“Making a real mess of the yacht.”
“Boss said to win this fight. Don’t count the cost, and there’s stock options in it for the crew. Not that the boss’s stocks are gonna be worth all that much if we lose. But we win this one, I don’t expect any of us will have to look for work the rest of our lives. Yes, Princess, we’re gonna go gunning for anything you don’t kill.
“And from what I hear, we aren’t the only yachts that are checking out their six-shooters. Half a dozen more armed yachts are getting ready to sail with us.”
“Oh my God,” Kris said. Maybe prayed. “We don’t need them out there ahead of us, messing up . . .” Kris didn’t say more.
“Messing up the fancy dance you fast boats are gonna have to do if your gonna stay alive,” Luna finished for her.
“Something like that,” Kris finished. NELLY?
I TOLD YOU I WOULD TELL YOU IF SOMETHING BROKE IN THE NEWSIES. NOTHING HAS BROKEN. NO HINT OF DEFENSE. THE TALKING HEADS ARE ALL POLITICAL AND ALL CONCENTRATING ON YOUR FATHER AND PANDORI. NO RETIRED GENERALS, ADMIRALS TALKING. INTERESTING, THAT. TRUST ME, KRIS, I CAN GENERATE RANDOM NUMBERS AND PAY ATTENTION TO THE NEWS. PIECE OF CAKE.
THANKS, NELLY.“How long do you think before this leaks out?” Kris asked the yacht skipper.
The merchant mariner shrugged. “Most of us have orders from our owners to keep it quiet. No reason for us to blab our heads off to the newsies. We drink in a better grade of bar from them, if you ask me. Anyway, they’re not snooping all that hard. Maybe someone shortened their leash. Who knows?” There was a hint of a smile in the shrug Elisabeth gave. Had she actually just praised the bugs that everyone usually loved to hate?
Kris’s next stop took her to Roy’s office. A runner led her to the shop floor where the acting super huddled with a small army of engineers over a hologram of one of the armed yachts. Kris watched as it blew away its outer shell, decoy, and power barge, emerging like a butterfly from a cocoon—and was then ripped apart by the flying pieces as they bounced off of each other and into the yacht.
“That ain’t gonna work,” Roy said. “Get another option.”
“We’ve already tried twelve.”
“So you shouldn’t have all that much trouble coming up with another twelve. Your momma didn’t raise an unimaginative engineer, did she?”
There was a general muttering about whether some managers had mothers. Roy chose to recognize Kris at that moment and by concentrating his smile on her, ignore the small mutiny among his people. “How’s it going, Your Highness?”
“Better than I might have expected. Has Captain Luna seen that little demonstration?”
“She and the other five skippers saw the first four versions. Doesn’t believe a pixel of them. ‘All engineering hogwash,’ I believe was their response.”
“Could they fire their lasers from inside that lash-up?”
“Not sure I’d recommend it.”
“How about a short, very low-power stutter burst to knock a hole where you want it, then a full power burst through that hole? I did a low-power burst on . . .” Right, her shoots were not in the history books, yet. “Well, I’ve dialed pulse lasers way down and used them that way.”
“Hardware’s not designed for that.”
“I did software mods. On the fly. Certainly you could do some with two days’ warning.”
“And test them, debug them, document them.” Roy sighed. “Oh, I hate dealing with software engineers. Especially when I have to tell them all we have is two days to do it in.”
“I could have Nelly do it before close of business today,” Kris said.
I COULD HAVE IT DONE IN FIVE MINUTES, IF I HAD ACCESS TO THE SHIP SYSTEMS. WHAT DO YOU THINK I AM, AN ABACUS?
I KNOW, NELLY, BUT LET’S NOT EMBARRASS TOO MAY PEOPLE.
YOU HUMANS AND YOUR FEELINGS.
Now Roy was grinning from ear to ear. “That might be fun. Challenge my software engineers to a race, them versus your computer. But no. Not a good idea. I’ll have to work with those guys long after you’ve sailed off into the sunset. Very bad idea. But it would be fun. Oh Lord, but I’m gonna be in trouble.”
He glanced back at his engineers. Another explosion was taking place in slow motion. Yes. Yes. No. The ship got nicked, then slammed, then the power barge bounced a girder and drove it through the bridge. Ugly picture.
“What a choice. Either these folks have to come up with something, or the software engineers. Looks like I’m damned either way.”
“What if you kept the false ship pretty much in one piece.” A small voice came from around Kris’s neck. “Blew the attachment points gently, and backed the yacht out of the cocoon?”
“What did you say, Kris?”
“You’re talking to Nelly, Roy.”
“Do you have to blow up the false ship?” Nelly asked. “Why not leave it mostly in one piece? Small explosions might detach it. Then, if the yacht fired short retro blasts, the false front would go on at its existing vector, and the yacht would slow. Then it could set out on its own course.”
“That’s what we’ve been trying to do. It’s not as easy as it seems. The charges keep doing more than we want. The attachments have to be solid enough to take the pounding we’re gonna give them during the fight. That rig’s going to be knocked around quite a bit. It takes major explosives to separate it.”
“But properly placed, they don’t have to create that big a mess, that many conflicting vectors,” Nelly came back.
Kris suspected this discussion could go on for quite a while. “Ah, Roy, I’ve set up a sixteen hundred meeting on the dock beside the Cushing for the PF skippers. There will probably be an oh eight hundred one as well. We might also want to set one up thirty minutes later for the armed yacht skippers and the Navy OIC aboard. I understand the Navy’s actually been moved off the decoys and into the yachts. These get-togethers would let everyone know what’s going on in their work.”
“Oh, right, yeah, we are moving the Navy workstations onto the yachts. Guess we haven’t told everyone.”
“We can do that at the stand-up meetings.”
“Right. Nelly, you have any suggestions for size of explosions and placement?”
“I would need to see your plans for supports.”
“Right. Hmm. No easy way to break that to the engineering staff. Let me get back to you at the four o’clock thing.”
“I will be there if Kris is,” Nelly said.
NELLY, TRANSMIT ALL THIS REAL TIME TO TRU.
HOW WOULD THAT NOT PUT SECURITY AT RISK?
RIGHT. THEN MAKE A RECORD AND TRANSMIT IT AS SOON AS IT BECOMES POSSIBLE.
YES, MA’AM. DOES THIS BOTHER YOU?
NO, NELLY, IT’S JUST A NEW SIDE OF YOU THAT WE HAVEN’T SEEN BEFORE AND I EXPECT WILL TICKLE TRU’S FANCY.
I THINK IT IS FUN TO TICKLE TRU’S FANCY.
SO IT SEEMS.
The Halsey was last on Kris’s list, but she made a stop by the 109 first. The yard folks had fully occupied the engine room. Tom was back on the bridge, giving what help he could to Penny’s effort to connect the intel station to the sensors.
“Maybe string and two tin cans?” Penny sighed.
“Maybe we need to bring in some expert help,” Kris said.
“More yard workers?” Tom asked, still no grin in sight.
“No, I think there’s a tech on the Halsey that might put all of us to shame,” Kris said. “A nerd who loves black boxes like a good friend of mine,” she said, giving Tom an elbow in the ribs.
“This tech nerd on the Halsey sounds like someone I’d like to meet,” Tom said, his grin starting to come out of hiding.
“If he or she can make my station talk to this tub’s sensor suite, I want in on the talks, too,” Penny said, pushing herself away from the recalcitrant station.
“Strangely enough, the Halsey’s CIC was next on my ramble,” Kris said and led the way.
No surprise, Kris found Sandy leaning over the battle board. “How’s it goi
ng?” Kris asked what was becoming her one-question-fits-all greeting.
The destroyer skipper shrugged but didn’t take her eyes off the board. “It’s a crapshoot. Do we attack early, dive straight at them as we come out of the moon’s shadow? Or do we come along beside them, let them shoot at us for a while at long range? Note that they will be shooting at us. Their battlewagons have the range for the shoot. We don’t.”
“Sounds like you just answered your own question. No reason to stay in their range any longer than we have to,” Kris said.
“But if we come charging straight at them, it kind of shows our hand, doesn’t it?” Tom said.
“That’s why I don’t want to do it.” Sandy nodded.
“But our hand is kind of weak,” Kris said.
“Weak, yes, but do we want them to know it? Battles aren’t so much won by the brilliant choices of the winner as lost by the dumb mistakes of the losers. I hope that doesn’t shock you, Longknife.”
“I’ve been kind of suspecting that,” Kris said dryly.
“I’m shocked,” Tom said, grin lopsided as could be.
“I’m shocked,” Penny said, “that a tin can skipper would be revealing such sacred Navy secrets to lowly junior officers.”
“Think security can afford to lock me in irons for the violation, Lieutenant Lien?” Sandy asked.
Penny preened at her new name and shook her head.
“So,” Sandy went on slowly, “if we did a slow approach until we got into long-range laser fire, let them get in the first shots, and then turned things loose . . .”
“We’d have more time to study their formation,” Penny said, giving the intel officer’s take on the tactical problem.
“And they’d be doing the same to us,” Kris pointed out.
“And wouldn’t the both of us be doing our best to lie, lie, lie to each other,” Tom concluded in full brogue.
“So who will do the better job?” Kris asked.
“What are our decoys going to be sending?” Sandy asked.
“I’d thought we’d pass them off as light cruisers, dragged out of mothballs. We were supposed to have sent everything we had to Boynton. It was on all the talk shows,” Kris answered. “But Roy says we can have any size false front put on the yacht lash-up. How big we want to fake?”
Sandy rubbed the bridge of her nose thoughtfully. Tom started talking first. “What if we started out making the noises like something smaller, but as we got closer, started ‘leaking’ something bigger. After we got caught up in those fights on Olympia, my great-grandmum told me that things weren’t always so peaceful on Santa Maria. During the starving times for the first hundred years after the lost ship’s crew tried to make a go of it settling on Santa Maria, well, not everyone was willing to go hungry. Some went bad. Went to the hills as bandits. That’s not something we kids got told in school.
“Well, there was one fight where the menfolk were making their stand against the hill bandits, and just when it looked like they were beat, the womenfolk and kids, decked out with any stick or whatever looked sharp or pointed, they come running around the hill beside the fight. The bandits took one look at what they took for reinforcements and ran.”
“Confusion and misdirection,” Penny said.
“Confusion to my enemy,” Sandy toasted.
“The more, the merrier,” Kris agreed. “Maybe we could start out making like light cruisers, then have half of them start to leak like Triumph-class battle cruisers. Just the kind of old units that might still be swinging around the reserve fleet moorings and been overlooked.”
“Confuse them more and more.” Sandy nodded.
“And if that’s not enough,” Kris said, “Patrol 8 isn’t the only gun in town.” That got a raised eyebrow from Sandy and open stares from the other two. Kris filled them in on what the armed yachts wanted to do, and that there were more of them wanting in on this brawl.
“Oh, sweet Jesus, Mary, and Joseph,” Tom prayed. “Just what we need, a crowded battlefield.”
“No, I’m told they’ll be behind us, looking to go in after us and fight what we’ve damaged.”
“That might not be such a bad use for them. Privateers cutting out the enemy wounded and putting them down.” Sandy nodded. “Somebody thought they could leave Wardhaven defenseless if they shipped the fleet away. Don’t they know you can never turn your back on a free man, free woman? Not while they got their teeth. Their fingernails.”
“I suspect 12-inch pulse lasers on an armed yacht qualifies a bit higher on the threat scale than teeth,” Kris said.
“But you get my meaning.”
“Yep. We cut a hole in the battlewagons, leave them bleeding and shocked. The armed people of Wardhaven will take them down with what they’ve got.”
“And my Halsey and the Cushing will cut a hole for you to go in. That we will do,” Sandy said, hands slowly clenching into fists. The four of them thought on that for a long moment. It was a plan. The only plan they had. And no battle plan survived contact with the enemy.
What will I come up with when this one comes apart?
“I need to make a call dirtside,” Kris finally said. “See how things are going with my brother. Since my last call to him didn’t get blasted all over the newsies, it looks like Beni’s commlink is a good one. Can I borrow it again?”
“Ask him. Lieutenant, please have Beni report to the CIC.”
“Aye, aye, ma’am.”
Two minutes later, the 1/c reported, rubbing sleep from his eyes and zipping himself back into a rumpled shipsuit.
“I wake you?” Kris asked, realizing her first question should have been about Beni’s schedule, not his availability.
“You sure enough did, ma’am. This important?”
“I hope so. Can I borrow your commlink?”
He handed it over, looked around for a empty chair, sank into it, and appeared to be asleep in two blinks. Kris talked in her codes and Honovi’s number.
“Rose, I told you . . . This you, Kris? Don’t hang up.”
“It’s me,” Kris said.
“Good. I’m meeting with Kusa Pandori. You remember her. She kind of does for her old man what I do for mine.”
“I remember Kusa,” Kris said. “I’ll call back later.”
“No. No, don’t you dare. I want you to hear this, and I want her to hear what I tell you. Kris, understand. She has to know that there is nothing being held back here. I can’t afford to say one thing to her, then another thing to you.”
“Open covenants, openly arrived at,” Kris quoted Father quoting some other politician.
“In spades, Sis.”
“What’s happening?” Kris asked as she heard, “So that’s really your sister. So what? She’s out of jail. Who cares?”
“My sister is up the beanstalk preparing a dozen fast patrol boats to take on the incoming battleships.”
“We don’t know they’re battleships. Those expensive toys are headed for the scrap heap, and my father ordered the Navy to stand down. Besides, if anyone with a name like your sister was doing anything like that, it would be all over the news. Why haven’t I heard about it?”
“Beni, can you put this on some kind of speakerphone?” Kris whispered.
“Yes, ma’am,” the technician said, coming to his feet from his apparent sleep. In a moment, the entire CIC was listening to Brother’s response, as Beni whispered, “I’ve got you on mute. If you want to talk, Lieutenant, hit this button.”
Kris nodded and listened.
“Do you honestly think someone would send luxury liners to broadcast a surrender demand?”
“It could be all a bluff,” the woman’s voice said. Kris measured it for conviction and found it wanting.
“They’ve got battleship reactors and turbines.” No answer there. “And my sister is doing everything she can to get those dinky boats you want scrapped ready to attack those battleships, ’cause they’re the only ships we have that can.”
“Don’t f
orget my Halsey,” Sandy said with a grin. A grin that was answered around the CIC.
“That’s suicide.”
“Maybe. Kris doesn’t think so. And she’s spending every second she can reducing the odds against her.”
“They can’t do it.”
“Then what does your father intend to do? He can’t surrender. Face it. Sooner or later, he’s going to have to do what we all know we have to do: fight. Order everything we have to fight. You wanted to be known as strong on defense. That’s why you sent the fleet to Boynton.”
“We thought if we were seen as strong, no one would try us.”
“They were bluffing,” Tom spat.
“And if they were bluffing at Boynton, no wonder they want to assume someone’s bluffing here,” Penny said.
“Nobody bluffs with battleships.” Sandy scowled.
“But you must be bluffing,” the young woman went on. “The news would be full of any preparation for battle at the Naval Station. That would not go unnoticed, Honovi.”
“No, Kusa, it hasn’t gone unnoticed. Just unreported. My father talked to his contacts in the media. They are sitting on it. They will sit on it until your father and mine announce that a coalition government is moving to defend Wardhaven.”
“My father has his contacts in the news—”
“And if they can get up the beanstalk, and if they can get on the Naval Station, and if they can get their news bite, does your father really want to say that what is going on is in violation of his orders? Orders that he did not put in writing for some reason.”
There was a long pause in the phone conversation.
“Why doesn’t your brother just tell her how the cow’s gonna eat the cabbage?” Beni asked.
“Because sometimes, the true measure of a politician is not what he says, but what he doesn’t say, and the patience he has in not saying it. The Pandoris painted themselves into a corner. A corner they didn’t see coming and never intended to be in. Now they need help out. Thank God my father is finally trying to help them out of it.” More likely, Honovi had persuaded Father to let them out. After this crisis, Kris suspected the relationship between father and son would never be the same.
Kris Longknife: Defiant: Defiant Page 21
