Amber had brought her own Chief of Operations, Mike Unhof. She nodded to him and he stepped to the main screen and held his wrist unit up to it. The screen quickly turned into a map of the crazy system.
“We settled in with the neutron star. They had the better two stars over on their side of this crazy system. We’ve got only one minor gas giant to refuel from. They’ve got a couple over there along with some serious rocks. They put all of them to good use building ships: speedsters as well as the door knockers. We’d never seen either of those before.”
A list of ships cascaded down the side of the screen. “For now, we propose to reform the Battle Fleet into 1st and 2nd Battle Fleets. Or, if you prefer, Bat Fleet and Crip Fleet.”
A scowl from Admiral Kitano brought a cough from her ops chief.
“Or Escort Battle Fleet, if you prefer.”
“I do,” Kitano growled. “You’re sense of humor, Mike, will get you booted from my staff someday.”
The briefer brightened at that threat, then continued. “We’ve shuffled the less damaged ships into Admiral Miyoshi’s Second Fleet, which is refueling as we speak, and Admiral Bethea’s Third, which is next. After each fleet is refueled here, we recommend they be detached to make a refueling pass at the nearest gas giant, then steer a high acceleration course for the huge gas bag nearest the jump the alien survivors fled through. They can top themselves off. We’d then order Miyoshi to take a peek through the jump. We’ve been ambushing the alien ships as they come through. They just might be ready to do the same to us. If the jump isn’t guarded, he can take his fleet through and try to sniff out a trail to whatever jump they used, and head for it immediately. Race to, stop, peek, jump through, repeat until we either catch them, loose the trail, or run into an ambush.”
“And if we find an ambush?” Sandy asked.
The briefer turned to his boss. Admiral Kitano turned in her chair to face Sandy.
“That will depend on how big the ambush is. One of those huge alien warships has two hundred or more lasers. We’ve spent the last five years staying out of range of one of those bastards. If they got our range, we’ll be toast. If several of them got our range, I doubt even our crystal armor could handle the overload. Now, we’ve never gotten a good signature off one of those door knockers. What we know is that they got lots and lots of armor, rock, steel, water, all laid on real thick. Their reactors are fewer and farther between, likely to reduce the chance of them going off in a daisy chain. They also seem to have longer ranged laser, though just how many, we aren’t sure. They don’t seem to be built to a single pattern like the rest of the alien ships.”
Kitano paused for a moment, gathered her thoughts, and went on. “If there are a dozen or more of those mothers waiting for us up close to a jump, Admiral, I can’t recommend that we take the jump.”
“What would you recommend?” Sandy asked.
“One of two options. We either pack up and go home, or we try to wait them out.”
“We might figure a way around them,” her ops chief offered. “Use some of the fuzzy jumps to get around them and come at them through another jump. Maybe drive them back through the jump we’re waiting at or chase them down as they run for another jump.”
“Have you done that before?” Sandy asked.
“Not really,” Amber said. “So long as we don’t tip them off that there fuzzy jumps exist, it might be fun. But let’s remember, a stern chase is a long chase. We have to remember that while we’ve got the two best fleets out here, who’s protecting Alwa? The lame, sick and broken.”
“And the new arrivals,” Sandy put in. “I left forty-eight ships tied up at Canopus Station. Ben’s running them through the yard to slap crystal armor on them.”
“You’re already up armored, right?” Amber asked.
Sandy shook her head.
“Oh shit. We’ll have to treat your task force like a bunch of eggshells.”
“That bad?” Mondi asked to save her boss the embarrassment.
“One on one, they’re toast. Two to one, we’re still okay. Three or four to one and it gets dicey. Without crystal armor, you stay out of their range and use your speed to keep them where you want them.”
“Very good,” Sandy said, summing up what she’d learned since jumping into Kris’s Longknife’s command. She stood, and those around her did likewise. “We dodge, we weave and we keep them at arm’s length wherever and whenever possible. Mondi, Mike, cut us some operational orders to sign. Admiral Kitano, I am taking command of the Battle Fleet and the Escort Fleet. Please assign Admiral Drago to command the Escort Fleet to return all damaged ships to Alwa. You, Admiral Kitano, will command the Battle Fleet in pursuit of the alien fugitives. In doing this, you will be guided by the principle of calculated risk. The survival of Alwa depends on the continued existence of your Battle Fleet. Risk it in battle with the aliens when the prospects for success are high and losses are acceptable.”
“Aye, aye, Admiral,” Admiral Kitano said.
“Now let’s go stop some aliens from telling their tale of what happened here.”
Chapter 5
Grand Admiral Sandy Santiago’s Victory led her two battle squadrons through the jump. During the high gee chase across System X and the next system out, she’d managed to catch up with Admiral Kitano and Rear Admiral Bethea’s 3rd Fleet. She, and Rear Admiral Harts’ collection of eight battlecruisers formed an ad hoc third task force to 3rd Fleet.
A bit less than a light hour away, Rear Admiral Miyoshi’s 2nd Fleet was decelerating toward the nearest jump. One ship was already coasting to a stop in front of it. No doubt, this hard-driving scout would soon have a report on what lay beyond.
Ahead of Sandy, Bethea’s thirty-two battlecruisers were already jacking their acceleration back up to the grueling 3.5 gees they’d used to speed them across one entire system and part of another. At least whoever had built the jumps had arranged for these two to be close together.
It took sensors a while, but they finally reported on the system. “We’re in a system with a single yellow dwarf and six planets. Two of them are gas giants. There’s a third jump all the way on the other side of the system. There’s also a fuzzy jump a light hour away, but in the opposite direction from the one Admiral Miyoshi is checking out.”
“Thank you,” Sandy said, and settled back into her high gee station ready for another long wait.
A little over two hours later, Vice Admiral Kitano intense face filled half of the main screen. Vice Admiral Bethea took up the other half.
“Admiral Miyoshi has found the enemy,” Kitano reported. “At least some of them. A third window opened on the screen. The video was of poor quality, but three dozen ships could be seen, half floating one hundred thousand kilometers in front of the jump. The others lurked behind it.
“Any way we enter that system, eighteen alien warships will have hundreds of lasers ready to sear our engines and reactors,” Kitano said. “Thirty-six of the door knockers are there, and we will have to go through the jump one at a time.”
Sandy well knew the physics. One jump. One ship. You could jam them through quickly, but warships needed space between them or they started doing more damage to themselves than the enemy ever could.
Well, maybe not this enemy, but enough to piss off the tax payers.
“Thirty-six, you say,” Sandy said. “So, the other seventy-two or more are still running.”
“While these play Horatio at the bridge,” Kitano said.
“I wonder how long they’ll hold here?” Bethea asked.
“I would imagine for a very long time,” Kitano answered. “If you had drawn the short straw, would you quit your station before you had bought every possible minute that you could for your friends to escape?”
Bethea winced. “We don’t know that any of these aliens consider anyone their friends. Siblings, yes, but they are very competitive among themselves. Kris Longknife found that out when she discovered their home world. They like to brag about
the planets they’ve sanitized of all life and jab anyone who’s lagging.”
That cast a pall over the discussion for a long moment as all three admirals mulled the critical need that these aliens must die or they would kill every last human in the galaxy.
“Okay,” Sandy said, “we can’t storm that jump from this end. I don’t want to go home and let them win this one by just being obnoxious, so what other options do we have?”
“Navigator,” Bethea said, glancing off screen, “where does that fuzzy jump take us?”
“On a wild round about, ma’am, but five jumps would bring us back to the second jump into the system where they are baring the door against us.”
“How long a wild round about?” Sandy asked.
“A week at least,” Kitano’s flag navigator said.
That gave everyone pause. It was Admiral Kitano who began the new conversation.
“Admiral Drago is moving what’s left of the 1st and 4th Fleets back to Alwa, as well as the beam ships. That’s bound to take some time, and when they get back, they’ll need more time to mend and fix ships. Harts, what kind of shape were the rest of Benson’s Reserve Fleet in when you finished with the last of the aliens’ forlorn hope?”
“Not badly dinged up, ma’am. We were close hauled to the enemy as we closed on the same jump, but we pretty much got them before they got a good twist on us.”
“So, twelve battlecruisers, all in reserve by now,” Vice Admiral Betty Bethea summed up.
“Make that sixteen in reserve, Betty,” Admiral Hart said. “The four I sent back with the wounded had a lot of my industrial and dock hands. They’ll be back at work by now.”
“We do have my newly arrived forty-eight ships,” Sandy put in. “By now, some of them must have been up-armored.”
“So, we’ve got sixty-four battlecruisers,” Admiral Kitano went on, “some up-armored, some not, but all defending Alwa with another fifty plus damaged ships in need of serious yard time, plus the three beam ships, all in desperate need of a major refit.”
“More like rebuilding,” Betty put in.
“Meanwhile,” Kitano said, “we’ve wiped out six alien mother ships and close to two thousand ships of one sort or another. Have we sanitized this chunk of space for Alwa?”
“Or is there some Johnny-come-late-to-the-party out there, headed for Alwa right now?” Admiral Hart put in.
“If he is out there, he’ll have to pass through our warning buoys. We’ve picked the Alwa System for the next twelve jumps out,” Kitano pointed out.
“Assuming our picket line is still intact,” Bethea put in. “The wolf packs we just kicked to the side of the road were taking our pickets out whenever they could.”
Admiral Kitano was shaking her head. “Okay, yes, we’ve got problems, but when haven’t we had a ton of problems on Alwa Station? Let me put it to you easy. Who here wants to go back to Alwa and tell Kris Longknife that we gave up and let all these door knockers get away without a fight?” The experienced Alwa admiral glanced around at the figures on her own forward screen, then shook her head.
“I’d rather have an eight months pregnant Kris Longknife biting the heads off of some alien wolf pack stupid enough to make a pass at her just now, than have her taking my head off.”
“Seriously?” Sandy asked.
Kitano just eyed Sandy. On screen, Admiral Bethea looked away.
Sandy weighed all the information that had been dumped on her in the last few minutes. Even after dismissing the idea that some folks out here thought Kris might take a head or two, there was still a lot to absorb.
When she gave Kitano the command, Sandy had ordered her to apply calculated risk to this situation. How would she calculate the risk now? Alwa had some sixty to a hundred ships, some with more fight in them than others. They also had three beam ships that between them might have the fight of one. Commanding Alwa’s forces was one very pregnant Kris Longknife. She’d taken down eight base ships, another wasn’t likely to break her stride.
No, getting these doorknocker ships and the knowledge they had of how Kris had fought the last battle and beat them like a drum, was essential.
“We’ll use the round-about route,” Sandy said, “to get some ships into that system and pull the alien ships away from the jump. Once they start to run, the rest of you can jump through and cut them down at your leisure.”
“But how many go and how many stay?” Kitano asked.
“If they break for the exit as soon as they see they’ve been outflanked, it would be better if both fleets were ready to pursue,” Sandy said. “My task force is the closest to the jump and we don’t have all that acceleration on the boats. Our twenty-four ships ought to be enough to get them running for the exit.”
“And if they don’t run?” Kitano said. “If they just hunker down at the jump and dare your puny twenty-four to tackle their thirty-six?”
“Remember, Admiral Santiago,” Hart put in, “only my eight battlecruisers have the crystal armor.”
“That’s a bridge we’ll blow up when we come to it,” Admiral Santiago said. “Admiral Kitano, you take command of 2nd and 3rd Fleets on this side of the jump. If Bethea will have her navigator transfer his proposed course to my navigator, we’ll get this diversion underway.”
Two minutes later, Sandy’s Diversion Task Force had its course and orders to go to four gees. Very rapidly, Bethea’s forces fell behind as Sandy hurtled toward her first battle with this vicious aliens Kris Longknife had stumbled upon.
Chapter 6
Six and a half grueling days and five huge jumps later, Sandy’s Victory led the Diversion Task Force through its final jump into the system where a two day, high gee charge would put them at the throat of alien rock mounds with thermonuclear reactors and more lasers that any generous god should have allowed.
It took sensors only a moment to report that nothing appeared to have changed since they got their last report from Vice Admiral Miyoshi just before they began their wild ride around the enemy flank.
It would be several hours before Sandy knew the enemy’s reaction to her arrival, so she gave the order to accelerate toward the enemy at four gees and then, according to her schedule, she went to sleep.
She awoke seven and a half hours later, a good half hour before her orderly would have called for her. Since the duty watch had let her sleep, she suspected strongly that they were in no danger.
A glance at the main board as she motored her high gee station onto the flag bridge showed her that she was both correct and incorrect.
She was in no immediate danger; the aliens were nowhere nearby. No, that was not the problem. The problem was that during her entire night’s sleep the aliens had not budged from their attack position, guarding the jump that Sandy really wanted to lure them away from so Kitano and her two fleets could jump through and start annihilating them. Eighteen heavily gunned rock piles still held formation a hundred thousand klicks from the front of the jump. The same number stood guard at the rear of it.
She was a diversion charging down on an enemy that appeared to be impervious to her distraction.
While she considered her problem, she had Comm call up Admiral Hart. “We seem to be a failure as a scarecrow,” she said.
“Don’t you hate it when the bad guys turn out to be smart son’s a bitches,” was his reply.
“Have they fought like this before?” Sandy asked.
“We’ve caught them a couple of times trying to slip away from a jump that we’d fought over and held when they tried to force it. They may have had a distant observer to the massacres that ensued. Or it could just be that these guys are here to delay us and they’re going to delay us for all their worth. Besides, fighting us twenty-four is a whole lot better than fighting a whole lot more.”
“Maybe I should have balanced our forces better,” Sandy concluded, realizing she had misjudged the temper of her enemy.
We live and learn. If we live on Alwa Station
“We liv
e and learn, ma’am,” Admiral Hart said, as if he’d read her mind.
“Any suggestions?” she asked. It was past time to beg, steal or borrow any advice she could get from an old Alwa hand.
“You probably already know this, but I’d come up on them a bit on the slow side. If we’re still hard charging and breaking at four gees, they could charge out at us and we wouldn’t have anything left in the engines to dodge out of range. Whatever we do, your ships have got to keep them at arm’s length. Hell, ma’am, I want to keep my ships at arm’s length. That crystal armor is nice, but if we get pinned by a hundred lasers or more, it’s bound to get hot in here.”
Sandy liked the jumped-up commander’s sense of humor as well as his keen insight. It had been a long peace. Hell, her only fight had been holding Kris Longknife’s coat while her fast attack boats closed with those six huge battlewagons of unspecified origin. No matter how many stars on their collar, everyone from human space was a novice.
Best to ask for advice from folks that have seen this elephant. This very huge elephant.
Sandy cut the acceleration to 3.5 gees and started laying on a long list of drills, tests and weapons checks. She was none too sure what the odds would be against her. If every alien turned to take her on, they have to expect a fleet was waiting on the other side of the jump to cut them up. No, only some of the alien ships would turned their attention to her. Just how dangerous would these door knockers be?
Whatever the odds, it was bound to get wild real soon.
Chapter 7
The Victory was in the final moments of a soft two gee deceleration; Sandy had aimed to being her fleet dead in space 200,000 klicks short of the eighteen rock piles that held the front of the jump. They had their rock-armored noses aimed at the jump. Their vulnerable sterns were pointed away from it and directly at Sandy’s fleet with its four hundred 22-inch lasers.
If nothing changed, this would be a very quick execution.
Kris Longknife's Replacement: Admiral Santiago on Alwa Station Page 4