“I love your confidence in me,” Rita said, dryly.
Still, Ray had a point. The supposed advantage of a defender had not worked out all that well for the pirates. Had it just been poor maintenance and ship handling? How good were the people, aliens, whatever, facing her? How battle-tested was their commander?
Rita, who’d seen a lot of how it shouldn’t be done in the Unity War, now had a chance to show them how it should be done.
She left the bridge under her XO’s able command and retired to her in-space cabin. Ray joined her. She left him the chair, and settled herself on the bunk, staring up at the overhead.
Why can’t engineers get us a high gee seat that’s as comfortable as a bunk?
“I’m incoming. Backing my way into orbit,” she muttered to herself. “They can gauge pretty much when I’ll get there and adjust themselves in their orbit so they can come charging out at me, aiming for my stern.
She paused to picture this in her mind’s eye.
“I can flip ship and fire my forward batteries, present them with the thickest armor of my dust catcher.” Rita played that out in her mind’s eye.
“I might miss making orbit, or have to do some real honking around to make it.”
“But if they launch out at you,” Ray put in, “won’t that mean that you get to make orbit while they’re headed off for who knows where?”
“Good point, my ground-pounding friend,” Rita said and tapped her commlink. “Sensors, how much activity can you make out on the planet?”
“There are shuttles going up and down. The pace seems to be constant. It hasn’t picked up. We’re getting communications off the planet. Nothing we can read, though. There are no reactors on the ground. It looks to be pretty primitive down there.”
“XO, Sensors, let me know the second anything changes?”
“We will,” came back immediately.
Rita continued to stare at the overhead, seeing lines of battle swinging in, up, down and around the planet’s gravity well.
Once she had an idea of what she wanted, she called the Jump Master, the best navigator aboard and laid out a plan.
A half hour later, the monitor above the desk of her in-space cabin came to life. Ray swapped places with her, taking the bed but looking over her shoulder. On the screen, dots danced through one iteration after another.
Rita studied one result after another, then went through the whole thing again . . . differently. Finally, she reran a few with different variations.
She and Ray swapped places again, and she eyed the overhead, letting her mind wander through various lines of thought. She got up, and, without moving Ray, added another question to her last list, then slipped back into the bunk.
This went on for two hours, with Ray keeping quiet vigil. That was mighty nice of him. She spent another long session at the work station, came to like what she saw, then took Ray to supper in the wardroom.
He did a good job of making her laugh. The watching officers seemed to find that encouraging, their skipper laughing at her husband’s jokes. Trouble added his own two cents’ worth, and Becky, no real surprise, turned out to have a decidedly wicked collection of dirty jokes.
Dinner over, Rita checked in on the bridge. The enemy was still not changing their position. In a way, that bothered Rita.
Someone clearly thought they didn’t need to turn in any cards. The hand they held was pat.
All Rita could do was hope they were wrong.
Rita invited Ray back to her in-space cabin and walked him through her thoughts. She didn’t really expect a gravel-cruncher to be an expert in three dimensional vectors around a gravity well, but he listened intently, asking a few rather good questions. And then suggested they make a night of it.
“Thanks for the offer, trooper, but momma’s gonna sleep right here, off the bridge,” she told her husband.
“You don’t trust them to not change things up in the night?”
“Not one bit. They haven’t changed anything. That doesn’t mean they won’t.”
“Sweet dreams, love. Don’t let the bed bugs bite,” he said, and kissed her on the forehead.
“They wouldn’t dare,” she said, and smiled him out the door.
Then she lay down, flat on her back, stared at the overhead and let the vectors run.
A blessing that night, the vectors kept the ghosts at bay.
38
The navigator who had the morning watch sent a runner to wake Rita at 0500. “Ma’am, the XO says they are making their move,” the young man said, standing in the doorway.
Rita quickly splashed water on her face, and went to see what that move was.
“They started juggling themselves in orbit about ten minutes ago,” said the XO as she surrendered the conn when Rita came on the bridge.
“We’ve been getting an improved picture of them, skipper,” reported the lieutenant on Sensors.
“Talk to me.”
“There are three of them that we’ve taken to calling quads, ma’am, though Nav here thinks we should call them four deckers,” the XO said through a grin.
“I always said you read too many books about Napoleonic era sailing ships,” Rita said.
The gal on Nav just grinned back, unrepentantly.
“All the ships we’re facing are ball-shaped,” Sensors continued. “The quads have four reactors spaced at ninety degrees around the sphere. They have capacitors, or something that stores energy forward of the reactors. Likely, they have lasers forward of that.”
“That would match the one report we have,” Nav said.
“I agree,” Rita said.
“They have six of what we are calling triples, or triple deckers.”
“Leave the ‘decker’ off,” Rita snapped. “The second we save may save our life, lieutenant.”
“Yes, Commodore,” Sensors said, and then went on. “They have three reactors spaced at 120 degrees around the sphere. The capacitors or whatever are about half as powerful as those on the quads.”
“That’s a major drop down,” Nav observed.
“That would appear so,” Rita said, rubbing her chin in thought.
“The rest of the twenty ships are doubles, ma’am. They have two reactors spaced evenly at 180 degrees from each other. The capacitors are about half as strong as the triples.”
“What kind of density are those ships showing us?” Rita asked.
“The quads are giving the atom laser a good wiggle, ma’am. There’s some serious mass there. The other two types seem rather hollow. Much less dense.”
“Less dense,” Nav said. “Less powerful power storage units.”
“So why are there so many?” Rita asked herself. She had brought eleven heavy cruisers to this shindig. She had six light cruisers and nine transports. Eight of the transports were hovering at the jump point, with orders to run if things went bad. The last one was back on the other side of the jump keeping a check on their line of retreat.
The hostiles’ deployment did not make a lot of sense, unless someone had come with only what they had available.
Clearly, it had been enough to shoot up a pirate fleet.
Pirates are one thing. This time you drew the Navy, you murdering bastards.
Of course, the present Navy was only what Rita had been able to beg, borrow, and steal. The crews and commanders were what could be found sober, or eager, and the whole collection was under the command of a jumped-up transport pilot.
Stow that in whatever hole it crawled out of, she ordered herself.
“In the last fifteen minutes,” Nav said, checking the watch on the bottom of the main screen, “they have started juggling their order in orbit. When you went to get some sleep, they were strung out pretty equally in orbit, kind of like a bunch of pearls on a string. Now they’re changing that line-up. Some ships are going into high orbits, some dropping lower. It will take a while for them to settle down.”
“Thank you for waking me,” Rita said. It was a good thing when
a watch officer isn’t afraid to ruin the skipper’s sleep.
Rita looked down at yesterday’s rumpled uniform. She didn’t have to check to know she was distinctly smelly. It was one thing for her husband to come back from a hard day in the field smelling like he’d had a skunk for lunch. It was something different entirely for a ship’s skipper to have an aroma.
“I’ll be in my quarters, getting a shower and a change of clothes. If anything changes drastically, don’t hesitate to have a female runner drag me out of the shower.”
“Yes, ma’am. Sorry about sending a male runner,” Nav said. “The female runner had left earlier to chase down some fresh coffee. Would you like some?”
“I don’t mind a guy waking me. Getting me out of the shower? That’s different.”
“We could send a guy and have him encourage your husband to get you out of the shower,” Sensors whispered.
Rita made an effort not to hear that as she left.
In her quarters, Ray was sleeping, she tiptoed past him and shot through a quick shower. Ray was up when she got out; a new blue shipsuit was laid across their bed.
“Thanks,” she said pulling on a bra. “Could you drop down to the galley and get me a plate of fresh bread and butter? Maybe some hot coffee? They just got a new pot on the bridge, but I suspect it will be cold by now.”
“Yes, Commodore,” Ray said, “the major general hears and will obey.”
“Well, my Army major general,” Rita answered in full sassy mode, “whether you’re alive or dead tonight will depend on how your Navy commodore does today.”
“Then I better get her caffeine level up and some nice bread in her belly before she starts taking heads off that don’t have four eyes.”
He gave her a peck on the cheek and was gone.
Rita ran a quick comb through the short mop that passed for her hair at the moment and returned to the bridge. She’d been gone fifteen minutes.
Nothing had changed where the enemy was concerned.
On the bridge, everyone was now in a high gee station. The chief of the boat brought one onto the bridge and parked it beside Rita’s command chair. She slipped into it and he hit the toggle switches that freed her chair from its lock-downs.
Quickly he rolled it off the bridge as she motored her station around and slid her board over it.
She was ready; now where was the enemy? No, hostiles. She didn’t want to start thinking of the aliens as enemies just yet.
There ought to be some formal declaration of war or something.
Admittedly that might be hard with them not even knowing each other’s languages or being able to patch into each other’s comm lines.
With the enemy reorganizing, it was time to reorganize her own forces.
“Squadron, form a box on me,” she ordered and the Astute slowed its deceleration to let her three trailing sisters form up on her, each 300 kilometers from the other.
“Lion, please form a square of your squadron, 500 kilometers aft of mine and 500 kilometers to starboard. Set a 300-klick interval between ships and prepare to jink ship on my command.”
“Aye, aye, commodore,” came back from the senior Lorna Do skipper, and the four ships from there and Pitts Hope moved into Rita’s desired fighting array.
“Northampton, form the second Wardhaven squadron on my port side, same intervals.”
“Aye, aye,” Matt responded. He had battle time in cruisers, but the former merchant skipper had told Rita he had no desire to carry the full burden of command. Now he obeyed as she sent them all into battle.
“Patton, form the light cruisers into two divisions on our wings. Use the same intervals.”
“Aye, aye, Commodore,” Izzy responded. She had more time in the Navy than any officer in the fleet. More time than most of the chiefs. However, all but the last few years of it had been served in the Navy’s ground-based defense battalions. Rita had more ship time than Izzy.
Today, she’d cover the wings and be ready, with her two pint-size squadrons to move to clean up what crumbs Rita’s heavies left to flee.
Assuming this fight goes anywhere close to what I have planned.
This array put the super heavies in the lead. Their 9.2-inch lasers had the longest range. The ice armor swathing the hull was a meter and a half thick. The trailing heavy cruisers sported 8-inch lasers for their main battery, and ice a meter and a quarter. The Patton had 6-inch lasers and a meter of armor. Sadly, the Rambling scout cruisers’ armor was a thin half meter despite their 6-inch main battery. They’d been lightened up for extra range to do their exploration mission.
Today they’d fight. A mission that had always been considered secondary.
Life doesn’t let you just do what you want, the co-Minister for Exploration sighed.
We came out here looking, and look what we found.
She let a sigh escape her, but her eyes were on the fleet. It was forming up according to her orders.
Time would tell if she’d done it better than the admirals she’d bitched about following in the war. Admirals who’d lost their battles, and with it, the lives of so many of Rita’s friends.
“May they be truly grateful for what they are about to receive,” Rita’s XO half-prayed at her elbow.
“Amen,” Rita answered.
39
The alien fleet came out from behind the Planet of Gold in their battle array. In many ways, it mimicked Rita’s.
The three quads were in a triangle formation in the lead. The triangle was pointed up, course straight for Rita’s fleet. Trailing them were the six triples in two triangles as well, one on each flank, though these triangles were pointed down. Stretching out on their flank were two squares of four doubles.
“No, one is a box. The other is a triangle,” Hesper, on sensors, corrected her report.
“Where are the rest?” Rita asked.
“Ah, oh. There they are,” Hesper said, a few seconds later. “Three of the doubles are out ahead of the quads, ma’am. They’re in a very irregular triangle.”
“That’s a strange deployment,” the XO observed. “And a simple one. They’re going to charge at each other and shoot as we pass. Not all that much thought behind it.”
“Maybe enough,” Rita said. “Come to think of it, the wreckage off Port Elgin fits this kind of mad charge.”
“Yes,” the XO agreed.
“We’re missing a ship,” Rita pointed out.
“I’m hunting for it,” Hesper replied. “I think I’ve got it. Yes, there’s a ship hightailing it for the Gamma Jump out of here.”
“Someone doesn’t want to fight,” the XO said.
“Or someone has orders to run for reinforcements or to let someone know what’s happening here,” Rita said. The data allowed for many interpretations.
Few of them were very good for her fleet.
Rita leaned forward in her high gee station. She’d gone to two gees to slow herself down a bit sooner, give herself some leeway to flip ship on the final approach. At two gees, she really wasn’t relying on the station for much support. Later, if she went for a burst at the max, three gees, she’d need it dearly if she didn’t want to black out.
“Why are those three small doubles out in front?” she muttered, half to herself.
“To draw our fire? To see what we have?” XO offered. “Maybe they have rockets they want to get off at us?”
“Maybe their sensor package has a short range and those are trying to get a better handle on us,” Sensor suggested.
“We’ll see,” Rita whispered, still deep in thought. The scattered light ships did not make any sense, unless they were a sacrificial gambit.
And why start with a sacrificial ploy?
Then she got her first surprise of the day.
“Skipper,” Hesper reported from Sensors, “the three lead ships are deploying junk. Sparklers, radar decoys, heat sources. All kind of junk as well as ice and sand, if I’m making it right.”
“Why do that?” the XO muttere
d before Rita did herself.
Then it got more interesting.
“Ma’am, the three quads are sliding off to our right.”
Which left Rita frowning. She’d intended to edge to the left, go for a high orbit and keep her vulnerable engines aimed a bit off from the approaching fleet.
Now, if she did that, she’d be opening the range from the enemy’s main force.
“You sure of that course change?” she asked of Sensors.
“Mostly, ma’am,” Hesper reported. “Radar, mass analysis, lasers, all of them are reporting the change. Visuals is having a problem following them through all this gunk, though.”
“A problem?” Rita asked.
“Those three leading doubles, ma’am, the stuff they’re scattering is chaff, sparklers, and heaters. It makes it hard to see what’s behind them.”
“Why would they do that?” the XO murmured.
“Hesper, you remember the last time someone put a lot of gunk up ahead of our intrepid Navy? We damn near lost our fleet to those Society Slugs,” Rita muttered, remembering a landing on one minor satellite that did not go at all as planned.
“All too well, ma’am. I’m doing my best to see through that gunk, but I’m not having a lot of luck.”
“Maybe we should make some luck,” Rita said.
There was nothing here that made much sense. But these are aliens I’m fighting, right? They’re not like us.
“Guns,” Rita called. “Have Turret X target the nearest quad.”
“We’re not even at extreme range, yet,” he said, but two 9.2-inch lasers reached out.
And hit nothing.
“Those should have been right on,” Guns snapped, offended by the miss. “Not good for much more than lighting them up, but we should have hit them.”
“Guns, target all aft 5-inch secondaries for the space between the two triangles of triples. Paint the area.”
“Painting, skipper, but that’s all they’ll do.”
Six 5-inch lasers reached out to crisscross the vacant space where the quads had been. They burned chaff, sparklers, and heaters that the lead alien scouts had scattered.
Rita Longknife--Enemy in Sight Page 16