Kris Longknife - Admiral

by Mike Shepherd

  Kris had a view to the stars. More interesting was her view of gobs of goo as they were sucked toward the overheated hull breach. A whole lot of them had been released by damage control. Some bounced into each other, growing from small dots to larger balls to big saucers. Some got sucked out into the void of space. Others hooked on the cleanly sliced edge of the laser penetration. There, they provided a base that seemed to adhere to the onrushing tide of goo. The edges caught saucers of the stuff, and they caught even more. They slid past Kris's egg to soon fill in the hole. At first the internal pressure arched the patch out, stretching it. Kris feared it would break loose and the P Royal would lose this patch. More of the stuff, however, was oozing along the deck toward the hull fracture. There, it climbed the bulkhead and reinforced the patch, making it stronger.

  The bowed-out patch pulled itself in and held.

  Somewhere, damage control was working on sliding the remaining Smart MetalTM of the hull over to fill the gaps. The klaxon warning of a hull open to space cut off as all the patches and moving about got the hull back to the job of keeping the vacuum out.

  It was only then that Kris realized she’d been weightless for the entire time since the laser slashed through her battle station.

  The skipper of the Princess Royal was doing the same thing the Irresistible had done. He was letting his ship zip closer to the jump and closer to the enemy vanguard with their short-ranged guns.

  Now the question was, could he get under way before he came in range of all those eager 22-inch lasers ready to savage them as they’d been savaged?

  It was moments like these that reminded Kris that she was a passenger aboard this ship. She commanded a vanguard wing and the entire fleet, but she could give no order to save this ship or her own life

  Only the captain on his bridge could do that.

  Of course, Kris had given her own survival pod orders to fill the hole, but that was as far as her command aboard this ship went.

  The air cooled. The egg opened up, unsealed itself from the hole it had filled, and Kris motored over to where Jack sat glowering at her.

  “Hey, I was closer to the hole,” she said in her defense.

  “There were others closer,” he growled under his breath, but she heard it.

  “There were. But I was the veteran and they were new at this job of staying alive while those around you do their best to make you suddenly dead. Next time, they’ll be the experienced hands and save someone else’s ass. You know that as well as I do.”

  Jack scowled, but he said nothing.

  Nelly had replaced the main screen, converting the Smart MetalTM to clear, active glass. Now, with Nelly overseeing the screen, it again showed Kris what she needed to know.

  The rest of the human squadrons were still dishing it out, the count of enemy 24-inch battlecruisers wiped out or sent reeling out of the line kept growing. Several of her ships were hotter, but others had cooled down a bit. About the time she got back in the fight, that bottom wing savaged another of her ships.

  “Nelly, tell your kids the bottom wing deserves some attention.”

  “We’re on it Kris.”

  The bottom wing had been abusing Kris’s beneficence. To make their fire the more concentrated, they’d softened their jinking about the time they were ready to fire. You would have thought that by now, a wing commander would have learned that going easy on the jitterbugging was not a good idea.

  Still, the softer jib had made deadlier his two hundred and fifty big battlecruisers in range of that flotilla his commanding admiral had chosen for destruction.

  Now the death they’d sought to dish out came their way like a frenzy of maddened sharks.

  Twenty-eight ships died as bow salvoes slashed into the bottom wing. Four seconds later, another twelve were hammered to shards by the smaller stern batteries.

  Even as commands were given to “Evade, evade, for destiny’s sake, evade!” the bow batteries were reloaded and another twenty-five ships died, bled, or fell out.

  As the admiral commanding the bottom wing was full-body slammed against the right and then the left bumper of his high gee couch, the wing lost another eight big war wagons.

  In the meantime, the bottom wing had tried to burn another one of the strange ships that glowed when they should have burned. The targeting effort, however, ran afoul of the defensive evasion. One human scum ship was heated up, but it did not glow like the first two they’d lit up.

  Now survival took the place of bringing death to the enemy.

  Admiral Donn stared blankly at the screen. He should have been watching thirty ships be burned, blown up, and turned into rolling hulks. He watched as more of his ships met that fate and they were sent to the evil demons of the dark deeps by these glowing ships. His ships died while his enemy evaded their deserved fate.

  He had come here commanding eight thousand ships.

  His was one of the largest collections of warships that the Iteeche Empire had ever seen. Without the humans and their smart metal, it would have been impossible to build so many warships so quickly. Without the human designs, it would have been impossible to crew so many warships.

  The humans had given him this fleet, and the humans were blowing it away. There was no doubt in Admiral Donn’s mind that those strange glowing ships were the squadrons that had come out from the misconceived human sphere.

  The report was clear. There were thirty-two human battlecruisers. The intelligence was clear. The human battlecruiser was worth three quarters of an Iteeche battlecruiser.

  What they said was clear as water now looked more like solid mud to Admiral Donn.

  “Why aren’t those human battlecruisers burning? Exploding?” he demanded of the air he breathed.

  No one spoke a word in response. Finally, staff officer number three cleared his throat. “M’Lord Admiral, we have reports that the humans are able to clad their battlecruisers in some substance that protect them from laser fire. The glow we are watching is the ships radiating the laser energy back out into space. They may take a hit one place, but the energy is radiated out from all over their ship.”

  “And we know this how?” the admiral roared.

  “There were rumors about this from the engineers that worked with the humans to build the power plants for their ships. They heard things and reported it. However, they were never able to actually access the substance or see what it looked like on a warship. All the ships have reflective skins, even ours. They looked at the human battlecruisers and saw nothing different to report.”

  “And why I am hearing about this now?” Admiral Donn roared again. He put so much air into that roar that it hurt his back. He winced but did not allow a whimper to escape his beak.

  “It was only a rumor. We had no report of anyone actually seeing this miraculous armor until now.”

  “And we are paying a high price for the chance to look upon it,” Admiral Donn snapped, then allowed himself a deep sigh. He had counted the thirty-two human battlecruisers as worth twenty-four Iteeche ships. What he was seeing was twenty-eight human battlecruisers still fighting after destroying most of the best ships in his fleet. It cost him two, maybe three ships to send an enemy Iteeche warship into the deep, dark abyss. Those human battlecruisers had sent hundreds, maybe a thousand or more of his ships into the abyss and all he had to show was four of them limping away from the battle line.

  As he watched, the first human battlecruiser they had scorched took its place back in the battle array.

  It was enough to eat the heart out of an Iteeche. He had come here with eight thousand warships under his command. Thousands were gone now. Still, five thousand of them had not yet fired a shot.

  “Staff officer number one.”

  “M’Lord Admiral.”

  “Have the fleet steer two points closer to the enemy vanguard. I want this fleet between that vanguard and the ships we have reaching for the jump. If those scum want to save their little boy’s neck, let them come through all of us.”r />
  “It will be done, M’Lord Admiral.”

  “Good.”

  55

  Grand Admiral Kris Longknife studied the two fleets displayed on the main screen of her flag bridge. As she had since this battle began, she and her fleet were running. The huge rebel armada was, as usual, in hot pursuit of her and hers.

  Only now, she was sliding off toward the jump, and the rebels were doing their best to flank her.

  The problem she faced was simple. If she decelerated enough to make the jump, the rebels got to slip down where their lasers could fire right up her engines. That was one thing she definitely did not want.

  However, the Iteeche ships that were heading for the jump would not have to face her wrath until after she had fought her way through the entire rebel fleet.

  If she brought her ships to close range of all four to six thousand rebel ships that sailed in her way, she would have damn few ships left to tackle the ones so intent on the jump.

  “Kris, have you noticed what’s going on behind the rebel fleet?” Nelly asked.

  “There’s something? Show me.”

  The last time Kris had checked on the badly shot up cripples that could only struggle to keep vacuum out, they’d been strung out like crap behind some cattle stampede. She’d seen that once when she was campaigning for Father out in ranch country. The ground had been beat up pretty badly by the cows’ hoofs, but clearly scattered randomly behind all the angry, panicked cows, were steaming piles of cow shit.

  “That’s why we wear these boots,” one friendly young man had pointed out to her. She’d glanced down at her shiny two-inch heels, and learned a solid lesson. Dress like the folks you’re working with.

  She’d also learned to stay away from cows unless they had already been converted to steak or hamburger.

  Kris had thought that what she left behind her was hamburger, slipping through and behind the Iteeche battle line, white flag flying.

  That’s the thing about space. You can’t fly a flag, white or otherwise.

  Some of her ships were still in desperate circumstances.

  Others, not so much.

  Captains had made repairs. Ships had slipped into small, then larger, then flotilla size formations. Two flotillas of thirty-two were steaming straight for the ships that were so intent on the jump.

  Kris’s ships were not the only ones, however. The rebel cripples were mending ships and forming up. It looked like a minor battle was about to be joined well behind the battle line.

  She shook her head. The rebel admiral had been right to question Kris’s call for aid and honor to her damaged ships.

  The Iteeche did not know when to call it quits.

  Kris pried her eyes away from that battle. She had a larger one to manage up here.

  Across from her, the rebel commander was doing his level best to cut her off. Absent that, he was intent on interposing his ships between Kris and the jump. Kris had given the order only a few minutes sooner than he had to slide his top, center, and bottom wings toward the survivors of the vanguard. The loyalists top, middle, and low wings were overlapping the rebels. They were able to concentrate more firepower on the flank of those wings and the rebels could concentrate their extra firepower on the trailing edge of Kris’s fleet.

  Still, the rebel vanguard was wilting under the firepower of the Iteeche 24-inch battlecruisers in her vanguard. Kris had let her ships slip closer to the rebels. Soon, the long-suffering smaller ships of the rebel vanguard would get their chance to use those their 22-inch lasers that had been long silent.

  Of course, Kris’s own hundred and seventy surviving 22-inch warships would also get in on the action.

  Kris expected a wild fight then.

  Admiral Donn waited, his eyes intent, his back killing him, as the vanguard of the scum finally fell back into the waiting arms of his vanguard’s 22-inch lasers.

  In his mind, it was like a clash of armored warriors of old. He could almost hear the slam of axe on shield, mounts crying as they were impaled on pikes or men screaming as the honored rider skewered them on lances.

  At the last moment, the wing commander urged his ships on to even more acceleration. Even as the enemy used part of their power vector to slow toward the jump, and less to distance themselves from the waiting rebel vanguard, the rebels leapt ahead, even if by only a quarter of a gravity.

  Still, it was enough to surprise the human sucking scum.

  His forces got off the first shot. They outnumbered the enemy two to one, and they would make that superiority count.

  Still, the enemy was only a second or two behind his ships in opening fire.

  Ships took hits. Ships burned. Ships exploded. Ships lost power and tumbled out of control or were unable to evade the lasers that fixed them like a pin might fix a young, newly chosen’s leaf collection.

  When the nineteen second exchange was over, it was impossible to tell who had won and who had lost. Seven seconds later, the second round of volleys slashed out.

  On both sides of the battle, ships exploded, ships veered out of line or ships lost control and ended up a dead, rolling hulk, streaming sparks and wreckage.

  I wish I had some way of keeping count, Admiral Donn thought as another spasm of pain wracked his back.

  56

  “Nelly, how’s it going?” Kris asked, unable to tell from her screen and hoping her computer had some way of counting up the butcher’s bill in real time.

  “The enemy van is melting away like snow on a sun kissed roof,” Nelly said.

  “You entering your poetic stage, girl?” Kris asked, barely suppressing a laugh.

  “It’s brutal stuff, Kris. Forgive me for trying to keep some distance from it. The rebels had two ships for every one we have. Maybe a bit more. They are losing four or five ships for every one we lose. In two or three minutes, there will be nothing left of their vanguard wing, but you will have lost a hundred ships or more. I hope it is worth it.”

  “So do I Nelly. So do I.”

  The slaughter went on. The rebels tried to jink, but they hadn’t jacked up their maneuvering jets like Kris’s ships had. That was one of the changes that Nelly’s kids had made on the loyalist’s warships and not told anyone about.

  What people didn’t know, they could not blab in a bar.

  Now it mattered.

  The Imperial forces jinked hard and lived even as they slammed their crews around in the cradles of their high gee restraints. The rebel forces zigged and zagged as best as they could, knocking their crews about, hammering them, sending them rolling off their couches breaking arms, legs, and backs. Aboard the ships, crews struggled to fight their ships. Struggled and failed. Loyalist lasers slashed deep into the rebel warships even as softer jitterbugging wrecked their firing solutions on the loyalist ships and left them too predictable for the incoming lasers that stabbed into and through their targets.

  The rebel vanguard fought and the rebel vanguard died. In the end, lightly damaged or even undamaged ships could not take the scourging. Ships cut their power, crews smashed their central weapons bus and fell out of the fight.

  First there were only a few, then more. In the end, a hundred rebel ships had as much as held up their hands and surrendered.

  Kris admitted to being grateful that they had called it quits. In a minute or more, they would all have died. Maybe they would have destroyed three or four more of her ships, but die they would have.

  Their deaths would have been little more than an execution.

  With the battle of the vanguard finished, Kris allowed herself two deep breathes before turning her attention back to what the rebel main force was up to.

  Admiral Donn watched as the last ships in the vanguard took the coward’s way out. He knew he should have felt rage, but it was way down there, below several other emotions.

  Was that human’s weakness tainting his blood?

  The admiral had been appalled at how quickly his vanguard had vanished under the onslaught of a force h
alf its size. He had expected to trade three or even four of his ships for every one of the loyalists they destroyed. Instead, in the exchange he had lost six, seven, maybe eight ships for every Imperial that winked out.

  “What do they have that we do not?” he allowed himself to mutter out loud. He might as well have saved his breath. From his staff came no answer, good or otherwise.

  He sighed at the sight of the loyalist vanguard decelerating toward the jump . . . and grinned. It didn’t matter one little minnow if his fleet slowed to make it through that jump. They could miss the jump and go around again. If he cut the deceleration of his four remaining wings, his entire fleet could charge right through that vanguard. Once he held a position closer to the jump, he could bring his lasers to bear on their vulnerable sterns, slashing deep into engineering spaces and destroying containment fields.

  He could blow their ships to bits.

  57

  Kris felt exhausted. It seemed like this battle had gone on forever. Still, it would not end.

  The rebel vanguard was no more. Of sixteen hundred ships that it had when the battle started, maybe four hundred were either wrecked and struggling to control the damage or, for the last hundred or so, they had surrendered, or at least taken themselves out of the fight.

  “Nelly, how many ships do we have left?”

  “Of the four hundred and forty ships you started with, we have slightly fewer than three hundred left, Kris.”

  “What’s that make our exchange rate?” Kris asked. Her brain was thinking of force vectors in three dimensions. Four, if she included time. At this moment, she could not do any sort of math.

  “Roughly eight rebel warships were disposed of for every one of your ships destroyed or rendered too damage to continue the fight.”