Kris Longknife 13 - Unrelenting Read online

  Kris had ordered it, and it was made so.

  Through all this, Kris slept soundly in her husband’s arms.

  The flag comm unit dispatched a message to Alwa not to panic, it was their defenders returning home. Kris expanded the routine message to include a list of lost and damaged ships with orders for the yards to make ready to receive the bent and busted and make them whole. Kris also appended a commentary on the performance of the crystal armor in the fight along with a request for yard personnel to put their heads together and figure out a way to improve it.

  Kris did this hard day’s work as she slept. In the morning, she went down what she’d accomplished while she dreamed and wondered why she wasn’t more exhausted.

  Then again, she did feel tired.

  She’d have to mention that to Doc Meade at 1000 hours.

  She didn’t get a chance to mention any of her concerns, at least, not at first. Doc Meade was hopping mad.

  “There are now twenty-two of you ladies-in-waiting,” the good doctor snapped at Kris as she came into her office.

  “Twenty-two!”

  “Yeah, I finally got a report from the Third Fleet’s chief medical officer. They’ve had eleven report pregnant. All in Bethea’s squadrons, as you’d expect, although Yi seems to think it shows the Earth’s superior virtue. Anyway, that man has ordered the Medical Officer to prepare orders for the women to be dismissed from the Navy way the hell out here or have an abortion, with a strong emphasis on the abortion option.”

  Now Kris saw why the normally placid doctor was about to explode.

  “I was planning on having a ‘Come to Jesus’ meeting with our Admiral Yi. I now see that it’s likely to take a meeting with Jesus, Mary, Moses, Mohammed, and Buddha.”

  “For Yi, you might want to add Confucius,” the doctor added. “And maybe the devil himself.”

  “I think I’d rather throw in the devil’s wife,” Kris said. For a moment the two of them just looked at each other. Then the doc started laughing, and Kris joined in.

  “Well,” Doc Meade finally said, “I can see that pregnancy has not affected your sense of humor. Any other complaints?”

  “I don’t seem to have my usual oversupply of energy,” Kris said.

  “Sorry, the little one there and your support equipment are drawing heavily on your energy supply. You’ll just have to make adjustments, Admiral. Like take a nap after you hand that bastard Yi his cohones.”

  “I’ll make sure to save enough to rip him a new one,” Kris assured the fleet doctor. “Now, that done, can you tell me how the search for the saboteur is going?”

  “I’m pretty sure it’s no one with this fleet. Likely it’s someone safe back on Cannopus Station. Can you remember anything about the woman who inserted your implants?”

  “I admit I took the process for pretty routine and was otherwise occupied with plans for this little sally.” Kris stared at the overhead and tried to see herself a month or so ago.

  “I see the nurse vaguely. Hold it, did you say woman?”

  “Yes, I always have a woman insert the birth-control implants. Call me old-fashioned and maybe a bit sexist, but I don’t see that as a man’s job.”

  Kris eyed the doctor. “A man did mine,” she said evenly.

  “Impossible.”

  “And it’s impossible that I’m pregnant,” Kris said, dryly.

  “I’m getting tired of impossible things,” the doc said, scowling.

  “That’s the way I remember it. I don’t remember the guy’s face, but he was most definitely a guy.”

  “A guy,” the admiral said softly. “That may narrow down our search parameters. Access to the expended implants before they’re destroyed. Access to the new implants somewhere in the supply chain, and”—she eyed Kris—“the ability to get aboard the flagship, access the medical section, and insert himself into your medical procedure.”

  “Going face-to-face with me sounds like a stupid stunt,” Kris said.

  “Stupid stunt, yes,” the doc said, “but maybe a very necessary bit of defiance. We’ll have to let him tell us when we catch him, now, won’t we?”

  “To my face,” Kris growled.

  Matters progressed in their usual fashion as the fleet slowed. The next day, they jumped into Alwa system. A message was waiting from Admiral Kitano, whom Kris had left in charge. There had been no surprises from the alien, but there was activity along their most distant warning pickets. The new Wasp, third of that name of late, was about to commission. Did the admiral expect to transfer her flag to it?

  Oh, and there were a number of pregnant woman in the Second Fleet. Admiral Kitano would like to discuss that matter with Kris.

  Kris sent back the count that First and Third Fleets were up to and asked Kitano what her count was. It totaled out at seventy-two, one Admiral, Her Royal Highness, Kris Longknife, included.

  “I think I’ll keep Wasp as my flag and let you have Princess Royal back,” Kris sent. “See if you can arrange for some kind of Forward Lounge on the new Wasp, will you?”

  13

  Kris and Jack marched for the pier where the new Wasp lay. Admiral Kitano joined them as they went by the New Eden squadron. She’d had her flag on the Banshee.

  “Congratulations on another victory,” Kitano said.

  “It’s either victory or death,” Kris said.

  “Yes. What a bunch of hardcases. Were they actually blowing themselves up even before you took them under fire?”

  “Afraid so. I’d blown away their mother ship. I guess they didn’t want to live without their Enlightened One. Crazy,” Kris said, shaking her head.

  “Can I talk to you about our epidemic of pregnancies?” Kitano said. “I can’t tell you how embarrassed I am to have it on my watch.”

  “Didn’t you get the word?” Kris said, as they crossed the brow to the Wasp. They paused in their conversation as they rendered honors to the flag and the OOD, then continued forward. “We had more pregnancies in First and Third Fleets.”

  “You did!”

  “Yes, it seems someone sabotaged the recent implants that were installed.”

  “Sabotaged! Who the hell would do that?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe Granny Rita really wants more great-grandkids,” Kris offered.

  “You’re not pregnant!”

  “Yep,” Kris said, not even turning to make a memory of Kitano’s expression. “I’m one of the lucky seventy-two.”

  “Damn!”

  “Any chance you’re one of us lucky sisters?” Kris asked, now looking at Kitano.

  “No way, José,” the admiral said. “In case you hadn’t noticed, I’m sleeping with the chief engineer on the Princess Royal.”

  Kris called up a picture in her mind. “Lovely woman.”

  “Yep, so there’s very little chance that either one of us will be reporting to sick call pregnant.”

  “Gosh, and I thought the same.”

  “Occupational hazard when you keep one of those guys around.”

  “One of many,” Kris agreed.

  They’d arrived at the nonairtight doors to the Forward Lounge. Jack did the gentlemanly thing and opened them for the two women who outranked him.

  Kris paused, both to take in the new, yet familiar sight, and to listen. Yi had the floor. Or more correctly, Admiral Yi of her Third Fleet and until recently of Earth, was shooting his mouth off.

  A glance told Kris that her instructions had been followed. The new Forward Lounge was small, just big enough at this moment for a large flag meeting. Three groups of tables formed a U shape. Seated across from each other were First and Third Fleets’ vice admirals, task force rear admirals, and squadron commodores. Each admiral was allowed some key staff. Kris noted that Admiral Yi had expanded his table to include quite a few staffers.

  Second Fleet under Vice Admiral Miyoshi was between them. That was not an accident; Kris had ordered it that way.

  She expected trouble before this meeting ended.

>   What she was hearing told her the trouble had started before the meeting even got under way.

  “This fraternization rule of yours is really something,” Yi was saying. “I got three guys and one gal shacked up together. I got one collection of six rooms joined together. At least that’s three guys and gals each, though what they’re doing, I have no idea. Guys and guys. Gals and gals. Bethea, I don’t know how you handle all these,” he said, turning to his own subordinate.

  Rear Admiral Betsy Bethea of Savannah had been placed under his command. Kris had hoped he might learn from her experience out at the far end of the galaxy. From the results of the recent battle, he clearly had not. From his yammering, he hadn’t learned much of anything for a very long time.

  “I wouldn’t know, Admiral Yi. I don’t concern myself with my crews’ voluntary living arrangement,” Betsy Bethea answered coolly.

  “Oh, the tigress has claws,” he said, giving her a sideways compliment since her squadron was known as the big cats from the names they sported. “If you’d paid better attention, maybe your ladies wouldn’t be all knocked up. None of my Earth girls are.”

  “I had heard the pregnancies were a result of sabotage,” Betsy Bethea snapped back.

  “Sabotage my eye. They just want out of this man’s Navy, I tell you. What you want to bet me that not one of them gets an abortion, so they can stay with the fleet.”

  Behind Kris, Jack cleared his throat. Admiral Miyoshi turned and shouted, “Atten’hut,” as he jumped to his feet. The room was only slightly behind him at coming to attention.

  Kris left the room standing as she marched to the front where her table had been reserved by Penny and Masao. Though she knew her face was in a deep glower, she let her gaze wander around her commanders. Most met her eyes evenly.

  Admiral Yi seemed intent on studying the table in front of him.

  “As you were,” Kris said. Her commanders sat. She stayed standing.

  “For the record,” Kris began, voice hard as flint, “each of the Sailors still had her birth-control implants in place when they reported to sick call and yielded up a positive pregnancy test. I know this because I have been in touch with the senior surgeon of the fleet.” Kris paused before adding, “And because I am one of those pregnant.”

  “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph!” was just one of the louder expletives that greeted that announcement.

  “Somehow expended implants were substituted for new ones and reinserted into women. Senior Surgeon Meade is investigating the handling of both used contraceptive implants and the new ones to find out how they could have been mixed up. Under normal handling, there is no way that could have happened. Any questions?”

  “So what are we going to do with all these pregnant women, Admiral?” Yi put in without being recognized. “My wife is a real bitch when she’s knocked up, and her hormones start yo-yoing all over the place.”

  “I suspect I could be a real bitch in your presence under most any circumstance,” Betsy Bethea said, under her breath. Well, not so much under her breath. It carried around the entire room and drew smiles from First and Second Fleet, as well as her own commanders in the half of Yi’s fleet that she led.

  Yi shot her daggers.

  Bethea buffed her nails and seemed to miss his look.

  “As you were,” Kris said, and the room sobered. “The pregnant women will decide how they will go forward,” Kris said curtly. “There. Will. Be. No. Command. Involvement. In. That. Decision. Do I make myself clear?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” came back at her from all. Except Yi.

  “Admiral Yi, do you have something to say?”

  “No, ma’am. I understand, ma’am. But may I ask how we are going to handle this? Space is dangerous. Radiation. All kinds of stray particles. I understand most Navies send their women dirtside for their own protection.”

  “My Granny Rita was commanding a cruiser when her first child was still being weaned. I understand she was pregnant with her second while commanding a ship in space and didn’t give up the conn until quite late. Our senior fleet surgeon is looking into making adjustments to some ships to handle these problems.”

  “Any adjustments are going to cost weight,” Yi countered. “You’re the one saying all the time that we have to be ready to bounce our ships all over the place. You add weight, and you aren’t nearly as nimble,” could be taken several ways.

  “I expect to concentrate the pregnancies in two or three ships, Admiral. None in your fleet, I might add. My flagship, Wasp, will be one of them. Now, are there any further questions on this matter? If not, we have a major battle to review and lessons to learn.”

  Even Yi seemed out of barbs.

  “Asshole,” Jack was heard to mutter, as Kris sat down.

  She placed a restraining hand on his arm. Then agreed softly. “Yes, I believe he is.”

  14

  Matters did not get any better as the meeting turned to the battle.

  Admiral Yi stood and gave his battle report . . . of how he saw it.

  Kris let him finish, then asked, “Did you bring any recordings from your battle boards?”

  “No, the original data was lost due to a failure on the part of a technician while archiving the databoards, ma’am.”

  Kris would have preferred to be addressed as admiral, but she’d let that slide. For now. For a moment, she considered calling on Admiral Bethea to provide any readouts from her battle board, but that would only further poison the atmosphere between them.

  “Nelly, please play back the Third Fleet’s battle with the main enemy force as you recorded it.”

  “Yes, Admiral,” Nelly said, and the take from the jump probe filled the screens behind Kris’s table.

  “Where did you get that?” Yi exploded before she was well started. “It’s all a lie. You can’t know what was happening in the system before you jumped in.”

  “Before we deployed, I told you that I had a probe that could look at the other side of the jump. I told you that I would use that feedback to decide when to intervene in your battle. Don’t you remember my telling you that?”

  “You said something like that, but I just figured you were blowing smoke up my ass. No one can see what’s on the other side of a jump.”

  “No one from Earth,” Bethea whispered to the commodore from Savannah who had taken over her squadron upon her promotion.

  “You really didn’t think I could see that you were ignoring my battle plan, did you?” Kris said evenly.

  Yi turned beet red but risked no answer.

  “Admiral Bethea, do you have better data on the initial contact with the alien?” Kris asked.

  Yi’s subordinate task force commander glanced at her boss. He did not meet her eyes. “Yes, Admiral Longknife. I do have a full readout from my battle board. Shall I put it on screen?”

  “Please.”

  The admiral turned to one of her subordinates, who placed a fist-size unit on the table in front of him. Behind Kris, the screens lit up with a display of what the target system had looked like when Third Fleet arrived.

  The screen advanced quickly. The frigates accelerated away from the jump at the one gee Kris had ordered. Around the mother ship, a dish of thirty warships formed up quickly and charged for the humans at two gees while others formed into four dishes and began a more sedate one-gee acceleration on an attack vector.

  The replay moved the ships rapidly across the system as the two forces rushed to contact.

  Suddenly, the sixteen Earth-built frigates slammed into a three-gee charge, Yi’s flagship, the George Washington, slightly ahead of the rest, leaving the task force from Savannah and the Scanda Confederacy behind them.

  “Pause,” Kris snapped, and the screen froze. “Admiral Bethea, why did you fail to accelerate to match the other half of Third Fleet?” Kris asked.

  “I received no orders to do so, Admiral Longknife,” was terse to the point of sharp.

  “Interesting,” Kris said. “Admiral Yi, would you ca
re to share with those present the basis for your deciding to split your command?”

  Around the room, there were soft snickers. Yi had spoken long and often on his opinion about Kris dividing First and Third Fleets for this operation.

  “I saw an opportunity to inflict a decisive defeat on a portion of the alien fleet. Once I demonstrated a clear superiority, I expected the fight would go out of them.” The words sounded worn and overpracticed.

  Apparently, Admiral Yi had gotten nothing from the reports Kris sent him. Reports that showed the aliens never let the fight go out of them. Kris considered pointing that out but settled for, “Continue the playback.”

  The two forces, thirty aliens and sixteen humans, came together at a blinding-fast rate. Yi’s task force opened fire at two hundred thousand klicks. The aliens had to take it; fifteen exploded under the blaze of the humans’ forward and aft batteries as Yi’s ships quickly flipped and emptied all their guns at the onrushing warships. Then they flipped again, providing their heavily armored bows to the fire of the surviving aliens.

  Those fifteen ships hurtled into range of their own lasers while the Earth ships were recharging their lasers. Now the alien slashed out at their tormentors. Each reached out with more lasers than Kris had ever been able to count.

  As one, the Earth-built squadrons began to glow as their new armor took in the lasers’ beams, slowed them down, then redistributed them along the hull to radiate back into space.

  “Pause,” Kris ordered. “Admiral Bethea, did you get readouts of the damage to the Earth task force?”

  “No, Admiral Longknife, my battle boards showed me only the damage to my own task force. However, the display combines not only radar reports but also infrared measurements. The other task force was glowing red-hot from the enemy fire.”

  “Thank you, Admiral. Continue the display at real time.”

  The action continued apace, then the fire from the alien ships changed. Someone got smart. The fifteen ships concentrated their fire on only three of the humans.