Kris Longknife 13 - Unrelenting

by Mike Shepherd

  47

  Now Kris waited. Battles were terrifying, but you were too busy staying alive to taste it. This waiting was gut-grinding, and there was nothing to do but do it.

  So Kris did what she had to do.

  The one thing she couldn’t avoid was gestating this little inconvenience beneath her heart. She was entering her third trimester and all that energy she’d been enjoying for the last three months had gone AWOL.

  Kris found her feet dragging . . . and swelling . . . even as she went about the desperate job of gathering support while her three distant fleets bought time.

  Kris needed more scouts. She and Pipra had a knock-down, drag-out fight as they debated what ships could be passed out of the carrying trade from the asteroid mines and into Kris’s scout fleet.

  “We’re operating at a bare minimum as it is,” Pipra insisted. “You do want more Smart Metal and reactors, don’t you?”

  “Don’t ask silly questions,” Kris snapped back, trying to get comfortable and finding that she and baby were not getting along at the moment, and it would likely only get worse. “You know our lives depend on what your people make. I’m just asking if you can do more with less.”

  Pipra scratched her head. Kris was seeing more and more of that lately. A lot of folks were carrying tension in their scalps. “You’ve kept the freighters at single reactors to make sure none of them got it in their heads to run for home.”

  “Yes,” Kris conceded.

  “If we went back to two reactors, we’d be running half the ships back and forth, but they’d carry more than double the load, just half as often.”

  “Would that disrupt the flow of production?” Kris asked.

  “Abby, what does your computer say?” Pipra said, tossing the bomb to Kris’s former maid and now super project manager.

  Abby spent a whole minute staring into space, communing with her computer, one of Nelly’s kids, before she said, “We’ve got just enough of a buffer in our present inventory that we could take the hit of going to half the ships making half the runs but bringing in 235 percent each trip. But how long would it take the yards to respin two ships into one?”

  “They’re getting very good at that,” Kris said, “Nelly, ask Benson.”

  “I’ve passed him Mata’s schedule of ships in port and those coming in. He says they can respin two ships into one in as little as twenty-four hours. There’s not a lot to do with a freighter. If they get the two ships orbiting the moon right now into the yard before noon, they can have one out by noon tomorrow.” Nelly paused for only a moment, then added, “And that will give you fewer crew on the mining runs and some of the ship navigation and electronics for warships.”

  “Every scrap helps,” Kris said, finally feeling comfortable in her chair.

  “Kris, I’m working my people day and night. We’ve got people volunteering to work extra shifts to make sure some of the new hands don’t screw up. I know your people are out there fighting for our lives, but I need you to know that we, back here, are fighting just as hard to get you what you need before you even ask for it.”

  “I know that, Pipra. Believe me, I know it.”

  “Well, it would be nice if you showed it.”

  “What do you want, a royal visit to your fabrication plants?”

  “Hell no, that would just lose us production. But it would be nice if my folks knew you knew what they were doing and cared about it.”

  “Kris,” Nelly said, “you’ve been looking at creating campaign medals for the First Battle of Alwa and an Expeditionary Medal against the Suicide Base.”

  “Yes. I should have signed off on those weeks ago. We’ll need to add another for the Holding Campaign for System X.”

  “Why don’t we issue a medal for industrial service in the defense of the Alwa system?” Nelly asked. “There was a medal given back in the twentieth century. The King George Cross was awarded to the island of Malta for its people’s courage under siege.”

  “We’re certainly under siege,” Pipra added, dryly.

  “You want me to award a King Raymond Cross? Kris said. “I think Granny Rita might have something to say about that.”

  “How about a Princess Kristine Cross?” Pipra asked.

  “I know I’m a cross you bear,” Kris said, making a face, “but do we want to make it official?”

  “Kris, I don’t think you realize the impact you have on my people,” Pipra said. “Yes, you’re keeping them from running, but you are here, right beside them. Even six months pregnant, you haven’t backed down. Kris, you may count on us, but we’re counting on you, too.”

  “So something like the Princess Kristine Cross for Steadfast Support in the Defense of Alwa, huh?”

  “Exactly. You have Nelly design you a ribbon to go with a silver medal sporting your face, and you’ll give me just what I need to keep my workers in the traces until they drop or the aliens blast us to atoms.”

  “Please don’t tell that to the troops,” Kris said.

  “It’s just between us two. Do we really have a chance?” Pipra asked, all levity gone.

  “I don’t know,” Kris said, letting honesty slip to the surface for a moment. “With what we have, we can’t hold. With what we’re trying to patch together . . .” Kris paused, then shook her head. “Not against five base ships.”

  Kris took a deep breath. “There’s supposed to be some secret weapon that they’re putting together back in human space. The last group to come out heard about it but were warned to not even try to guess what it was, or they’d be booted from the relief force. Maybe if we hold out long enough for them to get it here,” Kris said. “Maybe.”

  “So we’re fighting for time and praying for a miracle.”

  “I’m afraid that’s it, Pipra. That’s all I can offer.”

  Pipra took a deep breath. “Then that is what we’ll do. Now, if you’ll get that cross officially knocked together, I’ll arrange a five-minute break for people to look at a certificate with their name on it and cheer before I take the whip to them and get them back to work.”

  “I can have the template of the certificate for you in an hour,” Nelly said.

  A piece of paper and a prayer. Is that what we’ve come to?

  But Kris signed the certificate, and Nelly distributed it to the shipyards, moon fabs, and asteroid mines.

  Of baubles like that, seconds are bought.

  48

  Out beyond System X, Kris’s fleets bought time the old-fashioned way, with blood and sweat and tears. The three wolf packs turned out to be a bit different, so each of the fights were, too.

  Vice Admiral Bethea’s Third Fleet had the toughest time with Wolf Pack Anton. Their Enlightened One hardly deserved the name. Or maybe casualties just didn’t bother him.

  Bethea deployed Third Fleet to make a stand two systems out from System X. It had two jumps in, so, of necessity, Bethea split her fleet to cover both jumps. Her situation was complicated because the eight frigates of the Esperanto League and Hispania still had the shorter-range 20-inch lasers. She split them, sending one division to each jump, then had to split up the Scanda Confederacy’s squadron, sending the Odin, Thor, and Frigga to fight with her own Savannah Squadron while Admiral Shoalter’s New Eden Squadron had the other three.

  Fifteen ships each to hold two jumps.

  Bethea’s own Task Force 5 drew the bloody straw.

  The periscope gave them warning that over sixty ships in two dishes were incoming. There was no chance to call for reinforcements. Shoalter’s Task Force 6 had a dozen ships approaching his jump. Whether to force it or just fix him in place was hard to tell.

  There was no question, the ships before Bethea’s jump were coming at her with intent. Bloody intent.

  Three ships came through at fifteen-second intervals, firing every laser they had. Three came, three died under a hail of lasers and antimatter rockets.

  Then the aliens got smart. The next three ships came through backward, their vulnerable aft
end already flipped away from the eight ships Bethea had behind the jump.

  But Bethea had fifteen ships and seven were deployed in front of the jump. They snapped off shots at the aliens’ stern ends in rapid sequence and all three died just as dead as those that came through bow first.

  Several small packages came through next, likely atomics. Quickly, they were lased to nothing.

  A pause followed. Then the aliens began ramming themselves through the jump at ten-second intervals. Four- to five-hundred-thousand-ton behemoths shot through, alternating their facing.

  It did them no good. Indeed, alternating them just made it easier for the two squadrons to shoot, recharge, shoot, recharge.

  Twenty-four ships came through and twenty-four ships died.

  After that slaughter came another pause. When it drew long, Bethea ordered the Albatross up to the jump. She did a quick four-gee acceleration and deceleration and slipped the periscope through.

  “The other dish has had enough. It’s withdrawing.”

  Bethea studied the picture for all of three seconds, and said, “Let’s not let them go without a last dance, shall we?”

  In ten minutes, she had her frigates arranged in a tight line at five-second intervals. There were advantages in going to war in fifty-thousand-ton frigates verses five-hundred-thousand-ton monsters.

  Bethea led Task Force 5 through, her flagship Lion leading.

  Into a target-rich environment.

  Thirty alien warships were 120,000 klicks out, in a loose sphere presenting their hind ends. It was easy pickings for the 22-inch lasers that her big cats had been up-gunned with.

  By the time all fifteen frigates where through, nine aliens were balls of gas, and the commander was just reacting to his danger. He flipped his surviving twenty-one ships, loaded with lasers and thickly coated with rock, and charged Bethea’s two squadrons. Several tried to push themselves past 2.5 gees. One blew out its rocket motors and spun out of control.

  Whether they made 2.5 gees or a bit more, it didn’t matter. The human frigates flipped ship and backed away, hacking and slashing at them with their longer-ranged lasers while keeping well out of reach of the mass of lasers that might be good for lasing a planet from orbit but were totally outclassed against the humans’ big 22-inchers.

  Rocky armor blazed away in flaming chunks that gave only slight protection from the next incoming volley. Ships glowed and burned until there was nothing left but raw hull and vulnerable aliens inside.

  Then ships died. Some died quickly as a reactor blew out and plasma ate them. Others died slowly as lasers sliced off chunks of ship and sent them flying off to trail briefly behind the ship before falling well away.

  Damaged hulls collapsed under the pressure of the 2.5-gee acceleration; ships fell in upon themselves like a flower in some sort of reverse blossom.

  Twenty-one ships gave chase to the humans. Twenty-one died.

  Not one alien sought to save himself.

  There were three exceptions to this slaughter. Three fast movers had broken away from the jump ahead of the main force and were well on their way for the nearest jump when Bethea ordered an end to her victorious flight.

  When Bethea took stock of her ships, she found little damage to report. Both fights had been well out of range of the alien lasers. What hits they got were ineffective.

  Like the French knights against British longbows, the aliens would have to come up with something different if they wanted to win a fight against 22-inch lasers.

  Admiral Bethea held off her report until Admiral Shoalter had a chance to chase down his nuisance force. He jumped through and blew away six still close to the jump. The other six were already well away, accelerating at a full 2.5 gees.

  Kris got the report less than a week after the fight. Coming in quickly on the heels of the Kestrel was the Merlin from Admiral Miyoshi’s Second Fleet. The Beulah Wolf Pack had been more careful.

  Miyoshi’s Second Fleet had a tougher system to hold. It had three jumps in; he had to spread his ships more widely. Admirals Miyoshi and L’Estock’s as well as Commodore Zingi’s squadrons each got a jump. The new BatRon 13 of Alwa-built frigates were added two or three to each jump.

  That allowed for only five or six ships on each side of a jump.

  It could have been tough fight, but the Beulah Wolf Pack’s Enlightened One didn’t seem to have the stomach for slaughtering his people with nothing to show for it. Each of the three jumps were tested with a trio of ships. The supporting dish stayed well back from the jump, and when nothing came back, immediately flipped ship and boosted away.

  With so few ships to guard each jump, Vice Admiral Miyoshi chose caution and made no move to attack the withdrawing ships.

  Two days later, the Hermes reported that Vice Admiral Kitano’s First Fleet had rebuffed pretty much the same kind of attempt by Wolf Pack Clairissa.

  “Nelly, can we hold along this line?” Kris asked.

  “I’d like to say we could, Kris, but those fast-moving suicide boats tell me that the aliens know how to make long jumps. There are several jumps that wouldn’t require more than four hundred thousand klicks an hour to take them into the jumps behind those systems.”

  “And we’d end up with a couple of dishes defending the jump we need to go through,” Kris muttered.

  “We could use a long jump to get out of that trap, Kris, but it might take our ships a while to get back to Alwa.”

  “Give me a list of the jumps, Nelly. We’ll picket them. With luck, we can pick off their scouts, and they won’t discover we’ve got a trail behind our Thermopylae.”

  “I didn’t know you remembered that battle, Kris.”

  “Nelly, I do have a meat part of my brain that I use occasionally.”

  “I keep forgetting that part of your anatomy.”

  “Is that because you’re only thinking about that parts of me that Jack likes?”

  “Kris, I don’t know if I should continue this fun game of pretending what I do and don’t think about your physical makeup or whether I should get back to something serious.”

  “Nelly, if you want to be just one of the girls, you need to sound like us.”

  “But I am not now, nor will I ever be, one of you girls,” Nelly sniffed.

  “Well, it was fun thinking you were for a moment. Now, yes, we are holding several ‘Hot Gates,’ but it looks like we need to hold a few mountain trails as well. Get the couriers headed back with that data just as fast as they can be made ready.”

  “They report that they are ready now, just give them time to refuel and resupply.”

  “They’ve got to be doing 3.5 gees or better.”

  “A check of their vitals shows you’re right, Kris, but the skippers are already taking on fuel and frozen meals.”

  “See if you can get them some decent box lunches from the station’s restaurants and tell them the chow’s on me.”

  “Done, Kris. I’m telling them what’s available for takeout. These meals may be a bit spendy. They’re ordering the most expensive stuff on the menu.”

  “They earned it.”

  Kris took a deep breath and eyed her board. Three suiciders had come through to impale themselves on the guard ships’ lasers. The number had gone from one every couple of days to one a day, then two. Today was the second in a row with three.

  Kris shook her head. “I may finally get to see what happens when two ships try to use a jump at the same time. I hope they’re both suicide boats and not one of ours.”

  Then Jump Point Beta coughed up a normal warning buoy, followed a few moments later by the Challenger, and Kris found herself with a whole new set of problems.

  No, a challenge. Not a problem, but an opportunity. She smiled.

  49

  “We found the alien base ships that are spawning the suicide boats right where you expected,” Commander Hanson reported.

  Kris grinned; even a Longknife liked it when they guessed right. Even a tired, pregnant, Longknife. She
put her feet up on her desk, relaxed into her chair, which she had Nelly adjust until it fit her and baby as well as could be expected, and stared at the wall screen that showed the spread of systems spawning ten-thousand-ton boats that could make a very big hole in Alwa if they got through.

  So far, the Birds had stopped every one.

  Kris should be happy they were content to throw away their people in such an easily defeated way.

  Instead, Kris eyed the screen.

  She hated doing nothing, even if the aliens were doing little better than nothing.

  “Nelly, talk to me about the two systems with the alien base ships.”

  “Kris, you aren’t thinking of doing something to one of them, are you?”

  “Nelly, thinking about something isn’t doing something.”

  “I know many philosophies that say to think about a sin is the same as committing it.”

  “Since when did you take up philosophy?”

  “Since it dawned on me that if you die out here, I and my children will die with you.”

  Kris patted the bulge at her waist. “Motherhood does things to you, doesn’t it?”

  Nelly said nothing.

  The door to Kris’s quarters opened, and Jack entered. “Nelly tells me you’re examining options.”

  “Nelly is a snitch.”

  “Well, she only snitched to your husband and security chief.”

  Kris kept her feet up. “I just got comfortable. Pull up a chair, and we’ll talk if you insist.”

  He pulled up a chair. “You planning on doing something wild?”

  Kris mulled that over. “I haven’t decided. I want to look at my options, Jack. Every girl grows up being told to sit there like a good girl. Hell, I’m a knocked-up girl. I didn’t get this way by being good.”

  “Your husband might hold a different opinion,” Jack said with a happy grin.

  For once, Kris ignored him. “So, is there any weakness in the alien suicide array? They’ve scattered themselves over eighteen systems. ‘He who tries to be strong everywhere is strong nowhere.’ Didn’t Colonel Cortez tell me that a while back?”