Kris Longknife 13 - Unrelenting (10 page)

“I had heard the pregnancies were a result of sabotage,” Betsy Bethea snapped back.

“Sabotage my eye. They just want out of this man’s Navy, I tell you. What you want to bet me that not one of them gets an abortion, so they can stay with the fleet.”

Behind Kris, Jack cleared his throat. Admiral Miyoshi turned and shouted, “Atten’hut,” as he jumped to his feet. The room was only slightly behind him at coming to attention.

Kris left the room standing as she marched to the front where her table had been reserved by Penny and Masao. Though she knew her face was in a deep glower, she let her gaze wander around her commanders. Most met her eyes evenly.

Admiral Yi seemed intent on studying the table in front of him.

“As you were,” Kris said. Her commanders sat. She stayed standing.

“For the record,” Kris began, voice hard as flint, “each of the Sailors still had her birth-control implants in place when they reported to sick call and yielded up a positive pregnancy test. I know this because I have been in touch with the senior surgeon of the fleet.” Kris paused before adding, “And because I am one of those pregnant.”

“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph!” was just one of the louder expletives that greeted that announcement.

“Somehow expended implants were substituted for new ones and reinserted into women. Senior Surgeon Meade is investigating the handling of both used contraceptive implants and the new ones to find out how they could have been mixed up. Under normal handling, there is no way that could have happened. Any questions?”

“So what are we going to do with all these pregnant women,
Admiral?” Yi put in without being recognized. “My wife is a real bitch when she’s knocked up, and her hormones start yo-yoing all over the place.”

“I suspect I could be a real bitch in your presence under most any circumstance,” Betsy Bethea said, under her breath. Well, not so much under her breath. It carried around the entire room and drew smiles from First and Second Fleet, as well as her own commanders in the half of Yi’s fleet that she led.

Yi shot her daggers.

Bethea buffed her nails and seemed to miss his look.

“As you were,” Kris said, and the room sobered. “The pregnant women will decide how they will go forward,” Kris said curtly. “There. Will. Be. No. Command. Involvement. In. That. Decision. Do I make myself clear?”

“Yes, ma’am,” came back at her from all. Except Yi.

“Admiral Yi, do you have something to say?”

“No, ma’am. I understand, ma’am. But may I ask how we are going to handle this? Space is dangerous. Radiation. All kinds of stray particles. I understand most Navies send their women dirtside for their own protection.”

“My Granny Rita was commanding a cruiser when her first child was still being weaned. I understand she was pregnant with her second while commanding a ship in space and didn’t give up the conn until quite late. Our senior fleet surgeon is looking into making adjustments to some ships to handle these problems.”

“Any adjustments are going to cost weight,” Yi countered. “You’re the one saying all the time that we have to be ready to bounce our ships all over the place. You add weight, and you aren’t nearly as nimble,” could be taken several ways.

“I expect to concentrate the pregnancies in two or three ships, Admiral. None in your fleet, I might add. My flagship,
Wasp
, will be one of them. Now, are there any further questions on this matter? If not, we have a major battle to review and lessons to learn.”

Even Yi seemed out of barbs.

“Asshole,” Jack was heard to mutter, as Kris sat down.

She placed a restraining hand on his arm. Then agreed softly. “Yes, I believe he is.”

14

Matters
did not get any better as the meeting turned to the battle.

Admiral Yi stood and gave his battle report . . . of how he saw it.

Kris let him finish, then asked, “Did you bring any recordings from your battle boards?”

“No, the original data was lost due to a failure on the part of a technician while archiving the databoards, ma’am.”

Kris would have preferred to be addressed as admiral, but she’d let that slide. For now. For a moment, she considered calling on Admiral Bethea to provide any readouts from her battle board, but that would only further poison the atmosphere between them.

“Nelly, please play back the Third Fleet’s battle with the main enemy force as you recorded it.”

“Yes, Admiral,” Nelly said, and the take from the jump probe filled the screens behind Kris’s table.

“Where did you get that?” Yi exploded before she was well started. “It’s all a lie. You can’t know what was happening in the system before you jumped in.”

“Before we deployed, I told you that I had a probe that could look at the other side of the jump. I told you that I would use that feedback to decide when to intervene in your battle. Don’t you remember my telling you that?”

“You said something like that, but I just figured you were blowing smoke up my ass. No one can see what’s on the other side of a jump.”

“No one from Earth,” Bethea whispered to the commodore from Savannah who had taken over her squadron upon her promotion.

“You really didn’t think I could see that you were ignoring my battle plan, did you?” Kris said evenly.

Yi turned beet red but risked no answer.

“Admiral Bethea, do you have better data on the initial contact with the alien?” Kris asked.

Yi’s subordinate task force commander glanced at her boss. He did not meet her eyes. “Yes, Admiral Longknife. I do have a full readout from my battle board. Shall I put it on screen?”

“Please.”

The admiral turned to one of her subordinates, who placed a fist-size unit on the table in front of him. Behind Kris, the screens lit up with a display of what the target system had looked like when Third Fleet arrived.

The screen advanced quickly. The frigates accelerated away from the jump at the one gee Kris had ordered. Around the mother ship, a dish of thirty warships formed up quickly and charged for the humans at two gees while others formed into four dishes and began a more sedate one-gee acceleration on an attack vector.

The replay moved the ships rapidly across the system as the two forces rushed to contact.

Suddenly, the sixteen Earth-built frigates slammed into a three-gee charge, Yi’s flagship, the
George Washington
, slightly ahead of the rest, leaving the task force from Savannah and the Scanda Confederacy behind them.

“Pause,” Kris snapped, and the screen froze. “Admiral Bethea, why did you fail to accelerate to match the other half of Third Fleet?” Kris asked.

“I received no orders to do so, Admiral Longknife,” was terse to the point of sharp.

“Interesting,” Kris said. “Admiral Yi, would you care to share with those present the basis for your deciding to split your command?”

Around the room, there were soft snickers. Yi had spoken long and often on his opinion about Kris dividing First and Third Fleets for this operation.

“I saw an opportunity to inflict a decisive defeat on a portion of the alien fleet. Once I demonstrated a clear superiority, I expected the fight would go out of them.” The words sounded worn and overpracticed.

Apparently, Admiral Yi had gotten nothing from the reports Kris sent him. Reports that showed the aliens never let the fight go out of them. Kris considered pointing that out but settled for, “Continue the playback.”

The two forces, thirty aliens and sixteen humans, came together at a blinding-fast rate. Yi’s task force opened fire at two hundred thousand klicks. The aliens had to take it; fifteen exploded under the blaze of the humans’ forward and aft batteries as Yi’s ships quickly flipped and emptied all their guns at the onrushing warships. Then they flipped again, providing their heavily armored bows to the fire of the surviving aliens.

Those fifteen ships hurtled into range of their own lasers while the Earth ships were recharging their lasers. Now the alien slashed out at their tormentors. Each reached out with more lasers than Kris had ever been able to count.

As one, the Earth-built squadrons began to glow as their new armor took in the lasers’ beams, slowed them down, then redistributed them along the hull to radiate back into space.

“Pause,” Kris ordered. “Admiral Bethea, did you get readouts of the damage to the Earth task force?”

“No, Admiral Longknife, my battle boards showed me only the damage to my own task force. However, the display combines not only radar reports but also infrared measurements. The other task force was glowing red-hot from the enemy fire.”

“Thank you, Admiral. Continue the display at real time.”

The action continued apace, then the fire from the alien ships changed. Someone got smart. The fifteen ships concentrated their fire on only three of the humans.

Suddenly,
Abraham Lincoln
,
Clemenceau
, and
Mao Zedong
became the center of every alien’s fire.

The infrared readout showed them going from hot to blazing to gone.

The other ships of the Earth task force had reloaded. In rapid succession, they fired. Another twelve alien warships vanished.

Of the surviving four, at least two were hard hit. They did what they could, all concentrating on the
Togo
. It glowed and blistered off some of its armor, but it held together long enough
for the other ships to recharge their guns and wipe out the last survivors of the first alien formation.

Yi’s ships now flipped and decelerated to form up with Bethea’s task force as it came up even with them. Together, they engaged the four alien dishes as they came in range.

Kris noted how
Togo
stayed in the firing line rather than fall back, out of harm’s way, so it could be repaired to fight another day. Apparently, Yi had a different attitude toward this long war than Kris did.

The rest of the battle proceeded as Kris would have had it. The aliens were scourged at long range as Third Fleet first fell back in front of it, then followed as the alien commander chose to withdraw. They witnessed the attack of the suicide boats, including the ones that slipped through with atomics to destroy the
Loki
and severely damage the
Puma
. Unlike Admiral Yi, the experienced Admiral Bethea had her wounded cat fall back into reserve. That saved the
Puma
to straggle home and fight another day.

At one point, the aliens made a thrust toward the second division of BatRon 11. Since it was already weakened by the loss of the
Clemenceau
and
Moa
, the aliens concentrated their fire on the crippled
Togo
, and another ship was lost. Kris noticed what looked like life pods spewing from the burning hulk of the
Togo
.

“Pause again, please. Are those survivors and did we collect them?”

Yi said nothing. Bethea stepped in. “I had the
Regulus
converted to an armed merchant cruiser.” An isolated dot well behind the battle line flashed red. “She collected life pods from
Loki
and
Togo
. We recovered about half their crews. Likewise when we lost
Lenin
and
Heimdallr
to mines. Unfortunately, the alien lasers were pretty heavy around the earlier three ships when we lost them. We only got two or three survivors from each.”

“Thank you, Admiral,” Kris said. She had specifically ordered that each fleet have some rescue ships with them. The
Mary Ellen Carter
had been ready to do that service for the First Fleet. At least Bethea had seen to it that the Third Fleet had such aid.

Kris examined the facts of the fight, and her options. It was never easy to relieve an officer, but it was worse to let other commanders see an officer fail . . . and get away with it.

NELLY, EXPAND THE FORWARD LOUNGE SO THE OFFICERS PRESENT CAN GET A DRINK. WE DO HAVE SOMETHING TO DRINK, DON’T WE?

YES, KRIS, THE BAR ISN’T UP TO MOTHER MACCREEDY’S STANDARDS, BUT THEY CAN CUT THEIR THIRST.

THEN RAISE A WALL BETWEEN THIS AREA AND THE REST.

A CLEAR WALL.

NO. I’LL NEED SOME PRIVACY.

As Kris and Nelly spoke, the Forward Lounge expanded, tables and chairs appeared, and a wall rose behind those attending this meeting, a wall with a wide double door in it.

“I need this room. Why don’t you get some coffee, or something stronger,” Kris said to her officers.

All of them began to stand up.

“Admirals Yi and Bethea, please stay.”

Yi eyed Kris as he retook his seat.

“Save me some coffee,” Bethea said as she sat back down.

YOU WANT ANY OF US TO STAY? Jack asked for Kris’s staff.

NOPE. I EITHER DO THIS ON MY OWN, OR I CAN FOLD AWAY MY FOUR STAR FLAG, Kris answered.

Her staff joined the others headed for the door. While there were plenty of backward glances from the other officers, there were only small, firm smiles from Kris’s staff.

15

As
the door swung closed behind the last officer, Kris stood.

“Admiral Yi, your performance in this recent operation leaves a lot to be desired.”

“I commanded Third Fleet. I fought that battle the way I saw fit,” he shot back.

“You lost six ships. First Fleet lost none.”

“If the enemy had reacted in a rational manner, the defeat of their first task force should have routed the rest and sent them streaming for the jump and into your arms,” he spat back.

“I gave you reports on all the battles we’ve had with these bastards. Did you study any of them?”

“I looked them over,” Yi said, again not meeting her eyes.

“It’s clear to me that you learned nothing from them,” Kris snapped.

“Every battle is different,” Yi shot back.

“Enough of this. You failed to follow direct orders. You suffered casualties you didn’t need and that we can’t afford out here at the hind end of nowhere. I am relieving you of command of the Third Fleet and returning you to your permanent rank of rear admiral. I will leave you in command of Task Force 7.”