Kris Longknife Stalwart

by Mike Shepherd

  "I'd heard from several sources that you invited this junior clan lord to your table," Kris told the never-to-be Planetary Overlord.

  "So, what of it? We have plans to make for when you finally capture us a planet," he replied, wrapped in invulnerable dignity.

  He had no idea how moth eaten that garment was.

  "Or when you get a chance to take over this one," Kris said, then turned to the clan lord who actually ordered the bombing of the water aqueducts. "Shall I start the holograph of the junior lordling's confession?"

  The Iteeche leaned forward, rested four elbows on the table, then put his four palms over his four eyes. Without looking at Kris, he began speaking.

  "I didn't want to do it. Why should I do it? What good could it bring to me and my clan? Still, he threatened to see that I held my job for little more than a moon. If I didn't help him get this planet, I and my entire clan would be out of our jobs and starving on the streets before you even jumped out of the system you conquered and gave to him."

  "No trust, huh?" Kris muttered to the grasping Planetary Overlord.

  "Why should I trust you?" Sam shouted. "You promised this first conquest to me and my clan. You promised! Then you played this crazy game of semantics like some blind Imperial philosopher. You peeled your words until they had no more meaning than a flower stripped of its petals. What was there to trust?"

  "My word," Kris growled. "Megan bring in the guards."

  "You will not!" the Clan Lord snapped. "I am the master of a clan. You have no standing over me. I demand to speak to the council of clans. Let them hear my words and it will be you making that horrible new way of apologizing to the Emperor. You Humans never know when to leave well enough alone."

  "Very well," Kris said. "I had planned to bring you back to the Imperial Court for you to make your apology personally to the Emperor before all the clan chiefs. You will accompany me through my battles from a solitary cell on my flag."

  "I will not! I knew what you were up to. We Iteeche are not fools! Not one of those Battleships of State will sail unless I am aboard mine. Not one."

  Kris raised her eyebrows. "That will be interesting to see. Especially after I tell them what my next target planet is. Guards, remove these three Iteeche from my sight. I've had enough of them."

  The rest of them shared a much more comfortable dinner after the four Iteeche were removed.

  Next morning, Kris gave the order for the invasion fleet to sail before the battlecruisers pulled up anchor. Each of the nine Battleships of State detached from the space station right on schedule and followed the troop transports as they headed for the least-used jump point out of the Balan system.

  47

  The battlecruisers were in the lead as the fleet headed into the first jump. Three jumps later, two of them the advanced type, they jumped into the target system.

  Longnae was one of the three richest systems left to the rebellion. It had two occupied industrial planets, two more worthless ones being mined, and a richly exploited asteroid field.

  If they were going to try to stop her sweep through their gut, this was a likely place for them to defend.

  Kris was not disappointed.

  Longnae 3 and 4 were both circled by space stations. From them came the hum of a battle fleet ready for combat. The weird noise from their reactors made it nearly impossible for the Princess Royal's signal analysis team to separate them out.

  "Ten thousand? Twenty thousand? More?" Kris asked.

  For a long five minutes, the head of Sensors Division polled his three leading chiefs. They added in a pair of sensor operators first class to the assessment.

  Shaking his head, the Sensor Division Officer headed for Kris.

  "First off, Admiral, the enemy ships are packed onto that station like cans of sardines. The piers are dangerously close together."

  "That doesn't sound so good," Kris said.

  "Yes, ma'am. However, there is something else. We think part of our problem is caused by a new reactor. Lots of them."

  "A new reactor type? What can you tell me about it?"

  Sensors let out a sigh. "As I said, they are crammed in so close together that we can't separate one from another. They all just kind of form a line of static with every spike too close together for us to make anything out of it. We also think there may be some heterodyning between the different engines. One signal may be modifying another, so that what we see from the same reactor once may be different from the next one, depending on how close or how powerful the reactors around it are."

  "I repeat, Commander, is what we are facing closer to ten or twenty thousand?"

  Sensors shook his head slowly. "Admiral, you're asking me for little more than a guess at this range. I think we might be able to pull the noise apart as we get closer."

  The look on Kris's face must have hastened the commander to add, "Closer to twenty thousand than ten thousand. It could be over twenty."

  Kris frowned. "What makes you say that?"

  "We're assuming that these are battlecruisers with three reactors. What if there are more ships with fewer reactors aboard?"

  "Do you think the Iteeche have managed to spin out a new class of ship?"

  "I'm not saying anything, because I don't know anything. However, the reactors seem to be a bit strange, strange enough to modify the standard music we get off of the usual reactors both we and they use. There is something not right here. I'm not sure we can assume that what worked last fight will work for this attack."

  Kris nodded, finally accepting that one of her usual miracle workers had come up empty handed.

  She asked Jack to report to her day quarters and converted the conference table into a large map board. If she wanted 3-D, Nelly could add that later.

  Jack found her pondering the map of the Longnae system.

  "You look worried," Jack said, as he rested his hands on the table beside hers.

  "I am."

  "How so?" her husband asked. He rested a hand on her shoulder and rubbed it for a second. A moment later, he was standing behind her, working on both sides of her backbone, from shoulders to the small of her back.

  Kris breathed in slowly, enjoying the warmth of Jack's touch on her back. She let the stress in her flow out through his fingers and her breath. Still, she only allowed herself a very brief minute.

  "While we were playing patty cake with the clan lords, the rebels came up with a surprise."

  "What kind of surprise?"

  "Nelly, give me a replica of what a sensor board should look like when it's scanning a thousand battlecruisers."

  A moment later, the table opened a window. It showed three bars: one tan, one white, one gray. Across them ran reports, traced out in green, red, and black. The squiggles told their story in a moving series of peaks and troughs. Strangely, the peaks and valleys of one strip were usually mimicked by those above and below it. There was some variance, but not much.

  "That's what the space station above Longnae 4 should look like. Here's what it does. Nelly?"

  The table opened a window with the sensor take that had everyone puzzled. In place of regularly repeating sine waves that were closely mirrored by the tracings of the signals above and below, it showed something totally different.

  These traces were a jagged series of ups and down, with data in none of the three bars reflecting in any of the others. Indeed, occasionally the green trace would shoot off the chart. Other times it crashed to the lowest data point.

  It was the same for the other two bars. They showed short jagged movements that edged up or down overall. Interspersed with that pattern were sharp spikes also going up or down.

  "Nelly, can you spot any sort of a pattern in this jumble?"

  "Kris, I and all my children within the fleet have been searching for a pattern since this first came in. So far, the major excursions have not been repeated in any kind of a pattern. Every time we spot a pattern in the low grass, it lasts for only a few seconds, then it takes off like a wil
d thing again. Sorry, Kris, but they either have a jammer with capabilities way beyond anything we could mimic, or they've done something that naturally produces the most random noise I've ever heard."

  "So, let's assume that the Iteeche computers have not suddenly gotten better than ours," Jack said. "What does that leave us?"

  "A new reactor for a new class of ships," Kris whispered.

  "Nelly," Jack said, "could you filter out what would be the normal sensor take from a fleet of battlecruisers?"

  "I will try," Nelly said. "I may have to search a bit to find the right place to slip in the canceling data."

  For several long minutes, the different squiggles shimmied and shook as Nelly tried to find a place where injecting the normal battlecruiser reactor readout could fit into the present readout and make everything fall into a useful pattern.

  Finally, the screen went back to its previous uninformative mess.

  "Kris, there must be several other input sources for the data. I've tried several million ways to fit the battlecruiser noise into these patterns and I’ve gotten nowhere. Every attempted match left patterns that are still way too random."

  "Thank you, Nelly."

  "What do we do now?" Jack asked. "Turn around and go find another planet?"

  "That might be the smartest thing to do," Kris mused slowly. "However, we have a major rebel fleet here. We left Balan with two thousand battlecruisers for its defense. It seems to me that with our six thousand warships, we ought to be able to take on this unknown fleet. After all, I've never had a larger force under my command."

  "That is true," Jack said. "However, I don't remember you ever sticking your head in a lion's mouth without checking how loose its dentures were."

  "I know," Kris said slowly. "Yes, I know. So, let's stick our head in this noose very carefully. Nelly, set a fleet speed for Longnae 4 at one gee for the battlecruiser fleet. When the attack transports finish coming through, let the soldiers have it easy. If we have them head in at .4 gees, we should have plenty of room to maneuver."

  "And if we get a surprise?" Jack asked.

  Kris studied the system. "We've got a couple of gas giants between us and Longnae 4. They're a bit off our course, but they'd give us a place to swing around and reverse course. Maybe refuel as well. There's a rocky planet fairly close to 4 that we can also swing around."

  "That assumes they haven't read your own book on defense," Jack pointed out. "They could be using it to swing around and put themselves on a parallel course for a running gun battle as you approach their planet."

  Kris made a face at Jack. "I had hoped that you hadn't noticed that." She shook her head. "I'd much rather be defending this system than attacking it."

  "I'm glad you hear yourself admitting that," Jack said.

  Kris nodded. "They’re in a good position to mount a defense. They've got an unknown number of ships, with some way of masking their reactors that confuses us. Yeah, what's not to like."

  48

  The approach to Longnae 4 was slow . . . and it remained uninformative. The noise coming off the five space stations orbiting Longnae 4 and the other three space stations orbiting Longnae 3 continued to run together. Sensors could not take a count of reactors, so the force ahead remained unknowable.

  The sensor division head was often seen walking the passageways shaking his head and mumbling to himself. That might have been something to worry about. However, Nelly remained just as befuddled.

  "It is as if they had plastered reactors all over the surface of the stations," Nelly said. "Assuming they have, and this isn't some new jamming, how could they dock that many ships that close without having some of them smashing into the piers as they docked?"

  Nelly seemed to shake her non-existent head. "Even if they did risk packing their ships in that tight, there would inevitably be some pier strikes. There would have to be spaces in the noise where a ship crashed as it tried to catch the hook. Kris, this is driving me crazy."

  "Is this the first time you haven't been able to solve a problem?" the admiral asked.

  "It's the biggest one I have failed to hack," Nelly admitted, "and the one that bothers me the most."

  Kris pulled her focus from the puzzling planets ahead to eye her own fleet. She had it formed up in the normal fashion, five wings in a cross shape. The cross could be spread out to prevent the enemy from engulfing it or concentrated to bring more fire to bear on a smaller area.

  Kris preferred that flexibility in battle.

  She had a bit more than 1,200 battlecruisers per wing. However, 200 of them were green as grass. They'd only had the brief time since they departed Balan to shake down, learn Kris's drills, and operate with a fleet this large.

  There were 640 experienced combat battlecruisers that had had come with Kris to the Imperial Capital. All the rest of her 6,000 had only a few weeks of drill under her command. Kris would have to be careful both with what she ordered and the way she ordered it. Confusion could easily slip into the ranks of battlecruisers if half understood her order one way, and half another way.

  The more Kris reflected on her situation, the less she liked it.

  However, she was an experienced enough battle commander to know that the other side of her battle board had their own problems. To date, she had been beating the rebels like a drum. Those ships up ahead were most likely just as green as her own crews. Maybe more so.

  She surveyed the system. It was devoid of any sign that ships were moving about. That included merchant ships as well as warships. She remembered a saying from back when Navies were wet and powered by sail that went something like the Royal Navy drank their grog while the French kept to port. While it compared two alcoholic drinks, it was also meant to point out that Navies are meant to be used, not kept swinging around the anchor.

  Her fleet, though its time was short, was doing what warships did. Drill, drill, and drill some more. Could the same be said for that unknown mass of ships ahead, tied up to the space station's piers? As happened so often when she went into battle, she would have to wait for the end of a horrible day to know the answer to that.

  The answer began to come clear when the space stations above Longnae 3 sortied a battle fleet. Warships by the thousands detached from the stations and set a course for the worthless rock that was Longnae 5 at 1.7 gees. That was double the normal gravity for an Iteeche.

  The enemy's intention to swing around the fifth planet and settle on a parallel course for Longnae 4 where they could take Kris's fleet under fire became obvious.

  "Kris," Nelly said, "Most of the battlecruisers have detached from the bases around Longnae 3."

  "Yes," Kris said, waiting for the next shoe to drop.

  "I am still having problems making sense of the hash coming off the stations. The noise is all over the place and too close and confused for me to separate it into a coherent signal."

  "I'm sure we'll find out soon enough," Kris said.

  Kris was sitting down to lunch with Jack and Megan when Nelly cleared her throat.

  "Yes, Nelly?" Kris said.

  "The noise from Longnae 3 is now detaching from the stations there and accelerating at 2.1 gees for Longnae 5."

  "Do you have a coherent signal?" Jack asked while Kris waited for Nelly to get to the point.

  "The signal is coalescing into an intelligent blend of signals."

  "Spit it out, Nelly," Kris finally ordered, exasperated by the wait.

  "We are facing a fleet of small- to medium-sized ships, all with one reactor of traditional Iteeche design such as we saw in the Iteeche War ninety years ago. They appear to be armed with a few large lasers. The weapon systems are different, but the same in some ways."

  "What do you mean, Nelly?" Kris asked.

  "Even though the lasers are 20-inch and 22-inch guns, they all have two capacitors. Smaller, but two."

  "Does that mean what I think it means?" Jack asked.

  "If you think it means they can fire a large laser for only a few seconds, th
en reload one laser at a time to get off a second shot, yes. Depending on what electrical power they're drawing from the reactor, they should be able to reload the two small capacitors faster than they could reload one big one."

  "Any idea what the range is on these lasers?" Kris asked. "Our Fast Attack Boats were armed with 18-inch pulse lasers. They packed a wallop but only at a short range."

  "It's hard to tell," Nelly answered. "Some appear to be armed with cast-off lasers from ships that were upgraded to 24-inchers. Others, I'm not so sure. I also have to wonder where the reactors came from. They match the signatures we took off Death Balls during the war. Bi-remes and Tri-remes had two or three reactor pods around the sphere. Quadri-remes and Penta-remes added four or five pods, then double or tripled the reactors and were laser mounted. Toward the end of the war, the Death Balls had gotten huge. That gave them a lot of firepower, but also left them a large target."

  "Tell me something I don't know, Nelly," Kris grumbled.

  "Somebody hit the archive library of reactor designs and came up with all the different reactors they had on those different ships: smallest, small, medium, big, bigger, biggest, large, largest."

  "I get your point," Kris snapped.

  "They must have mass produced a lot of those old reactor designs, then build ships around them for any guns they had on hand. It was all those different reactor designs, complicated by the new power system that gives them five or six times the power of regular ships that made it impossible for me to match all their different signals to what we had in our archives."

  "How many are there?" Jack asked.

  "I'm still having problems sorting them out," Nelly said.

  "Still?" Kris growled.

  "Somehow, they've got the signals still squashed up together. I spotted a few as they began to launch, but as more got into space, the clutter went back to hash. I don't know how they can get so much noise out of this mess, but the signal is far enough away that they all blend into one big mash up."

  Kris must have looked ready to tear into her computer, because Jack jumped in before Kris could say something she'd regret.