“Yes,” Kris said.
“Would I reduce the planet to rubble, destroying my clan’s investment, in order to take it out of your hands?”
“Yes, Ron.”
Ron leaned back on his stool and his eyes lost their focus. Then he blinked and sat up. “What is to keep those clan members you have imported from merely surrendering the planet back to their rebel co-clan members?”
Kris chuckled. “Let us say that not all the officers in the million Iteeche army I deploy to the planet are drawn from those friendly clans. Let's suppose that some are drawn from the clans that would love to see a major planet of their opposing clan in ruins. Let us say that those people would have access to the destruction switches.”
“You are playing a deep game, Longknife,” Ron said. “I still think that your wheels inside wheels will come off the axles.”
“No doubt, if the war drags on long enough, this will happen. Our need is only that this hold together long enough for me to swing the battle fleet from this planet to the next, and, likely the next ten or so planets. If we can gut the rebellion of half of their warship production, do you think the rebels will not open negotiations to resolve the war?”
“Negotiate with traitors?” Ron snapped. “Never.”
Kris and Jack glanced at each other and rolled their eyes at the overhead.
“Don’t tell me,” Kris said. “Civil wars are fought to the death.”
“Of course.” Ron snapped.
“So, of course, they are long, bloody, destructive, and leave only wreckage in their wake.”
This time’s Ron’s “Of course,” was slower in coming and nowhere near as absolute.
“You see the problem?” Kris asked.
“You humans,” Ron said ruefully. “You have only two eyes, so how do you see the world in so many, many different ways?”
“It’s just our curse. Also, Ron, we ornery humans with our fractured governments have been fighting each other and our brothers for so long, we’ve made just about every mistake in the book, and come up with every trick in the book to profit from the other guy’s mistake.”
“Slippery human,” Coth whispered.
“Yes,” Kris agreed. “And I’m worse than your average human. Good Admiral, I am a Longknife.”
That drew a grunt from all three at the dinner table.
“So,” Ron said, “let us say that your fleet sweeps in and seizes this system on the farthest side of the rebellion. What then?”
“Nelly, list me those nine remaining high production systems. How many jumps are they from Target 1?”
Nelly posted numbers, both white and black. One of the systems in the middling distance had no occupied planets involved with the voyage from Target 1.
“Mark that one as Target 2. Ron, we’ll need to have an invasion fleet of a million ready to ship out and sail. Is there any place we could get reinforcements that is close by Target 1?”
“Actually, there is one close at hand. This is one time when the crazy patchwork quilt of our planets being mixed in together works for you. You could use your fast transports that dropped off your army on Target 1 and lift another army off a rather minor, but over-populated planet and get them to Target 2 right about the time when you need them.”
“Once we have two of their most productive planets, Admiral Coth, what do you think they will do? Strike back at these two lost planets or defend their existing strongholds?”
“They will concentrate their forces to defend every major system that they fear losing.”
“So, their forces will stay scattered and defensive.”
“Well, My Admiral, calling six or seven thousand battlecruisers and battleships a scattered force is not exactly what I’d call a small force you can defeat in detail.”
“You mentioned battleships, though.”
“Yes, in many cases, we will be dealing with battleships, some dating back to the Human War.”
“How will they fare against battlecruisers?” Jack asked.
“Not well. Not at all well.”
“So?” Ron asked. “What do you want from me?”
“I need a million Iteeche army under a good commander, not an asshole, not an inflexible fool lusting for battle glory. I need an assault fleet capable of lifting a million Iteeche Army at accelerations of 2.0 to 2.5 gees. I need clan lordlings that can take over several planets. It’s possible that I may borrow clan lords from nearby loyal planets, but I need at least some senior lordlings appointed by the clan chief lords here at the capital.”
“Yes, you do. Very wise of you. Okay. I believe I can depart with just my flotilla. I’ll see what we can do about being back here with a million-soldier army and as many more battlecruisers as I can lay my four hands on.
“Before you leave, I’d like to send an updated report to my king for my embassy to pass along. I’ll do my best to have it to you in an hour.”
“That should be soon enough. Will you have an officer courier traveling with me?
“I hope you will allow one.”
“Of course. Well, Your Highness, Grand Admiral and all the rest Longknife, I am beginning to think that my chooser was very wise to have chosen you for my initial contact with you humans. Very wise.”
“I think my great-grandfather may have been wise to bring me along through all the assignments he gave me. Although there were times I doubted I’d survive his meddling in my life.”
“Don’t you hate it when those old graybacks are proven right?”
The four of them enjoyed the shared laugh. Kris watched Ron go, wondering what the Iteeche word that came through as “graybacks” was actually translated from.
She turned to see Coth still seated at her table.
“I know. I know,” the Iteeche admiral said, raise all four of his hands as if to ward off a physical assault from Kris. “I have a battle fleet to train up. Still, you promised me a dinner, and I’m hoping you have some of that double chocolate silk pie for desert. We really must begin growing cocoa trees on our worlds.”
“I’ll see if some cocoa plantations can be arranged,” Kris laughed. “Of course, we have pie. I had it made just for you.”
“Then bring on the pie!”
41
A month later, Kris took her battle fleet out of orbit around Zargoth. Less than a day earlier, Ron had brought out an invasion fleet. It, and the 500 more battlecruisers to reinforce Kris’s 3,000, were boosting for the jump Kris intended for her fleet to lead the way through.
The reinforcements were welcome, but it was the invasion force that was critical to their next mission. So, the 200 transports for those soldiers received a lot of scrutiny.
The soldiers were on battleships, only not at all like the Iteeche battleships Kris would have expected.
What the humans had come to call an Iteeche battleship was a large sphere. Along its equator could be four, six or eight reactor pods, but usually six. They provided plasma to the rocket motors at the rear of the pod and electricity to the weapons in the forward half, usually four lasers.
Those six pods mounted a total of twenty-four lasers, ranging in power from 14-inches to 18-inches when compared with a human battleship’s lasers. Many of the smaller laser-armed death balls dated back to before the Human/Iteeche war. The 18-inch lasers came out toward the end of the war.
The large sphere provided accommodations for the crew, and an Iteeche battleship carried a huge crew, well over 5,000.
Now, however, the death balls were no longer spheres.
“What has happened to those death balls?” Kris muttered in surprise as Ron’s two hundred obsolete battleships followed his additional five hundred battlecruisers through the jump. “Sensors, compare that bunch against the death balls in our database.”
“Aye, aye, Admiral,” was followed a few minutes later by, “I think we have something for you, Admiral.”
“Put it on screen, Sensors.”
Half the forward screen in Kris’s flag plot switched fr
om the scenery in orbit above Zargoth to a schematic of a standard 18-inch death ball. Below it was what they were seeing now.
Instead of a nice, round sphere, these ships looked something like a teardrop, assuming nature allowed a teardrop to be streamlined a bit in front. Where there had always been a perfectly circular bow on them, these had noses that stretched out before narrowing and ending in a well-rounded bow. It was the same aft, only it was longer, tapered more gently and ended in a more narrow but rounded stern.
“How many troops do you think one of those can carry?” Jack asked Kris
That, of course, was the million-dollar question. Or rather the million-soldier one.
“Sensors, what’s the volume and displacement on those modified ships?”
“It’s hard to tell, ma’am, but it looks like they’re at least double the internal volume of the original, maybe slightly more. Our mass detectors don’t show that much additional displacement, however. Excuse me for this guess, but I don’t think those death balls are carrying their ice armor.”
“Thank you, sensors. Keep me appraised as you learn more about those,” Kris said. The Iteeche had started the War with thin-skinned warships. Lots of guns, but not a lot of defense. They’d learned from the humans the advantage of ice armor layered on under a reflective coating of aluminum.
“It looks like these battlewagons are traveling light,” Kris muttered to Jack.
“If that’s what it takes to carry, what, five thousand soldiers and their supplies and battle gear, I’ll settle for thin-skinned transports. It’s your battlecruisers’ job to keep the rebels away from my army,” Jack answered.
“We’ll just have to see what Ron has to say.”
Ten minutes later, Ron did have something to say. “Hello, my Royal Grand Admiral and Imperial Order of Steel Admiral, how does your human joke go? ‘Look what followed me home’?”
He laughed at his own joke. It sounded like someone was strangling a parrot.
“Not only have I acquired another five hundred battlecruisers, all with 24-inch lasers, but I have an army of two million soldiers, along with their armor and artillery. No doubt, you will find someplace good to use them. Hidden somewhere among all those old death balls are a half-dozen bi-hexaremes just loaded to the gills with eager young clan lordlings, all ready to take over the running of a major planetary system. Not all of them are young and junior, either. You have the third chosen of the Clan Chief of the Chap’sum’We. He’s been promised a overlordship of a planet. One of my own chooser’s senior chosen is also with us. Having won this planet, a lot of loyal clan branches are seeing a bright future for themselves.”
Ron paused to look off screen.
“Right, now that you know what we have here, do you want us to drop down to the planet or head for a jump out of here? We do not need to refuel. We did so in the last system. If you will tell us what jump you want us to take, we will head for it directly.”
The message had taken several hours to get to Kris. The response would take almost as much time to get back. Kris, however, was ready to issue her orders immediately. She sent directions out to Ron, then alerted her battle fleet to prepare to sail in four hours.
One flotilla would stay behind. If the system was attacked by three flotillas, it would engage. How to respond to four flotillas was left to the commanding admiral’s discretion. If five or more flotillas showed up, his orders were to run like hell and report back to the capital.
In the meantime, the first fruits of the asteroid mine in orbit were starting to glide down to the planet. The first miners sent out to the asteroid belt had found both water and metals, and were setting themselves up for the long haul, and quite a few of the new clan lordlings were starting to think they might have been given something more than an overpopulated mud ball to rule.
There were a lot of happy groundlings, and not only had there been no more sabotage, but no one had been turned in for trying to attempt one.
Kris wondered if the Iteeche would take a lesson away from this. Beating the hell out of a planet wasn’t such a good idea and using your battlecruisers to help spur an economy could get you a whole lot more than using them to blow shit up.
To Kris, it was a clear lesson. To an Empire that was ancient when we humans were discovering how to hammer flint to get sharp edges, it likely wasn’t.
At the moment, it didn’t matter. Kris had a mission. For the first time in her career, she was taking the war to the enemy. She’d won a lot of battles, defending this place or that. Taking Zargoth hadn’t involved any fighting in the space around it.
Kris could not expect her luck to last forever.
She was not disappointed.
42
The voyage to Target System 1 involved six jumps. The first jump was a standard one out of the Zargoth system. They accelerated in the next system and hit one of Nelly’s fuzzy jumps. They shot through three more four jumps at high speeds and high accelerations with spin on their hulls.
Each jump, a few Iteeche ships missed the jump for one reason or another and had to go back around, get herded together by a human battlecruiser assigned that job, and then trail the main battle force as they tried to catch up.
Also at each jump, a few Iteeche ships would hit the jump wrong. Since the fleet went through the jumps with four battlecruisers lashed together as a single unit, and all following one after another, the problem was most likely someone blowing the last moment acceleration or the rotation.
Despite everything Kris did, twenty-four Iteeche battlecruisers and two assault ships wandered off in sour jumps. Hopefully, their skippers knew enough to retrace their steps. If not, they’d likely wander the stars until their oxygen ran out.
Space was not kind to the stupid or clumsy.
Kris took the time during the long voyage out to drill her crews. Much of it was ship drill for the crew, but three times she allowed the fleet to go to a one gee acceleration and drilled them as a single unit.
Evasion tactics meant having the ships zig and zag, bounce up and down, as well as throttle back or zip ahead. If that was all the ship had to do, it would be fine. However, warships didn’t go to space just to keep their crews alive.
Each warship was meant to destroy other warships, preferably at a ratio of better than 5:1. For battlecruisers, that meant swinging their bows toward the enemy, so the forward battery could fire. When they were empty, the ship then flipped to bring the aft guns to bear. That all had to be done while continuing an evasion plan.
The evasion plan was programmed into the helm; aiming the battlecruiser was done at the captain’s order by the helmsman. That was not at all easy, and took practice.
As Kris discovered, most of her ships had little time in space; they’d spent most of their time tied up at the pier. There was a fear among the Iteeche admirals that they might wear out their ships.
Kris cleared up that wrongheaded notion very quickly.
So, while their ships shot across the heavens on their way to war, both human and Iteeche crews sweated and trained, then trained and sweated some more.
They were probably the best-trained Iteeche fleet in millennia when they jumped into a system that was an easy, old-fashioned jump from Target 1. In this system, Kris’s entire fleet spent most of the time decelerating.
They would be going through the jump into the Artiecca system at a sedate 25,000 kilometers per hour and with no acceleration or rotation on the ship. Kris would likely arrive this time with the same number of ships she had in the last system.
That would be nice, considering the last system was unoccupied and Target 1 was potentially full of hostiles.
Right on schedule, the one Nelly had drawn up before they left Zargoth, Kris’s fleet began to pour into the Artiecca system.
It was expected to be undefended. After all, it was about as far from the Imperial Capital as you could get and stay inside the Empire. There were not any loyal planets close by which had any sort of offensive significance.
>
Why would anyone have a battle fleet parked in orbit around this planet?
If Kris ever got the chance, she’d have to ask the admiral commanding the ten thousand rebel battlecruisers moored at the piers and dock of the four space stations above Artiecca 4 just exactly what he was doing there.
43
“Bring the fleet to Battle Stations,” Kris ordered. “Inform all arriving ships that we are at battle stations.”
“Aye, aye, Admiral,” Comm said.
“Really?” Jack said, under his breath.
“Putting the fleet at battle stations, even if we are this far out, will let even the eternal optimists know that the cake walk has been canceled because someone forgot to bake us a cake.”
“Yes. I do believe they have.” Jack agreed, dryly.
Kris studied her battle board; she needed to get familiar with the terrain. The Artiecca system was a very busy place. Artiecca 4 was important enough to have four major space stations spaced around its equator, each one with its own beanstalk.
Most planets couldn’t afford one. This one had four.
There were also production facilities on its moon as well as Artiecca 3 and 5. Admittedly, none of those planets had much of an atmosphere, but they did have minerals and other resources. Artiecca 4 had gotten them up and going. Artiecca 5 even had a beanstalk of its own and a shipyard turning out small to medium ships for the local trade, allowing the four major shipyards around Artiecca 4 to concentrate on the Navy’s needs.
“Intel, what’s the Navy production on Arti 4?”
“According to the reports from returning human engineers and programmers, they’re producing four times the number of ships Wardhaven is making.”
Kris scowled. “And none of them are likely to be obsolete battleships. I really did need to have a little conversation with Grandfather Alex about the folly of wasting resources on second-rate ships. Preferably, with a baseball bat in both hands.”
“Can I sell tickets?” Jack said, through a grin. “I know a lot of people who’d pay good money to see that ‘conversation’.”
Kris Longknife Page 22