Kris Longknife 13 - Unrelenting (44 page)

This only accounted for some eight hundred warships. The others seemed to swarm in no particular pattern around the base ships.

It was the fast cruisers that bothered Kris.

Their smaller, fourteen-ship disks had started out in ten dishes of four that extended the warships’ box out, giving one very high, two wide in the middle, and one well below the warships’ diamond.

But the cruisers weren’t staying put. They kept spreading
out or pulling back in, edging ahead of the warship line a bit, then slowing until the more ponderous warships caught up.

Those cruisers added an unknown that unsettled Kris’s stomach and likely weren’t doing Admiral Kitano’s digestion any good, either.

What was clear was that any way you organized that mob, they could swallow up Kitano’s fleet and not even burp.

“We’ll have to be very careful,” Kris muttered, patting baby, who seemed at the moment to still be asleep.

In all of this there was no doubt that the aliens were making for Kris’s battlecruiser fleet.

“Nelly, when we start shooting neutron bolts, it will be a deflection shot. Will that be a problem?”

“Regrettably yes, Kris. Not the deflection, that’s a piece of cake. The problem is calculating where the ship will be ten hours from now when the bolt arrives. In that time, the alien fleet may have accelerated or slowed down. Our bolts could sail by them unnoticed.”

“So the enemy gets a vote and our best laid plans can take off for left field,” Kris concluded.

“Yes. I can tell you that the aliens have been holding steady since halfway through your nap. If they keep this up until we get to that cinder planet, we just might have something we can bet the farm on.”

“Nelly, your colloquialisms are getting very pleasant and right on,” Kris told her computer.

“Thank you, Kris. I’m doing my best to sound less like a cold computer and more like a flesh-and-blood person. I think you humans are more comfortable with that. I do hope I will have time to do more studies of you humans.”

“We all want more time,” Kris said, patting her unborn child.

“Yes.”

They stared at the boards, massaging that thought and the enemy’s predictability for some time.

This was the part of the battle Kris had learned to hate. The waiting. She’d done all she could. Nothing more would improve their chances of coming out of this alive. The last thing the fleet needed was a commander dithering and joggling the elbows of those who would do the fighting.

Kris wished she could take another nap, but she was all napped out, and baby had awoken and appeared to be jumping rope on Kris’s bladder. Not being in the eggs yet, Kris had to take care of that matter on her own. Returning from the head, she eyed the boards again.

Nothing had changed. The aliens were building up one strong head of steam. They were headed at Kitano’s fleet at a wild charge, ignoring Kris and her beam ships.

Big mistake.

Hopefully.

Kris tried to extrapolate what a wild, high-energy charge would be like between those two battle arrays. How many collisions could the aliens manage to steer themselves into? Could Kris lose her entire fleet in one big, head-on crash? Space was large and ships just didn’t smash into each other very often.

Still, with closing vectors of a million klicks an hour or more, dodging would have to be done in a blink and jinking out of the way with that much inertia on a boat would be a bitch.

Kris wouldn’t put it past the aliens to try.

Then Kris spotted the upside of that strategy for the aliens. They’d be headed for the jump out of the system toward Alwa, and what was left of Kris’s fleet would be headed away from their base.

Maybe this crazy charge wasn’t that crazy after all.

Kris noted that Kitano had dropped the acceleration on her fleet from one gee to .8. No surprise, Kitano had spotted it, too.

Then Kris smiled. “I wonder how long that charge will hold up when I start taking potshots at their precious mother ships from over here. I do my thing, you react and do your thing. Now I do my thing again.” She blew the enemy Enlightened Ones a poisoned kiss and settled into her comfortable chair to watch developments.

Jack came back from his Marine duties to take Kris to dinner.
Conqueror
had five different restaurants. Kris settled down in a comfortable chair in a spacious and quite nice Japanese restaurant. She ordered tempura but passed on the sushi after giving a thought to how long it had been since this “fresh” fish swam in some sea.

Kris couldn’t help but look around and frown. “When the fighting starts, will all this stay like this?”

“Afraid so,” Jack said. “I’ve looked at the plans, Kris, and
Conqueror
should be called the ‘spaghetti factory.’ No one really knows what’s behind this bulkhead or that compartment. They were finishing it as they sailed. From what I’m getting from my Marine detachment skippers on the other ships, each is an individual work of art. I’ve got nanos mapping this ship just like we did the alien ships that fell into our hands.”

Kris winced, then thought it through. “I know this is tough for you, but imagine what shape we’d be in if they took the extra time to standardize the design.”

Jack nodded.

“Besides, who knows, the difference in one ship may keep it shooting when the others have gone silent for a problem in their design.”

“That’s not a happy thought,” Jack said.

“You want an unhappy thought, think of me. No sake tonight. Not even tea. Just plain water.”

“Oh, you can drink the tea,” Jack said. “I jogged by this place earlier today and told them I’d be bringing you and asked if they had some noncaffeinated tea. That’s chamomile tea. You and baby will sleep like, well, a pair of babies tonight.”

Kris lifted her teacup in salute to her husband. Dinner was delightful, and she did sleep like a baby with the little one letting her sleep as well.

Next morning came early as
Conqueror
went into orbit around the cinder.
Ultimate Argument
was a thousand klicks right behind, with
Opening Statement
trailing. Kris intended the ships to enter a highly elliptical orbit that would bring them almost a hundred thousand klicks above the cinder before plunging them back to make a fast graze past the planet before rising high again.

This orbit would give them the maximum time in a firing position before the planet blocked their fire, but only for a brief twenty minutes. Hopefully, they wouldn’t be down there when anything crucial happened.

In orbit, the beam ships anchored themselves together.
Once stabilized, Kris ordered battle stations. The familiar “Bong, bong, battle stations, all hands to battle stations, bong, bong” lasted a lot longer than Kris wanted. It was a full fifteen minutes before the Klaxon cut off, and Kris’s board showed
Conqueror
manned and ready. Again,
Ultimate Argument
had beaten the flag.

Kris shrugged. It might be her flag, but she hardly considered
Conqueror
her ship.

“You may commence primary ignition at will. The targets are the alien base ships.” If she took them out early, there was no telling what the aliens might do, but at least she’d have them gone.

UA
fired immediately,
Conqueror
next, and, as expected,
OS
was last. After four firing sequences,
UA
fell into a fifteen-second rhythm.
Conqueror
came up to speed a bit later.
Last Stand
, as Kris was thinking of her ever-tardy third ship, took a half hour to get into a steady habit of knocking bolts off the neutron star every fifteen seconds.

“I’ve got the darts just the way I want them,” Nelly reported. “The front end is only three millimeters square and formed like a regular pyramid. That should deflect radar, especially with it rotating at 900 rpms. They’re about seven millimeters long. I expect them to spin off into four darts only a million klicks short of their target, say, one minute shy of the mother ship. It will be interesting to see what happens.”

“Yes, it will, Nelly. Now, we wait for nine hours.”

“Less, Kris. The aliens have been closing on the battlecruisers at a steady one gee.”

“You’re leading the targets?”

“The first round are. We’re varying the assumptions for the later bullets. Some ahead. Some behind. Some right on. We’ve shot enough bolts that we can afford to allow for Kentucky windage.”

“You like that phase,” Kris said, remembering how Nelly had sniffed at Phil Taussig’s suggestion that the Magnificent Nelly might need some.

“It’s a helpful turn of phrase when dealing with you humans,” Nelly answered.

Kris waited; she smiled at the thought. Being a
lady-in-waiting for the last seven months had done nothing for her patience, but she’d learned there was nothing for it but to wait.

Even baby seemed content. Kris knew she was awake, but there were no somersaults or jump rope or other things baby tended to do when she was excited.

Together, Kris and baby waited out the bolts as more and more of them joined the long line of death headed for the unsuspecting aliens.

61

“We
should start seeing hits any time now,” Nelly said.

Kris came awake. “This chair is too damn comfortable,” she grumbled.

“I thought I might as well let you sleep, Kris,” Nelly said. “It’s going to get lively here soon.”

“Yes,” Kris muttered as she heaved herself and baby out of the comfortable chair and waddled her way to the head. Baby might not be dancing on her bladder, but she was sure taking up room.

Done, Kris got back to her chair, eyed it like an enemy, then settled back into it and felt it conform to her ever-changing bulk. “Nelly, don’t make it too comfortable.”

“Yes, Kris.”

But Kris didn’t notice the chair change.

Oh, well, no doubt trillions of women have wished for what I’ve got.

But what I really want, little love, is a safe place to put you while Mommy goes out and kills what would hurt you.

“It’s happening,” Nelly said, ending Kris’s internal dialogue with the life beneath her heart.

This had happened hours ago, but, thanks to the speed of light, Kris only saw it now.

The horde had maintained a steady course and acceleration for its collision with Kris’s mobile fleet.

They likely would not make that mistake again.

A warship exploded. Then another, followed rapidly by several more. But even as the enemy’s main battle dishes were taking punishment, darts were slipping past them to hit the mother ships. One took a hit, then another and another.

It looked like all four were trying to sidestep the barrage
coming their way, but jiggering a small moon’s course was no easy task.

The least damaged ship flipped itself around and dove down ninety degrees from its base course.

It still took hits as it edged away from the others. Or maybe warships had taken hits intended for her. Back at the battle line, it looked like a Lander’s Day fireworks display as more warships and cruisers blew up.

The enemy formation was coming apart as ships jinked to avoid nearly invisible darts on their screens or to just not be where they were.

The enemy fleet was hard stung. Two mother ships lost all acceleration and were just coasting. “Nelly, will that work for them?”

“I don’t think so, Kris. I’m not sure where all the spun-off quarter darts went, but we aimed a lot behind the base course.”

Even as Nelly spoke, one of the drifting mother ships took another hit. This one sparked reactors to lose control of their plasma demons. The ship burned.

The ship that still had weigh on took a hit, too. Only the diving ship managed to miss the bolts aimed for her. “Lucky bastard,” Kris muttered. “Nelly, cease fire, give the bolt ships a rest. We’ll need to wait until we see what they do before we send out a new volley.”

“Yes, Kris. I ordered a stand-down on the beam ships four hours ago, just after you dozed off.”

“You did, did you?”

“As you have noticed, there was not a lot we could do just then, and some deficiencies had begun to make themselves known in our systems.”

“They had? And you didn’t wake me?”

“Kris, an admiral with a screwdriver has got to be even more dangerous than an ensign with one. The repair ships did their jobs. What do you say you do your job, and I do mine?”

Kris considered reprimanding her computer for both letting her sleep and exercising her four star rank while she slept, then decided to let it slide. Kris was feeling more rested than she had in several days, maybe several weeks. And Nelly had gauged her targeting and the systems-maintenance needs just right, which was to be expected of a computer.

“Well done, Nelly,” Kris said.

“Thank you, Kris.”

Kris eyed the alien fleet on screen. Two mother ships were rolling lazily in space, drifting as inertia took them. One was making maybe a quarter gee, zigging and zagging.

“Nelly, are the beam ships ready to go back online?”

“Yes, Kris. I’ve received several requests to test the systems.”

“Let’s fire a couple of bolts toward the drifting mother ships. Don’t bother splitting them into quarter bolts.”

“You want to hit those ships with a full fifty-thousand-ton shot?”

“Yep. Let’s see what happens when we really hit one of those bastards.”

“It will be like slicing watermelons with a sword at full charge,” Nelly said.

“Likely.”

“What if one of the warships gets in the way?”

“Do you think a five-hundred-thousand-ton ship can slow down a fifty-thousand-ton neutron bolt?” Kris asked.

“No doubt the scientists and Navy types will be interested in the results.”

“Do it. Scatter fragmentation bolts around the one that still has weigh on.”

“Yes, Kris. What about the fourth one?”

“Ignore it for now. It’s too unpredictable. But those others? Slam them hard.”

“The bolts are on their way.”

Kris leaned back in her chair, got comfortable, and watched developments.