Kris Longknife - Admiral Read online

  First some. Then more. Finally, all seventy-two ships in the top and left-hand fleets were bringing their bow laser batteries around to bear on Kris’s battlecruisers.

  Nelly observed the action of the Iteeche. Two Iteeche flotillas were behaving normally, if a bit raged in their battle array and actions. The other two flotillas were executing orders that had nothing to do with what Kris Longknife had just given.

  Nelly was not alone. Megan Longknife, Kris’s aide de camp, had been given one of Nelly’s children. Lily was immediately called to her mother’s assistance. They divided the 6th Battlecruiser Task Fleet: Nelly taking Task Force 1, Lily, Task Force 2. They slipped into the helm computer on every ship and jammed the accelerator down, sending the ships off at 3.6 gees base course. They also switched the helm to Evasion Plan 6, which got the human ships slamming themselves around their base course right, left, right, right, up, left, down, left, while jiggling the acceleration from 3.45 to 3.65 gees.

  That was all done in the second it took the potentially hostile Iteeche battlecruisers to rotate themselves and point their bow batteries at Kris’s fleet. Even as they changed front, their active targeting computers clicked off standby and began sweeping the human fleet, identifying targets, and feeding position, course, and speed into their own fire control computers.

  Nelly had learned her lesson. Nelly was not permitted to start wars. What had never been included in her conversations with Kris was at what point Nelly was permitted to reply to someone starting a war. Nelly was all too well read on the problems inherent in the transition from peace to belligerency. She also understood how hard it was for humans to stop a war once it started.

  Nelly had a direct wire into Kris’s brain. Today, she used it. “Alarm, Alarm,” she said firmly to the grand admiral. Nelly also commandeered the main screen in Flag Plot and filled it full of the picture of the two aggressor flotillas.

  While Nelly waited for Kris to respond to this input, she kept herself very busy. She edged the rotating skin of the battlecruisers up to eighty revolutions per minute, four revolutions every three seconds. If the jinking worked, even a direct laser hit would be hard-pressed to achieve burn-through before the skin of the ship was carried away from the burn point. Better yet, if the human battlecruiser was zigging and zagging, by the time the skin rotated back, the laser might very well be burning another part of the ship’s skin.

  It had saved lives before.

  However, Nelly was not limited to defensive action.

  Nelly and Lily slipped part of themselves into the fire control computers. There, they switched the huge and complex sensor package on each battlecruiser over from search to acquire. Lily and Nelly took in the sensor feed, calculated it, and would have smiled if they’d been human.

  The Iteeche had a system they called maskers. When activated, it complicated the fire control sensor suite on the human battlecruisers. The most sensitive targeting gear, the lasers, radars, and atom laser mass finders, could all be spoofed by this fragment of ancient alien technology. The Iteeche had done that back during the Great War. The aliens, however, couldn’t spoof light. They could try to emit as little as possible, but each ship was coated with reflective material to try to bounce back grazing laser fire. Such coatings had a tendency to gleam.

  Nelly did a quick check. There were no discrepancies between the four targeting systems. A check of the electromagnetic spectrum showed a missing note deep down the line. Nelly had recently helped the Iteeche manufacture maskers. She’d promised not to keep any information about the manufacturing process. However, she didn’t promise anything about discovering the power signature of the maskers. Nelly now knew what noises to look for if maskers were in use.

  There was no noise.

  This sneak attack had given up much for the advantage of surprise.

  Nelly completed fire solutions for her sixteen battlecruisers and fed them to the lasers.

  Sensors can travel at the speed of light. Calculations can be made at the speed of light. Information can be passed at speeds close to the speed of light. However, some things took time. One of them was the mechanical process of swinging the huge 24-inch lasers out of train and aiming them at their target. The other was the time it took to put the helm over and move the ship from going one way to aiming her guns at the target full on her beam.

  As the potentially hostile battlecruisers swung around, Nelly could pick up the electronic noise from their servos as the Iteeche lasers swung around to lay on target. Of course, that meant that the helmsman had to stop the bow at the precise moment that it faced the human battlecruiser.

  Most of the helmsmen were new. Untested in battle. Nervous. Most over-steered or under-steered. If it was within the fifteen degrees that the lasers could be moved, the servos took over, redirecting the lasers at their target. If the helm went too far or not far enough, they had to correct, and maybe correct again when they swung too wide the other way.

  While the potential hostiles were doing this, Grand Admiral Kris Longknife’s eyes were locked on her main screen. She saw the threat, and, unlike everyone else of the 108 battlecruisers, she had Nelly in her brain and all it took for her to communicate with Nelly was a thought.

  DO NOT FIRE UNTIL FIRED UPON. IF FIRED ON, WEAPONS FREE, was but a thought, but it was all the thought Nelly needed to hear.

  Kris had laid on this short cruise today so she could take the metal of the Iteeche Navy. It looked like someone had decided to try her metal as well. Kris had been tried by deadlier killers than these. She was still here and they weren’t. She added one more command for Nelly. TARGET EACH FLAG WITH THREE LASERS TOE ACH AIMING POINT.

  AYE, AYE, ADMIRAL.

  Kris discovered in desperate battles against the alien space raiders, that burn-through came quicker if you could target two, three, or even four lasers at the same spot on the ship’s hull. It was not easy to get lasers to slave to a single point. It also cut down on the spread of the ship’s laser salvo. Most fleets used a wide spread laser salvo to increase the chances you’d damage a target with at least a few hits.

  Not Kris’s.

  Everything was a tradeoff. Still, with the Iteeche so reluctant to follow an evasion plan, this concentration looked like a good bet.

  A dozen Iteeche battlecruisers opened fire on the humans. It was a ragged salvo, growing as more ships brought their forward batteries to bear and joining in until all seventy-two were sending everything they had at the thirty-two human battlecruisers.

  Six Iteeche warships targeted the Princess Royal.

  Over half of their seventy-two 24-inch lasers in their bow batteries went wide. One even nipped the battlecruiser behind the P. Royal. Others lasers sputtered to life, but only managed to cut the vacuum close in to Kris’s flag. As Kris expected, the Iteeche lasers were loose in their gun carriages and their salvos were wildly scattered about the space the Princess Royal dodged in.

  Still, there were a lot of lasers aimed at Kris’s flag and a lot more taking up the howl for her blood. Kris waited patiently to see if her ship was as well built as she thought. She had inspected her several times and never found the P. Royal wanting.

  The Princess Royal took six hits. Two were glancing blows, but four were solid hits. The lasers hit the crystal armor; the energy was instantaneously diffused out to the crystal around the hit. The fast rotating skin of the P. Royal spun the superheated skin away from the laser beam, bringing in cool, undamaged crystal armor. The 24-inch lasers were good for six seconds of fire at full power. However, with the way the battlecruiser was jinking in space and the high-speed rotation of the hull, the lasers never got to take a second bite out of the same place.

  The cooling honeycomb structure of Smart MetalTM and the rapid flow of cooling reaction mass under the crystal armor all helped to dissipate the infernal heat of the lasers. Still, the Princess Royal was fit to fight back.

  Nelly certainly intended to.

  Nelly had Lily stand down Task Force 2. However, the sixte
en human battlecruisers of Task Force 1 were under Nelly’s control and she had them armed, aimed, and ready to return the fire. The twelve lasers of the ships’ forward batteries had been dialed in tight. Kris had learned on Alwa station that many ships came from the yard with their lasers loose in their carriages. On distant Alwa station, they’d learned to tighten down the lasers and slave them in tight together. Four groups of three concentrated lasers leapt out from every battlecruiser in the human Task Force 1.

  Nelly had targeted the Iteeche flotilla and task force flagships, as well as squadron commanders. They accounted for fourteen targets. Nelly made the decision to target the flotilla flags with two battlecruisers rather than slaughter some private ship. She doubted any of her targets would survive.

  She aimed her lasers, and fired.

  The US battlecruisers were confronted with several problems simultaneously.

  If they wanted to stay alive, they had to keep up their mad jitterbugging. If they wanted to fire at their tormentor, they had to get their bow within fifteen degrees of the target. The human ships continued to jink. However, their fire control was aware of what their ships would do next in its dance to stay alive. The fire control computers factored those movements into those of their target and spat out a solution.

  The Iteeche rebels made it way too easy.

  With their ships hardly dodging at all, four groups of concentrated laser beams fixed on seven of the thirty-two Iteeche ships in each flotilla. Some missed. Most didn’t. Ten Iteeche battlecruisers took two or three hits. Two were missed entirely. The two flotilla flags took six or seven hits.

  They simply disintegrated.

  The other twelve ships became a study in damage control. In too many cases, damage control didn’t appear to have been well taught. Instead, ships began shedding survival pods as sailors took one look at the hell around them and punched out. Twelve ships twisted, rolled, and flipped through space, spewing tiny pods behind them.

  “Check fire. Check fire,” Kris ordered. Normally, she went into her high gee station in her birthday suit. When ships got busy honking around at 3.5 gees, things like belt buckles and ribbon pins could be downright dangerous and leave her black and blue for days. However, Kris hadn’t really intended to be pushing the outer edge of the envelope. She just wanted to see how good, more likely how bad, the Imperial Iteeche Navy was.

  She’d learned a whole lot of what she’d expected to learn, and a lot more that she hadn’t.

  “Ron. You’re the Imperial Counselor. You tell these bastards that if they fire another shot at me, I will blast the entire lot of them out of space.”

  Ron took over the conversation, speaking rapidly in Iteeche.

  “He’s telling them that they will all meet the Emperor’s personal headsman if there is one more shot fired. He’s ordering all of the captains and admirals to surrender their vessels and to place themselves under arrest. Oops, Kris, it seems that you blew away four of the six admirals. The other two have chosen to avoid making a formal apology to the Emperor by taking poison.”

  “Dead Iteeche tell no tales,” Kris growled, through a scowl. She really wanted to talk to whoever set up this ambush as well as who set them up to do it. Now, she’d have to dig all of this out slowly from the hearsay of captains who were only obeying orders.

  By the time she found one set of answers, would they still mean anything to anyone? That thought slowed Kris down. Once again, she was faced with an enigma that was an Empire that had a teenager for an “all powerful” Emperor. A whole lot of people “worshiped,” that kid, but too many others wanted to sit on his throne.

  This was not the emissary job that Kris had signed up for.

  “Ron, you order the survivors to make for the Navy station. I will follow. If they so much as twitch, I’ll have my lasers blow their reactors to hell.”

  “They understand. They will comply.”

  “Have the fellow who didn’t shoot at me break out his longboats and pinnaces to recover survivors.” In theory, it was Kris who had the authority over that other admiral of the cloth. In fact, Ron was an Imperial Counselor and spoke with the unquestioned authority of the Emperor to people at the admiral’s level.

  At the moment, it looked better for Kris to use the old ways to get things done.

  “Ron, I’d also appreciate it if you could detach Imperial Marines in longboats to each ship. I want their captains brought to my flag. I want any survivors from the admirals’ staff as well. If you have any Imperial interrogators or inquisitors, I’d be glad to have them, but I want to see that the interviews are recorded. I, of course, will provide copies to you, your Chooser, and the Emperor.”

  The set up here was beyond crazy, but Kris had a lot of experience with crazy lash-ups. Back then, she’d hated the mess and dreamed of a nice, simple chain of command. After five years at a staff desk job, Kris had developed a different attitude. Crazy was good. Insane was her friend.

  For the training exercise today, they had come out as five flotillas in a cross tactical array. They returned with two in a ragged formation, with Ron’s battlecruisers just below Kris’s ships. Between the Iteeche ships, longboats slipped from ship to ship. Some docked on one or two ships, others three or four.

  All of them docked on the Princess Royal before they returned to their own ship.

  All brought Navy officers and Marine escorts. All were met by human Navy officers and United Society Marines. Their orders were to treat the Iteeche as guests, not prisoners. Kris could afford to give them decent quarters in her brig, now that the P Royal had relaxed from Condition Zed to Condition Able.

  Or Love Boat sailing condition to any old salt among the crew. Still, it was nice to have your own spacious quarters and you could always go back to Condition Zed in a flash. For now, that gave the humans room to give each of the Iteeche officers a single room to prowl in and contemplate their future.

  It was a long, slow sail back to the station.

  3

  Kris could not afford to delay the critique of the short battle they’d just fought.

  “Nelly, tell my key staff I need them in my quarters in one hour. They should come prepared to tear this action apart from the Navy aspect and tell me where we go from here.”

  “Yes, Kris. Do you want the task force commanders to attend?”

  Kris considered that. In practice, the commodores had their own commands. At the moment, Kris needed their advice more than she expected to need their leadership.

  “Ask Commodores Ajax and Afon to report to my day quarters if at all possible.”

  “Aye, aye, Admiral.”

  Kris smiled at how nautical Nelly was getting. Then again, Nelly and Lily had saved their bacon just now, and the two of them could do anything they wanted to. Meanwhile, Kris had to get herself into a mind set for a large meeting.

  That was a problem she was having. Her irregular promotion path had skipped quite a few steps, which included several staff slots along the way. Kris had never really figured out how to use a staff. On Alwa, she’d had a lot of fish to fry, but everyone was in the same boat and all were pulling in the same direction. There had been plenty of friction, but not so much that Kris hadn’t been able to keep things going smoothly with a small staff.

  While in a staff job for the last five years, Kris had been able to use Nelly to do a lot of work for her. With no battle experienced officer to use for her chief of staff, she’d preferred to do without.

  Her situation here at the Imperial Court was a whole lot worse than any she’d ever faced before. She had an embassy to run and a battle force to train and fight. Either one of those jobs could work her to death if she didn’t delegate.

  The embassy was a mess. Facilities on the planet below were a big question mark. The attitude of the Iteeche was unclear, but likely not to be to the liking of the humans that had followed Kris out here. She had business men expecting to make their private fortune. Diplomats from several planets and associations all hoped to make the
ir careers by negotiating better terms for their planet than the next guy could get for his.

  There were a lot of oars in the water, but few pulling in the same direction.

  On top of all that, she now had a fleet to command that could turn on her at any moment and whose battle skills were sorely wanting.

  The planning for this recent failed exercise had started immediately after Kris got back from her initial meeting with the Emperor and called a no-notice staff meeting just like this one.

  “You’re what, Admiral?” didn’t quite have the shock in it that Kris had gotten when she announced to her command on Alwa that she was pregnant, but it was pretty close.

  “I am, it appears, appointed Imperial Admiral of the First Grand Order of Steel, commanding the whole kit and caboodle of the Imperial Iteeche Battle Fleet. I need a staff. The hot potato is landing in your lap. Where can we hold a large staff meeting?”

  They stood on the quarterdeck of the Bold, flagship of ComBatCruFlot 6, where the chief of staff, Titania Tosan, had come to formally meet Kris when she got short notice that the admiral was on her way. The captain had carried off the greeting with great aplomb, despite being a bit breathless, right up to the moment Kris dropped the bomb.

  The tall woman looked like she’d been kicked in the gut by a mule, but she struggled with it valiantly.

  “Ah, Admiral Darlan is indisposed in his quarters at the moment. I believe we can use the flag wardroom for a meeting.”

  “Indisposed?” Kris echoed and left it hanging.

  “He’s been, ah, partaking heavily of Chief Mason’s home brew since you relieved him of his command, Admiral. He didn’t take it well.”

  “The officers I relieved of command will be on the first ship heading back to human space just as soon as we unload. For now, contact one of Al Longknife’s liners and get them all rooms on the civilian side. We don’t need this kind of unprofessional and undisciplined behavior aboard ship.”