The old counselor laughed loud and long as he made his way to the door.
21
Grand Admiral Kris Longknife sat cinched into her high gee station. She was naked in the egg. She expected some hard sailing before this exercise was done.
Around her, Battlecruiser Task Fleet 6 was stacked up in four squadrons of eight human battlecruisers each. Commodores filled the rear admiral command billets of the two task forces. Captains commanded the squadrons. Half the divisions were commanded by commanders.
If this exercise went well, Kris would frock each commander up to his or her functioning rank. If it went badly, she wasn’t sure what she’d do.
A bit more than 270,000 kilometers on her starboard bow, three Iteeche flotillas cruised in similar formations. All were decelerating at one gee toward a small rock of a moon. According to this fleet exercise, Kris was defending that rock. The ninety-six Iteeche battle cruisers were intent on fighting their way through to the worthless satellite.
In actuality, this exercise would decide whether the young boy who sat on the Iteeche Imperial throne would live or die, along with the fifty billion people who lived on his capital planet.
Both fleets were composed of battlecruisers, built to the same design, armed with the same 24-inch lasers, powered by the same reactors. By all rights, a three to one superiority should result in Kris’s fleet being quickly wiped out.
Fortunately, for this exercise, all the lasers had been dialed back to .01 percent of their usual power. If any ship showed any sign that their capacitors were getting more than a trickle of electricity from the reactors, Kris would immediately cancel the exercise and blow that ship to hell.
The Iteeche captains and crew understood. They knew the fate of the last Iteeche admirals and battlecruisers that had crossed swords with Kris Longknife. Unlike those admirals that had turned coat and tried to kill Kris, these ships had only one admiral’s flagship.
Coth, Admiral of the First Grand Order of Iron, commanded the opposition forces. He would fight this battle per present Iteeche Navy doctrine. Under his command, flotillas, squadrons, and sections were led by captains that had come far too close to being cashiered out of the Navy and made to apologize most sincerely to the Emperor.
All of them wanted to win this fight. Every one of the Iteeche ships’ skippers and crews were tired of losing battles or fighting themselves to bitter and bloody draws. This human, Kris Longknife, said that she knew how to fight outnumbered three to one and win.
They would very much like to know how she intended to pull that off.
For this exercise, they were the three. She was the one. They had ninety-six battlecruisers. She commanded a mere thirty-two, built to the same design as their opposite number.
It was their job to destroy her, to tag her ships with enough weak hits that they would be counted as destroyed. Ten hits and a battlecruiser could fire no more and had to fall out of formation and the exercise. Ten for the human ships. Ten for the Iteeche ships.
The humans should be annihilated quickly.
Kris intended to annihilate the Iteeche very quickly.
“We will be in maximum range in ten seconds,” sensors reported to Kris on the flag bridge of the Princes Royal.
“Prepare to raise deceleration to 3.3 gees, Execute Evasion Plan 4,” Kris ordered.
“All ships report ready,” reported Captain Tosan, Kris’s chief of staff.
“Execute,” Kris ordered.
Her weight began to grow as the P. Royal went from one gee to 3.4 gees. As it began evasion maneuvers, Kris was slammed from one side to the other in her egg. Fortunately for her, it cushioned the blows, allowing Kris, and all the crew on the thirty-two human battlecruisers to stay combat effective.
Up and down the line, human battlecruisers jinked independently. What had been a stately line of 75,000-ton warships turned into a wild mass of jitterbugging ships as some went up when others went down. Kris had allowed 5,000 kilometers between ships in squadrons and 10,000 kilometers between the squadrons above and below. Within that authorized zone, each battlecruiser did its own thing, juggling their acceleration between 3.1 and 3.5 gees. They never stayed on the same course more than three seconds.
This might have ruined their own fire control solutions, but the jink plan for the ship was fed into the fire control computers and adjustments made.
The distant Iteeche ships continued on their stately course. They did, however, activate their maskers. This bit of technology from the ancient races who built jump points between the stars several million years ago had caused the humans all kinds of trouble during the Iteeche War. When activated, it confused the human mass mass range finder. Suddenly, that sensor showed the alien ship to be as much as a thousand kilometers from where it was. When combined with chaff to dazzle laser range finders and confuse radar as well, human fire control systems were left confused and unable to target the Iteeche.
It had turned out that nothing but the Mark I eyeball could be trusted, and the US fleet was extremely out of practice with it. During the war, humans had quickly improved their optics and learned to use them and computers to get a good range, bearing, and target solution.
As the hostile battle line jumped or vanished, Kris’s ships switched smoothly to optics only, although the lasers and radars continued to strive to contribute to targeting solutions by frequency hopping.
“We are in range of the hostile force,” Sensors announced.
“Commence firing,” Kris ordered.
Battlecruisers do not fire broadsides. All their guns were located in the bow or stern and could fire only within fifteen degrees to the right or left, up or down, from the ship’s keel. Both fleets now wore ship to bring their forward batteries to bear.
The human battlecruisers independently changed course to get themselves aimed at the Iteeche ships, presenting their bows at zero to fifteen degrees off of the opposing fleet.
The Iteeche battlecruisers swung around most majestically, as one, to face the humans with zero degrees on their bow, and aimed directly at their opponent.
At the same split second, both forces opened fire.
Nelly had programmed each laser on both sides to fire tenth of a second bursts at .01 percent power. They would then fall silent for the rest of the second to fire another infinitesimally short burst each second for six seconds. That was normal duration of a laser beam from the twelve huge 24-inch lasers each battlecruiser carried.
Once the forward battery was shot dry, the ship would flip to bring the eight lasers of the aft battery to bear. Six seconds later, the human ships would turn back on their base course while they reloaded.
Twenty seconds after the bow guns fell silent, the captain would bring those guns to bear again. Every twenty-six seconds, another salvo would slash out to burn and smash their opposite number.
Three Iteeche ships targeted each of Kris’s ships. Kris’s fleet targeted the Iteeche flotilla closest to the rock they were defending.
It was supposed to be a massacre. To the Iteeche’s shock, it was their three flotillas that was massacred in hardly more than a minute.
Exactly seventy-eight seconds after Kris gave the order to commence firing, every last one of the ninety-six Iteeche ships had received ten of the required hits. Most had taken forty or fifty hits of the 120 weak pulses aimed at them.
Kris’s ships had taken one or two. Total! Not each!
“Cease fire,” Kris ordered as her ships completed their third salvoes and demolished their third flotilla.
“Admiral Coth, it seems our exercise is over,” Kris said on the guard channel. “Would you care to repeat it?”
“By all the monsters ever to come from the deep, no. At least not just now. Would you be kind enough to allow me fifteen of your minutes to examine what just happened to us?”
“Certainly, admiral,” Kris said, and ordered the two fleets back to their base course at one gee deceleration.
“I would not want to be in his shoe
s just now,” Captain Tosan said, softly.
“I imagine it must be very exciting to wear his shoes,” Jack said from his high gee station on the other side of Kris. “When you’re racing downhill to hell in a hand bag, it’s always exhilarating to try to change directions.”
“You have a good point, sir,” Captain Tosan said. “Now, Admiral, is there anything you want to do differently for the next part of the exercise?”
“At the moment, no. I’ll save going to Evasion Plan 6 for the third shoot, if there is one.”
Fifteen minutes later, Admiral Coth was back on screen. “We are prepared to try that again,” he said.
“Shall we recommence the exercise in one minute? Would you like me to transmit a tic toc for you?”
“No need. Our computer has one of your clocks available. We will activate it.”
“Good, then we will begin again in one minute from my mark.” Kris paused, then said, “Mark.”
“I will see you again. Hopefully less soon.”
“Good luck, Admiral.”
Kris waited for the timer on her screen to count down to 30 seconds. “Prepare to drop deceleration to .8 gees, Execute Evasion Plan 4. Target flotilla farthest away from the rock,” Kris ordered, changing up from the last time.
“All ships report ready,” came back from Captain Tosan, Kris’s chief of staff.
Kris waited until the clock was down to five seconds, then ordered, “Execute.”
This time, the human battlecruisers slowed. The knocking about was easier without the extra energy of hard deceleration.
As the clock hit all zeros, Kris ordered, “Commence fire.”
The human battlecruisers again honked themselves over hard toward the opposition forces using independent maneuvering. As soon as their bows came to bear on their target ships, the forward batteries began a weak staccato fire.
Admiral Coth had jacked his deceleration up to two gees, the maximum Kris had seen an Iteeche force use. In the minute the clock had been ticking, the squadrons and ships had opened up their ranks and files within their flotillas to something close to Kris’s formation. They started trying to jiggle their courses, even as they all turned to face their opponent.
The humans flipped smartly in seven seconds. The first salvo snapped out as if a single shot. Many Iteeche ships flipped slower than others. Their opening volley was ragged.
The Iteeche managed to secure a hit on only one of Kris’s ships. One entire Iteeche flotilla was swamped by hits and fell off, out of the exercise.
Both sides reloaded.
“Kris,” Nelly said, “Iteeche skippers are reporting that they cannot get target lock on our ships. Their jinking is messing up their firing solution. Oh, Coth just ordered them to jink more.”
“A decent suggestion,” Kris said. “If you can’t blow them up, at least try not to get blown up.”
The second when the forward batteries on the human battlecruisers would be reloaded was fast approaching. The volley from the aft Iteeche batteries had been ragged as well. Kris's battlecruisers fired their second forward salvo seconds before the Iteeche. Kris’s ships kept up their jink pattern. The Iteeche tried to jack theirs up.
Kris’s fleet suffered no hits this time. A second Iteeche flotilla had to fall out of action.
Coth appeared on screen. “Sea snakes and dark monsters, Admiral Longknife, what is it that you are doing right and we are doing wrong?”
“Check fire. Check fire,” Kris ordered her fleet. Coth said something to someone off screen and his fleet returned to the base course, one gee deceleration. Kris gave the same order.
“Is there something wrong with our guns, with our ships, or just with us as Iteeche warriors?” Coth demanded of Kris.
“Yes, there is something wrong with your guns, and differences in our ships, but there is nothing wrong with your warriors. Admiral, have your fleet close the distance with us in the next thirty minutes. In one hour, I would like to meet with you and your key staff and subordinate commanders as well as each ship’s skipper, his second in command, and with the officer we call Guns, or the gunnery officer.”
“It will be so,” Coth said, and the screen went blank.
“Captain Tosan, secure the fleet from battle stations. Set course to rendezvous with the Iteeche flotillas. Advise all unit commanders and their key staff, ship skippers, XOs, and Guns we will be meeting in the Forward Lounge in an hour. I will be in my room.”
“Aye, aye, Admiral.
“Jack, with me.”
22
“Admiral on deck,” Jack called.
The humans in the Forward Lounge jumped out of their chairs and snapped to attention. It took the Iteeche only a second more to realize that they were expected to stand. It turned out their attention was something more like left foreleg forward, left aft leg back and the two right legs straight in line, with hands up, the two forward ones together and flat above their eyebrows, while the two aft ones were up as a human would do to surrender.
All that took time with a lot of knees and elbows bending in strange ways.
Megan had come ahead. She and her computer Lily had been rearranging the Forward Lounge. She had it in a gentle amphitheater sloping down to the front table where she and Admiral Coth now stood. Four groupings of chairs in wedge formation stretched up the gentle slope. Three were occupied by Iteeche in Navy gray. In the fourth humans in undress whites stood.
Kris strode down to the front table, and while Jack joined the others behind it, Kris turned to face her Navy officers, “As you were.”
It took them a few moments to settle back into their chairs. The Iteeche seemed a bit uncomfortable to all be afforded a chair with a high back.
THEY ARE MORE LIKELY TO BE REQUIRED TO STAND. IF THEY SIT, IT IS ON STOOLS.
THANK YOU, NELLY.
“Admiral Coth, do you have any questions after this exercise?” Kris said, turning to have her Iteeche chief of staff
“Yes, Your Royal Highness and Imperial Admiral of the First Order of Steel. How do you humans do those things you do? How do you get your ships to jump around so much that they were impossible to hit? How did you manage to hit us while doing that? It all seems impossible. What is different about your ships?”
“Our ships are no different than yours. Your ships could do exactly what our ships did.”
“I find that hard to believe. How are you able to get the same ship design to do what we cannot?” All the Iteeche in the room seemed to lean forward in their seats.
Kris spoke slowly. She had to persuade them to change something ten thousand years of warrior culture had instilled in their bones.
“Steel is strong. Much stronger than flesh,” She turned back to his officers and began to walk back and forth in front of them. “If we are to yank our ships away from hostile laser fire, do what we must do so that we are not there when their lasers slice into the space where they expect us to be, human flesh needs help. I might add, so does Iteeche flesh.”
NELLY, A HIGH GEE STATION, PLEASE.
An egg flowed up from the deck. “This is what we call a high gee station. Every human on board my battlecruisers went to their battle station seated in one of these.” So saying, Kris settled into the egg.
“This conforms to a warrior’s body so that if the ship is going hard right or up or down, the movement is cushioned. Also, it allows us to recline, to keep our blood from flowing away from our head and causing us to lose consciousness when we accelerate at three or more gees. Without this high gee station, we could not maneuver as hard as we do.”
“I had read in our histories,” Admiral Coth said, slowly, “about how you humans flitted about like water bugs upon a pond and made it hard for us to hit you, but what we saw today was so much more than the histories ever spoke of.”
“These are much improved from eighty years ago.”
“You humans are always changing,” came from somewhere in the back of the Iteeche officers.
“Yes, we are. It i
s how we have survived as a species,” Kris said.
“Just so,” Coth said. “You could dodge about, but we did too, and still you hit us. What do you have that makes you better warriors? Is it just this egg thing you sit in during battle?”
Kris suspected that sitting during battle would still be a hard sell, however, she went on to the next item on her agenda.
“We identified areas that you might be interested in addressing,” Kris said. “Our fire control systems adjusted our fire plans just as quickly as you adjusted your course. The cycle of identifying a course change, calculating where you would be when our lasers reached you, and then feeding it to our guns, went faster for us. It appears that we were able to complete the cycle in three to four seconds. You seemed to be taking six or more seconds. We never stayed on the same course for more than two or three seconds. By the time your laser got to where you expected us to be, we had slammed ourselves onto a different volume of space.”
“But how did you keep from turning your fire control solution into stew?” came from a gunnery officer in the third row back. Unable to keep quiet, he was still as embarrassed as Kris had ever seen an Iteeche, his vestigial gill slits showing a bright yellow.
“That is a very good question,” Kris said. “Thank you for it.”
The Iteeche’s gills showed less yellow.
“We feed whatever evasion plan we are using into our fire control computer. It adjusts our fire for what our own ship will be doing. Thus, if we make a hard right halfway through the six second laser burn, it corrects the guns for that even as we do it.”
“Ah,” came from a lot of Iteeche beaks.
“However, let me return to the amount of time it took you to calculate your firing solution. We are using the same computers. How is it then, that it takes you close to twice as long to get your solution?”
Now a lot of yellow was showing from a lot of gill slits.
“It may be,” Admiral Coth said, “that our battlecruisers are not the same as yours.”
Kris Longknife - Admiral Page 14