Seems like a poor use of my time.
Sandy stood, eyed the star map one more time, then headed off for her bunk.
No doubt, tomorrow would have its own surprises.
31
Driving a team of archeologists through the woods was not as easy as the automotive advertisements back home would have you believe. Not when the woods are virgin forests.
At first light, Marines dropped onto the alpine meadow – and sank halfway to their knees. If there had been any drones near the high plain, they could have done this check during the night, but no one was interested in the meadow. It was boring to scientists.
The next drop included Marine engineers and groat sprayers. They picked the hardest spot two klicks long and a hundred meters wide and hardened it. As night fell, longboats were finally able to land. Helicopters rolled out of their cargo bays and mechanics began to get them ready for flight.
During the night, newly landed drones mapped the route between the meadow and the cave. It looked ugly.
However, they did spot a open space in the forest much higher up the mountain. Lightning had started a forest fire there not too long ago. Again, the engineers jumped. This time they blew up snags, cut down sprouting trees and generally flattened and enlarged the space. This allowed the choppers to land there, rather than hover.
It was only twenty klicks to the cave mouth – twenty klicks through trees twenty feet across at the base. Twenty clicks through ravines and across roaring rivers.
The first team that headed out from the landing zone included eager scientists, alert Marine rifle men and heavily loaded engineers.
At the first ravine, rather than climb down and then hump their gear back up, the engineers told everyone to take a break. A few minutes later, “Fire in the hole,” sent everyone scurrying for cover and a huge tree slashing its way through the forest canopy to rest, lengthwise, across the ravine. A few minutes with a 13-mm light antiaircraft laser and there were steps up and down the tree and a quick, safe walkway across the ravine.
A raging white-water filled canyon was crossed the same way.
Five breaks and five felled trees later, the light was fading, the entire troop was exhausted but they were at the foot of the rock-strew mountain, looking up a very steep last few hundred meters.
One eager young scientist took off running for the cave. He hit a rock wrong, went ass over teakettle, and broke his ankle.
Gunny ordered the Marines to make camp and the scientists agreed to join them around the fire. The Marines set up a watch and those not on guard quickly fell asleep.
In orbit, Sandy reviewed the work of the last forty-eight hours and tried not to chew anyone out. The job had been hard. Nature had not cooperated with them at any step of the way. Still, trained troops had tackled the natural obstructions, sprayed, blown or dug their way through them and were set to begin exploring the cave in the morning.
She surveyed the star map. They should be getting word soon that the aliens had jumped out of their first system, five jumps out, and into the next one, four out. Sandy left instructions to be woken as soon as that message came in and went to bed.
32
It seemed like Sandy had hardly fallen asleep when her computer woke her up. “You are wanted on the bridge.”
A quick question to her computer told her she’d only gotten two hours sleep. She quickly pulled on a shipsuit and hurried to the flag bridge.
Van was there, waiting for her with a mug of steaming coffee and a dour face. He let her get some coffee in her – smart man that he was – before saying a word.
Sandy took three quick sips of the hot brew, then eyed her Chief of Staff with jaundice eye. “You woke me, Van?”
“The aliens pulled a fast one on us,” he said, just as Penny hustled onto the bridge.
“How fast?” Sandy asked.
Van passed the question off to the Alien Intel Chief.
Penny looked half embarrassed, half angry. “The bastards are really pushing themselves, Admiral. They’ve gone the two gee route with ninety battleships.”
“Actually eighty-six,” Mimzy corrected from her neck. “The aliens are missing one or two ships from each of their three dishes.”
“Where are they?” Sandy snapped.
“They are presently decelerating in system B-2,” Mimzy said. “Admiral Miyoshi has sent a pair of battlecruisers into system B-2 to get a good look at them. I’ll be able to tell you more soon. They’ll have to decelerate at slightly less than 2 gees if they want to jump into this system at 50,000 klicks per hour.”
“They’ve got eighty-six battlewagons in the next system. I thought they were supposed to lose half their ships if they tried to maintain two gees for a long run,” Sandy inquired, doing her best not to scowl at Penny and Mimzy.
“That assumption was based on past experience,” Mimzy said. “We have a visual on the battle fleet. It’s fuzzy at that distance, but the battleships appear to be much wider. I am guessing that they have constructed cooling wings on their ships. If they can radiate more waste energy out into space, they can keep their engines cooler. I will know more when the battleships are closer.”
“They’re not dumb. They learn,” Penny said softly.
That was not what Sandy wanted to hear. She paused a moment to let that sink in.
“Yeah, they learn,” she muttered, then focused. “Okay, Jump Point Beta isn’t the direct route to Alwa, right?” Sandy asked, not wanting her tired mind to miss anything.”
“All jumps lead to Alwa,” Mimzy said, “but using Beta would mean a long winding road. Alpha Jump is our most direct course for home.”
Sandy eyed the star map, then glanced at the planet below her. The mountain that held what she so wanted to see was experiencing spring. The days were about as long as the nights. It would be several long hours before she could wake them up and get them digging.
“Tell Admiral Miyoshi that he’s to prepare to hold that jump. Mondi, I want a BatRon to augment him. Include two of the atomic armed ships. We are going to hold that jump.”
“You think twenty-four battlecruisers are enough to mount a successful defense?” Van asked.
“Thirty-two had no trouble holding off a force much larger and with door knockers. Surely twenty-four can handle a smaller force. Maybe a much smaller force if those coolers don’t work as well in the long haul and the aliens can’t manage a steady deceleration from all their ships. If they can’t slow to under 50,000 klicks per hour, they jump somewhere else, right, Mimzy?”
“Yes ma’am. Clearly four already have failed to keep up with the fleet.”
“They must be running hot already,” Penny added.
“Okay, have I missed anything?” Sandy asked.
No one spoke up.
“Good, then lets everyone get some sleep. They’re three or more days away from storming the jump. That’s plenty of time to chew our fingernails.”
Without any further comment, though plenty of backward glances at the star map, her team obeyed her orders. Mondi alone hung back, working with the flag navigator and the Comm watch officer to prepare orders for BatRon 17.
With a last glance at the map, Sandy headed for her own bunk. “Computer, wake me fifteen minutes before first light reaches the team on that mountain.”
“Aye, aye, ma’am.”
Sandy did not find it easy to fall back to sleep. Why had the aliens risked fragmenting their force to make a high-speed run at Sandy’s forces? Was this a new wolf pack? Was this rush coordinated with the last attack?
That didn’t seem likely. Why hit them at one jump then turn around and hit them much later at the other one.
Sandy could find no real rationale for what she was seeing.
She forced her mind to settle down, measured her breathing, and did her best to return to sleep. She’d need a facile mind in the days to come. It took a while, but she finally slipped into a restful sleep.
33
“Jacques, we need to talk
.”
“You got me up fifteen minutes early, boss. Couldn’t this have waited just a bit? Marine, could I have some of that coffee?”
“Sorry, Jacques, but we’ve got a situation developing up here.”
“What kind of situation. Damn, son! That is hot!”
“The aliens managed to get a battle fleet into the system on the other side of Beta Jump.”
“Oh shit,” the anthropologist muttered. “How’d they manage that?”
“Penny says they’re pushing their battleships harder than they have ever done before. We think at least four missed their last jump because of engineering casualties. We’re hoping that more will suffer breakdowns and miss this jump as well.”
“The more the better, huh?”
“Yep.”
“What do you want from me, down here on Skull Mountain?”
“Skull Mountain. Not a bad name for it,” Sandy said. “I need for you to get those skulls as quickly as possible so we can get out of here.”
“Understand. There’s a lot of dirt in front of the cave entrance. We’ll try digging it away at first light. Three front end loaders are due to be chuted into here early this morning. We hope at least one of them doesn’t get lost in the trees or dragged over rocks. That’ll help us get in, but for now all we’ve got are Marine entrenching tools. We’ll start digging just as soon as I can safely get my guys up the rest of the way to the cave.”
“Do it, Jacques. I’m hoping that as soon as you’ve got your hands on the material from the bottom of that well that we can beat feet out of here. The aliens are headed for Beta Jump. Alpha is the jump that leads home the fastest.”
“If they attack, can’t you hold them? You did wipe out the last bunch that showed up.”
“Yeah, but it’s clear they know we’re here. They know Alwa is a tough nut to crack. I’m guessing they’d love to pick off a detachment.”
“Got you. We’ll get digging. Private, wake up the troops.”
Sandy relaxed back into her command chair. She’d gotten that bunch moving. She studied the star map. BatRon 17 was already accelerating toward Miyoshi’s command at Jump Point Beta. They would be there well before the aliens arrived. Sandy wondered again, what was the alien commander thinking?
Since she could think of no answer to her question and her stomach was rumbling, she headed for the wardroom. She was halfway though a light breakfast when Penny hurried in with her cat shadow right behind her. Penny filled a cup of coffee at the urn, the cat drew hot water and chose a tea, then the two of them quick walked for the chairs across from Sandy.
“You got good or bad news for me?” Sandy growled.
“I don’t know, Admiral. All I can say is I got strange news.”
“Wreck my day.”
“The alien battlewagons are slowing. They’re moving fast and they’d have to slow a lot to make the jump, but they’re decelerating even more than they need to. I don’t know if they can keep this up. One ship has already cut back on its deceleration and is pulling ahead of the rest of the fleet. But if they can keep up this slowing, they’ll reach the jump at a dead stop.”
“A dead stop?” Sandy echoed.
“Dead in space. Like we usually do when we want to make a safe jump.”
The feline admiral watched them, her head swiveling back and forth as each spoke. She’d turned the chair around so she sat in it with her hands on the back rest and her tail twitching. The more she listened, the slower the tail swung from side to side and the more her eyes became slits.
Sandy frowning frowned at Penny’s news. “They’ve tried to force jumps at slow speed and it hasn’t worked that well for them, not with us on the other side. Don’t they know we are here?”
“They didn’t bother to blow the jump buoys, so they must know we’re here. Besides, why shoot through these last two jumps only to slow to a crawl before this one?”
Sandy just shook her head. “Don’t you hate it when the damn aliens start acting like, I don’t know, damn aliens?”
“It often makes a mess of my day, yeah.”
Then Penny got that faraway look in her eyes. “Oh shit,” she muttered softly.
“I’m not liking the way you are looking,” Sandy said.
“You aren’t going to like this. Mimzy?”
“There has been an problem on Skull Mountain,” the computer said. “Marie tells me that the ceiling of the cave collapsed, blocking it.”
“How’d that happen?” Sandy demanded.
“Admiral, we’ve got a problem here,” came in Jacques’s voice.
“Mimzy was just telling me you do. How’d the cave-in happen?”
“Not easy to say. We had a dozen people up here, good, professional diggers, ma’am. They were removing the dirt from the entrance so we could get into the cave, then suddenly, the overhead at the mouth of the tunnel was on the deck and more rocks were headed that way fast. We are dealing with a tunnel system that hasn’t gotten any maintenance for say, a hundred thousand years. We’ve got the engineers cutting down a tree and lazing it into boards and timbers. I’ve asked for the next longboat to bring in a ton of Smart Metal and a programmer. We’ll try to line the main passageway with it just as soon as we can get it in there.”
Sandy wished they’d put in the Smart MetalTM before they started moving the dirt.
“I sure wish someone had thought of slipping the Smart Metal inside before we started digging our way in,” Jacques said.
Sandy said nothing.
“Let us know what you need. I’m not prepared to order a bug out, but I’d sure like to get out of here as soon as we can.”
“Understood, Admiral. Understood. Jacques out.”
Sandy sipped her coffee, sharing the quiet moment with her Alien Intel Chief and a silent cat. With each sip, the admirals stomach churned and her breakfast turned to acid.
34
Getting the Smart MetalTM up to Skull Mountain involved gliding it down. It landed several kilometers away so as not to risk shaking the mountain more. Getting a programmer in looked to take an entire day until a young woman volunteered.
“I’ve been sky diving.”
“How many times?”
“Once.”
There was no choice but to take the risk. Everything went fine, until she landed on a rock and turned her ankle. A big Marine lugged her the five kilometers to her Smart MetalTM. She quickly programmed it into a walker and it walked both of them back to the tunnel.
There, relays of experienced diggers gently extracted rocks, helped by Marine engineers or just eager trigger pullers. They had used wood to shore up the opening to the tunnels. Now, Smart MetalTM began to squeeze in and help them.
Eagerness would build up the speed of the diggers, then sliding rock would remind people there was an entire mountain above them. Progress was nail-bitingly slow.
While the digging went on, engineers and archeologists studied their problem. They called for the air dropping of grouting and sprayers. They both agreed that fixing the walls in place was a good place to start. The Smart MetalTM should be used as a support of last resort, and, if the mountain came down, the programmer would have it ready to retract into an umbilical cord to the outside world that people could crawl out through.
Two more tons of Smart MetalTM was drop glided to them. That about exhausted the supply of spare metal the nine battlecruisers in orbit had brought to handle the breakdown of the ships’ Smart MetalTM. If they had to have more, it would have to come out of the battlecruiser’s armor.
Sandy ordered a study done. How much Smart MetalTM could they take out of Admiral’s Country on the Victory? Two tons would make for cozier work and living space for her staff, but the tunnel could get the extra metal it needed without degrading the fighting strength of one of her ships.
While work below continued at a feverish pace that all too often couldn’t match a snail’s, the watch at the threatened jump went on. Six alien battleships failed to maintain the necessary dec
eleration. The question for the betting pool was would the speeding battleships sheer away and go around the jump, or would they crash through, blasting away with their lasers at anything human, in range or not?
The problem with the betting pool was that no one would take a bet on the alien sheering away. Everything they’d seen before warned them to prepare for a suicidal crashing of the jump.
The Broadsword and the Claymore had been stationed on the far side of the jump. There, they kept a cautious eye on the approaching fleet. They studied the ships and took signatures off them. The alien reactors were all very similar, and well within the usual parameters they had come to expect of large alien warships. Twenty reactors aft to feed super-heated plasma to the rocket motors. Another twenty spaced along the length of the hull to feed an amazing number of lasers. No two ships were the same. The lowest count for capacitors to feed the lasers was one hundred and ninety-eight. The highest number was two hundred thirty-one. The others ranged along between them.
The human scouts knew some aliens had developed newer lasers with longer range. They could make out no difference between these capacitors, one ship to the next. If the lasers they fed were different, we humans would not know that until they fired on us.
As the first battleship approached the jump, the Broadsword and Claymore slipped their moorings and cautiously made the jump back to the waiting task force. All of their data was transmitted to the Victory and Penny disappeared into her cabin with Mimzy to study it.
When she emerged for supper in the wardroom, she shook her head. “All the reactors in the fleet are within a hair of each other. This is one wolf pack and not one we’ve fought before. All the capacitors are cut from the same cookie cutter. If they’ve got more powerful lasers, maybe they’ll fire in shorter bursts.”
“Could they be planning on feeding juice from three capacitors to a single laser?” Sandy asked. “We used two capacitors now, but in the early days, weaker lasers had used one.”
Kris Longknife's Relief: Grand Admiral Santiago on Alwa Station Page 18
