Kris Longknife's Replacement: Admiral Santiago on Alwa Station

by Mike Shepherd

  “Again, ma’am, I know I suggested we see if we can chase them down, but you might want to be very careful before you follow them through a jump point.”

  Sandy raised an eyebrow. “Because?”

  “We’ve been bushwhacking them as they come through the jumps.”

  “You can guard jumps?” Mondi said, incredulously.

  “You may have noticed some ships keeping guard back a bit from the jump you just came through,” Admiral Benson said.

  “I thought that was some kind of space station,” Mondi answered.

  “Nope. You were looking at three ships docking together using a Smart Metal hookup to anchor them in one place. They rotate. They get some down for the crew’s health and at least one of them is always in a position to shoot at anything that comes through that jump. We’ve been picking off suicide boats, fast little buggars. So far, we’ve been batting a thousand. We have to. We miss one and a whole lot of people and birds will die on the planet below.”

  “Can the aliens do something like that?” Mondi asked.

  “I don’t think they can, or have tried. Remember, we spin out a Smart Metal beam to anchor to. They’d need to carry some regular metal beam around with them. Still, getting back to those door knockers, Admiral. I wouldn’t put it past those aliens to leave a couple dozen of those things standing guard over a jump to buy time for the rest to get away. It might be pretty putrid in those ships, but they would have enough power to shoot you full of holes if you jumped through without looking first.”

  “Looking first?” was again Mondi.

  “We’ve got a periscope that lets us look through the jump. You have to kind of drift up to the jump, but you can see what’s on the other side.”

  Sandy whipped at her eyes with the palms of both hands. “Is it always like this around Kris Longknife? Everything’s different?”

  “That’s what I’ve found,” Benson answered. “But I’m not complaining, ma’am. We’re still alive. I don’t think when they dispatched us here that anyone was laying any kind of odds that we would be alive and still fighting after this long.”

  “And winning,” Pipra put in. “Don’t forget the winning. I kind of like winning. It lets me keep breathing oxygen. I really like that habit.”

  Sandy nodded. She did like being alive. It so beat not.

  “Okay, Van, I’m leaving you behind to work with Ben, here. Get our ships moving into his yards as soon as docks are available and get that new, fancy armor added to the ships.”

  “And you’re going to have all the fun,” Van grumbled.

  “Yep. Mondi, prepare BatRon 1 and 2 to go to space. We’ll use them as tankers while the local ships escort us and show us how it’s done on Alwa Station.”

  “We, ma’am?” Van asked cautiously,

  “We, Van. I’ll be taking the task force out. I want to get a decent feel for what the situation is out here. I’m not going to get that feel sitting at a dock.”

  “Aye, aye, Admiral,” Mondi said. “BatRon 1 and 2 to sortie in as soon as possible.”

  “In two hours,” Sandy amended the order.

  “Two hours?”

  “And if a captain can’t get his boat to answer all bells, get a replacement from one of the other squadrons. No doubt, you’ll have plenty of volunteers. Admiral,” Sandy said, turning to Benson, “will your twelve ships be able to get up steam in two hours?”

  “I suspect I’d better go tell them.”

  “Are we done here?” Sandy said, starting to rise.

  “May I have a moment of your time?” Pipra said, staying solidly in her seat.

  “Who are you, again,” Sandy said. She’d wondered why Benson had had a civilian shadow. She was not all that pleased with talking about Navy operations with someone not in uniform in the room.

  Admiral Benson was halfway to the door, but he turned to put in, “As I mentioned before, ma’am, she’s been Kris Longknife’s right arm where production is concerned. She’s been a life saver from my perspective. Instead of bitching and moaning about her profit margin, she’s seen to it that we got what we needed when we needed it. She’s good people, Admiral.”

  Sandy would decide that for herself.

  “You’ve got one minute, talk,” Sandy said.

  “I need your help, Admiral.”

  Sandy’s eyes grew wide. “My help?”

  “Admiral, Kris Longknife made the point abundantly clear that we all either pulled together or we’d all die in one big heap. I haven’t always liked what she did to me and mine, but I had to respect her. As Admiral Benson said we’ve all pulled together. My problem is that Alex Longknife has just dumped a whole new management team on top of me and they’ve already ripped me up one side and down the other for not showing a profit.”

  Sandy had thirty-seven years in this gal’s Navy. Commanding ships and Sailors was her forte. Suffering contractors was something she did her best to avoid. Her first thought was to tell this woman thank you for the heads up and send her on her way.

  Sandy held her tongue and, instead, turned to Ben, now standing at the door.

  “You need this industrial base?”

  “Desperately, Admiral.”

  She turned back to the woman. “Why would Alex Longknife send a new management team out here?”

  The woman actually looked embarrassed. “I was a junior vice president when I arrived here. There was a CEO and a senior vice president who were supposed to run the show. Instead, once Kris Longknife pointed out the hazards of our position and her demand that the Navy be the center of our efforts, those two wandered off and drank themselves to death. Since I was with the Longknife group, and I had Kris Longknife’s attention, I ended up running the whole shebang.”

  Pipra paused to take a deep breath. “However, the truth was, I was the Junior Vice President for Human Resources, ma’am. I was supposed to hold coats, not take over and run things. I suspect when Commodore Taussig went back to Wardhaven, my status may have come up in some fashion. Anyway, Alex sent an entire new team out here.”

  Again, the woman paused. “I also think they saw a chance to make a killing, even if it drove a plant on Alwa to extinction and strained our relationships with the locals. Are you aware of the unique plant we shipped back and its very unusual aspects?”

  “Do you mean am I aware that there’s a plant out here that might revolutionize microminiatures, if not nano activity, by jacking up their power by several orders of magnitude? Yes, I know of the thing.”

  “Alex thinks that in three, maybe five years, his labs will develop artificial versions of the plant’s mitochondria. Right now, though, they can make a killing in the market by bringing bushels of the plant back to human space and selling an ounce of it for a million bucks or more. They’re ready to send teams down into the Ostrich section of the planet below and scour up every leaf they can find.”

  The woman fell silent, leaving it to Sandy to grasp the full impact of her bosses’ plans.

  Sandy turned to Admiral Benson who still hadn’t made it out the door. He was just finishing up saying something into his comlink, though. “Ben, how would this impact our relations with the what-ever-they-are? Sometimes you call them Roosters, other times Ostriches. Which are they?”

  Admiral Benson cleared his throat. “The Roosters and Ostriches are about as different as say Old Earth’s Europeans, Africans and Asians. The thing you need to know is that the Ostriches are fighters and very territorial. Kris Longknife had to walk pretty careful around those Ostriches feet, and even she got shot at once. While she got some land grants from the Ostriches, she was careful to leave them the rivers and large streams. If someone starts mucking around without permission, they could get their head kicked off their shoulders. And I mean literally, not figuratively. Those suckers can kick.”

  He glanced at Pipra. “Also, the Ostriches have been the most eager to get jobs up here at my yards, at Pipra’s fabrication facilities and aboard our battlecruisers. If someone pisses them off
, we could lose a whole lot of goodwill and good workers. May I make a recommendation, Admiral?”

  “Please do. I don’t much care for this bucket of snakes.”

  “Kris Longknife is still the senior officer of Nuu Enterprises in the Alwa System. If she’s got anything like the temper my wife had during the last month or so of her pregnancies, I’d have Pipra trot over to the Wasp and see how Kris likes her grandpa’s latest dump on her. My guess would be that the ship that’s supposed to go back loaded with water plants might instead just be carrying a few damn fool business types.”

  “Why didn’t you take it to her in the first place?” Sandy said, scowling at the industrialist.

  The woman accepted the scowl, and quickly said her peace. “I was headed to see Kris, when I ran into you coming off the Wasp, Admiral. Everyone knows that you’ve replaced her. It’s not at all clear who’s the boss of anything now.”

  Sandy found she had to agree with the woman. “I just found out how many hats that woman wears. Admiral commanding Alwa’s defenses, Viceroy of the King on Alwa and CEO of Nuu Enterprises and pretty much straw boss of all the industrial base operating here. Who in God’s name dumped all that on one poor woman?”

  “Ray Longknife, I believe,” Benson provided dryly.

  “There’s a reason why we Santiagos hate Longknifes, and he’s a huge part of it. Okay, Pipra, it’s been great meeting you. Please get off my ship before we pull up the gangplank. Do have fun talking this over with Kris and feel free to darken my door anytime you need to. I suspect I’ll be seeing a lot of you. Ben, just exactly what is your part in this crime scene? I hear you giving orders to a reserve fleet, but also running yards.”

  “I’m Commander, Base Forces for Kris, what little we’ve managed to patch together of a base force,” the admiral said. “If it don’t sail, it’s mine. That is until all hell breaks loose. Then we down tools and jump on things that do move and go out to fight for our lives.”

  “Alwa Station,” Sandy said, but didn’t quite spit. “You do everything different.”

  “We do everything different, ma’am. You’re one of us now, Grand Admiral,” Benson said.

  “And may God help us all. Now, I’ve got a fleet to get away from the pier.”

  “Good luck and Godspeed,” Admiral Benson said, then quickly led the civilian from Sandy’s day quarters.

  “God help us all,” Sandy whispered as they closed the door. “Ray Longknife, what have you gotten me into this time?”

  Chapter 3

  Grand Admiral Sandy Santiago’s flagship, Victory, led her ad hoc task force through the final jump into System X. Even at 45,000 kilometers per hour, her usually sleek ships waddled like ducks; each battlecruiser bulged with three times its normal reaction mass.

  “Admiral,” Comm reported, “the emergency frequencies are saturated.”

  Sandy was quickly behind Comm, looking over his shoulder. Hundreds of emergency beepers demanded their attention. Some showed yellow to orange on the board. Way too many glowed red. Many of the red were flashing. Whoever was in that survival pod did not have long to live unless rescue came real soon.

  “Admiral Hart,” she said, raising the admiral who had led his twelve battlecruisers through the jump first. Benson lent her Hart not only as an escort for her lumbering elephants but to also demonstrate on the way out, to their embarrassing edification, that big battlecruisers could jitterbug like nobody’s business.

  “Yes, Admiral.”

  “You are detached to render all assistance.”

  “We’re already on our way. Three minutes ago, I ordered my ships to accelerate.

  We’ll be at four gees in about two minutes,” he answered

  Sandy glanced at the regional scan on the main screen. His ships were already pulling away from hers.

  Gladly, Sandy would have followed him, but a survey of the system showed a battle fleet in orbit around a burned-out husk of a planet orbiting a neutron star. “Comm, send to task fleet, ‘Accelerate to two gees smoothly, set course for the neutron star.”

  Acknowledgments came back quickly and the two squadron commanders did their job of getting their battlecruisers into acceleration mode. This force would take a full fifteen minutes to put on just two gees.

  While the fleet moved out, the sensor team on the Victory completed its assessment of the system. It was brutal.

  It would be half a day before any communications arrived from Admiral Kitano and the survivors of her battle fleet. In the meantime, the visual and electromagnetic analysis of the system showed one hell of a battle had been fought here. The humans had won. The aliens had lost. That didn’t mean that one hell of a butcher’s bill hadn’t been paid.

  Scattered through the fields of survivor pods was fragmentary wreckage of destroyed ships and clouds of cooling gasses that showed where even more ships had vanished in thermonuclear annihilation.

  Well beyond that battle field were strewn other bits of wreckage and cooling gas. A long line of that flotsam stretched from halfway across the system to the neutron star. Sharing the orbit of the burned out planet with the exhausted battle fleet was what appeared to be a bashed in demi-moon.

  Every once in a while, a battlecruiser would make a minor adjustment to its orbit to stay clear of that thing.

  “What the hell went on here?” her ops chief whispered.

  “One hell of a brawl, Mondi, one hell of a brawl” Sandy said. Then, shaking herself, she turned to Comm.

  “Send to Admiral Kitano. “Grand Admiral Santiago sends her complements on a battle well fought and very well won. I bring you reaction mass so you can get your cripples underway for Alwa and, if you please, your battle-worthy ships underway in pursuit of the fleeing aliens.’ Comm, append our likely arrival time and send.”

  There was only a brief pause, before Comm answered, “It’s on its way, ma’am.”

  “Very good. Now we wait.”

  That was the main trouble with space travel. You spent most of it waiting. Waiting for ships to arrive. Waiting for communications to be exchanged. Waiting.

  Sandy settled in to wait for her message to get to Kitano and her reply to get back. Meanwhile, desperate crew members, maybe injured, or maybe in survival pods that had suffered damage, waited, fearing any breath could be their last.

  In the débris field, activity had already begun. The thing about Smart MetalTM was that three or four survival pods didn’t have to stay separate. Moving about the field were ships’ longboats, collecting pods and merging them into themselves, growing as they went. As some of the pods flashing red were collected by their shipmates, the longboat’s beeper might switch it off. Other times, the rescue boat’s beeper would switch to red or even a flashing red.

  There was only so much help that a longboat could provide a wounded Sailor.

  Sandy watched the story of desperate need and succor play out, helpless to do anything.

  Of course, Kris Longknife inevitably provided her with a distraction.

  Mondi asked her for a quiet talk in her night quarters. Once the door was shut, her operations officer blurted out, “Have you heard about the Alwa Station’s Fraternization Policy?”

  “It’s what policy?”

  “I’ll take that as a no.”

  “If it involves fraternization, take that as a hell no.”

  Mandi took a deep breath. “Admiral, with Van left behind, the ship skippers have come to me as a stand in chief of staff, and they may or may not have a problem.”

  “Mandi, you don’t normally beat around the bush. What is it?”

  The Navy officer raised her wrist, were her commlink rode. “You know we can program this Smart Metal to make our bed more comfortable, chairs, and the like.”

  “Yes.”

  “Supply makes entire walls disappear when they’re moving crates around.”

  “Is there any content in all these words, Captain?”

  “Our people weren’t ashore very long before we sailed out for here, A
dmiral, but it was long enough for some of our hands to talk with Alwa Sailors. On Kris’s fleet, ship’s personnel are making walls disappear between their quarters.”

  “I’m not getting what you’re telling me, Captain.”

  “Sailors who like each other are swapping their staterooms around to get next door to each other, then they’re making the bulkhead between them go away. Doubling their living space.”

  “That sounds like a fine idea.”

  “They’re also swapping bunks for double beds, queen size, double king size, depending on how many bulkheads they’ve made vanish.”

  Finally, the light dawned on Sandy. “Oh, shit. That Longknife girl hasn’t done that to my Navy.”

  “It’s standard Alwa policy.”

  Sandy rolled her eyes at the overhead, a silent prayer to any bureaucratic god listening.

  “I was surprised to find her married. At least I hoped she was married, what with her bulging way pregger. Official policy, though?”

  “One of our skippers actually messaged one of the Alwa ships that came out with us. I’ve got the official policy, if you want to see it.”

  Sandy did, and words began to stream across her own commlink.

  “Kris Longknife did this!”

  “Not by herself, Admiral. Sailors figured out how to make bulkheads go away on their own. Faced with an app she couldn’t control and a fleet with no base force, she dumped the problem on the leading chiefs and XO’s. They knocked the policy together while pulling an all-nighter. It’s been modified a few times.”

  “But not changed.”

  “No, ma’am.”

  Sandy continued scanning the policy, but her mind was already racing through the problem and its ramifications. Her crews were young, eager and far from home. Even her older officers were more than likely to be getting as far away from a domestic breakup as the galaxy allowed. Talk about foot loose, fancy free . . . and horny.

  “Do any of the skippers think that some of our Sailors have begun applying this app and the policy in advance of my authorization?”

  “They haven’t had any show up during quarters inspection, ma’am.”