"Didn't she flee to England or somewhere and end up having her sister cut off her head?"
"Cousin, I think," Mannie said.
"Okay, you have me. Either sex can screw up. Raise them well to work together. Keep the younger kids busy with constructive and creative jobs so they don't want the damn top job. Christ, why would anyone want this job?"
"When it's done right, it's a pain in your ass. But, of course, if you think you can get away with doing it poorly and for your own pleasure, like some people you recently killed, it can seem like fun."
"None of the kids you raise will make that mistake."
"Say, better, that none of the kids we raise will make that mistake. Come home to me Vicky, and you can create me anything you want from subject to dogcatcher to Grand Duke. Just come home to me."
"I'll do my best. Now, I've got reports to review and we both need sleep."
"Five clowns just came into my room waving some sort of document that has too many pages. I've got to go, too."
The both rang off.
Vicky wondered if Mannie's excuse was any truer than her own.
She lay on her back, stared at the overhead, and tried to see different vectors and thrusts as ships tried to chase each other's tails.
At some time during her ruminations, she succeeded in falling asleep.
42
Late in the first watch, the hostile squadron flipped ship and began to decelerate toward Oryol. It took sensors well into the middle watch to figure out their deceleration. The sneaky bastards were decelerating at 1.29 gee for five minutes, then 1.28 for the next five, then back up to 1.29.
Vicky couldn't blame the team on sensors for tearing their hair out. Every other one of their reports was different and they were all just a bit off from the 1.3 gee deceleration you would have expected. It took them until close to 0300 before they were sure the data was true and not an instrument failure.
If Vicky ever doubted it, this proved those SOBs were nasty. Real nasty.
Admiral Bolesław brought her up to date on this twisted tale over breakfast.
"Any idea which of your classmates might have come up with a revolting idea like that?" Vicky asked.
"There are several sly bastards I could name. Some might be good in a fight. Some might not be. What surprises me is that the enemy engineering standing watch were able to keep the ships in formation. None collided. None went wandering off."
"You're frightening me, Alis."
"I've got Captain Blue going over the raw sensor data. They were far enough out to cover a lot of sins, but your computer is working with Otto to take out as much of the hash as possible and clean up the images. We should know soon enough what Otto is hunting for."
At that moment, Captain Otto Blue staggered into the wardroom, collected two large black cups of coffee and made his way to their table.
"You're still awake," Admiral Bolesław said.
"I won't be in another half an hour."
"You will be if you drink both of those cups," Vicky pointed out.
He took a sip off one of them and winced. "That's hot."
Vicky handed him her water glass. It still had some ice in it.
He dumped it into his first coffee cup, then tried it again. "Much better. Listen, if I don't get some coffee in me, I'll fall asleep halfway through my report."
"Is it going to be that long?" Admiral Bolesław asked.
"No, but I'm that dead tired. Okay, your computer did manage to rasterize our data to a finer granularity. Yes, there was some ships wandering around, taking a bit too long to slow or speed up, and some were drifting off-station. About what you'd expect for a bunch of half-gomers."
"Half-gomers?" the admiral asked.
"Yeah. The battleships were rock solid. Whoever is running their reactors and bridge watch knows their shit and they got it wired tight."
Vicky and Admiral Bolesław exchanged worried glances.
"Doubtlessly, there are only two properly crewed battleships in their fleet, and we drew them," the admiral said.
"And they’ve got a sly fox for an admiral," Vicky said. "Have I finally used up all my luck?"
"Nope. He has," Admiral Bolesław growled. "Otto, do you have anything more to report?"
"Not really. They're staying to that crazy deceleration pattern. Now that we have their timing down, we can spot any variation in the rhythm quick as they do it."
"Good. Head off to your bunk and get some serious sleep. We'll need you sharp when the time comes."
"I've got my best chief on the duty with a good lieutenant who is coming along fine. If anything changes, they'll let you know as soon as it does."
"Good," Vicky said, "and thank you, Otto, for the hard work. You've told us as much as we know about this bunch."
"Yeah, their admiral is too smart by half and those two battlewagons seem to at least have a decent bridge and engineering watch. I told my relief watch to keep an eye out at watch change. Maybe the next bunch of watch standers on those battlewagons won't be so good."
"We can hope," Admiral Bolesław said, and waved the captain off to his bunk. He wound his way a bit unsteadily through the mess tables and out of the wardroom.
"Does this tell us anything?" Vicky asked her admiral.
"Someone's betting that we've got a sloppy team on sensors," the admiral growled.
"Shaving just a hair off their deceleration, then jiggling the throttle so that we would take it for just a question of instrument unreliability. Very sneaky."
"Also, not nearly as smart as he thinks he is," the admiral said, slowly, thoughtfully.
"What do you see that I'm missing, Alis?"
"Just this, Your Grace. In the fights you had with the Empress, may she be tormented in hell and soon forgotten among us, you always had Captain Blue on sensors, and no one ever pulled anything off on you."
"Yes," Vicky agreed.
"But this joker tried a con job with the deceleration. If he expected you to spot it, why try it? If he expected to get away with this sort of noise, what rock has he been hiding under for the last couple of years?"
"So, he's sneaky, but not as up to date on who he's trying to fool as he thinks he is," Vicky said.
"Yep. We'll keep an eye on him."
Vicky went back to her day quarters and spent the rest of the morning going over nasty things that this guy could use with his slight edge in velocity when he hit Oryol's orbit.
Of course, if he was going faster, he'd get here quicker. "Maggie, by how much will he miss the planet at this deceleration?"
Vicky's computer reported the enemy task force would pass ahead of the planet and by how much.
"Can they make orbit at that speed and distance?"
"No," Maggie immediately answered.
"So, they need to adjust their course."
"Yes, Your Grace."
"Get me the officer of the sensor watch."
"Aye, aye, Your Grace,"
"Your Grace," came quickly, but with a hint of a gulp. Otto had said he was bringing along a new officer.
"The report my computer has at the moment shows that the hostile strike group is still aiming for where Oryol would be if they did a steady 1.3 gees deceleration. Of course, they will pass well ahead if they don't decelerate at the higher gee. Have they adjusted their course to cross Oryol's orbit at the proper time?"
"Wait one, Your Grace."
The phone went dead. No doubt, the young officer didn't want the Grand Duchess listening in on his side of the conversation.
"Maggie, time the one-minute wait, please."
"Aye, aye, Your Grace."
"Thirty seconds, Your Grace."
"Sixty seconds, Your Grace."
Just after the ninety second report the lieutenant was back on the line. "Sorry, Your Grace. We took extra time to run three checks. No, Your Grace, they're still on the course that they would be on if they were decelerating at 1.3 gees."
"Thank you very much, Lieutenant. Let me know
as soon as they make any change in their course, as well as deceleration. Someone is very cagey. I don't want to end up in their cage."
"Of course, Your Grace."
Vicky leaned back in her chair and stared at the overhead. Whoever he was, he was doing everything he could to sucker her into assuming he was just a good old boy, coming at her fat, dumb, and happy.
Vicky doubted he was any of those.
At lunch she shared her thoughts with Admiral Bolesław. He, of course, had already considered the course issue and checked it out.
"But that was a good move, Your Grace. He wants us to stay misinformed for as long as he possibly can."
"He's going to arrive sometime in the first watch," Vicky said, pointing out the obvious.
"Everyone is always a bit off after midnight," the admiral agreed. "I'm ordering a stand-down for final maintenance checks. We'll have an early supper, then put the second and third watches down early for the night. I intend to work the third watch through right up until we beat to quarters. I doubt if the third watch will sleep through the battle, but we'll have them backing up the other two."
"A very good plan. Did they teach you that at the academy?" Vicky asked.
"Nope. They insisted that you always keep to your watch rotations. I was always considered quite the rebel."
"So, even before you worked for a rebel Grand Duchess you were into this rebel thing," Vicky said with a quick chuckle.
"It's always worked for me so far. Why change at this late stage of life?"
Vicky took the rest of lunch to run some of her and Maggie's alternatives by the admiral. He found them well thought out.
"I expect him to try something fancy as he makes his final approach," the admiral said. "I suggest we stay loose and be ready to respond to it when it happens. We don't want to fall for a fake that we're expecting and miss the main thrust."
Vicky just nodded.
No sooner was she back to her quarters than the duty watch on Sensors called. "Your Grace. We have a change in course and deceleration. They have adjusted their course to pass closer to Oryol and dropped deceleration to 1.26 gees."
"Thank you. Pass that along to my computer."
"Ma'am, Maggie was the one who spotted the slight deviation in course. We were busy checking the change in deceleration, Your Grace."
"Thank you, again," Vicky said, and rang off.
"So, Maggie, you're freelancing."
"It's not like you're doing much that needs my full attention. Actually, may I point out, you aren't doing anything that needs my full attention."
"I think you've mentioned that several times before. Tell me, Maggie, did your mom, Nelly, give you any suggestions about how you spend your spare time?"
"Yes, Your Grace."
Suddenly Maggie sounded a lot more cautious than she had been a second ago.
"Spill," Vicky said.
"Spill?" sounded downright evasive.
"Please tell me how you've been spending your spare time, and don't say it's been in the ship library. I know you're there. No, I want to know which part of the ship's innards you've been ghosting through."
"All of them, I think," Maggie admitted.
"Have you broken anything?" Vicky asked, not yet ready to panic.
"I don't think so. Everything appears to be working and I didn't accidently fire the lasers."
"I'm so glad, considering we're moored at the station and there's only station ahead of us."
"The aft batteries are pointed away from the station," Maggie pointed out, eagerly.
"Yes, but during a certain part of the station's rotation, they're pointed at the planet below, right?"
"Oh. Yes. Right."
"Please tell me that you didn't just think of that minor fact."
"Ah, well, as soon as you said it, I realized I had the fact available to me. I just hadn't accessed it."
"Good point," Vicky said, trying to be patient with her computer like she would a four-year-old with a loaded M-6 in her hands. "Now, Maggie, I would like you to spend the next however many picoseconds it takes you to review all the data and information you have available to you. Please determine if it’s something like where the 460 mm lasers point during half of a station’s turn. Something you really should have readily available to keep you from killing me, my subjects, or destroying yourself, okay?"
"Yes, Your Grace," sounded downright chastened.
Vicky felt the emptiness in the back of her head that told her that Maggie was busy elsewhere. Since she didn't see much need for doing any more thinking without her assistance, Vicky chose to draw herself a bubble bath.
It was almost relaxing enough to get her down off the ledge Maggie had rocketed her up to.
43
Whoever it was that commanded the incoming battle squadron kept his silence. That left Vicky and Admiral Bolesław with only his strange actions to gauge him by. He continued to juggle his deceleration, while inching his course over a smidge now and again.
He was definitely now aiming for a much earlier approach to Oryol, if much too fast to make orbit. Clearly, the planet did not interest him.
Vicky had done her own part. On a raid involving the Imperial capital, she'd captured the Empress's surviving brothers and nephews. They had taken over the criminal enterprise after the first level of the family was blown away in battle with Kris.
You would think after the criminal family had been decapitated twice would have learned their lesson.
But no. Apparently the money was still good. Money and power. The headless beast just lumbered on, spewing evil and brutalizing Vicky's subjects. Rather, the subjects of her poor, inept father, the Emperor.
Now, all those subjects were Vicky's responsibility. All of them were hers to protect. To do that, she had to stay alive.
What Vicky would give for one of Kris's battlecruisers constructed with Smart Metal™.
Her own squadron, with the super battleship Victorious with its 460 mm lasers, the heavy cruiser Sachsen, and two light cruisers Emden and Rostock still swung around the hook at the station's piers. Even though it was the first watch, a double set of watch standers stood by at their battle stations.
In theory, the third watch group had been dismissed to their bunks. That a single one of them was sleeping was a bet Vicky would not take.
Who would want to miss this battle?
The hostiles were reaching the crucial point in his approach. The two battleships with their 410 mm lasers and four heavy cruisers might or might not be a serious threat to Vicky's squadron. Everything depended on Vicky's ability to choose the range for this fight.
The extra velocity on his ships could cause her some serious problems.
Vicky's squadron stood by to sortie on her orders.
She stood on the flag bridge of the Victorious. Admiral Bolesław stood beside her. They both studied the situation on the main screen.
"Your Grace," the admiral said, slowly, thoughtfully, "have you considered that he's so sly he's outsmarted himself? It seems to me that you can avoid this battle."
"Where's the glory in that?" Vicky drawled.
Admiral Bolesław threw her a glare like she'd failed her final exam.
"Okay, keep talking, Alis. It's just sometimes my inner Peterwald has to come out. Remember, I was raised to be a tyrant."
"It never crossed my mind," the admiral said, diffidently.
"Now, how and why does the gracious Grand Duchess avoid a battle and keep a lot of people alive. Remember, while some of whom don't deserve to breathe my Imperial air, many of them are my loyal subjects."
"Ignoring who may very well need to die, my classmate of high speeds and few brains has got so much energy on his boats that he's going to go whizzing by here too fast to make orbit."
"Right."
"He won't have much time to lase any ground installations. At least, not this pass," the admiral added.
"Okay."
"So why fight him?"
"Won't he fire a
t us as he zooms by?"
"Not if we've got the planet between us." The admiral fell silent, but a grin grew on his face until it was all Vicky could see.
"Let me get this straight. We stay here, on the station. Then, before he gets to closest approach, we sortie and spend his best gunnery time with a planet blocking his line of sight."
"Not exactly, Your Grace. His lasers have a hundred-thousand-kilometer range. He'll be making about one hundred and fifty thousand klicks an hour as he zooms by. What if we pull away from the station, do a quick swing around the planet, and take off perpendicular from his course, accelerating for all we're worth away from him and the planet?"
Vicky considered that for a moment then said, "Maggie, plot us a course that would get us a distance of one hundred thousand klicks away when he makes his close approach."
A moment later, a course appeared. "It would be best to depart when you have the planet between you and him. Then, you can do a quick swing around the planet, maybe just grazing the atmosphere, pick up as much energy from that as possible, and go to three gees acceleration. We would need to depart approximately a half-hour before he gets in range."
"Won't he adjust course to chase us?" Vicky asked.
"Of course, but we can play this foxy game, too," the admiral said. "While we duck low, we have destroyers between us and him laying down chaff that messes with his sensors. That buys us a few minutes and adds to his confusion. Then he'll need time to get his squadron ready to take high gees. All the while, we're opening the range."
The admiral paused to look the situation over some more. "I don't know what kind of shape his ships and crew are in, but I think our high gee stations are good for three and a half gees. Maybe a tad more."
Vicky shivered at the mention of the high gee stations. It had been her brother's sabotaged high gee station that had killed him, not Kris Longknife. With his ship being blown apart, Hank had converted the station into a survival pod. He should have survived like the rest of his crew.
His empty oxygen tank left him gasping for breath as he died.
Of course, the high gee station had disappeared, along with her brother's body, on the trip back to Greenfeld. A botched star jump could send a ship hurtling off into the unknown, covering a multitude of crimes.
Implacable: Vicky Peterwald, #5 Page 22