Kris Longknife 13 - Unrelenting (29 page)

“Please don’t go promoting folks before the parade starts,” Jack said. “They’ve only got the ranks they’re wearing. We don’t have a BX with loads of spare eagles and stuff.”

“Thank you, Husband, I will keep that in mind,” Kris said.

NELLY, CAN YOU MANUFACTURE SOME EAGLES, SINGLE, TWIN, AND THREE STARS FOR ME WITHOUT ANYONE THE SMARTER?

I MAY NEED ABBY’S HELP.

I THINK I CAN TRUST HER.

So Jack presented Kris with a promotion list for the two new divisions. At the top of it was brevet Brigadier General Hayakawa with a recommendation for three stars and overall command of all troops stationed on Alwa. Kris signed off on colonelcies for the regimental commanders, which, she noted included Abby’s Sergeant Bruce, and two stars for the two
Marine officers who had come out a few short months ago from human space as company commanders.

There was risk there, but if they didn’t turn out, she’d sack them and give some other jumped-up company skipper a crack at the job. And she’d likely be doing it based on the recommendation of Lieutenant General Hayakawa.

But did she want him outranking Jack?

Kris mulled that one. She solved it by promoting Jack to Lieutenant General, Commander of the Alwa Expeditionary Force, Alwa system, with the Commander, First Corps, Alwa Defense Force reporting to him.

She signed Jack’s promotion before she went to bed and Hayakawa’s the next morning.

Jack didn’t seem at all surprised when she called him front and center before the parade next day. Hayakawa must have been warned as well; a certain young colonial woman was standing close by and did the honors of pinning his three stars on his red uniform. The rest of the officers were read their new promotions but paraded in their old ranks. There was a lot of pinning going on as soon as the two divisions were dismissed.

Two reinforced divisions did march by. Three regiments of over three thousand, plus an artillery brigade of mortars. It was extremely light, but it was a fighting force, and marching in between the regiments of colonial and Rooster units were battalions of Ostrich militia. They held their rifles smartly and even got the cadence close to right.

“They take it for a dance,” Granny Rita whispered to Kris as the first militia battalion marched by.

“Can they fight as well as they march?” Kris whispered back.

“God help us if we ever have to find out.” Rita made it sound like a sincere prayer.

Kris got back from the dirtside honors just in time to make a quick visit to the
Challenger
before she sealed locks and headed out.

“Have you read your orders?” Kris asked Commander Hanson.

“I read them to the entire crew and got a cheer for it. I notice I’ve got three 20-inch lasers pointed aft and three forward.”

“I’m as interested in you running as I am in you chasing,”
Kris said, and glanced at his XO. “Do you have a problem with that?”

“No, ma’am.” She grinned. “I knew Captain O’dell. I’m amazed you got her to run away from a fight. Me, I like running. Better yet, don’t get in a place you have to run or fight, that’s me. Does this periscope really let us peek in the next system without having to go there?”

“Trust your boffin. If he says there are dragons in the next system, be assured, there are dragons, and you don’t want to go there.”

“Great,” both Commander Hanson and his XO said.

“Now, off with you. Godspeed and a fair wind. A lot will depend on what you bring back, so come back.”

“Aye, aye, Admiral,” Command Hanson said, and Kris left them to get under way.

They cast off from the pier before she was off it herself.

Now all she could do was wait. Wait, and try to bring everything together.

The problem was, even if she could patch together a few ships here, an extra squadron there, she was still way too weak to take on three alien mother ships.

Who was she kidding? Unless there was another miracle in the Longknife bag of tricks, all of this was just the final act in a too-short play.

Baby took that moment to do some somersaults.
Yes, little one, I know you’re there. How do I give you a chance to play in some lazy summer sun?

Admiral Kris Longknife marched for her flag plot, perchance to find some hidden miracle.

44

A
week later, the
Albatross
streaked in with a report from the B approach to System X. Rear Admiral Zingi and his squadron from Yamato had gotten their baptism of fire.

Zingi’s squadron had arrived after the Battle of Alwa and he’d been left defending the system when Kris took two fleets out to nail the assassins. Still, he’d studied her reports, apparently better than the Earth admiral.

The aliens had sent him a full dish, thirty strong. Zingi surprised them; he defended in the fifth system out. There was no buoy in the sixth system to warn the bastards, and they sailed up to the jump in a loose formation.

Zingi had his periscope out; it warned him what was coming. He arranged his two divisions in squares behind the jump.

The first three aliens came through fat, dumb, and sassy. Not even firing. They died before they knew what hit them. The next three ships were at least shooting as they came through. The frigates took them full in their vulnerable sterns.

The last ship apparently had orders to return immediately and report. It was rotating even as 22-inch lasers slashed into engineering space, destroying containment fields and letting plasma loose in flaming streams. The ship came apart, pieces spinning off in every direction.

Six ships jumped in next; six ships died.

With no report, the alien commander must have wised up to his problem. Next through was a tiny atomic package. Zingi’s ships nailed it before it could do anything.

And nailed the next ship as it came through and tried to twist around and return.

Thirteen ships and no report back.

The alien commander must have been sincerely pissed.
Three ships came through in rapid succession, firing everything at anything. But firing at a lot of empty space couldn’t protect their vulnerable sterns with all the reactors and rockets that it took to propel a ship of four-hundred-thousand-plus tons.

Again, 22-inch lasers sliced into alien ships, reducing them to hot gases and wreckage in little more than the blink of an eye.

Having lost half his force, you would think that he’d cut his losses and go home. Apparently, “retreat” was no more in the alien dictionary than “surrender.”

After a long pause, three more atomics came through, one right after the other. One managed a low-order explosion, but did nothing to the frigates holding in formation a hundred thousand kilometers back from the jump.

Then matters changed. A tiny vessel, little larger than a human longboat, appeared, flipped and made to head back.

It didn’t make it through the jump before four 20-inch lasers pinned it in place. From the looks of the explosion, its antimatter containment field failed.

Ten seconds later, a second boat appeared. This time, only two lasers took it under fire. It didn’t matter, it died just as fast.

In rapid succession, eight shuttles appeared, and eight shuttles died.

Apparently, the commander assumed the weak human frigates would have shot their few lasers dry. Three ships shot through.

And blew as frigates showed they could take out large and small targets and keep their lasers charged.

With nineteen ships lost, the alien commander didn’t run but instead charged the jump, sending ships through at ten-second intervals.

Rear Admiral Zingi was ready for them. His Yamato frigates fired half broadsides from their bow lasers. Twenty-four lasers would bludgeon the stern of the first vessel. Ten seconds later, another twenty-four would slash into the second. Even as the forward batteries recharged, Zingi would flip ship, ready to take out the next ship with the four aft lasers on his eight ships, then flip again and use the half of his fully charged forward lasers.

Fire, fire, flip, fire. The drill went on for a minute before the
Enlightened commander’s nerves broke. More atomics sailed through the jump, to be swatted down before they could do any harm.

Then nothing. Nothing at all.

Cautiously, Admiral Zingi sent his probe with the periscope up to the jump. It showed five ships in full retreat, accelerating away at their maximum of 2.5 gees.

Zingi pulled his ships up to the jump and formed a line. Once the fleeing alien was a hundred thousand klicks out, he ran his squadron through at five-second intervals.

Now the alien had no choice but to fight or flee. He lost two ships before he could make up his mind, then ordered the remaining three to flip and attack.

Now it was Zingi’s turn to flip and run, but he ran with his stern 22-inch guns slashing at the alien. The three alien ships had been modified with a thick coating of volcanic rock. Under laser fire, the pumice boiled, spattered, and fell off in globs. A flip, and the forward batteries were burning off more rock. A second flip, and the eight human frigates danced away from the charging alien trio.

It went that way until there was no more stone to burn and lasers speared deep into the vulnerable innards of the ships.

One blew when a reactor along the central spine lost control of its demons. The second died as fire engulfed it faster than the damage opened it up to the quenching emptiness of space.

The last ship didn’t give up the chase but hurled itself onto the combined fire of eight frigates. They cut it up but, for this one, there was no sudden end. Reactors went cold as more and more of the ship gave way under the pressure of human lasers and the heavy stress of 2.5 gees acceleration. For this one, the reactors went silent, not vicious.

It charged the humans until it had nothing left but its own momentum, and then it continued to drift at them, with one or two lasers still lashing out when they could be brought to bear.

This one died hard, but it died. And even as it drifted, helpless in space, no one sped away from it in a survival pod. No one tried to save themselves. Open to space, its crew died.

Kris found herself joining her staff in shaking their heads.

“They know how to die,” Jack said. “If only they knew how to live half as well.”

The report concluded that there was no observer on distant overwatch. “If the aliens sent these ships to find out what happened to their last lost ships, they have even more questions now,” Rear Admiral Zingi finished dryly.

“So what will they do next?” Penny asked no one in particular.

“I’d send a Marshall forward under a branch of green to parley,” Admiral Furzah said.

“They don’t know how to do that,” Kris said.

“In a hundred thousand years, none of them ever fought each other?” the feline asked. “Hard to believe that.”

“Maybe not,” Jacques said, an anthropologist in full lecture mode. “They have the entire galaxy to wander in. How often do you think two shared the same star system?”

“Hmm,” the admiral purred. “How well do you think three of them will do allying to fight us?”

“A good question,” Kris said. “A better question is do we send a copy of this report to the other two squadrons that we’ve got deployed and have them repeat the treatment if the opportunity presents itself?”

“Nelly, show me the other two approaches,” Jack ordered. “Specifically, the two systems where our squadrons are operating.”

Nelly did.

“Note how both of these, as well as Admiral Zingi’s system, has more than one jump into it. Nelly, trace them back until you find crossroad jumps, jumps that would allow you to leave the approach the aliens have used and head for the system on another track.”

Nelly did. It didn’t take more than about eight jumps to sidestep one approach and slip over to another.

Jack turned to Kris. “If you want to suggest we try and nip off another dish, I’d go for it, but you might want to put a picket in these flanking systems to give your squadrons a warning if the aliens get smart.”

“They always get smarter,” Kris muttered, but she gave the orders to both set up the ambush and look out for a return of the favor.

It was well she did. Over the next two weeks, Admiral L’Estock’s
Battleax
and other Sharp Steel Squadron ships got their chance to take out thirty alien warships from a second wolf pack in a near replay of Admiral Zingi’s fight.

However, Admiral Shoalter had to pull his
Phantom
and other wild creatures back from his exposed position as sixty alien ships in two dishes made a move on his flank, using a different jump to enter his system. Without the alert from the jump buoy, he’d have been caught in a race to see who could get to the exit jump before the other.

The aliens from the Anton Wolf Pack didn’t follow him though the jump. One dish set up shop guarding it, while the second dish jumped out and showed up a week later, again, flanking him.

Admiral Shoalter again chose discretion as the better part of valor and withdrew. Slowly, but surely, he fell back toward System X.

45

Soon
the
Hermes
and the
Apollo
raced in to report that the Beulah and Clairissa Wolf Packs were conducting the same flanking maneuver on Kris’s other far-flung ambushes. Admirals Zingi and L’Estock pulled back although Zingi risked splitting his forces. One of his divisions managed to give the aliens a bloody nose before turning to race them for the exit.

It was a close run thing at the start, with the aliens doing their best to nail them.
Idzumo
and her three sisters raced off at nearly four gees, leaving the aliens far behind as they struggled to push themselves past 2.5 gees. After a few salvos, there was little left to do but growl at each other as the aliens fell behind.

Kris had strong suspicions that the aliens were now communicating with each other. Those suspicions were confirmed when the
Challenger
returned. Commander Hanson made his report personally to Kris.