Kris Longknife 13 - Unrelenting

by Mike Shepherd

  While the trip so far had held to below 1.5 gees, things would get rather wild on the other side of this jump. Jack was naked, helping Kris out of her uniform.

  He paused to caress her baby bulge. “You sure you’re going to take good care of her?” he asked.

  “Nelly promises me that she’s fine-tuned the egg to take very gentle care of us both,” Kris assured him, holding him close, skin to skin.

  If only we had more time.

  But time was fast running out, so she stepped into her egg and Jack helped the two of them settle gently within the confines of the Smart MetalTM. He gave her a final peck and quickstepped to his egg.

  “Seal the egg, Nelly.”

  “Is it too tight?” Jack asked.

  “It’s fine. It’s better than fine. If baby starts doing the can-can thing she does on my bladder, I can just let the egg take care of things. It saves me running to the head every hour.”

  “Always the optimist,” Jack said.

  Kris motored into flag plot. Admiral Furzah was already there, along with Penny and Masao. Kris had left Amanda and Jacques behind. There wasn’t a lot here for an economist or anthropologist.

  Kris studied her array. All twenty-four ships of the Fourth Fleet were in line behind Wasp. She and Jack had gone around and around about where Wasp belonged.

  “The flag should not go first. You don’t know what’s out there,” Jack had argued.

  “You’re right, Jack, we don’t know what’s out there, but we’re going to be headed for it at over three hundred thousand klicks, and there’s no way to peek through the jump or turn around and come back. We’re committed.”

  “What if there’s something there? A suicide ship or something?”

  “Jack, the fuzzy jump is well away from the direct path to any of the normal jumps. There’s no reason for anything to be there.”

  “But you don’t know anything about that system. Where the enemy is? What they’re doing? Anything!”

  “Correct, Jack, and as soon as I’m in the system, we can begin planning the actual move to contact. Any ships that jump through ahead of me will just have to twiddle their thumbs until I get there and start giving orders. I go through first, check things out, and holler orders as they come through.”

  “I hate to agree with her when she’s in this kind of mode,” Penny said, “but she has the better of this argument.”

  “I know. I just want to make sure we haven’t overlooked something.”

  “I see no better way to go about this than the one she has laid out,” Admiral Furzah said. “We cannot leap a twenty-foot-wide chasm with two ten-foot hops.”

  With that settled, Kris had the fleet in line, five thousand kilometers apart. Still, at the speed they were going, they’d be hitting the jump at five-second intervals. In two short minutes, they’d all be through.

  Trailing Wasp was the Helvetican Confederacy’s division of four ships. Captain Zermatt’s flagship Triumph led Swiftsure, Hotspur II, and Spitfire. Directly behind them came BatRon 16 with Commander Kaeyat’s Tenacious, followed by Persistent, Steadfast, Relentless, Vigilant, Insistent, Stonewall, and Unrelenting. Last through the jump would be Rear Admiral Yi’s Task Force 7, with twelve Earth ships, three to each reduced division.

  Kris hoped she wasn’t making a mistake leaving Yi on one side of the jump after she’d led the way to the next.

  The chronometer in front of Kris reached 00:00.00. In place of the usual hint of dizziness was something closer to the nausea Kris had experienced from that tiny passenger she bore beneath her heart.

  One screen showed the stars ahead. It went blank, then re-formed a distinctly different view. They waited.

  “We made the jump to our target system,” the navigator reported.

  “Admiral,” the captain reported, “we have evidence of alien reactors in system, but no specific location yet to report.”

  “They are supposed to be in orbit around that nearest gas giant,” Kris let herself say.

  “Yes, Admiral,” Drago answered, “but we’ve got no direct line of sight on anything.”

  “Did we catch them on the other side of that planet?” Jack asked.

  “You may be right. So, when will they come back around?”

  “Your guess is as good as anyone’s,” Jack said.

  “Fleet, begin a four-gee deceleration. Captain Zermatt, form BatDiv 40 to Wasp’s right, low. Commander Kaeyat, form BatRon 16 on my right, high. Admiral Yi, form Task Force 7 on my left.”

  Wasp, and Helvetican and Alwa ships immediately began the deceleration as they formed up. The same could not be said of the Earth ships.

  The George Washington, and the ships behind it, failed to begin the deceleration burn and shot past on the left of Wasp, narrowly missing her.

  “Admiral Yi, report,” Kris demanded.

  “Admiral Yi is not available,” came in a calm voice. “This is Captain Nottingham, Chief of Staff, Task Force 7. Admiral Yi is indisposed. Wait one while I follow your instructions,” and the line cut off. The Earth task force did, however, begin a deceleration burn that quickly built up to a bit over four gees; the four Earth divisions formed into a square of triangles. To Kris’s right, the other ships formed a triangle of squares. It was a compromise formation, but it fit the different tactical grouping Kris was stuck with.

  “Please excuse my abrupt cutoff, Admiral Longknife,” came a moment later. “I regret to inform you that Admiral Yi froze up just as we made the jump. He lost his lunch as well. The ship’s surgeon has assisted him from the bridge, and he is under sedation.”

  “Are you prepared to lead Task Force 7?”

  “Commodore Pavlenski of BatRon 11 is senior officer present. I have contacted him, and he has declined to take command but will conform to the flagship’s movements.”

  Kris had often complained about the chain of command that she fought with. Just now, she had to wonder what the Earth fleet was going through as it sorted itself out. After this battle, she would clean house, but for now, she had a battle to win.

  “Fine, Captain Nottingham, you have the command,” Kris said, and clicked off.

  “What was that all about?” Penny asked no one in particular.

  “I should have followed my instincts and replaced Yi before I got us out here.”

  “We live and learn,” Jack muttered, not quite under his breath.

  For the next hour, they decelerated hard. Kris wanted to be slow enough to either go into orbit around the gas giant or to swing around it and head out to wherever her enemy was running.

  She also wanted to be able to flip ship and present them her bow guns and armor if it came to a fight.

  Of course, to have a fight, she needed an enemy.

  “Captain Drago, are you sure there are alien reactors in this system?”

  “We have a solid signature from them, both background noise from the plasma and noise from the electronic gear. As best we can tell, the gas giant ahead of us is masking them.”

  “For how much longer?” Kris asked.

  “The noise we have is nondirectional, Admiral.” You know that as well as I do, was left unsaid.

  Kris gnawed her lip and tried to keep her worried mouth shut.

  Just when she was about to lose that battle, the aliens presented themselves for battle.

  The entire bunch, gigantic mother ship and eighty-four huge warships, swung into sight. They must have seen Kris just as she spotted them. The ponderous mother ship rolled over and began a deorbital burn.

  “They’re moving,” Jack observed.

  “But are they charging us or running?” Admiral Furzah asked.

  Kris eyed the screen and waited. It would be easier for them to head for the nearest jump. She would have to change her plan, turn her deceleration toward the gas giant into a pursuit swerve. It would take more reaction mass, but she had mass to spare although she’d have to refuel before she headed home.

  An hour later, it became clear the aliens were not
running. The mother ship hiked up her skirts and went to 1.35 gees, as the whole swarm headed straight for Kris.

  “They’re charging,” Kris said. “Good.”

  “They charge us. We charge them,” Admiral Furzah said. “It has always been that way among us.”

  “Yes, but we have gravity and inertia to worry about,” Jack pointed out to the feline Sasquan. “In space, we battle with more dimensions and different forces than on a planet.”

  “Ah, I see. If they charge through you, and you charge through them, it is not so simple a matter as bringing yourself to a pouncing halt and turning on your heels.”

  “No,” Kris said. “Inertia must be canceled, or redirected, or they must keep going. Nelly, are there any jumps behind us that they can see?”

  “It’s just empty space, Admiral. They’ll need to make a major course adjustment. Both of the nearest jumps are inconvenient.”

  “Very interesting,” Kris said, mulling a most complex set of variables.

  “Kris,” Penny said. “These folks have been sending out suicide boats. Is there any chance they intend to ram you?”

  “Ram someone in space?” Masao said. “Space is huge. You can’t just nose up to a ship and run into it. Not at the closing speeds we’ve got.”

  “But they are heading for us and we for them,” Penny said, standing her ground.

  Masao opened his mouth, then thought better of it.

  “I admit that the odds are against ramming,” Kris said, then went on, thinking as she spoke, “but they do look ready to trade their lives for ours.”

  Slowly, a smile crossed Kris’s face. She knew it was not a pretty one. “Let’s see how this goes. Nelly, send to fleet. Prepare to close up to five-hundred-klick lateral intervals.”

  “At this speed?” came from Captain Drago. “Are you crazy, Kris?”

  “No more than usual. Do you see a problem?”

  “None other than the obvious. We’re doing over three hundred thousand klicks. It won’t take much for a small problem to become a big one.”

  “Do you foresee a problem in our future, Captain?”

  “None other than that we’re following one of those damn Longknifes.”

  “Then I’m sending an execute order.”

  “Five seconds is all we’ll have to dodge, but okay, Your Highness, they’re closing up on us.”

  The frigates nudged in closer. Kaeyat’s two divisions to Kris’s right and below formed themselves into two lines of four. Zermatt’s four ships formed a square close above their top.

  The Earth squadrons to Kris’s left formed two lines with the triangles pointing above and below. Wasp was sandwiched in rather tightly.

  “I’m not even breathing,” came in a half whisper from Captain Drago.

  An hour later, the bastards reacted. Sixty of the warships formed one huge dish, but it was a tightly woven array with ships at little more than a five-hundred-klick distance, possibly less.

  Two warships paid for it when one lost control for a moment and crashed into its neighbor. Both fell out of the dish. One exploded.

  From the reserve around the base ship, two ships accelerated to fill the hole.

  Sixty ships in a tight dish boosted out a good hundred thousand klicks ahead of the mother ship and the twenty warships that swarmed around her.

  They were all headed straight at Kris.

  Kris grinned. “This is going to get interesting.”

  For the next several hours, the two forces hurtled at each other. Kris reduced her fleet’s deceleration to 3.5 gees, then down to 3.25. As much as she wanted to be at a reasonable speed when the two fleets met, she wanted to conserve her ships and their engines more. On her boards, some of the engines on the Earth ships had crept into the yellow.

  Now, every ship was comfortably green.

  As they drew to within five hundred thousand klicks of the aliens, Kris brought Nelly into her plans.

  At three hundred thousand klicks, she informed the fleet. “We are about to do a starburst maneuver at four gees. Captain Zermatt, you will assume command of Task Force 8 and pass above the hostiles, keeping outside their hundred-thousand-klick range. Task Force 7, you and Wasp will pass below their dish. My computer is sending you your sailing orders now.”

  “Received,” both Nottingham and Zermatt reported. On Kris’s board, each ship blinked twice as it acknowledged its orders. “We will execute as we hit the two-hundred-and-fifty-thousand-klick mark. Open fire at two hundred thousand klicks and fire at will. Try to concentrate on targets by divisions or sections. Good shooting,” Kris said.

  “Execute starburst . . . now!” Kris ordered.

  Ships swung around. Now, instead of decelerating toward the enemy, they were blasting laterally. Their momentum still carried them toward the waiting alien warships, but now their rockets shot them off so they’d pass above or below them.

  Kris waited to see how the aliens’ Enlightened One would react.

  She hadn’t long.

  The alien dish came apart as half changed their acceleration vector down and the other half aimed up. The warships that had been holding to the same 1.34-gee acceleration as their base ship now jumped up their power settings to 2.5. A few went even higher.

  As Kris sought to pass wide of them, they scrambled to get into her way.

  Wasp slipped over to join the division with Yi’s flagship, George Washington, turning the triangle with the Franklin D. Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy into a square.

  As the range closed to two hundred thousand klicks, Wasp and her division mates picked one of the closest aliens and concentrated their aft batteries on it. Sixteen 22-inch lasers pinned the closest ship.

  It glowed. It burned as it shed flaming globs of rock. It burned, but it did not break.

  As one, the division flipped to bring its forward batteries to bear long enough to empty them.

  And Kris got a big surprise.

  The alien ships came apart. Correction, they separated.

  Where one ship had been, now a half dozen or more ships were hurtling out, trying to reach for the human frigates. In place of the thirty ships that had begun to drop down, following Task Force 7, almost two hundred blips filled the screen.

  “They’ve launched suicide boats,” Nelly reported. “We can clearly identify the single small reactors on the additional ships.”

  The spawning of the suiciders was frightening to behold, but it did not go smoothly.

  Several of the smaller craft had been damaged by the initial volley from the frigates. One exploded almost immediately, shoving its mother ship almost into the ship next in formation. Another careened around wildly before impaling itself on a huge warship. The two of them vanished in one gigantic explosion.

  Still, as Kris’s ships fired their forward volley, they had to aim with care to get their original target and not its suicidal offspring.

  They also had to fire the forward battery quickly and flip back around to get their sterns pointed at the aliens and boost away from them.

  While her ships blasted on course and recharged their lasers, Kris studied what her fleet had accomplished so far.

  The aliens were still out of their range though they struggled mightily to change that. Kris’s ships had concentrated their first volleys on seven alien warships. Five were gone, vanished in vast explosions. Two tumbled powerless, out of the fight.

  With the one that the suicide boat had been kind enough to kill, Kris still faced fifty-two warships.

  By the time the aft capacitors were reloaded, they were within 150,000 klicks of the closest ship.

  Her divisions did not fire on Kris’s orders, but rather on the command of their division captains. Kris watched as they fired, then flipped, fired, and quickly flipped back.

  This close, the 22-inch lasers were murder. Six more warships vanished. It would have been seven, but a suicide boat interposed itself between the targeted warship and absorbed enough laser energy to save it.

  As Kris�
�s ships accelerated out of the enemy’s main vector, the alien suicide boats settled in between the two fleets.

  “They’re trying to absorb some of our lasers,” Jack observed.

  “They’re suiciders, not stupid,” Penny said. “But they sure look crazy to me.”

  “Yeah,” Kris agreed. “Nelly, show me course projections,” and her screen now showed her ships with blue vectors, the alien with red.

  If the courses and accelerations held true, the next volley from Kris’s fleet would be almost at a hundred thousand klicks. The aliens would likely be firing every laser they had, hoping, even at extreme range, to damage some frigates.

  “Begin Evasion Plan 4,” Kris ordered. “When we fire our forward batteries, do not flip until we are out of range of the dish.”

  “Aye, aye, Admiral,” came from her two task force leads. Ships blinked their acknowledgments.

  Seven alien warships burned under the close-range hits of the aft batteries, then blew up when hammered by the forward guns. Twenty-one alien ships were gone, but the remaining thirty-nine lased the space around Kris’s ships. Their laser fire was attenuated and blooming; still, they shot.

  Kris’s ships took the weak lasers in with their crystal armor, slowed them to a stop, then radiated them back into space.

  “I imagine that is causing some jaw dropping out there,” Jack said dryly.

  “Let their jaws drop, just so long as I don’t have to go to funerals,” Kris muttered, half to herself.

  Now the alien warships in the leading dish were speeding out of range, but the twenty ships of the rear guard had more time to react to Kris’s deployment. They also spawned dozens of suicide boats; some had slammed themselves into three-gee accelerations, climbing high to meet Task Force 8 and diving toward Task Force 7.

  “Take the little boys with your secondary batteries,” Kris ordered. “Apply the main battery to the warships.”

  Twenty warships came at Kris. You could doubt their sanity, but not their courage. Twenty died under three volleys from Kris’s frigates. A dozen suicide boats that got to within fifty thousand klicks of the frigates were burned by the 5-inch lasers.