Kris Longknife Stalwart

by Mike Shepherd

  In the less than a minute that the two forces were in range of each other, nearly 5,000 gunboats in the forward arrays had been blasted to wreckage.

  The butcher's bill was yet to be tallied precisely but it was clear even now that 1,300 of his battlecruisers had vanished and close to half of his gunboats were now twisted wreckage spinning in space!

  Admiral Zom wanted to rage. He wanted to kick the bulkhead and maybe roar at some cringing sailors. How could the ships under that Longknife Human's command have done this to him in less than a minute?

  What had she done to her ships that he had not done to his?

  Consumed by fury, Admiral Zom forced himself to study what visuals he had on the other fleet and his own.

  It was immediately clear that her ships had dodged and bobbed much faster than his ships had. That would clearly make them harder to hit. Still, from the video of the brief battle there were few sparks of her ships blowing up.

  "Computer, count the number of enemy ships that blew up."

  It took two minutes for the computer to come back with a curt, "Seventeen."

  "Seventeen!" Zom bellowed. "How could we have only gotten seventeen of her ships? Computer, recount. Any spark, any flash, any evidence of a ship exploding. Count it."

  The computer was calculating for three minutes, but when it finished, "seventeen," was still its answer.

  Admiral Zom slumped back in his high gee couch. It was true that the enemy fleet had escaped out of range before most of his fleet could come up. Still, how could he have traded 1,300 of his battlecruisers and 5,000 of his gunboats for just 17 enemy ships?

  Going into this battle, he had thought he outnumbered the Longknife Human by almost seven-to-one. Admittedly, the small, short- ranged, gunboats had accounted for a third of his force. Take them away and the odds dropped to a bit better than four-to-one.

  Admiral Zom watched as the enemy fleet zoomed away from him. It had hardly begun to decelerate towards Longnae 4. His fleet had decelerated hard to make it around the gas giant. Now he had to accelerate hard to catch up with the Longknife Human. Sooner or later she would have to begin decelerating and then he would have her.

  It was only a matter of time before they were again in laser range.

  Of course, his ships would have to be firing more than they had been this pass.

  "Number One, what is wrong with our deep damned ships today?"

  63

  Kris ordered her fleet back to Condition Baker, and allowed chiefs to dismiss one in four watch standers to get a hot meal and a warm shower before returning to their battle station to doze or drill, depending on the iron whim of his or her chief.

  The most pressing needs taken care of, Kris climbed out of her egg, donned her shipsuit and stood beside her battle board, her shoulders hunched as she leaned on it. She thought better standing up and staring down at the universe.

  "Nelly, get me Admiral Tong," Kris ordered.

  A moment later, a very happy Iteeche filled much of her forward screen.

  "Admiral Tong, that was a very good shoot. Give the crews a Very Well Done."

  "It will be my pleasure," the admiral agreed, and waved at someone off screen, likely a comm officer, to get the message disseminated to the fleet quickly.

  "Now, what's the butcher's bill?" Kris asked.

  "I was hoping you'd tell me. I'm sure your Nelly kept a better tally than my ship's computer could."

  Kris could almost feel Nelly preening at her neck. For a computer, the gal was getting awful vain. However, she did stay quiet. Apparently, Nelly wanted Kris to give her the order.

  After a brief pause, Kris allowed herself a tiny shake of her head and said, "Okay Nelly, what are the total casualties for both sides?"

  "Twelve hundred and ninety-seven hostile battlecruisers lost containment and exploded or suffered major, but not catastrophic, damage and have dropped out of the battle formation. Many are adrift in space."

  "What about those non-Smart Metal ships with only a single reactor?" Tong asked.

  "Seven thousand, five hundred came in range during the shoot. They turned out to have no ice armor. We'd kind of expected that based on their mass and density, but it was nice to find out we were right. If we hit them, we destroyed them. However, they weren't very good at jinking. I don't know why that wasn't a major design requirement. We hit six thousand nine hundred and twelve, Admirals," Nelly reported.

  "Our gunners thought the small rebel ships were quite energetic, dancing around all over the place," Admiral Tong said. "We thought we missed more than we hit. I guess we must have hit more than exploded."

  "What about the battlecruisers?" Kris asked.

  "The same thing," Admiral Tong said. "Lots of dancing around. I don't think they were revolving their hull armor nearly as fast as we were. That might have cost them ships."

  "I hope they don't do better next time we meet," Jack drawled, dryly.

  "Yes, let's hope. What were our casualties?" Kris asked, and changed the topic. She could have had the ships she lost listed on her board, but she waited for Nelly to pass the word.

  "Seventeen of our battlecruisers were destroyed. Twelve from among the thousand ships we acquired at Balan," Nelly added softly. More proof that training was essential to surviving in battle.

  Nelly went on, "Another sixty-four were damaged, but not enough to have to pull out of the line. Two Human battlecruisers were hit, but their crystal armor worked."

  Kris shook her head. "I wonder if our opposite number has this loss count."

  "I'd hate to be in his shoes if he does," Jack said.

  "I'd hate to be part of his flag bridge crew," Admiral Tong said. "If he's a clan lordling, this may be the first time in his life that he's facing adversity."

  Kris could easily agree with the Iteeche admiral. Adversity was a hard tool for annealing character, but she had yet to find anything that worked nearly so well. Into each life some rain must fall, or it's a pretty dry life.

  She turned her mind from the preliminary battle she'd just fought to the critical one that lay in the future. Her main concern was where to meet that battle.

  "Let's see, Nelly. If we stay at 1.5 gees and they set out to overtake us, where do we meet?"

  "Your enemy is now accelerating at 3.5 Iteeche gees. That would give him more energy on the boat when they come up on us. He'd whiz by and then have to decelerate. Let's assume his nav computer is half decent and he cuts his acceleration, or keeps it up and flips ship to decelerate into our meeting engagement. You're about twelve hours out from that fight. Oh, and Kris, you'll have to decelerate at three gees for the last twelve hours in order to make orbit on Longnae 4."

  "If he matches course with us," Kris mused, "he'll be back doing 3.5 gees again."

  "Yes. His ships and crews have to be tired of that by now."

  Kris let her mind wander, following vectors and thrust projections. Always, the maximum range of the 24-inch lasers was a circle around each potential position of her ships. Of his ships.

  Finished with the thinking, Kris had Nelly run some projections on a few of her possible options. Satisfied, Kris said, "Nelly get me Admiral Tong."

  "Yes, Admiral," the Iteeche said.

  "I want to take the fleet up to 1.75 Human gees. Will that be a problem for your Iteeche crewmen?"

  "That will be just a smidge over two gees Iteeche," Nelly put in, helpfully.

  "If they can't lift double their weight for a bit," Admiral Tong snapped, "they don't belong in my Navy."

  "What do you intend to do for the next dozen hours or so?" Kris asked.

  "Once the crew gets some food and a dip in the tub, I'll let them sleep in their high gee carts at their battle station. I already have the ship engineers mending and fixing. They can take care of their own needs after they take care of the ship's needs. I intend to be back up to a hundred percent on every ship before we get into another fight."

  "Good," Kris said, and closed down the call. She turned to Jack.r />
  "You hungry?"

  "I could eat the horse you rode in on," he said.

  "I don't think the supply situation is quite that bad. At least not yet. But don't make any suggestions to the officer mess's president. He doesn’t need any more ideas about how to find stray meat for the stew."

  "No. Not at all," he answered her.

  At the hatch into the passageway, Kris glanced back at her board. Nothing much had changed. She allowed herself to go enjoy lunch.

  Maybe, after that, she and Jack could enjoy a tub soak.

  She rotated her shoulders, trying to get some of the tension out. Jack rested a gentle hand between her shoulder blade and did his best on the walk to the wardroom to unkink a few muscles.

  64

  Admiral Zom was tired of laying on his high gee couch. He was tired of staring up at the overhead whenever he wasn't risking his neck to angle it up so he could see his battle board. The tube intended to help him evacuate fluids when nature called itched.

  If he hated this, what must his sailors feel toward this enforced torture? First, his fleet accelerated at hard gees. Then it decelerated. Now it accelerated again at the same hard gee. He knew why he'd done it. How many of the sailors did?

  Still, sailors really didn't matter. They performed their duty to the clan that fed them. That was enough.

  Speaking of feeding, his stomach growled. Zom could not remember the last time he had eaten. He reached down to rummage in the pocket sewn into the side of his high gee cot and found a wrapped candied yam. He unwrapped it and slowly began to eat it.

  At high gee, you had to chew your food until it was little more than spit in your mouth, otherwise your stomach could not digest it.

  He also had to bring his cot up to forty degrees from the vertical to make sure that he didn't choke on his food. There were so many things to fighting a battle the new Human way.

  He'd done so much, yet still they slaughtered his ships like smelt swimming upriver in shoals. What could he have done differently?

  "Number One, do we have any video of the enemy battlefleet during the last fight?"

  "Most Eminent Admiral, they were barely into the 270,000 kilometer range of our lasers."

  "Certainly, someone took video of what the enemy was doing," Zom snapped.

  "I will canvas the fleet, Most Eminent Admiral," Number One answered, and began talking into his comm unit.

  Half an hour later, Admiral Zom was watching a brief video on the main screen of his flag bridge. It had been magnified and slowed down, but it was clear that the enemy ships were dancing around like spring bugs doing their best to evade hungry fingerlings.

  "They never stayed on one course more than three seconds," Admiral Zom mused softly. "Every two or three seconds they're up, down, left, right, faster, slower. Yet each ship did a different dance. Whether they were turning toward our ships to fire or returning to their base course, they never quit bouncing.”

  No wonder so few of his ships had made hits.

  His staff officer stayed quiet. Zom wondered what he was thinking . . . or if he ever thought at all.

  "Our ships did their own dodging, but apparently not so well. I wonder what our dodging efforts looked like?"

  "I don't know, My Admiral," Number One staff officer said.

  "Then have a few flotillas go back to Dodging Program 3 and let's get some video to compare."

  "Yes, My Admiral."

  That Number One staff officer was now addressing him merely as "My Admiral," told Zom a lot. Someone didn't approve of all this hunting around for the source of their catastrophic losses. "It was just their time to die. Their fate. Their destiny."

  That kind of thinking had gotten him into this mess. That and the few survivors of the previous defeats who had managed to escape destruction or capture to carry back reports on how this Longknife Human fought.

  They had changed their tactics and equipment. A week ago, it had seemed enough.

  It had not been nearly good enough.

  Every survivor brought back stories of how the Human and allied Iteeche ships danced around, making it nearly impossible to hit them. Spies from the capital reported on new high gee couches. They shared how the Humans and Iteeche fought while reclining on them, allowing their bodies to survive the brutal pressure of two, three, or even four times their weight.

  The newest high gee stations were the best copy they could make of what the spies described.

  Zom ground his beak together. The spies said the enemy used the magic metal to make the high gee "eggs" and that the warriors went into them bare. Both claims were hard to believe. Dozens of programmers had tried to create the cushioning needed for a such a station and all had failed. They were either too brittle and fell apart, or too strong and inflexible. Those were no better than laying down on the deck.

  The Human programmers had offered every builder a high gee station for their ships. Every planet had rejected those offers. Warriors went into battle standing on their own four feet.

  Now, the Human programmers were gone and Zom was left fighting a Human-led fleet that he could not match with these thrown together couches whose water cushions blew out under the pressure of high accelerations.

  "My Admiral," Number One staff officer said, somewhere between respectful and obsequious. "We have the video of four of our flotillas operating for three minutes under Dodging Program 3."

  "Put it on the main screen. Put the enemy ships above it."

  The two videos appeared, the enemy below, his own ships above. The two told him nothing. His own ships were clearly dodging faster than the Human-led fleet.

  "Computer, change the timing on the videos. Make one Iteeche second equal to five Human seconds."

  His ships slowed down. The enemy ships sped up. This view showed an enemy fleet that moved as if its feet were in a bucket of kelp syrup. His fleet now was much more lively; the ships changed course every two or three seconds with much harder turns.

  His ships were sluggish, each course change taking effect slowly. The hostiles slammed their ships into the change of directions.

  At times, his ships doubled back on themselves. For example, one ship went down and right, then up and left, only to end up in the same space. If it was trying to evade a laser, it had done a good job of charging right back into it.

  "Do you see the problem?" he asked Number One.

  "Yes, My Most Eminent Admiral," the staff officer said. With the proof right there in front of him, even this mindless sand flea could see it.

  "What do we do?" Number One now wanted to know. "They obliterated half our vanguards. What changes can we make in the next half day that will make things go any differently?"

  "Are you suggesting I turn and run from an opponent I outnumber four-to-one?"

  "She has defeated forces that outnumbered her four-to-one and sailed away with more ships than when she started the fight. A lot more ships."

  Suddenly, Number One staff officer was sounding like someone who had seen a ghost and became a true believer in ancestor worship.

  "I think we can do much better than we did this last fight," Admiral Zom said. "Battle board, show our course and vectors to intercept the enemy fleet, assuming we stay at 3.5 gee acceleration as long as we can and then flip and match course and deceleration with the enemy."

  "There are too many variables," the computer responded.

  So, Admiral Zom went through an iterative process, inserting his assumptions for when the Longknife Human would jack up her deceleration.

  He was halfway through this effort when Number One said, "The enemy fleet has increased its deceleration from 1.5 to 1.75 gees."

  "So, she doesn't want to have to weigh four times her normal self. After today, I can't blame her."

  "Computer, I wish to generate a random number list. Two lists, each using digits from one to seven."

  A long list of random numbers began to cascade down the screen in front of him.

  "Now, assume that the first
and last three numbers mean a course change of 40, 30, and 15 degrees right or left of course. Use the second list in the same way for up and down."

  "That can be done," The computer agreed.

  "Good. Then go through the list eliminating any numbers that cancel each other out. For example, a down, left followed by an up, right. That would put the ship back in the exact same space it left."

  "Yes. I can eliminate all of those."

  "Now, prepare a program that will control the helm of each battlecruiser. Let each ship start the random numbers at a different random place on the list. Also, have them skip ahead fifty after using a hundred pairs. That should keep it random."

  "It shall be done," the computer replied.

  That should give that Longknife Human something to worry about.

  Number One staff officer cleared his throat, then cautiously said, "My Most Eminent Admiral, may I point out that their ships seem to dodge much harder than ours do?"

  "Yes, you may. Apparently they have much more powerful reaction jets." There was a long pause as both of them considered the problem.

  "Most likely they have reprogrammed their ships for the hard maneuvering," the admiral said.

  "Our programmers can't do anything that extensive," the staff officer pointed out.

  "No, we can't," Admiral Zom said. Then an idea hit him.

  "We cannot reprogram our ships, but we can use what we have," he said. "Staff Officer Number Seven, are there attachment points aft for engineers working outside on the engines?"

  The staff officer inspector for engineering immediately answered from several meters away. "Yes, My Most Eminent Admiral."

  He sounded quite surprised to be called upon but also excited.

  "Are they on the spinning part of the hull or the stable part?"

  "Stable," Most Eminent Admiral. "We cannot spin the hull well aft. There are too many engineering fixtures to risk it. That is why our sterns are so vulnerable."