Bold

by Mike Shepherd

  It became even clearer when the Empress addressed her husband from the bridge of her new flagship, the Terror of Space. Her tirade against the Emperor and his stupidity was only balanced by her gloating over how she would kill Kris Longknife, then laser all of them, “That whole damn planet,” from orbit.

  Nope, Kris would have to match orbits with this bunch and make sure they surrendered and stayed surrendered.

  The one delight Kris found while listening to the Empress’s boring harangue was watching the admiral standing beside her. The Terror of Space rated an admiral for its captain, and that admiral was her old buddy, William T. Thorpe, former skipper of the Wardhaven corvette Typhoon. Kris had relieved him of his command back when she was just an ensign.

  When Kris countered the Empress’s spiel with a demand they surrender now or face the consequences, Billy Thorpe laughed in her face. “I’m so glad you command that collection of shrimp boats, Ensign Longknife. It would be such a joy to take your surrender, but please, please keep strutting around. I will so enjoy blasting you out of space.”

  Kris just grinned as if she knew something he didn’t and cut the line.

  Boy, do I know something you don’t know.

  “You know him?” Jack asked.

  “He was before your time, but his time is up.”

  “Yes. Yes, I do think it is.”

  Kris studied how the enemy battle array had developed. The two super battleships were following one behind the other. Ahead of the Terror of Space were the six battleships with 18-incher lasers. Instead of being in a long line, they were stacked three high and two deep. The four 16-inch battleships trailing the Death to Traitors were stacked two high, two deep. The older battlewagons formed two blocks, one forward, and the other aft of the newer ships. Both were three high and two deep. Sixteen heavy and light cruisers made up four stacks of four, two in the lead, the rest trailing. The last two light cruisers and the forty destroyers formed two circles, one below the thick battle line, the other above.

  “Somebody wants to concentrate his fire,” Kris said.

  “The last time I fought the Empress, I divided by battle force into two lines of seven and nine. Her admiral divided his battleships into four long lines of a dozen each, minus those with engineering casualties. It left the older BBs out of range while I smashed the newer ones as they came in range.”

  “This still has the battle line bringing its different guns to bear at different times,” Kris observed.

  “Assuming she keeps them that way,” Jack pointed out. “Any idea who commands over there?”

  Both Kris and Vicky shook their heads.

  “The only admiral I saw,” Kris said, “was Thorpe. Vicky, did you see anyone?”

  “Nope, Admiral Bolesław, was there anyone familiar to you on that bridge?”

  “Interestingly, no. Every officer’s face I saw was that of a stranger, and the Navy is a small place. I would have expected to recognize someone.”

  “I think my stepmom brought in people to officer those big ships from anywhere but Greenfeld.”

  “The better to slaughter the Emperor,” Mannie said.

  “My father is nothing if not gullible.” Vicky sighed, tiredly.

  Kris pursed her lips and let that thought sink in, then began to issue orders. “We will stay in line ahead for the trip out to the moon. As soon as we have the moon between us and the hostiles, second squadron will close up even with the flag with a thousand-klick interval between the two columns. On my orders, we will open up the interval to five thousand, but I don’t intend to do that until we are two hundred fifty thousand klicks from the hostiles. Any concerns with that?”

  “They’ve shortened their battle line,” Vicky said, “so you’re shortening yours?”

  “Yes,” Kris said.

  “Kris,” Jack said, “who will we target with our first broadside?”

  “You’re thinking it will be our only broadside.”

  “I hope so,” Vicky said.

  Kris ran a worried hand through her hair. “The first division’s four ships target the two big ones. The second division’s five ships target five of the six 18-inchers. Immediately after that, all Imperial survivors will be dismissed from stations so they can toddle off to their quarters to change their underwear.”

  That got a laugh.

  Kris turned to Vicky. “Your stepmother, the Empress, tried to kidnap my daughter. I stood in the nursery for an eternity before Jack got a shot and killed the bastard she hired. She’s got a whole battle fleet aiming their guns down my throat. As far as I’m concerned, she’s a dead woman.”

  Vicky took in several shallow breaths and let each out with a huff. Finally, she shook her head. “I didn’t kill her when I had a chance, but Dad was telling us to quit fighting. Still, I swore when I finally tore that bed apart and managed to get a drink of water that I’d had enough. I’d kill her. I think I would have if she’d been right there at that moment.”

  Vicky paused for a long minute, then fixed Kris with hard eyes. “Kill the bitch.”

  “All right, ladies and gentlemen, the squadron has its orders. Let’s go do what the Grand Duchess ordered.”

  67

  Kris came out from behind Cuzco’s largest moon with all her ships at Condition Baker and her squadron in two parallel columns.

  She wasn’t the only one who had changed her battle formation.

  It took the hostiles a bit longer to complete the reorganization, but when they did, Kris had to hand it to Thorpe. He’d come up with a very interesting way of defending the flag and bringing all his guns to bear . . . assuming he faced frigates armed with short-range 24-inch pulse lasers.

  The Death to Traitors still trailed the Terror of Space, but it was the only ship.

  Well forward of those two, but forty thousand klicks closer to Kris, the stacks of 18- and 16-inch battleships followed one behind the other. Well aft, but coming up on eighty thousand klicks closer, were the 15- and 14-inch battleships. From the looks of it, they’d form a column of four, three ships high. The cruisers appeared to be racing to form a similar column of stacks well ahead of the newer battlewagons. Most likely, they’d end up only eighty thousand klicks from Kris.

  The destroyers, all forty of them, were already turning to begin a pulse-laser run.

  “Thorpe’s a very smart fellow,” Kris said through tight lips. “He’s put together a very nice trap . . . for a frightened bunny rabbit. Pity he’s set it for one mean and angry momma bear.”

  Kris studied her board for a full minute, then asked, “Nelly, will we need to worry about those tin cans?”

  Circles appeared on Kris’s battle board. The red of the destroyers were well back when Kris’s ships passed the two-hundred-thousand-klick range mark.

  “Kris, we’re coming up on the two-hundred-fifty-thousand-klick range mark.”

  “Thank you, Nelly. ‘Squadron, open your intervals to five thousand klicks. Division 2, drop your distance to five thousand klicks below Division 1 on my mark. Admiral Longknife sends.’”

  The ships board on Kris’s wall all blinked twice as every ship acknowledged.

  “Mark,” Kris said.

  The Princess Royal kept its course steady. Every battlecruiser around it slowed or slipped lower, or both.

  “Squadron, go to Condition Charlie now. We will go to Condition Zed when we come up on two hundred ten thousand klicks to the two big boys. We will dispense with high-gee stations for the moment. If we need them, we can order them out of the Smart Metal then.”

  Around Kris, flag plot got smaller. Kris, Jack, Vicky, Mannie, and Admiral Bolesław got closer to the table.

  “Nelly, put me on-screen. Beam this to all the ships across from us.” Kris turned to face a blinking red lens. It turned green. “This is Admiral, Her Highness Kris Longknife of United Society. I’ve slaughtered
half a trillion aliens, so adding a few thousand humans to my blacked soul doesn’t bother me.”

  She paused to let that sink in. “But you aren’t subjects of my King. You aren’t, for the moment, rebels to your Emperor. However, if you continue to follow the false orders of the Empress, you will be in rebellion to your sworn liege lord. Discharge your lasers and blast away from Cuzco, and mercy shall be yours. Maintain your present course with charged lasers, and I will begin your destruction in three minutes.”

  Kris turned the comm over to Vicky.

  “I am the Grand Duchess Victoria. You are all loyal subjects of my father, your Emperor, who is present on the planet of Cuzco, where you are heading. In a few minutes, a lot of you will be dead. If, after that, the rest of you choose to surrender, I will accept it.”

  “You bitch,” the Empress broke in screaming.

  I wonder what took her so long. I must have caught her comm wizards napping.

  “Worse, you stupid bitch. I have more than two battleships for every one of those luxury-liner frigates that Wardhaven whore has, and you have the gall to demand my surrender? You’re a fool! You and that Longknife whore will be dead in ten minutes. Enjoy your last few moments, ’cause they’re all you’ve got.”

  “Nelly, off,” Kris said, then turned to Vicky. “That woman has serious anger-management problems and a very limited vocabulary.”

  “We were discussing that during the last battle, weren’t we, Admiral Bolesław?”

  “Yes. Her temper will be the death of her yet if she doesn’t learn to control it.”

  “I think 22-inch lasers will get her long before a heart attack,” Jack muttered.

  “General, I think you just might be right,” Kris said.

  Kris paused, then said, “Attention to orders. Take the squadron to Condition Zed.”

  Her flag bridge got smaller, and she and her team got more chummy.

  “Princess Royal and Intrepid, you will engage the lead battleship of those most distant. Courageous and Furious, you will engage the trailing battleship. Commander Division 2, assign one of your ships to five of the 18-inchers. You decide who the lucky son of a bitch is who isn’t blown to hell in the first salvo.”

  Kris let those targeting orders sink in before continuing. “As we come up on two hundred thousand klicks, I will order weapons release. You may fire your forward batteries as they come in range. If your target is still there, flip ship and fire aft batteries. You will be weapons lock after your aft batteries are empty. Immediately begin to reload. If, however, this shoot is to continue, I will give you another weapons free. Any questions?”

  “One point, Kris,” Vicky said.

  “Yes.

  “We’ve had a lot of luck punching through armor when we aim two lasers at the same point. We’ve even grouped four together though I doubt your big lasers need that.”

  “Right, my mistake,” Kris said. “That is standard practice on Alwa Station. That’s the problem with being an admiral; you forget how to be a squadron commander. All ships, concentrate fire on your target by pairs of lasers.”

  The ships blinked their reply.

  “You sure we want to blow all those ships away just like that?” Admiral Bolesław whispered.

  “You remember that battle where we had a hard time figuring out which ship was the flagship?” Vicky said.

  “Yes,” he scowled.

  “You really want to bet the Empress is on any ship smaller than an 18-inch battleship?”

  He shook his head at his Grand Duchess’s question.

  “The big battleships die,” Vicky said, her words harsh.

  Kris was eyeing the two. “You couldn’t identify the flagship?”

  “Long story. I’ll tell you later,” the Grand Duchess said.

  “Kris, we’re coming up on two hundred thousand klicks,” Nelly said.

  “Thank you, Nelly.”

  68

  Kris closed her eyes. She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. She took a second one and held it for a moment, searching for her center.

  I’m about to slaughter a whole lot of people. Most of them innocent.

  Not the Empress.

  The Empress tried to kidnap Jack and torture him. She went after Ruth. She’ll do anything to get her way, even slaughter a lot of innocent people on the planet below.

  If only Harry was on that battleship with her, I’d consider my family finally even with the Peterwalds.

  But he isn’t. Just the Empress and most of her twisted family.

  Kris opened her eyes, steeled her heart, and set her face to hard military bland.

  “Squadron, prepare to fire one salvo. Fire.”

  The Princess Royal swung around, bringing the twelve 22-inch lasers of her forward battery to bear and throwing Kris against Jack. She grabbed hold of her battle table, and Nelly had it grow handles. She grabbed one and brought herself upright.

  “I told you to get yourself into a high-gee station,” Jack growled.

  “I’m tired of going naked into those things, then needing to stand up and take someone’s surrender,” Kris snapped back.

  “And no,” she quickly added, “wearing a uniform is no better. It has all those buttons and sharp points.”

  “I agree with Kris, and I still do,” Vicky said.

  The Princess Royal flipped ship and aimed her aft battery of eight more 22-inch guns at the Terror of Space. They fired.

  Kris looked down to see what the battle board had to say about how the shoot was going. Five of the 18-inch battleships were in trouble.

  First, the forward top, then the aft middle battleship blew up. That was followed by the forward bottom and the aft top going together in the blink of an eye. For a moment, it looked like the forward middle battleship might survive. Then the aft end, where the reactors were, blew itself to gas, and a moment later, nothing of that ship remained.

  Only the bottom aft battleship, the one not targeted, still existed as Division 2 shut down and began to reload.

  “Come on, you two monsters, blow.”

  Was that Vicky or Kris? No, it was both of them.

  For a breath, the two huge ships with twenty-four of the “new” 19-inch lasers and ice armor more than six meters thick just lay there in the center of the board.

  Then the aft one vanished. It just disappeared. One moment it was there, the next moment there wasn’t anything there.

  The lead one, the one Princess Royal and Intrepid were aiming at, looked like nothing was happening to her. Suddenly, the aft end flashed out of existence, and a chain reaction of explosions raced through the ship.

  In the blink of an eye, there was just hot gas where it had been, then nothing. Not a thing.

  The heart of the hostile battle line, and very likely the life of the Empress and much of her family, had been snuffed out in less than a minute.

  “Kris, the other ships have flipped and are boosting away from us,” Nelly said. “They’ve emptied their lasers into space. We’re checking them, but from the looks of it, none are recharging their capacitors.”

  “Are we getting any requests to surrender?” Vicky asked.

  “Not yet. Right now, they’re just trying to sort out what’s left of their chain of command, Your Grace. A couple of the vice admirals commanding battle squadrons have abandoned their bridges. One has shot himself, and it appears the others are drinking themselves blind drunk. Oh, they just called out a crash cart for one vice admiral. I don’t know why.”

  The screen in front of Kris and Vicky came alive with a rear admiral’s face.

  “Hi, Ramiro,” Admiral Bolesław said, “How’s it going?”

  “Good God, man, what happened? You weren’t even in range of us, and suddenly seven of our biggest ships are just gone.” His voice rose to a sharp screech.

  “Calm down
, Ramiro.”

  “Calm down, you say? Damn it, man, what have you got over there?”

  “I’ll let Admiral Longknife explain her battle squadron to you.”

  “Battle squadron?”

  “Hello,” Kris said softly. She’d made her point. If Vicky was to save the lives of her subjects, there was no need to hammer them. “I’m Admiral Kris Longknife. I’ve been away for the last two years, fighting alien raiders and their oversize base ships. We’ve pushed our technology. The broadsides that just took out seven of your ships were from my ships’ twenty 22-inch lasers.”

  “Your frigates carry twenty 22-inch lasers?”

  “We’re reclassifying them as battlecruisers,” Kris said modestly.

  “I guess you would,” the Greenfeld admiral murmured in agreement.

  “Ramiro,” Admiral Bolesław said softly, “what’s happening over on your side?”

  “Everything’s gone to hell. One of the battlewagon vice admirals just OD’d on red heroin. I’d never have taken Spinosa for a user, but he’s been in the Empress’s pockets for a long time. I’m told they called out the crash cart for him.”

  “Most people don’t survive that kind of a thing.”

  “Yeah. Well, the vice admiral commanding cruisers and destroyers is a jumped-up bank clerk who married some daughter of someone in the family bank. I hear he’s locked himself in his cabin with a bevy of girls he brought aboard, and they’re getting sloshed. That leaves me senior officer present outside the battle line. Our ships don’t have all that extra reaction mass, so what do you want us to do?”

  Vicky stepped forward. “A chief on one of the destroyers who surrendered to us at the last Battle of St. Petersburg smashed the buss to the mains that would reload the capacitors. Did I get that right, Admiral Bolesław?”

  “Yes, Your Grace.”

  “Is that the Grand Duchess?”

  “Ramiro, may I introduce you to Vice Admiral, Her Grace Victoria of Greenfeld,” said Admiral Bolesław.

  The admiral ran a nervous hand through his black hair. “I think I better take this chance to be the first of my fleet to swear allegiance to you.”