“Now left.” Kris waited, listening for Nelly’s next random move. If only she knew when Hank would be recharged. “Up,” Kris said a second later.
And the Patton was raked by two 6-inch hits down its right side. Had Hank fired as fast as he could, or waited and out-guessed Kris? No way to tell.
The 4-inch lasers picked at the Patton, boiling off a bit of ice here, some more there. Her ship rumbled and shuddered beneath Kris as reaction mass was pumped quickly to rebalance the ship. Otherwise the spin might tear the ship apart, sending ice flying off into space and leaving her ready for Hank’s coup de grâce.
“Sulwan, jack up the attitudinal jets. Jink faster.”
“These dinky jets weren’t meant for heavy lifting.” But the woman did. The Patton dodged and weaved in its orbit. Every few seconds, Sulwan goosed the main engines, jumping them a bit in their orbit and vacating the space that had gotten too hot. In near-0 g, this was not the mad, punishing dance at 2 and 3 gs that Kris had needed to survive at Wardhaven. Kris doubted the Patton could take that. No, they stayed in their orbit and dodged just enough to throw off Hank’s gunners.
But the occasional blast of plasma through the five working motors shortened the time Kris needed to reload. She fired her five available lasers as they came up again. Four raked Hank’s ship. Only now did it start its own dance. No question Slovo was in the brig. Unfortunately, Hank was learning from Kris how it was done.
Behind Hank, the other ships began the same. And the Resolute was taking one, no two, hits.
“Aft gunnery, if you can target the Surprise, get a few shots off at them to take the pressure off the Resolute.” Only two of the stern lasers were up, but when Sulwan put the Patton into a left lean, both of then took a nip at the Surprise. One hit, boiling a long slash in her ice.
“Bet that surprised them,” a gunner chortled on net.
Now Kris’s battery was again loaded. She waited for Hank to go from a zig to a zag, let Nelly do the analysis, then sent five lasers his way. Again, she hit. Hank must be trying to do his own dodge pattern. Nelly had developed the one Sulwan and the other ships were using. It wasn’t perfect, not at this range, but it was better than Hank making his own calls. “He likes going up and to his right,” Nelly noted.
Kris’s 5-inchers hammered the Fury. The young skipper on that boat was trying for the Patton, but rarely connecting.
Which looked good but didn’t make Kris feel any better. She was teaching these kids their job—and their slight delay in firing their lasers told Kris something she didn’t really want to know. They were recharging their pulse lasers. About the time the fleets were closest, those big hitters would be ready.
Sulwan kept the Patton’s teardrop hull pointed at the Incredible. That put the meter of ice on the nose out where it took most of the hits and the engines out of harm. Kris nipped one of Hank’s engines. Penny also got one of the Dominant’s. It didn’t matter much, since none of the ships were under boost; but now Hank angled his cruisers vulnerable engines away, pointed only his bow weapons at Kris and continued the fight.
They closed at over fifty-five thousand kilometers an hour, dodging and weaving in their orbits, firing as quickly as they could recharge. Steam boiled off the Patton to cool into crystalline ice, providing a thin cloak of cover for the ships behind her. That and the residue of decoys gave color to the lasers reaching out to slash ships. It also deflected sensors, making firing solutions less precise. But as the angle of fire approached zero, that mattered less and less.
“Sulwan, get ready to make a major dodge,” Kris whispered, firing off a salvo that boiled Hank’s ice but did no apparent damage. “He’s coming up on closest approach. And he’ll have his 21-inch pulse lasers recharged.” Kris didn’t have to say what the Patton would look like if she took five, ten of them at once.
Kris would give her right arm for the four-pulse lasers the Patton was supposed to have. Someone had removed them before exiling the boat to the Rim, probably for new construction. Kris hoped they earned their pay wherever that was.
The navigator laid the Patton over and boosted; then just as quickly, flipped it, fired decoy, and boosted back. Twice Sulwan did that yo-yo. Sometimes the leg was one second long, another time two. Halfway through the third, the Patton shuddered along its length.
Kris’s board lit up as the Patton shimmied and bumped. Pumps moved reaction mass to rebalance her, but not fast enough.
“Laser Bay 1 is open to space.” That was no surprise. “We’ve got a burn through there.” The meter of ice over it, slashed and hacked, had boiled away totally. The Patton staggered in its orbit, taking hits as it became predictable. “Sulwan.”
“I don’t know if the old gal can take this, but here goes.” The Patton’s engines blasted Kris back in her seat. Kris ignored the red flashing on Jack’s board and aimed for the Incredible. Four lasers answered her order. Hank’s ship steamed.
How much longer can I keep this up?
Flag Captain Slovo struggled to make his way back to his bridge. A man of his age and experience should have known better than to try to teach a pig to sing. All he’d done was aggravate the pig—and get himself thrown in his own brig.
In his cell, it had done him and his ship no good to shout orders for battle rotation or evasive maneuvers. The dimming of the lights told Slovo that the Incredible had fired everything it had at the start of the battle. Only a long minute later did the ship take on rotation . . . maybe half of what it needed to survive. And then it began to zig and zag in its orbit.
“So that Longknife girl is teaching you how this dance is done,” Slovo muttered as his cell door opened.
“Your presence is requested on the bridge.” Maybe Hank was ready to learn from someone other than that girl.
Against the rotation, allowing for dodges and weaving, and trying not to let the sudden bursts of power leave him with a broken leg or cracked skull, Slovo struggled forward.
“I got her. I got her.” Hank greeted him as he half stumbled, half swam onto his bridge. The commodore’s happy face turned to him. “I’ve already won this battle. I didn’t need you after all.”
The flag captain locked his face to blank, said “Very good,” and lurched for his seat. He was just strapping in when all hell broke loose.
Steve Kovar, Lieutenant, retired, more or less, did not like what he saw. On the good side, his station remained unengaged by the hostiles. The princess had ordered him not to fire unless fired upon and the commercial value of the station seemed to be working as its best defense.
The bad side was that his side was getting the crap beat out of them. He’d soon face a choice of surrendering or fighting a hopeless battle. He hadn’t joined the Navy to give up without a fight, so he figured him and his crew for dead.
He went down the list of Kris’s ships and didn’t like the answer he got. The Patton was badly holed by that last salvo. She was still fighting, but didn’t look long for the battle.
The Resolute had been dancing like mad, but it had taken hit after hit. Its smart armor had to be about gone. One or two more hits and . . . Only the Wasp was holding its own.
Steve measured the distance between his station and Hank’s flagship. It wouldn’t be more than two hundred klicks at closest approach. His station should be able to bring to bear eight boosted 6-inch lasers. “Harriet, jack up the reactor. I’m gonna want all you can give.”
“You got it.”
Pumping energy into capacitors even as you discharged their lasers was something that had sparked a long series of letters to the Proceedings. Now would be a good time to see if it worked.
“Every gun that can bear, aim for the flag.” He paused. “Fire.”
“Oh my God,” someone prayed on the bridge.
Kris didn’t have time; she mashed guard channel. “Hank, you’re naked as a plucked chicken. Accept my cease-fire.”
“Never. I’ve got you.”
Lasers reached out, lashed the Patton as Sulwan do
dged.
“Like hell,” Kris muttered, and changed channels. “Penny, you still charged?”
“Fully. Where do you want it?”
“Target Hank’s engines and power.”
“I know just where they are.”
“Fire,” Kris ordered and did the same with all she still had available.
The Incredible steamed, staggered drunkenly, rolled away from Kris, and then went dead in space.
Captain Slovo’s board lit up on his command. Then it flashed red and went dead. Around him lights went out but not fast enough to conceal the horror. A huge hole blazed open in the far wall and the entire sensor team vanished in blinding light. Air blasted across his face.
“Life pods,” Slovo shouted as he reached for the handle below his seat and pulled it. In a blink, the walls of a pod flashed around him. Transparent, it let him see the destruction of his ship. He saw his commodore, so sure of himself a moment ago, now fighting panic as he also pulled the handle. The survival pod expanded around him. Slovo breathed a sigh of relief.
Then tasted panic; the same that must be swallowing Henry Smythe-Peterwald the Thirteenth. Around Slovo, other pods showed lights as they pumped air, sent emergency signals.
Where Hank sat was deadly dark.
Kris mashed her commlink on guard channel. “Hank, are you there? Hank, have you had enough? Hank, I’m offering you a cease-fire.”
Only static came back.
“This is Captain Krätz, Senior Captain present. I accept your offer of a cease-fire.”
“You can’t do that,” one of Hank’s captains shot back.
“I can and I am,” Krätz snapped. “And I will see that the captain of any ship that violates my agreement is court-marshaled. You want to be the one to tell Papa Peterwald that you didn’t render every assistance to his son?” That brought silence.
“This affair is over,” Krätz bit out. “Form on the flag and render all assistance possible.”
Six hours later, they’d found out how little they could do.
Kris risked the battered nose of the Patton to push High Chance into an orbit that would last several months or until someone came along to put it higher. She was just stabilizing it when three ships came through Jump Point Alpha, announced themselves to be from the Helvetica Confederacy and asked what was going on.
Captain Slovo, now commanding the Fury, advised that there had been a slight misunderstanding and requested assistance. Kris and Steve seconded the motion in the name of their respective political entities.
The new arrivals listened, took a good look around, and sent one ship back through the jump to make a private call home, then drove for Chance at 2 g’s. They docked a day later, just before Slovo brought the three surviving Greenfeld ships carefully alongside, as well.
Thus, Vice Admiral Quang Tu of the Helvetica Confederacy was present with Kris and Steve, when Captain Slovo gingerly brought an unopened survival pod onto the landing of Pier 2.
“I hope that is not what I think it is,” Kris said.
“Regretfully, it is,” Slovo sighed. “One, very inoperable life pod with one Henry Peterwald the Thirteenth in it.” The Greenfeld captain waited until representatives from the other two ships arrived, then ordered one of his own mechs to open of the pod. Jack and Beni were as close as they could get, recorders and sensors out, but there were no surprises today.
Hank Peterwald’s very sculptured features were very dead.
“I guess I’ve finally met someone with more enemies than me,” Kris said.
“May I offer assistance?” Admiral Tu asked.
“No,” Slovo said. “Regretfully, this situation has become a crime scene and Greenfeld security will handle the investigation from this point.” Kris suspected she recognized several of the hard-faced men who stepped forward. One of them had tried to enter the station’s reactor. Yep. She’d ID’d them all right.
Captain Slovo nodded to Kris. “If you will order communications through Jump Point Barbie reopened, I will call my headquarters for orders.” Kris quickly did.
Vice Admiral Tu, who never explained what a vice admiral was doing commanding a mere division of heavy cruisers or how he happened to wander into the Chance system, let it be known he was in no hurry to leave and might well be expecting additional forces. There were hints of battleships.
Kris took Lieutenant Kovar aside and asked if he’d mind looking after United Sentients interests while she made a quick trip to Wardhaven. Nelly discovered a reg, dating back to the Iteeche Wars, that delegated authority to Naval District Commanders to approve battlefield promotions through Commander. With a grin, Kris promoted Steve to outrank her and gleefully sent the paperwork in to see how much trouble it would cause BuPers.
She was packed when Slovo detached the remnants of Hank’s squadron and began a very sedate .5 g acceleration toward Jump Point Barbie.
As Kris marched down with her team to the Resolute, Steve went with her. And chuckled as Ron and a half dozen other mayors from Chance waylaid them.
“Kris, I know we can never thank you enough for what you’ve done,” Ron started, “but we’ve got to at least try. We of Chance have never awarded a medal for valor, but the people who fought with you certainly deserve one.” And so Kris was handed the very first Chance Cross of Gallantry with Silver Star. Jack and Penny both rated the Silver Star version. Beni and Abby’s award had Bronze Stars in them. Kris heard that those who served beer got palm fronds on theirs. It truly was an award to unite all those who had stood up for Chance in its time of need.
“I told them,” Steve said, grinning, “that all your fruit salad was just tourist stuff, been there, done that, got shot at. We made sure this one had a cross and a silver star on it.” Kris hugged Steve, then hugged Ron . . . and got kissed.
“Any chance you could, maybe, hang around here long enough for a guy to get to know you? Deserve an entire chapter in that book I want you to write?” Ron asked, his mom at his elbow.
“You know I have to take The Word back to Wardhaven. And now that Hank’s dead, I have to tell them why.”
Ron was still waving as the Resolute undocked.
As soon as they jumped through Alpha, now monitored by a buoy from New Bern, Abby knocked on Kris’s cabin door.
“I have a report I need to file with an employer.”
“I figured you’d be around soon. It mention aliens?”
“No, I won’t give that away. They don’t pay me that much.”
“Does it have anything in it that might harm me?”
“Other than your reputation, I think you’re safe.”
“My reputation was lost long ago. Send it,” Kris said, then had a second thought. “Pass a copy along to Jack. I may borrow from it if I have to write a report on this.”
“You don’t want a copy?”
“No, Abby, I trust you.”
“No you don’t, Kris.”
“Yes I do,” Kris said, frowning at the bold contradiction.
“You don’t trust us any more than any Longknife trusts anyone. Here you dragged us off hunting aliens and you didn’t tell us a thing about it beforehand.”
“Your steamer trunks had what I needed.”
“Yes, but will they always?”
Kris went back to studying alien issues and Abby left. After five minutes, Kris found she was going over the same item for the ninth time. You don’t trust me, kept coming back.
Well, the maid was selling Kris’s life. Why should she trust her? But she hadn’t told Jack about the jump points, either. Or Penny. And somebody hadn’t told her that Hank was wandering these spaces. Longknifes don’t trust.
Kris spent much of the voyage home thinking about that.
19
Usually, Kris had to wait for a summons from General McMorrison until her ship docked at High Wardhaven. Not this time. She was just finishing breakfast aboard the Resolute with her team when the Comm Chief stepped in with a message flimsy.
“You know an
yone named Mac?” Kris averred she might.
“He wants to see you in his office ASAP after we dock. Message is kind of cryptic. You understand it?”
Kris sighed and put down an apple core. “We have these little get togethers every time I come back from off-planet. Mac starts by offering me a completed resignation form to sign. I tear it up and things go downhill from there.”
“General McMorrison, the Chief of Wardhaven’s General Staff?” Penny asked, a bit unsure that Kris actually was on a nickname basis with someone of that elevated status.
“The same,” Jack said. “I cool my heels in the waiting room. Not sure what I’m supposed to do if he decides to threaten bodily harm. Interfere or cheer.”
“Well, I’m glad it’s just you,” Penny said.
“Maybe, maybe not. Jack, you’re with me. Penny, you, too.” She looked around the room. Abby was eating her breakfast alone at a corner table. “You, too.”
“Me?” the maid said in high theatrical shock.
“Can’t tell when I might need a report composed.”
“Maybe you can sell the story,” Jack said.
“Nobody pays for the obvious,” Abby sniffed. “Who’s going to take charge of your steamer trunks. I’ve got to get them back to your suite at Nuu House.”
Kris looked around, found Beni munching waffles with Doc. “Chiefs are the backbone of the Navy. I’m sure our good chief can get some trunks to toddle along after him.”
“What? How? Why me?”
“The what and how,” Jack said. “Ask Abby. Why you? That’s too philosophical even for me, but I think proximity to greatness or the near great has something to do with it.”
As Kris led her two officers off to change into undress whites, Doc was heard to suggest to Beni that “you really do need to apply to OCS.”
At the bottom of the space elevator, Harvey, the family retainer and chauffeur was waiting; he already knew his first stop. His oldest grandkid, a girl who claimed to be old enough to drive and waved a license “with a horrible picture” to prove it, was there with a truck for the luggage.
Kris Longknife: Resolute Page 37