the other star system’s accumulated gravity had its effect as well.
    In addition to the tendency to wander, there was also the question of which star system your ship jumped to. If you entered the jump at a safe, dead-slow pace and with your ship stabilized rock-solid steady, you exited into a star system not too far from the one you left. Always the same one.
    That was nice and dependable. Insurance companies liked that.
    Enter a jump at high speed, or under acceleration, or with a spin on your hull, and the results could be spectacularly different.
    For the last four hundred years it had been human practice to do the nice and slow and steady thing at jump points. Owners, shippers, and high commands like the dependable results.
    Ship captains who took chances were frequently never heard from again. Grampa Ray’s ship was one of the first to recover from a bad jump. The Sheffield had been outfitted as an exploration ship, and instruments had recorded all the motion on the ship. That allowed them to double back.
    The news of the Sheffield ’s return had been greeted wildly, not the least by Great-gramma Rita, eight months pregnant with Kris’s grandfather Al.
    Other folks had also been excited about exploration prospects. Ships were quickly fitted out.
    And they bumped right into the Iteeche.
    One thing about a war, it concentrates the mind. It also sucks up all available cash. Exploration funds vanished from the budget.
    Once peace came, Grampa Ray made sure human exploration of space was measured and careful.
    Now Kris Longknife, Ray’s great-granddaughter, was wadding up the restrictions of his beloved Treaty of Wardhaven and tossing them in the trash can.
    And taking a small battle fleet with her.
    How was that for the new generation trashing its elders?
    In a few weeks . . . maybe months . . . Kris would know whether all Grampa Ray’s caution had been a good idea.
    Kris’s Fleet of Discovery stayed well out; few people on Santa Maria would even know they passed that way. And those few had been sworn to secrecy. With any luck, this secret would last long enough for Kris to go and come back.
    Kris suspected that whatever information they brought back could be kept secret for, oh, maybe twelve seconds.
    Following behind the Wasp , PatRon 10 accelerated at one gee in echelon with Kris’s flagship: the Fearless , and Intrepid in close, the resupply ships Surprise and Surplus . . . already rechristened by the fleet Misplaced and Misfiled, formed a square with the messenger packets Hermes and Mercury . Kris had no intentions of leaving a trail of communication buoys behind her at every jump point she used. Once the fleet took leave of Santa Maria, communications back to human space would be by ship.
    The rest of the fleet trailed behind PatRon 10. The four battleships of Greenfeld’s BatRon 12 followed in a fighting square, their four auxiliaries trailing them in a square of their own. The Musashi and Helvitican warships formed another fighting square, the Haruna and Chikuma to the right, the Swiftsure and the Triumph to the left. Behind them came the two supply ships they had contracted for at Wardhaven once they’d realized what they were getting into.
    Lieutenant Commander Taussig’s Hornet pulled up the rear with a message packet that was also a last-minute addition, the Kestrel . This rear guard was responsible for riding herd on any of the trailing ships. If their jump point did a last-second juggle, and the large, lumbering battleships couldn’t find where the jump had gotten to, the Hornet would see that they got through.
    All of the battleship admirals assured Kris this really wasn’t necessary. The sensor suites on all their ships were just as upto-date as anything Wardhaven had.
    Maybe that was true. Still, Taussig was back there with the