“You are at a precarious stage of your civilization. You are still divided into tribal factions. Only now, you are tribal factions with atomic weapons. You can destroy yourselves and everything that lives on this planet. I would prefer not to have anything to do with you until you decide for yourselves if you are to wipe yourselves out or will grow beyond your childhood.”
“That is an interesting perspective,” Almar said with a snort.
“You are where we were four or five hundred years ago. We chose one path. You are still at that crossroads. Which path will you choose?”
“Will these aliens you are about to fight stand by while we choose?” Almar asked.
Now it was Kris’s turn to frown. If she’d had a tail, she might have twitched it. “They create a problem.”
“Will you stay here and guard us?” Madame Gerrot demanded.
“No,” Kris said.
“And why not?” President Almar asked.
“I am charged to defend Alwa,” Kris said.
There was a long pause at that.
“And you do not have enough ships to do that, do you?” President Almar said slowly.
“What admiral ever had enough ships for her job?” Madame Gerrot said slyly.
“I think you are inviting us into a war that is still very much in doubt, isn’t it?” Almar said.
“I am not inviting you into any war. It is coming at you,” Kris said.
“But you cannot defend us,” Gerrot snapped.
“And you cannot defend yourselves,” Kris snapped right back.
The two leaders turned back at that and joined in heated conversation with their advisors.
THIS GOING WELL? Jack asked on Nelly Net.
ABOUT AS WELL AS I EXPECTED.
KRIS, I CAN FOLLOW MOST OF THEIR TALK. SOME WANT TO TAKE YOU HOSTAGE AND DEMAND YOU PROTECT THEM. OTHERS FEAR YOU. THAT SLAGGED MOUNTAIN REALLY IMPRESSED THEM. A FEW JUST WISH YOU’D GO AWAY AND TAKE THE OTHER ALIENS WITH YOU.
SO, NO CONSENSUS, NELLY.
NOTHING EVEN CLOSE.
JACK?
I’VE ALREADY ALERTED THE MARINES OUTSIDE. THERE DOESN’T APPEAR TO BE ANY MOVE TO CONTAIN THEM. I’VE GOT OTHERS MOVING INTO PLACE.
PENNY?
I’VE SET REPEATERS INTO MOST OF THE POLICE NETS. THEIR ELECTRONICS ARE NOT VERY SOPHISTICATED. THERE’S NOTHING ON ANY NET ABOUT MOVING AGAINST US.
SO IT’S JUST TALK. JACK, KEEP YOUR MARINES ON STANDBY. THERE’S NO TELLING WHAT ONE DESPERATE TYPE MIGHT DO.
TRUST ME, ADMIRAL, MY WIFE, I’M VERY ALERT.
Finally, the two statesmen stepped away from their advisors and faced Kris.
“What might we do to gain a defensive alliance with you and your king?” Madame Gerrot asked.
“First, let me be very clear. If any of you launch a nuclear war, or any war of conquest that exhausts your resources and lays waste your lands, all bets are off. You will be on your own.”
Kris paused. She knew she’d spoken too fast for the translator. Besides, there were several aides who were elbowing others in the ribs. No doubt, someone had brought up the idea.
“Secondly, yes, a planet must have a united government to apply for membership in the United Societies. It must be democratic and have arrangements to see that the will of the majority rules while protecting any minorities under a rule of law.”
Again Kris paused.
“It sounds like you have had plenty of experience with fractured governance,” President Almar said dryly.
“Yes, it lacks balance. Finding that balance is often bloody.”
“But you will not impose that single governance,” Madame Gerrot said.
“That always leads to more blood, not less,” Kris said.
That brought what Kris took for grim chuckles from both leaders.
“But you, yourself, have said that we cannot stand against these aliens. We might as well roll over on our backs, show our bellies to be scratched, and piss ourselves. What are we to do?” Madame Gerrot said.
“You have not yet sent one of your own to walk your moon,” Kris said.
“We have talked about it. It will be very expensive,” President Almar said.
“It will also be very productive. It will require you to advance your science and technology. It will put you into space.”
“But we still won’t be able to stop these attackers,” snapped Almar.
“But you will have started down that path.”
“And if we are attacked in the meantime?”
“Empty your cities. Spread out. Be prepared to be attacked with nerve gas. Fight them. Make this victory so expensive that they turn away in disgust,” Kris said.
“But you will not sign a defensive pact with us,” Madame Gerrot said.
“No,” Kris answered.
Madame Gerrot’s tail was thrashing now.
“Mort, don’t have yourself a coronary,” President Almar said to her sister politician. “She’s an admiral, for pity’s sake. Yes, she may be the whelp of her king, but still, she’s just an admiral here. Would you want some admiral, even of your royal bloodline, negotiating a military treaty for you to sign? And negotiating it with no authority and no guidelines?”
“Thank you for understanding the limits of my authority here,” Kris said.
“I think there are more limits here than you want to talk about. You are going into battle at three-to-one odds. Something tells me that you don’t have the resources to protect us if you did sign that treaty Mort is so hot to get your paw print on.”
“You will understand that such issues might be covered by the State Secrecy Act.”
“We have one, too,” Almar agreed.
“Just how much danger are we in?” Almar asked after a pause. “What do these aliens want? Slaves? Resources? Control of the means of production?”
“They want your heads,” Kris said bluntly. “They want to sanitize your planet down to the smallest signs of life.”
The big cat visibly gulped at that. Madame Gerrot had been consulting with her aides. Now she turned back to Kris. “Our heads?”
NELLY, PROJECT THE INSIDE OF THAT PYRAMID FOR THEM, Kris thought as she turned to face the opposing wall.
The hologram was very solid. Suddenly, the walls were no longer marble but lightly worked granite. The pillars became figures encased in cubes of glass.
The floor showed piles of heads. Skulls, carapaces, whatever.
“Sweet ancestors,” came from somewhere, but otherwise, the room was dead silence.
“These aliens are not like any other aliens my species has encountered,” Kris said slowly. “We enjoy encountering different species.” Unless, of course, they go to war with us, but the less said about the Iteeche the better. “These people hate all life not of their own kind. They search space, hunting for life, and then kill it.”
Kris let that sink in.
“Then, once they have plundered a planet down to even its air and water, they take one sample of that life, encase in this plastic cube, and a pile of heads, and take it back to their trophy room. Their room of horrors.”
Kris left the hologram up for a bit longer, then had Nelly kill it. She said nothing as she turned back to the two leaders of this planet’s most powerful governments.
“It seems we have our work cut out for us,” said President Almar, “if we are to keep our heads on our shoulders.”
“Yes. It seems we do,” Madame Gerrot agreed.
Kris’s address to the Associated Assembly after that was a minor affair. She gave the nice, generic speech she had planned, adding in the foolish vs stupid reference to Solzen. It went over big now that she was assumed dead.
Kris made no references to heads or raped planets but left it to her listeners to assume the worst.
No doubt, they would assume far less than what they faced, but hopefully, their fear would be enough to unite them.
She, Jack, and Penny were back aboard the Wasp before it was time for lunch.
Kris
still hurt quite a bit from those two slugs. Nelly told her that several religious groups on Sasquan were claiming the miracle of her survival for their gods.
That was another opinion Kris was willing to leave open to whatever interpretation people wanted to put on it.
Captain Drago interrupted her lunch. “The aliens are braking as they come around the sun, but they have launched stone, iron, and lead bullets at the planet. These are not slowing. They’re headed our way at several hundred thousand kilometers an hour, and it looks like they are aiming for major cities.”
Kris tossed her napkin on the table. “Enough of diplomacy. Now we get to fight,” she said.
46
The five-hundred-ton bullets were coming in fast. Twelve of them, each made of whatever the aliens had been able to get their hands on. No doubt, they’d make a major hole in whatever they hit.
And what they would hit would very likely be a major city. If not intercepted, every one of them was headed for an impact within one or two kilometers of the center of a major urban area.
The twelve largest cities on the planet.
“Good shooting,” Captain Drago was heard to mutter.
“Too bad we’ll have to spoil their shoot,” Kris said.
She’d ordered the Endeavor to cast off and head out immediately. As she did, Nelly and Kris went over several possible shoot scenarios.
They ordered the simplest one.
The Endeavor did a deorbital burn, dropped down to graze the planet’s atmosphere, then slingshot herself up into an orbit that put her fifty thousand kilometers above the planet, headed for the incoming slugs.
A hundred thousand kilometers below the targets, she hit the first three with a head-on shot, cutting them in half. Endeavor then did a flip ship and deceleration maneuver, while using her aft batteries to filet the next three. She repeated that again, and there were twenty-four half-size bullets headed in, but on slightly different courses than they had been a few minutes before.
Kris could only imagine the rejoicing among the Ostriches as their lasers sliced targets exactly as they intended. No doubt, there would be a lot of chest bumping later, but not now.
Now they sliced and diced what was left of the bullets hurtling toward the cat world. Every fifteen seconds or so, the Endeavor would lash out at the bullets, dicing them into quarters, eighths, sixteenths, and smaller.
Whatever energy wasn’t needed to recharge the lasers went into the engines, braking the Endeavor in orbit and heading her back down.
It wouldn’t do for the little Endeavor to run into the entire enemy fleet all by herself. Captain O’dell reported, however, that the Ostriches were quite willing to do so.
The aliens’ first shots did slam into Sasquan, but not as five-hundred-ton streamlined bullets. Instead, they hit the atmosphere as ragged, jagged chunks of thirty tons or less, rolling and out of control. By the time the atmosphere had its go at eroding them, they hit the ground as meteorites of ten tons or less.
That might be hard on the two or three dwellings that got flattened, but they were no longer city killers.
Whatever doubts the cats might have held about Kris’s true intent vanished with the demise of the slug strike. The airwaves were unanimous in their praise of Kris as their planet’s savior.
“Let’s hope they’re still saying that after the battle,” Kris muttered.
The Endeavor made orbit again and rejoined the squadron. The problem was, she was low on reaction mass. She’d used a lot going against the laws of physics.
The Bulwark launched its pinnace over to refuel her. The Bulwark had come out from the gas giant with more fuel than the other frigates. It was a joke among the skippers that the skipper of the Bulwark was always afraid of running out of fuel and always took on extra.
Now, no one kidded him, and Captain O’dell was grateful for the help.
For the upcoming battle, Kris intended to use a similar orbit to the one Endeavor had used, only she’d sling herself around the moon to get farther out and be on a better-angled orbit. Like her enemy, Kris would be braking.
But with any luck, Kris would be closer to the cat world as she did so. That would put her in the perfect position to cross the T of the alien line, able to shoot up their vulnerable sterns, hit their engines, and rake their reactors with all her ships while few of them could reply.
At least that was the plan.
And like all battle plans, it didn’t survive contact with the enemy.
47
Kris’s squadron had reached the apogee of their orbit above the moon and were beginning to fall back toward the cat planet. The aliens were off to her left, still braking.
Kris studied their deployment from her flag plot. On other days, it was her day quarters, but today it was organized to command the developing battle. Screens around her reported the availability of every ship’s lasers, armor, reactors, and other critical systems.
Kris had been alone when she fought her last battle from this same space. Today, Jack kept her company. It was nice to have his supporting presence, but she somehow doubted she’d find time to even notice him.
Her eyes roved from screen to screen.
No surprise, the aliens had upped their deceleration for a bit and were farther out than Kris had planned for. The extra deceleration meant they would have to do some reaching to make orbit, but it would allow them more maneuverability when the shooting started. Kris would not always be able to count on having their vulnerable engines and reactors pointed her way.
Trade-offs, trade-offs. This was a surprise Kris had ex-
pected.
Then they did the unexpected.
The first seven upped their deceleration, which put the other fifteen rapidly climbing up their rear. However, as the next eight overtook the vanguard, they slewed aside to take station on their far side. Then they also upped their deceleration. The last seven ships slid in smoothly on the side closest to Kris’s squadron. That done, they all resumed their previously scheduled fleet deceleration.
Instead of facing a long line whose T Kris could easily cross, she now was confronted by three much shorter lines. One was a few hundred kilometers closer to her, but the other two were in a perfect position to flank Kris if she tried to have her squadron take that line on alone.
“They’ve formed squadrons,” Kris said softly to herself.
“I bet you didn’t see that coming,” Jack said.
“Actually, I kind of expected something like that,” Kris said, still half talking to herself. “I was thinking they’d form a dish like in the last fight, but three lines have advantages as well.”
“They aren’t dumb,” Jack said.
“I never said they were.”
“No, I don’t believe you have,” he agreed. “So, now what?”
“We use our 20-inch lasers for best effect, and boy, do I wish I’d brought along just two of those 22-inch war wagons.”
“This will be a slugfest,” Jack concluded.
“It’s looking that way. They outweigh us. If they manage to come alongside and board, they’ll bury us in bodies. However, we have the reach, and, unless I’m mistaken, they don’t have any armor.”
“Kris, Chief Beni has been doing his best to get a solid-mass determination on those ships,” Nelly said.
“And they do have armor,” Jack said softly.
“The ships are massing more than they did the last time we met them. Every one of them is different, but there seems to be between forty-five and seventy-five thousand tons more ship there.”
“Nelly, how many extra tons were on the ship we shot up at the Hornet’s arsenic planet?”
“I estimate there were fifteen to twenty thousand tons of rock, Kris, that we had to punch through before we could hit the soft, chewy center. There is likely double or more armor on these hulls.”
“So it’s maybe twice as bad as the last time?”
“It looks that way, Kris.”
“Pass that word to all
the captains with my compliments and suggest that they plan on hitting the same place on their target’s hull as hard as they can, as often as they can.”
“I’ve sent it, Kris.”
They were at three hundred thousand klicks and closing when Kris ordered the fleet to set Condition Charlie. She saw no reason to let the aliens know any sooner than she had to that their targets could get smaller. The former mutineers pitched in, manning the Wasp’s extra reactor. Those who weren’t engineers mustered with the Marines to repel boarders.
Sampson stayed sedated in the brig. It was tiny, but it was locked.
Jacques and Amanda joined the twenty alien recruits in a space reserved for them at the center of gravity for the Wasp. Hopefully, that would make the jinking around easier on them.
And hopefully, Jacques could find words to explain what was going on.
Kris had so wanted to talk to an alien, ever since the first time they gave her a choice between killing them or dying herself. Now she had her own pet aliens, and she hadn’t found a second to talk to them.
The problem, of course, was that these aliens were of a different tribe from the strong, silent types that wanted her dead.
Oh, and the tame aliens didn’t have all that big of a vocabulary.
Someday, the world would have to present Kris with a few easy problems.
Someday, hopefully, sooner rather than later.
Physics ruled space warfare. In ancient days, ship battles had depended on the wind. No wind, no battle. Too much wind, and the ships might find themselves struggling to stay afloat more than fight each other.
Space battles were very much like that, only it was gravity that ruled the roost. And while gravity might be more constant than the wind, it was no less a master of the battle.
The alien warships were decelerating, aiming to make orbit around the cat world. What they’d do there was an exercise best left to horror.
Kris was on a course to intercept them.
Gravity ruled both their vectors.
But laser power might very well trump gravity’s vectors.
At 160,000 klicks, Kris ordered all her ships to Condition Zed. Thirty seconds later, she ordered them to cut deceleration and face the enemy. Seven of her ships lashed out at the closest seven enemy ships with six 20-inch lasers each.
Kris Longknife: Tenacious (Kris Longknife novellas Book 12) Page 28