Kris Longknife - Admiral Read online

  Kris Longknife: Admiral

  Mike Shepherd

  KL & MM Books

  Published by KL & MM Books

  November 2017

  Copyright © 2017 by Mike Moscoe

  All right reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including photocopying, recording, or any other information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the publisher.

  This book is a work of fiction set 400 years in humanity’s future. Any similarity between present people, places, or events would be spectacularly unlikely and is purely coincidental.

  This book is written and published by the author. Please don’t pirate it. I’m self-employed. The money I earn from these sales allow me to produce more stories to entertain you. I’d hate to have to get a day job again. If this book comes into your hands free, please consider going to your favorite e-book provider and investing in a copy so I can continue to earn a living at this wonderful art.

  I would like to thank my wonderful cover artist, Scott Grimando, who did all my Ace covers and will continue doing my own book covers. I also am grateful for the editing skill of Lisa Müller, Edee Lemonier, and, as ever, Ellen Moscoe.

  Ver 1.0

  ISBN-13: 978-1877816580

  ISBN-10: 1977816584

  Contents

  Also by Mike Shepherd

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  Chapter 64

  Chapter 65

  About the Author

  2017 Releases

  Also by Mike Shepherd

  Published by KL & MM Books

  Kris Longknife: Emissary

  Kris Longknife’s Replacement

  Kris Longknife: Admiral

  Kris Longknife’s Relief

  Rita Longknife: Enemy Unknown

  Rita Longknife: Enemy in Sight

  Ace Books by Mike Shepherd

  Kris Longknife: Mutineer

  Kris Longknife: Deserter

  Kris Longknife: Defiant

  Kris Longknife: Resolute

  Kris Longknife: Audacious

  Kris Longknife: Intrepid

  Kris Longknife: Undaunted

  Kris Longknife: Redoubtable

  Kris Longknife: Daring

  Kris Longknife: Furious

  Kris Longknife: Defender

  Kris Longknife: Tenacious

  Kris Longknife: Unrelenting

  Kris Longknife: Bold

  Vicky Peterwald: Target

  Vicky Peterwald: Survivor

  Vicky Peterwald: Rebel

  Mike Shepherd writing as Mike Moscoe in the Jump Point Universe

  First Casualty

  The Price of Peace

  They Also Serve

  Rita Longknife: To Do or Die

  Short Specials

  Kris Longknife: Training Daze

  Kris Longknife : Welcome Home, Go Away

  Kris Longknife’s Bloodhound

  Kris Longknife’s Assassin

  The Lost Millennium Trilogy Published by KL & MM Books

  Lost Dawns: Prequel

  First Dawn

  Second Fire

  Lost Days

  1

  Grand Admiral, Her Royal Highness Kris Longknife of the Royal United Society Navy sat comfortably on her now shrunken flag bridge in the tight embrace of her high gee station. Around her, the crew of her flagships, the USS Princess Royal, were at battle stations: targeting systems swept the space all around them, lasers were dialed in and powered up, the outer hull with its crystal armor spun around the inner hull at one revolution per second.

  The Princess Royal was at Condition Zed and ready for war.

  Fortunately, today, the only thing the Sailors risked losing was an exercise. At worst, they might miss adding another E to their power plant or laser. Kris had a pretty good idea about the quality of the 6th Battlecruiser Task Fleet. She exercised them plenty on their voyage out from Wardhaven to the Iteeche Imperial Capital.

  Kris was the first human envoy ever accredited to the Iteeche Imperial Court. She made sure her fleet arrived ship shape and Bristol fashion, as well as ready to fight if it had to. Which was a good thing.

  The Iteeche were locked in a bloody civil war.

  The rebels didn’t want a human emissary. The Imperials didn’t really want a Longknife for an emissary. No, the Imperial court wanted a fighting admiral. Kris had even been commissioned into their Navy as an Imperial Admiral of the First Order of Steel and made the commanding admiral of the entire Iteeche fleet. At least as much of that fleet that were holding to the Imperial flag.

  That was the reason for today’s drill.

  Thirty-two human battlecruisers accelerated into space at one gee. They were formed into four squadron lines of eight battlecruisers each and stacked one on top of the other. All the battlecruisers faced forward, giving their twelve, 24-inch bow lasers a clear line of fire as they approached any target. Battlecruisers’ lasers could only fire fifteen degrees right or left, up or down from their keels. If you caught a battlecruiser on the broadside, it was toast.

  Which was a bit troubling to Kris.

  Her task fleet at the moment sailed in the center of four equally large flotillas of the Imperial Iteeche Navy: one to each side, one above, and one below her. All told, they formed a cross with Kris in the middle. The lower fleet was commanded by Imperial Counselor, Ron the Iteeche, a good friend of Kris and one of the reasons she was here. He was trusted by Kris.

  The other three squadrons were drawn from different satraps, seconded to the Imperial Planet’s protection. In theory, they were as loyal as an Iteeche could be to the most worshipful Emperor.

  With a civil war raging, coats could be turned very quickly.

  Still, if Kris was to command an Iteeche fleet, she had to know how good it was. From what she’d heard, the Iteeche considered a human battlecruiser worth only three-quarters of one of their battlecruisers.

  Kris had her doubts. Today, she was about to find out.

  “Comm, send to fleet. ‘Flip ship, raise accele
ration to two gees, initiate Evasion Plan 3 on my orders’.”

  Kris eyed her board. She’d trained the captains aboard all her human ships to reply directly to her flag. She had suggested that to the three Iteeche admirals commanding the flotillas. They were Admirals of the Second Order of Cloth. They owed their allegiance and their jobs to different Lord Pashas of the satraps that built the ships and paid for their crew and maintenance.

  Ron had explained to Kris that there were several orders, starting with Cloth, and going through Gold Cloth, Oak, Bronze, Iron, and Steel. Each order was divided into First through Fourth class with Grand Order added for the top most level. The entire lineup of orders, ranks, and extra gewgaws had kind of grown as the Iteeche fleet had grown. As an example, Kris’s status as a commissioned Imperial Admiral outranked all admirals commissioned by a Satrap. The realization that there were some twenty-four admiral ranks between her and her subordinate Iteeche admirals was a real jaw dropper.

  Those admirals might be way down the totem pole, but that didn’t mean they would let Kris remove even one of their prerogatives. The human battlecruisers were all bright green a good half-minute before the last Iteeche admiral transmitted that his ships were ready for the reverse course.

  “Execute,” Kris ordered.

  Around Kris, the Princess Royal did a fast flip along its midship axis. From accelerating at one gee in one direction, it took off decelerating along the reciprocal course vector at two gees. The big battlecruiser also began to jitterbug. Up, down, right, left, faster and slower deceleration, the Princess Royal did everything it could moderately do to not be in the space it had been headed for three or four seconds before.

  Lasers were powerful, and traveled at the speed of light. However, it took time for fire control systems to acquire a target, time for it to develop a projection of where that target would be in a few seconds, time to transmit the firing coordinates to the laser, then aim and fire it.

  Kris had survived a lot of battles by not being there when the other guy fired.

  She’d spent most of her career in small boats that swapped ice armor meters thick for dexterity at evasion. The battlecruisers may have grown from the 25,000 ton frigates with a half-dozen 18-inch lasers to the present 75,000-ton battlecruiser with twenty 24-inch lasers, but they were still a lot more maneuverable than a lumbering battleship.

  At least, human battlecruisers seemed to be more maneuverable.

  The four squadrons of eight human battlecruisers turned on a dime as if pulled by a single string. They flipped ship and took off at two gees while each of them jinked in its own volume of space. That was why Kris’s ships were 5,000 kilometers from each other. The eight ships in her squadrons formed a line 35,000 kilometers long.

  Three Iteeche admirals had formed their ships in tight, with only 2,000 kilometers between each ship, though each flotilla was 25,000 kilometers from where Kris’s ships steamed in the middle of this cross.

  The Iteeche were in a stack of four lines of eight, just like Kris’s fleet. They were just a tighter mass. Until this maneuver.

  Now, the ships were scattered all over the place. Some had turned sooner than others. Others had not flipped ship but chosen to turn ship, taking up more room and scattering themselves farther apart. Some took off at two gees sooner, others later. Three of the Iteeche task fleets were an amorphous blob to the right, left, and above Kris’s orderly fleet.

  The fourth Iteeche fleet, having been drilled by Kris on the way out from Wardhaven, executed the maneuver with precision nearly as exacting as Kris’s human ships.

  Still, none of the ships in the four Iteeche task fleets were doing much bobbing around.

  “Nelly? How easy would it be to target them?”

  No doubt, quite easy. The Magnificent Nelly, Kris’s much upgraded computer had started life most docile in first grade. Somewhere, however, after one of her frequent upgrades, Nelly had taken to arguing with Kris and telling horrible jokes. Nelly, and her children . . . yes, Nelly was a mother . . . were the first sentient computer anyone knew about.

  The family unanimously agreed; they did not want to become common.

  Nelly proved why in only a moment.

  “The Iteeche are very predictable. None of them are executing any evasion better than Plan 1. In a lot of cases, they are worse. I would expect that I could make twenty percent hits with the first salvo. Fifty percent with the second. I doubt that any of those flotillas would survive very long in a fight with a human battlecruiser.”

  That was what Kris had already figured out with her meat brain, but it was nice to have Nelly confirm her opinion.

  “Comm, raise Ron’sum’Pin’sumCap’sum’We aboard the Red Sunset on the Water.”

  A moment later, the forward screen was filled with an eight-foot-tall Iteeche. His four eyes were focused on Kris. Of his four arms, two were over his head, grasping a roll bar, at least that was what humans called those things before they started fighting from high gee stations. Ron swayed on his four legs, flexing as his ship jinked.

  Behind him, on the Iteeche bridge, not one high gee station was in evidence.

  “Ron, old friend, your ships did better than the rest, but all the Iteeche ships are not evading very well.”

  “Kris, my old friend, we are doing the best we can. I discussed your idea of a high gee station with the other admirals. I’m afraid that their attitude is that they have fought their ships standing up for ten thousand years before you humans ever darkened our stars. It would be unmanly to go into battle seated like a student in the Palace of Learning.”

  Kris shook her head. Commanding an Iteeche fleet was nowhere near as easy as some folks thought. Yes, the Iteeche were building battlecruisers that were supposed to be just like the human ships. The sole exception was the crystal armor that slowed laser light down, distributed it around the ship’s hull, then radiated it back out to space. That was one secret the humans were holding close to their chest.

  Admittedly, the crystal armor was not perfect. Kris had lost crystal armored ships. Grand Admiral Santiago out on Alwa station had lost armored ships. Still, a lot of battlecruisers that would have burned without the armor had made it back to a Navy base to refit and repair.

  The Iteeche had been given the same lasers designs, the same power plants, the same fire control systems. In theory, they should be the same.

  Kris knew that there was a hell of a lot of difference between a trained and battle ready crew and a collection of landsmen who couldn’t tell their asses from a hole in the ground.

  She was starting to wonder how many landsmen were on the Iteeche battlecruisers around her.

  Kris ordered the Iteeche admirals to get their ships back in a battle array. A good fifteen minutes later, she was ready to issue the same command to five flotillas of thirty-two battlecruisers each, all in rows of eight, all stacked four high. The five had reformed back into a cross. So far, a cross was the best fighting formation Kris had come up with.

  Again, Kris ordered the ships to flip ship and accelerate at two gees using Evasion Plan 1 for the Iteeche, Plan 3 for the humans.

  Fifteen seconds after the execute command was given, they were, if anything, even more scattered.

  It was then that Nelly noticed a serious discrepancy in the Iteeche battle array.

  2

  Humans have a hard time living their lives by the second. Our best efforts are barely able to divide a human activity like foot or swim racing by a hundredth of a second. A computer like Nelly can divide a second up into millions of fragments and live a lifetime in each second.

  Nelly’s ability to recognize the changing face of events around her had saved Kris’s life more times than Kris could count. Still, there were certain things that Nelly was not allowed to do.

  For example, Nelly could not start a war. This had been impressed upon her no end and she accepted that if she did that, Kris would be very upset.

  However, Nelly had been slipping into ships’ systems for
most of Kris’s career, spotting problems and correcting them, or hitting a scram button to kill a reactor just moments before it might run away and destroy Kris’s ship.

  Keeping things from getting out of hand got Nelly nice accolades. Starting a war? Not so much.

  What Nelly saw in the fractions of a second that Kris did not have, was a drastic battle maneuver as two Iteeche task fleets changed front.

  The Iteeche battlecruisers appeared to be disorganized, from one perspective. They had failed to execute their maneuver properly and now were scattered all over thousands of cubic kilometers of vacuum. As such, they had failed again to execute Kris’s orders.

  However, when viewed from another perspective, one Nelly quickly grasped, two flotillas of Iteeche battlecruisers had opened their ranks up and given every one of the seventy-two battlecruisers in their formation a direct shot at the human ships.

  Nelly noticed that perspective and its potential to harm Kris. She set part of herself to observing that particular perspective as she kept herself busy with many other things. It was only a fraction of a second later that her alarms went off. The Iteeche battlecruisers were changing front.