“Assuming he comes back headed straight at us,” Nelly said, “you need to be in a 149 kilometer high orbit.”
“Sulwan, can we do that?”
“Just barely. Starting a burn now,” she said and the Patton began to push the station into orbit.
“Very good, Sulwan. Nelly. Very good.” Assuming she’d judged Captain Slovo right. He struck her as a head-on man, not a long tail-chase kind of guy. A few hours would tell.
Kris leaned back in her chair. On her board, Lasers 2 and 6 were now down. Laser 7 was up. It was that kind of day.
“Sensors, keep an eye on Jump Point Alpha. We haven’t sent any communications for a couple of days,” Kris said. “Sooner or later, someone’s bound to get curious. I know I would. With luck, they’ll send a couple of battleships to ask what’s up.”
“Yes, ma’am,” the old chief said.
“If I knew there was a Longknife on the other side,” Jack said from his seat near the helm where he could keep a good eye on everything, “I’d send a whole squadron of battleships.”
“Not everyone has such a low opinion of me, Lieutenant.”
Jack glanced around the bridge and made a face.
“No fair polling my subordinates,” Kris said.
“Ah, we’ve just been scanned by the Greenfeld squadron, ma’am,” the chief reported.
“I wonder how it will go over?” Kris said, and smiled.
“I’ll be in my cabin,” the commodore said, stamping from the bridge. “Call me when you have something useful to tell me.”
Captain Slovo watched him go—and breathed a sigh when he was gone. The entire bridge seemed to relax around him. Then he turned back to his ordered duty. “How do I force this Longknife girl to battle,” he muttered. And maybe arrange it so that one or the other of them can realize that they are getting the worst of the fight and run. “Navigator, when we complete this moon trip, I want us in an orbit opposite that station.”
“Opposite, sir?”
“Yes. I don’t want to have to chase her around and around that damn ball. Let us trade shots at each other twice an orbit and with the range on our lasers, we’ll be shooting at her a great deal of the time. She may dodge me some of the time, but she can’t do it forever. All it will take is a couple of good hits to end this thing.” And every ship in the squadron had an E for gunnery.
“Yes, sir.”
18
Kris had the station where they wanted it—way lower than the specs allowed. Kris could almost feel the heat as the Patton and station collided with the microatmosphere at this altitude. Low and fast, that should make them harder to see, and harder to hit. Then again, the station was a sitting duck and the duck hunters had very long-range guns.
Unless Kris could talk that hunter out of a duck dinner.
First she needed to unhitch from the station and join her other ships. “Station. Prepare to undock us.”
“There’s a problem. Didn’t you notice a clang awhile ago.”
“No.”
“Well, we did. The trundles on your tie-downs are off their rollers. Unless we can move them, you can’t move.”
So maybe they hadn’t quite balanced the fire of the five working motors to make up for the two useless ones. “Steve, I don’t look like much of a threat to Hank with your station hanging off the snout of my ship.”
“We’re working on the problem.”
“I either roll out of here or I shoot my way out.”
“Anyone ever tell you you have quite an attitude.”
“Several.”
Kris sat back in her command seat and glowered at her board. Now Lasers 7, 8, and 9, her entire stern battery, were down. This is great. Where I have lasers, there’s this station in my way, and where I don’t have anything, my butt is hanging out.
Commanders were supposed to remain calm. Inspire confidence. Kris gnawed the inside of her lip and tried to fake it.
“Ah, Kris, could you try reverse on your maneuvering jets. Just a gentle tap,” Steve asked. “Remember, you’ve got to push this station out of this orbit real soon.”
“And fight. Helm, you heard the man. Just a tap.” There was a horrible noise forward and the entire ship swayed.
“Thank you. That was a bit more than we wanted,” Steve said.
“I couldn’t do any less,” the helmsman pleaded.
“You did fine. Steve, please fix this.”
“Ma’am, they’re coming out from behind the moon,” the sensor chief said. “It looks like the bogies will come back at Chance in a clockwise orbit to our counterclockwise one.”
“Exchange broadsides as we pass.” Kris called up a draft plan on her board. Twenty thousand klicks out was when the 6-inch laser started to get accurate, and the pulse lasers on the Wasp and Resolute began to have any effect. Today, that range was irrelevant. With the planet limiting their line of sight in orbit, they’d be swapping lasers at point-blank range. But then she’d known she was in deep trouble when she took this job.
“Steve, I really need to be on my own way sometime today. Penny, Drago, stretch it out like we planned. I’ll join later.”
“Roger,” came back at Kris. The two ships that had flown in close formation with the station while it did its wandering, now changed orbit. With a bit of luck, they’d confuse Hank.
“We think we’ve released the attachments that were holding you. Try that back out again. But real careful,” Steve said.
“Our helmsman will try.”
It didn’t work. Worse, Kris felt a wind on her face that stirred ugly memories. She mashed her comm button. “All hands. Look around your area. We may have a small hole in the hull.”
“Yes, ma’am, we do,” came a tense, if eager young voice. “Laser Bay 1. We’re working on it. Didn’t want to bother you.”
“Bother me. How big is it?”
“Not much, ma’am. Just a split seam where the ice got shoved back. We’ve got goo on it and are putting a solid patch on top of that. We shouldn’t be losing any more air.”
Kris did not need the old seams on this tub unzipping from nap to chaps. “Keep on it. Are you folks in suits?”
“No, ma’am.”
“Get in them.” Kris paused, then switched comm to the station. “Steve, I’m holed and leaking air. I’m not in any position to try to muscle my way out. You’ve got to cut me loose, or I shoot my way out. You see another option?”
“There is one. Chief Gentle wants to blow the tie-downs.”
“Chief Gentle wants to blow me out!”
“Yeah, I always got a kick out of having a demolition expert with that name. Really does fit the man. You game?”
Kris glanced at sensors. Hank was about an hour out. If everyone stayed where they were, they’d have a shooting pass at each other just as he came into orbit. “Let’s try the boom.”
Then, switching back to ship. “All hands. They’re going to try to blow the tie-downs holding us. If you’re forward, either get in a space suit or lay aft. I don’t want to use our survival pods this early. Let’s dog all airtight hatches and pray.”
“Steve, give me a ten count before you pop us.”
“I’m a minute away from doing that.” A very long minute.
“Helm, I want you to give us another boost when he hits zero. If those tie-downs need any extra help, let’s give it.”
“But what about our seam forward?”
“It’s my job to worry about that. You worry about making sure we don’t slam into anything hard as we get out of here.”
The helm leaned over his board, muttering something about being glad he wasn’t a part of that woman’s Navy. He liked worrying about what he wanted to worry about. Which reminded Kris she commanded a collection of volunteers, not sworn sailors.
Hold together, she prayed, for both ship and crew.
“Here’s your count. Ten. Nine. Eight. Seven. Six. Five. Four.”
“Helm stand by.”
“Two. One.”
&nbs
p; “Power!” Kris ordered.
The hull shook and groaned. Then the Patton threw them forward as she backed away from the station.”
“Damage control reports,” Kris demanded. Her board lit up in only one place. Laser Bay 1 had popped its patch. They were working to replace it. The hole was no larger. Here and there, minor things had broken, but she noticed that now Lasers 8 and 9 were taking a charge and Lasers 1 and 6 had joined 7 off-line.
The temptation to boost for Jump Point Alpha flitted across Kris’s mind, but she had a promise to keep to Ron. And Longknifes never ran and she wasn’t going to start any new traditions. She angled the Patton to put it in the lead of the other ships, and made ready to receive Hank’s greeting.
“We could come in high and slash the station to ribbons on our first pass,” Commodore Peterwald said, studying the flag captain’s battle board.
“That would eliminate one of our threats,” Captain Slovo agreed. “However, it would let those three ships maneuver up our tail and take slices out of our vulnerable engines. And your father might prefer to get this planet with a working station.”
“It won’t survive long in that orbit.”
“Yes, but just as they moved it down, we can move it up.”
“So you suggest we go straight for Longknife and her junk-yard collection. I like that.”
That wasn’t exactly what Captain Slovo had intended. And he certainly wasn’t happy to have his commander disparaging the enemy he faced. Military history was full of too many ragtag-and-bobtail forces that won against the odds. Not a few of those stories had a Longknife in them. “If we use a slightly higher orbit, we’ll be moving slower and have targets longer.”
“Make it so, Captain,” Commodore Peterwald said, preening at the prospects of a quick, overwhelming victory.
Damage control was just getting air back into Laser Bay 1 as Kris boosted the Patton into the lead position of her tiny squadron. She wanted to ask the other ships how their guns were doing, but she suspected their communications—a hurried lash-up—were compromised. Hopefully the others were in better shape than the Patton. Kris now had four lasers down.
Worse, the initial reports from observers on the other side of Chance said that Hank’s squadron was coming in low, maybe making a play for the station. Kris and Steve had bet that logic, or at least profit motive, would aim Hank at her warships, not the commercially valuable station. Kris gritted her teeth and kept her money on her bet. All it would take was a slight change in course and deceleration and the squadron would ride right down her throat. That was what Captain Slovo would do. Who’s calling the shots over there.
Then the update came in from the other side of Chance and Kris smiled. “They’re coming in high, folks,” she announced on ship net. “Gunnery, if you’re ever going to get those lasers up, now would be very appreciated.”
Jack settled into a station close to Kris as she ordered the Patton to begin defensive rotation. Ice protected the ship, but lasers burned through ice fast. So big warships spun along their long axis twenty times a minute, hoping to spin new, undamaged ice into a laser hit before it burned into the hull. Sometimes it worked.
Now, Jack converted the junior sensor station to a general overview. About the same time, Kris tapped her own board and turned it from a captain’s General Overview to Gunnery Central. No one on this boat had her experience shooting other ships. She’d have to wear two hats today. Fortunately, Jack was willing to share one hat with her. Sulwan would manage decoys as well as back up the helm. Lots of double hats.
But Kris had a third hat. She tapped the comm button, brought it up on guard channel, and said, “Hank, we’ve got to talk.”
“No we don’t,” Hank replied. No surprise.
“I really think we do.”
“Why? So you can mess with my head?”
That was true, but not what Kris wanted to talk about. “I don’t think us fighting is a very good idea.”
“I think this is a great idea, Longknife. I’ve got you.”
“And have you thought through what you’ve got?”
“I’ve got you.”
“That boy isn’t much for thinking, is he?” Jack whispered.
“Okay, Hank, let’s follow that thought. Now that you have things the way you want, will you bombard the cities below? You going to enjoy killing me?”
“Don’t mess with me, Kris. You’ve lost. They’ve lost. They’ll have to give up or I will bombard them. And you better run or surrender.”
“That’s where you need to think, Hank. I’ve got three ships ready to fight you. Three ships that won’t run while there’s a shot left in them. Below are folks that will fight you. Stand up fights when they can; snipe at you from behind trees if they have to. You’ve got us, but we’ve got you, too. You can’t win.”
“I’ve won, damn it, Longknife. I’ve won. You’re supposed to run away. You’ve lost. Why aren’t you running?”
“Because, Hank, this is not a pick-up basketball game; a chess match. Folks don’t just resign and walk away. Take you and me. We’re on a head-on course. In a few minutes, you’ll come over our horizon and we’ll be shooting to kill each other. That what you came here for?”
There was a pause at that. “No, no you can’t do this to me again. You got me to walk away from that jail. I bet you think you scared me. I know I would have won. I should have done it then. This time, I’ll do it. I’m going to blow you out of space, Longknife. This time I know why you did it.”
“The alien stuff.” Kris sighed.
“Right. You’re not going to hog it. Not this time.”
“Hank, nobody can hog it. The people on Chance know about it. I know about it. You know about it. Fine. We share it out for everyone.”
Hank snorted. “Right. You expect me to believe that?”
“Why not? If you walk through the logic, it holds together better than us killing each other and our families fighting.”
“No. You won’t talk me in circles this time. You sound like Slovo. If I could, I’d put both of you in the same cell.”
Which explained why Kris hadn’t heard anything from the flag captain. Only seconds remained before the cruisers came over the horizon and the battle started.
“Hank, this isn’t a fight, it’s a suicide pact. We’re fighting with hand grenades in a broom closet.”
“You’re wrong, Longknife. I won’t let you mess with me. It’s not a suicide pact I’m signing, it’s your death warrant.”
The four cruisers edged over the horizon, their sensor returns still smudged by the atmosphere that lay between.
All four Peterwald cruisers fired everything they had: 6-inch lasers, 21-inch pulse lasers, 4-inch secondaries.
In unpowered orbit, Kris had the Patton nose on to Hank’s ships and in a soft drift to the right. As Hank’s cruisers came over the horizon, Sulwan slammed the Patton as hard to the left and as down as the attitudinal jets would take her, while firing off a cloud of decoy chaff in the direction they’d been drifting. The folks on Chance had no rockets, but they did plenty of hunting—now shotgun shells blew ice and iron pellets to distract Hank’s gunners. A maelstrom of energy from Incredible and Fury passed down the Patton’s right side, hitting nothing.
Not quite, a pair of 4-inchers raked the meter-thick ice on the Patton’s nose.
NELLY, DO YOU HAVE A TRACK ON HANK’S SHIP.
THEY ARE COMING IN ON A STRAIGHT COURSE. DUMB.
FIRE. Forward, the Patton’s five working 6-inchers reached out for Hank’s flag. Three connected, boiling swirls of angry steam off the ship. WHY’D TWO MISS?
THEY ARE NOT STAYING REGISTERED. THEIR TRUNNIONS ARE OLD. I WILL ATTEMPT TO ADJUST, Nelly said.
“Five-inch battery, engage the second ship in line.” And Kris’s secondary lasers reached out to rake the Fury. Though the difference between 6- and 5-inch lasers seemed small, the main battery hit with over double the energy of the secondary. However, the secondary could fire two or three time
s while the 6-inch lasers recharged. At this close range, their reach was irrelevant.
“Wasp, Resolute, engage your opposite number plus one,” Kris ordered. The Wasp now fired at the third ship, Dominant, while the Resolute tackled Georg Krätz’s Surprise. Hopefully, the captain with only daughters would not handle the thin-skinned Resolute too badly.
Although the short range of the Wasp’s and Resolute’s pulse lasers didn’t matter today, they were intended as single-shot weapons. It usually took four or five minutes to recharge after firing. Now Penny and Drago used a trick of Nelly’s to fire only one-tenth or one-quarter power shots from their pulse lasers. They could worry the Greenfeld skippers longer if they held back, recharged as they went—and waited for them to get closer.
Assuming they dodged death and were alive at close range.
First salvos exchanged, now Kris waited for the lasers to recharge. In a running gun fight, 6-inch lasers usually took ten seconds to do that, 4- or 5-inch secondaries a third as long. But Kris’s ships were not under power. No fusion plasma shot from the reactor to the motors and out into space, generating electricity in the superconducting coils of the ship’s magnets.
This would not only be a battle in slow motion as the ships followed their orbits, but in slow time as the capacitors struggled to charge up again. Thanks to the expanded racetrack and its trickle charge, Kris had her 6-inchers back on-line in only twenty seconds. She fired. Four hit. More ice boiled off of Hank’s ship as it stayed steady in its orbit and on course.
“Sulwan, keep her on a steady course,” Kris said through tight lips. “Get ready to execute evasions.” Kris watched the seconds click by. Her guess was Hank would need a full half minute to recharge.
When asked how long Hank’s ships would take to reload, Nelly had given the equivalent of a computer shrug. “Too many variables, Kris. I will need to observe him for a while.”
Kris only had her gut to go on. At thirty seconds from Hank’s first salvo, Kris said, “Up and to the right.”
“Done,” Sulwan said, firing decoys.
Kris Longknife: Resolute Page 36