Kris Longknife: Defender (34 page)

Kris
sat in her egg. With the
Wasp
at Condition Zed, she commanded from a much-reduced and very solitary flag bridge. The screens around her showed her fleet array a hundred thousand klicks from the Beta Jump Point.

If this was going to be a running gunfight, she intended to give herself a lot of running room.

At the moment, Commodore Kitano, newly frocked up, had her BatRon 1 drifting in microgravity with their forward batteries aimed at the jump. Kitano commanded the seven big Wardhaven frigates that had been here the longest:
Princess Royal
,
Constitution
,
Constellation
,
Congress
,
Royal
,
Bulwark
, and
Hornet
, reinforced with the newly arrived
Resistance
.

Each of the other three squadrons were deployed in a line by divisions to form a loose box around the jump. Commodore Hawkings’s BatRon 2 was high with the new Wardhaven ships,
Renown
,
Repulse
,
Royal Sovereign
, and
Resolute
brigaded with the contribution from Lorna Do,
Warrior
,
Warspite
,
Nelson
, and
Churchill
. Commodore Miyoshi’s BatRon 3 held the low position with
Haruna
,
Chikuma
,
Atago
,
Tone
,
Arasi
,
Hubuki
,
Amatukaze
, and
Arare
. Commodore Bethea’s BatRon 4 with the big cats from Savannah prowled off to the left.

These last three squadrons were not in battle mode but had extended a pole from one ship to another so that four pairs of ships swung around each other, giving the crew some benefits of down for now.

Twenty thousand klicks behind the four battle squadrons, the Ninth Division with the Helveticans’
Triumph
,
Swiftsure
,
Hotspur
, and
Spitfire
held position beside Captain Drago’s own tiny Tenth Division of Kris’s flagship
Wasp
and the
Intrepid
. All swung at anchor.

Thirty thousand klicks farther back, Commodore Benson’s reserve squadron of merchant cruisers swung in three pairs as best they could. Unbalanced, each pair did its own crazy little jig. What could you expect from the likes of unicorns, pixies, and leprechauns, Kris heard Navy types grumble.

All the crews: Navy hands, retreads, or volunteers of human or Alwan persuasion now waited for battle in their high-gee stations. Every hour, one of the forward BatRons would break out into a fighting line, and the other would go into anchor mode.

A second board showed Kris that all the ships were green: reactors online, lasers charged, armor and structure undamaged. No doubt, that would change soon enough.

However, the fleet had been waiting for hours for the aliens to make their move, and the bad guys had declined to do much of anything. The periscope into the next system showed the alien mother ship parked ten thousand klicks out from the jump. Her monster brood ebbed and flowed around her. The speedsters were up next to the jump, but they, too, seemed to be waiting for the auspicious moment.

Kris was as prepared for battle as she’d ever be. She waited, wondering if under another star, some alien honcho was sacrificing a goat and studying its entrails. She wished he’d hurry up. Waiting was boring.

At that moment, one of the speedy ships nudged through the jump and began to flip for a hasty return.

One laser from each of BatRon 1’s ships shot out, and the smaller ship vanished in a ball of gas. Apparently, the small guys hadn’t gotten the rock armor.

Half a minute later, a second and a third ship shot out of the jump, accelerating at 3.5 gees. Each was taken under fire by BatRon 1. As the rest of the squadrons deployed for the coming fight, BatRon 1 held the line.

Then there was a long pause. Apparently, another goat was needed for sacrifice. Kris waited for what the aliens might come up with next.

What came through next was tiny but moving fast. Kris thought atomics even as four recharged lasers from Katano’s BatRon 1 tore into it. Whatever it was, it vaporized before it did anything.

“That had plutonium in it,” reported Professor Labao on net. “They’re using nasty stuff.”

“BatRon 5, reverse course a hundred thousand klicks and return to alert.” If atomics were going to be flying around, Kris wanted those folks well back.

“Aye, aye, Admiral,” Commodore Benson replied and began the hard job of shepherding his enthusiastic, if undrilled, charges back. Their line was ragged as they came out of their anchorage, but they did move quickly to obey.

Three more fast movers shot through the jump, accelerating as they came, but dying nevertheless. Kris wondered how long their boss would keep this up. He had less than twenty of the small type left.

This time, three bombs shot out of the jump. The gunners of BatRon 1 were on a hair trigger. Their lasers got all three again before any of them self-immolated.

“Isn’t there supposed to be something about fratricidal destruction of other atomics when one goes off?” Kris asked Nelly.

“It’s in the literature I was able to find. Maybe they don’t know about it?”

“Or maybe they’d be happy if any of them got us, but we’ve caught them before they could arm and explode,” Captain Drago said. “They must have some safeties on them to keep them from exploding on the other side of the jump.”

This time three huge monster ships popped though the jump. Kris had been expecting them. Three had led the way into the system the last time Kris had fought a mother ship and her brood. Three battle squadrons took them under fire. Sixteen lasers slashed into each one as they appeared. The stone armor bled to dust as a second volley speared the alien ships.

They exploded, as reactors suffered damage, and containment failed.

Kris frowned. Boss man on the mother ship must be getting tired of sending ships and none reporting back. What would a frustrated alien killer do? By now, he must know that Kris was holding the bridge. What was her weakness?

“BatDiv 9, hold in place,” Kris ordered. “BatRons 1 through 4, reverse course. One-quarter-gee acceleration. BatDiv 10, reverse course and join the squadrons when they pass. Prepare for atomic attack.”

Kris’s board lit up with acknowledgments as ships immediately responded to her order. In this battle, there was no time for a preliminary order to be followed later by an execute. Kris had rewritten the book. In an hour, she would know if her book was better than the old one.

As the squadrons fell back to 120,000 klicks from the jump, the
Wasp
and
Intrepid
flipped ship and joined the withdrawal. Throughout the fleet, any sensor that didn’t have to be out was retracted and covered with armor.

Three small objects shot through the jump and immediately separated into four smaller ones that spun away on wild courses. The four Helvetica frigates took out eight immediately. Their fire controls switched to the remainders as quickly as computers could. Three more vanished. One took a hit, but still blew.

“Low-order detonation,” Professor Labao reported. “Less than a megaton.” He used the ancient form of measurement, one that Kris had no frame of reference for. “Our regular hardening for space’s radiation should handle this pulse.”

That answered Kris’s question before she asked it.

Kris’s screens showed the status of her entire fleet. BatDiv 9’s ships switched from green to red as two reported damage to their sensors.

“BatDiv 9, reverse course, one-gee acceleration. All others cease deceleration. Reverse ship.” The fleet went to zero gee but momentum continued to move it away from the jump, rear first, forward batteries aimed at the jump.

The last holders of the bridge decamped and moved to join the rest. Kris ordered a small deceleration burn to park her fleet 140,000 klicks from the jump. Their 20-inch lasers were still in range. They waited for what came next.

All too soon, it came. The jump began spitting out monster ships every second. BatDiv 9’s rear batteries took out the first one. “Squadrons, engage by Plan A,” Kris ordered.

The eight ships of BatRon 1 engaged the next ship out, firing half their forward lasers. The second ship through the jump exploded.

But there were more. The battle squadrons engaged in order the third, fourth, and fifth targets. Alien ships came through the jump, and alien ships died. It was BatRon 1’s turn again, but the wreckage and roiling gases from the earlier ships were making the lasers less effective.

“Let them get out five hundred klicks,” Kris ordered, and the squadrons held their fire for a fraction of a second before laying on again. Still, there were ships through now that hadn’t been fired upon. For every ship they blew, one slipped through and raced off at two gees acceleration.

On the orders of their own commodores, the squadrons flipped to bring their aft batteries to bear. More monster ships died—some in spectacular explosions, some from a series of internal blows that tore them apart. Alien ships fired back, but their lasers dissipated before they could reach Kris’s fleet.

Yes, alien ships died, but Kris’s ships were shooting themselves dry. They needed more time to recharge. As Kris’s screens showed her ships firing their last pair of ready lasers, she gave her next order.

“Deploy chaff. Set course to two-ten by fifteen.” That would aim the fleet sunward and toward the nearest gas giant. “Accelerate at one gee. Deploy mines on my mark.”

Kris waited ten seconds for the fleet to begin its move away from the laid chaff before giving the mark. As the mines silently slid from the frigates, canisters of ball bearings, metal cubes, and simple rocks left behind became active and blasted toward the alien ships. Some chaff canisters held bits of magnesium and white phosphorus with delayed timers to mix them with oxygen and set them to burning bright and hot. Behind the fleet, space began to sparkle, as the chaff masked where the mines waited patiently.

Almost thirty alien ships were dead, but they had forced the jump for their master. Kris had made them pay a cruel price, but it was a price someone had paid willingly.

More ships came through the jump every second. Kris would not have risked ships at that short an interval, but the aliens commander did. He paid with a couple of collisions that Kris spotted. Maybe more that she didn’t.

While her fleet spent fifteen precious seconds recharging, fifteen ships came through, spread out, and went to two gees acceleration.

They formed a circle, then slowed their acceleration while later arrivals filled in the center. “A fighting dish,” Kris observed. She’d considered that but dropped it for the advantage that articulated squadrons and divisions gave her. These guys had been doing this a whole lot longer than humans had. Was it nearly instinctive to them?

Lasers recharged; still, Kris continued to back off. The dish came on as more ships came through the jump and formed up in more circles.

The lead alien formation approached the waiting mines, their lasers sweeping the space ahead of them. A few mines took hits, but not many. The mines were actually high-acceleration missiles with passive sensors. Once the sensors found reactors of an unknown origin near them, they waited until the aliens passed them by. Then the missiles took off at nine-gee acceleration, aiming their antimatter warheads for the vulnerable engines.

More lasers came alive as a few ships recognized the attack, but the missiles were close and coming in fast on an erratic course Nelly herself had designed. Explosions began to mark the fighting dish. Ships lost balanced power and shot off in wild course changes. Others began to eat themselves as reactors failed and plasma ripped through the ship. There were two more collisions.

The fighting dish shattered.

“Reverse course,” Kris ordered. “One-gee acceleration, if you please.”

Her fleet flipped and charged, jinking as it closed the distance to the flailing enemy. The aliens were too busy with damage control, or they’d lost their sensors. Only a few fired at Kris’s fleet or tried to dodge.

Kris’s squadrons mopped up the residue of the dish.

“Fifty-seven down,” Nelly reported.

Kris had no time to celebrate. Four more fighting dishes had formed up and were now headed her way at two gees.

“Pop more chaff,” Kris ordered, then reversed course at one gee. The oncoming alien dishes began to sweep the space in front of them with their huge battery of lasers. Kris didn’t try another mine drop, but she had plenty of chaff. So she did what she could to keep them working their lasers where she wanted them. Forward.

“Professor, Chief, let me know if their weapons begin to heat up.” Human lasers lost some of their efficiency and power when the system overheated. Physics was the same galaxywide. Kris wanted the aliens worn down before they reached the gas giant.

The alien fighting dishes were now arrayed in a box much like Kris’s squadrons but covering more space. Kris’s flanks, right, left, up, and down, were covered. Kris could retreat, but if she turned to fight, she invited the aliens to swarm around her flanks and into her rear.

It was not a good picture on the screens of Kris’s lonely flag bridge.

Another set of four dishes formed up. Thirty ships to a dish, four dishes to a square, made for 120 ships. Two squares should account for all the enemy she’d identified and then some. Either the last square was short a few ships or Kris’s intel hadn’t counted them all.

Either way, the mother ship should be coming through soon.

Finally, it did.

The monster fighting ships were huge, at four or five hundred thousand tons. The mother ship dwarfed them. This one was the size of a moon. Unless Kris was wrong, it was cut from the same mold as the one she’d disposed of before.

Well, if you have a successful design, why mess with it?

While the first square of dishes continued to close on Kris at two gees, the second held back, forming a shield around the mother ship. The smaller, faster ships darted around mother, using their few lasers to vaporize anything that came even close to her.