Kris Longknife: Defender

by Mike Shepherd

  They exploded, as reactors suffered damage, and containment failed.

  Kris frowned. Boss man on the mother ship must be getting tired of sending ships and none reporting back. What would a frustrated alien killer do? By now, he must know that Kris was holding the bridge. What was her weakness?

  “BatDiv 9, hold in place,” Kris ordered. “BatRons 1 through 4, reverse course. One-quarter-gee acceleration. BatDiv 10, reverse course and join the squadrons when they pass. Prepare for atomic attack.”

  Kris’s board lit up with acknowledgments as ships immediately responded to her order. In this battle, there was no time for a preliminary order to be followed later by an execute. Kris had rewritten the book. In an hour, she would know if her book was better than the old one.

  As the squadrons fell back to 120,000 klicks from the jump, the Wasp and Intrepid flipped ship and joined the withdrawal. Throughout the fleet, any sensor that didn’t have to be out was retracted and covered with armor.

  Three small objects shot through the jump and immediately separated into four smaller ones that spun away on wild courses. The four Helvetica frigates took out eight immediately. Their fire controls switched to the remainders as quickly as computers could. Three more vanished. One took a hit, but still blew.

  “Low-order detonation,” Professor Labao reported. “Less than a megaton.” He used the ancient form of measurement, one that Kris had no frame of reference for. “Our regular hardening for space’s radiation should handle this pulse.”

  That answered Kris’s question before she asked it.

  Kris’s screens showed the status of her entire fleet. BatDiv 9’s ships switched from green to red as two reported damage to their sensors.

  “BatDiv 9, reverse course, one-gee acceleration. All others cease deceleration. Reverse ship.” The fleet went to zero gee but momentum continued to move it away from the jump, rear first, forward batteries aimed at the jump.

  The last holders of the bridge decamped and moved to join the rest. Kris ordered a small deceleration burn to park her fleet 140,000 klicks from the jump. Their 20-inch lasers were still in range. They waited for what came next.

  All too soon, it came. The jump began spitting out monster ships every second. BatDiv 9’s rear batteries took out the first one. “Squadrons, engage by Plan A,” Kris ordered.

  The eight ships of BatRon 1 engaged the next ship out, firing half their forward lasers. The second ship through the jump exploded.

  But there were more. The battle squadrons engaged in order the third, fourth, and fifth targets. Alien ships came through the jump, and alien ships died. It was BatRon 1’s turn again, but the wreckage and roiling gases from the earlier ships were making the lasers less effective.

  “Let them get out five hundred klicks,” Kris ordered, and the squadrons held their fire for a fraction of a second before laying on again. Still, there were ships through now that hadn’t been fired upon. For every ship they blew, one slipped through and raced off at two gees acceleration.

  On the orders of their own commodores, the squadrons flipped to bring their aft batteries to bear. More monster ships died—some in spectacular explosions, some from a series of internal blows that tore them apart. Alien ships fired back, but their lasers dissipated before they could reach Kris’s fleet.

  Yes, alien ships died, but Kris’s ships were shooting themselves dry. They needed more time to recharge. As Kris’s screens showed her ships firing their last pair of ready lasers, she gave her next order.

  “Deploy chaff. Set course to two-ten by fifteen.” That would aim the fleet sunward and toward the nearest gas giant. “Accelerate at one gee. Deploy mines on my mark.”

  Kris waited ten seconds for the fleet to begin its move away from the laid chaff before giving the mark. As the mines silently slid from the frigates, canisters of ball bearings, metal cubes, and simple rocks left behind became active and blasted toward the alien ships. Some chaff canisters held bits of magnesium and white phosphorus with delayed timers to mix them with oxygen and set them to burning bright and hot. Behind the fleet, space began to sparkle, as the chaff masked where the mines waited patiently.

  Almost thirty alien ships were dead, but they had forced the jump for their master. Kris had made them pay a cruel price, but it was a price someone had paid willingly.

  More ships came through the jump every second. Kris would not have risked ships at that short an interval, but the aliens commander did. He paid with a couple of collisions that Kris spotted. Maybe more that she didn’t.

  While her fleet spent fifteen precious seconds recharging, fifteen ships came through, spread out, and went to two gees acceleration.

  They formed a circle, then slowed their acceleration while later arrivals filled in the center. “A fighting dish,” Kris observed. She’d considered that but dropped it for the advantage that articulated squadrons and divisions gave her. These guys had been doing this a whole lot longer than humans had. Was it nearly instinctive to them?

  Lasers recharged; still, Kris continued to back off. The dish came on as more ships came through the jump and formed up in more circles.

  The lead alien formation approached the waiting mines, their lasers sweeping the space ahead of them. A few mines took hits, but not many. The mines were actually high-acceleration missiles with passive sensors. Once the sensors found reactors of an unknown origin near them, they waited until the aliens passed them by. Then the missiles took off at nine-gee acceleration, aiming their antimatter warheads for the vulnerable engines.

  More lasers came alive as a few ships recognized the attack, but the missiles were close and coming in fast on an erratic course Nelly herself had designed. Explosions began to mark the fighting dish. Ships lost balanced power and shot off in wild course changes. Others began to eat themselves as reactors failed and plasma ripped through the ship. There were two more collisions.

  The fighting dish shattered.

  “Reverse course,” Kris ordered. “One-gee acceleration, if you please.”

  Her fleet flipped and charged, jinking as it closed the distance to the flailing enemy. The aliens were too busy with damage control, or they’d lost their sensors. Only a few fired at Kris’s fleet or tried to dodge.

  Kris’s squadrons mopped up the residue of the dish.

  “Fifty-seven down,” Nelly reported.

  Kris had no time to celebrate. Four more fighting dishes had formed up and were now headed her way at two gees.

  “Pop more chaff,” Kris ordered, then reversed course at one gee. The oncoming alien dishes began to sweep the space in front of them with their huge battery of lasers. Kris didn’t try another mine drop, but she had plenty of chaff. So she did what she could to keep them working their lasers where she wanted them. Forward.

  “Professor, Chief, let me know if their weapons begin to heat up.” Human lasers lost some of their efficiency and power when the system overheated. Physics was the same galaxywide. Kris wanted the aliens worn down before they reached the gas giant.

  The alien fighting dishes were now arrayed in a box much like Kris’s squadrons but covering more space. Kris’s flanks, right, left, up, and down, were covered. Kris could retreat, but if she turned to fight, she invited the aliens to swarm around her flanks and into her rear.

  It was not a good picture on the screens of Kris’s lonely flag bridge.

  Another set of four dishes formed up. Thirty ships to a dish, four dishes to a square, made for 120 ships. Two squares should account for all the enemy she’d identified and then some. Either the last square was short a few ships or Kris’s intel hadn’t counted them all.

  Either way, the mother ship should be coming through soon.

  Finally, it did.

  The monster fighting ships were huge, at four or five hundred thousand tons. The mother ship dwarfed them. This one was the size of a moon. Unless Kris was wrong
, it was cut from the same mold as the one she’d disposed of before.

  Well, if you have a successful design, why mess with it?

  While the first square of dishes continued to close on Kris at two gees, the second held back, forming a shield around the mother ship. The smaller, faster ships darted around mother, using their few lasers to vaporize anything that came even close to her.

  Yep, they’d gotten the word about how Kris blew away their sister. Kris hadn’t expected to use the same trick twice. The only question was, would they spot the new trick any faster?

  The lead box of dishes was 150,000 klicks away and closing. Kris let them get to 120,000 before she went to two gees. She ordered the hooligan squadron into the line well to the left of BatRon 1. With BatRon 1 now facing the enemy’s center, Kris edged the rest of her squadrons a bit to the right.

  Then the aliens pulled their first surprise.

  53

  “The lead alien square of dishes has jumped to 2.5-gee acceleration, Kris,” Nelly said.

  They aren’t supposed to do that! No doubt, a lot of aliens are feeling the pain.

  “Squadrons, fifteen degrees right, engage the closest dish,” Kris ordered, as the aliens came within range. The fifteen-degree angle protected their vulnerable engines. BatRons 1 through 4 engaged the enemy’s far-right dish. But the enemy was coming on fast, switching their fire from motes of dust to Kris’s ships. At extreme range for their lasers, damage was light, but there was plenty of it.

  On Kris’s board, ships’ armor switched from green to yellow as they began to stream steam and take hits.

  But the aliens were well within range of Kris’s 20-inch guns. Her ships lit up the aliens; twenty-six ships engaged thirty aliens.

  In a minute, the dish was an expanding ball of gas.

  But to finish off the aliens, Kris’s ships had to flip to use their forward battery. That put the enemy way too close. “Accelerate away at 2.75 gees,” Kris ordered. “Pop chaff. Launch a missile volley.”

  One dish was gone, but the top and bottom dishes had angled over, getting the range. The far dish was hammering Commodore Benson’s hooligans of BatRon 5. The cheery volunteers gave as good as they got, but Benson had to order them to run for it ahead of Kris’s orders.

  The fleet accelerated away from the aliens, who settled back to two gees.

  Kris’s board was red. Constitution, Tiger, Hotspur, and Spitfire reported damage to their engines. Kris ordered them to three gees to form up as a reserve. All obeyed except Hotspur, who couldn’t manage even the fleet’s 2.75.

  Four alien ships accelerated away from the rest and leapt out to engage the trailing Hotspur. They shot it out, with the other three ships from of the Helvetican Ninth Div trying to support their sister. Two more alien ships died, but so did Hotspur.

  The three other ships, what Kris labeled CripDiv 1, for crippled division, pulled ahead.

  Each side paused to lick its wounds.

  The aliens reorganized themselves. The three remaining dishes re-formed in a triangle.

  Kris reorganized, too. Despite showing yellow for damage, Triumph and Swiftsure moved up from BatDiv 9 to replace Constitution and Tiger in BatRons 1 and 2. Spitfire swung around to join Captain Drago’s BatDiv 10, pretty much eliminating not only one division but half of Kris’s reserves.

  Kris did get to smile at one thing. Their pressure on the aliens’ right had driven the mother ship to the left. Her course was edging closer to the gas giant.

  Good!

  The aliens had a problem. They could not handle the edge Kris’s long-range 20-inch lasers gave her.

  The fight drew away from the jump point, but three ships still hovered there. That puzzled Kris. “Chief, talk to me about those three aliens holding back.”

  “I’ve been meaning to mention those, ma’am. Their reactor configuration is different from the ones fighting us. One has ten smaller reactors. One has eight. Even the one with six is different. I think its reactors are more powerful than the ones we’re fighting.”

  “Opinion, Captain Drago?” Kris asked.

  “Military observers from other countries. It’s an old tradition.”

  “So our next visitors are watching how we handle this bunch for future reference.”

  “I hate to say so, but it looks that way.”

  “Oh, God,” Kris kind of prayed. “We haven’t figured out how to handle this bunch, and someone is setting us up for the next match.”

  “That’s what happens when you’re the champ.”

  “And if we aren’t the champ, we’re dead,” Kris muttered. “Thank you, Captain.”

  “Anytime, Admiral. How long are we going to hang out here, catching our breath?”

  “They’re on the course I want. Let’s see what they do next.”

  The aliens chased. Kris fled, now at a sedate 1.75 gees. Once, she ordered an attack at long range on the lower dish, but they quickly killed their acceleration, inviting Kris to close on them while the other two dishes advanced above her.

  She declined.

  “Smart move. You’re learning,” Kris mused. “You’re advancing, which you want to do. I’m falling back, which I don’t want to do.”

  Kris adjusted her course to take her close to the gas giant and between two Hellburner command stations, then made a feint at the higher dish. When it flinched back, she swung toward the middle one.

  They all fell back and ended up pretty much in line again.

  Kris’s fleet kept littering their retreat with chaff. Soon, Professor Labao reported the aliens’ lasers were heating up, and they were cutting back on sweeping their path. Kris dropped off a half dozen mines along with more chaff.

  Three mines caught ships.

  The aliens went back to blasting everything in front of them.

  Kris smiled as they developed the habit she wanted.

  The dish opposite the hooligan of BatRon 5 suddenly went to 2.5 acceleration, closing the distance between them in a leap. Commodore Benson saw his danger and upped the acceleration, too, but his ships had suffered more damage than they knew. The Proud Unicorn’s motors sputtered, and one blew away into space. The Lucky Leprechaun was no luckier. They failed to pull away. Kris ordered BatRons 1, 2, and 3 to swing inward, threatening the attacking dish’s flank.

  Still, the aliens came on. The other two dishes now were back up to two gees and edging closer. Kris ordered missiles fired at them and had Drago move BatDiv 10 in to support BatRon 4’s efforts to meet those two.

  On her left flank, the hooligans fought their battle with one dish, aided by the arrival of most of the fleet. The Unicorn and Leprechaun struggled to keep up, then flipped and fired full bow batteries at their tormentors. That cost the aliens two ships, but it cost the two volunteers seconds of precious acceleration. The aliens came on.

  Now the dish’s flank burned under the fire of three battle squadrons. Ship after ship blew or stumbled out of formation, internal explosions erupting into space. Still, what was left of the dish locked its teeth onto its two unlucky victims and a third, the Kikukei, was proving no luckier than the Leprechaun.

  Commodore Miyashi’s ships concentrated on supporting the Kikukei, and that may have saved her. Still, both the Unicorn and the Leprechaun fell farther behind, bleeding steam and armor from hits even as they fired ever-decreasing salvos. At close range, they both managed a missile salvo that took their closest enemies with them as their final moment came.

  Suddenly, the fight was over as quickly as it had begun. Two more of Kris’s ships were gone, but an alien dish was gone with them. The Kikukei managed to put on enough gees to crawl ahead and join CripDiv 1.

  With BatRon 5 reduced to three ships, Kris offered Commodore Benson the chance to take all his ships out of the line and join the cripples in reserve.

  “We’ve just begun to fight, Admi
ral,” was his reply. On Kris’s board, many of her ships were showing some red for damaged. However, as the quiet between storms stretched out, Temptress’s, Fairy Princess’s, and Pixie’s hardworking damage control parties brought them back into yellow.

  The alien commander also seemed to need time to reassess the situation. The two remaining dishes, both battered, slowed their advance to half a gee. The rear four dishes and mother ship closed on them at one gee.

  The clan was gathering, and their swords were sharp.

  Kris had started with forty-four ships. She’d lost three and held four damaged ships in reserve. The tip of her spear, the four battle squadrons still had eight ships each, but she had little to play with otherwise. The remnants of BatRon 5 weren’t even a full division, and she wasn’t supposed to send her flagship charging into the line.

  Across space, some 180 monsters formed a hexagon. Possibly worse, eighteen speedy small boys were doing a fast run, dropping well below the lowest dish to get behind Kris. So far, those little boys hadn’t shown a lot of firepower, but if they got across Kris’s line of flight and started tossing atomics at her, things could get messy.

  “Constitution, Tiger, and Spitfire, you up for a high-speed run and some shooting?” Kris asked. In theory, their boards showed green again, but Kris didn’t trust she was getting the real word. She left the Kikukei out. It showed only two lasers online.

  “We’re ready now,” the skipper of the Constitution said for all.

  “You see their little boys. We can’t have them behind us. Proceed independently and stop them.”

  Three big war wagons went to 2.75 gees and headed down, jinking all the way.

  Kris could only watch that battle out of the corner of her eye. The hexagon of dishes were again trying to engulf her tiny battle array. First, the top dish would edge its speed up, closing the distance a bit, then one of the side dishes would make the threat.

  Kris chose to feint toward one, shoot a few long-range salvos, never from more than one division of a squadron, then up her own speed to match the creeper. She picked off a ship here, another ship there, and she kept them at bay. But if they kept this up, there would still be a whole lot of them when they made orbit above Alwa.