“Sensors, Comm, did you get any interesting communications between the effected merchant bottoms and the Navy’s station close aboard?”
“No, Admiral,” Comm answered. “We got message traffic ordering each individual ship to adjust its course in such and such a way, and that was followed by an immediate acknowledgment.”
“No sooner was the message received than the ship adjusted its course,” Sensors added.
Kris shook her head. She’d once had to shoot out an engine on one of Grampa Al’s ships to get its skipper to follow her orders. Here the senior issued explicit orders and the junior hopped to it and asked how high on the way up.
Of course, they also have a rebellion going on.
Hmm.
“Comm, get me the four flagships.”
A moment later, Kris was looking at Ron, Commodores Ajax and Afon as well as Captain Tosan.
“I want to make our passage through the next jump smart and quickly done. The Iteeche have cleared the jump for two minutes before us and ten after. We’d have to be awful sloppy to take all ten minutes. Commodores, Captain, how fast can we take our ships through?”
The chief of staff glanced off screen for only a moment. “We’re in a line by divisions, Admiral. Fifteen minutes out, we could form back into a single line, first by squadrons, then task forces. We’ll be pretty slow. I don’t think we’d have any problem going through the jump at two second intervals.”
“I want a four second interval between divisions,” Kris said.
“No problem, Admiral,” Captain Tosen answered promptly, but Kris had enough time in the Navy to hear the ever so slight question mark wishing the elephant would give the poor worker bee some enlightenment as to what the hell was going on.
“Commodore Afon, I want your task force to lead the way and I want your division to be the first through. You are to immediately take a snapshot of the space around the jump and flash it back to the last ship in your division the very second it arrives. It is to load that data on a message rocket and shoot it back through the jump. Nelly, I want you to grab that message and let me know if there is trouble on the other side.”
“And what if I’m evaporated before I send that message to the Dependable, Admiral?” Commodore Afon asked.
“That message rocket is to be launched immediately by the Dependable as soon as the data can be loaded. If there is nothing to load, it comes back empty, but it comes back immediately. That will tell us as much as your message.”
“Understood, I’m to lead the jump myself. If I find a beasty on the other side, I’m to floss its dentures while sending you a message concerning the new greetings that await Your Highness. Hopefully, you’ll come through shooting and avenge my vanished corpse.”
“I’ll decide what I’ll do when I need to do it,” Kris answered. She was tempted to wait on this side of the jump to see who tried to come through. With luck, the battlecruisers on the Iteeche station would come out to reinforce her. If her luck was running to its usual norms, no doubt they’d attack her.
Another wonderful day for a Longknife in the Na-a-vy.
Several hours later, Kris was seated in her chair on her fully manned flag bridge as her escorting fleet came up on the two hour mark before the jump. The battlecruisers were at Condition Charlie, tight, but folks still had room to breathe. Throughout the fleet, they weren’t quite at battle stations. Still, anyone with nothing to do was doing it pretty near close to their general quarters; a call to battle stations would only take seconds to answer. The Sailors knew by now, as well as their officers, that someone didn’t want them fulfilling their mission.
“Sensors, what’s the status of the Imperial battlecruisers tied up to that station?” Kris asked.
“No change, Admiral. Communications levels holding steady, no sudden spike in chatter. The reactors are warm, but no one’s preparing to sortie.”
Kris nodded. The largest collection of firepower underway in this system was under her command. The battlecruisers around that station could change that in a real hurry. If they pulled away and headed for the jump, Kris would not only be outnumbered three-to-two, but she would be very close to dead in space. No question, she would slam her fleet up to combat energy, but she would miss making the jump.
Behind Kris’s battlecruisers came Ron’s two squadrons. Tailing them ten seconds back came her own merchant ships. Kris had ordered them to a five second interval. You could never count on a merchie not to make your day more exciting by doing its best to ram you.
An hour out from the jump, Comm piped up. “I have a request from Lord Hoff’sum’Seava, Captain of the Defender of the Emperor No. 207.”
“Put it on screen,” Kris ordered.
An Iteeche officer in Navy gray and gold stared out at Kris. He began speaking in Iteeche, but what came from the screen over his words were, “I have the honor in the name of His Worshipful Majesty to be called by my Lord Commander to pass through the jump you are about to travel and report back to you that all is safe on the other side. I will,” what followed took a lot of words but came out in Standard as “observe traffic on the other side and send you back a picture of it.”
Kris stood. “We are grateful to your Honored Emperor, your Lord Commander and you for your service to our Royal Majesty,” Kris said. The precise order of gratefulness had been an important point Ron had lectured Kris on. From the look of the Iteeche captain, her words appeared to have passed muster.
Once that communication was finished, Kris found herself on the receiving end of a call from Commodore Afon. “Do you still want me to follow the drill we worked out?”
“Of course, Commodore, I’m a belt and suspenders kind of gal,” Kris said with an encouraging smile.
“Aye, aye, Admiral,” and Afon clicked off.
“Has my eager tiger changed her stripes?” Jack muttered, hand over his mouth.
“Even a Longknife can learn if you rub her face in it often enough.”
They continued to close on the jump.
The Defender of the Emperor No. 207 went through the jump two minutes ahead of Afon. Thirty seconds later the jump buoy popped back into space and broadcast a snapshot of the area a million kilometers around the jump. There was nothing closer than the stream of merchant ships that had gone for the last four minutes ahead of the Iteeche battlecruiser. There was a long line of merchant ships approaching the jump, but none would arrive in the next twenty minutes.
Kris whistled softly. Controlling this jump’s traffic must take a whole lot of computer sweat and obedience to orders.
MY THOUGHTS EXACTLY, Nelly added.
Kris now ordered her battlecruisers to Condition Zed and beat all hands to battle stations. A minute later, all her battlecruisers reported ready for action. Interesting enough, Ron’s battlecruisers were still at Condition Baker, and had been since the last jump. Still, Kris stayed attentive to everything. The jump ahead. The traffic behind. The battlecruisers at the nearby station.
Nothing appeared threatening.
It looked peaceful and continued peaceful.
But how often has ‘looking peaceful’ gone to hell in a blink?
Afon’s flagship went through the jump. Six seconds later, the Dependable followed it through. Less than a second later, a message rocket shot back through the jump. Kris sat forward in her chair as the screens before her filled with the data from the messenger.
Then she let out a sigh of relief.
Afon’s rocket carried a scan of the area five million klicks around the jump. It showed the same merchant ships headed for the jump and Defender of the Emperor No. 207 as well as those headed away that Kris’s navigator identified as ones they’d tracked before their jump out of this system.
Of warships, there were only the two Iteeche and four human battlecruisers.
Kris leaned back and watched placidly as the next twelve battlecruisers of Task Force 2 made their jump, then waited as the Princess Royal led Task Force 1 through. Once through the jump,
her screens quickly filled with data showing the entire system.
Beside her, Jack whistled softly. “Talk about a traffic control challenge.”
Kris nodded before whispering, “Yes.”
There were six jumps into and out of the system. Only one of them led toward the Imperial system and traffic was streaming toward it from the other five jumps. Each of the inbound jumps had a huge space station hanging in space a couple of million klicks from it, and from them came the emissions of several battle fleets along with plenty of honking big laser cannons. The jump into the Imperial system had three of the biggest stations Kris had ever seen, each with its own battle fleet.
Kris gulped as she took it all in.
“I think they want to keep the Emperor safe,” she muttered.
“Ya’think it?” Jack said.
Kris very much wished she had more ships. For someone charged with representing all humanity, she very much felt like a mouse that had wandered into a cage full of hungry lions and tigers. She’d already run into the bears not so long ago.
Hopefully, one Royal Princess was not on the dinner menu.
Chapter 26
The trip across the system to the jump into the Imperial system was challenging for the navigator and bridge crew as they struggled to keep station. One of the fortresses guarding the Emperor’s jump had the job of traffic control. Kris’s ships were given an allotted time to make the jump. Every ship was expected to go through at 2.32 second intervals and at a steady speed of five hundred and twelve klicks per hour.
Apparently, the Iteeche did things by the Imperial planet’s day and measurements.
Kris assigned the flags the duty of keeping their task force and squadron’s ships on the dime and tucked in tight. For the merchant skippers, her words were simple. “Miss your allotted time and you will be required to go around and wait for a break in the traffic to get another chance. I’m told those come along every couple of weeks. And don’t even think about jumping through after you’re waved off. We’ve got our time assigned to us. There will be oncoming traffic right ahead of us and right behind us. Get out of line and you’ll likely end up a splat on the bow of some huge Iteeche ship.”
There was grumbling on the merchant comm channels, but not a lot. Not after the first bit of grousing was greeted with “Don’t you dare muck it up for the rest of us,” from one of Grampa Al’s skippers, echoed by most of the other captains.
As Kris’s escort sailed its meticulous way to the jump, her sensor teams sucked in everything they could get their antennas on and turned it over for analysis.
“Kris, every ship in this system has a squawker, identifying its name, owner and planet of origin,” Sensors reported. “Most have added the last planet visited and where they’re headed. Apparently, there are nine destinations in the next system, only one of which is the Imperial Presence. The other names mean nothing to Nelly’s dictionary. I can’t tell if they’re planets, moons, habitats, stations or whatever, but there are a whole lot of ships headed for every one of them.”
“Any military traffic?” Jack asked. “Does it show a single destination?”
“There are a couple of dozen battlecruisers, none in a bigger formation than a division of four. None of them are squawking a destination. There are several huge honking spheres in the traditional Iteeche fashion powered by a dozen reactors or more. The biggest has eighteen reactors in six pods around the ball. I can get very little off of it. Believe it or not, that thing is actually jamming everyone. It and the other big balls seem to have right of way over everyone. They’re accelerating and decelerating at 1.21 gees for a faster trip.”
“Do they have right of way over us?” Kris asked.
“I don’t know, Admiral. None of them are due at the jump anytime close to us.”
“Track them. I want to know when they go through. Once we’re on the other side, I want to know how they’re treated.”
“Aye, aye, ma’am.”
Jack raised two questioning eyebrows at Kris.
“I want to know how the local head high muckety mucks behave in the Imperial system. Then I’m going to do exactly what they do.”
“Any chance I can talk you into discussing it with Ron? I mean, before you get us all a meeting with the Imperial headsman.”
“I think it’s an Imperial poisoner, but I agree with you, whomever it is. Comm, get me the Iteeche flag.”
A moment later, Kris was face to face with Ron again.
“How’s it feel to be getting this close again to your Emperor?”
“I think you would call it claustrophobic. It is so nice to visit among you humans. You are so informal. Few Iteeche that I have talked about you with could understand how you could do things the way you do. A few even think you are wild savages, out of control. But you did not call me to talk about all that. What can I do for you?”
“We’ve identified some really huge puff ball ships. One has something like eighteen reactors in six pods. Should I know anything about them?”
“Oh, yes you should. Steer clear of them if you can. Those are both battleships and what you would call Imperial yachts.”
“How many yachts does your Emperor use?” Kris asked.
“His worshipfulness? None, of course. He doesn’t go anywhere. Everyone comes to him.”
Kris allowed herself a puzzled frown. “So, what are these ships?”
“The largest one is likely being used by an Imperial Master of a Satrap. All ships are by right the ship of the Emperor, but the Imperial Master of a Satrap, or a district of planets, is authorized to build himself a battleship of state. Our name for them is more like your Greek warship. We had three reactors each in six pods, a tri-hexareme. Even though your battlecruisers are better fighting ships, many Imperial Masters still like the old ways and even now build bi-hexaremes. Many of the greater lords lavish money trying to have the most opulent tri-hexareme.”
“We’ll have to show people how fancy a battlecruiser can be decked out.”
“Yes, I heard that you’ve done some pretty luxurious things with your Princess Royal. Will we be seeing anything like that?”
“Once we reach the station above the Imperial Palace, I assure you, we’ll lay it on as thick as we can.”
“I’m looking forward to it. Have I answered your questions, Your Highness?”
“Yes, thank you, as always, Ron. Or should I start calling you by your full name?”
“When you have Nelly translating matters into Iteeche, please have her use my full name. I am Ron’sum’Pin’sum’We qu Chap’sum’We, if you will, Nelly.”
“Of course, Speaker for His Worshipfulness,” Nelly said.
“May I suggest that Nelly introduce you, Kris, as Her Highness, Princess Kristine of the United Society, Chosen Royal Battle Fleet Commander of the mighty war clan Longknife who comes as Emissary and Speaker for Humanity.”
“Wow, that’s quite a mouthful,” Jack put in.
“Yes, but it is a mouthful that explains her to all who hear. Among my people, it is important to make a first impression.”
Kris parsed the words. Most of them she could fit into comfortable. Princess, okay, I’m over that. “Royal Battle Commander” fits into King Ray’s comments that I’m the fightingest admiral he has. Chosen, however, may be more than I’m hearing. Longknife, okay, been there, done that. I’m proudly one of those damn Longknifes. It was the last that stuck her as a sour note. “Emissary and Speaker for Humanity.” Emissary, yes, I got that loud and clear from King Ray. “Speaker for All Humanity.” Where did that come from?
Kris shook her head. Had anyone on old Earth sent her papers to talk for them? Hell, most of humanity was splintered into a couple of dozen or more associations, confederacies, Empires and what not. How many of them had said she could speak for them? Hell, she’d gotten in all sorts of trouble when she protected Alwa the first time and every fourth planet accused her of starting a war without permission.
What kind of ninth pit o
f hell did that crawl out of. Better yet, how did she bonk it over the head and get it to crawl back where it came from.
NELLY, HAS RON CUT THE COMM BETWEEN US?
YES, KRIS.
“Jack, Nelly, get Amanda and Jacques to report to my day quarters immediately. I don’t like this hot potato one bit. I need a potato masher and I need one quick.”
Chapter 27
A few minutes later, the table in Kris’s day quarters was rapidly filling up. In addition to those Kris had asked for, Nelly had added Senior Chief Agent Foile and Lieutenant Megan Longknife. Both slipped in quietly and tried to take a seat against the bulkhead. Kris pointed both of them at the main table.
SO, IS THAT WHY THE TABLE WAS SO BIG, NELLY?
YES, KRIS. DID I MAKE A MISTAKE?
NOPE. I’M GOING TO BE NEEDING THEM MORE AND MORE.
Kris began without preamble. “I seem to have stumbled upon another little minefield. I don’t know whether or not Grampa Ray knew about it or not. I’d like to hope it would be a surprise for him, too. Nelly, play back what Ron just told me.”
In a moment, the Iteeche was on the main screen. Nelly cut directly to the relevant part.
“May I suggest that Nelly introduce you, Kris, as Her Highness, Princess Kristine of the United Society, Chosen Royal Battle Fleet Commander of the mighty war clan Longknife who comes as Emissary and Speaker for Humanity.”
Kris let that sink in for a moment before opening the discussion. “I think we can ignore most of that for now. It’s the ‘Emissary and Speaker for Humanity’ that got my attention at the get go.”
Jacques frowned at Kris’s point. “What exactly are your orders? I know what we all thought we were here for, but what did the king officially say?”
“That is suddenly very interesting,” Kris said. “In a safe, I have King Raymond’s official introduction for me to the Emperor. It’s in a gorgeous cherry wood box, sealed with several fancy silver and gold seals and has an engraved golden scroll in the lid. It says all the nice things about their Emperor and our King, tactfully skipping the claim that he is the Disemboweler of Humans and Ray is the Hammerer of Iteeche. I had always assumed that what was inside it said the exact same thing as I read in my formal orders.
Kris Longknife - Emissary Page 18
