Lost Dawns: A Short Prequel Novel to the Lost Millinnium Trilogy

by Mike Shepherd

  “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.

  “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,” the admiral said. “If it don’t sail, it’s mine, until all hell breaks loose, and 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 us now,” 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?”

  23

  Grand Admiral Sandy Santiago’s flagship, Victory, led her ad hoc task force through the jump. Even at 45,000 kilometers, they 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 had not long to live.

  “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 ducks 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. We’ll be at four gees in five minutes,” he answered, and a glance at the regional scan showed his ships starting to pull away from hers.

  Sandy gladly would have followed him, but a survey of the system showed a battle fleet in orbit around a burned out 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 underway. This force would need fifteen minutes to put on 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 nearly 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.

  Scattered through the fields of survivor pods was fragmentary wreckage of ships destroyed and hot gasses that showed where even more had vanished. Well beyond those battle fields were other bits of wreck and cooling gas. A long line of that stretched from halfway across the system to the neutron star. Orbiting around it was what looked like 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?” Mondi whispered.

  “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 boats beeper would switch to red or even a flashing red.

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

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

  Of course, Kris Longknife 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, chair, and the likes.”

  “Yes.”

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

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

  “We weren’t ashore very long before we sailed out for here, Admiral, but it was long enough for some of our hands to talk with Alwa Sailors. On Kris’s fleet, crew mates 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 statesrooms 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 knew she was 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, Admiral.”

  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.”

  “Scheduled quarters inspection.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  When Ray Longknife had ordered Sandy out to Alwa Station he’d said the place was critical to keeping the alien monsters busy and away from human space. He’s said the situation would, no doubt, be difficult.

  Ray, you don’t know the half of it.

  “Computer, get me a chair. No, make that two,” she said, waving Mandi at the first one to emerge from the deck. She settled in, leaned back and stared hard at the overhead.

  “I now command the fleet on Alwa Station, right.”

  “That’s what you read in your orders when you took command, Admiral.”

  Sandy saw where that would take her, and decided to avoid it for a few more minutes. “What other rumors did our talkative shore parties pick up in the short time they had to yak.”

  Mandi took her time composing an answer. When it came, it was a whopper.

  “The Sailors and Marines can get land grants down on the planet. Have your own farm or hunting shack. The Alwans are handing out land grants, or maybe not deeds, but land use permits. Kris Longknife is making sure we don’t steal the natives’ land.”

  Sandy took that in and had a flash back to the hot potato that Pipra gal had dropped in her lap. No way would Kris let some money grabbing types strip plants from a river in native territory.

  I’ve got to remember to be there when Kris gets her hooks into those dreamers.

  As fun as that thought was, Sandy had this new hot potato to deal with. Call it a hot sweet potato.

  Sandy had been a widow for a long time. She did have some old friends that she might occasionally go away with for a long weekend. She’d accepted that command of a forlorn hope on the other side of the galaxy might be on the celibate side.

  She’d didn’t exactly expect the same from her subordinates, but she’d assumed that rules were rules. Maybe she hadn’t thought that through as far as she should have.

  The preamble of Kris Longknife’s fraternization policy put it bluntly. “We are here and not likely to be going anyplace soon. We also lack any shore facilities that might allow for the normal separation of intimate others,” Sandy read aloud.

  “Yes, ma’am,” Mondi said.

  “Do they have much of a shore facility now?” Sandy asked herself.

  “I did get a readout of the base force, Admiral, before we sailed.”

  “And?”

  “Yards and docks has mostly a highly skilled civilian workforce. Supply is growing, but most of it is Colonial or Alwans, not a lot of slots for Sailors. Except for those assigned to what passes for a penal colony shoveling bird shit.”

  “Who’s shoveling bird shit?”

  Mondi had a quick answer for that one. “The two guys that sabotaged Kris’s birth control implants resulting in her pregnancy. There are also some Sailors and Marines, including a few senior officers and chiefs that didn’t take no for a no from a subordinate.”

  “So there are still a few teeth in this Longknife shacking up policy?” Sandy spat.

  “There have been a lot of weddings,” Mondi answered. “Still, some of the larger combinations don’t seem to fit the usual requirements for a marriage licence.”

  Sandy scowled at that, but Mondi didn’t flinch.

  “You wouldn’t happen to know how this policy is working out, would you?”

  “Admiral Hart said they’ve issued some warnings, admonishments and reprimands to those with problems with the word no that didn’t earn a shovel. At least yet. He said they’d also had to shuffle a few folks around the fleet after breakups that got nasty. Apparently, they’ve also added an approval system where Cupid’s arrow strikes too far up or down the chain of command. I’m told that Admiral Kitano herself has an ongoing relationship with the engineering chief of her flag, left over from when she was its skipper. Overall, the chiefs and the XO’s have managed to make it work.”

  “Suddenly, you know a hell of a lot about this abomination.”

  “I’m the one that contacted Admiral Hart, ma’am. We’ve shot a couple of messages back and forth.”

  “Okay, Captain, do you have a recommendation?”

  “Since you used the word abomination with reference to said policy, I take it that after thirty-seven years in the Navy, you have a strong opinion.”

  “Very strong.”

  “I also know you to be a very flexible officer. Always on the lookout for a better way of doing things. Fix what’s broke.”

  “Are you saying that the Navy’s Fraternization Policy is broke?”

  “I’m saying we’ve walked off the edge of the world we know and we’ve got a whole lot of nothing to go on, ma’am. I’m also saying that you’ll have a very difficult time walking the rest of the fleet back to the traditional way of doing things. Secondly, I don’t see any way that you can allow the rest of the fleet to shack up and tell the new arrivals to suck it up, ma’am.”

  “You put my problem to me, succinctly. Oh, the sorrow of it,” Sandy said with a sigh. “I come out here expecting to finally get my ass in a decent battle and I find Kris Longknife has smashed the hell out of the opposition and I’m stuck figuring out how to keep this lash up together all by our lonesome on the other side of the galaxy. Hell, damn, spit,” she said. She knew more forceful words, but they failed her just now.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Okay, my ever vigilant Ops Officer, I assume you have some recommendations for me before you brought me this steaming pile of shit.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “And they are?”

  “I’d suggest that you distribute the policy for comment to all skippers, XO’s and leading chiefs and require their comments on the policy as well as any steps they might need to take to implement the policy if you should order it, Admiral.”

  “So, dump this sweat potato in the laps of those that will have to live with it, huh?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Sandy considered that. No doubt, Kris Longknife and her castaways had had more time to experience the problem of isolation on their Sailors before the extent of the problem had demanded they come up with a solution. Sandy could delay, and see what happened, but delay might lead to some real train wrecks as a few of her more rigid officers ran smack into some of her more creative Sailors.

  Strange how I didn’t think of that the other way around.

  “Okay, Mondi, ask for comments. Give then three days to reply. We’ll let this simmer for a bit.”

  “In the meantime, do you have any recommendations to your skippers about no notice quarters inspections?”

  “Yeah, tell them to stuff the idea and keep their eyes on the ball. We may be in a fight any minute. I don’t want anyone creating problems I don’t need.”

  “And the Sailors?”

  “Sailors were invented to create problems for officer, Mondi. It’s just what they do.”

  Sample Chapters from a Rough Draft of Kris Longknife - Emissary

  Coming in Spring, 2017

>   Note to reader, much of this may end up on the cutting room floor of the second draft, so enjoy it now.

  31

  Admiral, Her Royal Highness Kris Longknife returned from lunch with her husband with a smile on her face. Five years ago to the day she’d demanded a desk job where she could have lunch with Lieutenant General Jack Montoya, RUSMC, her husband, and go home to her kids at 1700.

  For a while, Kris had kept count of every day she and Jack met for lunch, but somewhere about the end of the first year, she gave that up. Jack was a Marine general and had inspections and field operations that occasionally left her alone. Kris was type commander for the Battlecruiser Force and had her own inspections to attend, as well as fleet exercises to observe and write up.

  That reflection cost Kris her smile. Fleet problems always meant her crossing swords with the Battle Fleet and Scout Force as she defended her battlecruisers from their misuse and her trying to free her battlecruisers to go raise hell with battleships and cruisers alike.

  The manual on the proper doctrine for battlecruisers use remained in draft form despite everything Kris had done to get it signed off on.

  Kris shrugged, something she’d been doing a lot of lately, and tried to regain her cheerful self. Five years! The pool on when she’d leave hadn’t gotten a dollar in the last year. They were learning that when this damn Longknife said something, she meant it.

  Kris opened the door to her outer office. She’d managed to get it repainted in a soft green. The carpet was a light blue . . . a color she’d never get away with at Nuu house, not with Ruth and John junior tracking dirt everywhere.

  Those were happy thoughts.

  But the look on Lieutenant Megan Longknife, Kris’s once again aide de camp brought Kris to a halt with a frown slowly overtaking her face.