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

by Mike Shepherd

  Battleships had been designed that way since well before the Iteeche War.

  The problem with this kind of design was the vast amount of open space that it required inside the armor of the ship. The long lasers had to swing through a complete circle inside as it trained on a target. The 24-inch lasers were the longest yet. The new battleships were 150,000 tons; half again larger than the monstrous 100,000 ton battleships Kris had fought to save Wardhaven.

  That these battleships took up twice the tonnage of a battlecruiser for only four more big lasers was bad enough. However, all those voids inside the ship for the guns’ movement meant the hulls were huge. All of that oversize hull had to be covered now with crystal armor.

  Worse, some battleship admiral had got it in his head that if the battlecruisers had crystal ten centimeters thick, the battleships needed armor twenty centimeters of armor!

  Kris had a strong hunch that this was not only a costly requirement, but likely a very bad idea. While the crystal did a great job of absorbing a laser hit, distributing the energy throughout all the crystal cladding and radiating it back out into space, there was still heat involved. Lots of it.

  The Earth battlecruisers that had brought the first crystal out to Alwa had not fared well in their first battle. The crystal heated up when hit, that heat was transferred to the hull with serious consequences.

  Alwa Station battlecruisers were quickly clad with crystal, but the Smart MetalTM behind the cladding was honeycombed with voids filled with reaction mass circulating through it, carrying off the heat and keeping the hull from melting.

  Kris wanted to test the twenty-centimeter armor in a live-fire shoot. She suspected that the middle of the crystal armor would over heat to destructive levels.

  Nelly had made the calculations to back her up.

  Unfortunately, the battleship admirals had their own calculations that said there was no problem. It didn’t come as a surprise to Kris that those calculations were on Nuu Enterprises’s stationary.

  Grampa Al was at it again.

  Kris’s Grampa Al ran a major portion of Wardhaven’s manufacturing economy. Kris was a major shareholding in Nuu Enterprises and had never been able to spend half of her annual dividends. And to spend even close had taken funding a bank on a distant planet that jump started its economy on the loan.

  New Enterprises was huge. Last year, Grampa Al had won the contracts for eight of the battleships. An old crony of his had gotten the other four.

  Kris understood the battleship admirals. They’d spent their entire careers in those huge, unwieldy ships. But they should be educatable. At least some of them.

  However, with Grampa Al pushing hard for more battleships and spreading the work out to subcontractors all over Wardhaven, it was turning into an impossible job to zero the battleship account and use that money to plus up the battlecruisers.

  For five years Kris had struggled to persuade Navy, Parliament, and the general public that battlecruisers were the best solution to their defense needs.

  For five years the conservative elements in the Navy, Parliament and people had given her some of what she needed and allowed the other cost centers to grow as the fear of the alien raiders became a palpable terror.

  Kris herself had helped grow that terror by talking to any civic group that would have her.

  Being a princess helped when you had an agenda to push on people

  Unfortunately, admirals, politicians and men of business had their own agenda and could push back as much, if not more, than a princess.

  Kris glanced through the rest of the battleship building plan. The twenty-four battleships from the last two years’ construction plan, made of Smart MetalTM, would be plused up to 150,000 tons and get the 24-inch lasers. Battleships before then had been made of normal construction material and could not be modified.

  There were strong hints that the entire fleet would need to be replaced.

  Kris wouldn’t mind that, if they just replaced them with cheaper battlecruisers that required far less crew.

  “You done, Admiral?” Megan asked.

  Kris mulled over the entire mess. “Do you see any reason we can’t just use the same rebuttal that we did last year?”

  “No, ma’am. It’s the same old same old.”

  “Is the Scout Force just as bad?”

  Nelly flipped to the summery of the cruiser, destroyer and smaller escort section. It left Kris shaking her head.

  These ships were just too small to stand in any defense line against half million-ton alien warships. Battlecruisers could accelerate and decelerate just as fast as these scouts and punch far more powerfully than the 6 or 8-inch lasers the scouts carried.

  Vicky Peterwald had warned Kris of the disaster that befell the destroyers when they attempted a classical missile attack. The longer range of the new guns created far too large a killing space for the destroyers to get in missile range. Those that launched farther out might have escaped, but their missiles were blotted out well before they could do any damage.

  Kris had drawn up a new manual on battle doctrine. It was still circulating for comments three years after she finished it.

  Her new doctrine had been tested in fleet exercises . . . by ships not under her command and officers that didn’t appear to have read her manual. What they didn’t botch, the umpires ruled a failure.

  Being a damn Longknife did not mean a damn thing it seemed.

  Kris took her feet off her desk and ran a worried hand through her hair. “Meg, throw together a rebuttal to this year’s budget using last year’s argument.”

  “I’ll have it on your desk first thing tomorrow morning, Admiral.”

  “Oh, and the lottery about when I’ll call it quits and ask for space duty.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Megan said. She knew what would come next; Kris had done this a couple of times over the last three years.

  “What do you have to pick now? A week? A month?”

  “A month, ma’am.”

  “Buy a ticket for me and one for you.” Nelly popped a calendar up before Kris even asked. This month was half gone. “For next month.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Nelly, order up the car and tell Jack to meet me in the basement.”

  “It isn’t quite five yet, Kris.”

  “Tell Jack I’ve had a lousy day.”

  Only a few seconds later, Nelly reported, “He’ll be there before you are.”

  33

  Kris spent the drive home filling Jack in on the ups and downs of her day. Neither was distracted from driving. A Marine drove, another one rode shotgun. Kris went nowhere without two Marines.

  Kris detested that. For about a month she and Jack had driven themselves to work. The eighteen wheeler that about took their car apart couldn’t have been an assassination attempt. Besides, the spider silk armor and Fast Distorting Smart MetalTM, had absorbed all the energy of the collision and left Kris and family none the worse for the morning’s incident.

  No one had listened to her when she pointed out that the Peterwalds were now her best friends and there was no one who’d really want to kill her. Nelly, the traitor, had begun spewing out a list of everyone Kris had pissed off during her years of space duty.

  Jack just silently handed Ruth to Kris.

  The baby was on its way to Main Navy’s daycare center so Kris could still breast feed her. She’d fallen asleep in her baby bucket in the back and Nelly’s creation had shown just how good it was.

  Ruth slept through the crash.

  “Will the next attack be as survivable?” Jack asked softly.

  So Kris sat in the back seat like a lump on a log.

  Well, not a lump. She and Jack had learned to use the drive to debrief on the day so they arrived home with the work’s cares left somewhere beside the road and ready to devote time to themselves and two rambunctious darlings.

  Ruth was rapidly approaching her sixth birthday and was becoming quite the young lady, when she wasn’t cl
imbing trees and getting into mischief with the neighborhood kids. Young John jr. had just turned four and did his best to keep up with his sister, and had the scrapes and bruises to prove it.

  Kris had the Marines drop them off at the front portico. Even from outside, Kris could hear Johnnie’s happy giggles. Ruthie was shrieking in delight. Clearly, the kids were enjoying themselves. Jack opened the door for her and she got ready to be hit by two rambunctious, small cannon balls.

  Both darlings were in the middle of the foyer, swinging around as if as on a merry-go-round created by the four arms of an Iteeche.

  Granny Rita would have puller her automatic and shot the Iteeche dead. She, and any other veteran of the Iteeche War were on a hair trigger where their four legged, four armed, four eyed enemy was concerned.

  They remembered when the Iteeche would have driven humans to extinction but for their sacrifices.

  Kris knew different. While spending a couple of months with an Iteeche representative, she’d discovered that the Iteeche Iteeche War veterans were absolutely sure that they had saved their people from the genocidal humans.

  It had been an enlightening experience for both of them.

  But six or so years back, desperation had driven the Iteeche Emperor to send an envoy to King Raymond I. The Iteeche were losing exploration ships and feared what was lurking out in unexplored space. Kris’s circumnavigation of the galaxy had been the result of that . . . as well as her discovery of the alien raiders.

  And she had started a war.

  All those thoughts flashed through Kris’s mind as she watched an Iteeche swing her kids around, holding them both tightly in his arms.

  “Ron, is that you?” Like all humans, Kris had trouble telling them apart since all of them looked the same. Kris had learned the Iteeche had the same problem with humans.

  “Yes, Princess Longknife, I have again the honor of meeting you face to face,” he said, still swinging the kids, but using that strange Iteeche neck to keep himself face to face through most of the twirls.

  The kids were screaming “Mommy, mommy,” with glee but making no attempt to stop their own fun as they continued to fly a good six feet off the floor.

  Kris let the fun continue as she tried to puzzle out what an Iteeche of the Imperial court was doing in the foyer of her house giving her kids the ride of their young lives.

  For the eighty years since the war ended with the Treaty of the Orange Nebula, hammered out by Kris’s great grandfathers Ray Longknife and General Trouble, the two species had kept their distance. Kris had thought that included no contact until Ron showed up knowing a lot more about present human politics than isolation should have allowed.

  Of late, the Iteeche had shared their unique way of getting many times the power from the same reactor than humans got, and humans had shared Smart MetalTM as well as the beam weapon. Space stations building critical defense projects inevitably had a small Iteeche colony hidden away on them.

  But none had ever come down to a human planet. The risk was just too great.

  No Iteeche until one decided to give Kris’s kids the wildest swing ride of any kid in human history.

  Kris cautiously covered the distance to Ron and the children. Only with mommy at arm’s reach did Johnnie turn his attention from Ron to her. On the next turn he reached out to Kris and grabbed a hold of her outstretched arms.

  Kris hugged him to her breast as he giggled happily.

  A moment later Ron swung Ruth right at her and she managed to reach an arm out to pull the six-year-old in. Ruth switched from her delighted scream to, “Mommy, mommy, isn’t Mr. Ron great. He can make us fly!”

  “Yes, your Uncle Ron is the bestest fun ever,” Kris replied, giving Ron the full family honor. “How long have you been flying with your Uncle Ron?”

  “For hours and hours,” Johnnie put in. His four-year-old mind was having trouble with the concept of time.

  Oh, for the simple life of a little kid.

  “He can swing us longer than you or daddy,” Ruth added. “And higher, too.”

  “Then I guess we’ll have to see how long he can stay,” Kris said. “Will you stay for dinner?”

  “Yes, if you are so kind. I had my driver drop off a container of my preferred food with your kind Mrs. Loddie, but if you would prefer I dine on your food, I can manage that. We have found an enzyme that allows us to process even your burned food.”

  “There is no need,” Kris said. “I think we’ve raised the kids to be open to different experiences. Let’s see how they handle this one.”

  “New ek-pher-ience” Johnnie said, adding a new word to his often mangled vocabulary.

  “Experiences,” Kris said. “Nelly, how long until dinner?”

  “Mrs. Loddie,” Nelly said from Kris’s collar bone and giving Loddie her new formal title, “will have dinner on the table just as soon as the short people can wash their hands.”

  “Well, let’s wash our hands, then,” Kris said, and Johnnie set to wiggling out of her arms. She set him down, and both he and his sister galloped for the nearest downstairs bathroom. Kris followed, with Jack and Ron right behind her.

  “So, what brings you to Wardhaven?” Jack asked.

  Kris stood in the door supervising from a safe distance as water and soap flew with the enthusiasm that only children can bring to the work of getting themselves clean. Behind her, the conversation between Jack and Ron continued.

  “My Emperor has decided that the ocean between our two races has been too great for too long. He wishes to open full trade between us. That, of course, well require treaties to assure that the relationships between us is rightly established and in good order. We do not want to repeat the chaos of our first encounters.”

  “No,” Jack said, most emphatically. “We don’t want that again.”

  “Then we will need a human presence at court, to establish those terms and to help when matters get complicated, as you humans say.”

  “Your grasp of standard is quite good,” Kris said, glancing back as the kids now were toweling themselves dry.

  “I have been given one of your best personal computers,” he said, tapping a tiny broach on his chest. “I know it is not as good as your Nelly,” he said, giving Kris a smile that now looked better than a grimace. “It runs the language program Nelly developed very quickly and well.”

  “It certainly does,” Nelly put in.

  “So,” Jack said, “your Emperor seems to want to set up full diplomatic relations.”

  “Yes, we have studied your practice of exchanging ambassadors. The concept of having someone in the court to stands in the place of a ruling equal is most strange for us and no doubt there will be the strong possibility of misunderstanding.”

  “You’ll need someone very capable,” Kris said, as the kids raced by her, clothes damp in several places, but they were now very, very clean and most hungry.

  “Yes, we will need someone very special,” Ron said. “That is why my Emperor has asked your King to send a very special emissary. We have asked for you, Princess Kris Longknife to by that emissary.”

  “That is very interesting,” Jack said, most circumspectly.

  It was good he did, because Kris would have yelped something most inappropriate for her children’s ears.

  What the hell is Ray doing to me this time!

  Quickly followed by.

  Hey, I wouldn’t have to do a budget!

  Ray Longknife : Enemy Unknown

  The first book of the Iteeche War

  by

  Mike Shepherd

  41

  General Ray Longknife watched over the nurse’s shoulder as he changed the baby’s first diaper. Ray did not doubt that he himself would be changing quite a few in the coming days.

  “His balls are purple,” Ray said.

  “They all are. That’s the way boys are born, sir,” the nurse said. “They change to your normal color in a couple of days.”

  “Sorry.”

  “E
very father asks,” the nurse assured him.

  The nurse fixed a new diaper in place expertly, while Ray marveled at the miracle of new life. The tiny figure laying there, perfectly formed arms and feet waving weakly. Ray counted ten tiny fingers and toes, complete down to their miniatures fingernails and toenails.

  Rita had done a fine job.

  The nurse ended Ray’s examination of his first born by wrapping the baby tightly in a blanket.

  “Like a papoose,” Ray said.

  “We call it playing baby burrito,” the nurse said, with a well-practiced laugh. “It helps them feel comfortable and they build up muscles pushing against the blanket.”

  “My boy will be a strong trooper,” the general said.

  “Yes, sir,” the nurse said.

  “Do I get a chance to look at this new trooper before you ship him off to boot camp?” came in a tired voice from the bed in the New Birth Room.

  “You most certainly do, dear,” Ray said. Under the nurse’s watchful eye, Ray picked up his tiny new son and carried him oh so carefully to his mother.

  “Mrs. Rita Nuu-Longknife, may I introduce you to Alexander Longknife, your loving son,” Ray said, and transferred the child to his mother’s arms.

  “Alexander, huh. You already a conqueror?” she asked the tiny form.

  “It’s my grandfather’s name,” Ray put in quickly. “I thought we’d agreed that if it was a boy, I got to name it. A girl was yours.”

  But Ray was talking to empty air. The mother had her son in her arms and was lost in his eyes. Ray took a seat beside the bed and managed to get one of his own hands into the mix of mother and child. The tiny eyes looked up at his mother, then over at his father. He seemed satisfied with what he saw . . . and yawned.

  “Such a big yawn from such a little fellow,” Rita said.

  “Those eyes,” Ray said.