Kris Longknife: Mutineer

by Mike Shepherd

  “Stirring words,” Tom quipped.

  Kris shrugged. “Have to do. Addison, start jinking ship, zigging and zagging like you’ve never done before.”

  “I’ll ruin your firing solution,” Addison pointed out.

  “Ruin it. I’m more interested in us dodging their fire than us hitting them.”

  “Hostiles are coming around, ma’am,” Tom reminded her. “They should be able to bear in five seconds.” That was another limitation of the smaller ships. Cruisers and battleships had massive turrets that gave their lasers all-around bearings. The Fast Attack’s twenty-four-inch lasers were limited to thirty degrees to either side of the bow. Kris used the time before attackers could touch the Typhoon to send four half-strength pulses at the four ships of the squadron’s second division. She missed all, except maybe the Shamal. That didn’t matter; getting their attention was more important. What was most interesting was the behavior of the Cyclone and Tornado. Both slowed, turned out of line and away from the Earth Battle Fleet. Bet there are some interesting discussions taking place on their bridges.

  Kris’s stomach jumped to her throat as Addison dropped the Typhoon. “Missed us,” he crowed.

  “Turn us bow on to the Hurricane,” Kris ordered.

  “Bow on, aye,” he answered.

  “Moving metal to bow,” Tom reported, moving liquid metal to where it was needed. Kris tried to line up a shot at the flag, but every time she was about to squeeze off a laser, Addison jinked ship. She dialed the energy on her twenty-four-inchers down to one-quarter power and snapped off a few misses.

  “Sorry if I’m lousing up your shots, ma’am,” Addison said.

  “Keep it up. If I can’t hit him, he can’t hit me.”

  Then the two attackers shot past the Typhoon, and Addison swung the ship to bring the bow back to face fire, but there was none. Both ships were headed for the jump point, accelerating for all they were worth. “He’s running!” Tom shouted.

  “Tom, get me a tight beam to the rest of Ron Six,” Kris shouted as she mashed her commlink. “Typhoon to rest of AttackRon Six. Please note that the flag is hightailing it for the jump point, and consider your own options.”

  “Cyclone here. Ensign Santiago acting commander. We’re with you, Longknife.”

  “Tornado here, JG Harlan doing the temporary honors. Where do you want us?”

  “Engage Monsoon and Shamal. Keep them away from the Earth fleet. I’ll chase the flag.”

  But Hurricane had gone to three g’s on a zigzag course. The g’s quickly stripped away her vector toward the Earth fleet and got her moving toward the jump point fast, while the zigzags did not offer Kris a good shot at the Hurricane’s vulnerable engines.

  For reasons known only to Thorpe, he had not rigged the Typhoon for high-g acceleration, nor did Kris remember any practice at higher than 1.5 g. For now, she held deceleration there and watched developments.

  A couple of Earth battlewagons got one or two guns out of train. The Shamal and Monsoon found themselves the center of attention not only of their sister ships but also of a dozen Earth fourteen-, sixteen-, and eighteen-inch lasers. Had this slow reaction been spread over eight attackers, it would have been pathetic. It still was, but now it was concentrated on only two. The Shamal and Monsoon broke off and raced for the jump point, Cyclone and Tornado right behind them.

  “Guess now would be a good time to report in,” Kris said, tapping her commlink. “This is Ensign Longknife, commanding the Typhoon calling any fleet commander on circuit.” Her screen split as two faces appeared, one familiar, one very familiar.

  “This is General Ho, Chief of Staff, Earth forces. Do you want to tell me what I just saw?”

  “This is General Ray Longknife.”

  “Mr. President,” General Ho stiffened to attention.

  “No, just General today, Howie, working with General McMorrison, Wardhaven’s chief of staff. General, it looked to me like you just had your bacon saved by another Longknife.”

  “Kind of looks that way from here, too, Ray.”

  “Now General, you can sit over there and wait for another bunch of hotheads to do something stupid, maybe this time at us, or you can come over here and do what we both know must be done.”

  “Ray, you know my orders are to wait for Mac to come here.”

  “And Howie, you know Mac’s orders are to sit right here for you. Now, just between us old warhorses, I’m getting tired of orbiting this worthless rock. There’re asteroids whizzing around all over the place. I’m thinking of suggesting to Mac that he cruise his fleet over to Paris 8.” Kris checked her board. Paris 8 was a gas planet about halfway between Alpha jump, where the Earth fleet was, and Delta jump with the Wardhaven fleet.

  “I think I’ve used up enough fuel going in circles,” General Ho said, looking off screen. “Paris 8 looks like the only planet around that isn’t in an asteroid cloud. I think I’ll inform Earth I intend to use that planet for a temporary fleet base.”

  “Pure coincidence.” Grampa Ray grinned.

  “Pure coincidence,” the Earth general agreed.

  “Now that we have that settled, Ensign, you have any problems?” Ray said, turning his attention to Kris.

  “Just the normal ones of a mutineer, like what to do with the old captain and who on board is with me.” She shrugged. “Do you want more prisoners?”

  Grampa Ray pursed his lips at the hot potato she’d dropped in his lap. Was the battle only halfway over, or could she let the running dogs run and order beers all around? “Kris, as much as I hate to say it, I think the Earth fleet needs to see us in hot pursuit. Also, I want to talk to the bastards who set this up. What did they think they were doing?”

  “I’ve got the skipper, XO, and comm officer of the Typhoon under guard. I’ll see what I can do about getting you Commodore Sampson. If you’ll excuse me, sir, I’m going to be busy.”

  “Understood, Longknife out.”

  “Longknife out,” Kris repeated, liked the feeling—and switched gears immediately. “Helm, accelerate us smartly to one and a half g’s. Make us a course for jump point Kilo.”

  “Aye aye, ma’am. One point five g’s to jump point Kilo.”

  Kris tapped her commlink. “Chief Bo.”

  “Yes, ma’ am,” came instantly.

  “Would you mind doing a walk-around. Reassure any scared kids that they are on the right side. Let me know if there’s any trouble. You know, what I’d be doing if I wasn’t kind of busy doing two jobs at once.”

  “Understand, Skipper. Glad to.”

  Skipper. That was a title Kris hadn’t expected to earn for a long time. Well, she hadn’t finished earning it today.

  She studied her board. At three g’s, the vector symbol for the Hurricane and Scirocco had just about bled off all their motion toward the Earth fleet and would soon be making speed back toward the jump point. The Typhoon, now decelerating, was still making plenty of kilometers per second away from the jump. However, Kris didn’t need to catch the flagship, only hit its engines, and as long as the flag was running, its engines were a prime target.

  Kris dialed the power on her lasers down to one-tenth strength and started plunking away at Hurricane’s and Scirocco’s sterns as their zigs and zags offered opportunities. Her first shot was off to the left. Next was to the right. Third shot was again to the right as the flag altered course to the left. Kris tapped her commlink. “Commodore Sampson, I can keep this up all day. Sooner or later, I’ll get you. If not now, I’ll get you at the jump point. It’s a losing proposition.”

  Two shots later, the commodore’s two ships, instead of zigzagging around the course they needed for the Kilo jump point, took off on a long tack to the right that quickly took them out of reach of Kilo. “Where they headed?” Tom asked.

  “I think they just picked another jump point, one they can outrun us to. Addison, any suggestions?”

  The map of the star system appeared on the main screen. Four jump points were highlighted
in red. “They could be making for any of those. Orders, ma’am.”

  Kris rubbed her eyes, trying to remember what a captain was supposed to think about at a time like this. She mashed her commlink. “Engineering, what’s our fuel state?”

  “Your shooting put a dent in it, but we’ve still around sixty percent.”

  “ComAttackRon Six is running, and the Wardhaven Chief of Staff would sure like a few words with him. Any suggestions?”

  “We got a lot of green hands aboard, Skipper,” that one word, coming from a lieutenant commander who might well have been in on the conspiracy, was good to hear. “You may not have noticed, the way Thorpe was keeping you deep in sims, but we never drilled at greater than 1.5 g’s. I would suggest, ma’am, that you give all hands a half hour at 1.5 before going to two g’s. If we don’t find any problems, then take us to three. I know that’s slow, but we’ve got a lot of green spacers who’ve never been in a high-g operation.”

  Which sounded good but could be an excuse to let Hurricane escape. But engineering and his snipes had tended to be their own clique. Hell, if he wanted to stop the pursuit, all he had to do was dump the reactor core. “Thanks, engineering, we’ll follow that. Commander Paulus, in case you haven’t noticed, you’re the senior officer aboard. The spare chair here on the bridge is yours.”

  “If you’ll excuse me, Ms. Longknife, I expect I’ll be needed here if you put any kind of load on these engines. I know the yard’s advertising says these liquid metal boats are supposed to switch to all configurations with no pain, but every time we shorten up the hull, my snipes and I go through the tortures of the damned to keep plasma flowing. You fought us fine, Ensign. Until you can get me a relief I trust as good as myself to keep these engines from blowing us to pieces, I’ll stay here.”

  Which was the first Kris had heard about engineering having problems with the liquid metal. “How bad is it, Commander?”

  “Nothing I can’t handle. And if I can’t, I’ll holler.” Kris was rapidly discovering a captain’s job was not all skittles and beer. “Yeoman, announce to all hands we go to two g’s in thirty minutes and three g’s as soon as we can.”

  It took the Typhoon almost three hours to work up to 3.25 g’s. Among other things, the brig had bare metal for beds. Tempting as it was to let Thorpe take his g’s the hard way, Kris had the marines scare up air mattresses. By the time Kris had the Typhoon up to full acceleration, the Hurricane and Scirocco were out of laser range.

  Well behind Kris, the four ships of the second division fought their own battle, two experienced captains against jumped-up JOs who were getting their first taste of command in the middle of a fight. However, the decisions made by the designers of the fast attack corvettes came home to haunt the two rebels. Running, their weapons were pointed in the wrong direction, their engines fatally open to damage. It took Santiago and Harlan a while, but time was on their side and luck was against the Monsoon and Shamal. Long before they made it to the jump, their engines were nicked and their skippers replaced by subordinates who were not at all interested in fighting for a small group of officers who hadn’t told them what they were fighting for.

  That left Grampa Ray plenty of prisoners to interrogate, but Kris wouldn’t bet that even Thorpe knew the whole story. If Attack Squadron Six had managed to decimate the Earth battle fleet, what did it do next? Ships might sail the stars, but they had to go somewhere for food, repairs, and refit. Hurricane was running. Where?

  Once the Typhoon was up to speed, Kris got all the loyal officers on a hookup. “Engineering, how are we doing?”

  “Lost power to laser three. Don’t know why. With your permission, ma’am, I’d prefer not to send a repair crew nosing around it while we’re on high boost. I’ve got my best ship maintainers down on the engines.”

  “Commander, engineering is your domain. You run it your way. Is our acceleration causing you any problems?

  “No ma’am, not the way you put it on slowly, but if I was the skipper of the Hurricane, I’d be a bit worried about how fast the commodore put pedal to the damn liquid metal. Me, we’re under control. It’s them I’d worry about.”

  Which offered Kris a negotiating option. Why not make a friendly call to the commodore and suggest he review his engineering boards? That brought a chuckle to her, not a pleasant experience at 3.25 g’s. “What else do I need to know?”

  “Chief Bo, here, Skipper. The mess crew have never cooked a meal under high g. I suggest cold cuts until we slow down.”

  “Make it so, Chief. Any other problems?”

  “None, ma’am. You got a good crew here, and we’re rooting for you.” That was good to hear.

  The problem with a stern chase is that it is long and, at three and a quarter g’s Kris weighed nearly four hundred pounds. Just breathing exhausted a person. Moreover, the peacetime staffing level for a fast attack corvette didn’t make allowances for a battle running over normal work hours. The usual underway bridge watch was two. The engineering watch was a similar pair. At three and a quarter g’s, Commander Paulus kept his entire watch and maintenance team on duty. On the bridge, there was no way Kris was leaving the attack board or relieving Tom from defenses. Addison was just as reluctant to go below. “Who knows when they’re going to turn and fight. I’m here as long as you are.”

  So Kris scheduled Tom, then Addison, then herself for a two-hour doze at their stations and had the ship’s officers and petty officers do the same for the entire crew, two-thirds alert at their posts, one-third resting. By the time Kris awoke from her nap, it was clear the Hurricane was headed for jump point Mike.

  “It’s never been used for anything,” Nelly told Kris. “It’s an F minus if there is such a thing.”

  “They’ve got to flip ship soon, start slowing down, or…” Tom swallowed the rest of that thought.

  “They won’t be able to adjust their course to account for the jump point’s wandering,” Addison finished, “or they’ll hit that jump and end up somewhere in the next galaxy, if the points go that far.” He turned to Kris, not easy under acceleration. “You Longknifes know more about that than I do.”

  Kris risked a snort. “Trust me. I don’t know anything about jumps. Whatever you may have heard happened to Grampa Rayon Santa Maria, it’s not hereditary. Let me make this decision early and make it clear. We are not going into a jump with this energy on the boat. Any questions? Any discussion?”

  “Great by me,” Tommy said.

  “Engineering, what’s your condition?”

  “No change, ma’am. Three lasers fully charged. Capacitor full. Reactor is holding just outside the red. Everything looks stable.” So Kris ordered another six-hour nap rotation. As she was about to take her own, Tom frowned. “I’m getting action on jump point Juliet. That’s not too far from Mike.”

  “What’s it connect to?” Kris asked.

  “Lots of Rim worlds. Just not so stable as to be one you want to use on a regular basis.” And two minutes later, jump point Juliet coughed out six blips.

  “This is Wardhaven corvette Typhoon to ships that just exited Paris jump Juliet. Identify yourselves,” Kris demanded—and waited to see if the commodore had friends coming.

  “This is Society cruiser Patton, out of Wardhaven,” drawled a female voice; Kris exhaled the breath she was holding. “I hope the party’s not over, and you folks haven’t drunk all the beer. I’m leading Scout Squadron Fifty-four. It was no picnic getting these collections of junk and ice up to speed.”

  “Patton, this is Ensign Longknife, acting captain of the Typhoon. AttackRon Six launched an unauthorized attack on the Earth fleet. We are in pursuit of Hurricane and Scirocco.”

  “Good God, woman, I’ll say you are. You’re not going into a jump at that speed are you?”

  “I’m not, but I’m not so sure about them. You game for trying to cut them off from jump Mike?”

  “Good gravy, boys, they saved some of the fun for us. Scout Fifty-Four, follow me. General pursuit. Shoot ‘e
m if you got ‘em.” And the Patton let off a long-ranging shot herself. During the Iteeche War, laser ranges had tripled.

  Still, the six inchers on the Patton were only good to 60,000 kilometers. By the time the residual beam hit the Hurricane, the energy level was no worse than a warm summer day at the lake on Wardhaven. Still, the Patton’s shot did reach straight and true to warm the Hurricane.

  Kris had her board check the vectors. With Squadron Fifty-Four accelerating and the Hurricane locked into its course both by its hellacious speed and need to stay on a line to jump point Mike, the flag was in trouble.

  Fifteen minutes later, that trouble was highlighted by a message intercept. “General McMorrison to ComAttackRon Six. Your situation is hopeless. You will be cut off long before you can jump. If you jump, it is suicide. Cease acceleration and prepare to be boarded.”

  “Yeah, right, in an hour or ten,” Kris muttered.

  “Holy Mother of God,” Tom half prayed. “The Hurricane’s accelerating: 3.4, 3.8, a full 4 g’s.”

  “He’s going to come apart,” Addison shook his head. “Ma’am, do you want me to accelerate?”

  “Engineering, flag’s gone to four g’s. Any suggestions?”

  “No ma’am. Just a fact. You order us to four g’s, and I swear, I’ll crawl up to the bridge and lead a mutiny personally. You want to spend the rest of this trip in the brig with Thorpe?”

  “No, Commander. I just wanted your opinion. I have no intention of arguing with you.” Kris flicked her commlink again. “Hurricane, Scirocco, this is Longknife. Be advised, the engines on these liquid metal boats can’t hold four g’s. You are risking catastrophic failure. You hit the jump at this energy level, and you don’t know where it will take you. Do those of you not in on this conspiracy really want guys like the commodore deciding whether you live or die?”

  “Think anyone is listening?” Tom asked.