Kris Longknife: Resolute

by Mike Shepherd

  “As I see it,” Steve went on, “your job now is to command the force we crew. Hank’s inbound at two g’s so we don’t have a lot of time. Shall we quit wasting what we have?”

  “You know we’re all crazy,” Kris said.

  “Better to be crazy than defeated.”

  Jack and Penny smartly marched up six girls and boys in green shipsuits. He took in the scene and raised an eyebrow. “So, what do I do with this bunch of fire-breathing dragons?”

  Kris eyed the shuttle bay. The new arrivals were forming up at their chief ’s orders, facing the Patton’s crew.

  “What would you do?” Kris said, not looking at Steve.

  “I’d authorize my chiefs and petty officers to comb through the Patton’s crew; find the ones they can put to use. Sign up the green suits as trainees, the blue suits as assistants. Then I’d get this station and that cruiser ready for what’s coming.”

  Kris wanted to say “be it on your head,” to wash her hands of what she saw coming. But a Naval officer can’t do that. Instead, she stood to attention. “Proceed as you propose.”

  Steve saluted. “With your permission, Your Highness.”

  Kris returned his salute. “Carry on. I’ll be in the Command Center. Report there when you’re done here.”

  Penny waved the dragons to rejoin their crew. Having heard the officers, they raced to spread the word. Jack and Penny formed on Kris. “So now we fight with everything we can beg, borrow, or steal,” he said.

  “Again,” Kris said. “You’d think just once we could do this with a decently trained and ready bunch of ships and sailors.”

  “Why send a fleet when a certain princess will make do?” Jack said.

  Which almost made Kris miss a step. Was she getting so good at yanking miracles out of hats that someone thought all they had to do was send a hat and her. She very much hoped that wasn’t true. Because if they thought Grampa Trouble was a problem, they had no idea what Princess Kris could be.

  Assuming she survived this particular hat trick.

  “Which ship will you take out?” Penny asked.

  “I think Steve wants to fight the station,” Kris said slowly. “Drago probably will be best with the Resolute. I’m thinking I should take out the Patton. It’s got the most fire power and ice armor. If it actually can fight, it’s our best ship. You’ve spent time on the Patton. Is it good to go?”

  “They coated it with a few inches of ice last week. It’ll need more. The lasers look fine, but none have been fired. The engines look good, but, again, they haven’t actually been run. We need to break her loose and give her a test run. Soon.”

  Kris nodded. “What do you say we both do that.”

  “So if you take the Patton, who gets the Wasp?” Penny said.

  “You want it?”

  “I’ve studied what you did at Paris debriefing the Typhoon ’s crew. I was with you at Turantic and Wardhaven. Who do you have here that’s better at conning a small combatant? Yes, I know I’ve been an intel weenie my whole career, but, Kris, you got to know there isn’t a JO hatched that doesn’t want her own command.”

  Kris considered the request; there wasn’t anyone handy close to her experience and qualifications for the Wasp. Should she bounce Penny to the Resolute and give Drago the bigger ship? Change this late was never good. No. Penny deserved the Wasp.

  But was Penny a good call? Was a grieving widow the best person to command what might be Kris’s best combatant, if the Patton went flat? Would she command the ship as well as she said she could . . . or would she go berserker on Kris at a critical moment? Would she follow orders, or lose herself in a killing rage to get Hank, the son of the man who killed her husband?

  Neither giving Penny the Wasp, nor giving someone else the ship was a good bet, but Kris would have to lay her money down, and now was better than later. “Is the Wasp ready for a shoot?”

  Penny mulled that over as they came to the escalators down to the Resolute. “Materially, she’s good to go,” Penny said. “I assume we’re going to talk Drago into loaning a few hands. Steal some from Steve. But yes, you give the order and the Wasp will answer all bells, and be underway with all pulse lasers loaded.”

  “Then she’s your baby. Take good care of her,” Kris said with a smile she really felt. “I don’t think I’ve made the last payment on her.”

  “I’ll try not to scrape the paint.”

  Down the escalator, they headed for the ship. “Shall I call Abby and tell her she’s out of hack?” Jack asked.

  “Let her stew for a while,” Kris said. “I don’t like the idea of someone selling news about me. I’ve never liked the newsies. I don’t see any reason I should like it in my maid.”

  “We might could use her?” Penny pointed out. “She brought twelve steamer trunks this trip. Who knows what’s in them?”

  “I’ll talk to her about that later. Right now, we need to juggle crews.”

  Captain Drago was not at all happy to have a draft put on his ship to seed the others. Interestingly, he never asked Kris for the Wasp. He did ask for Smart Metal. Kris promised him all she had left to coat the Resolute and headed back to the Command Center. There, she relented and sent Jack to explain what they now knew and release Abby from house arrest.

  “Do I bring her back?” he asked.

  “You decide. If she’s got some good tricks to share . . . and knows what she sees here isn’t shared.”

  Jack returned with Abby about the same time Steve arrived. “I’ve got our folks organizing. You going to need any of them for the other ships?” Penny beamed him a list of what she wanted for the Wasp and what they’d stolen from the Resolute . He glanced down the list. “We can do that. Hilary,” he shouted.

  A girl in greens ducked in the door; Steve printed out the list Penny had sent. “See that this gets to Chief Ramirez.” And the girl was gone like a rabbit.

  “I kept some spare troops that didn’t make it to permanent party as runners. Let’s keep our communications to something Hank can’t hack, and let these track stars earn their keep.”

  “How many did you keep as permanent?” Kris asked.

  “A bit over half of Patton had bigger brothers or sisters willing to stand for them. If Momma Howe said they knew their job, we took them. Then I added the runners. I’ll get them out of here before the shooting starts, okay, Your Highness.”

  “Momma Howe?”

  “Yeah. The woman you were bulldogging when I came up. She’s good. A might bit slowed down by the hip replacement, but with that cane, a solid traveler. I’ll use her and a lot of the blue suiters on the station. There won’t be any high g’s here.”

  “How do you fight a station that just has to sit here?”

  “Who told you a station just sits and takes it?”

  “Nobody, they just all do. Sit,” Kris said. “The 6-inch lasers on Hank’s cruisers can reach out sixty thousand klicks and are really effective at twenty thousand. If they can see you, they can shoot you full of holes.”

  Steve took a seat at a workstation. Leaning back, he put his feet up on it and his hands behind his head. “I spent ten years worrying about what I could do if someone wanted my bit of space. Ten years—with some of the most twisted minds on the Rim—can be quite an education.”

  Kris settled into a chair, leaned back and got comfortable.

  Captain Merv Slovo brought his high g station alongside that of his superior. “Commodore, I believe it would be better for our coming combat if we dropped down to 1g now.”

  “And why delay the moment of truth for Longknife?” asked Commodore Henry Smythe-Peterwald the Thirteenth, Hank to some.

  “Our men have been confined to their high g carts for most of the last day, sir. They need a hot meal and time to make ready for battle. Equipment needs checking. That is best done at 1 g, Commodore.”

  Squadron 38’s commander turned to look directly at his flag captain. “I was told this squadron is experienced in long cruises. Didn’t you pra
ctice high g ops on that four-month cruise of yours?”

  “We most certainly did, Commodore.” Captain Slovo ignored the slap . . . with an effort. A well practiced effort. “However, over half of that crew was reassigned to new construction or filling out the crews of recommissioning ships. Our present crew is heavily spliced with green sailors fresh off the farm. The last day will have been hard on them. If you want their full effort against Lieutenant Longknife, you will need to make some accommodations to their limits, sir.” Always end with a “sir.”

  The young commodore gnawed his lower lip. “That will delay our arrival, give that Longknife girl more time to do things.”

  “With what, sir? As you pointed out, all she has is a broken-down cruiser, a rented buoy tender, and that other ship of strange antecedents.” It was usually good to quote Hank back upon himself. Usually . . . not always.

  The young commander looked away. “You can never trust a Longknife. That is the first thing I remember my dad saying. ‘Never trust a Longknife. They’ll say one thing and do whatever makes money for them.’”

  Captain Slovo had found it was usually better to leave references to the senior Peterwald untouched. The younger of the title tended to swing widely in his attitude toward the senior.

  “What do you think she’ll do when we get there, Merv?”

  The question was both unusual and difficult to answer. The captain weighed his options, and spoke. “That is very hard to say, Commodore. Any rational person would take advantage of our arrival to duck behind the planet and bolt for a jump point.”

  “Longknifes are never rational. She’s going to fight me. How will she fight me, Captain? You’ve studied war for twenty years. I’m supposed to listen to you. Well, talk.”

  Was the boy getting that nervous, or was this another one of his traps? The flag captain chose to take the risk and do his duty. “That very much depends on what she has to fight with. We know the station has a dozen lasers. However, a station is very vulnerable. We should be able to silence it quickly. The ancient cruiser is a question mark. It has nine 6-inch lasers. How many work? It could be fully iced and armored. Then again, its motors might fail to contain plasma, and it could blow up first time it pulls away from the pier. The Resolute has a strange history of late. Let’s assume they are hiding at least one, maybe two 12-inch pulse lasers. The Wasp is truly an unknown, but why would a Longknife give it a name like Wasp if it has no sting. I’d assume another pair of pulse lasers.”

  The captain shrugged. “Our squadron mounts thirty-six 6-inchers and two dozen 21-inch pulse lasers. If she fights—no matter how—it will be a short fight.”

  “And a bloody one for her.” The commodore seemed to like the sound of that. “A very bloody one for her and those foolish enough to follow her.” He clenched his fist. “Wait until my father sees what I’ve got him. This time it will be all ours. And I made the deal. I made the deal.”

  “Yes, sir.” There was nothing more to add to that.

  “Slow the fleet, Merv. Tell the navigator to come up with a new course. And tell him to have us go into orbit and then come up on the station, like you suggested. No need to wave our vulnerable sterns even at what little Kris has.”

  “Aye aye, sir.” And Captain Slovo went to do his master’s bidding; praying softly that one Longknife would be smart enough to take the time he was offering her, coming up slowly on the orbit of her station, to yank up her skirts and run as fast as she could for Jump Point Adele. The boy wonder here would be greatly disappointed when there was no battle, but even Merv couldn’t calculate the disaster for humanity if the Peterwald heir killed a Longknife heir.

  Much better that these two don’t meet.

  Kris tightened the buckle on the command chair of the Patton and surveyed her domain. It was good to be in 0g again. Sensors were on-line, crewed by a chief, an old blue, and two young greens. They tracked Hank’s squadron on final approach. Good.

  Hank was going to make an orbit before approaching the station. Kris had hoped he would. If it was to give her time to run, well, even Hank must know that Longknifes don’t run.

  The delay had given Kris time to finish armoring the Patton ; the cruiser now sported a meter of ice on her bow, half that elsewhere, beneath a thin coat of aluminum spray for added reflection. The ice was courtesy of Hank. His ships had pulled out without reclaiming the sewage they’d passed to the station. Treated, it now protected Kris.

  Chief Ramirez was almost giggling when she reported that they had found two packets of high explosives when they drained the sewage out of the holding tanks. Rigged to explode when they came in contact with methane, they’d been jettisoned. The Patton used them for gunnery practice. Seven of the nine lasers had worked the first time. Two were being worked on.

  To Kris’s great relief, the superconductors in five motors held their plasma. The Patton hadn’t blown her stern to kingdom come and they were now parked at Pier 7, a tie-down Kris had only learned about when Steve introduced her to it. It put the old cruiser’s engines right in the middle of the station’s backside. A perfect place for what they had in mind.

  Now, Kris waited.

  “Bogies are five minutes from sliding behind Chance,” Steve reported from the station. “Resolute, you cut loose first.”

  Since the Resolute was the most likely ship to run, her un-docking shouldn’t tell Hank any more than he wanted to hope for. A few minutes later, it was the Wasp’s turn. The two ships hung just off the station.

  “Station is rebalancing,” Steve reported as liquids were pumped from one section of the station to another to perfectly balance her now that no ships hung off the edges.

  “Bogies are behind Chance. The station is balanced. Let’s rotate.” Small station-keeping jets on High Chance, aided by the Patton’s maneuvering units, reoriented the station until the Patton’s engines were pointed opposite to its orbit.

  “Navigator, have you laid in a course?” Kris asked.

  Sulwan grinned. “Down to a gnat’s eyebrow, ma’am.”

  “Execute on your mark. Station, prepare to change orbit.”

  “We’re rigged and ready,” Steve reported.

  “Orbital burn commencing . . . now,” Sulwan reported, and Kris was pressed slightly back into her seat as the Patton slowed High Chance and started the station into a dive for lower orbit.

  This was not something suggested in the station’s manual. But High Chance was among the smallest stations built in the last hundred years; that left her with a bit more flexibility than most. And Steve’s crew had added reinforcements at certain weak locations. He swore his baby could do it, and just now, she was.

  Assuming the Patton perfectly balanced the burn from her five working motors. And the station’s tie-downs didn’t rip out under the strain. And Pier 7 was still at the exact center of gravity for the station. And about a dozen other assumptions that Kris hadn’t thought of yet.

  They must have all held. High Chance stayed together and headed down. And at the right moment after High Chance had swung close by the planet, Kris would interrupt the long slingshot of that orbit with a burn that parked the station in a lower orbit.

  Kris checked her board. Laser 6 was now taking power. Laser 7, aft, was still down. Well, she planned to tackle Hank head on anyway.

  “Where is she?” the commodore demanded.

  Flag Captain Merv Slovo noted that his young superior didn’t ask where the station was, where the opposing forces were? No, it was “where is she?” Not for the first time he tasted the animosity between the young man and the woman. Letting a fight get personal had never been recommended in Command and Staff School. Clearly, the boy needed more book learning.

  The captain leaned forward in his command chair. Normally, a flag officer would have his own bridge, own battle station. Someone high above Slovo had decided that the commodore and the captain should share their space. I wonder if they had any idea how much stomach lining this would cost me?

  “Clearly,
neither the station nor the ships are where they once were. Interesting first move on her part.”

  “I don’t need to be told where she isn’t. Where is she?”

  “Sensors?”

  “We have residue of ionized exhaust. Lots of it.”

  “Moving a station. Interesting.”

  “She’s headed for the moon. That’s what she did against . . .” The flag captain shot his commodore a withering glance. Don’t say it . . . “Ah, the intruders at Wardhaven.”

  Slovo glanced at his board. It didn’t make any sense to head for Chance’s one moon. It was close, and there was no question the ships could make for it but—moving a station that far? “I’m not sure about that, Commodore.”

  “Boost for the moon,” Commodore Peterwald ordered. “She’s doing to us what she did to—ah—them. You’ll see.”

  “That will involve more deceleration, dropping into a lower orbit. We’ll be less able to see what’s going on.”

  “Trust me. I know that woman. She can only think of one thing at a time. And once she’s found a good solution to a problem, she’ll keep using it. No flexibility.”

  Why did that sound so much like a description of the young man saying it? Slovo thought, but said, “Navigator, lay in a course for the moon.”

  “Aye aye, sir. I’m already working on it.”

  “Get us on that heading for the moon.” The young man ordered the older.

  “Yes, sir.” Who knows, maybe the Longknife girl had headed for the moon. And if she hadn’t, the squadron would be safe for the trip. Maybe I can talk some sense into this young man. Not likely, but maybe.

  The report came in from a ground station when Kris and company were on the other side of Chance. “Four headed for the moon?” Steve said. “They took the bait.”

  “At Wardhaven, we attacked the invaders after a swing around our moon,” Kris said. “I guess he thinks I’m predictable.” Big mistake. “Nelly, run me an assumed 1g trip for Hank to the moon and back. Then calculate an orbit that will put us coming out from behind Chance as he comes back.”