“Hard to tell,” the Captain said, dusting sandwich crumbs from his hands and heading for the hatch.
“Very hard to tell,” Sandy said in agreement.
12
The afternoon went long, with Kris still poring over the battle board. Jack stood close, watching, occasionally asking a question. Few were dumb. “If the yachts are faking it as PFs, won’t it be kind of obvious when the real PFs fire this Foxer decoy stuff, and the yachts don’t?” he asked.
Sandy sighed. “And the battleships will know exactly who are PFs and who are yachts . . . and the yachts would die. You want to join up, Agent?” Jack took a big step back.
The yachts needed Foxers or something like it. Kris took a walk over to the yard to get them welding external tubes to the yachts for firing a few Foxers. They’d have to do it manually, and with no reloads, but it might work . . . for a while.
To avoid putting a Foxer message on a net that was supposed to be all roses and kisses, Jack went off happily with Sandy’s XO to see what the Foxer status was at the Naval Supply Center. They came back way too quickly and none to happily.
“When the fleet sailed, it took a full load of Foxers for every ship. That didn’t leave many in stores. Here’s the bad news,” he said, handing Kris a number that when divided by the number of yachts came out between one and two.
Jack drew the job of dropping down the beanstalk to visit the company that made Foxers. Colonel Tye went searching the Army Supply Center for anything that might fake it as a Foxer . . . and Kris tried not to kick herself for not thinking about this yesterday. This whole operation was a thousand-headed monster . . . but it grew its heads a day, an hour, a minute at a time.
It was bad the way it was slowly being popped on her. With luck, springing the whole thing on the Peterwald fleet in one big chunk would be a whopping shock to their carefully laid plans.
The 1600 meeting with the PF skippers came before Jack got back. Kris led off with her idea of mixing armed yachts in with the PFs early in the charge to confuse the battleships. Phil looked none too happy. “ ‘Steer clear of the merchie,’ my pappy always warned, ‘lest she liven up your day by taking it in her head to ram you.’ ”
“They won’t go full bore, probably won’t go more than two g’s,” Kris answered. “They’ll come in behind us to finish off what we’ve left crippled.”
The other skippers seemed to like the idea.
Then Kris told them they’d have to share their Foxers.
“Trade-off.” Chandra scowled. “All the world is a balance.”
“I hope we get something for that balance,” Heather said. “I don’t want to get squashed like some wandering frog ’cause someone is using up my supply of foxy.”
“We’re looking into what we can do,” Kris said.
Penny and Tom took a step forward when Kris thought the meeting was about done. “We were talking with Beni,” Tom said. “We think we can improve our chances of maintaining communications between the ships, letting us talk when we want even if they try to jam, if we set up a continuous battle net with a preplanned swapping of data packets. We’ll then piggyback anything we’re saying onto the preplanned packet.”
“And Tommy has just the idea for something to play on the battle net in the background,” Penny said.
“What?” Kris asked, not sure about Tom’s choice of music.
“Trust me,” Tom said. “It’s something my old grandda says came with the landers from Earth, three hundred years ago. Twenty-first century. Maybe older, from the words.”
“But don’t listen to it until we go out,” Penny said. “Don’t spoil it.”
“Trust you,” Kris repeated.
“Believe us, it’s good. Ask Beni if you don’t believe us.”
Kris made a note to do just that, but she also had a note to do something else. “How’s the 109?”
“Good to go,” Tom said as Penny said. “Great!”
“Good,” Kris said.
“A bit more work on her tonight—” Tom started.
“No,” Kris said.
“Huh?” came from both.
“The High Wardhaven Hilton actually is open for business. It’s not getting a lot, but it’s open,” she told her two friends. “I reserved the Honeymoon Suite for you two tonight.” There were noes and can’ts and other negatives, but Kris talked right over them. “It’s four o’clock, civilian time. I’m sure if you show up by 7:30 tomorrow morning, the Chief can fill you in on anything and everything that’s happened in the meantime.”
Penny and Tom were still shaking their heads. Behind them, Phil and Chandra, Babs and Ted were gathering, wide grins on their faces. Heather was making signals to the other skippers. Kris didn’t need two guesses about where this was headed.
“Now then,” Kris continued slowly, eminently rationally, “You two can either walk yourselves over to the Hilton, check yourselves in, and enjoy the night. Or your friendly neighborhood JO juvenile delinquents can grab you, strip you naked, haul you squealing and screaming over to the Hilton, lock you in your Honeymoon Suite for the night, and leave you showing up for battle tomorrow morning dressed like Hikila warriors . . . without the tats.”
Penny and Tom glanced behind them. Then turned to face down the growing threat. “I think surrender is the better part of modesty, here.” Tom sighed.
“Heather and Babs look awfully eager to get their hands on you,” Penny said.
“Ted and Phil ain’t exactly backing away from you, love.”
There was a general move toward them.
“We’re moving. We’re moving,” the young couple said in unison. “Just tell Chief Stan to recheck that sensor feed,” Penny called over her shoulder as Tom put his arm around her.
“Glad those two haven’t forgotten what it’s like to be just married,” Phil said.
“Be nice to have someone to hold tonight. Be held by,” Heather said with a shiver.
“Chandra, you going to make it home tonight?”
“Can’t stay away that long.” The old mustang sighed. But coming down the pier, like it was any other day, was Goran, two kids in hand, at least until they caught sight of Mom. Then they broke ranks and mobbed her with, “Mommy, Mommy.”
Once she surfaced from hugs and kisses and more hugs and kisses, she turned to scold Goran, but he silenced her with a kiss of his own. “Certainly your boat can spare you for a few hours.”
“But this station is a target tomorrow.”
“And I and our children will not be here. Trust me,” he said. “Certainly, there is somewhere we can be alone.”
NELLY, TELL THE HILTON I’M PAYING HALF FOR A WHOLE BLOCK OF THEIR ROOMS.
ALREADY CHECKED. THEY HAVE CUT THEIR RATE FOR ANYONE WITH AN ID CARD.
“The Hilton has a special tonight, Chandra, Goran.” So with the first smile Kris had enjoyed in a long time, she left the PF pier behind and headed for Nuu Docks. One look at what lay ahead of her . . . and she wanted to go hide in the 109.
If the earlier meetings had been mobs, this one was a full-fledged riot. All the efforts to keep things low key at the beanstalk were history. Everyone and his brother and pet duck must have headed up to the space station.
There were main contractors with ideas, sub-contractors with their suggestions, sub-subcontractors with their brilliant pet concepts, and folks who’d never won a bid for even a sub-sub-subcontractor’s billet who were absolutely sure they had the war-winning breakthrough . . . and anyone who knew someone who knew someone on one of the yachts and had gotten through the Nuu yard gates was there. Kris had to remind herself that the enemy was that-away and that using machine guns for crowd control had gotten Colonel Hancock in trouble.
Still, it was tempting.
Roy took to the role of ringmaster like a seal takes to a pool of fish. He ordered all the nonship personnel to the yard side of the pier. He then invited the ship personnel to police up their ranks. Merchant sailors relished tossing business types who drew five,
ten times their pay over where they belonged. None too gently. With wide grins.
A quick rundown of progress showed that the missile launchers were going onto the larger system runabouts. Despite the early morning decision, Luna and her fellow decoy Captains had come up with an idea that would get them a few missiles “in small, conformal packages.” Foxers were going onto the runabouts that would be mixing in with the PFs. Like the missiles on Luna’s boats, they were in tubes welded to hulls. No reloads. Four to a boat if the supply could be found.
It turned out that the Army had some white phosphorous rockets that they used in space situations. They would provide heat and some cover. Kris ordered them to be mounted on a two-for-two basis on the yachts, and some for the PFs. That way, the first four times both ships dodged, they’d be alternating Foxers with phosphorus. That ought to confuse the battlewagons. It left enough folks at this meeting scratching their heads.
Make do, make do. Just let it get us by, Kris prayed.
Once the usual business was covered, Roy tackled the masker and countermeasure problems. “Any of you big fellows bring along enough units for say, thirty, forty ships?” got slow shakes of the heads from the main contractors.
“So we’re going to have to let some ships sail with some of your gear, some ships sail with the other guy’s stuff.”
“Kind of looks that way.”
Roy signaled for the Navy OICs to step forward from the MK XII decoys. Most of them knew at least a couple of the business types. Roy brought in several of his own yard people. It began to look for all the world like a bizarre bazaar with this group haggling with that Naval officer, that shipyard fellow shaking his head violently, “No, you can’t do that,” and a contractor insisting that his new baby could, and skippers like Luna standing back, skeptical looks clouding their faces.
Kris sidled up to Roy, who took a second from his dickering to notice her. “You going to need me?”
“Don’t think so. Best you leave this kind of stuff to us with dirty hands. Where you going if I do need you, though?”
“Halsey’s CIC,” Kris said. He nodded and dived back into his debate of antenna, bandwidth, and signal strength.
Kris backed out, found Jack waiting for her, brought him up to date on what she’d been doing, and found out that the Foxer manufacturer had been waiting for a new contract before he started turning out any more units.
As Kris groaned, he quickly added, “However, he expected we might need some and has been running twenty-four /seven since those battleships showed up. He’s shipping what he has and shipping the rest as fast as they come off the line.” Jack sent Nelly a report that showed enough to rig maybe four or six to the laser-armed yachts. Filling up the spare lockers of Squadron 8 and the destroyers would have to be done from the last to arrive.
“It’s going to be tight,” Kris said.
“Yeah, hope it’s just as tight for the other guy.”
Kris nodded. “I have to remember that. If I have it bad, the other guy can’t have it all that easy . . . even if we are doing this battle on their timetable.”
“Remember, according to the last news report out, your boats are cold steel, and all he has to worry about is the Halsey and maybe the Cushing. Would you want to be on his bridge when they get the first reports on the fleet that you’re gonna have sortieing from High Wardhaven? And then you’re gonna be hiding behind the moon as they get closer.”
“And deaf,” Kris said. “If the battleships do anything while we’re behind the moon, we won’t know about it. We need a relay to keep us in touch. Come on, I’ve got to talk to Sandy.”
Sandy shook her head. “I should have thought of that before. We want them to be biting their nails about us, not the other way around. But whatever we put in a trailing slot will be out of the fight.” She scowled.
Kris hadn’t worked to get all this ready just to start paring her fleet down. “Nelly, call that nice guard at the yacht basin.”
“Hello,” came back at her.
“Hi, I dropped by a few days ago to look at buying a few boats. You seemed to know what just about every one of them had inside. You wouldn’t happen to know of one that has a lot of entertainment capability, maybe the thing my boyfriend would want. He’s kind of into broadcasting.”
“Broadcasting, you say. Something that could get you a good media feed and send it on your way where you want it?”
“Yes. That’s it.”
“Well, there’s this system runabout owned by a media anchorwoman who has only used it to run to the moon and back. Wanted to know what all her competitors were doing while she was on vacation. I think she mainly was worrying about replacement. You want to come over and get it? Take it out for a spin?”
“Grampa,” came an enthusiastic voice on the phone, “why don’t we take it over to her. We can run it around. We do it when they need cleaning. We know how to run those things.”
“Son.”
“Grampa.”
There was a long pause, pregnant with expectation.
“Got room for an old fart and a smart kid?” finally came back at Kris.
“You know where we’ll want you.”
“We’ll be there in an hour.”
“Two more volunteers,” Sandy said as the commlink went silent.
“But these stay way back, right?” Kris said. So why did she have chills running up her back? With a shiver, she changed her train of thought. “They’re going to be shipping Foxers up the beanstalk. We’ve got a small mob of electronic countermeasures folks, and they’re bound to be shipping stuff up. The beanstalk’s going to get plenty busy.”
“So that’s a flock of ravens on the next pier,” Sandy said. “Wonder what they’ll come up with?”
“I think I better warn my brother that the space elevator is going to be a busy place. Where’s Beni?”
“In the sack,” the Duty Lieutenant said, but she produced a commlink from a drawer. “The boy may be slow and lazy, but he ain’t dumb. Said if you needed his phone, better it was here than under his pillow.”
“Boy is educatable,” Sandy agreed.
Kris dialed Honovi. “Bro, it’s me. How are things?”
“We’re working on it. I’m with Pop and his good buddy just now.” Kris heard snorts in the background.
“I thought you ought to know that the beanstalk is going to be getting a workout soon. All kinds of nice stuff.”
“Hmm. I’m putting you on speaker, turnabout being fair.” Kris did the same. Brother continued, “We’ve got a bit of a problem. Among our others. Seems there are several liners in port. Due to sail yesterday, today. Booked solid. We’ve held them in port. Policy issues. That kind of stuff.”
Kris could imagine. Would Peterwald dare shoot up a liner registered to an Earth company or one of the hugely powerful Seven Sisters, the first planets colonized four hundred years ago? Do you hold the liners in port and challenge Peterwald to shoot up the station with them there? Not very brave, but then Pandori was grasping for anything.
“We’ve got folks who want to leave town, folks with non-Wardhaven passports. Even some with ours. So, we’re thinking of giving in and letting the boats sail. What are your thoughts?”
Kris eyed Sandy and wished she had a whole lot more people here at the moment. Liners would mean a mob scene at the station. People with cameras. It would be much harder to keep hidden what they were doing. Or could they hide their efforts among the flow? Would refugees be interested in looking around? Would all the people fleeing be refugees?
The Duty Lieutenant tapped a workstation. One of the screens scrolled down a list of passenger ships in port. Four big ones. Six medium. Most had sailing dates past due. Yep, there’d be a lot of pressure on Pandori to let them go.
“If they sailed at the same time we did?” Kris said. She was no expert on electromagnetic racket, but all those reactors would have to put out a whole lot of noise. All that mass in motion would play hail Columbia with detection gear. Could her
tiny fleet fall out the bottom? NELLY, SHOW ME IN PURPLE THE ORBITS THESE LINERS WOULD TAKE TO GET TO JUMP POINT ALPHA. COULD THEY BE MADE TO FOLLOW THE FIRST PART OF OUR ORBIT AROUND WARDHAVEN AND OUR HEADING TO THE MOON?
The purple path appeared on the battle board. Sandy frowned and mouthed “Nelly,” silently at Kris. Kris nodded. Sandy eyed the plot. “Birds on the next pier might like this idea.”
“I missed that,” Honovi said.
“Some local discussion. Some of us up here think it would be a good idea to let the passenger ships go.”
“You’re not going to use them . . .” Kris recognized Pandori’s deep baritone.
“No. But if they traveled the same path for a ways, it wouldn’t hurt. We’d want those ships to leave—”
Sandy cut Kris off with a sharp shake of the head.
Kris backed off two hours and said, “All the passengers would have to be aboard by, say, seven tomorrow morning.”
“Not a lot of time,” Father said.
“There’s not a lot of time before those other ships show up,” Kris pointed out, if it needed pointing out.
“Yes.” “Right.” “Just so,” came from the phone. Apparently it did need pointing out.
“So there will be a lot of traffic up the stalk in the next couple of hours,” Kris said. “Please keep it low-key.”
“We will,” Brother promised.
“And you are going to make us legal, right?”
“We were working on that when we were interrupted by this other matter,” Father assured her.
“See you when this is all over,” Kris promised.
“Please, yes,” Honovi answered as the line went silent.
“I better get back over to the yard,” Kris said, getting up. “Sorry about having Nelly mess with the inside of your battle board, but . . .”
“It seemed like a good idea at the time,” Sandy said. “You know, I’ve never once heard a Longknife admit to doing something that seemed like a bad idea at the time. Now, in hindsight . . .”
Kris tried to give the destroyer Captain a lighthearted shrug. She wasn’t doing lighthearted all that well today. Whatever she did, it seemed to mollify Sandy.
Kris Longknife: Defiant: Defiant Page 24
