Kris Longknife's Replacement: Admiral Santiago on Alwa Station

by Mike Shepherd

  So, of course, the enemy changed their deployment.

  Eight of the sixteen ships closest to Sandy flipped and headed for her at a 2.5 gees acceleration. Two hundred thousand klicks farther away, from the back side of the jump, eight of the sixteen also lit off their rocket motors. They also accelerated for Sandy’s ships at 2.5 gees. Sixteen heavily armored ships loaded with lasers accelerated at her with all they could get from their reactors.

  “Comm, send to task force. “Up deceleration to four gees,” Sandy ordered immediately. Fortunately, she had kept her ships at Condition Zed and her crews in their high gee stations so they were ready to answer her orders immediately.

  The aliens hurtled toward her ships, but her fleet succeeded in coming dead in space and began their own acceleration well before the aliens pulled within 200,000 klicks.

  As soon as the aliens were in range of her big lasers, Sandy ordered the aft batteries to open fire.

  Her battlecruisers might as well have been throwing snowballs for all the good it appeared to do.

  “Flag to all ships, on my command, we will kill our deceleration burn, flip ship and empty all forward batteries at once. All ships will concentrate on the closest ship and aim for one specific point on its hull. I want to burn that sucker bad.”

  She quickly got acknowledgments.

  “Cease deceleration. Flip ship. Fire. As soon as you’ve shot yourself empty, flip ship and lay on four gees.”

  There was a slight additional hum in the Victory’s background noise, but no other evidence that the twelve lasers in the forward battery were sucking the juice from twenty-four huge capacitors and any other electricity the ship might have available. Sandy ignored the sound of the flagship around her and concentrated on the main screen.

  The closest ship glowed red and streamed a mixture of lava, gas and steam . . . but it did not explode.

  Two other ships looked like they were also taking fire. Apparently, the definition of the closest ship was more ambiguous than Sandy intended.

  The Victory shot itself dry, flipped and once again Sandy felt the oppressive weight begin. Yes, the high gee stations kept the acceleration from squashing her like a bug, but it could not keep her from feeling just how heavy her body was.

  The ships settled into a 2.7 gee acceleration. The aliens were accelerating slower, but they’d built up more momentum. Somewhere around 160,000 klicks they’d match the aliens. Then Sandy would have her ships pull back out to 200,000 klicks before matching acceleration.

  Once the aft batteries were reloaded, Sandy concentrated the entire fleet on the most damaged alien ship.

  This time, all twenty-four of her ships concentrating on a single alien ship.

  Some laser burned through somewhere. A line of explosions swept through the targeted ship and its acceleration fell off drastically.

  When Sandy’s ships flipped to bring their bow lasers to bear, they slammed the same alien ship they’d been savaging. It was already hurting. Now they sliced into it and through it.

  One moment it was there, then a terrible explosion started amidships and shot aft. In the blink of an eye, the aft half of the ship was gone and only an expanding cloud of superheated gas filled the space where it had been. The bow, like an obscenely ripped off head, shot off, tumbling in space.

  Without an order, all of Sandy’s ships ceased fire, retargeted their lasers to the next closest ship and slammed it. Capacitors exhausted, fire ended and the fleet flipped almost as one.

  The fleet returned to its 2.7 gee acceleration. Now the range was back at 200,000 klicks. Sandy ordered her ships to match its flight to that of the onrushing charge of the enemy. The flips to fire the forward batteries would allow the enemy to gain on them, but only a bit. The battle was well under control.

  Then Formidable began to fall behind.

  “Formidable, report your status?” The order came from the Formidable’s squadron commander, but Sandy followed it intently.

  “We have suffered an engineering casualty. Two of our reactors are off line. We can only make 2.3 gees on our remaining reactor.”

  All the ships from human space were new construction, tested and accepted. They’d made the run across the galaxy at 2.5 to 3.0 gees with only a few minor problems that had been fixed easily. Admittedly, Sandy had pushed them hard at 4.0 gees during this flanking run.

  There was no way to tell what had failed or why.

  Sandy shook it off. Her fleet had an engineering casualty on a major warship, and now it was up to her to factor that failure into her fight and adjust for it.

  “Comm, send to all. Fleet acceleration is now 2.3 gees. Please advise flag on status of power plants.”

  The fleet slowed. Down the side of Sandy’s main board now cascaded the name of all her ships and an indicator of their engineering status. Most were green. A few were yellow. Two were red. One was the Formidable. The other was the Illustrious.

  “Comm, do we have a report from the Illustrious yet?”

  “Coming in now, Admiral.”

  As she stared at her board, the voice of the Illustrious’s skipper reported. “We’ve pulled one reactor off line. As soon as it cools enough, we’ll send bots inside to effect repairs. I wish they’d convert the reactors to Smart Metal, but they aren’t, so we’ll do this the old way. Out.”

  Two of her ships were limping. One was out of the fight and could not maintain fleet speed. The other might be able to keep up with the fleet, but with only two of its three reactors on line, reloading its lasers would be slow.

  After blowing away one enemy ship, Sandy had lost the use of twenty, maybe forty of her four hundred lasers.

  The remaining twenty-two ships had just finished firing their aft batteries at the singled out enemy ship. It was time to flip. While twenty-two ships ceased acceleration, flipped, and slashed at the closest alien rock pile, two battlecruisers continued their acceleration, pulling ahead of the rest of the human ships but continuing to lose ground against the onslaught of alien warships.

  The target threw out jets of steam and red-hot lava. A chunk of something red hot was seen to fly off. Still, no matter how hurt it was, its commander kept his course and acceleration steady, aiming straight for the humans, closing the distance slowly but surely until it might bring its lasers to bear.

  That ship did not survive the next iteration of the fire, flip, fire, flip.

  The squadron redirected its fire onto the next alien ship to which the honor of being the closest fell. It took the honor with pure stoicism.

  By the time they had dispatched it, the alien stone wagons were coming up on 175,000 klicks from the human battle line. Sandy had just finished firing her forward batteries and flipped back to accelerate when the aliens popped a surprise of their own.

  Chapter 8

  It shouldn’t have been a surprise. Her ships had been concentrating their fire since the battle started, aiming for a single ship, a single spot on that single ship, doing their best to put the maximum energy into the smallest space.

  Suddenly, the five remaining alien rock piles lit up with all their lasers. Close to a thousand lasers reached out, not for the ship closest to them, but the one that hadn’t been firing the last couple of flips.

  Formidable.

  She had actually pulled ahead a bit, not losing time to flip and fire, but keeping up her acceleration even while Sandy’s other ships were coasting and firing their forward batteries aft. Still, she was the ship the aliens chose to concentrate all their lasers on.

  Lasers, by definition, are coherent light. A laser beam stays solid, concentrated, deadly. In an atmosphere, smoke, clouds, or even the atmosphere on a clear day can disperse the power of a beam, cause the concentration to bloom out and lose power as the distance stretches out.

  Even in space, there is enough random gas in the so-called vacuum of space to bleed out the energy of a beam, to reflect part of it, to cause it to bloom and lose concentration. The alien lasers were something like the human 14-
inch or 15-inch lasers. They were effective out to about 100,000 klicks.

  The latest versions of the alien lasers seemed to have been fine tuned to reach out 120,000 klicks.

  At 175,000 plus clicks, those lasers shouldn’t have been good for much more than warming coffee.

  However, if you take 800 or more lasers and concentrate them on one ship, you can do a lot more than warm coffee.

  As the alien ships lit up, Sandy realized her mistake.

  “All ships, Evasion Plan 3. Now.”

  She should have ordered it sooner. She should have expected something like this.

  But the enemy wasn’t firing.

  Sandy shook away her excuse. She should have expected the unexpected.

  Throughout her small fleet, captains struggled to mouth her orders, helms crews jumped to obey her voice or maybe their own captain, or maybe they saw the light from the distant ships and knew they had been complacent for way too long.

  Sandy had her fleet arrayed in three lines by squadron, each ship showed its stern to the enemy as it matched acceleration with the aliens. One newly arrived squadron was above her own; Admiral Hart’s scrimmage squadron was below. There were five thousand klicks between the ships, right, left, up and down.

  The Formidable was the fifth ship in Sandy’s squadron.

  Her skipper made the right call.

  He couldn’t go any faster, but he could get the hell out of the center of all those beams. He took off high and to his right, passing close aboard Irascible, but getting his vulnerable engines at least somewhat protected from the incoming fire.

  Sandy ground her teeth but kept her mouth firmly shut; she would not request a report. That skipper would report when he damn well had the time.

  Around her, while she had eyes only for the drama centered on the life or death struggle of the Formidable, the rest of the fleet dodged up and down, but more right or left, forcing a deflection shot on the enemy if they wanted a bite out of their vulnerable reactors.

  “High and low BatRons, increase distance to ten thousand klicks from my squadron. Squadron commanders, increase the interval between ships to ten thousand klicks.”

  Her three subordinates answered with two flashes of their comm light.

  It was coming up on time to return the favor with their aft batteries. The time to be fat, dumb and happy was long gone.

  “Admiral Hart, please have your two divisions divide their fire between the two right most ships.”

  “Aye, aye, ma’am.”

  “BatRon 2, You will divide your fire by divisions between the two ships to the left.”

  “Aye, aye, Admiral.”

  “BatRon 1, you will concentrate on the central target.” BatRon 1 was minus the Formidable. The Illustrious was only contributing half as many guns to each broadside. Time would tell how long it would take Sandy’s squadron to destroy their target so that she could retarget them to concentrate on one of the other four.

  Behind them, the enemy began to jinks a bit. What they did was slow and jerky. It helped them miss a few salvoes, but the battlecruisers fire was relentless and more likely to be spot on. Alien ships’ bows glowed, spewed steam and boiling lava. Every once in a while, never often enough, their 22-inch laser fire was rewarded with a secondary explosion as their shots penetrated the armor and destroyed a laser or its capacitor. It would blow up, adding alien destruction to the human fire.

  Sandy didn’t know how long it would take the aliens to reload their lasers. She didn’t know if they would hold their fire for another concentrated five ship broadside or allow fire at will. As soon as the aft batteries were spent, Sandy flipped her fleet and fired a full salvo from her bow guns.

  Through it all, the alien lasers stayed silent.

  “When we flip ship, I want all ships to set a base course at forty-five degrees from the base course and three gees acceleration. Formidable, you may proceed independently.”

  She got an answer from her subordinate battle squadron commanders but from the Formidable, only silence.

  Her lasers reached empty. “Flip ship. Adjust course and speed. Now.”

  Within their jinks pattern, her ships conformed to her orders.

  Sandy studied what her sensors showed of the Formidable. She had continued a zig-zag climb until she was well above the top squadron. There was something different about her engines, but sensors couldn’t give Sandy a solid picture.

  Formidable picked that moment to urge an extra .2 gees out of her engines, then flipped her zig over ninety degrees to a definite zag.

  That was when the aliens shot everything they had at her.

  Some raked her broadside. Sandy could see steam streaming out from the hull where the lasers had sliced through the reflective Smart MetalTM skin into the honeycomb beneath. That layer was filled with reaction mass for the express. It was intended to both ablating away some of the heat from laser hits but it also steaming out into space to disrupt the concentration of the incoming laser beam.

  The armor worked as designed. The question was how much her engines were suffering.

  The Formidable’s skipper cut power and flipped his ship, bringing his bow armor to bear and protecting his vulnerable engines. He was fighting his ship, one against five, and doing all the desperate dance moves he could to stay alive.

  Sandy tore her eyes away from the Formidable, and glanced down her entire battle array. While Formidable had eked out a few extra points of acceleration for his ship, Hart’s ships were falling behind, allowing the enemy to close on them.

  “Hart, would you care to explain your course change?”

  “My Sapphire has got crystal on her hide, ma’am. All my squadron does. Your Formidable is in trouble. Out on Alwa Station, fixing or replacing ships is no problem. Finding crews for more ships is a bitch. Permission to steer closer to the enemy, Admiral.”

  “As you will, sir,” Sandy allowed, which was a phrase she suspected she’d be using a lot on Alwa Station.

  Who asks for orders to Alwa Station? she asked herself.

  People as crazy as Kris Longknife, she answered.

  The Formidable appeared to win this particular round with alien death. She was still maneuvering as the enemy lasers fell silent. As soon as they did, the skipper adjusted his course. He didn’t quite end the dodging and weaving, but he did set his course as straight as he possibly could to put more distance between himself and his tormentors.

  Twice more they repeated their strange evolution. The Formidable doing its wild jig with death while the other battlecruisers raking the five alien ships with three or four withering broadsides.

  Sometime between two or three human salvos, the aliens did their best to catch the Formidable in a misstep. They failed, and she began to work her acceleration back up to 2.4 and finally 2.5 with accessional forays under fire to even 2.7.

  Astern, the five alien ships began to stumble themselves. Sandy could not get a shot off at their vulnerable sterns, but her intense fire was slashing through the stony fortress these ships presented her.

  Here and there, lasers blew, becoming momentary volcanoes spewing rock, lava and ice for a moment. Some of the damage must have reached aft to engineering spaces because two of ships began to slow. The first to fall off was the one Sandy was concentrating her squadron on, then one of Admiral Hart’s targets faltered and fell behind.

  Slowly, with bleeding fingers, the Formidable pulled ahead and the aliens fell behind.

  However, the more these five fell behind, the closer they were to being joined by the eight ships that had started this long stern chase two hundred thousand klicks further away. These were the ones from the far side of the jump. They had been lurking there, intent on shooting their hundreds of lasers up the tender sterns of Admiral Kitano’s ships as they came through the jump.

  Sandy very much needed to finish off these five before she had to tackle another eight.

  The ship her reduced squadron had been concentrating on suffered some sort of engine
ering casualty. It stumbled off in a straight line just as Sandy’s forward batteries were about to exhaust their capacitors. Still, all seven of her ships got solid hits on their target for the last second of their volley.

  Random explosions began to tear it apart.

  Sandy quickly flipped her fleet and her squadron began to peel the enemy ship even as it came apart from the inside from cascading explosions.

  “Check fire. Check fire,” Sandy ordered as the target suddenly vanished in a cloud of superheated gas.

  “Switch fire,” she ordered, “to Admiral Hart’s weak target.”

  In only a moment all of Sandy’s ships joined Hart’s four ships chipping away at the ship that was having the most trouble maintaining course and speed.

  Two flips later, that alien ship couldn’t stand the punishment any longer and blew into tiny pieces.

  Sandy now concentrated a squadron of ships on each of the damaged aliens. The last of them was gone before the first of the alien eight came into what the humans had come to accept as their maximum range.

  The Formidable chose that moment to announce its progress. “I’ve got the second reactor coming back on line. It’s only giving me partial power, but I should be able to make three gees. I’ve rearranged my stern, constructing small rocket engines and spreading them over more space. I can maintain a fleet acceleration up to 3.2 gees.”

  “Fleet, acceleration 3.2 gees,” Sandy ordered, allowing herself a wisp of a sigh. “Let’s give them a blast from the stern chasers, shall we?”

  Actually, she let the aft batteries carry the fight for a few minutes while they ran themselves well out of range of the onrushing aliens. That didn’t stop the alien warships from firing even after they were well out of effective range, which only demonstrated how far out-ranged their guns were compared to the 22-inch lasers on the battlecruisers.

  Once Sandy had regained 195,000 klicks distance from the aliens, she returned to the previous drill. Fire, flip, fire, flip, reload.

  Sandy also concentrated her entire fleet on one ship as a kind of test.

  The grand admiral had read Kris’s reports. The enemy never surrendered. The enemy fought to the last round and then opened their ships to vacuum for their final breath.