Rita Longknife--Enemy in Sight

by Mike Shepherd

  And lit up three large balls of death that were not at all where the sensors placed them.

  “Hell, what are they doing there?” Sensors growled.

  “Squadron, target quads with aft main batteries. Fire,” Rita ordered, then added. “Squadron, begin jinking. Put on battle revolutions.”

  The lights dimmed as all available power was shunted to reloading the emptying aft capacitors. The Astute dropped under Rita, throwing her against the harness of her high gee station, then rose, slamming her butt against the water cushions.

  A worse affront to her inner ear was the spin the ship took on. Twenty revolutions a minute slammed Rita against the back of her seat.

  Doing a jig might throw off the hostiles’ aim because not getting hit was best. Ice armor was there to absorb lasers when you couldn’t dodge them. But even ice could take only so much heat.

  Spinning a ship assured that even a laser’s power would not burn through the ice before the spin swung the void of vaporized ice away and layered more ice in place.

  Then Rita was thrown right, left, left some more, with a drop thrown in that made her stomach ride up in her throat.

  They were dodging and spinning, but the hostiles weren’t shooting.

  Yet.

  “Flip ships,” Rita ordered, and the Astute spun around to present her nose to the onrushing hostiles.

  “Fire forward batteries.”

  On screen, the external visuals caught the hint of light as invisible 9.2-inch lasers cut through the scattered gunk to hammer into the three alien balls. Two of them looked to be hit bad.

  Then all three of them reached out with sixteen lasers that shone as they too, made gunk burn. And every one of them pinned the Alacrity for a horrible moment.

  Steam spun off into space as ice and spin struggled to do more than it should have been asked of them.

  A turret popped up to fire as the spin took it right into the burn of an enemy laser.

  The turret exploded.

  Then the Alacrity was spinning off its tortured ice, and lasers were cutting right through her. She burned, then glowed, and suddenly was no more.

  “Flip ships,” Rita ordered. “Angle 25 degrees away from the base course.” That should protect their engines . . . some.

  “Fire,” Rita ordered. Maybe she shouted.

  “We are in range,” the Lion reported.

  “Lion, engage quads. Northampton, engage the closest doubles.

  All three of the quads were hurting, falling off course as first one, then another of their reactors took hits and angle of forces failed to balance. This time, their fire was sporadic as they cut loose with one or two lasers from only a few of their pods.

  One exploded, its reactors eating the ship as their thermonuclear heated plasma got loose.

  The leading doubles seemed to evaporate like water on a hot griddle as Exeter, Northampton, and Concord took them under fire.

  But now the triples were coming into the fight. Their three pods sprouted two lasers each.

  Someone must have commanded there because all six reached out for Rita’s squadron. Two lasers raked the Astute. They failed to achieve ice break through, but the Astute throbbed as the evaporated ice threw the balance of her spin off.

  But the Astute was a good ship. Pumps hummed as reaction mass was thrust from one tank to another to keep the ship balanced.

  Dan Taussig’s Artful was not so lucky. Maybe she took more hits. Maybe some new machinery failed to meet its warranty. Whatever it was, she spun out of control for only a moment, but the pause in her jig was enough for more lasers to slash into her. A turret exploded.

  “Artful, pull away,” Rita ordered.

  “Going to three gees deceleration,” Dan shouted, and the Artful tried to let the rest of the squadron pass her. She tried, but the engines failed him and he stayed, pinned by more lasers.

  “Helm, put us between the Artful and the skunks,” Rita ordered.

  “Adjusting jinking pattern,” helm reported.

  “Flip ships,” Rita ordered. The fleet flipped. The reloaded batteries from ten human cruisers reached out for the hostile six triples.

  They had begun a slow dodge and weave, nothing like the human jinking pattern. They did not spin, which led Rita to suspect they had no armor.

  Under the fire of sixty lasers, they burned.

  Two blew up. Three began to come apart like rose petals in a child’s curious hand.

  Children can be so unconscious in their violence.

  The murder at Rita’s shouted orders was done with pure intent.

  Some of the doubles tried to run, to break off, to fight the physics of their fate.

  They ran into the concerted fire of the entire human fleet as the scout cruiser’s 6-inch lasers came in range.

  What whizzed by the human fleet as they passed the aliens was wrack and ruin.

  Rita hardly noticed, she was busy taking the measure of her own fleet and the damage it had taken in just a few short, gut-wrenching minutes.

  One big cruiser lost, one damaged, was only the start of the accounting.

  40

  Rita breathed a short prayer of thanksgiving, then turned her full attention to the butcher bill. “Nori, is your Arduous in any shape to help Dan?”

  “They hit us a few glancing blows. I’ll stand by the Artful and render all assistance possible.”

  “Dan, you take the Artful into any orbit you can manage.”

  “I’ve still got power, but we’ve got some internal fires we’re working on. I’ve vented as many compartments to space as I can. Some of the automatic doors aren’t as automatic as they used to be.”

  “Take care,” Rita said, and then moved on to her other problems.

  “XO, what’s our state?”

  “Reactors ready to answer all bells. We’ve been holed at frames 172 through 179, radii a and b. Nothing we can’t handle. I’ve got teams out repairing armor.”

  “Nav, can we make a good orbit?”

  “The first orbit will be a bit rough, but we can regularize it by the third go around.”

  “Make it so,” Rita ordered.

  Her duty to her squadron and ship done, she turned her attention to the fleet. There had been a few hits from the doubles on the other cruisers, but nothing that had defeated the heavy’s armor. The Rambling Rose had taken a hit to its rocket motor but was making for orbit with what she had left.

  “Undamaged light cruisers, set an orbit that will bring you back through the wreckage of the alien battle group,” Rita ordered. “Check for survivors.”

  “We’ll do that, Commodore,” Izzy replied on net, “but I didn’t see anything that looked like survival pods as we went by. We’re also not making out any distress signals. Not a one, ma’am.”

  “They can’t be that stupid,” Rita said.

  “How many survival pods did we make out among the wreckage where the pirates fought them?” Izzy asked.

  “But there must have been survival pods.”

  “They bought used warships,” Izzy said. “They were sure to keep the guns but survival pods have their own surplus market. I don’t think the pirates bothered to buy them.”

  “And neither did these dolts,” Rita said.

  “You thinking what I’m thinking?” Izzy said.

  “That our pirates fell afoul of their pirates, or something enough the same as to make no-never-mind?”

  “That’s my first guess,” Izzy said. “But I’m open to being proved wrong.”

  “Those three quads didn’t fight like pirates,” Rita pointed out. “They messed good with our sensors, too. The others didn’t, I think.”

  “Yeah, that kind of bothers me,” Izzy said.

  “Well, let’s clean up whatever of this mess we can and see what happens next.”

  “Do you want to order in the transport fleet?” Izzy asked.

  That brought a frown to Rita’s lips. “I don’t like the look of that one that maybe ran, or maybe was running
for help. Let’s see if the troops on the heavy cruisers are enough to get us a decent recon of the Planet of Gold. If you don’t think you’ll need two of the scouts for policing up this battlefield, send them off to provide some cover for the transports but keep them holding at the jump point.”

  “Those green troopers are gonna love spending their time in zero gee.”

  “They joined the army. They got to expect shitty orders,” the Navy commodore said, with a sly grin.

  “You busy?” Ray asked from behind her.

  “Just cleaning up loose ends. Speaking of, you need to put together a landing party to check out the Planet of Gold.”

  “Should I issue gold panning equipment?”

  “I don’t think they’ll have time,” Rita said. “We may have company coming, but I want to know what happened down there. The one report we’ve got leaves a lot to be desired where specifics are concerned. I don’t much care for the gloss some folks were putting on their carrying on down there. I want to have someone I trust take a look for themselves.”

  “And I know just the man for the mission,” Ray said and tapped his commlink.

  “Trouble, have I got a job for you.”

  Rita had no trouble catching the groan that followed her husband’s cheery words.

  41

  Brevet Brigadier General Trouble was getting tired of this shit. If he saw another dead and bloated body, he was going to puke.

  Problem was, he hadn’t felt the need to puke once on this drop.

  That was starting to bother him.

  “You getting used to this shit?” he muttered to himself, or were these alien bodies somehow not driving him to the need to puke.

  There were a lot of bodies, all with too many arms, legs and empty eye sockets. Here, however, someone had stacked them up like cordwood. Had they intended to bury or burn them? That was possible. Rita and her fleet certainly had not been expected.

  But there were other dead. They’d found a cemetery outside the hurriedly built wall around the town. Actually, they’d found several. One had crosses. One six pointed stars. Another had five pointed stars. The last just had markers over boxes of ashes. That one had been the largest.

  A lot of humans had died here.

  Trouble went down to the beach. General Ray Longknife was coming to take his own look at what Trouble had found. Trouble had sent plenty of pictures up to the Astute. It was nice working for an elephant that took the time to really check out the lay of the land.

  Or of the dead.

  To Trouble’s surprise, Commodore Rita Nuu-Longknife followed the general ashore. And right behind her was Becky Graven, the ambassador. The weasel Crossie had actually come down with them.

  All the elephants were on parade.

  Major General Ray Longknife looked around. “Was there an assault here?” he asked.

  “I think it was more of a fighting withdrawal,” Trouble said. “We found wreckage washed up along the beach of at least one shuttle. Humans bodies had been collected in a heap over there, under the trees. There’s some interesting patches where lasers turned the sand to glass. From the bones caught up in the glass, I’d guess there were a lot of aliens down on the beach. Final protective fire is my guess.”

  Ray nodded agreement.

  “What else have you got to show us?”

  Trouble began the grand tour.

  “Wall and ditch here were hastily dug,” he said, ushering them through the gate. “There are sandbagged positions on the top of the wall, but nothing down here.”

  “Have you had any reactions from the aliens?” Rita asked.

  “They tossed a sack of incendiaries in here a bit after we arrived. We got up a radar so when they tossed the second round, we had mortar bombs backtracking them. There was no third round,” Trouble said with a proud chuckle.

  His troops were green. That didn’t mean they were incompetent. They were rapidly taking on the patina of vets.

  “This place has been burned out,” the ambassador observed.

  “Burned, rebuilt, burned and was being rebuilt again,” Trouble said.

  “Someone doesn’t know when to quit,” Rita said.

  “A lot of people, I’d say,” Trouble offered. “There’s one place I need to show you.”

  They headed for the one significant structure inside the walls.

  “Over there seemed to be a meeting hall. We found lots of human liquor bottles, jugs, and such. There was a wooden sign, ripped down and tossed aside saying Captain’s House.”

  “As in pirate captain’s house.” Becky said.

  “I think somebody had read too many bad historical romance tales,” Rita observed.

  “This mess here and in space sure looks like it,” Ray said.

  “There’s one room I think you’ll find informative,” Trouble said, and led them within.

  “Before we shipped out, I snatched up some guys from Savannah’s police forensic unit. They’ve gone over this particular room with some interest,”

  Trouble held open a large wooden door. Its planks were reinforced with iron bands and it had a large, broken lock.

  “The roof was burned off at least once by laser fire,” he said, pointing at the ceiling with its fresh cut logs and thatch. “The gouges you see in the adobe walls were put there by molten gold splatter. Most had been dug out by the time we got here. There were still small droplets of gold that our team recovered.”

  “What’s in the sacks there?” Becky asked.

  “More gold nuggets. This is someone’s, or several groups of competing peoples’ treasure room. The boxes have silver bars from the mine up in the hill. We’ve flown a recon over it, and were shot at when we took our drone in low. We’ve left it alone. Oh, those smaller sacks have some really fantastic jewels in them. Diamonds, rubies, emeralds.”

  “No wonder you have four guards at that door,” Ray said.

  “And I change them every hour. They’re not supposed to know what’s in here, but I think the rumor’s starting to spread.”

  “I’m tempted to slag this from orbit like someone already did,” Rita said, “but I think we’d better take it back as evidence.”

  “Evidence of what?” Ray said.

  “Evidence that a lot of what we’ve been looking at was done in the throes of gold fever,” Becky said.

  Rita nodded. “I was wondering how anyone could be so unhuman. Now I’m starting to see. We humans don’t have a very good track record for milk of human kindness when we’re in the grip of gold fever. I’m suspecting that whoever these other big dudes are, they might not be representative of their species. At least I’m hoping they aren’t. Maybe, if we can find some of them that aren’t in thrall to filthy lucre, we might be able to have a reasonable conversation.”

  “That may be our only hope,” Becky said.

  “I think you’re letting hope become your policy,” Ray said. “Until we’ve pounded some respect for humanity into their thick heads, I don’t expect them to be much interested in anything from us but our dying gasp.”

  “I hadn’t taken you for such a bloody pessimist,” Rita said to her husband.

  “I hadn’t taken you for such a blind optimist,” Ray said back.

  “Folks, can we do our policy forming somewhere else?” Trouble asked. “Preferably with this place receding fast in the rear-view mirror.”

  “I’ll second that motion,” Becky said.

  “Trouble,” Major General Ray Longknife ordered, “have your troops get this ‘evidence’ moved up to the Astute. Commodore, as soon as your fleet is ready to answer bells, I suggest that we get out of here before any more of those things shows up.”

  “On that, General, we most certainly agree,” the general’s wife responded. “Humanity has to know what has happened here.”

  “And what may be following us back,” Ray added.

  “Pity them that tries,” Trouble muttered, “they’ll wish they’d never been born.”

  42

  F
ather Joseph lay face down on a gold-inlayed marble floor. It was cold, but at least he’d been allowed to dress for his presentation to the Emperor.

  He had lain once before on a floor. It had been a simple wooden floor in front of the altar of the parish church. Then, he’d arisen a priest forever, in the order of Melchizedek.

  Whether he rose from this prostration, or died where he lay, would be decided with no comment from him.

  Roth’sum’We’sum’Quin of the Chap’sum’We clan had made it quite clear to Joseph. “Of our words, you hear some. Of our words, most would kill you for what comes from your mouth. You are most impious.”

  For the act of being impious among these people, death was the only accepted apology.

  And these folks were really into apologies. The bloodier the better.

  This meeting would determine who owed the Emperor an apology. Roth, for taking one of the newly discovered animals into the city of the Emperor, or someone else for something Joseph didn’t quite understand.

  He huddled prostrate on the floor and tried to make sense of the few words he understood.

  He had come into the Magnificent Hall of Celestial Reception with Roth and several senior members of his clan. Roth himself was just a fledgling.

  His elders hoped that his youth and curiosity might be used in his favor to balance out his present folly.

  But that was not the only thing on the agenda, if Joseph understood how these creatures thought. There was something else. Something he struggled to catch.

  Even after a year of Roth helping him to understand their language and he trying to give Roth some grasp of human Standard, there was still so much that went over Father Joseph’s head.

  It wasn’t the words, but the ideas behind the words.

  Impious for one. To Father Joseph, it had a clear meaning, and a clear area. Matters of faith and morals. To these people, it seemed to cover just about everything, from political to scientific and everything in between.

  Joseph wondered if he was missing some fine point of nuance that separated one sort of impiety from another, but if there was one, it eluded him.