Lost Dawns: A Short Prequel Novel to the Lost Millinnium Trilogy

by Mike Shepherd

  “Begging your pardon, ma’am,” Admiral Benson went on, if a bit uncomfortably, “it’s likely not safe for you to send your ships out there. Leastwise, you’re more likely to loose more of yours than I’d loose of mine.”

  Now Sandy did give him the Look. “You want to explain yourself, admiral?”

  And be fast about it, went unsaid.

  “Are you aware of something called crystal armor that they’ve developed on Earth?”

  “I’m aware of it. None of it has gotten out to the rim yet. Why?”

  “Well, ma’am, a couple of squadrons of Earth battlecruisers showed up out here a while back with the stuff. Between the scientists and engineers we had on station, Pipra’s industries and my yard hands, we kind of reverse engineered the stuff and managed to coat every ship in our fleet with it before this last dust up.”

  Sandy came to a halt. The look she now gave him was full surprise. And maybe a bit of awe.

  “You put that weird armored on your entire fleet?”

  “Yes, Admiral,” Benson said. “And there are a lot fewer dead Sailors out there because we did, ma’am.”

  “And you got all of that stuff out of your moon fabricators?” she said, glancing at the civilian.

  “You’re damn right we did, ma’am. You ever try telling a Longknife you couldn’t give her what she wanted.”

  “Not recently,” Sandy muttered, then, remembering she needed to be on her flag bridge, kept walking, but slower, so the woman wouldn’t have to run so much to keep up.

  “Okay, Admiral Benson, tell me what you think I need to know about operations on Alwa Station.”

  “You got a week?”

  She glared at him.

  “He’s not joking, ma’am,” Pipra put in, defending the Navy man. “The way Kris Longknife has been running things, it doesn’t fit any book, and frankly, if she hadn’t, I don’t think any of us would still be alive.”

  “Okay, give me the short form. You can give me the longer one later.”

  Again, the two locals exchanged glances. This time, the young woman took over the conversation. “I’m assuming that you don’t want to be running your ships around here without a coating of crystal armor.”

  “How long will it take you to crystal-clad my ships, I brought in sixty-four of what Kris is calling battlecruisers.”

  The business woman rubbed her eyes, then looked off toward the distant end of the space station, when she started speaking, it was slowly. “That all depends on how fast we can get production up and running again. Ben, can you stand down some of my workers?”

  “BatRon 13 is first on my decommissioning list,” Admiral Benson answered. “Furious, Enterprise, Audacious, Resolute, Proud Unicorn, Lucky Leprechaun, Kikukei and Temptress are crewed pretty much by my dockyard workers with some of your people added on and a few Roosters and Ostriches tossed in for good measure. We’ll get the most labor out of those ships. If I shake out the V class, Valiant, Vanguard, Vindictive and Victorious, I should have enough to handle our damaged ships as well as up armor at least sixteen of your ships, Admiral.”

  “Assuming I can get the crystal growing again,” Pipra growled.

  “Assuming?” Sandy demanded.

  “You know, Granny Rita’s going to be screaming for farming equipment and the Alwans will be hooting for their trade goods.”

  Admiral Santiago was not following this conversation. Grand Admirals did not appreciate having to listen to conversations that meant nothing to them.

  Grand admirals did not have to put up with this kind of noise, either.

  “Explain yourselves,” she demanded.

  Again, the young woman took the lead. “My fabricators knock out what the admiral here needs for his yards, but they also have to meet the demands of the human Colonials and the Alwan birds. As you may have heard a moment ago, we’ve got Colonials and Alwans standing watch side by side with your Sailors. I’ve got Colonials and Alwans doing shifts in my fabs. We’re getting pretty mixed up and matched, but you got to feed the cow’s front end before you can milk guns and butter out her back in. You following me?”

  “The picture is disgusting, but you say Kris has been juggling all of this?”

  “We’ve been doing all this,” Pipra said, forcefully. “Kris, us, them, all, anyone handy. You following me?”

  “I think so,” Sandy admitted. “I was briefed that some factories and yards had been sent out here to provide some sort of support force. I didn’t really expect, from the tone of voice of those who mentioned all this stuff, that you’d be running all of it at full bore.”

  “Full bore and balls to the wall,” Admiral Benson said. “I’m not sure any of us thought we could do half of what we’ve done, but when you’ve got Kris Longknife giving you that Look, you don’t tell her you can’t, you tell her she’ll have it ahead of schedule and underprice.”

  “Even if we haven’t figured out how to price anything in this crazy economy,” Pipra added, making a face like she’d been made to swallow a lemon.

  They’d reached Sandy’s flag. The canvas stretched between the guardrails on either side of the brow was blue with the proud name Victory in bold white letters. Someone had added five stars in a circle as well.

  “Please come aboard,” Admiral Santiago said, leading the way. “I know we’ve only scratched the surface of the mess you’re dropping in my lap. Remember, there are still those hungry ships out there, starving for reaction mass.”

  22

  “If I may,” said Admiral Benson, settling into a seat across from Sandy at the conference table in her day quarters, “you face three problems.”

  Benson had waited to make his point while Sandy had coffee and sandwiches brought in. That also allowed time for Captain Van Velder, Sandy’s chief of staff, and Captain Mondi Ashigara, her operations chief, to join them.

  “Only three problems?” Mondi asked. The tall, thin woman was a stickler for details.

  “No doubt, these three will spawn their own crop with more heads to lop off,” Pipra answered.

  “Getting back to our three problems,” Admiral Benson said, going forward. “The alien wolf packs have designed two new classes of ships. One is fast, though lightly armed and armored. Some of them may be wandering around our flanks or rear areas. The other class is the opposite, huge things we call door knockers. Thick rock armor, massive number of lasers, they weren’t included in the main battle Kris just fought. Those door knockers were seen to slip out the back after we annihilated the main force. Admiral, it might behoove you to chase them down and destroy them before they report back to whatever wolf packs are still out there. We really don’t want them all in the know of how we demolished these last four.”

  Mondi was taking furious notes, calling up reports on her reader and looked ready to come out of her chair. There was a lot to like about Mondi’s eagerness. Still, Sandy knew when to keep her leash tight.

  “And the other two?” Sandy said.

  “We’ve got a hundred plus ships out there at what we call System X that are just about out of reaction mass. They’ve got to be refueled, and the damaged ones convoyed back here for some serious repair work in the yards. There are also three massive beam ships that are in desperate need of an escort back here, too. At least one was last seen limping out of the system in any direction that was open. We used them desperately hard. Likely we’ll totally need to be rebuild them before we dare use them again.”

  “And lastly?” Sandy said.

  “There’s the matter of whether or not your new arrivals are up to fighting by Alwa standards, ma’am.”

  “We arrived ready for a fight,” Van put in, storm clouds forming in his bushy eyebrows.

  “No, doubt, Captain, but did you arrive ready to fight the Kris Longknife’s and the Alwa Defense Sector’s way? Begging the admiral’s pardon, but did Phil Taussig get a chance to pass along to the home fleet how Kris fights her battlecruisers?”

  “You mean jinksing all over the place,�
� Sandy said. “He mentioned it, and I was there when Lieutenant Kris Longknife took her fast attack boats in to get those six battleships someone sent out to blast Wardhaven back into the stone age. She and those boats did some wild jigs. She’s not trying to do something like that with a ship this big,” Sandy said, glancing around at the bulkheads and overhead. “A tiny slip of a mosquito boat was one thing. A sixty or seventy thousand ton near capital ship? Even a Longknife couldn’t be that crazy.”

  The two locals exchanged glances.

  Damn, she is that crazy.

  “Begging the admiral’s pardon, ma’am, but yes, the admiral won’t have any ship, picket or battlecruiser, stay on any set course for more than two, maybe three seconds. That’s how we fight, win, and stay alive on Alwa Station.”

  “You can’t jump a ship this size around like a spit kit,” Van said, as absolute as any Navy captain ever had been.

  “You’ll need to have your ships’ computers talk to Kris’s Nelly. It involves doubling the piping between the reactor to the maneuvering jets, and doubling those suckers, too,” Benson said. When faced with the look of rejection, he didn’t wilt, but went on. “You’ll also likely want to upgrade your high gee stations. They not only have to accommodate acceleration along a single axis, but also right, left, up down, faster, slower, and maybe even a bit of torque. Kris Longknife is rough on her crew as well as her ships.”

  “You’re serious,” Van said, playing devil’s advocate so his boss wouldn’t have to.

  “Dead serious,” Benson answered. “That’s why I was suggesting that if you do decide to send out a squadron or two on a refueling mission, that you also take a squadron and a half on mine to escort you. That way, they can help you drill in some of the bobbing and weaving we do out here on the way to System X. You don’t want to be unprepared if you run into any stray monsters that didn’t get The Word they lost.”

  “And I’m thinking of chasing myself some of those door knockers you mentioned,” Sandy said.

  “Again, ma’am, I know I suggested we see if we can chase them down, but you might want to be very careful before you follow them through a jump point.”

  Sandy raised an eyebrow. “Because?”

  “We’ve been bushwhacking them as they come through the jumps.”

  “You can guard jumps?” Mondi said, incredulously.

  “You may have noticed some ships keeping guard back a bit from the jump you just came through,” Admiral Benson said.

  “I thought that was some kind of space station,” Mondi answered.

  “Nope. Three ships docking together using a Smart Metal hookup to anchor them in one place. They rotate. They get some down for the crew’s health and at least one of them can shot at anything that comes through that jump. We’ve been picking off suicide boats, fast little beggars. So far, we’ve been batting a thousand. We have to.”

  “Can the aliens do something like that?” Mondi asked.

  “I don’t think they can, or have tried. Remember, we spin out a Smart Metal beam to anchor to. They’d need to carry a long, regular metal beam around with them. Still, getting back to those door knockers, Admiral. I wouldn’t put it past those alien to leave a couple dozen of those things standing guard over a jump to buy time for the rest to get away. It might be pretty putrid in those ships, but there’s be enough to shoot you full of holes if you shot through on of those jumps without looking first.”

  “Looking first?” was again Mondi.

  “We’ve got a periscope that lets us look through the jump. You have to kind of drift up to the jump, but you can see what’s on the other side.”

  Sandy whipped her eyes with both hands. “Is it always like this around Kris Longknife? Everything’s different?”

  “That’s what I’ve found,” Benson answered. “But I’m not complaining, ma’am. We’re still alive. I don’t think when they dispatched us here that anyone was laying any kind of odds that we would be alive and still fighting after this long.”

  “And winning,” Pipra put in. “Don’t forget the winning. I kind of like the winning. It lets me keep breathing oxygen and I really like that habit.”

  Sandy nodded. She did like being alive. It so beat not.

  “Okay, Van, I’m leaving you behind to work with Ben here. Get our ships moving into his yards as soon as docks are available and get that new, fancy armor added to the ships.”

  “And you’re going to have all the fun,” Van grumbled.

  “Yep. Mondi, prepare BatRon 1 and 2 to go to space. We’ll use them as tankers while the local ships escort us and show us how it’s done on Alwa Station.”

  “We, ma’am?”

  “We, Mondi. I’ll be taking the task force out. I want to get a decent feel for what the situation is around here. I’m not going to get that feel sitting at a dock.”

  “Aye, aye, Admiral, BatRon 1 and 2 to sortie in as soon as possible.”

  “In two hours,” Sandy amended the order.

  “Two hours?”

  “And if a captain can’t get his boat to answer all bells, get a replacement from one of the other squadrons. No doubt, you’ll have plenty of volunteers. Admiral,” Sandy said, turning to Benson, “will your twelve ships be able to get up steam.”

  “I suspect I’d better go tell them.”

  “Are we done here?” Sandy said, starting to rise.

  “May I have a moment of your time,” Pipra said, staying solidly in her seat.

  “And you are,” Sandy said. She’d wondered why Benson had had a civilian shadow. She was not all that pleased with talking about Navy operations with someone not in uniform in the room.

  “As I mentioned before, ma’am, she’s been Kris Longknife’s right arm where production is concerned,” Benson put in, “and she’s been a life saver from my perspective. Instead of bitching and moaning about her profit margin, she’s seen to it that we got what we needed when we needed it. She’s good people, Admiral.”

  Sandy would decide that for herself.

  “You’ve got a minute, talk,” Sandy said.

  “I need your help, Admiral.”

  Sandy’s eyes grew wide. “My help?”

  “Admiral, Kris Longknife made the point abundantly clear that we all either pulled together or we’d all die in one big heap. I haven’t always liked what she did to me and mine, but I had to respect her. As Admiral Benson said we’ve all pulled together. My problem is that Alex Longknife has just dumped a whole new management team on me and they’ve already ripped me up one side and down the other for not making a profit.”

  Sandy had thirty-seven years in the Navy. Commanding ships and Sailors was her forte. Suffering contractors was something she did her best to avoid. Her first thought was to tell this woman thank you for the heads up and send her on her way.

  Sandy held her tongue and, instead, turned to Ben.

  “You need this industrial base?”

  “Desperately, Admiral.”

  She turned back to the woman. “Why would Alex Longknife send a new management team out here?”

  The woman actually looked embarrassed. “I was a junior vice president when I arrived her. There was a CEO and a senior vice president who were supposed to run the show. Instead, once Kris Longknife pointed out the hazards of our position and her demand that the Navy be the center of our efforts, those two kind of drifted off and drank themselves to death. Since I was with the Longknife group, and I had Kris Longknife’s attention, I ended up running the whole shebang.”

  Pipra paused to take a deep breath. “However, the truth was, I was the Junior Vice President for Human Resources, ma’am. I was supposed to hold coats, not take over and run things. I suspect when Commodore Taussig went back to Wardhaven, my status may have come up in some fashion. Anyway, Alex sent an entire new team out here.”

  Again, the woman paused. “I also think they saw a chance to make a killing, even if it drove a plant on Alwa to extinction and strained our relationships with the locals. Are you aware
of the unique plant we shipped of back to human space and its very unusual properties?”

  “Do you mean am I aware that there’s a plant out here that might revolutionize microminiatures, if not nano activity, by jacking up their power by several orders of magnitude? Yes, I know of the thing.”

  “Alex thinks that in three, maybe five years, his labs will develop artificial versions of the plant’s mitochondria. Right now, though, they can make a killing in the market by bringing bushels of the plant back to human space and selling a ounce of it for a billion dollars or more. They’re ready to send teams down to the Ostrich section of the planet below and scour up every leaf they can find.”

  The woman fell silent, leaving it to Sandy to grasp the full impact of her bosses’ plans.

  Sandy turned to Admiral Benson. “Ben, how would this impact our relations with the what-ever-they-are. Sometimes you call them Roosters, other times Ostriches. Which are they?”

  Admiral Benson cleared his throat. “The Roosters and Ostriches are more different than say an Old Earth Eskimo from an equatorial African. The thing you need to know about an Ostrich is that they are fighters and very territorial. Kris Longknife had to walk pretty careful around those Ostriches feet, and even she got shot at once.” The old admiral chuckled at that.

  “While she got some Land Use Agreements from the Ostriches, she was careful to leave them the rivers and large streams. If someone starts mucking around in them without permission, they could get their head kicked off their shoulders. And I mean literally, not figuratively. Those suckers can kick.”

  He glanced at Pipra. “Also, the Ostriches have been the most eager to get jobs up here at my yards, at Pipra’s fabrication facilities and aboard our battlecruisers. If someone pisses them off, we could loose a whole lot of goodwill and good workers. May I make a recommendation, Admiral?”

  “Please do. I don’t much like this hot potato.”

  “Kris Longknife is still the senior officer of Nuu Enterprises in the Alwa System. If she’s got anything like the temper my wife had the last few months of her pregnancies, I’d have Pipra trot over to the Wasp and see how Kris likes her grandpa’s latest dump on her. My guess would be that the ship that’s supposed to go back loaded with water grass might instead just be carrying a few damn fool business types.”