Kris Longknife, with the aid of the Magnificent Nelly, had recently tried some fast and loose jigs with jumps and it had gotten her all the way across the galaxy and back. Barely. She left with fourteen ships and returned with one, and that, the USS Wasp, had been fit for nothing but to be scrapped at the pier where she lay.
Since then, humanity had gotten better at using the jumps. It had to to get a battlecruiser fleet to Alwa and hold its own against the murderous aliens.
“Ma’am,” Penny interrupted while Nav was still diligently working her board, “the aliens have figured out that if they hit a jump at high speeds they can skip over several near jumps and land much farther away. Where they go will depend on what energy they have on the boat when they jump. So far, they haven’t figured out what putting a spin on the boat does with a jump. You need a computer like Nelly, or my Mimzy to do that.”
“Sensors.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“I want to know exactly what speed and acceleration they have on them when they hit that jump.”
“Can you get us closer, ma’am? It’s a bit far to make that precise of a call.”
“Comm, send to squadron. ‘We go to four gees in five minutes. There won’t be time to dismiss the crew to quarters to change. They’ll have to strip down at their station and go into their high gee stations where they are.’”
You didn’t want to have bra snaps or belt buckles digging at you when the ship hit four or more gees. It was normal policy to rotate a quarter of the crew through their quarters so they could strip naked in privacy before settling into their high gee station, ubiquitously known as eggs because of their shape. Sailors could spend days in them and the stations took care of all the bodily needs, both food and water in as well as what came out.
Today, there wasn’t time for modesty.
Having given the order, Sandy called up her high gee station. It rose quickly from the Smart MetalTM of the deck right at her side. She kicked off her shoes as she pulled down the zipper of her ship suit, then let it fall to the deck.
Once the bridge crew saw that the admiral was serious about this, high gee stations came up and clothes went down all around Sandy. A few of the crew were heard to murmur into their commlinks. No doubt, their asides reinforced Sandy’s order.
Sandy finished striping out of her bra and panties, then settled into her high gee station. It immediately began to adjust to her every nook and cranny.
Or Granny. Sandy was reminded wryly that when last she’d talked to her daughter, there had been talk of a grandkid. Hopefully, she lived to hold that little one.
On Alwa Station, that was always in doubt.
Shaking off such human thoughts, Sandy focused on the board. The alien fled at 3.1 gees. As she eyed the readouts, her squadron went to four gees.
“Penny, can the alien cruisers do more than what they’re at now?”
“We’ve seen them hit 3.5 gees, but they tend to breakdown under the pressure. They can squeeze out another few more points of gees, but not much more.”
The problem confronting Sandy had too many variables. What would be the energy on the alien cruisers as they bolted through the jump? How much could Sandy’s battlecruisers accelerate now and still be able to decelerate and pass through the jump with the same energy as the aliens?
Sandy now remembered that all the ships of BatRon 18 were battle veterans, but they’d been built on New Birmingham. They might not be up to the exacting standards of those built by Wardhaven. She called up the skipper of the Birmingham.
“Captain, what kind of acceleration did your ship make on acceptance trials?”
“I think we did the usual, Admiral. 4.3 gees for an hour. Deceleration was a bit gentler.”
“What do you think you and your squadron mates could make right now?”
“Admiral, on Alwa Station, we have to keep these boats in top shape. Our lives depend on being fast and light on our feet. Any problem we have, we fix. What we can’t fix, the yard force takes care of fast. ‘Fast in, fast out,’ is Admiral Benson’s motto, ma’am. These boats are in better shape then when they came from the builder. If you want to put pressure on those bastards up ahead of us, you put the spurs to these ships and they’ll make you proud.”
“Thank you, Captain,” Sandy said. She studied the screen.
“Comm, can you get me status data on all my ships?”
“We’re tracking it ma’am.”
“Put it on another screen.”
Beside the main screen, a second one opened with all eight of her cruisers named. Beneath each were bars graphs showing engineering, weapons, and defense. All were well green with the exception of engineering. At four gees, the engineering bars were longer, with the edges tinged with a hint of yellow.
“You thinking of running the reactors hard?” Penny said, driving her gee station up next to Sandy’s.
“Yes. But I’m remember how my ships fresh out from Wardhaven funked out in their first fight when we asked too much from the reactors.”
“And you’re wondering if ships months out from their builders might be in worse shape?”
“Yep.”
“You can trust what that skipper just told you. We may not be all spit and polish out here on Alwa Station, but our ships are mean and we keep them ready for a fight. We have to. We never know when those murdering bastards are going to show up. Like now. What the hell were they doing here? Scouting out the cats?”
“Sensors,” Sandy called. “While we were tied up to Kiel Station, did we have full sensor sweeps out?”
“Yes, Admiral.”
“If those cruisers had nudged into the system, would you have spotted them?”
“Ma’am, if they so much as sent a lifeboat through, we’d have spotted it. A month ago, we were dodging suicide speed boats. Trust me, ma’am. We keep a watch and we know what’s happening in our space. Whatever those turkeys were doing in this system, they didn’t take a peek at the cats.”
Sandy had a strong urge to run a worried hand through her hair, but in an egg and making four gees, her hand wasn’t going anywhere near her head.
“What are they doing here?” she muttered to herself.
“They might just be passing through, going from point A to point B,” Penny said.
“Just coincidence that they happened to be orbiting that gas giant when we jump into this system, huh?” Sandy said, her words full of doubt.
“Yeah, that idea smells too fishy for me, too.”
Sandy set that question aside and went back to her original problem.
“If we go to 4.3 gees, would we be showing them something they haven’t seen?”
“I think we would, ma’am. I don’t think we’ve ever pushed the boat to their limits in view of the aliens,” Penny said.
“So, while they’re in the system, maybe 4.1 is tops.”
“Yes. Ma’am, are you afraid the ships can’t hold 4.1?”
“Or just four,” Sandy answered.
“Ah, Kris Longknife and Nelly had a backdoor into all the ships systems. She’d use it at times like this to get a deep look inside the reactors support machinery.”
“Below the readouts on the engineering boards?”
“Yes, ma’am. She and Nelly could tell you you had a problem five seconds before you had it.”
“And you’re offering . . .?”
“General Bruce’s computer, Chesty, and my Mimzy have been collecting the deep data from within the engineering spaces for the last few minutes. We can feed that data to your board.”
This sounded like micro management to Sandy. Still, she didn’t know how much she could count on these people, and they didn’t know what to count on her for. Some captain might push too much to keep her happy.
Better I call it quits before we have a problem than some overenthusiastic tiger push his equipment beyond its limits.
“Do it. If it’s not too much of an imposition on the general, please have him actively monitor this. You, to
o. Talk to me if you see something I missed.”
“Aye, aye, ma’am.”
“Comm, send to squadron. Let’s take her up a notch. 4.1 gees if you please. Any captain who has problems maintaining this acceleration, signal me immediately.”
The ships on her list blinked their acknowledgments.
In her gee station, Sandy’s hand got a little bit heavier.
Chapter 32
As the maxim says, a stern chase is a long chase. It has been true since wooden ships sailed the seas of old Earth, pushed along by the wind in their sails. It was no less true now that ships had the power of a sun in their reactors and accelerated at forty-one meters per second, every second.
Space, however, is vast. Time passed and nothing happened.
As far as Sandy was concerned, nothing happening was good for her. Her squadron’s ships showed no ill effect of her pushing them hard. Some reactors did creep a bit deeper into the yellow.
Sadly, the same high quality of performance held true among the alien cruisers. They stayed steady at 3.1 gees holding to their formation of three columns echeloned to the right. Not one of them dropped out.
Neither did they flip their ships when the time came to begin a deceleration burn. They arrived at the midway point where they’d have to begin decelerating if their commander intended to take them safely and carefully through the jump.
No flip. They just kept accelerating at a steady 3.1 gees.
“They’re going to take it fast,” Sandy muttered to herself. “Nav, get me an estimation of where they’ll go if they don’t slow down.”
The answer came back quickly. No doubt, the navigator had been thinking just what Sandy was now thinking. “They’ll hit the jump at close to 500,000 kilometers an hour, ma’am. That should throw them a good eight hundred light years.”
“You know what system they’ll end up in?”
“It could be any one of three. Maybe four. None have ever been visited, all I know is what kind of star those systems have.”
“Even mom was never quite sure where some of these long jumps would take us,” Mimzy answered from Penny collarbone.
“So, this time the aliens get to surprise us, huh.”
“It seems so, ma’am,” Penny said.
Sandy eyed the board. She was doing her best to catch those cruisers in this system, accelerating by one extra gee. Now, she was not likely to engage them here. It would likely be in the next system, maybe the one after that. She could accelerate harder here once the aliens left the system but that only meant she’d have to do some extra hard deceleration to hit the jump with the exact same velocity as the enemy had when they went through. Even if she did that, she’d still be well behind the enemy when she got were they were going.
She could think this problem through as many times as she wanted, but it wouldn’t change the math of interstellar flight.
With a frown, Sandy turned away from the board.
“Comm, send to squadron. ‘Have the crew rotate at their posts, half alert, half resting. We’ve got a long chase ahead of us.’”
She then turned to Penny. “You get the first rest rotation. I’ll keep watch on these teakettles.”
The intell chief wisely nodded agreement with her superior. She opaqued the cover on her egg. What she did inside the egg was now unknowable. Whether she slept or worried about their problem some more, or played a game with Mimzy, there was nothing Sandy could do about it.
Four long hours later, it was Sandy’s turn to darken her egg and dim the lights. Going to sleep was another matter. She try to sleep. It did not come easy. Even with her eyes closed, she could not get the sight of the main screen out of her mind’s eye. It was very tempting to take a sleeping aid, but that was out of the question. Penny might wake her at any moment and a groggy commander was not a good commander.
Sandy thought of happier times when no one was trying to kill her and everyone said the long peace would last forever.
Maybe she did sleep, because Penny had to wake her at the end of her four hours to turn the watch over to her.
“The aliens should make the jump during your watch,” Penny said. “I’ve arranged to have the best team on sensors, from the antennas to the assessment group here.”
“Good,” Sandy said through a yawn. Then regretted it. A yawn at 4.1 gees was rough on the jaw.
“You get some sleep,” she told Penny.”
“You want another two hours, ma’am? It’s a bit more than three hours before they jump.”
“I got my sleep, now you get yours. Has anybody got fresh coffee? The brew in my egg is anything but drinkable.”
The ubiquitous coffee mug could not be accommodated in a high gee station. However, if Sandy turned her head one way there was a nipple to suck water from. The other way was for coffee.
A yeoman motored her high gee station over to Sandy’s. She quickly drained the dregs of yesterday’s coffee, washed out the reservoir and filled it with fresh, steaming coffee. Sandy took a sip.
“There ought to be a way to mainstream the stuff, straight from the pot to my veins.”
“I’m sure Mimzy could figure one out,” Penny said, helpfully.
“Don’t you even suggest that to her,” Sandy whispered, then realized the uselessness of keeping anything from a super computer that was there at Penny’s collar bone.
“It would not be a problem,” Mimzy said.
“No. No. Forget I said anything,” Sandy said. There were limits as to just how much help she wanted from those fancy new computers.
The watch was about as eventful as watching paint dry, which was much to be preferred over watching reactors boil over or explode. Sandy found herself wishing for a report on the alien’s reactors. No doubt, engineers on those tubs were sweating bullets.
An hour before the aliens were due to jump, the skipper of the Birmingham called up.
“Admiral, my leading chief cruised her egg around the boat, and she finds the cats are restless.”
“Restless.”
“She told them that we’re on the pounce, but they don’t see anything. It seems the cats are very visual. I can’t honestly say that the birds are much less happy to be in the dark. Even the Colonials are a bit edgy.”
“Does your chief have any suggestions?”
“She’d like to pipe the battle feed, stripped of the heavy stuff and with a bit of commentary for color, through to every high gee stations. She strongly suspects that even the trained Sailors we brought from New Birmingham could use the distraction.”
“It’s not going to be very exciting. I’m looking at it and I’m kind of bored, to tell you the truth.”
“I’m looking at it too, ma’am and I agree with you, but we’re old hands. For the kids, it’s likely to be really cool.”
“Are they still using that word?”
“How should I know, Admiral? You and I know what it means. That’s all that matters to me.”
“Have your leading chief put together whatever she thinks will be helpful, check it out with your XO, and mount it on the ship’s open net. Oh, and pass the idea along to the other ships behind us. Tell the leading chiefs on the other boats that there’s a contest to see which ship comes up with the least boring feed.”
“Do you really want to challenge the chiefs, Admiral?
It only took Sandy a moment to recognize that inviting the senior chiefs to be creative was no less open to surprises than challenging super computers.
“You have a very good point, Captain,” Sandy said. “Tell her to do whatever you think is best.”
“I’ll get her on it right away, ma’am.”
Sandy heard nothing further about that. No doubt, the crews below decks ate it up.
An hour later, the aliens went through the jump one ship at a time, barely a second apart.
Sensors had an immediate report. “They were making 512,316 kilometers per hour at exactly 3.089 gees acceleration. Rock steady. No rotation on the ship.”
&n
bsp; That settled that.
Sandy now had numbers. “Nav, plot me a course where we go to 4.3 gees for six hours, then resuming 4.1 for six hours. We’ll follow that course until we flip ship and begin decelerating. Let me know how much we’d have to put in at 4.3, then alternate as much time as needed with 4.1 deceleration. I want to hit that jump at exactly the alien’s numbers.”
Nav had an answer back in less than a minute. “Ten hours to flip ship, half at high acceleration, half at lower. Our deceleration toward the jump will be about two hours high, one low. I’m ready to send the exact course to the squadron. We’ll flip again, and use their exact accelerate jump through. Shall I send the course?”
Sandy frowned at the screen, now showing the high acceleration part of the course in red, the rest in yellow. She’d be hammering the ships’ reactors hard. Would the rest at only 4.1 gees be enough? Lord, in her days in destroyers, a three gee acceleration was considered an outstanding performance from the ship’s engineering division. Kris Longknife had jacked up the acceleration and the pressure on everyone. There were risks involved in this course. She eyed her board. It showed all reactors with plenty of yellow left, and the computers continuous deep review showed no hints of impending failure.
“Nav give Comm your course. Comm, send to the squadron. ‘A six hour speed run at 4.3 gees starts in two minutes. Captains, please advise me of problems.’”
Two minutes went by with no adverse comments and no evidence of problems. “Commence speed run . . . now,” Sandy ordered.
Sandy watched her boards like a hawk as the as the ships put on the extra gees without fault or problem. The reactor cores took the extra plasma in, heated it up and spat it out the end. Containment held and the cooling systems did their work. Three cooling pumps fell out, but three backup pumps kicked in without a drop in the flow of coolant around the reactors that, only seconds later, was fed into the reactors and superheated to plasma.
Here again, the Smart MetalTM made repairs manageable. The three balky pumps were dissolved into the basic matrix and reformed according to specs without anyone having to get out of a high gee station. Five minutes after the initial failures, all three pumps were back on-line, tested, and ready to kick in if needed.
Kris Longknife's Replacement: Admiral Santiago on Alwa Station Page 16