Kris Longknife Stalwart

by Mike Shepherd

  However, that created a problem. Only the Human's latest Mark XII fire control sensors could spot these new jumps. The Iteeche were blind to them. Having watched Human ships disappear into them, they knew they were out there. However, their fire control system could not find one with all four of their hands.

  As much as Kris hated to, she would have to break up her Human battlecruisers and assign one of them to each Iteeche flotilla. While the improved jump points were nice, they still orbited four or six other suns. This gravitational pull caused them to move at irregular times and disappear.

  Kris had once had half her fleet jump into a raging battle when a jump point took it in its mind to ramble off. It took the rest of the fleet a while, but they spotted it thousands of klicks away from where it had been. Half of her fleet had to reform, get themselves lined up for the new jump, and then hurry through it to arrive, like the cavalry in some old-time movie, their armored cars rolling in to save the civilians from the evil Iteeche.

  Kris had 224 Human battlecruisers. She had 216 Iteeche flotillas. If she assigned each of her Iteeche flotillas one Human ship, she'd have eight left over to shepherd the one hundred and twenty-five troopships loaded down with a 100,000 Iteeche soldiers each, and the nine Battleships of State as well as one or two to assign as a rear guard to help any Iteeche ships that missed the jump.

  Kris also intended to adopt an idea that Admiral Kitano brought from the Alwa Station. The rabid alien raiders had come up with a method for invading a system much faster. They'd bind six ships or more together and charge the gate as one.

  It was embarrassing that those bastards had come up with the idea before Humans, but they had. Humans had brought space stations and beam battleships that weighed in at over a million tons through the jumps. Humans should have realized that eight or twelve battlecruiser-sized ships could make the jump as a single unit.

  Now that it had been done safely, it was easy using Smart Metal™ to bind several ships together and split them apart quickly and smoothly. For the vicious alien raiders, it was much harder and required more hands-on experience that usually ended up with space-suited aliens floating alone in space, waiting for their air to run out, or popping open their helmets after they had sawed the cabling through that bound the ships together.

  The aliens were crazy suicidal in their commitment to destroy all intelligent life in the galaxy . . . except their own. Almost their entire species had also been genetically modified a hundred thousand years ago to slavishly obey any order.

  The problem was the "almost." For a few, the modification hadn't taken. Those few were now in charge leading all of them in a genocidal rage against all intelligent life not their own.

  It was not a good combination.

  Still, Alwa Station was holding their attention all the way on the other side of the galaxy. There had been no sightings of the aliens near Iteeche space for seven years or more. The two species had time to prepare.

  Time that was, unfortunately, being used up as the Iteeche Empire tore itself apart. Kris needed to end this insane rebellion before the alien raiders stumbled into them again and found a species spread across over three thousand planets and ripe for the plucking.

  Kris held the fleet at one gee as they decelerated toward the improved jump point. For the Humans, that was comfortable. For the Iteeche, it was closer to 1.25 gees. Unpleasant, but not uncomfortable.

  Intending to take this jump easy, Kris decelerated the fleet down to 40,000 klicks per hour and organized the fleet into a single column. Even at a two second interval, it would take the nearly 7,300 ships over four hours to pass through the jump. With the flotillas formed by squadrons into eight ship clusters, and the troopships in divisions of six, the fleet might complete the jump in half an hour.

  It was definitely worth the risk of a ship pranging into another if Kris could cut the vulnerability to the fleet being defeated in detail by 88%.

  Kris was also taking the fuzzy jumps because most of the systems she'd be passing through should be empty of hostile ships . . . or ships of any type. The systems her fleet would be traversing were off the Iteeche map or unoccupied or just well off the main shipping lanes.

  Since the first jump was a safe one, Kris let the fleet go through in single file, even if it did take four hours. Nobody wandered off and missed the jump, nor did the jump do any wandering.

  On the other side of the jump, Kris increased the fleet speed to 1.5 gees. It was still easy on the humans, but for the Iteeche it was double their usual acceleration and left every one of them carrying double their usual weight. As much time as the sailors could manage was spent laying on well-cushioned high gee couches.

  The Humans had brought target drones for practice. They expanded them to full battlecruiser size and turned them over to Nelly. She increased the maneuvering jets until the targets were as jumpy as one of Kris's battlecruisers, and the live fire drill began.

  The Iteeche ships were firing full broadsides at targets executing Nelly Evasion Plan 6. Kris didn't expect a lot of hits. She mainly wanted to see how fast the ships could fire. In that respect, she was not disappointed.

  Admiral Kris Longknife watched 6,400 of her volunteered warships plunk away at their dancing targets. There were few hits. Worse, the speed at which ships produced broadsides was dismaying.

  She let them spend thirty minutes struggling to get off as many broadsides as they could. The best managed battlecruiser managed 48 salvos. Several hundred, however, were in the single digits.

  After calling a ceasefire, Kris ordered Admiral Tong to assign one of his battlecruiser flotillas to take four of the targets under fire.

  "Pick one of your flotillas whose shooting is somewhere in the middle of your force and turn them loose on four drones. That's one per squadron," Kris ordered on a live line to every ship in the fleet.

  Flotilla 12 took its 32 ships out of the line. The flotilla went to full battle stations. The outer hull of the ships began to spin at 60 revolutions a minute, the best rate to distribute hits and avoid burn-through. The ships also executed their own Evasion Plan 6.

  Organized into four squadrons of eight, aligned one on top of the other, they turned their bows toward the targets.

  "You may open fire when ready," Kris ordered.

  The battlecruisers opened up with each of the twelve 24-inch lasers in their bow battery. Six seconds later, with capacitors empty, the battlecruisers flipped ship and fired their eight aft lasers before flipping their nose back to the enemy.

  Reloading the forward battery began the instant their capacitors ran dry. Twenty seconds after the first blast, the entire flotilla executed that same drill, dancing like a corps of ballerinas. They did this in just over four times a minute, then ceased firing.

  There was nothing left of the four target drones.

  Flotilla 12 holed them so badly the fake battlecruisers could not hold together. In one case, they hit the anti-matter power plant and the entire target vanished. In others, they shot up the maneuvering jets so badly they failed entirely, making the drones much easier targets. What was left of the three surviving targets were holed so badly, portions of the outer hull were bent and tore off to drift away.

  "Well done Flot 12," Kris said. "I think all your ships have qualified for a Gunnery E. For the rest of you, I hope you now know what I expect of you. You will recharge the capacitors for your lasers as fast as their specs allow. Your firing control teams will develop solutions quickly and accurately. Guns will be ready to bear on the target and laid quickly. You have a lot of work ahead of you. I want you to drill until you can do this in your sleep. Admiral Longknife sends."

  The Human ships recovered their drones that hadn't been shot to pieces. The fleet went back to drilling with breaks only for chow and sleep.

  Kris remembered days like the ones she was inflicting on her fleet. As a boot ensign, she'd been put through them, numerous and repetitive by her skipper on the old Typhon. Then, it had been intended to get her ready f
or a fight . . . and to dull her mind until she could do no more than obey orders.

  Then Captain Thorp ordered them to attack the Earth squadrons that had come to celebrate the devolution of power from the Society of Humanity. Hundreds of Human planets had been demanding freedom from the taxes and policies they complained were restrictive or unnecessary, and they were about to get it.

  However, someone intended to start a war between Earth and the Rim Worlds; Kris found herself right smack dab in the middle of it. Even as they closed on the Earth battleships, Kris had somehow managed to raise a mutiny against Thorpe and Nelly had helped them smash through the jamming to receive a frantic message from Grampa Ray to abort the attack. It was not authorized.

  Strange that the memory of that mutiny should be forever attached to the deadening mindlessness of hour after hours of drill.

  At least the Humans and Iteeche under Kris's command could rest assured that she was out to end a war, not start one. It had been a long time since she had given any thought to that callow young woman.

  As they drew closer to the jump, Kris turned the fleet over to Admiral Tong to organize the battlecruisers into clusters by eight by squadrons. The troopships were edged together into groups of six by divisions. The Battleships of State were huge and built of traditional materials. They would go through alone.

  It was no easy job to bring ships together without smash-ups. Indeed, it was probably impossible by Human or Iteeche standards. However, Nelly and her children had seeded each of the near 7,300 ship's computers with automatic routines that, when activated, would do all the work for them.

  By the time they reached the improved jump, the fleet had reduced its deceleration and was traveling at only 40,000 kilometers an hour. Kris and Admiral Tong had placed their flagships in groups well to the rear of the column. The fleet took this jump with more distance between formations. There were four-second intervals between each squadron or division. Admittedly, this would double the jump time to an hour, but Kris wanted as few banged up ships as possible.

  Nelly might be able to take most of the dings out of the hulls, but the sound of ships grinding together was not something a skipper or sailor liked to hear.

  Admiral Kitano in the Resolute led the first flotilla through. Her sensors took an immediate snapshot of the system and beamed it back to the last battlecruiser coming through. That ship shot a small message beacon through that gave Kris a good look at their destination system. It allowed her to decide to abort the jump or go through with it.

  As planned, the Resolute jumped a mere two hundred light years to an uninhabited system. It was empty; Kris ordered the ships to continue with the jump.

  This fleet evolution proceeded as planned. The jump was gracious enough to stay put. Each flotilla followed its assigned Human battlecruiser through that same point in space without a hitch, except for those captains who panicked and hit the abort switch.

  Kris had detached the Intrepid to shepherd those formations back to the jump and lined them up to go through. They arrived late and under the watchful eyes of their fellow captains in the squadron who had kept their nerve.

  It was very embarrassing.

  Kris congratulated the skippers and their crews for a job well done and gave them four hours to call their own while the ships detached and reformed into flotillas.

  This time, while the fleet accelerated at 1.5 gees toward the next improved jump point, the flotillas organized themselves into wings.

  The standard battle formation was a cross, with five equal wings. A vanguard, center, and rear guard were strung out in line ahead. Above and below the center wing was a top and bottom wing. For Kris's fleet, each wing held 45 flotillas, or 1,440 ships. Standard doctrine in both the Human and Iteeche Navy would array the flotillas in five files of nine flotillas following in line ahead.

  The wing could be ordered to cover more space by stretching out and going to seven or eight files with fewer flotillas in line ahead. It all depended on the situation.

  Now Kris began drilling the ships in performing those changes. First, they performed a uniform turn to the right.

  And the formation went to hell.

  "Admiral Tong, didn't you practice these drills?"

  "Yes, my Most Eminent Admiral, we did."

  "And?"

  "What you see here is the best I got from them. You would not believe what happened the first time we tried this drill."

  "Somehow, I think I would. Okay. Admiral Tong, please take up where you left off. We need this fleet to be able to maneuver under fire."

  "Yes, My Most Eminent Admiral."

  Since most of Kris's Navy responsibilities had been delegated, she switched to her political hat and checked in with the Battleships of State.

  She wished she hadn't.

  If she thought the people in the senior clans had long names, those in the junior clans frequently had to include at least a major clan somewhere in their last name, and likely two before they got down to what made them a distant sapling of that august and mighty oak. Once again, Kris resorted to short names she could remember and left it to Nelly to say whatever the etiquette of the present situation required.

  Sam was the name Kris called the future Planetary Overlord of the first planet they would retake for the Empire. None of his clan had ever served the Emperor as a Planetary Overlord and he was very excited.

  And also full of himself.

  "Do you have to race around the stars at an acceleration that leaves us flat on our backs?" He was speaking from one of the improved Iteeche high-gee stations Nelly made for them out of Smart Metal.

  "Most Eminent Clan Leader," Kris said, "I am moving quickly so that I can surprise the rebels and seize three planets out from under their noses before they know I am no longer sitting on my rear at the Capital."

  "But this confounded weight," he grumbled.

  So, Kris did her best to slowly and simply explain about the short cuts she was taking and how she needed to hit the jumps at a much faster velocity than usual. "That requires high accelerations and decelerations."

  "I still think this is a poor way to travel."

  "Do you think I should offer all those on a Battleship of State an opportunity to go back, now that they understand the price to be paid for their new positions of eminence?" Kris asked, diffidently.

  "No, no, no. Others might, but I would never call it quits over a minor thing like temporary weight."

  "Okay, but I thought I should ask."

  "No, no. No problem."

  Kris checked in with the other two future Planetary Overlords and got the same whines which she answered with the same potential offer. Both shut up.

  If only all of Kris's problems could be solved so easily.

  22

  After many exhausting hours of drilling, and not a few hours of the fleet jinking around at first Evasion Plan 1 and slowly working their way up to Plan 5, Kris was reaching a new understanding of how the Iteeche Empire ran.

  There was no way that they could have almost wiped out humanity in the War.

  Kris had held her fleet to a gentle 1.5 gee acceleration, then deceleration.

  The crews and officers of the Human battlecruisers were chosen from the younger up-and-comers. The Iteeche on Admiral Tong's ships were also experienced and often young.

  However, it was not the same on the newly contributed Clan battlecruisers. By the time they were ready to take the next jump at 250,000 klicks and twelve revolutions on the boat, there was a crisis of leadership on many of those new battlecruisers.

  Far too many of the officers and senior chiefs of the Iteeche Navy were superannuated barnacles that should have been left ashore. Time after time, a skipper had to be relieved after he wrenched his back. This was usually followed by his XO and even senior division heads ending up in sick bay for any of a number of reasons, including heart attacks as well as all sorts of sprains and broken bones.

  Old chiefs were falling like flies as well.

&nbs
p; After Kris's twelve tiny forces of fast attack mosquito boats saved Wardhaven by blowing six super battleships out of space, she'd been assigned to teach other planets how to develop a swarm of these self-same mosquito boats. This had been her first use of the jinking pattern to save ships by not being where the next salvo was aimed.

  It also had ended up with a lot of older officers on the disability retirement list.

  Wardhaven had collected a bunch of misfits much like Kris and turned them loose to develop their own doctrine. Without even meaning to, they had taken in stride the demanding physical needs of the fast attack boats.

  Kris couldn't be too hard on the Iteeche. Several Human Navies had to get past the idea that these tiny boats might be a good command for the officers who had been passed over once and desperately wanted to catch that next promotion.

  Now, these ships from the minor clans were discovering that if they actually intended to use those warships for like war, they needed officers who could conn them and men who could crew them under high gee and jinking.

  Most of the ships managed to find in their crew the hidden skills needed among their junior officers and sailors. In a few cases, Kris had to order some of Admiral Tong's new XOs to take command of a ship that just couldn't get its act together.

  For once, Kris was glad that the Iteeche crews were numbered 1,000 strong for a battlecruiser that the Humans usually had less than 400 aboard.

  It was a tighter fleet . . . with very full sickbays . . . that headed for the next jump. This jump would not only be taken faster, but at three-second intervals between formations.

  Again, the ships came together with no major dings to their hulls. Unfortunately, at this velocity, it required the finest navigation. Several of them missed the jump, often by only a few hundred meters, but the jumps were that small. These usually involved screaming debates between three or four ships that the other three or four were off course with each group, or several groups riding their steering jets trying to "correct" the course.