Kris Longknife's Replacement: Admiral Santiago on Alwa Station Read online

  “Scheduled quarters inspection.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  When Ray Longknife had ordered Sandy out to Alwa Station he’d said the place was critical to keeping the alien monsters busy away from human space. He’d said the situation would, no doubt, be difficult.

  Ray, you don’t know the half of it.

  “Computer, get me a chair. No, make that two,” she said, waving Mandi at the first one to emerge from the deck. She settled into the next one, then leaned back and stared hard at the overhead.

  “I now command the fleet on Alwa Station, correct?”

  “That is what you read in your orders when you took command, Admiral.”

  Sandy saw where that would take her, and decided to avoid it for a few more minutes. “What other rumors did our talkative shore parties pick up in the short time they had to yak?”

  Mandi took her time composing an answer. When it came, it was a whopper.

  “The Sailors and Marines can get land grants down on the planet. They can go in with a few or a lot together and own a share of a farm, ranch or hunting shack. The Alwans are handing out land grants, or maybe not deeds, but land use permits. Kris Longknife is making sure we don’t steal the natives’ land.”

  Sandy took that in and had a flash back to the bucket of snakes that the Pipra gal had dropped in her lap. No way would Kris let some money grabbing types strip plants from a river in native territory.

  I’ve got to remember to be there when Kris gets her hooks into those dreamers.

  As fun as that thought was, Sandy had this new hot potato to deal with. Call it a hot sweet potato.

  Sandy had been a widow for a long time. She did have some old friends that she might occasionally go away with for a long weekend. She’d accepted that her command of a forlorn hope on the other side of the galaxy might very likely be on the celibate side.

  She’d didn’t exactly expect the same from her subordinates, but she’d assumed that rules were rules. Maybe she hadn’t thought that through as far as she should have.

  The preamble of Kris Longknife’s fraternization policy put it bluntly. “We are here and not likely to be going anyplace soon. We also lack any shore facilities that might allow for the normal separation of intimate others,” Sandy read aloud.

  “Yes, ma’am,” Mondi said.

  “Do they have much of a shore facility now?” Sandy asked herself.

  “I did get a readout of the base force, Admiral, before we sailed.”

  “And?”

  “Yards and docks has mostly a highly skilled civilian workforce. No slots for Sailors there. Supply need people. It’s growing as the fleet grows. But most of the workers are Colonial or Alwans, not a lot of slots for Sailors. The only real place with underused personnel is what passes for a penal colony shoveling bird shit.”

  “Who’s shoveling bird shit?”

  Mondi had a quick answer for that one. “The two folks that sabotaged Kris’s birth control implants resulting in her pregnancy. There are also some Sailors and Marines, including a few senior officers and chiefs that didn’t take no for a no from a subordinate.”

  “So there are still a few teeth in this Longknife shacking up policy?” Sandy spat.

  “There have been a lot of weddings,” Mondi answered. “Still, some of the larger combinations don’t seem to fit the usual requirements for a marriage licence.”

  Sandy scowled at that, but Mondi didn’t flinch.

  “You wouldn’t happen to know how this policy is working out, would you?”

  “Admiral Hart said they’ve issued some warnings, admonishments and reprimands to those who have a problem with the word no that didn’t go so far as to earn a shovel. At least yet. He said they’d also had to shuffle a few folks around the fleet after breakups that got nasty. Apparently, they’ve also added an approval system for when Cupid’s arrow strikes too far up or down the chain of command. I’m told that Admiral Kitano herself has an ongoing relationship with the commander leading the engineering division of her flag, left over from when she was its skipper. Overall, the chiefs and the XO’s have managed to make it work.”

  “Suddenly, you know a hell of a lot about this abomination.”

  “I’m the one that contacted Admiral Hart, ma’am. We’ve shot a couple of messages back and forth.”

  “Okay, Captain, do you have a recommendation?”

  “Since you used the word abomination with reference to said policy, I take it that after thirty-seven years in the Navy, you have a strong opinion.”

  “Very strong.”

  “I also know you to be a very flexible officer. Always on the lookout for a better way of doing things. Fix what’s broke.”

  “Are you saying that the Navy’s Fraternization Policy is broke?”

  “I’m saying we’ve walked off the edge of the world we know and we’ve got a whole lot of nothing to go on, ma’am. I’m also saying that you’ll have a very difficult time walking the rest of the fleet back to the traditional way of doing things. Secondly, I don’t see any way that you can allow the rest of the fleet to shack up and tell the new arrivals to suck it up, ma’am.”

  “You put my problem to me, succinctly. Oh, the sorrow of it,” Sandy said with a sigh. “I come out here expecting to finally get my ass in a decent battle and I find Kris Longknife has smashed the hell out of the opposition and I’m stuck figuring out how to keep this lash up together all by our lonesome on the other side of the galaxy. Hell, damn, spit,” she said. She knew much more forceful words, but they failed her just now.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Okay, my ever-vigilant Ops Officer, I assume you have some recommendations for me before you brought me this steaming pile of shit.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “And they are?”

  “I’d suggest that you distribute the policy for comment to all skippers, XO’s and leading chiefs and require their comments on the policy as well as any steps they might need to take to implement the policy if you should order it, Admiral.”

  “So, dump this ugly problem in the laps of those that will have to live with it, huh?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Sandy considered that. No doubt, Kris Longknife and her castaways had had more time to experience the problem of isolation on their Sailors before the extent of the abomination had raised its ugly head and they had to come up with a solution. Sandy could delay, and see what happened, but delay might lead to some real train wrecks as a few of her more rigid officers ran smack into some of her more creative Sailors.

  Strange how I didn’t think of that the other way around.

  “Okay, Mondi, ask for comments. Give them three days to reply. We’ll let this simmer for a bit.”

  “In the meantime, do you have any recommendations to your skippers about no notice quarters inspections?”

  “Yeah, tell them to stuff the idea and keep their eyes on the ball. We may be in a fight any minute. I don’t want anyone creating problems I don’t need.”

  “And the Sailors?”

  “Sailors were invented to create problems for officers, Mondi. It’s just what they do.”

  Chapter 4

  At least the distant Kris Longknife created no more new problems for Sandy for the rest of that day. She got in a good supper and part of a good night’s sleep before she was awoken by the duty orderly.

  “Begging the Admiral’s pardon, but we’re getting a message from the battle fleet.”

  “I’m on my way,” Sandy growled. In a moment, she’d splashed some water on her face and pulled on a fresh shipsuit. It was only a few steps from her night quarters, through her day quarters to her flag bridge.

  On the main screen, a bedraggled woman’s face was frozen in mid word. “Comm, let’s hear what she has to say.”

  The screen went active.

  “Kris, thank God you’re back. We’re down to using waste water for reaction mass when we have to dodge the wreckage of that last mother ship. I’v
e got three pinnaces taking a slow trip to the nearest gas giant for reaction mass, but . . . Oh, Admiral Santiago. It’s you and not Kris. Sorry, ma’am, I just assumed. Did Kris make it back in time to stop that last batch of alien warships? Oops, you’ll answer that in tomorrow’s message. Don’t get me wrong, I’m grateful for you showing up with fuel. As I was saying, we’ve got three pinnaces making a fuel run, and we’d use that to send more out to get more fuel. Still, we were faced with an awful slow recovery time and God only knows if those bastards have more ships. We’re sitting ducks just now and I hate looking like duck soup.”

  Admiral Kitano glanced off screen, seemed to like what she saw and sighed. “I see that you’ve got Admiral Hart going pedal to the metal for our survivors. The fight was just too fast and too hard for me to leave even one ship behind to pick them up. We did drop off some longboats to help those that had gotten way from the wrecks. Still, it’s been heart breaking watching pods go from flashing red to silent. Godspeed to you, Admiral Hart.”

  Kitano took a deep breath, then squared her shoulders and reported, “About half my ships are too dinged or busted to risk in any kind of a donnybrook. They could put up a fight if they had to, but I’d rather they didn’t. I intend to organize them into an escort force for the two beam ships here and have some of the better ones chase down the other beam ship that had to make a run for it. I’ll handle all that. Once we’ve got fuel, I’m prepared to reshuffle, say sixty ships, into Miyoshi’s Second Fleet and Bethea’s Third. Then we can get a move on to see if there are any surviving bug-eyed monsters we need to chase down. I’d offer you our most combat experienced admiral, ma’am, but Admiral Hawkings collapsed with a coronary soon after the battle and he’s in intensive care. We can talk more about this in your next messages.”

  Kris Longknife’s deputy took another deep breath and let it out slowly. “I can’t tell you how relieved I am to see you. We’ll be waiting for you when you get here.”

  Sandy ran the message a second time, then did a check with sensors. They had identified the three objects making slow passage to the nearest gas giant as wreckage. Now, marked as human vessels, they were plotted and tracked. They’d likely make two trips out and back before Sandy’s fleet got there.

  Sandy went back to bed with more to mull over.

  The next day, Admiral Hart began his rescue mission. He tasked some battlecruisers to slow early and start at one end of the debris field. Other ships delayed their deceleration by intervals so they could reach for those scattered along the length of the battlefield. Still, it was heart breaking the number of times a survival pod beeper went off line just as a rescue vessel heaved alongside.

  Tear-jerking frustration.

  “Aren’t there any survival pods from the enemy?” a young second class on comm asked her chief.

  The chief glanced around for an answer.

  Had no one read any of Kris Longknife’s reports on these monsters? Sandy thought to herself.

  When no one else provided an answer, she said, “They don’t surrender. They don’t have survival pods and they don’t evacuate their ships to lifeboats.”

  The young woman looked stricken at the answer. The older chief didn’t look all that better. A lot of the crew around the bridge tightened the seatbelts on their high gee stations and checked the button that would turn them into survival pods in a second and eject them from the ship a moment later.

  Humans wanted, indeed, humans needed hope. What was missing in the soul of the enemy that it refused to grasp every moment of life?

  Hart did his job, pulling desperate humans back from the brink of the abyss. Battlecruisers and pinnaces moved through the scattered wreckage of ships and pulled men and women aboard. Many were grateful for a decent breath. Others were in greater need. Badly injured were triaged and shuttled from pinnace to battlecruiser for better care. All too soon, Admiral Hart was on the line.

  “Admiral Santiago, I know I should be asking your permission for this, but by the time this message gets to you and your answer gets back to me, much of a day will be dead and gone, and with it some fine Sailors. I’m collecting the most seriously wounded on four of my ships. I’m ordering them back to Alwa for better care. I’ll join you with the eight I have left.”

  Sandy eyed the screen. Admiral Hart was a short man, graying and sporting a bit of a paunch. She had no idea what blend of hard work and chance had brought him to this point in his life, commanding a small task force and making the hard calls.

  She smiled. He’d made the call, and was ready to take the consequences if this new elephant wanted to put pursuit of the enemy ahead of care for her own Sailor.

  He’d made the right call.

  “Admiral Hart, I concur with your detachment of a division for medical emergency purposes. Join me as soon as your rescue efforts permit.”

  The tension in the atmosphere on the Victory’s bridge dissipated as the order went out. Admiral Hart wasn’t the only one wondering what the new admiral was made of.

  A day later, the Victory drifted up to Admiral Kitano’s battle fleet. Battle damage was not all that noticeable; Smart MetalTM allowed for the most obvious outer damage to be smoothed over. Still, one of the spherical beam ships looked like someone had bashed it in with a giant’s hammer.

  To Sandy, the battle fleet presented a problem. She’d read in one of Kris’s reports on the great voyage of galactic circumnavigation that they’d come up with a neat trick of mooring ships nose to nose and then swinging then around each other, thus getting a critically needed sense of down. Admiral Kitano’s ships had used about their last bit of reaction mass to maneuver themselves into pairs and anchor together.

  How could a pair of swinging ships take on reaction mass from a pinnace?

  Sandy hailed Kitano. “I’m about to spawn sixteen pinnaces. Any suggestion as to how your ships refuel?”

  “This won’t be a problem,” the other admiral replied. “Nelly developed an app for this. We’ll let you know which of the two ships is the lightest and have your pinnace come along side it. Then we can pass a fuel line across to the other ship and refuel both of them together. That way, I should have thirty-two ships ready to fight, or head off for the nearest gas bag in a couple of hours. There will be more later as you refuel them.”

  “We will conform to you,” Sandy replied, and had Mondi issue the orders. Soon, sixteen pinnaces were being guided into sixteen pairs of ships. The docking quickly turned into a merging followed by huge lines being passed from the refueled ship up to the other. Even Sandy was amazed at how quickly the first thirty-two were refueled and the pinnaces detached.

  The refueling was hardly completed before the refueled ships did a breaking burn, dropped down to skim the planet, and took off for the nearest gas giant, quickly accelerating to a good 2.5 gees.

  While that was underway, Admiral Amber Kitano reported to Sandy’s bridge.

  “That’s a smart bit of ship handling,” Sandy said, pointing at the main screen, where a quarter or so of Amber’s fleet was finishing up its refueling.

  “It’s an app Nelly developed for us,” Admiral Amber Kitano said. “We were having a devil of a time getting ships all balanced out so we could moor them together. Trust Kris’s Nelly to figure out a way to anchor ships together when we’re off balance and weigh in differently.”

  “Nelly, you say? I suspect we’ll really miss Kris’s computer when she leaves,” Sandy said.

  “Leaves?” the other admiral asked, eyebrow raising.

  “King Raymond has ordered her home.”

  “Why ever for?” Amber asked.

  “He just gave me orders to relieve her, not explain it to her,” Sandy said.

  “Ours not to reason why, huh?”

  “The usual.”

  “So, ah . . .” the young admiral seemed at a loss for words. “Will Kris’s temporary promotions be rescinded?”

  That stopped Sandy in her tracks. Since she arrived she’d observed the organization of the
Alwa forces into a lot of fleets and task forces. References to admirals and commodores had been made with no doubt attached to them.

  Now it was her turn to echo, “Rescind?”

  “I don’t think anyone out here has an official rank higher than commander. I know I don’t. All of your senior commanders have been fleeted up from frigate skippers over the last year or so. Maybe in just the last few months as slots opened up and the need arose. We’ve got lieutenant commanders who came out in charge of gunnery or engineering holding down skipper slots.”

  Like a good staff officer, Mondi stepped in to give her boss time to recover. “You mean that Admiral Hart, who totally intimidated us with ship handling that demonstrated how much we needed to learn real fast to jinks and dodge around, is a jumped-up frigate skipper?”

  “Actually, Hart came out here as a retired commander assigned to yards and dock to help Admiral Benson run Canopus Docks. I think he was his deputy before Ben promoted him up to run the station when he was made boss of the base force. Hart was tickled to death to have command of a ship during the First Battle of Alwa, and then to be flagged up to command a task force.”

  “Alwa Station,” Sandy said softly, trying not to make it sound derogatory.

  “Yes, Admiral, promotions come quickly out here,” Amber said. “They come quickly or you die real dead.”

  Sandy realized that being the new Grand Admiral in town out here might not have quite the authoritative kick it would have back home. Alwa was different. Lurking alien monsters. Fraternizing policy. Promotion policy. That was a whale of a lot of different to throw at a new boss woman.

  Oh, and while you’re figuring out what to do about Kris Longknife’s unique way of running things, there’s a batch of aliens running like mad for their uncles and aunts and cousins. Running with the latest news on how humans had once again kicked their butt’s way out of the ball park.

  Sandy decided to ignore everything that wasn’t critical for the moment. “Okay, how fast can we get underway and chase the aliens that snuck out the back door?”