Kris Longknife 13 - Unrelenting (46 page)

“Nelly, send to Benson. You will decelerate even if the alien cruisers do not. Make orbit and prepare to render assistance.”

That done, Kris ordered more bolts for the fast-approaching cruisers. “Nelly, do you think you could fragment those bolts more, say, eight or sixteen bits? Seems that six thousand, even three thousand, tons ought to vaporize a cruiser.”

“I’ll see what I can do, Kris. No promises. We’ll be testing this on the fly, if you’ll excuse the pun, and we will not know the results until we see what happens when it happens.”

“Do your best.”

“That is what I and my children always do.”

Again, Kris felt the strange absence of Nelly in her skull. Nelly insisted she and her children needed their humans. Kris had no idea what the strange symbiotic relationship was between her and Nelly. Still, Nelly was loath to distance the two sides of the bargain. Where Kris went, Nelly went, and, if like today, Nelly needed to be close to
Conqueror
’s fire control computers, Kris was here so Nelly could be.

Someday, when things slow down, I’m going to figure this out,
Kris swore.

But for now, Nelly worked her miracles, and Kris eyed the boards in flag plot.

The final moments of approach were working out between Admiral Kitano’s Mobile Fleet and the aliens’ cruiser wing. Two hundred and eighty cruisers formed into two groups, one high, one low, each with ten divisions of fourteen cruisers were closing rapidly on Kris’s four battle fleets. Not bad odds compared to what Kris had faced the last times out.

That cruiser wing had gone untouched by the darts from the neutron star. They might have gotten lazy. They paid for it now.

Fragments of 12,500 tons shot into their midst. The angle of attack was not head-on. Here darts gashed cruisers, breaking their backs and leaving them twisted wrecks in the wake of something unseen. A few got off easy; darts took them through the reactor, and they vaporized in one huge burst of light and gas.

Death flashed through their midst for fifteen minutes as they struggled to come to grips with the human battlecruisers. They were 280 strong when the invisible came their way. There were barely 150 when the neutron hailstorm passed them by.

Then Kitano’s battlecruisers opened fire.

Whatever the range of the new cruisers’ lasers, it didn’t have the reach of the 22-inchers on the battlecruisers. Cruisers took hits. Some folded. Some exploded. Unarmored, the cruiser force took the scourging, but the survivors held their course to close with the humans.

Admiral Kitano faced two tough choices. Eight hundred or more large alien warships, four to five hundred thousand tons each, were bearing down on Kris’s beam ships. They had to be defended.

But at the moment, Kitano had these alien cruisers heading in, committed to closing to hand-to-hand range, desperate to get their hands around Kitano’s throat.

If Kitano bore away to keep the range open, the huge fleet of alien warships got to increase its lead in the race to Kris’s slug throwers.

Kitano chose to let the cruisers close and fight it out all along the line.

An alien cruiser fleet got to go toe-to-toe with an equal number of human battlecruisers.

The cruisers did have longer-ranging lasers. They made human ships glow at 140,000 klicks. They lit a few up, but at a horrible price.

The 22-inch lasers ripped at them.

At first, it was one-to-one, and many thin-skinned cruisers died. Battlecruisers then concentrated their fire two, three, or even four on one. The more the humans concentrated, the faster alien cruisers died.

“What does that mean to us and the two hundred and eighty headed our way?” Kris muttered

“Kris, that number is down to one hundred and ninety-two,” Nelly reported. “Several suffered reactor failures. More found neutron star not to their liking.”

“Good,” Kris snapped.

“Kris, I think we have a problem,” Nelly said.

“I’m listening,” Kris grumbled, finding that she was getting tired of having problems. All she really wanted was to have this kid born safe and sound with ten fingers and ten toes.

“There were a hundred and fifty alien warships heading for Admiral Kitano’s flank. They were the guard ships for the three base ships we destroyed. Fifty of them have changed course. Instead of bearing down on Kitano’s fleets, they are heading for the jump we came through.”

“Oh, shit,” Jack muttered.

“We only have a pair of courier ships guarding that jump,” Penny said.

Kris found herself juggling ships in her mind’s eye. She didn’t need Nelly to run a full analysis to know that Admiral Kitano was committed. There was no way any of her ships could reverse course. All Kitano’s energy was aimed at engaging the huge fleet in front of her.

Kris glanced at
Wasp
and
Intrepid
, as well as the eight Birds and eight couriers she had guarding the beam ships. Except for the two large frigates with their ten 22-inch lasers, the others were 20-inchers and totaled only eighty at that. Kris had bet the farm that this would not happen. Apparently, she’d been too good and left the aliens so enraged that they’d risk anything to get at Alwa. Now they had a handful of ships in place to do just that.

“Damn,” she finally said. “We will concentrate on the ships facing us. As soon as we finish this fight, we will turn what we can around and chase those bastards. Hopefully, a few fast jumps will put us ahead of them. For now, we concentrate on what’s in front of us. Nelly, send these orders to Kitano from me. Attack what’s here. We’ll chase the others later.”

“Sent,” Nelly said.

Kris looked at her staff. They did not meet her eyes.

“Kris,” Nelly said, “would you like me to make an estimate for time and movement to see where we will intercept the breakaway alien fleet?”

“No, Nelly. Any estimate you make will not reflect damage we suffer or fuel expended. All the gas giants we can refuel from are either on the other side of the system, or in the next system. We will tackle that problem when we finish with this one.”

“Spoken like one of those damn Longknifes,” Penny spat. “For God’s sake, Kris, that’s Granny Rita out there.”

“Penny, take a walk,” Kris ordered. “Masao, go with her, please.”

For a moment, Penny and Kris stood face-to-face, Penny’s an angry red, Kris cold and committed. Her gut was another matter. No doubt, baby was not enjoying sharing space with the venomous void that passed for Kris’s stomach at the moment.

For a moment they continued to lock eyes . . . then Penny broke for the door, and her friend followed in her wake. Still, as he closed the door behind them, his eyes met Kris’s. There was dismay at what he’d seen.

Then the door was closed, and Kris turned back to her screens.

“Tough call,” Jack said, coming up to rub her aching shoulders.

“God help us all if we don’t have enough fuel when this is done to at least make it back to a gas giant. Back to a gas giant and fast passage to Alwa,” Kris whispered.

“And you will see what you see when it’s there to see,” Jack said.

“Yes. Jack, I can’t worry about what I can’t do anything about. I’ve got to fight the battle I’ve got before I chase down a new one.”

“I understand, Kris.”

“I know you do, Jack. I know you do. Just don’t call me Ray. Okay?”

“Never.”

“You have made a hard but correct call,” Admiral Furzah said.

“Thank you,” Kris said, and hoped she meant it.

“The other hundred warships have altered course to join the fifty headed for Alwa,” Nelly reported.

“I expected they would,” Kris said. She patted baby. That was all she could do.

64

“What
the hell,” Jack said, unusually venting surprise.

Kris was busy grabbing for something to hold on to. “Nelly, drop this footrest.”

Around her, the
Conqueror
was doing some kind of bump and grind. Then it went sideways, and all gravity fled. Kris held tight to the table and tried to protect baby.

“The
Ultimate Argument
has blown out a capacitor,” Nelly reported. “They’ve got a fire on board. One of the reactors is out of control, and they’re venting it to space. Its feedback is affecting four more. They may have to dump them. The
UA
’s skipper broke his ship out of the mooring.
Conqueror
and
Last Word
have also cut loose and are distancing themselves from the
UA
.

Kris waited as the skippers and crews did what they had to do to survive. That did not include sending any darts at the approaching enemy.

It was an hour later before the captains of the
Conqueror
and
Last Word
reported they were ready to anchor again to each other and commence firing.

Kris ordered
UA
to make for the distant Zeta Jump Point. She’d suffered five hundred casualties, killed, wounded, and missing.

What would have happen to
UA
if they didn’t hold the line was not worth thinking about.

Kris ordered
Conqueror
and
Last Word
to limit their fire. “One shot a minute. Let’s make sure everything is shipshape.”

It took an hour to work up to two shots a minute.

“That long firing sequence
Last Word
used,” Nelly said.
“They’ve gone over it again and are using half of it. It’s still twice as long as
UA
’s.”

Kris eyed the incoming attack waves. “We may have no choice but to go back to rapid fire, but we can put that call off a while.”

The first wave of eighth- and sixteenth-size bullets were approaching the onrushing cruisers. The ships charged headlong into a trap that rapidly turned marvelous works of high tech into wrecks and ruin.

A dozen cruisers vanished in the blink of an eye. More the next minute. In the face of onrushing death, cruisers tried to evade, to dodge after days of 3.5-gee acceleration. The inertia on the thinly built speedsters was brutal. Two ships bent in the middle. Since one took a pellet a moment later, it likely was doomed either way.

For fifteen minutes, the onrushing wave of barbs devastated the cruisers. They died in twos and threes. Once, six blew out in a single second.

“I think I got the fragmentation pattern just right,” Nelly said, but she did not crow. A deadly pall hung over flag plot. This was not so much battle as murder.

Of course, if these murderers got half a chance, they’d make a suicide dive right down the humans’ throats.

Kris ordered the beam ships to aim more pellets at the onrushing cruisers. She also ordered
Wasp
to lead her last-ditch defense squadrons out to make a quick orbit around the neutron star, rising high and passing low to stay out of the line of fire, and to come up along the path of the incoming cruisers. No doubt the speed difference would give them little time to shoot, but they’d have more time to aim than holding formation with the beam ships.

“There’s a risk,” Kris told
Wasp
’s new skipper, “that you’ll be in heavy traffic when you come back at us: cruisers and the wreckage of cruisers as well as our outgoing shots. We’ll try to give you a good idea of where that is, so you can dodge, but we can’t make any promises.”

“Admiral, we knew the score when we shipped out. Give us targets. That’s all we ask.”

“Good luck,” Kris said, and cut the link.

She turned to Jack. “Hold me.”

He did.

What kind of a woman am I, sending so many out to die? What kind of an admiral am I, needing a man to hold me?

NO DOUBT, A LOT OF GENERALS AND ADMIRALS NEEDED SOME HUMAN COMFORT WHEN THINGS GOT BAD, Jack answered on Nelly net.

WHAT?

YOU WERE THINKING IT RATHER LOUDLY, Nelly answered. MAYBE I SHOULDN’T HAVE PASSED IT ALONG TO JACK. YOU CAN SUE ME LATER, WHEN ALL THIS IS DONE.

Kris let Jack hold her. She felt the buzz in her bones, not shaking like before but something different, as if every bone in her body had taken on a resonance. Slowly, in Jack’s arms, it died away.

“Thank you,” she said, stepping away.

“Can I come back in?” came plaintively from the door.

“Certainly,” Kris said, “although I’ve just sent our last defenses out to make a quick swing by our local star and come back up, possibly in neutron traffic, to get the best shots they can at the incoming cruisers.”

“I was going to suggest that,” Penny said, coming gingerly back into flag plot. “Kris, I’m sorry. I was out of order. It won’t happen again.”

“Yes, it will, Penny. That’s why I have you here. We both knew that was the only order I could give, but neither one of us liked it. You had to say it. I had to do it. Now get caught up and let me have the benefit of your thoughts.”

Penny studied the board for a bit, then turned to Kris. “You remember when you told me you wanted
Endeavor
to run away, not fight?”

“Yes. Someone suggested I turn in my Longknife ‘Do or Die’ merit badge.”

“I was wondering. Is there any reason we have to stand and fight these cruisers? Could we maybe duck out when they get here?”

Kris slapped her forehead. “Right. We spend fifteen minutes every twelve hours behind this cinder of a planet. Why not spend the few minutes they’re in range hiding there?”

“With all the energy they have on their boats,” Masao said,
“there is no way they could bend their course to an orbit. They are coming at us hell-for-leather. Let them eat hell.”

Kris found herself hugging her friend, not a hug for her, but a hug for joy. She even planted a kiss on Penny’s cheek. “You are a genius, woman. A defensive genius. Nelly, calculate what changes we need to make to our orbit to accomplish this.”

“If we make a minor adjustment this orbit, we can make a second adjustment an hour before they pass through, and yes, Penny is right. From the lead ship to the last one is less than five minutes.”

“Nelly, advise the captains of the change in orbits. Also, adjust our targeting. The cruisers still get one shot out of ten. We don’t want them to think we’re ignoring them. Nelly, are the ships headed for the Alwa jump holding a steady course?”