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

  Sandy had read all those reports. Still, she couldn’t believe them. She wanted, needed, to see it for herself.

  The aliens showed her with full intent. They fought. They never stopped fighting. Only when the blast of human lasers burned them to gas did they cease the battle.

  Never did Sandy’s sensors spot a single longboat or survival pod separate from an alien warship. One small boat might have tried to get away, or maybe it just came loose. If it was a serious run for survival by someone, it was shot out of space by fifty of that ship’s own lasers.

  Surrender was not a word in their alien language and, as eight ships came under her fire, one at a time, all eight of them died. Not one swerved away from their end. Sandy was left with a sick feeling in the pit of her stomach.

  This isn’t war. This is murder.

  Whatever it was, eight ships stayed in line and died with every living crew member still on board.

  Chapter 9

  Sandy ordered her ships to one gee and dogged the watch. Half the crew would stay alert at their post while the other half got their first shower in way too many days to remember and maybe, if the mess crew could manage it, a real, honest to God, hot meal. Two hours later, the clean and well fed would take over the watch from the stinky and hungry and they could get squared away and fed before returning to their station.

  “Nav, I want a one gee course that will get us well back from that damn jump so we can take time to do some serious maintenance. If it confuses the aliens and leaves them thinking we’re running for a jump, that’s all the better. If there’s a nearby gas giant, aiming us for that might rattle them even better.”

  “Yes, ma’am. The flag navigator worked his Ouija board for a long moment, then recommended a course and acceleration, Sandy passed it along to the comm, and the fleet conformed to her orders. With a sigh, she motored off the bridge, leaving it to Mondi to divide the bridge staff.

  With creaking muscles, she pulled herself out of her stinking high gee station, set it to self-clean itself up, per the manual’s promise, and headed for her own shower to clean the sweat and stink that the egg was supposed to have taken care of for the last forever, but never did.

  “The guy who actually comes up with a design for a high gee station,” Sandy muttered to the shower head, “that really lets you bounce out of one of those torture machines smelling fresh as a daisy and feeling fit as a teenager will make a fortune.”

  She turned around to let the hot water splatter on the many knotted muscles in her back. “And I’ll be in line to buy the first one.”

  Fifteen minutes later, in a clean ship suit and with only slightly mussed drying hair, she made her way to the Victory’s senior officer’s wardroom. The mess crew had outdone themselves. How they managed to have fresh bread ready left Sandy wondering if she shouldn’t yank the mind reader or fortune teller from the mess deck’s team and put them where she really needed them, at her elbow in flag plot.

  The meatloaf might have shown evidence of defrosting, but the bread made up for it.

  Fed with something that didn’t come in a tube for the first time since she ordered her ships into an extended high gee run, Sandy returned to her room to find that the Smart MetalTM had done its miracle for the high gee station and returned it to pristine condition. She stripped out of her shipsuit, boarded and closed up the station, and headed back to the bridge.

  She’d taken less than an hour, but when she offered to relieve Mondi, the captain refused.

  “What are we going to do with the sixteen alien door knockers that we’ve got left?” she asked her admiral.

  Sandy ran a worried hand through her wet hair. “It seems to me that they get a vote.”

  “Yeah,” her ops chief muttered, gnawing on a cuticle. “As I see it, they have three options, none of them good. They can stay where they are. We drift up and shoot them to hell from outside their laser’s range, and leave them dead without having fired a shot. I suspect that will be a non-starter.”

  Mondi seemed to discover the finger in her mouth, and switched to holding her hand out, two fingers up. “They can repeat what they just did, peeling four ships off of each side of the jump, chase us back a bit while dying, but buying time for the others to hold the jump a bit longer.”

  Sandy nodded. She suspected that would be the chosen strategy.

  “Or they can come off their guard stance and charge us with all they’ve got, pushing us to see if they can get lucky and get a ship.”

  Sandy shook her head. “They’d have to know that there’s someone lurking on the other side of that jump. Kitano would be on them like fleas on a dog.”

  “We’re here, ma’am. They don’t really know what’s there, but yes, I’d bet on the second option. So I’d suggest we take our time, get some serious maintenance and repairs going on our ships, let the crew get a good night’s sleep, and see what our aliens choose to do.”

  A day and a half later, Sandy’s battle array drifted up to a spot in space 200,000 kilometers from the nearest alien rock mound. Lasers were loaded all around. Even the Formidable stood ready to fire half broadsides. They were ready to begin what looked to be a simple execution.

  So the aliens chose that moment to demonstrate just how alien they were.

  First, one ship blew up. One huge explosion started aft in engineering and shot through the ship. In the blink of an eye, there was nothing there but roiled superheated gases.

  A second later, another ship performed its self-immolation. A third and fourth followed in the blink of an eye. The last four went out at two second intervals as if someone was calling cadence.

  Before Sandy could pull in a shocked breath, the eight on the back side of the jump blew themselves up in a single explosion.

  “Holy Mother of God,” Sandy breathed softly.

  “Help them,” Mondi finished.

  Sandy stared at the main screen as the roiling clouds of gas expanded and dissipated away into the vastness of space. Slowly she closed her mouth as the realization came to her that it was hanging open. Nothing in her life prepared her for what she had just witnessed.

  Intellectually, she knew that her Navy service during the long peace left her unprepared to take over a fighting command from Admiral Kris Longknife. In her head, she knew she was coming out here to a command where combat was not just possible but probable. Still, it was one thing to know that she might have to fight for her life and kill to save it and others. It was something else entirely to see it, experience it not just in the head, but in the gut.

  Sandy fingered the yellow and black striped handle that, with one pull, would convert her high gee station into a survival pod and send it hurdling into space. Every ship she’d served on came equipped with some sort of survival pod, none as fancy as Smart MetalTM allowed hers to be on the Victory. As a human being, she would fight for her life until her dying breath.

  Her enemy had just proved to her just how alien they were. Not just alien but completely opposite from us. What can make someone do that?

  Sandy shook her head, as if to shake off a blow.

  “Know thy enemy,” had been hammered into her since her first day at the academy. She’d studied human difference through the ages and, under secure conditions, studied the difference that divided even the humans of the United Society, and, when that vanished away, had studied the capabilities and intents of several of the factions that fragmented humanity splintered into.

  Sandy thought she knew just how different her enemy might be.

  But now she was on Alwa Station and her first look into the alien enemy’s eyes had left her stunned by the difference between them.

  Sandy set her jaw. “Clearly, I need to understand those bastards more than I do now,” she said, half to herself.

  “Yes, ma’am,” Mondi agreed.

  With a deep sigh, Sandy shook herself out of the dark cloud that befuddled her. This question would have to wait. She had a fleet to get back to where it belonged.

  “N
avigator, set a course for that jump. Let’s take it easy through the jump. No need for us to risk a ship now that we are no longer under attack.

  Chapter 10

  Sandy sent a warning buoy through the jump before she cautiously led her ships through. Admiral Kitano had her fleet moored well back, 150,000 klicks, each of her ships swinging around another, comfortably anchored.

  “Did you see what they just did?” Sandy asked Kitano when the admiral came on line.

  “Yeah. We’ve seen them fight like wildcats one minute, then give over to despair and suicide the next. They’re crazy.”

  Sandy sighed. “I’m inclined to agree with you. When I headed out from Canopus Station, I was half wondered what a person of my paygrade was doing chasing around space, using her battlecruisers for tankers, then running off for some kind of personal fight. I think I needed to see this to actually believe what we’re up against.”

  Kitano nodded. “You have to actually see these bastards in action to believe they can be this alien. The only thing I’d add to get you fully briefed up on conditions on Alwa Station would be a visit to that pyramid on the alien home planet. Maybe add a visit to the next planet over that they sterilized down to bedrock.”

  “I’ve seen Kris Longknife’s report on both,” Sandy said. “I really didn’t want to smell the place, taste it up close and personal. I hoped to do without those nightmares. I’m starting to think I may have to do it.”

  “I would suggest it, Admiral. Now I would also suggest that we get back to Alwa. We’ve been gone over a month.”

  “Let’s take it easy, say one gee, maybe 1.25 gees. I don’t know about your ships, but mine need some serious love from a competent dockyard.”

  “Dockyards we’ve got on Alwa Station,” Amber said, beaming. “Let’s get your ships into them.”

  They had hardly gotten underway at a gentle 1.25 gee acceleration when Mondi was at Sandy’s elbow. “Admiral, about that abominable policy of Kris Longknife?”

  Sandy raised a questioning eyebrow, pretty sure what would come next.

  “Fifteen of your skippers request you immediately implement the policy. We’ve done some hard fighting and The Word is out below decks that a change is coming.”

  “And the one skipper who isn’t asking?”

  “Ma’am, he’s chomping at the bit to do some no-notice quarters inspections. He’s real sure his crew is already doing stuff against God and regulations.”

  “So if I don’t do something, something is going to be done to me.”

  “Am afraid so, ma’am. Not all the talk between ships has been to improve combat efficiency. Stories about victory celebrations in Admiral Hart’s squadron have gotten around.”

  “Sailors are such gossips,” Sandy muttered. “So I either follow Kris Longknife’s policy or I risk all kinds of guff.”

  “Guff,” Mondi coughed softly. “All kinds.”

  Sandy rolled her eyes at the overhead and took a deep breath. “Not for the first time, or the last, I suspect, I’m going to curse Kris Longknife’s shadow. Issue the order. All newly arrived squadrons will adopt the Alwa Station Fraternization policy. And may all the gods of sea and space have mercy on their fornicating souls.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Mondi said, and went to issue the order.

  Three weeks later, the Victory arrived in the Alwa system via Jump Point Beta just in time to see the Wasp, with Princess Kris Longknife and one tiny princess Longknife take the Alpha point for human space. What with all Sandy’s chasing aliens around space, Kris must have not only had her baby, but found it strong enough for the journey home.

  Space is huge and human time ticks on.

  The Victory was waived directly into a maintenance slipway rather than a pier.

  Sandy hardly had a moment to settle behind her desk and begin to tackle more of the huge stack of reports that had been flooding into her inbox since Victory got in the Alwa system, than her yeoman announced, “Admiral Benson is here for you.”

  “And Granny Rita,” came in a cranky voice that arrived only moments ahead of a tall, whip-thin woman of undetermined years, although her gray hair and the crinkles around her gray eyes showed she’d seen many miles go by. She held out her hand.

  Sandy rose to accept it, puzzled at the woman who seemed to command the room even with herself, Admiral Benson and now Pipra Armstrong trailing into the space.

  “Granny Rita?” Sandy said, tasting the word.

  “Once I was Rita Longknife, but it’s been years since I shared a bed with that scoundrel. I go by Granny Rita these days and I’ve earned it.”

  A light went off in Sandy’s head. “Commodore Longknife. The long-lost Commodore Rita Nuu-Longknife.”

  “I knew where I was the whole damn time, so you can forget that lost bit, and yes, I commanded BatCruRon 1 when we won our last battle, and, I hear, the war. I got chased so far and so fast for our effort, that we ended up all the way across the galaxy.”

  Sandy gulped, and found herself tearing up. “You knew my grandfather. You used your first pregnancy that day to help them get the bomb past security that he used to kill President Urm.”

  “Oh, God, you’re one of our Santiagos,” Rita said, and came around the desk to engulf Sandy in a hug. “I remember your grandfather. He was so handsome and so brave. He chose to take the bomb in. He chose to,” she said, ending in a gentle whisper of awe.

  And so the Longknife legend had begun on a lie, that Ray Longknife had assassinated President Urm of Unity and ended the war between the Rims hundred and fifty worlds and Earth’s fifty allied planets. The Longknifes and the Santiagos knew the truth, even if everyone else ignored it, and the Longknifes and Santiagos had begun a relationship in which the Longknifes took and the Santiagos gave, often to that last measure.

  Sandy shook her head. Ray Longknife had sent her here. Kris Longknife was dropping this uniquely crafted amalgamation of challenges and problems in her lap, and now she had Rita Nuu Longknife, no matter what she called herself, standing in her office.

  This couldn’t be good.

  Sandy wiped her eyes, took a step back and eyed Rita. “What ill wind brings you to my office?” she said cautiously.

  The old woman took two steps back herself and resumed a more reserved stance. “I’m just trying to figure out what Ray might have told you about this place and what kind of portfolio you think he’s handed off to you.”

  Sandy motioned Rita and the other two to chairs on the other side of her desk. She settled into her chair and ran through her orders in her mind.

  “Clearly, I command all allied forces in the Alwa Defense Sector.”

  “Not the Alwa System?” Rita asked.

  “Sector. Why?”

  “Well,” the elder stateswoman said, suddenly uncomfortable in her chair. “The system is pretty obvious. Sector might just be taken to include all the systems we’re got automated outposts in to give us warning of any incoming trouble. Then again, it might include the Sasquan System. You know, the star system Kris Longknife stumbled across with cats that have their pretty little claws on nuclear triggers.”

  “Yeah, I heard about them,” Sandy said, frowning. Had a Santiago once again been set up by a Longknife, even if he was now a royal Longknife?

  Or was this woman, officially no-longer-a-Longknife, doing her best to job her?

  “What about the felines?” Sandy asked cautiously. Then added, “Do we actually call them felines?”

  “They prefer to go by Sasquans, but their translators don’t get upset with felines or even cats. Don’t call them kittens to their face though,” Ben put in.

  “A diplomatic challenge, huh?” Sandy said.

  “A challenge in several levels,” Rita said. “We think we killed most of the aliens that know they’re there, but you can never tell with those bastards for sure. The cats are now hell bent on getting into space. Do we help them? Does our help to them depend on them putting the thermonuclear genie back in the bottle, or do we ask them t
o stew up a batch of those atomic bombs for us?”

  “You aren’t thinking of using forbidden atomics?” Sandy said. There was little a Longknife could say that would shock a Santiago. Rita just had crossed that, among several other, thresholds.

  “The bug-eyed monsters have nukes,” the elder woman said with finality. “They’ve thrown plenty of them at our ships and taken out a couple. They’ve also sent suicide nukes at Alwa. So far, we’ve only lost a few ships, but I’m thinking that if they’re tossing them at us, it’s only fair for us to have a few to toss back their way. It’s been a nice three, four hundred years without them lurking in our closet, but sometimes you need to let some of your skeletons out to dance on someone’s grave.”

  The room fell silent as they contemplated that goulosh of mixed metaphors.

  It was a long time before Ben started the conversation up again.

  “Kris Longknife, and about all of us who have seen that crazy alien woman, heard her ravings and seen the horrors under their pyramid, have sworn that no new planets will be added to that house of horror. We feel honor bound to protect the cats.”

  He paused for a moment. “I also think the cats might be a good addition to our defense. As a race, they’re pretty advanced. I could use a couple thousand of them working in my yards and manning the extra ships I build, along with regular Navy, Pipra’s workers, Granny Rita’s Colonials, and the birds of many feathers. I appreciate all the ships and gear that King Ray’s alliance is sending out here, but we’re the ones that will live or die at the bleeding point of this spear. With the cats, I think we have a better chance of living, and I know the cats have a better chance with a fleet of our ships in their sky.”

  That, in so many ways, let the cat out of the bag.

  Sandy leaned back in her chair, eyed the overhead and tried to catch up with all the wild twists and turns of this conversation. She’d brought the Victory into the yard for some of that crystal armor and some serious maintenance. She’d figured she would have a little time to read a stack of reports and get up to speed on her new assignment.