Kris Longknife's Successor

by Mike Shepherd

  37

  Admiral Drago also was spending his afternoon watching the feed from the periscope stuck through the jump 180,000 kilometers from where his reinforced fleet was moored. What he saw was enough to make anyone’s sphincter clench.

  For the last four hours, he had watched as an alien warship, battleship, frigate, or cruiser came shooting through the jump across the system at some 50,000 kilometers an hour.

  Admiral Drago would have preferred to turn that jump into a hotly contested roadblock. Fortunately, he’d chosen not to try to cross the third system out from the cats, and settled for establishing his defenses at the jump between systems two and three.

  Had he attempted to get to the other side of system three, he’d be heading straight for the alien fighting force at one hell of an acceleration.

  He’d made the correct choice, but that didn’t mean he had to like it.

  To face the seven hundred plus alien ships, he had only sixty-six. The odds were ten to one against him. In the past, Kris Longknife had killed the aliens at a ratio of twenty or more to one. But she’d had a lot more ships to start with.

  Drago had mined the jump on his side. A massive atomic device sat less than two thousand klicks from the jump, its proximity fuse activated. If any ship came through the jump, the bomb would plunge the jump into the fires of hell.

  Farther back, high acceleration rockets, heavily protected from the electromagnetic pulse from the first bomb, would shoot into the flaming maelstrom and add more hell before it could dissipate.

  This defense had held a jump point before. Bert could only hope it would hold it against what he had coming for him.

  Then he got a message from Admiral Santiago with a battle report attached. After he’d looked through it twice, he hoped even more that the mines could hold the jump for him.

  Drago called in Captain Svenson, his chief of staff, and his Ops officer. The three of them went over the battle report twice. It left all of them shaking their heads.

  Svenson held up a finger. “The new frigates do have battleship-sized lasers, with a range of 150,000 kilometers. They’re fast. The cruisers didn’t get in a position to fire, but they are even faster.”

  “Fast, but how long can they hold that acceleration before the destroy themselves?” the Ops chief asked.

  “What we’ve seen of these battleships show them to be faster,” Drago said, “good for at least 2.7 gees with none of them dropping out or blowing up. Somebody’s quality control is getting better.”

  “The reactors are different,” Svenson said. “Are they improved, or is this a new mother ship?”

  That got a shrug from the other two.

  “I think we’re in for a tough fight,” Drago muttered to himself.

  “Well, at least they didn’t bring any of those door knockers,” Captain Svenson said.

  “No, they haven’t,” Drago agreed.

  Then they did.

  38

  Drago was at lunch the next day when he got a call to the flag bridge. By the time he got there, both Svenson and the Ops chief were huddled around the forward screen.

  “Is there a problem?” Drago asked.

  “It seems that sixty of the battleships and an equal number of cruisers have slipped off from the main force. They’re headed for a huge gas giant with a large number of moons.”

  “What type of moons?” Drago asked, knowing he wasn’t going to like the answer.

  “At least a few are real solid rock with tectonic activity. Even volcanoes,” Svenson answered.

  “What are the betting odds that they intend to cut some nice big chunks of hard rock and make their own door knockers?” Drago asked.

  “No one in here is going to take your bet,” the Ops chief answered.

  “Yeah. I kind of thought so.”

  Drago mulled his new problem over for a bit. “Well, look on the bright side of this. It will be a while before those rock-clad ships can get here.”

  39

  For the next week, the two fleets fifteen light years apart faced each other through a jump that was a tiny pinpoint in space. It very quickly settled down into something like what Admiral Miyoshi reported from his blocking force at his defended jump point.

  Every day or so, the aliens sent a cruiser forward to lob atomics through the gate. The human battlecruisers swatted down the devices before they could arm themselves and detonate. After a while, a cruiser would sneak through, only to be smashed likewise.

  Admiral Drago, for his part, sent a couple of armed probes through the jump, picking different intervals to see if he could identify their night cycles. Each time he’d nail eight to twelve mines. Each time they would replace them.

  On the third day, Drago sent the battlecruiser Roger Young through the jump for a fast ‘I came, I saw, I shot.’ She bagged four mine layers, eight cruisers, and three of the frigates that were moving over to extend the flanks of the alien deployment.

  The Young was back before the aliens were ready to take a shot.

  The next foray through the jump was by the aliens. The periscope warned that they were sending three of the frigates forward, all of them lashed into a single unit. They started off tossing atomic devices through the gate, none of which had time to arm and explode.

  Then the trio of frigates tried their luck.

  Forewarned, Drago had cleared his own mine out of the way, and even sent his atomic tipped rockets out of the fire lanes.

  The trio shot through the jump, already accelerating. They popped apart and headed off in separate directions. However, Drago’s fleet was spread out and waiting for them. They had laid out a fire plan that gave the frigates no chance at all of escaping the salvoes headed for them.

  Having come through at only a few kilometers an hour, even accelerating at thirty meters per second, per second, they were Swiss cheese before they got a kilometer from the jump.

  It is possible that a few fragments from the exploding frigates got hurled back through the jump, but not likely.

  For the next three days, the aliens tried to attack single cruisers at different times of the day. On the third day, Drago decided to try his own hand again. He ordered the Valiant, Vanguard, Vindictive, and Victorious through the jump as a unit. It was easy to meld the Smart MetalTM hulls together.

  The plan was for them to edge through the jump as one unit. Immediately, they’d blossom like a flower, letting their bows spread out while keeping contact well aft. That way, each ship had its own bit of the alien fleet in its sights.

  They were over and back in eleven seconds. The Valiant was glowing from a single hit.

  The alien fleet suffered a lot more.

  Using the periscope for scouting, the four-ship division had laid in a fire plan. Each ship set its lasers for half power. Each alien frigate was targeted by three different lasers to increase the odds of a hit, or, more especially, a hit that would not get blocked by their forward basalt shields.

  Thirty-two frigates were targeted. Hanging in space, they were sitting ducks. Twenty-seven of them died as at least one of the 22-inch lasers slashed through a port for the frigate’s own lasers and ripped into its capacitors and other potentially explosive gear.

  No sooner was the division back on the human side of the jump than the probe was back in place. The periscope showed evidence that the alien fleet was still firing everything they had at the jump.

  One of their wild shots apparently winged the periscope, finally answering the question of just how much of the device was on the other side of the jump.

  The probe used some of its own Smart MetalTM to rebuild the periscope, but Admiral Drago ordered a five-minute delay before they sent it through again.

  The alien ships were rocketing around in no sort of a pattern. Two battleships had collided; one exploded, the other was tumbling end over end.

  All in all, it looked like a very productive morning.

  However, during the few seconds on the other side, while the gunnery departments we
re busy, the sensors were also occupied. The battlecruisers searched the system. They found sixty battleships; their mass jacked up from half a million tons to one million tons each, accelerating out from that gas giant.

  The preliminaries were over. It was time for the main event.

  40

  Three days later, it was clear the aliens intended to force the jump. A quad of door knockers, lashed together, were drifting not too far from the jump. Another foursome drifted 10 kilometers farther back. Behind them, lined up like a freight train, was the rest of the alien fleet. They were making for the jump at 2.0 gees acceleration.

  Admiral Drago ordered the periscope retrieved and the probe to distance itself from the jump. He also ordered his ships to slip their moorings. As soon as they floated in formation, he ordered them to Condition Zed and beat the crew to quarters.

  They were locked in, loaded, and ready to hunt bear.

  Then an atomic device exploded.

  “Did I miss something?” Drago asked Captain Svenson.

  “I didn’t see anything either,” the chief of staff answered. “Sensors, talk to me about that explosion.”

  “Just a moment, sir,” and the forward screen took on the blank appearance of space. A second later, an atomic device exploded and it was impossible to get any sensor reading except heat. Then the screen recycled back to pre-explosion and advanced slowly.

  For a fraction of a second, a cruiser appeared. Immediately, the atomic device activated and the small ship was obliterated.

  “Where’d that puppy come from?” Svenson asked.

  “It doesn’t matter,” Admiral Drago said. “I’m starting to think that our shooting was too good when we sent ships through. They may have become suspicious that we knew what was happening on their side of the jump. Whatever it is, we now have a problem. Do we keep the jump under atomic fire?”

  “Our atomic-tipped missiles won’t be much good to us if they get some of their over-gunned battleships through. They’d shoot them down like mad dogs.”

  Drago nodded. “Use them or lose them, huh?”

  “Unfortunately, we’ve only got twelve.”

  “That should last us a good twenty to thirty minutes,” Drago calculated. “Start the second one moving in. Let’s see if we can get it parked close enough to the jump and active. Maybe we can replace the mine.”

  Just as the thermonuclear explosion was beginning to dissipate, the missile coasted to a slow halt, then edged itself in closer as the fire ball shrank.

  Four door knockers drifted through the jump, already firing. They split up, jacked up their acceleration to 2.5 gees and spread out.

  Their lasers got not only close to the missile, but quickly wiped out all the rest.

  “There goes the atomic option,” Drago muttered, then ordered, “Fire!”

  The Fourth Fleet and its reinforcements had been expecting four door knockers. They unloaded two hundred and sixteen 22-inch lasers at each of them in the next six seconds. They boiled off lava and gases, but none exploded.

  “Flip ships,” Admiral Drago ordered, “Accelerate to 4.0 gees. Fire.”

  This time the aft batteries laid one hundred and forty-four lasers on those four targets.

  Internal explosions could be seen for a second on all four of them, and then they exploded into expanding clouds of superheated gases as their reactors lost their containment and the demons of their own plasma ate the ship.

  Meanwhile, another four door knockers had jumped through.

  Even as Drago’s ships destroyed those four, another two quads had joined them.

  Drago kept his fleet accelerating away from the jump, except for when he had to kill acceleration and flip to fire his bow guns.

  “Why aren’t we killing more of them?” Svenson asked the thin air above his high gee station.

  “How many lasers did we see firing at our atomic tipped rockets?” Drago said, answering a question with a question. “Sensors?”

  “Checking, sir.”

  There was a pause. “I can’t tell, sir, the radiation and heat from the atomic explosion makes it impossible for the highly sensitive sensors we can usually use to spot the ionized gas from a laser passing.”

  “But the other door knockers haven’t fired a shot,” Svenson noted.

  “Is that because they’re out of range?” Admiral Drago left the question hanging. “Still, I’m starting to think they have rock clad the entire bow of their ships. Maybe all of it. That makes them harder to kill and we’re taking a lot more time to kill them.”

  “That’s possible,” the chief of staff agreed.

  “Sir,” Sensors called, “I’m having a hard time scanning around the jump. The door knockers are laying down that same smoke screen that Admiral Bethea reported.

  Admiral Drago frowned, but said nothing.

  This battle was not the one he’d planned for.

  “Cut acceleration to 2.0 gees,” he ordered, wanting to keep the jump in range for as long as possible.

  The battle continued. Door knockers now shot through the jump already at a 2.5 gee acceleration. Every ten seconds or so another four would appear, split apart and spread out, spewing gunk behind them, expanding the cloud and forcing the humans to engage the aliens later, after they’d put on more velocity and began evading.

  The Fourth Fleet was now firing by task forces. Each group of twenty-two ships would fire their forward battery at three ships. All three usually exploded. Then they’d flip and fire their aft lasers. They usually destroyed at least one ship and left the others glowing with red hot molten lava. Occasionally, one of them would overheat and destroy itself.

  Still, the final score was twenty-nine door knockers destroyed, but thirty-one were through the jump. All were accelerating at 2.5 gees straight for their tormentors, creating a blind spot behind them to cover new arrivals.

  Yet not one had fired a shot.

  Wanting to keep well away from the enemy’s new laser range of 150,000 klicks, Drago now pulled back. His acceleration was 2.0 gees, except when he cut power, drifted, and brought his bow guns to bear.

  Now battleships were jumping in. Every minute, five or six groups of alien warships would come out of the spreading cloud and join the forces massing against Drago.

  As soon as the first few broke out of the screen, Drago ordered his fleet to concentrate on them. It proved effective.

  The fleet continued to fire by task forces of twenty-two ships each. They could take three ships under fire with their aft battery, then the next three of the newly arrived battleships would be burned by the forward battery as they coasted. Usually, they got all six. Sometimes, one of them would survive.

  In the first minute, twenty battleships came out of the smoke, already dodging. Drago’s ships destroyed eleven.

  For seven minutes, the alien battleships poured out of the spreading debris screen. Every minute, the alien ships Drago’s forces engaged got more and more frisky as they increased their velocity up before they became targets.

  The result was that fewer of them got blown apart. One hundred and twenty battleships were culled down to ninety-one.

  Still, Drago’s strategy was working. He was now 200,000 kilometers from the latest battleship to come out of the screen. It might be extreme range, but he could sit out here and plunk away at the alien force as he gave up ground from now until the cows came home.

  By Drago’s estimate, he’d have destroyed this force before it was half-way across the system.

  Suddenly, new ships began to shoot out from the screen. Now the battleships were joined by frigates and cruisers. Their acceleration was somewhere between 3.5 and 4.0 gees. Each one of them spread out the screen behind them.

  No doubt, more were coming.

  Drago ordered the frigates and cruisers to be taken under fire. Hitting them proved harder than he expected. They likely had come through the jump at over 20,000 kilometers an hour. In the two or three minutes before they shot out of the screen, they’d increase
d their speed to over 30,000 kilometers an hour.

  While the battleships had charged at Admiral Drago’s main force, these fast-movers were moving as much out as forward. That did make them a better target. The bow armor on the frigates only covered about half of the target. Still, getting a hit at this range, even considering speed and erratic movement, proved harder than Drago wished.

  The first eight ships died, but by that time, sixteen more were reaching for his flank. Before another eight were blown out of space, the force had grown to thirty-two.

  Even as the enemy light units died, the debris cloud expanded. Every new frigate or cruiser that appeared was faster, more spread out, and jinking for its life.

  Fewer and fewer enemy ships were destroyed.

  Something worse was also happening. Many of the faster ships were turning hard as they came out of the jump. Now that the Fourth Fleet had been backed away from the jump, they were heading out to the right or left, top or bottom, jacking up their velocity to 3.5 gees for the frigates, 4.0 gees for the cruisers . . . and staying outside the range of Drago’s fleet.

  “Those outriders are going to be a major pain,” Captain Svenson said.

  “If they manage to get ahead of us,” Drago said, “they can spread mines and other junk along our course. Likely, our secondary batteries can take care of them, but I don’t want to see what one of their atomics does to a ship that missed one.”

  “So, what do we do?” the chief of staff asked.

  41

  Admiral Drago let the battle develop for three hours. The velocity of the alien ships climbed up as they accelerated. Thirty-one door knockers were cut back to twenty-four. From the look of the glow on their bows, it appeared the aliens were using their own lasers to drill gun ports through their armor.

  The alien battleships had pulled ahead of the door knockers. They were making 2.7 gees verses the bigger ships’ 2.5 gees. None of them had organized themselves into a battle array. They kept their distance from each other and threw themselves around as hard as they could. Drago’s fleet cut the number of battleships down to seventy-two.