Kris Longknife: Defiant: Defiant

by Mike Shepherd

  “Nope.”

  “If you stare at those dots long enough, they start to dance,” came a new voice behind them. Captain van Horn strode into CIC. For the first time, Kris saw him not in his impeccable uniform of the day, but in a blue shipsuit, a ship command patch on the left pocket. “You stare long enough, you can get a high good as any drug. I found that out in my younger days, standing CIC watches,” he said, pulling out a seat and settling in, apparently ready to try his own advice. “See anything new, Sandy?”

  “Nope. Same old same old. Crazy lash-up. Impossible odds. We’re all going to die. You got any new and crazier ideas?”

  “All out, though I passed a bunch of PF crewman doing the craziest dance to a bagpipe, a harmonica, and a guitar. Claimed it was some highland thing done by the ancient clans before battle. Guaranteed victory.”

  “Anyone getting hurt?” Kris asked, wondering if maybe she should have stayed and provided a modicum of adult supervision.

  “Seemed harmless, but they were trying to get sixty-four people all dancing in a row.”

  “A conga line?”

  “No, side by side. As if getting ready to charge.”

  And weren’t they? Maybe it wasn’t such a bad idea.

  “You’re out of uniform,” the Captain said.

  “Shipsuit, same as you,” Kris said back.

  “Don’t you have whites?”

  “You in on that, too?” Sandy said.

  “Commodore Mandanti asked me about it. I thought it would be a good idea. You need to look spiffy when you give the All Hands Address on the pier tomorrow.”

  “What All Hands Address?”

  “The one where you tell us all this is a wonderful thing we’re doing and that we’re going to push through and win. The one they’re going to need to hear after my personnel chief tells them they’re all in the Navy Reserve, on active duty, and covered by health and life insurance for the next month.

  “You don’t think I’m going to send this lash-up of Johnny-come-latelies out to fight battleships without official papers. I’ll be damned if I’ll let those Peterwald bastards shoot these people for terrorists. Even Luna. They may be taken in armed resistance, but they will be taken in uniform with ID cards.”

  “Assuming Kris’s dad here and his thousand closest friends can agree that we are legal,” Sandy added.

  The Navy base CO shrugged. “We lose, the winners want to shoot someone, they can come looking for me, or whatever pieces of me they can find. As far as these folks are concerned, they signed the papers, they got the card. We even dug up enough shipsuits to put them all in uniform.”

  Details, details. More that never made it into the history books. Thank God for bureaucrats like van Horn or his personnel chief who thought of all the details.

  “They could shoot your personnel chief. She’s a civilian.”

  The Captain laughed, full and hearty. “Holds a commission or whatever they call a lieutenant’s papers in the Coast Guard auxiliary. Was supposed to be on a search and rescue boat, but the last I heard, she wrangled herself onto one of the armed yachts. We’re having to bring up more folks to cover the SAR boats. They ought to melt nicely into the refugees headed for the liners.”

  “Didn’t anybody tell folks this is a suicide mission?”

  “Ah, yes, Your Highness,” the Captain said, fingering his ship command badge, something she’d noticed he lacked on his uniform. “But there are some suicide missions you just can’t miss. Some missions, no matter how bad the odds . . . how middle-aged smart you are . . . you just have to get in line for.”

  He paused, stared at the battle board for a long moment. “If I could find it in my heart, I’d feel sorry for the poor son of a bitch decelerating toward us. He’s got all the power on his side. By every right, he wins tomorrow. All we’ve got on our side is will. Raw determination. And a hunger for freedom. We’ve lived free for so long, we’ve forgotten what chains feel like. And we ain’t going back.”

  Kris studied the battle board. On one side, power, steel, chains, and slaver. On the other side determination to stay free. A willingness to die trying. The arrangement on the battle board stayed the same. The prospects looked a whole lot different.

  Sandy shuffled in her chair. “Battle board, how long until the arrival of the hostiles, assuming continued deceleration?”

  “Arrival in twelve hours.”

  “Start a countdown clock.” One appeared on the board.

  “Nelly,” Kris said. “Keep one of those going for me, too.”

  “I already have.”

  13

  Contact: -12 hours

  Vice Admiral Ralf Baja studied the battle board in flag plot of his flagship, the Revenge. Henry Peterwald had chosen the names of the five ships that trailed the Admiral’s flag: Ravager, Retribution, Retaliation, Vengeance, and Avenger. If there was any doubt in the Admiral’s mind about his mission, the names given his commands settled it. He’d always known there was bad blood between the Peterwalds and the Longknifes. Nothing open, just something whispered. Now it was as public as six battleships and their course for Wardhaven.

  “Any changes?” he asked.

  “None,” his Chief of Staff Rear Admiral Bhutta Saris said immediately. Nice to have a second who knew what was on your mind. Then again, it didn’t take a crystal ball to guess today.

  The Admiral glanced up in the direction of the separate intel section he had added to his flag plot. Saris followed his gaze. “Lieutenant, report the status of the target,” he ordered.

  The Duty Lieutenant came to attention, but his eyes stayed on the boards of the three enlisted technicians he oversaw. “Communications on their battle net is at twenty percent and purely administrative. No threats identified. Their media net continues to report on their political paralysis. No evidence of military preparations, though some of the minor outlets are now carrying commentaries urging military action. These are usually attacked immediately by phone-in callers. Their civilian net usage is about normal. Some minor public demonstrations reported. Anything larger is being suppressed. Our searches identify no threats developing.”

  “Not that we’d know before time.” The Admiral sighed. “No one talking about us would call us enemy battleships. They’d have selected code words. Love Boats. Twinkies.”

  “And we would have nothing more to fear from such talk,” came a new voice. The Admiral organized his face to bland as he came to attention and turned to the only one who would enter his flag plot uninvited. Harrison Maskalyne was the perfect governor for Wardhaven, or would be as soon as the Admiral put him there. Tall, with finely sculptured features offset by wavy black hair, he could have stepped off a pedestal of some Greek god. And was about as dumb and bloodthirsty as one as well.

  The governor waved a hand. “Your political masters have delivered Wardhaven to you with nothing to defend it but a ship or two that dare not show their faces. Perfect planning. First we smash the Longknifes here. Over the next year or two we collect up the wreckage of their king’s united nothing,” he said, closing a fist on thin air. “Then, in three or four years, Admiral, you will be leading a full fleet on an intercept vector for Earth, and humanity will be done with this fracturing and bickering. United once more.” He smiled.

  Of course, he was quoting a speech the Admiral had heard Henry Peterwald give a few months ago. Peterwald didn’t count on Maskalyne for anything but an echo. He rarely surprised.

  The Admiral nodded. “All goes according to plan. You will excuse an old fighter. We are trained from our first day at the Academy that no battle plan survives contact with the enemy.”

  “Ah, but this plan has nothing to fear. Your enemy has nothing to bring at you. No contact. No problem. Right?” The governor said with a happy chuckle.

  “As you say,” the Admiral said, giving the governor a slight bow so as to avoid joining in the mirth.

  Maskalyne shook his head. “You are far too dour, Admiral. Just don’t let your concern for boge
ymen interfere with your application of the proper jolts to Wardhaven. I want the full spectrum of political and communication targets flattened on our first pass. We of the political arm have taken care of your military problems. Now you will apply the proper degree of violence to all the necessary social and cultural targets to cower the troublemakers on Wardhaven. Wardhaven must not just be defeated. They must know they have lost everything. Even hope.”

  “We have a full list of your targets,” the Admiral said, tapping a section of his battle board. On the bulkhead, a screen changed from the space ahead, Wardhaven growing larger, to a long list of targets ranging from Government House and Nuu House, as well as communication hubs, media centers, any places large groups might gather, talk, and form a consensus when the net was down.

  “Good. They must be defeated, and more importantly, know they are defeated. The occupation forces won’t be arriving for several weeks. We don’t want them to have to fight. Only occupy. Your job is to take the fight out of Wardhaven. That’s what these ships were built for. Right?”

  “Yes, Mr. Governor,” the Admiral said. The Revenge was not your average battleship. Tomorrow, Wardhaven would either surrender or find out. The governor left, on whatever errand he felt called to on this, the last day before his investiture. Admiral Baja continued to study his battle board. It continued to tell him the same nothing it had for the last three and a half days.

  “I want to get four, maybe six undisturbed hours of rest,” he told Saris. “Don’t awaken me unless something very important comes up. Something that fills in some major blanks.”

  “I will get some sleep, too, sir. No need to baby-sit a board that says nothing. Let the Duty Lieutenant do it.”

  “He will wake you if necessary?”

  “Yes, I trust him. I knew his father.”

  “Good, then let us get some rest.” The Admiral turned but carefully let Saris fall in step beside him. As he came close, he turned on his jammer and whispered to Saris goodnaturedly, “Do you have orders to replace me if Maskalyne says to?”

  Saris’s dark complexion turned almost ghostly for a moment, but he did not miss a step. “Yes, sir. That was the condition of my being offered the position. If I did not agree to that, it was made known to me that they would offer it to someone else.”

  The Admiral nodded. “You were my first choice. In return for you, they required that I accept certain things as well. I expected they would require something like this of you. I am glad that we now have it out in the open.”

  “Might I ask what things they required of you?”

  “Let us hope that you never have to find out what they are,” the Admiral said and switched off the jammer.

  “Sir, we had a slight magnetic disturbance in the vicinity of flag plot,” the Duty Lieutenant said, turning to them.

  “What kind of disturbance?” Saris demanded. They both knew that their recent conversation would not have occurred without someone jamming the observing cameras, listening posts.

  “We could not locate it, sir. It was only there a second. It might have been a minor power fluctuation,” the young man added, as if trying to give himself an out. Maybe his superiors. Senior officers were known to occasionally use jammers. If caught, it could be a career-ending mistake. Maybe life-ending.

  “Well, what are you going to do about it?” Saris demanded.

  “Log it, sir,” the young man said, giving the proper answer.

  “Then do so. I will be in my underway cabin. Wake me only if something develops. Understood?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Vice Admiral Ralf Baja left for his stateroom without looking back. He could only hope his fleet could spare enough time from looking over everyone’s shoulder to keep an eye on its rapidly approaching target.

  Contact: -11 hours

  Honovi watched the large screen in the main parlor of Government House. It was hard to remember that this was not his home for the first time since he was thirteen.

  “Can’t you get the picture any clearer?” Prime Minister Pro Tem Mojag Pandori snapped. “Somebody walked off with the remote.” A slur against the Longknifes’ sudden packing job, no doubt. Honovi didn’t mention all the stuff he couldn’t find.

  The screen was old, and someone had been messing with the brightness. Kusa looked at Honovi wordlessly. Yep, she was the kind of hands-on type who would have tried to make things better . . . and gotten them worse. An out-of-kilter vid screen perfectly illustrated the entire mess Wardhaven was in.

  Honovi walked over to the wall, opened the control box, and pushed a couple of buttons. The screen snapped into proper clarity. Father and the acting Prime Minister focused on the picture and didn’t notice Kusa mouthing Sorry, behind their backs. Honovi gave her a quick wink.

  The scene was of the main space elevator station. People waited in long lines for cars. The voiceover explained that just hours ago, the stations had been deserted, with the evacuation of the space station complete and no one going up or down . . . a lie Honovi had made sure there were no pictures to disprove. Or at least none ready yet for the news.

  Now it was different. The government had lifted its ban on near-Wardhaven space travel so long as the ships were only going from the High Wardhaven station to Jump Point Alpha. Now citizens of other worlds, stuck on Wardhaven, were fleeing.

  The pictures were the kind that Honovi had hoped to never see in his lifetime. Fearful women clutching children that had that blank look of the young who didn’t know enough to be frightened, except their mothers and their fathers were scared, so they took in that terror. Men hurried about, accomplishing nothing in their haste, and women hastened them on, wanting to know why the impossible wasn’t done already.

  Honovi had tried to keep this fear at bay for three days. Now it reached out, from children’s wide eyes, from mothers’ cracking voices, from men’s frustration. Yes, that was fear. And now that it was on the screen, it would be out in the open for all to see everywhere.

  “So, now are you satisfied?” Pandori spat. “I still say we should have kept the ships, the others, here. No one would dare bombard us with them here.”

  “The message is very clear,” Honovi said with the slow, dogged repetition that he hoped might finally get through Pandori’s denial. “They are using the old formal declarations from pre-Unity times. Ninety, a hundred years ago, a planet was supposed to surrender when it lost control of the space above it and pay ‘reparations.’ That usually meant taking over the winning planet’s debt to Earth. It was not a pretty time.”

  “But they aren’t demanding reparations. They want our total surrender,” Kusa pointed out.

  “Those are Peterwald battleships, and they’re playing for bigger stakes,” Father snapped. He was trying to stay quiet like he’d promised. It was not easy for him.

  “So you say,” Pandori snapped. “With you Longknifes it’s always a Peterwald under the bed. I say we ignore them, go about our business. They wouldn’t dare fire on us. And, when the fleet is back, we settle anything that needs settling.”

  There it was, out in the open. Bluff. Pandori was a great one for bluffing. Father brought his fist down on the visitor’s easy chair. “And just what do you think those six battleships will do while our fleet is boosting in from the jump point? Our battleships will arrive over a smoking ruin of a planet, with those ships running for the other jump point.”

  “Father. Mr. Prime Minister. We’ve had this conversation,” Honovi put in. They had. And might well have it many more times if there was time for it. Eighty years of peace had built “civilized expectations,” as Pandori put it. “Faith in the system,” as Father put it. “A near impossibility to face the reality of change” was the way Honovi put it privately to Kusa. She disagreed politely but not forcefully and tried to get her father to accept the need for change as much as Honovi worked on his.

  “We need to work on the wording of our response to the surrender demand, and orders for the fleet,” Honovi said, going straigh
t at the next item on his to-do list. “We need to issue it in two hours, maybe less.”

  “Why so soon?” Pandori grumbled. “It only takes a bit more than an hour to boost past the moon. I’ve done it many times.”

  “Yes, sir,” Honovi said. “But they aren’t boosting past the moon. They’ll boost at one g for an hour, then reverse and decelerate for an hour so they swing around the moon and come back at the hostile battleship’s track as they’re coming in. That’s where they’ll fight them.”

  “We did a school trip in the first grade,” Kusa said. “It took the afternoon to swing around the moon and come back.”

  “We did that trip, too,” Honovi said.

  “Do you remember much of first grade?” Father quipped to Pandori. “I sure don’t.”

  The acting Prime Minister shook his head. Finally, something the two old political warhorses could agree upon.

  “Course, we didn’t fight any battleships,” Kusa said.

  “I pretended we saw pirates,” Honovi said.

  “They were good days when children had to pretend they saw anything horrible,” the Prime Minister said, eyes tearing.

  “They will come again, Papa.”

  “If we make them,” Honovi said.

  “Okay, let’s see what we want to say.”

  Contact: -10 hours

  The Duty Lieutenant in flag plot of the Greenfeld Alliance Battleship Revenge studied the news feed. Then studied it some more. Then reviewed it again. This was a definite change in the target’s condition, but was it enough to wake the Chief of Staff, the Admiral? He called down to the intel center.

  “Commander, have you an analysis for flag plot yet?”

  “We are working on a full report. At the moment what you see is basically what we see. They are letting those holding non-Wardhaven passports leave. We should expect that several large liners will be crossing our track as we make final approach, heading out for Jump Point Adele. I doubt any of them will make for Jump Point Barbie, but we should keep our lasers ready. Any that do might try for a suicide dive on us.”