Kris Longknife's Relief: Grand Admiral Santiago on Alwa Station

by Mike Shepherd

  “Message traffic, priority,” the comm lieutenant reported, then thumbed her folder and withdrew the message flimsy. The commander scanned the message. “Another one, Lieutenant?”

  “Yes, sir. We haven’t had one of these for a couple of weeks.”

  “Be glad for that,” he said, then ordered up a star map and rattled off the originator of the report. As he expected, the violated system was one of the most distant.

  He nodded, and signed for the message. “I’ll include this in the morning briefing. No need to wake up a bunch of stars for news that is already three weeks old.”

  “Aye, aye, sir. You still interested in a squash game tomorrow?”

  The commander grinned at the lieutenant. “You want to lose another set?”

  “Speak for yourself, sir.”

  “You know, if we keep playing squash every other day, one of us might need to fill out a Standard Form 57.”

  She grinned. “I wouldn’t mind that sort of paperwork. You want to do it or shall I?”

  “I’ll fill it out. We can both sign it tomorrow.”

  She wrinkled her nose, then turned away. Was there a bit more wiggle in her walk? Yeah, they both needed to do the paperwork for this relationship before it developed much more. Fraternization may not be as frowned upon as it had once been, but it still had rules.

  The commander again scanned the message. He hated to say it, but probes by the aliens were getting to be routine. He shook his head; they could not allow this to become the new normal.

  He added the message to the morning briefing, made sure it was all properly logged, then returned to studying the use of gravity wells in battle management.

  Those type of calls were usually made way above the pay grade of a battlecruiser captain. Still, single ship actions had been fought, and a single casualty could promote him into command of a division of four warships, escorting a buoy tender to repair or expand their picket line.

  You never knew what might be out on the other side of that next jump.

  7

  Grand Admiral Santiago made it a practice to include Admiral Kitano in the daily briefing. As Sandy had learned, Alwa Station was different. Having Amber at her elbow during the morning brief gave her immediate access to a font of knowledge that was especially helpful when Sandy took that next step . . . and discovered it wasn’t there.

  Today was no different.

  The night duty officer gave the daily briefing before going off duty. That gave him most of the small hours of the morning to prepare it. From the brevity of the briefings over the last two weeks, Sandy wondered what they did for most of their watch.

  Today, the commander didn’t start his briefing off by announcing that they had spent the last twenty-four hours at Alert Status Two, not quite the lowest, but much better than “hair on fire” Five.

  This morning, the briefer began by calling up a holographic star map and walking into the middle of it. After pointing a laser at one planet and getting it flashing red, he said, “One of our outer sentinels reported an incursion. It took the report three weeks to make it back here, so this is likely a stale datum.”

  “When will we know if the buoy was destroyed?” Amber asked.

  “The follow-on message may take a week or more to arrive,” the commander answered.

  “All that we know is that a star ship with three reactors entered system N-24 by its Beta Jump. A hostile cruiser accelerating at 2.5 gees from Beta Jump to Alpha where our sentinel is will need about a week to get there and destroy our buoy.”

  Sandy frowned at the problems of time and distance, even at the speed of light. The alert had been sounded three weeks ago. Two weeks ago, the buoy likely was lazed to atoms, but it would be another week before they know that.

  “How soon could we get a reaction force out there?” Sandy asked.

  The commander had a ready answer. “If a squadron maintained up to 3.5 gees acceleration when it could, we have a course to system M-15 that will likely take ten days.”

  “The cruiser probably destroyed our picket two weeks ago and got out of the system last week,” Amber pointed out. “We can’t get there until seventeen days after the alien cruiser jumped out.”

  “So this is just a nuisance raid,” Sandy said.

  “But it gives us data,” Amber said. “Commander, what can you tell me about this ship?”

  “It has three reactors, so it’s likely a cruiser design. The reactors don’t match anything in our database. The design is close to Wolf Pack Foxtrot. Admiral Longknife destroyed that mother ship and about half of its battleships before the Battle of System X. It was sending suicide skiffs at us. It’s likely that this new wolf pack picked up some of the survivors of Wolf Pack Foxtrot that missed out on dying with their mother ship and those survivors may have taught them how to build cruisers.”

  “Commander, highlight for the admiral the other two systems that have been skunked,” Amber said.

  The briefing officer highlighted two more systems. Both were at the N layer, thirteen jumps out from Alwa. “They got raided by alien battleships that, again, had different reactors and lasers from any we’d run into before.”

  “Battleships?” Sandy said.

  “Excuse me, Admiral,” Amber put in. “When all we had to deal with was alien base ships or the half million ton monsters that escorted them, we just call them alien warships. Now, they’re making smaller, faster ships. We call them cruisers. The monsters we now call battleships. We’re trying to fit the alien fleet into our own nomenclature.”

  “And the high speed, single reactor suicide boats are skiffs,” Sandy said, nodding.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “So, to put all of this together, we’re being prodded by at least three wolf packs, but they’re just testing our pickets and running away before we can cross swords with them.”

  “Yes,” Amber said.

  “What did we do when they hit the last two pickets?”

  “We dispatched a division of battlecruisers with a buoy tender. We replaced the destroyed sentinel and added pickets on the other side of the jumps out of that system. In those two areas, we now have an O layer of warning buoys.”

  “If you do the same thing three times in a row,” Sandy asked, “what are the chances they’ll flip on you? Try something new?”

  Amber tossed that one to the briefer. He looked seriously uncomfortable. “We’re dealing with what appear to be three different wolf packs. They are about as far apart around our sphere of sentinels as they can be. The chances of any coordination seem unlikely.”

  “And, in addition,” Amber took over, much to the well-hidden relief of the commander, “our battlecruisers are under orders not to engage a larger force.”

  Sandy had the good form to cough gently at that comment. All too recently, she’d thought she was engaging a smaller force. Thought that for too long.

  “And yes, Admiral, as a general rule, we don’t go chasing after aliens who run,” Amber said, letting Sandy know that out on Alwa station they were smart enough not to do what she’d just done. But gently.

  “Our standard approach to a jump is to cruise up to it slowly, send a sentinel through, wait for it to return with a general situation for the other side of the jump, and only then send one ship through. We prefer to be as cautious as any cat at a dog show, and, so far, we haven’t run into any dogs off of their leashes. We know that could change at any minute, but we impress on the commanders of these patrols that their priority is to bringing back information rather than add some notches to their belt.”

  “Very good,” Sandy said. “Are we done with this part of the briefing?”

  “Do you want to send out a division or a squadron, Admiral, to replace the sentinel?” the commander asked.

  “Assign one of your experienced divisions and one of my divisions that hasn’t gotten in any shooting time and send them out.” Sandy turned to Amber. “How much advanced warning do you give for a sortie?”

  “If
I’m nice, twenty-four hours. If I think people are getting complacent, four. In those cases, I do allow captains to ask to be dropped from the sortie.”

  “And?” Sandy asked.

  “Then I give them a full, top down inspection. It doesn’t always result in the relief of the captain, but it can.”

  Sandy grinned. “Four hours, Commander.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” he said, and spoke a few words into his commlink.

  Somewhere, prepared orders were showing up on the bridges of eight ships. Somewhere, people’s boring day was turning exciting.

  While he was doing that, Sandy leaned over close to Amber and whispered, “Do you really keep all your ships on a four hour sortie notice?”

  “We try to keep all ships on a twenty-four hour notice, except for those in a reduced availability periods. We keep one fleet ready to sortie on eight hour notice. It has a squadron on ready alert that can clear the pier in five minutes for a short duration cruise. Another squadron is on four hour no-notice sortie status. Finding two divisions, one veteran and the other newly arrived may take a bit of work, but it will be interesting to see how this goes down.”

  Some might consider this cruel, but as Sandy mulled the entire process over, she found she very much approved of this. Toes were invented, after all, to keep Sailors on them.

  Four hours later, eight battlecruisers departed the station and set 2.4 gee acceleration for the Jump Point Beta. Immediately, a buoy slipped through to announce to the next system the time these ships would jump through and set a half hour cushion around it for any approaching traffic.

  The ready alert squadron had the right of way.

  Penny’s computer, Mimzy, had examined several courses to system O-24 and chosen the fastest. Battlecruisers would be in that system in twelve days.

  8

  For the next week, matters progressed comfortably, the way Sandy liked. Portions of the fleet sortied every other day for training. One numbered fleet was usually matched against another fleet. Since all of them had a mix of old Alwa hands and new arrivals, both fleets got serious workouts and Sandy’s nuggets got some of the green worn off of them. Considering that training cruises were usually a twice a year experience for the Wardhaven Navy, Sandy found she approved of keeping the ships out on the tip of the spear well practiced and sharp.

  The Navy wasn’t the only thing that seemed to be going smoothly.

  Pipra Strongarm showed up with Abby Nightingale in tow one cheery morning after the morning briefing to do a briefing of her own.

  “We’ve got a couple of changes in the production quotas that I want to bring you up to speed on,” the Nuu Enterprise CEO said.

  Sandy’s eyebrows rose up her forehead like angry caterpillars. Not production again.

  Pipra saw the storm and moved quickly to head it off. “Do you mind if I bring your Admiral Benson and First Minister Ada in on this?”

  “Please do so.”

  The large screen in Sandy’s day room came to life. One side showed Admiral Benson’s office, the other Ada’s. Apparently, this was no surprise; both were seated at conference tables, surrounded by interested subordinates.

  “We’ve have some nice news for a change,” the industrialist said. “The lunar prospectors near the new North Production complex found a field of titanium ore. It turned out to be richer than the first reports led us to believe. We’re bringing it on line now and getting more yield per ton. That allows us to jack up production in the light fabs. The ones that produce things like refrigerators, egg warmers and the like.

  “We also discovered a rock out in the asteroids that is rich in rare earths. It has come on line faster than we thought and it is very rich. It’s providing us with just what we need to increase the production of TV’s, phones and other electronics that the birds and Colonials like. Adding to our good luck, that last fab to come on line is a light fab, perfect for this kind of feed stock.”

  Sandy eyed the production boss, still trying to guess when the next shoe would drop and what it would hit.

  “This is a win-win for everyone,” Pipra said. “We can increase our production of consumer goods from the light fabs. They can be operated by Colonials and birds. We can switch more of our heavy fabs to Smart Metal, lasers and other ordinance, as well as making more light fabs.”

  Pipra smiled. “Everybody should be happy. Please, Admiral, a smile is actually in order at the moment.”

  Sandy found herself smiling despite herself.

  “So you’re not telling me we need to knock together an entirely new production schedule?” Ada said.

  “Correct,” was Pipra’s quick response.

  “Thank God,” was not a prayer from Ada.

  Pipra continued quickly. “Right now, we’re running at about 40-40-20%. Defense and consumer goods are getting close to an equal portion of the lion’s share. Investment in new production capability is holding at about twenty percent. For any normal economy, that defense share would be a huge burden. For Alwa, however, we need it and we can carry it. Consumer goods are low because the Colonials were living hand to mouth before we got here and just having a decent meal on the table three times a day is something to celebrate. As for the birds, most of them are still ignoring us. That’s changing for many of the younger birds, but not so fast that we can’t stay ahead of it.”

  Pipra paused, “Anyway, what I would suggest to everyone is that we use the extra new resources to let production output to all portions of the market float higher. No change in priorities, just more of it.”

  “You really do have good news for a change,” Admiral Benson said, leaning back in his chair. “When your message said you did, I really didn’t believe you, but hey, I can live with this.”

  “I’ll have Abby forward you the full details of the plan. There is a bit of wiggle room along the edges. If you see something you don’t like, assume it was just an oversight on my part, not an intent to dis you. Please talk to me before you hit the ceiling,” Pipra said.

  “Are we done?” Sandy asked.

  “Yes, we are, Admiral,” Pipra said.

  Sandy grinned. “I could use short meetings like these.”

  The next meeting took a lot more of her time. Professor Labao showed up an hour after Pipra with three full readers, enthusiastically prepared to tell Sandy about every lovely detail of what the boffins intended to do with the coming time on the putative alien home world.

  Sandy tried cutting to the chase.

  “By the time we’re finished, will we know for sure that it is the home world of the aliens.”

  “It is rarely possible to know with certainty what happened last week,” the aristocratic academic said. “This happened a hundred thousand years ago and involved peoples we can hardly comprehend.”

  “We have aliens trying to kill us. We have some of their bodies. We have samples of people living on this planet now. Are they related?” Sandy said, doggedly

  “They appear to be,” was all she got in reply.

  Sandy scowled at that evasion.

  “What about this other system just one jump away? Were they the invaded or were they the invaders?"

  “That is extremely hard to answer, considering the present state of the planet, ma’am. We will be looking for anything that could answer that question, but absent a lucky discovery, like stumbling on a needle in a huge field of haystacks, we are not likely to find an answer to your question.”

  Sandy frowned at that answer, but knew it was reasonable.

  “Have your zenobiologists put together a thorough study plan for the different remnants left inside the pyramid?”

  “Oh, yes, ma’am. They are very enthusiastic. I have it all here in this reader,” the professor said, handing Sandy one of his three readers.

  “Good, you can leave it here for me to study when I have time,” Sandy said, cutting him off. “Will we have the necessary astronomers and astrophysicists to study the stars fields around the planet?”

  “Yes, tha
t is in this second reader,” and so saying, without prodding, the professor handed another reader over to Sandy.

  “And the other reader?”

  “Is the study plan developed by the archeologists for conducting digs at certain sites that appear to have been bombed in the last ten thousand years. The anthropologists also have developed a plan for studying the local tribes around the digs as well as around the pyramid. This time we intend to use tiny nanos and small drones to avoid any interpersonal contact with the locals. The only two encounters with the aliens were not well done.”

  Was a gentle way of saying Kris Longknife and her small team of scientists had blown the first contact protocols. Sandy had read that report and considered Kris’s effort effective, if a bit tenacious. Still, it was a first try and Sandy would not fault it.

  “Thank you for leaving these three readers with me. I’ll review the executive summaries and get back to you if I have any questions.”

  “Very good, Admiral. May I say that I hope scientific research will be the central driving force of this cruise.”

  Sandy snorted. “If the aliens cooperate, I certainly hope so.”

  “Ah, yes,” the professor answered dryly, then rose, and with a slight bow, left.

  Sandy eyed the readers. Fortunately, she had no meetings until tomorrow morning‘s briefing.

  Unfortunately, tomorrow’s briefing came way too soon.

  9

  The sound was wrong for Sandy’s alarm. She still told the damn thing to shut up. “Sorry, Admiral, but this isn’t your wake-up call. It’s 0212 hours and Comm has got a hot message. Can we bring it to your night cabin?”

  Sandy failed to suppress a yawn. “I’ll see you in my day cabin in five minutes. Get Admiral Kitano and have her standing by to join us in a link.”