Kris Longknife Stalwart

by Mike Shepherd

  The Stalwart heated up, going from glowing a warm yellow-white right into red before it blew itself to dust. The Valor held together longer, but did not survive the salvo from the aft batteries.

  By the end of those volleys, all of the five remaining ships of the top squadron were glowing hot. They flipped ship and put on 4.5 to 4.7 gees as soon as the enemy lasers fell silent.

  Ajax ordered the rest of the task group to go to 4.2 gees and cover their withdrawal. Again, they clipped the rocket motors of 40 battlecruisers, but the exchange rate was higher than the Human fleet liked.

  The next salvo from the rebels attacked the front of Ajax's ships. Many of the rebel ships had fallen behind and out of range as the Human battlecruisers applied the highest gees possible. Quite a few of them fired anyway. This time, the next highest squadron was the target, but the fire was much less concentrated and, while many ships glowed white hot, all were able to go to 4.5 gees and pull away from the fight.

  This time, 66 rebel ships were knocked out of line. Ajax had ordered her flotillas to each put a maximum effort in scattering low power bursts all around the ships which were also doing a poorer job of dodging themselves. Apparently they needed a reminder that while their own aim got better when they dodged less, they also became better targets.

  With Ajax conducting a measured withdrawal, half the charging enemy ships were again out of range. Many of them chose to flip ship and head for greener, or at least more open, pastures.

  Admiral Kitano, for her part, ordered three of her flotillas to hasten to Ajax's aid.

  Again, the enemy fire was not directed at any one ship. However, having focused on the lead ships in the last several attacks, the middle ships came in for hard handling this time.

  The Princess Royal was the fourth ship in the squadron of eight.

  78

  The first Kris knew that the P. Royal had drawn the short straw was when the air in the flag bridge began to get warm, then hot.

  She had kept her flag bridge amidships, right at the point where the hull was widest, and began to taper going either fore or aft. If the rebel fire control systems were aiming for the center of mass, the bridge shouldn't have gotten the worst of the hits.

  That, however, only worked for those ships that were directly across from them. Ships to the right or left, up or down, could aim for the center and miss wide. Many of them hit the wide part of the hull.

  The temperature on the bridge went from comfortable to blazing hot in the amount of time it took the heat to diffuse through the 10 centimeters of crystal armor, into the 30 centimeters of super chilled Smart Metal™ and down to the meter of honeycombed armor that was cooled by the rapid flow of moist reaction mass.

  In theory, the spinning outer hull should have moved the heated crystal away from the slashing laser beams. This moment, too much heat was hitting the whirling hull from too many directions for any of that to matter.

  Normally, the reaction mass circulated freely through a meter of honeycomb. However, reaction mass expanded explosively as the lasers raised the temperature of the armor to the near boiling point of Smart Metal. Valves at the aft end of each pipe run were specifically designed to open and vent the superheated gas into space. They didn't just open but blew out and tumbled into space.

  In the bow, fresh, cool reaction mass flowed into the pipes. It quickly overheated and blew out the aft end.

  All this was supposed to keep the Princess Royal from being blown apart by hits from 24-inch lasers. However, Kris's flagship was the focus of a hundred or more rebel battlecruisers, intent on getting some revenge for their slaughtered shipmates.

  Instantaneously, Kris's high gee station locked itself down as a survival pod. Launching a pod through the superheated armor was suicide. Still, the pod did what it could to protect Kris's all too fragile life.

  "Jack!" she cried through gritted teeth.

  "I'm here!" was strangled and weak, but it was there.

  "Hold on!" Kris half-commanded, half-begged.

  Inside her pod, a fine mist of water tried to cool her and the walls that held her body close. The water all too soon flashed to steam. It would have boiled Kris like a lobster, but the pod sucked the heated air out of her tiny compartment, cooled what it could, and vented the rest into the flag bridge.

  Quickly, the place came to look like the inside of a steaming fog. The air recirculation system struggled to suck the mist out, vent it to space, and fill the room with fresh air.

  However, Nelly was making nearly instantaneous changes to the ship. All equipment not essential to survival vanished. Around the flag bridge, screens, workstations, and battle boards all melted into the heating deck. Now the survival pods had their own access to the ship's water supply, and more fine mist struggled to cool each of the crew before it overheated and had to be flung into space.

  The overheated, meter thick honeycomb of cooling reaction mass grew thicker until a good half-meter had been added to it.

  A blood curdling scream filled the net for a moment before it was cut short, either by a grateful death or a chief taking that pod off net. Someone's survival pod had failed.

  Kris knew that the same death awaited all of them if they couldn't shed the concentrated laser beams holding them like moths pinned poorly to a board for a primary school report.

  "I have the con," Nelly said on net. No one argued with her.

  Kris found the weight on her chest dropping while she was slammed harder against the hot sides of her pod. She gritted her teeth and fought to hold in the scream of pain that clogged her throat.

  Admirals did not scream.

  Around her, the bulkheads, overhead, and deck began to glow with heat. Kris felt like she was being baked in an oven, bombarded by a vicious heat. It would have boiled her blood and roasted her flesh if the pod wasn't struggling to keep her barely among the living.

  The heat was unbearable. Still, it went on and on, not giving way to blessed oblivion. Kris struggled to breathe in as little of the hot, steaming air as she could. She waited for the agony to end, begging any listening God to bring her back safe to her children.

  Will you never go out again? The question came unbidden to her mind.

  Kris scowled. Even in this extremis, she did not believe in a god that bargained for Her blessings. Kris would live or die the way she had lived: fighting and willing to keep fighting for what needed to be done.

  She firmly believed that the survival of that poor kid on the throne was important for both humanity and every Iteeche alive.

  No. She was satisfied with what she had done with her life, and in this battle. She wanted with all her being to return to her kids, but she and they knew she'd go back out when the mission required it.

  That was her bequest to her children. If the mission was critical, you gave it your all.

  Somewhere in Kris's dialogue with herself or her God, she noticed that the temperature was beginning to cool. It was still painfully hot, but it was a bit shyer of scalding.

  "You okay, Honey?" Jack asked.

  "I think we're going to make it," Kris breathed

  The ship computer announced, "Maintaining survival pod integrity. We are venting the ship's atmosphere to space."

  The steaming air on the flag bridge was sucked away. For a long minute, nothing replaced it. The overheated structure of the bridge was allowed to radiate much of its heat into the open space that surrounded Kris. A slow hiss of air and reaction mass blew through the bridge as it collected the heat and was quickly swept out.

  Now Kris was again under 4.5 gees, maybe more, as the Princess Royal opened the distance between it and the rebel fleet that was defeated, but still deadly.

  "Nelly, can you show me the battle?"

  "Sorry, Kris, but we lost all our sensors. I'm afraid the Princess Royal is deaf, dumb, and blind. Once we bleed off more of this heat I will try to reestablish the basic sensor and comm suite, but for now, Admiral, this battle goes on without us."

  "That's fi
ne, Nelly. I trust my admirals. I just hope we don't crash into anything."

  "So do I, Kris. So do I."

  Even blind, Nelly began to take some of the killing gees off of the flagship. Slowly Kris felt her weight go from deadly to merely oppressive. The brutal heat slowly bled away to merely painful.

  A small shape dangling from the overhead formed where everyone that was flat on their back in their survival pod could see. It soon morphed into a screen that showed the immediate million kilometers around Kris's flagship.

  Admiral Ajax had broken off contact with the enemy fleet and they had flipped ship and taken off after their erstwhile associates. Now, the rebel wings were scattered across space in six contingents. The farthest two were the largest, the closest ones the smallest.

  Admirals Kitano and Ajax were back at the chase. They'd close just in range and take out the rearmost rebel ships, then lower their gees to avoid overtaking the next batch while they reloaded.

  Lasers charged, they'd again closed with the rebels. Some of the enemy tried to flip ship and take on their attackers. They got a full-strength salvo and either blew up or went tumbling out of control, a shattered wreck. Those that kept running usually ended up twisting about in space with damaged rocket motors and begging to surrender.

  Admiral Tong's Iteeche wings were now coming up. They took over guarding the surrendered rebel warships. After sending over a boarding party to take possession of the ship and assure it could not become a threat, they were left behind to begin decelerating into orbit around Longnae 4. The sooner they did that, the fewer gees they had to suffer.

  More and more of the rebel Iteeche fell out of the two fleeing wings.

  "Nelly, are any of the ships we're chasing going to be able to make orbit?"

  "Not with the high velocity and course they are on now. I think they may be able to steer for Longnae 9. Depending on their fuel state, they may be able to make orbit around that gas giant and refuel. If not, they are quite likely going to starve before they can make any orbit. It may be that they've put too much energy on their ships to slow down for any planet."

  "Nelly, are you monitoring the main guard channel?"

  "I am now."

  "Get me a hookup to that channel."

  "You have it now, Kris."

  "This is Imperial Admiral of the First Order of Steel, Her Royal Highness Kris Longknife of the United Society. The Emperor of the Iteeche Empire has given me directly from his hand the honor of commanding the Imperial Combined Fleets. I address this to all Iteeche sailors and officers presently in rebellion against their Emperor and sailing in warships in the Longnae system."

  Kris paused to carefully take a breath. The air in the pod was still scorching hot.

  "Throw down your weapons. Take all acceleration off your ships, empty your lasers into empty space, and destroy the bus bars between the capacitors and your reactors. Do this and you will live. Many senior officers may need to be reassigned or demoted. However, I pledge on my honor that you will be treated as Prisoners of War under the Laws of War practiced by my people."

  She'd offered them the carrot. Hopefully, they would believe that Humans were alien enough to them that her laws might just be survivable.

  "If you do not surrender, I intend to stop chasing you. By my best estimate, most of you are near to exhausting your reaction mass. You are headed on a high velocity course to nowhere. If you stay this course, you will end up deep in interstellar space as your ships grow cold and your air grows bad. Maybe you will starve to death before you freeze or asphyxiate. It doesn't matter which, only death lies ahead of you.

  Again, Kris paused, both to catch her breath and to let that thought sink in. She'd been on such a nightmare ride. She'd risked it because she had no other choice but certain death. What would they decide?

  "Consider your next move carefully. Many sailors aboard ships in the last few hours have locked up captains that insisted on sending them on a death ride. The choice is yours. Choose quickly and wisely. You do not have a lot of time."

  Kris paused for a moment then finished. "Admiral Longknife out."

  "Nelly, get me Admirals Tong and Kitano."

  The tiny screen above her had expanded by several centimeters as more metal could be pulled from the hull. The two admirals appeared above her head.

  "Did you copy my last message?" she asked.

  Both nodded.

  "Break off the chase," Kris ordered, " and make for Longnae 4."

  "Some of our ships may need to try for Longnae 5 to refuel," Nelly put in.

  "Or Longnae 5," Kris added.

  "Admiral Longknife, some of my ships have enough reaction mass to continue the pursuit for another hour, assuming the rebels cut their acceleration."

  "Proceed cautiously, Admiral Tong, but I'd prefer to have ships surrender rather than head off into the void."

  "Is that really their course?" Admiral Tong asked. "I tried to get my flag computer to calculate their course, but it insisted it had insufficient information."

  "I assumed a slightly larger than standard reaction mass load out," Nelly said. "When I looked at all their heavy accelerations, decelerations and then going back to a hard charge with a lot of adjusting, I estimated that they are only hours away from the point of no return. I could be wrong on the basic assumption of their initial load, but I think I have measured their fuel usage accurately."

  "Thank you, Nelly," Kris said.

  "What was that admiral thinking?" Tong muttered.

  "He was thinking he could win a fight, then work it out later, I imagine," Kris said.

  "The fool."

  "Admirals," Kris said, changing the topic to survival. "I am ordering all damaged ships to make for Longnae 4. I don't know how much reaction mass the Princess Royal has left after losing so much to cooling. I hope we can make it.”

  "I have checked the tanks, Kris. I think we have enough. We may have to be careful flushing toilets and taking baths or showers, but we should be able to make it."

  Kris could have killed for a shower, but it was clearly days away.

  On screen, Kris watched as her flag, and the rest of the crippled ships began the long, slow braking that would take them to their target planet. They each followed their own course. They had no spare fuel to waste for forming up.

  While the rest of the fleet waited to see which among the rebel ships would choose to live or to die, the Princess Royal began the careful journey toward a desperately needed pier.

  79

  Most of the damaged battlecruisers barely made it. They ended up in high elliptical orbits. With the remaining fuel aboard, it took them time to regulate and lower themselves to match orbit with a space station.

  That was when the next problem raised its ugly head.

  The managers of the four space stations above Longnae 4 refused to let the crippled battlecruisers dock. Two, then four, then seven badly damaged warships ended up trailing the stations as their crews suffered in zero gee.

  As the wrecked Princess Royal made its final approach to Longnae 4, Kris put on her dress whites and took an angry stance before the main screen in her flag bridge. It was barely half the size of normal, but the camera above it was at full power.

  "This is Grand Admiral, Her Royal Highness Kristine Longknife of the United Society, Imperial Admiral of the First Order of Steel. I personally received from the Emperor's hand a mandate to command the Imperial Combined Fleet. I commanded the fleet that just beat the rebel warships in this system like a drum. Thousands of battlecruisers were blown to dust in the blink of an eye. Thousands more chose to accept the offered surrender. It is now your turn."

  Kris paused to let their plight sink into any thick heads that were still unpersuaded that surrender was the only acceptable option. When she went on, Kris made sure that those hold-outs didn't want to try her fury.

  "Know this, those of you who administer Longnae 3, 4, and 5. If you do not accept the offer to surrender, the battlecruisers presently in orbit
will begin the destruction of your planet. By the time my fleet is done with your two planets, they will be balls of molten rock, unfit for any life for the next billion years."

  Kris gave the screen a scowl of biblical proportions before telling Nelly to cut the line.

  Fifteen minutes later, the USS Dominant was invited to come alongside the space station high above the planet's capital. Fortunately, she still had a full company of Marines.

  The troopers were immediately offered guides and led to the command center and the reactor control rooms. Once those were secure, the rest of the damaged ships caught the hooks and were quickly pulled into their assigned piers. The Princess Royal was the twelfth to tie up.

  Her flagship was no sooner docked than the skipper ran blowers to empty the ship of the air that had gotten stale and thick. A watch was set, and half the crew was released from stations to clean up. An hour later, they relieved the rest, and within two hours, everyone was almost feeling human again.

  Everyone who was still alive.

  The Princess Royal would likely never fight again. Launched at 5,000 tons over the normal 75,000 tons of her class, she now displaced barely 65,000 tons. The rest had boiled away to space.

  Along with it had gone half of the forward battery. The port side guns were hit so hard and often that burn-through could not even be prevented by the crystal armor. Thanks to Nelly's quick action, the capacitors behind the guns had contained only a fraction of a charge. When several blew up, they damaged the immediate area, but did not blow out the rest of the ship.

  Nelly may also have had something to do with that. She isolated the forward port battery behind a thickened bulkhead. When the explosions came, they were blocked from going inward. Instead, they blew outward into space.

  Unfortunately, that assured that there were no survivors from half the forward gun crews.

  There were other hull breaches. Under the intense focus of so many lasers, there was no way to avoid them. Nearly a quarter of the flagship's crystal armor was vaporized when it had been hard hit over ten seconds. Along with it went 15,000 tons of hull structure.