Intrepid

''I will take you to the nearest planet with a recognized court system. Cuzco, I expect.''

''Do they have capital punishment?''

''I honestly don't know.'' NELLY, I DON'T WANT TO KNOW.

YES, KRIS.

The negotiations went on like that for the next hour. In the end, they all surrendered, and no shots were fired.

''You didn't want any of your Marines hurt,'' Kris pointed out to Jack.

He nodded, then shook his head. ''Would have been nice to send a few of them to meet their maker.''

''We killed the worst of them. The bridge crew was fifteen strong when the fight started.'' Only parts of three bodies had been recovered from the wreckage.

Every ship's officer excepting the engineer had taken the brunt of a twenty-four-inch laser … and come up the worse for it.

Which left a certain young Navy lieutenant with what the brass euphemistically called a few ''leadership challenges.''

She had forty-seven former prisoners that were in pretty bad shape. They needed medical care, and they needed it quickly.

She also had thirty-two new prisoners, all of whom were loudly expounding on their innocence … to the no one who was listening … from the confines of a hastily expanded brig on the Wasp.

And Kris had a very damaged hulk, which turned out to have a very full load of expensive cargo. Leaving her with a lot of questions about how that had come to pass.

Her first two problems said get gone from here. The third left her reluctant to abandon what she'd done. There was also the problem of the Compton Maru being the scene of several crimes that were greatly in need of investigation.

Kris was saved from the first problem. The health of the pirates' prisoners improved as Doc did a couple of miracles. The Wasp's corpsman, widely rumored to have been a board-certified MD before his alcoholism cost him dearly, stayed sober and did good. He racked up bushels of good karma as more and more legs passed from likely candidates for amputation to just in need of careful and tender care. Several of the tough old sailors recovered with amazing speed.

Which led to the next challenge that Kris really should have seen coming.

Onally MarTom slipped a meat cleaver from the mess and tried to use it to part the hair of one of the brig's new denizens.

Fortunately, a Marine interrupted him.

Kris was there only a second behind Jack while the Marine was still struggling with a surprisingly strong and very distressed mariner.

''He killed my captain,'' the man screamed in frustration.

''And he'll pay for it,'' Jack assured him.

Outnumbered and overpowered, the man broke down in tears, but he still cursed them one and all for standing between him and his captain's murderer.

Gunny arrived to lead him off. ''I'll get him drunk on Doc's ignored supplies. That'll at least start the healing. When he sobers up, he'll be glad he's not a killer. He isn't, you know.''

''He showed a pretty solid commitment to making a go of it if you ask me,'' Kris observed, still trying to parse some of the old sailor's curses. And she thought she'd heard them all.

''I'll double the guard,'' Jack said. ''Keep the ones keeping the bad guys in where they are. But I'll add a full team in the next compartment to keep the sightseers and hackers out.''

Which left Kris wondering if she ought to do something about the pirates sooner rather than later. King Ray had dragooned a retired Wardhaven judge into joining Kris's crew. Being a hobbyist astronomer, she was delighted to be aboard.

Kris had assumed the Wasp might be called on to pass quick and efficient justice on some minor matters. Capital piracy, murder, and slavery went quite a bit beyond Kris's plan.

And there was the requirement that any court chartered in Wardhaven follow the Ordinance of Human Rights that had been the cornerstone of the now-defunct Society of Humanity.

Central to that was the ban on capital punishment.

But not every planet had signed the Ordinance. Kris's father had almost lost his chance to be Wardhaven's prime minister when he'd used every stalling tactic in the politician's handbook to keep Wardhaven's signature off the Ordinance. Not forever, only long enough to hang the kidnappers whose mishandling of Kris's little brother, Eddy, caused his death.

With luck, the nearest planet would also not have signed the Ordinance. Longknifes did not like kidnappers.

So while Doc healed the freed, and Jack kept alive the not yet dead, Kris led a scratch salvage-and-repair team through the wreck of the Compton Maru. Most were borrowed from the Wasp's crew, but the boffins supplied their own techs, and the Marines also provided their electronics and engineering specialists.

And Kris donated most of Nelly's time after the computer demanded a go at the mess Kris had made.

Kris's well-aimed twenty-four-inch lasers had made quite a mess of the Compton's bridge. Even when they patched the holes and glued an airtight bubble over the bridge, they also had to set up a string of lights.