Kris Longknife 13 - Unrelenting (30 page)

“We nailed one of their fast movers,” he said, grinning from ear to ear, as he and Kris exchanged salutes. “We weren’t looking for a fight, Admiral. We understood our orders,” he said before Kris could even begin to form an opinion on his kill.

“We were coming up to a jump. We expected a nest of bastards to be on the other side, so we were slowing for a dead stop. One of those fast movers shot through the jump heading right at us. It only had one reactor, but our sensors identified two lasers charged and ready. We didn’t attempt to talk to them, ma’am. We were in their laser range and in damn short range for our 20-inchers. Apparently, their gunners don’t sleep by their lasers the way our Ostriches do. I ordered a shoot for
the aft battery, and we hit them good. Then I flipped ship and gave them the forward guns. They never had a chance.”

He paused for a moment. “Apparently, their single reactor vented somewhere other than at the ship, so there were plenty of chunks left when we were done with them. We retrieved pieces and turned them over to the boffins for analysis.”

“I have the initial report,” Nelly said.

“Don’t keep us waiting,” Kris said.

“The isotopic makeup of the metals are different from any ship we’ve encountered, different from this local arm of the galaxy. Likely, Admiral, we are dealing with another mother ship built thousands of light-years from here.”

“Damn,” Kris said. “Continue.”

“We found three nests of alien warships. Each time we peeked into a suspected system, we found sixteen warships in a kind of rotating lattice structure. Apparently, their equivalent of our anchorages. The four- to five-hundred-thousand-ton warships had a half dozen or so single-reactor suicide boats laid alongside, getting ready to launch. But it was the design of the warships that told me we had something different here. While they all had three large reactors aft to power their rockets, instead of three identical reactors laid out along the keel line, there was one huge reactor, say, mother-ship size, situated forward. It’s a very different design.”

Kris nodded; she hadn’t figured out how to handle three, and now she was facing a fourth monster coming in from a totally different threat axis.

I will not think this can’t get any worse. I won’t. I won’t, because it likely will.

Kris forced herself to keep her rising panic down. Well down. Away from baby, down.

“Thank you, Commander, and well done. Have your crew get some shore leave. I’ll be assigning the
Challenger
to the courier squadron. When a frigate command comes up next, I’ll keep you in mind.”

“Thank you, ma’am, I’d love one of the new frigates, but, with your permission, can I take the
Challenger
’s crew with me? They’re good, ma’am. Very good.”

Kris smiled. He was talking what she liked to hear.

“And if it’s the same to you, ma’am, I’d like to take the
Challenger
out for another run. Me and my XO think we can find the mother ship. If she’s not in the middle of the line, she has to be close to it. If you don’t need us all that much running messages, we’d like to find where the queen spider is lurking in that web.”

Kris glanced at her board. She had five of the couriers out with the retrograding forces. The
Kestrel
was just back with a report from Admiral L’Estock. The
Merlin
was already away to replace her on station.

It would be nice to have a third backup courier, but it would be better to know what she faced. The yards could knock together another courier. It didn’t have to be armed.

No, that was a mistake. If the aliens were running couriers around armed, there was always a chance that they’d take a stab at cutting out one of Kris’s message boats. No, the couriers had to have a fighting chance.

“Thank you, Commander. Yes, I would like to know what’s out there. Refuel, resupply, and head out. Let us know your plan. If you aren’t as lucky with this scouting cruise as you were last time, I’d like to know where to look for the wreckage.”

“Don’t you worry about us, Admiral. It’s not luck that brought us back but seriously applied caution.”

“Good luck and good scouting,” Kris said, and made her dismissal salute sharp. He’d earned the honor.

Kris called in her staff. She briefed them quickly, then posed a question.

“The aliens are proving painfully quick studies. Without intending to, Commander Hanson picked off one of their courier boats. Once they realize it’s missing, they’ll know they’ve been scouted and they’ll know there is an advantage to killing the messenger. Do we need to start patrolling our lines of communication?”

“Better yet,” Admiral Furzah said, “when will they move from threatening your flank to trying to cut you off entirely? If they can figure a way to seize a jump between one of our exposed squadrons and Alwa, they can ambush you.”

“I don’t think we have to worry about being ambushed,” Jack said. “We’ve got enough pickets out at each jump point. If one of our jumps goes silent, we know something hostile is going on when the connected buoys report back. No, they can’t set up an ambush, but they most certainly can cut our
most direct line of retreat and force a squadron to take the long way home.”

Kris found herself patting her bulging tummy. The terror that she’d felt when Hanson reported the presence of a fourth mother ship, a ship she’d suspected but, apparently, denied deep in her bones, was rising again. She felt an almost uncontrollable urge to pack it in and run for home. She was breathing faster. Her mouth was dry. She’d known panic, and she was making its close acquaintance once more.

She gritted her teeth and forced her hand away from her belly. She laid both flat on the table. “Any suggestions?” she asked her staff.

“I’ve thought of putting Hellburners on some of the moons around the gas giants in System X,” Penny said. “The problem is, even if we pick the right moon, without a maneuvering force to distract, they’d just shoot out the missiles before they got anywhere.”

Jack shook his head. “How do we defend a system as huge as X from three base ships and all those damn warships? Three, four, maybe as many as five hundred.”

“Let’s not take counsel with our fears,” Kris said, even as she struggled to take her own advice. “We don’t know how many warships they have, and we’ve peeled off sixty, seventy, maybe eighty already.”

“Ever the optimist,” Amanda said.

“I try to be,” Kris said.

“Sometimes she’s even more successful than today,” Jacques said.

“You’ll excuse me for interrupting your little panic party,” Abby said, dryly, “but you got me out of a nice warm bed, and I’m figuring you had some purpose. Mind sharing it with me?”

“We need to start patrolling our line of communications,” Kris said, tackling the problem she could. It helped her ignore the monster challenge she couldn’t. “How soon before we can see some more frigates?”

“Admiral Cochrane’s new squadron is starting to take shape. The yards aren’t spinning them out together.
Roger Young
is coming along as fast as they can push it.
Erwin Rommel
is only a bit behind it.
Vo Nguyen Giap
and
George Patton
are a bit behind the two lead ships.
Grant
,
Lee
,
Napoleon
, and
Marlborough
are just starting to form. We’re giving priority to the more complete ship whenever we can and only adding resources to the later ships when they aren’t needed for the lead ships.” Abby shrugged. “We figured four fighting ships now might be of more use to you than eight nearly complete ones later.”

“Outstanding logic,” Kris said. “Tell Admiral Cochrane that he better start exercising his crews full-time, blue and gold style. When those new ships come online, their crews won’t have a hell of a lot of time to shake down.”

“I have passed the word to him, Kris. He was already doing that, but he thanks you for the suggestion.”

That brought a laugh from around the table.

“I guess that puts me in my micromanager’s place,” Kris admitted.

The meeting struggled on for a few minutes longer. The elephant in the room trumpeted silently while they ignored it. Finally, Abby sniffed that she had enough from them and needed to get some real work done, and one by one, the others followed her out, leaving just Jack and Kris to stare at the screens.

“You’re trembling,” he said softly.

Kris wrapped her arms around herself. She could feel the shaking. Try as she might, she could not still it. Jack came over and put an arm around her. In a moment, she turned to lose herself in his strong embrace. A few moments later, they were on the couch.

“I don’t quite fit like I used to,” she laughed as she struggled to find a way for her and baby to fit in his lap.

“You two fit just fine,” he assured her.

She breathed in his masculine scent. Masculine warmth. Deep inside her, she knew that he was just as at sea as she was, but there was something about being held by him that made all the dragons nipping at her butt somehow more distant.

She accepted the illusion for the moment and let it warm her.

Slowly, she found the shakes taking their leave. Slowly, she found her center settling in place, on an even keel. Slowly, she felt less a terrified little girl and more the woman who was the terror of these aliens.

How many have I killed? How many billions? One hundred? Two hundred? Two hundred billion dead,
she repeated to herself.
Even if they win in the end, they’ve paid a hell of a price for our dead bodies.

And we will have bought time for humanity and the Iteeche to make the blood price for them way more than these dogs can pay.

Done with the shakes, but not yet willing to leave the warmth of Jack’s arms, she said, “You have any idea how we stop them next time?”

He shook his head. “From where I sit, it can only get worse. Why haven’t they sent a ship through the jump backward? Accelerate it and flip it on the other side, let it come through the jump firing everything it has and boosting to go back through? Even if we do shoot it to crap, some of the crap will drift through, and they’ll know it’s an ambush.”

“Ouch. Jack, I was hoping for something
we
could use. You’re not supposed to be thinking for
them
.”

“Yes, but if we’re not one step ahead of them, we’ll be one step behind them, and you know what it has cost them to be a step behind
you
.”

“You say the nicest things
to
me, which means the worst things
for
me,” Kris said, smiling up at Jack.

“What can you expect from the worst half of the human race?”

“I don’t think you’re the worst half of the race. I kind of like you.”

“Thank you very much,” he said, and kissed her. Not a peck, but one that felt all the love, respect, and value that he held for her. Considering that, at least for a few moments there, Kris was none too sure what use she was as an admiral, a woman, and a future mother, it was nice to feel that someone believed in her.

“Hm, keep this up and we’ll need a shower,” she said, breaking for air.

“And I have to check on ammunition production for our M-6s,” Jack said. “We’ve been practicing a lot with the locals. If we assign Marines to ship defense, we’ll need more ammo.”

“Is it a problem?” Kris asked, putting her admiral’s hat on.

“I don’t think so. We’ve had a good supply of nitrates on
hand. The stuff was supposed to be for civilian use, but I don’t think anyone will begrudge us Marines a couple of tons.”

“You’re robbing consumer goods for guns?”

“Yep.”

“Thanks for telling me. I’ll at least be ready when Granny Rita and Ada ambush me with their complaints.”

“I’m only taking a little,” Jack said, raising two fingers and spacing them only a bit apart.

“But that little bit,” Kris said, raising her own fingers up, then using both hands wide apart to make her point, “will likely cause a big disruption.”

“Such is war,” Jack said, as Kris managed for her and baby to stand up.

“I think that has two meanings in the present situation,” Kris said.

“Yep.”

“You do your Marine thing, and I’ll do my Navy thing. Maybe we’ll even survive.”

“Likely we will. You have a great track record. You and that Vicky Peterwald gal. I wonder how she’s surviving without you around.”

“Oh, so that’s it. I’m all bloated and fat with your child, and now you start talking about Vicky Peterwald.”

Jack laughed. “I figured mentioning Vicky would get you in a fighting mood.”

Kris sighed. “Fighting for you and baby. Always. Now go. I’ve work to do.”

Jack left, and Kris found herself staring at her situation board.

While Jack had been holding her, another suicide boat had found its way to Jump Point Beta. It had shot in at well over 1 million kilometers an hour. Very close to 1.5 million. It had been a test for the new jump guards.

The division of Hispania and Esperanto League frigates had been pulling full duty at the jumps; Kris couldn’t risk two ships missing the speedsters. Defending the jumps had cost her an entire squadron. Those eight frigates had just been relieved by six ships designed specifically for guard duty.

The Bird class were compromises piled on top of halfway
measures. Nine Earth-built freighters had been molded into six gunships with three reactors each. To that mix had been added forty-eight 20-inch lasers made surplus by the up-gunning of five of Kris’s frigates. The idea looked decent on paper.

As work progressed, its flaws became evident.

The hulls were thin; they kept space out and held in a mixed crew heavy with Ostriches and Roosters. Each ship had four lasers forward and four aft. The lasers’ cradles had been modified to allow them to fire though an arc thirty degrees up to thirty degrees down.

On a regular ship, that kind of swing was to be avoided. It left a gaping hole in the ship’s armor.

On these ships, it didn’t matter. There
was
no armor. Not a stitch!