If they kept planting at the rate they were going, they’d be buried under a mound of food.
Three out of four colonials had been working their arms off, trying to raise enough food for all of them. Now, one in ten was enough.
There was a major labor surplus.
So they, as well as Roosters and Ostriches, were hitchhiking rides up to the station looking for work. This might have caused trouble, but a lot of the farm co-ops realized they needed help if they were to make a serious go of it.
“You teach me how to farm, and I’ll show you how to keep this dang machine from screwing up,” became the contract among a lot of work groups.
It also worked aboard ship.
So things changed faster than Kris had expected. No doubt, there would be pinching and pulling, but for now, there was plenty of goodwill to go around.
Furthermore, no one wanted a ride home. No one except the two that had finally gone back to shoveling bird guano in order to eat.
Kris was ready to send Phil Taussig’s Hornet and the Endeavor on their way. She was walking to the Hornet’s berth, when Admiral Kitano buzzed her.
“You about to send Phil back home?” the admiral said.
“Yes.”
“How about you and him come to my flag plot instead.”
“We got problems?”
“You look at the report and tell me, Admiral Longknife.”
Oops. When Kris was Admiral Longknife, there was trouble in the wind.
“Nelly, have Phil meet me at the Hornet’s brow.”
“He’s on his way, Kris.”
“You want to tell me what’s got Amber’s panties in a twist?” Kris asked her computer.
“She got a message from the Beta Jump Buoy in a code I can’t easily decipher. You want me to crack it?”
“If you think you can in the next five minutes,” Kris said. “Otherwise, we’ll know soon enough.”
“It’s a single-use cipher, and only a few number groupings. I can control my curiosity,” Nelly said.
Phil saluted Kris at the bottom of his own gangplank. “I thought you were coming to see me.”
“That was the plan. Admiral Kitano thinks you and I need to see something before you shove off.”
“Hmm,” was all he said. Kitano had been his XO a long two years ago. A lot of water had gone under the bridge since then. Good for her, not so good for him. Still, he was alive and kicking, so it wasn’t all bad.
Together, they boarded the Princess Royal. In her flag plot, Kris found Amber staring at a screen. It was centered on the system the aliens seemed to find so interesting.
“Trouble?” Kris asked.
“Most likely not immediately,” Amber said. “We’ve lost two buoys, three out from the system. Two of the alien clans look to be headed for that system. If we’re reading the reactors right, it’s the same two clans headed for the same jumps they used last time.”
“Are they bringing the fleet?” Phil asked.
“Not that I can tell. It’s one fast scout each. Of course, once it shoots up the next jump buoy, I won’t know what’s behind him.”
Kris gnawed her lower lip. “So we wait, just like we’ve been waiting.”
“We wait,” Amber agreed
“You had this in a single-use code,” Kris said.
“I don’t want every comm watch in the fleet decoding stuff from that system. We’ve got colonials and even Roosters standing watches. I don’t want anyone going all flighty on me.”
“Good,” Kris said.
“I better be on my way,” Phil said. “Nothing’s changed. The settlers need reinforcements because the bad guys might be just around the corner.”
“True,” Kris said, and followed him back to his ship. She wished him and his crew Godspeed before dropping over to the Endeavor to wish the same to Captain O’dell and her crew. Since her crew again included both Roosters and Ostriches, human space was in for an experience. O’dell’s passengers included six of the older aliens Kris had recruited on the aliens’ home world.
With any luck, these aliens might allow humans to dig into their DNA and see how it had been bent to make them better slaves as well as how that might be untwisted. Whether that would make them friendlier was an unanswered question.
Meanwhile, the aliens would keep trying to kill every living thing in the galaxy not of their seed.
And Kris would keep killing them.
What a mess, Kris thought as she went ashore. Even as she left the docking bay, Endeavor was sliding down the pier, on her way to human space or self-destruction.
The aliens would not capture them. All they’d know was that they killed us as we killed them.
Kris patted her still-mostly-flat belly. “Somehow, my darling inconvenience, I will make all this better for you.”
37
Months passed. Kris found herself wearing a tent, or feeling like she should be wearing one. Can’t anyone design a comfortable maternity uniform?
NO, KRIS, BECAUSE NO WOMAN IS COMFORTABLE PREGNANT.
The amateur farmers put in their first crops, and returned sunburned, blistered, but smiling to their ships, fabs, mines and mills. To Kris’s surprise, the number of accidents went down, and production went up.
In the fleet, new hands shared the burden with old hands as half the crew went below and a mix of colonials, Roosters, and Ostriches tried their hands at keeping a frigate battle-ready.
Task force commanders exercised their ships with these mixed crews and found them at least minimally acceptable.
“With more practice, they’ll do better,” Admiral Kitano assured Kris. “We didn’t do all that well the first time out.”
“We were under the gun then as we are now,” Kris reminded herself.
“Look on the bright side. The yards have finished putting the crystal cladding on most of our ships and are now spinning out eight new frigates. That means promotion for our officers and a chance for some of these colonials and birds to try their hands as crew for these new warships.”
Kris nodded. On her desk were a hundred suggested names for those eight ships. Popular among them were the whimsical names the yard hands had fought the last time they defended this system: Proud Unicorn and Lucky Leprechaun had been lost with all hands; Temptress, Fairy Princess, and Mischievous Pixie had likely been snide references to Kris. Kikukei, or Lucky Chrysanthemum, had been the name the Kure Docks gave their ship.
Somebody kept sending in King Raymond I and Princess Kris. Kris kept erasing them. Now Trouble was one name she was willing to fight beside, but who would want to fight in a ship with that name?
It was not that Kris was adverse to naming things. She and Jack had gone through a whole bag of baby names. Kris wanted her daughter to be Ruth, after Gramma Ruth, aka Gramma Trouble. Jack’s mother’s name was Maria, so Ruth Maria it was. Or Mary Ruth if Jack was talking. Kris was willing to make a peace offering to her own mother, so the poor baby’s name had grown to Ruth Maria Brenda and Jack always added Anne for Kris and also for Sara Anne, Trouble and Ruth’s daughter who had married Grampa Al . . . and paid for that mistake with her life far too soon.
So a girl would be Ruth Maria Brenda Anne.
Any boy would be John Junior for starters. Kris added William for her father. Jack wanted Raymond for obvious reasons. Kris was not about to make the poor child suffer through Terrence, though any son of hers would more than likely be Trouble at every chance.
John William Raymond was it for the boy so far.
Now that Kris was out of the first trimester and her stomach was back with the program, Kris had joined the Wasp’s pregnant women’s PT program. Every morning, without respite, the twenty-four of them were in the Forward Lounge doing their exercises. The girls were nice, though the first day or two had been a bit quiet. Once they realized the admiral was a woman just like them, with a baby on board, they’d gone back to their chatter and included Kris as well.
It was the first time Kris could remember be
ing “just one of the girls.” It was fun. Dr. Meade had arranged for the first birthing class, which gave Kris and Jack a chance to meet the whole bunch together. Most of the future mothers had shown up with a man at their elbow. A few had girlfriends to help them through.
All of them seemed to have no limit to their joy.
Kris remembered one woman and took Doc Meade aside. “The young officer I saw leaving our office once. I haven’t seen her aboard.”
“No, she exchanged with one of the preggers who needed a billet on Wasp.”
Kris nodded. It was only human to protect yourself.
But Kris’s job was to protect everyone.
And that job started to get serious.
They’d sent Admiral Miyoshi back out to what was being called System X with his BatRons 3 and 9 to replace the jump buoys lost when the two alien ships cruised through three layers of pickets to take a second look at the large system. This time they picketed out four systems.
“That still means it will take four weeks for us to know they’d popped the outer picket. By that time, they’ll have gotten all the way into the system and left, if they’re doing what they’ve been doing,” Admiral Kitano growled.
“Or have set up shop in that crazy system,” Kris pointed out.
“We’ve got too much lag time in our warning system,” Admiral Miyoshi concluded.
“How can we get the word back here sooner?” Jack asked the screen they were all standing around showing System X and environs.
“Have we got some empty supply ships?” Kris asked.
“Most of them are empty,” Kitano reported.
“Okay, here’s what we’re going to do,” Kris said. “Admiral Miyoshi, I’d like you to take two of the Marus that came out with Yamato’s squadron and merge them into one fast merchant cruiser. I plan to take the 20-inch lasers off the last of your frigates when they come in to get crystal cladding over their armor. I’ve talked to Admiral Benson about putting 22-inchers on them as well as a fourth reactor to support them.”
“Good.” Miyoshi grinned happily. “I saved my flagship for last.”
“I’ll do the same with two of the Blossoms from Earth and leave them standing guard in the first system inward of System X. It has a fuzzy jump. With a bit of acceleration and rpms, they should be able to get a message back to us in only two jumps, a good two weeks before the speed of light will let us get a radio message.”
“Ships faster than radios,” Admiral Miyoshi marveled. “What will we humans think of next?”
He departed the next day, leaving the Haruna and Chikuma in the yard for armor and armament upgrades. He was back three weeks later.
“You know, that fast route out is not a bad way to go,” he reported to Kris.
Kris nodded. She didn’t tell him that she’d gotten the idea in a dream. She was dreaming a lot these days. What was unusual was that she was remembering them. Some were just dreams. Showing up late for formation at OCS . . . in her birthday suit. Others were more challenging, like getting into arguments with Father or Mother and not doing her usual run for her room and slamming the door.
She woke up a lot with Jack holding her.
Kris broached the topic of her active night life with Doc Meade.
“It’s not unusual for pregnant women to have lucid dreams,” she told Kris. “Mentally, you’re working out unresolved issues. Do you have issues with your folks?”
“Doc, I got whole subscriptions with my folks. Lifetime subscriptions.”
“Maybe your dreams will find a way to cancel some of those subscriptions,” Doc Meade said with a sparkle in her eyes. “After all, you’re going to be the mother soon.”
Kris found herself taking stock of her life, her command, and her situation. She looked upon her work and found it good. Very good, overall. Things were going so well, she was starting to think that everyone had the right idea. Here was a place to set down roots and relax.
She should have hunted up a sledgehammer to knock on the wood of her desk.
38
The fast routes out and back gave Kris ideas. That and her dreams.
Six months into her pregnancy, she and baby were doing fine. Four months into the Roots Down Initiative came the first harvest. The new farms didn’t produce as much per acre as the colonial farms, but the food was a welcome addition.
It was during the harvest festival that Kris announced the names for the new eight frigates. Four were easy. Furious, Enterprise, Audacious, and Resolute were the ships that followed Granny Rita into battle for the last time.
Those drew cheers from the colonials.
After long and serious consideration, and letting a lot of people bend Kris’s ear on the topic, the other four would be the Proud Unicorn, Lucky Leprechaun, Kikukei, and Temptress. The last two had suffered the most casualties in the battle that caused the loss of the first two.
Those drew cheers from the yard workers, both the ones who’d come out from human space and the Alwans who were working beside them now.
“I’ll be wanting volunteers for those crews. We plan on a hard and long voyage for them after they shake down.”
Kris said no more, but she soon had plenty of volunteers. Apparently, farming wasn’t as much fun as getting killed. She explained the mission to the eight XOs who’d earned promotions to skipper the new ships.
“We’ve pushed the pickets out four jumps from System X. I want a pair of you to anchor just inboard of the third jump point. Keep an eye on the next system. If they try to pop our latest set of jump buoys, you pop them. It’s time they learn they can’t just waltz back and forth around our space. However, if a whole alien clan shows up, run for home. Any questions?”
There were none.
Kris had come up with the idea one morning, lying in Jack’s soothing arms after a particularly hard dream. In it, she had not run away but had stood, toe to toe with both her mother and father and argued her point home.
Exactly what the point was and what she said had not survived waking. That she woke with her heart pounding had been evident to Jack. He said nothing, just held her.
So her mind had wandered anywhere but back to her family. She’d found herself mulling System X as her heart slowed.
Why not stay rather than run?
What had started as a muzzy-minded question turned into a serious thought and a policy before breakfast.
Why not?
Now Kris sent six newly built ships with the best Alwa had to offer to guard those outposts and bite back when the aliens tried to take a nip.
Whatever happened, it was likely to be interesting.
Two ships stayed at Cannopus Station to relieve the watch and allow a section to come back and resupply. Kris wondered how her plan would survive first contact with the aliens.
She hadn’t long to wait.
39
Commander Alex Rogers had come out as the operations officer on the Repulse in Hawkings’s squadron from Wardhaven. He’d been promoted to XO when his skipper got command of a division. Having distinguished himself in the First Battle of Alwa, he now commanded the Alwa Resolute, second ship of that name in Kris’s fleet.
Having a fleet made up from many sources meant a couple of duplicates: Resolute and Churchill so far.
The Resolute and the Audacious had drawn the C approach route to System X.
At the moment, standing in Kris’s flag plot, Commander Rogers looked sure of himself but a bit nervous.
“We had just arrived at the jump from System C3 into C4 when the buoy came through to tell us that Jump Buoy C4c had been popped,” he reported, standing not nearly as “at ease” as Kris had ordered.
“We sent the periscope up to the jump, and it identified four fast movers from Wolf Pack Anton coming across the system at 3.25 gees acceleration. Captain Beaudette and I decided to wait for them on our side of the jump. It took them two days to come up to the jump, ma’am. When it was clear they were coming through, we recovered the periscope and made read
y to receive them.”
“How’d that go?” Admiral Katano asked.
“As good as we had any right to expect. They came through one ship at a time. We stationed ourselves behind the jump so we had a good shot at their reactors. The first three were a bit slow, so we had no trouble firing, flipping, firing, and recharging in between.”
Commander Rogers eyed Kris. “We’d been warned to expect them to be shooting at anything and everything.”
“Yes,” Kris said.
“Ma’am, they must be getting sloppy. They weren’t shooting at all. We got the three of them. Then nothing. So we ran the periscope back through the jump. The fourth was sitting there, waiting for something.
“After a while, it moved around to behind the jump. No doubt, he intended to hit our sterns when we came through. When we didn’t, after a long while, it headed back the way it came. We waited until it was over a hundred thousand klicks out, then jumped through and shot out its reactors before it could flip ship and return fire.”
“So the aliens will get no report back from that bunch,” Kris said.
“Not a peep, Admiral. The rest of the system was cold and empty.”
“How did the mixed crew work out for the Resolute?” Admiral Kitano wanted to know.
“I couldn’t ask for better, Admiral,” Commander Rogers answered. “The Ostriches held off doing their chest-bumping thing until after the last alien was dust. The Roosters didn’t blanch at the lack of a dance. The colonial kids were delighted beyond words to be serving on a ship just like the old codgers had. Now they have tales to tell. The hands you let me bring from the old squadron clicked perfectly. Ma’am, I don’t know that all crews drawing one-quarter from each source will work as good as us, but it did for the Ressie in this fight.”
“Thank you, Commander. Does your ship need any yard time?” Kitano asked.
“No, ma’am. Let me take on some fresh food, and we’re ready to head back. The Audacious is holding the line alone. We didn’t have any trouble handling four ships together, but I wouldn’t bet one of us could. You got to hit them hard and fast.”
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