“What gave you that idea?”
“The kids sense that you’re spending more time with them, but you’re only half there. They know something’s up.”
“You think they’re scared?”
Jack shook his head. “They trust you to take care of them.”
“God help me if I can’t,” Kris whispered.
“You’ve always figured a way out. You’ll find a way out of this.”
“How? I’m outnumbered so bad that there is no way I should be able to win, and I’m fighting ships just as good as my own with lasers that have as much reach as I’ve got. Worse, I’m headed for a jump that goes nowhere. We can’t fight and we can’t run.”
“But they know they’re chasing Kris Longknife, the one of those damn Longknifes you don’t want to cross.”
“So how do I make my forces match my reputation?”
Jack met that question with two raised eyebrows and not one word of suggestion.
Kris settled into a chair in the middle of her flag bridge. Nelly made it comfortable as Kris studied the layout of the system she was racing across and the ships that faced each other.
She’d fought pirates. They’d been easy. Almost.
She’d fought aliens. They had huge ships and vast numbers, but they hadn’t fought anyone for a long time. They were sloppy and their lasers had very short range. Kris figured out a good way to take them on, and then beat them like a drum.
Wonder what they’re up to out there? she thought, but had no time to follow that question.
Now, for the first time, she was faced with ships just as good as her own manned by Sailors and officers who were trained professionals. Their crews might be trained better or worse than hers. Heavens knows, she’d found that the training in her own squadrons was spotty.
Still, if it came to a fight, they’d have three ships to her one and those ships were constructed from the same designs as her own, firing lasers with the same range as hers.
Kris shook her head. “This will be a slaughter, if it comes to a fight,” she muttered to herself.
“So,” Jack answered what she thought was not a question, “how do we avoid a fight?”
“Nelly, talk to me about that next system.”
“The sun is a red dwarf. It has both rocky and gas planets. There is just the one jump in.”
“Any fuzzy jumps?”
“The fuzzy jumps were built after the map your great grandfather discovered on Santa Maria was done. I won’t know if there is or isn’t a fuzzy jump there until we’re in system.”
“But there could be one,” Kris said.
“Or not,” Nelly answered.
“But we could get reinforcements through that hypothetical fuzzy jump.”
“Hypothetically, yes.”
An idea started to form in Kris’s head.
“Comm.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“I want to set up a very low-powered, tight-beam communication net between us and the other flags.”
“Aye, aye, ma’am.”
A moment later, Kris was facing Ron, Commodores Ajax and Afon, as well as the fleet’s chief of staff.
“I want to reorganize the fleet by divisions. Each task force will reform into four divisions in ranks. While we’re doing that, I want the Princess Royal and the Bold brought to the head of their division.”
The commodores had followed Kris right up to the point of flipping the two flags with their division flags. Ajax blinked, but the chief of staff immediately answered, “Aye, aye, Admiral. When do you want this done?”
“Soonest,” Kris answered.
“We should be able to execute in ten minutes, if that’s acceptable to you.”
“Ten minutes it is.”
Ron coughed softly on net. “Am I to assume that you wish the Iteeche contingent to reorganize itself in a similar fashion?”
“Yes, Ron, if you could. Please assure that your ship is at the lead of a division.”
All four of his eyes blinked three times, leaving Kris to wonder if she now had a new way of learning if she had puzzled an Iteeche.
“It will be done,” Ron said.
Kris closed the comm circuit and leaned back in her chair.
“It’s started,” she muttered to herself.
“If I may ask, what has started?” Jack said.
“Us outsmarting one honking big Iteeche fleet,” Kris said.
Ten minutes later, Kris gained a few more pounds as the Princess Royal accelerated into the lead of her division, then lightened up as it reduced acceleration to match with the other ships. On Kris’s screen, the fleet went from three long lines of sixteen ships, accelerating in ranks beside each other, to something totally different. Now each of the task forces split into four divisions of four ships, forming a filled-in box. The fleet had gone from having only three ships with their forward batteries unmasked to fire at anything ahead of them to having twelve.
The transports and freighters following behind the warships were still in their rough line, thirty-five successfully, more or less, following one behind the other. Now, however, they were farther behind the closest warship. Calls came in asking if they should catch up, but Kris left them following along where they were.
Returning to her battlecruiser force, Kris noted that her chief of staff, Captain Tosan, had taken this opportunity to open up the distance between the three ranks. The two outer task forces now had plenty of room to open up their divisions, swinging them out in echelon so that all sixteen ships could fire ahead. Now there was enough distance between the two outer task forces to allow the middle one to deploy its ships forward.
Good move, Captain. Good initiative.
Now it was time for Kris to make something happen.
First, however, “Comm, what are the chances that there will be any scatter off our low power tight comm beam between the flagships that could reach the aliens behind us.”
“Very slim chance, Admiral, almost nil now that you have all the flag ships even with each other. Our tight beam is aimed at ninety degrees from their course. Even if they do get something, we’ll be scrambling your conversation and I can hop frequencies so even if they get a fragment of it, they’ll have to chase it down on another frequency. They won’t get enough signal to make anything out of it.”
“Well done, Comm, thank you.” Kris said, then began the laborious process of pulling a reluctant rabbit out of a way too small hat.
Chapter 20
Her Royal Highness, Grand Admiral Kris Longknife turned to the four faces on the main screen in front of her. She took in a deep breath and began to see if her idea might actually have the seeds of a plan in it.
“I am facing a conundrum,” she began. “If we fight, we fight outnumbered three to one. I don’t like those odds.”
Heads on the screen nodded. Even Ron managed to made some sort of a nod, though it started at his waist.
“It also appears that we cannot run. The only jump point that doesn’t have a stronger fleet between it and us seems to go nowhere.”
The humans nodded again. Ron breathed out something that might pass for a sigh.
“Yet, we cannot surrender. I bear a commission from my king and it does not allow me to take myself off to anywhere a rebel pasha may drag me.”
No one nodded this time. It looked like all four were holding their breath. Waiting for a Longknife to pull another miracle out of some place or another. With a deep breath, Kris started feeling around for a pair of rabbit ears.
“Ron. During the Iteeche War, your warships played hobs with our fire control systems by casting their mass density somewhere else. I believe you used that same capability when you came hunting for me and ran into a couple of Greenfeld cruisers.”
“Yes, we did use the masker then, and we have maskers on our ships now,” he answered, then added, “as do the ships pursing us.”
Kris nodded. One question down, now for the big one. “Have you ever tried putting more than one ma
sker on a ship? Have you ever had one ship throwing its mass in several directions at the same time?”
“No. Why would we do such a thing?”
“I’ll get back to you in a minute on that,” Kris said and switched to her two task force commanders. “How many target drones do you have on board your ships?”
“Normally, we are issued twelve. We replace them as we use them up but on average, accounting for normal wastage, we’d only have nine to ten,” Commodore Ajax answered. “However, we hadn’t had much chance for gunnery practice before we sailed, so our holdings were pretty close to complete. Then, before we departed, someone shipped a full resupply to us.” Ajax looked off screen to check something. “BatRon 13 has on average twenty-three per ship. I’d have to check with BatRon 14 for their count.”
Afon was ready with his own answer. “BatRon 11 has the same number, say twenty-three on each ship. I’ve made a call to BatRon 12. I should have that number in a moment.”
“Ron, are your battlecruisers carrying any target drones?”
“Yes, we are, Princess. But ours are not so sophisticated as yours. Ours are just balloons with small rocket motors attached.”
Which told Kris that the Iteeche Empire might not be as committed to good gunnery as the US ships were . . . assuming the ships actually did some gunnery practice. Considering how many of their issued targets were still in storage on Kris’s ships, it didn’t bode well for them in a shootout either.
“Okay. Now a question for you, Ron. How badly do you have to be outnumbered before your sense of honor or whatever they were appealing to you for a surrender, would kick in? I don’t mean how badly would things have to be before you surrendered. All I want is a number large enough that they’d turn tail and run.”
“You mean how badly would I have to be outnumbered before I could honorably choose to turn my back on an enemy and still be able to claim the honors of war from my Emperor?”
“I think that’s about what I asked.”
Ron thought for a long minute. When he began to talk, his words came slow and thoughtful. “In our histories, any fleet that is outnumbered two-to-one by a force where all things are equal has been able to depart the field of battle with honor.”
Ron turned and barked a few words to someone off screen. An answer came back a moment later, to be followed by more questions and answers.
“I should have talked to my tactical officer first. If I had, I would not have had to worry that I was giving you a false answer. It seems that our tactical computer is made ready to answer your question. At two-to-one odds, we are required to break off action at all costs and save what we can. At odds of three-to-two we may engage without fear of being asked to make serious apologies for our stupidity to our superiors.”
Kris was left to wonder how different a serious apology was from just a normal old apology, but she didn’t have time to ask that question. “So, we would need twice as many ships to assure ourselves that they would flip ship and run for the nearest jump.”
“Yes,” Ron said, but the word hung in the air as more a question than a statement.
“They have one hundred and twenty-eight ships,” Kris said slowly. “We would need 256 ships to send them running.”
“Yes,” Ron said, and made his answer sound like a lead weight.
“So, if thirty-two of our ships could pass themselves off as a squadron of eight, we’d have 256 plus our other sixteen. Faced with that, they’d have to run.”
“Yes, their tactical computers would advise them to break off contact. However, how do we make those thirty-two ships appear to our pursuers as a massive fleet?” Ron asked, puzzled.
“Your sensor suites are pretty much the same as ours. Your range finders and target control systems rely on visual, laser, gravitational as well as electronic sensors. I propose we use human gear to fool the first two, Iteeche maskers to cover the gravitational, and then jam the rest. Doing that, we show our pursuing Iteeche a fleet of 256 ships coming back through the next jump. A fleet that they can see, laser and get magnetic and gravitational anomalies off of, but can only get hash off of electronically.
Kris turned to her commanders. “Commodore Afon, your squadron will be left guarding the jump while the rest of us pass out of the system. Once Commodore Ajax has got our ships multiplied like good loaves and fishes, we’ll come back through the jump and do our best to scare Ron’s rebels out of their pants and out of this system.”
There was dead silence on net for a painfully long minute as people mulled Kris’s latest rabbit.
It was Ron that broke the quiet of the tomb. “Pardon me, Kris Longknife, but I fear that your plan will not work.”
“What’s the problem, Ron?”
Ron gazed at the deck for a moment, then said, “I cannot allow you to place maskers on your ships. Just as you have technology that your government insists must not be given into our hands, we have some things that we are keeping from you. The masker is just such a technology. I cannot allow you to place them on your ships, even assuming that a ship could duplicate its signal seven times. You know, that has never been done.”
“I understand that point, Ron. I was expecting that we could create a masker as soon as we jump out of this system and test the concept.”
“That is another problem. We do not make the maskers out of Smart Metal. To do that, we would have to involve you humans. Even more, I do not know that we could make them out of Smart Metal even if we had the programming skill.”
Kris’s rabbit hopped back into that hat and went poof.
Quickly, she examined her options and found them nil. Well, maybe there was one.
“Ron, if I were to give you one of our prohibited technologies, could you let us have access to your maskers?”
Ron’s head was shaking even as she spoke. On an Iteeche, a head shake wasn’t just a nod. They could turn their neck through almost 270 degrees, something that was a survival skill in the depths of their oceans long ago.
“I am sorry, Kris. I know you mean well, but I do not believe that your writ extends to granting us any embargoed technology. I know that I have no authority in that area.”
“Even for a little while? Just long enough for us to chase them out of the system and reach your Emperor?”
Ron glanced off screen, then stepped out of view. The audio take from his ship dropped out of the net.
“Kris, are you sure you could grant them an embargoed tech?” Jack asked. “Don’t you think you might need to consult with the representatives from the other systems that we’ve got on board?”
Kris had to admit to the possibility that she should be doing what Ron was, going off the general net and holding a powwow with power. However, she had never had to ask permission for how she intended to fight a battle. Of course, avoiding this battle would involve doing more than fighting. Jack might be right.
She was saved from having to start a consultative session with her putative subordinate diplomats by Ron coming back on screen.
“I am sorry, Kris, but my advisors are adamant that I not give you access to the maskers. I can not go against their unanimous advice.”
“I’ve just been advised that I should probably consult my advisors and would, doubtlessly, find myself facing the same brick wall.”
“We are called to court, but there is no way that we can obey. I fear that I will have to make a serious apology to my Emperor if I live long enough to see him again.”
Ron’s words were sad to the point of mortal. Kris wondered if such an apology might be required of her by the Emperor as well. Hmm.
“May I interject myself here?” Nelly said from Kris’s collar bone.
“If you have an idea, Nelly, the floor is yours.” Kris answered.
“It is possible that I can offer another way forward,” Nelly said, and Ron perked up.
“Nelly, you have often been helpful. Do you have an idea?” Ron asked.
“I do not have any idea but Kris’s. However, I might be
able to offer a way around your fear of your technology being transferred to the humans.”
“How?” both Ron and Kris said at the same time.
“As a computer, I keep some of my processes in temporary memory. When I wipe that temporary memory, everything that was in it is gone. Even I cannot retrieve it. Normally, I only keep low order functions in temporary memory. However, I could expand my temporary memory and store everything I needed to scope out the specs and workings of the maskers, how to reproduce them in Smart Metal as well as the production, testing and operations of them. Once we no longer need that data set, I would then wipe it out, reorganize the matrix down to the atomic level and reuse it for something else. I would not only have none of the data, but I would have no matrix left that I had organized specifically for handling that data. There would be nothing there, Ron.”
Ron stared through the screen for several long seconds. “You could do that?”
“Yes,” Nelly answered straightforwardly. “In addition, before I wiped that memory, I could provide you with the specifications and supporting programs to create the maskers out of Smart Metal. The Iteeche Emperor would gain something and the humans would gain nothing. Well, nothing but the potential of arranging for the departure of these rebels and our safe arrival into the presence of your Emperor.”
“But if a human asked you to make a full data dump to a backup storage while the operation was in process?” came from the Iteeche side of the screen. An Imperial advisor in green and white court raiment came to stand beside Ron. He said something more; the translation came from Ron’s breast. “If that woman, Princess Kris Longknife, were to order you to do something, you would obey, would you not?”
Kris failed to suppress a smile. Exactly how would Nelly answer that question?
“Statistically speaking,” Nelly said, “I am known to obey Princess Kris some 85% of the time. A further 12% of the time, I obey after I argue with her or give her lip. I believe that in some three percent of the instances where she orders me that I do not do what she wants and she decides that I was correct.”
Kris made a face, “That sounds about right. However, I think I can go one step farther for the sake of your counselor and your Imperial embargo of restricted technology. Nelly, log this order. This order supersedes all orders from me on this subject and is not subject to revocation, change or modification in any other way by me. Are you ready to copy under these conditions, Nelly?”
Kris Longknife - Emissary Page 14
