As they closed to within two hundred thousand klicks of the aliens, Kris said, “Nelly, please send a copy of the message Jacques composed for the alien base ships.”
“It is sent.”
“I don’t believe the Enlightened One responded,” Jack said.
“No, not a word.”
“You think this will be any different?”
Kris shrugged. “Nothing beats a try but a failure. Sooner or later, we have to either learn to talk or kill each other. I’ve had enough killing today.” She found herself reaching for her belly in the egg. Without an order, Nelly expanded the egg to give Kris room to pat baby.
“If we can’t end this, this little one will grow up to fight the same fights again and again.”
Jack nodded. Even in an egg, you could see that simple expression.
They were at two hundred thousand klicks. Kris would order her ships to fire in only a moment. Unless the aliens had a trick up their sleeves, this would be another massacre.
“Kris, I have an answer from the aliens.”
“Yes.”
“‘It is better to die than eat vermin shit.’”
Across the way, eighty warships suddenly veered around, their engines going from decelerating them toward the jump point to ramming them toward Kris’s battle line.
Kris snapped out her orders. “Fire volleys by squadrons. Squadron commanders, select the closest ships for targets. Fire and flip as needed by squadrons. Open fire now.”
The aliens were charging Kris’s line. Again, they charged at whatever acceleration they could lay on: 2.6 to 3.12 gees.
Kris’s battlecruisers cut their deceleration burns. Then, by squadron, flipped to bring their forward batteries to bear. For five seconds, the six lasers struck out at the aliens. In tight salvos of three lasers, they pinned the foremost alien warships. Each stone-protected warship took the full force of forty-eight lasers concentrated on only sixteen points. The lasers, powered by the upgraded reactors, burned the alien ships for five seconds.
Burn through was inevitable.
The four leading alien ships took their hits, burned, and blew up.
Three of Kris’s squadrons then flipped ship, poured on three gees to open the distance from the alien charge, blew away another three ships, and accelerated away for another five seconds while all lasers recharged.
The seven ships from Hekate did a different dance with death. They continued to drift under no acceleration as their second forward battery took a different alien ship under fire, pinned it, and destroyed it. Then they flipped, jacked up their acceleration away from the onrushing aliens to 3.5 gees, and let both of their rear batteries pin two ships, one after the other.
One ship was hit hard but survived.
Then, like the other divisions, the Hekates repeated the process again.
Alien warships took battlecruiser salvos. They lit up, burned, and exploded.
One managed to get to within 160,000 yards when the human frigates were turned, stern on. Its new lasers got a lucky hit on the Invincible, slashing into its engineering spaces and damaging a laser. The Vince struggled to get out of the line of fire. Its squadron mates immediately gave the alien their full attention and burned it, but not before the battlecruiser with the unfortunate name began to eat itself. The Vince blossomed with survivor pods as its crew took to the cold of space rather than face the fire of their own ship.
The Lucky Leprechaun II also took a hit, but she proved luckier than her predecessor. This skipper dodged out of the enemy fire with a fortunate jink, then quickly mended the ship before more damage could be done.
Kris’s ships suffered, but the aliens burned.
Ten warships had stayed steady on course, decelerating for the jump, intent on using the sacrifice of its brothers to get at the system that had defeated them for so long.
Kris fought the fight with one eye on her fuel gauges and the other on the tack she’d need to cancel out all this dancing away from the course to the jump.
“No more running,” she finally had to order. “Set course for the jump. We fight it out on this course.”
The fleet, obedient to her orders, brought their engines around to face the jump. Now they presented their broadsides to the aliens. Battlecruisers could only fight from their bow or stern.
Now the rhythm of the fight changed.
Battlecruisers coasted, faced the enemy, fired, flipped and fired again. Then, while they reloaded, they went to 3.5 gees deceleration.
“That can’t be good for the engines,” Jack muttered from his egg.
“No one’s screaming.”
No one but the aliens.
They had the humans where they wanted them, but of the eighty that had started the mad charge, less than a dozen survived. And while they heated up the battlecruisers, and made hits on the vulnerable sterns of the Persistent and Enterprise, they did not make the critical hit they aimed for.
Battlecruisers glowed under laser fire that would have blown them away a month ago. They glowed, but held their place in line and hammered the last of the alien charge to dust.
Done, Kris brought her ships back into something like a formation even as she eyed the twelve ships that had held back.
Did someone over there order the charge? Why those ten?
“Nelly, send the surrender offer again.”
“Done, Kris. We’ll be in range of those twelve ships in five seconds.”
“Then they have five seconds to reply.”
“‘I will be your slave,’” Nelly snapped. “That is the message from them. ‘I will be your slave.’”
“Tell them to dump their reactor cores,” Kris ordered.
“I’ll try,” Nelly said.
“We can’t let them get into the Alwa system while they’re under power,” Jack said.
“We can’t let them get close to us while they’ve still got power,” Kris said. “They go dead in space, or they die.”
Kris’s ships passed the two-hundred-thousand-klick mark. There was no word from the aliens.
“Nelly, tell them we need to see their bellies. That’s what dogs do when they surrender.”
“I sent that. There is no word from them. They just repeat, ‘I will be your slave.’”
The fleet decelerated toward the jump. They closed to within 180,000 klicks of the aliens. The aliens continued to decelerate.
“Can we order them to abandon ship, to get into life pods and get out?” Penny asked.
“I doubt they have any.” Kris thought for a long moment on how to get “Surrender your ship” across in a different language. “Damn, we need Jacques. Nelly, tell them to stop decelerating and give us their ship.”
“I sent it Kris.”
They waited as they came up on the 170,000-klick mark.
“Any answer?” Kris asked.
“They just say the same, ‘I will be your slave.’”
“So, they remember slavery,” Jack said.
“Apparently,” Kris said. “Send to fleet, prepare to take the last alien ships under fire. Fire by divisions.”
Kris’s board showed acknowledgments.
They passed the 165,000 mark and were quickly coming in range of the new alien lasers. Kris considered letting them get the first shot off, do something to prove their treachery. She patted baby one last time. It was doing jumping jacks on her bladder from the feel. How do you like Mommy’s adrenaline, little love?
“Jack, you asked why I had to be here.”
“Yes.”
“It was for this,” Kris said, then added. “Fire.”
Twenty-nine ships, all the undamaged ones, went to zero deceleration, aimed their bows at twelve alien ships, and lashed out at them with every laser they could bring to bear.
Aliens glowed, burned, and blew out into expanding balls of flame.
Battlecruisers flipped to bring their aft batteries to bear and hit those that still lived.
There were no more aliens headed for Alwa.
70
It was a near thing, but every ship of the Reserve Fleet made it through the jump, barreling through at just below 50,000 kph. They immediately bent their course for the nearest gas giant.
They had hardly entered the system when Admiral Yi reported they had traffic in the next system out. A fast-moving fleet had jumped in and was slowing down. More reinforcements had arrived.
Still in her egg as Wasp made a hard reach for orbit, Kris breathed a sigh of relief. She was pretty sure the new largesse from human space would not have arrived soon enough to stop the aliens’ last try to blast Alwa, but she didn’t ask Nelly for a check.
As it happened, Kris was out of her egg and back in uniform when the new ships began coming through. The screens from her flag plot were back on the walls in the CPO’s locker so she had to go to the bridge to get The Word.
It left her stunned.
“This is Grand Admiral Santiago with orders for Captain Kris Longknife. I am to relieve you forthwith and you are to return to human space soonest. I will explain more when we can talk in private.”
“Hasn’t she said enough?” Jack said.
“I need to sit down.”
Someone else kept a count of the new arrivals. Kris found herself seated in her day quarters, staring at the overhead.
It never quits. They just never quit. Longknifes suck bilgewater. Through a straw.
71
Kris had recovered by the time Wasp caught the first tie-down and pulled into her place on Canopus Station. Kris’s fleet made it in an hour ahead of the Thunderer, Admiral Santiago’s flag.
Kris was saved from having to pay her compliments to the newly arrived grand admiral by Santiago’s message that she would instead meet Kris in her quarters.
“Strange and stranger,” was all Kris said.
Kris stood in her spiffiest maternity blues, which was to say the least lumpy. The stripes of an admiral still etched her sleeve as Sandy Santiago walked in. She’d been an admiral when Kris was a freshly promoted lieutenant. Kris had given her daughter a reference for her academy application.
What was the situation between them now?
It was hard to say which one saluted which. Maybe Nelly could have measured it.
“You’ve done an outstanding job, Kris, from everything I’ve seen.”
“We’re still trying to retrieve the last of our scattered ships. I sent a squadron of battlecruisers back loaded as tankers. Should I have asked your permission, Grand Admiral?”
“Oh, right. Oops. Sorry Kris, and it’s Sandy among us admirals. I had specific orders to make that announcement, right from King Raymond. He wants you back soonest, and he figured the best way to get you moving would be to let everyone know right at the get-go that I had orders to relieve you, and you had orders to depart immediately.”
“Immediately,” Kris said, sweeping a hand over her rather large bump.
“Ah, right, I did hear something from Captain O’dell that there had been an epidemic of pregnancies. I didn’t think you’d be one of them.”
Kris pointed at Jack. “May I introduce my husband, Lieutenant General Jack Montoya.”
“How many Marines are out here?”
“I command a division afloat and a corp of Alwa National Guard ashore,” Jack said.
“The Alwans are under arms?”
“I think your brief may be a bit out-of-date,” Kris said, and began to update her replacement. She ended, an hour later, by laying down her own specifics.
“I am not traveling this pregnant. Not at the accelerations we have to use to go leaping across the galaxy. I will stay right here. I will have my baby right here. I will not travel until the doctor says my baby can travel.”
Grand Admiral Sandy Santiago nodded agreement. Even a grand admiral knew when she’d been trumped by a Longknife.
72
“Here you go, General, your latest little recruit,” said Doc Meade as she laid the cutest tiny bundle in Jack Montoya’s arms.
He held that miniature miracle with awe and the utmost of care. He couldn’t help but stare at the fingers. Just like his, right down to the fingernails, but so much tinier.
Deep blue eyes stared up at him, under a shock of black hair. Then the perfect mouth formed an oh-so-large yawn for such a little face. The eyelids blinked, then closed for the moment.
“It’s normal for a newborn to fall asleep after it’s made a study of its new world,” Doc Meade whispered to Jack.
He smiled a thank-you.
“Well, don’t I get to see what my labors have wrought?” Kris asked from where they had made her comfortable, at last. Jack still shivered at the last couple of hours. No question the human race would have died out long ago if men had to do what his loving wife had just done.
The tiny bundle in his arms made it all worthwhile.
“Mrs. Longknife, may I introduce you to Ruth Maria Brenda Anne. Your latest adoring fan.”
“Whom you have put to sleep,” Kris said, but she was reaching for her daughter. Gently, Jack made the transfer. Now Ruthie lay on her mother’s breast. Jack joined Kris in fondly caressing their daughter with his eyes.
“We’ve come a long way, little one,” Kris said. “And you will go a long way soon enough, but for now, baby, you belong to Mommy and Daddy and we belong to you.”
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About the Author
Mike Shepherd grew up Navy. It taught him early about change and the chain of command. He’s worked as a bartender and cabdriver, personnel advisor and labor negotiator. Now retired from building databases about the endangered critters of the Pacific Northwest, he’s enjoying some fun writing.
Mike lives in Vancouver, Washington, with his wife, Ellen, and close to his daughter and grandchildren. He enjoys reading, writing, dreaming, watching grandchildren for story ideas, and upgrading his computer—all are never-ending.
He’s hard at work on Kris’s next story and on Vicky Peterwald: Rebel.
You can learn more about Mike and all his books at his website mikeshepherd.org, e-mail him at [email protected], or follow Kris Longknife or Mike Moscoe on Facebook.
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Table of Contents
Praise for the Kris Longknife Novels
Ace Books by Mike Shepherd
Title Page
Copyright
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
/> Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
Chapter 67
Chapter 68
Chapter 69
Chapter 70
Chapter 71
Chapter 72
About the Author
Kris Longknife 13 - Unrelenting Page 39