Kris Longknife 13 - Unrelenting Read online

  The aliens just kept on coming in their ragged formation.

  “Up deceleration to three gees,” Kris said. “Execute Evasion Plan 6. Deploy chaff.”

  Around Kris, her ships went into a wild dance of up, down, right, left as they jumped up to three gees deceleration, then dropped to one. To complicate fire control solutions more, they popped chaff, shooting tiny balls of iron, ice, and flares out the way they were going just as they changed direction.

  They needed the wild jig. The aliens were just coming into their new, extreme range, and had too many lasers firing into the general space around their dancing target. They missed a lot of shots, but they had so many lasers sweeping the area where Kris’s ships were that some had to connect.

  The Caesar, Asama, and Broadsword took hits on their rocket engines. This time their captains were ready. As soon as one engine’s power skewed, they countered with corrections to their other rockets as well as boosting their ships to a full 4.5-gee deceleration.

  None ran into any more lasers than they would have as they dropped away from the battle line.

  Kris was in a tough fight.

  “Flip ships,” Kris ordered. She’d have to be a fool to keep her vulnerable rear with its rocket engines and reactors where the hostiles could get at them.

  The ships flipped. Now armored bows took the light hits from the attenuated alien lasers. It was bad, but acceptable.

  Better yet, the Mandela and the Saber, repairs made, were coming back into line.

  Kris measured the seconds as the forward batteries edged toward full.

  “Kris, I’ve evaluated the evasions the aliens are using. It’s a simple algorithm. I think I can forecast where they’ll be next.”

  “Feed it to the targeting computers, Nelly.”

  “Done,” her computer reported.

  “Fire forward batteries,” Kris ordered.

  Fifteen alien ships burned as twenty-one frigates hit them hard. Two exploded. Fire from others slackened, but the range was closing, and the alien lasers were taking bigger bites.

  The Smart MetalTM hull of the Princess Royal, like all the other non-Earth frigates, was a honeycomb of metal and cooling reaction mass under a thin covering of reflective material. It spun around the ship to spread out any hit while the reaction mass around a hit bled into space, carrying away heat as well as causing the laser beam to bloom and lose power.

  Damaged frigates took on a halo.

  The Earth frigates were a different story. Now they fairly glowed as they took in the laser hits, slowed the light down, spread it out along the entire length of their armor, and reflected it back into space.

  Earth’s BatRon 12 had led the way through the jump. It was always closest to the enemy. Now the thirteen aliens concentrated on the seven Earth frigates. They made them glow.

  But they did not make them explode.

  Kris watched her board. The Earth frigates’ armor wasn’t even into the red yet.

  “We’ve got to keep our nose to the foe,” Jack whispered.

  “And the Earth squadron out front,” Kris agreed.

  The forward batteries were recharging. The aft batteries in Kris’s fleet were coming up on full as they crossed the hundred-thousand-kilometer range.

  That also put the trailing 20-inch frigates of Hawkings’s BatRon 2 in range.

  “Forward squadrons, prepare to flip ships and fire aft batteries. You will flip back, bow toward the enemy as soon as your aft batteries are empty. BatRon 2, fire your forward batteries at the ships you identify as least damaged, then flip and fire aft lasers. You will also flip back and offer the enemy your bows.”

  Ships’ names blinked acknowledgments as Kris finished.

  “Flip ship. Fire,” Kris ordered.

  The slaughter among the onrushing alien ships was brutal, but they gave as well as they got.

  Thirteen big warships took fire from twenty-nine frigates. Actually, a full thirty-two as the damaged frigates flipped and contributed their recharged forward lasers as well.

  Eight of the five-hundred-thousand-ton alien ships dissolved, wrecked by their own acceleration or eaten by the plasma in their own reactors. One ship actually bent along its middle, then broke in half. Another ship seemed to burn from the inside, gutting itself before the inrush of vacuum could dowse its own fires.

  Most just exploded into gas as reactor containment vessels failed and sun-hot plasma was released to incinerate flesh and steel.

  Eight ships died, but the other five just kept coming, firing whatever lasers they could still bring to bear.

  Hawkings immediately flipped his eight ships and fired their aft batteries at the five survivors. One blew, but the others kept racing at Kris.

  Kris’s ships had to take it. Tests had shown that they couldn’t feed all the power into a single capacitor and get one laser ready ahead of the rest. No, they might give three priority, but only at a ten-percent penalty.

  Kris had weighted the options and established the fleet doctrine. Charge the entire forward battery. Charge the entire aft battery. Only under unusual circumstances charge three guns ahead of the rest.

  Kris considered the present circumstances and shook her head.

  The two fleets rushed at each other. Behind this fight, the monstrous alien base ship fled at 1.14 gees toward the third jump.

  No way you’re going to make that, Kris swore.

  Beyond that, the survivors of the ships that had fought Yi were also bearing off to connect with their mother ship. Yi’s ships had time to mend and make repairs. They were now back to yellow or green on their boards although Kris counted five that were trailing the rest of the fleet. Seven destroyed, five too damaged to pursue. That left Yi with only twenty ships. The ten surviving 22-inch war wagons were closing with the retreating aliens, nipping at their heels, but from an extreme range of 180,000 klicks.

  Admiral Yi’s secondary batteries were also sweeping the space ahead of him for those troublesome mines.

  Admiral Bethea had pulled her two BatRons off a bit, as if to get well ahead of the aliens on their flight to the third jump point. With the speed of her frigates, no doubt Bethea could put herself square in their path and make them come to her as she fired and retreated, fired and retreated.

  The humans had shown the aliens that chasing us was a bad idea.

  Kris turned back to her own battle.

  First Fleet might have lost a ship if the five alien ships had concentrated on a single frigate.

  Instead, the aliens seemed mesmerized by the glow from the Earth frigates. What fire they had, they concentrated on them. The ships took their hits, absorbed them, and radiated them back into space.

  The five Earth ships showed hull damage as their crystal armor heated up. Kris had suggested to Yi that his ships might benefit from a layer of honeycomb cooling under their crystal belt. He’d declined, with his usual attitude that seemed to say nothing good could come from the Rim worlds. He was of Earth.

  Kris had chosen not to make it an order. She wasn’t all that sure that the ships could be redesigned. Certainly not in the time before she ordered this operation.

  Without orders, the secondaries opened up on the alien ships as the range closed to less than fifty thousand kilometers.

  The forward batteries were over half recharged.

  At this range, even a half-strength laser would be deadly.

  “Prepare to fire forward batteries,” Kris ordered.

  Ships blinked back their reply.

  “Fire,” Kris almost whispered.

  One hundred and ninety-two lasers reached out at reduced strength for the four surviving warships.

  They vanished in hellish blazes.

  “We got a problem,” came from the commander of BatRon 12.

  “Report,” Kris said.

  “There’s a lot of crap showing up on my sensors. I think they seeded the space behind them with whatever those mines were that hit Admiral Yi so badly.”

  “I think you’r
e right,” Kris said. “Captains, have your secondary batteries take on anything close to your ships.”

  Again, ships blinked their acknowledgments.

  Then something exploded close on to the Longbow.

  “There’s a whole lot of this crap,” Admiral L’Estock reported. “And some of it’s moving.”

  “Nelly,” Kris said.

  “I’m taking a feed off the Princess Royal’s scientific sensors,” Kris’s computer reported. Most of the ships had sailed without their science teams, leaving them behind to explore Alwa and its star system. Kris had insisted on having at least a team aboard her flag. She also had Doc Meade to offer her expertise if they had a chance to talk to some real-live aliens.

  Now her boffins were passing along information that Kris could hardly believe.

  A picture appeared on one of Kris’s unused screens. It showed a tiny spacecraft. A rocket motor, a small crew compartment that appeared to hold a single alien, and a big bulge in front that Kris suspected was explosives, maybe atomics.

  Kris was not shocked.

  She had been shocked when the aliens started hurtling ships into the Alwa system, intent on crashing the planet and killing people by the hundreds of thousands, if not millions. Possibly even rendering the planet uninhabitable.

  “How can any living person do that?” Kris had asked. Then Nelly answered. Kris got a lesson on Kamikazes and Jihadist suicide bombers and others from Old Earth’s bloody and dark history.

  Admiral Furzah had added examples from Sasquan history. “Do not mistake my meaning,” she added. “We consider those who resort to this as fools. They have never won a war, but they have certainly made their mark on our history.”

  Now Kris saw space between her and the monstrous alien mother ship littered with these tiny weapons, propelled by hate and guided by a living mind.

  “Kris, some of the ships are larger,” Nelly reported. “I think there is room for two, maybe three. It is possible that these carry the outlawed atomic weapons.”

  Outlawed by humans. Not so outlawed by these bug-eyed monsters that looked just like us.

  “Nelly, warn the fleet. Get the big ones before they get you.”

  “Warning sent, Kris.”

  A loose cluster of three alien ships were coming in range, hurtling themselves like some bug to a flame. Kris ordered her ships to take them out, and they vanished under a hammering of full frontal fire.

  Next, two came in range. Kris flipped ship just long enough to obliterate the pair.

  Forward batteries were reloaded when the last three rushed to their deaths.

  Kris scowled and ordered an end to the massacre.

  “Whether they come at us in full ships, or in tiny, sentiently guided mines, they die,” Jack whispered.

  Now that part of her problem was done. She had ten minutes to destroy a base ship before its bloodthirsty brood came howling back, screaming for Kris’s head.

  “How the hell do you destroy an alert and fully armed base ship?” Kris asked no one in particular.”

  Still, Admiral Furzah attempted a reply. “It is like, what do you call that animal? A porcupine. Sharp spines everywhere.”

  “Only these spines are lasers,” Jack added.

  “Yes,” Kris said, and considered her next major challenge.

  7

  “Squadrons, flip ship and come up on 4.5 gees deceleration slowly. Let me know if battle damage causes you trouble.”

  At 3.5 gees deceleration Earth’s BatRon 12 had a hard time keeping their overheated crystal armor from sliding off their hulls. Kris reduced them to 3.35-gee deceleration.

  The Asama, Broadsword, and Saber hollered uncle around four gees. Kris detached them to proceed independently. She ordered all the separated ships to aim for well out on the mother ship’s base course.

  They decelerated with their vulnerable sterns to the alien base ship through a loose cloud of intelligently guided mines. They fishtailed a bit, opening up their amidships secondary batteries to pop the bits and pieces of murderous crud. Occasionally, a denser cloud would require short, low-powered bursts from the aft main battery.

  Still, Longbow suffered a near-miss atomic and had to slow down.

  Kris had twelve of the large 22-inch frigates, as well as all eight of BatRon 2’s 20-inch war wagons and the Princess Royal as she matched course and speed with an alien mother ship the size of a small moon, still 180,000 klicks out.

  “Nelly, send to the alien. ‘Enlightened One, you and all your black hats will die. Give up your arms, and I will let you live. Admiral Longknife sends.’”

  “I have sent it, Kris, using what we know of their language.”

  “BatRon 8 and 9, let’s back up my surrender offer with a full broadside. Pick a target on that monster and make it vanish.”

  “Kris, we really ought to concentrate on what will do the most damage,” Nelly said.

  “Yes, we will,” Kris answered, “but not right now. Let’s scourge him a bit before I go for blowing him to bits.”

  “Psychology, huh?” Nelly asked.

  “Just plain human orneriness,” Jack put in.

  “It’s gotten us where we are today,” Kris pointed out.

  “How long do you plan to be ornery before we slice some serious chunks off that ship?” Nelly asked.

  Kris sighed. So long as the ship had rocket power, it could keep up its flight. If she cut the huge bell-shaped rockets off its aft end, would that end the run, or just allow them to douse the reactors back there and become a whole lot harder to blow up?

  Kris posed the question and got half her human staff in favor of destroying the rockets. The other half, Jack included, proposed delaying that until they could get some antimatter torpedoes into the reactors and turn them loose to rip the ship apart.

  Admiral Furzah voted with Jack.

  It didn’t matter.

  A number of Kris’s captains had taken it on their own to aim for the rocket engines that dominated the aft end of the huge, thick ellipsoid. The moon-size ship’s dash through space took on a distinct shimmy before it settled down at a steady .97-gee acceleration.

  A moment later, its acceleration fell off significantly.

  “They’ve dumped reactor cores and closed down half their engines,” Nelly reported.

  “All ships, prepare to flip ship,” Kris ordered. “Aim your aft batteries at the rear of the base ship. Reactors are our target.”

  Ships blinked on Kris’s board.

  “Flip ship now. Fire.”

  The P. Royal, having been up-gunned only to 20-inch lasers, did not join the shoot.

  “We hit three, maybe four reactors,” Nelly reported. “However, they seemed to have dumped alternating reactors so one wild wave of plasma is not washing over and tripping the next one. Oh, now they’re dumping all reactors along the aft end of the base ship. Kris, the alien is just coasting.”

  “That may make her an easier target,” Jack said.

  “I don’t think so,” Nelly said. “They’ve just put a spin and rotation on the ship, Kris. It will be hell on whoever isn’t tied down aboard it, but it will be hell to target any specific point on its surface or inside.”

  “And, no doubt,” Jack drawled, “their Enlightened One is ensconced in the safest place on that rock, waiting for the fleet to come and save his skin.”

  “It will be a cold day in hell when that happens,” Kris said, and did a new count on the ships charging back from their fight with Admiral Yi. The aliens were down to sixty-three. No, make that sixty-two as another ship bloomed into a colorful flower of hot gas and bits of wreckage.

  Kris eyed the clock; she had eight minutes. Time for thirty salvos from her frigates. Maybe less.

  “Nelly, do you know where the reactors were on that wrecked mother ship we examined?”

  “Yes, Kris.”

  “Send that data to all ships. Close into one hundred and twenty-five thousand klicks and aim for the reactors that power all those lasers.”


  Nelly sent the data, and the frigates began circling the base ship, keeping up their jinking while doing it. Kris had been surprised once today by longer-range lasers.

  As they closed to Kris’s ordered range, she gave her next order. “Skippers, I want to slice that big, ugly melon. Aim your batteries for the same spot on the ship. I want it drilled right down to the reactors. Understood?”

  The message boards blinked acknowledgment.

  “Fire at will,” she ordered.

  Ships flipped to present their forward batteries. The lasers showed nothing as they departed the ships, but showed brightly as they sliced into the spinning ship. Several skippers managed to walk their fire across the twisting ship, keeping the heat on one place for an entire broadside.

  “How’d you do that?” on net got a quick reply. When the aft batteries were brought to bear, each frigates’ fire was much concentrated.

  “Nelly, why didn’t you suggest that?” Kris asked.

  “Nobody asked me, Kris, and it didn’t occur to me that you humans would need help tracking such a slow-moving target. Sorry.”

  BatRon 12 joined the shoot two minutes into it. It fired its aft lasers on the approach, flipped ship, and cut power, then fired the forward lasers. Another flip, and they were decelerating toward the base ship as they recharged. They repeated that maneuver twice before they were circling it, firing with the rest of Kris’s ships.

  Moments later, the rest of the cripples joined up and got into the shoot.

  The monster burned under their fire, but it was a huge monster, and there was a lot of it to burn.

  Then a reactor cut loose. Its plasma vented through the hull, incinerating everything along the way. That had hardly died down when another of the two hundred or so reactors along the centerline of the base ship also let loose its plasma to burn its way to the surface.

  “BatRon 9, fire one antimatter torpedo per ship, if you will.”

  “On their way, Admiral,” Commodore Shoalter answered.

  Before they crossed the hundred-thousand-klick line, lasers reached out to burn them.

  We don’t use the Hellburners yet.