Kris Longknife: Defender (31 page)

Without
the sortie, Kris was stuck with administrative work the next day. The prospects seemed less onerous after waking up beside Jack and showering and dressing together before dropping down to the wardroom for breakfast.

Granny Rita didn’t let Kris finish her bran muffin and juice . . . of an unidentified variety . . . before she had Nelly get her a list of what each ship had and started arguing over what priority to land them.

She didn’t like it when she heard that the
Altair
would unload first. She was still grumbling as Kris explained why. Longknifes, even former Longknifes, could be a real pain.

Kris oversaw getting the flow of material dirtside started, then touched base with Admiral Benson, ret. He was already pulling his hair out. “Have you any idea how much energy it takes to get Smart Metal flowing?” Kris admitted she didn’t. He told her.

“Have you asked the folks on the Musashi half of the station if you can have one of their huge reactors?” Kris asked.

“Will you ask them? I don’t want to seem too needy and, you know.”

Kris knew very well how it was with businessmen. She put on her CEO of local Nuu Enterprises hat and had tea with a kind old gentleman, Hiroshi, the manager of the Mitsubishi yard. It turned out that he expected to surrender three of his many reactors. He was just waiting for someone to tell him where to send them.

Kris connected him with Superintendent Benson, and they were soon best of friends, since Benson only coveted one of those reactors.

Kris’s next stop was Pipra. She now had a very spartan office next to the Thai restaurant. Wasn’t Smart Metal
TM
nice. “That was one hard-assed twist you took to drafting those ships and their crew,” was her greeting for Kris.

“I need them. At least one of those ships is going to be a frigate and go scout the alien home world.”

“Still, you might have offered them a bonus for staying on.”

Kris paused to consider that. “Good point. I keep forgetting that money is a motivator for your sector of the economy.”

“Don’t make it sound dirty; it’s getting you lasers.”

“How’s that coming?”

“We’ve started shipping the parts for a couple of them up to the station.”

“You’ll get most of the ships when they’re unloaded.”

“It will help. How long do you think we have?”

“I don’t know,” Kris said. Then Nelly cut in.

“Kris, they want you back at the command center.”

“Why?”

“Another jump buoy just got popped.”

“I’ll be right there. Get the commodores headed that way as well.”

“Ask a stupid question,” Pipra said, “get the answer you don’t want to hear.”

“Please keep this under your hat,” Kris said. “At least until I get back to you with something more definite than we lost a buoy. I don’t even know which one.”

“I’ll keep quiet until lunch. Having the latest news gives me points. You must know that.”

What Kris knew was that Father did his best to keep news away from the news.

She headed for the
Wasp
and found herself walking briskly beside Commodore Miyoshi. “Is this it?” he asked.

“We’ve got six layers of buoys. This could be a fifth one out or another of the farthest ones.”

“Or they could have done a big jump like we did.”

“It’s hard to get a base ship moving very fast. Would you want to risk twenty, thirty billion people on a bad jump?”

“I know what I’d do,” Commodore Miyoshi said. “I don’t know what they’d do. What’s a bad jump for folks that are born and live their whole lives in space?”

“Good point, but they’re after us. Jumping all to hell and gone won’t do us any damage. Let’s quit guessing and see what’s happening.”

They crossed the brow to the
Wasp
just as the other commodores arrived. It was a silent group that entered Kris’s day quarters. Jack was there, as was Penny. Captain Drago entered from the bridge as they came in from the passageway.

Kris’s screens lit up. “We’ve lost another buoy,” said Drago. “It’s one of the outer ones.”

“That’s good,” Commodore Miyoshi said.

“Maybe not so good,” Kris said. “Nelly, am I right? Does that system lead to the Beta Jump Point?”

“Yes, Kris.”

“Nelly, get me Pipra.”

“On the line, Kris.”

“Pipra, I’m glad you’re not out gossiping about what you heard. Tell me, how are things coming at digging in a Hellburner base on the gas giant’s moons near Beta Jump Point?”

“I thought the aliens were coming in the Alpha Jump again.”

“Looks like they are keeping their options open. We need to get a base near Beta.”

“We haven’t started.”

“We need to start right now.”

“That’s going to slow down the mining and transportation for more lasers.”

“Can’t be helped. Lasers aren’t going to dent a mother ship. Get the drilling operation moving to Beta. Change the unloading priorities. Push the
Altair
, but concentrate on one of the others as much as you can. Ignore the other two. Once you get the second unloaded, respin it into two transports and get them out to the mines for ore. Then we can do the third and fourth.”

“Granny Rita is not going to be happy. She wanted specific stuff out of all four of them in her own order.”

“Leave Granny to me. Whether or not we survive the next attack depends on this.”

“Understood, Longknife. There goes my lunch. Now you’ve fixed it so I won’t have a chance to gossip about all my inside tidbits.”

“You can tell everyone whose day you have to ruin by changing their priorities all about how you learned it from rubbing elbows with that damn Longknife.”

“You took the words right out of my mouth. Pipra out.”

“That young woman is downright insubordinate,” Hawkings said.

“She’s a civilian. They don’t have to be subordinate. And whether or not we win the next battle depends as much on what those civilians do as what we war fighters do. Get used to it.” Kris paused a moment to let that sink in, then went on.

“Captain Drago, run though the situation with these warning buoys for the new members of our command staff.”

“Nelly, could you please call up the system where we just lost our buoy?” the captain said.

Nelly did. It showed a worthless system with three jumps. Two led into it. One led inward toward Alwa. “The buoy we lost was this one.” One of the outer jumps lit up. “Immediately upon its falling silent, the buoy at the inbound jump slipped out of the system and started the report coming in.”

“Could it tell how strong the force entering the system was,” Commodore Miyoshi asked, “or how many reactors jumped in?”

“Our jump buoys have been modified,” Penny put in. “Yes, they identify reactors, so even if they aren’t shot up, we know they’ve been visited.”

“The bastards, however,” Kris said, “always shoot. Shoot and never talk.”

“Would it help if you knew how many reactors had jumped in the system?” Nelly asked.

“Definitely,” Kris said, as the commodores nodded.

“I can do a software mod and add that capability to the buoys. It might take a few days for the upload to reach the outer buoys.”

“Is there a downside to the change?”

“None that I can project, Kris.”

“Then get started immediately. Nelly, change the screen to show all the systems we’ve put buoys in.” Nelly did. “We lost sensors in these two systems. So now we have two buoys waiting at the next jump. We only need one. Nelly, after you get the updated software to these two outer buoys, order one of them to duck back into the silenced system, do a reactor count for thirty minutes, then come back.”

“Good,” Jack said. “We’ll know if those systems are now bases or were just hit-and-run raids.”

“Do you think they’re playing with us?” Commodore Hawkings asked.

“I would be very surprised if the bastards even allowed their children to play,” Kris said. “No, I think they are feeling around our perimeter. They lost a mother ship and a whole lot of her little monsters. Now they’ve lost a few more. We would recon a target more thoroughly that gave us a bloody nose. Especially if this is the first bloody nose we’d had in a long time. They are feeling us out.”

“Do they have to come through all six layers of our buoys?” Commodore Miyoshi asked.

“No,” Nelly said. “There are several of the systems four out that they could jump into directly. That is why I recommended as thick a warning perimeter as we could make.”

The commodores seemed startled that Kris’s computer would answer them direct. All but Miyoshi, who only smiled at the others’ surprise.

“Exactly,” Kris agreed. “Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for coming. Now, I suggest we all get back to work. The bastards are out there. I’m not surprised they are threatening us. They won’t be here today. Let’s get ready for them when they do come.”

The commodores left with hurried steps.

Throughout the station, people walked faster, looked more intent. The enemy wasn’t something just seen in media reports. It was blasting human gear out of space scant jumps from them. Things needed doing that might just save lives, your own life. Time was blood.

The
Altair
finished unloading and was moved into the yard for reconstruction.

Granny Rita complained she had containers dirtside that needed to be on the moon. There were plenty of lighters going down, so that meant plenty to get stuff back up. Still, cargo masters were warned to be more careful.

The team of diggers who had just finished arming three moons around one gas giant took off at two gees for the other one a third of the way across the system. No one complained about the weight.

Even before the
Algol
was unloaded, it gave up a reactor to the
Endeavor
. That scout would still be underpowered compared to the
Wasp
, but that was the best Kris could do for Penny. Once unloaded, the
Algol
would take on two huge reactors from the former
Kagu Maru
and ship them to the factories on the moon. That would free up several ship-size reactors to power potential armed merchant cruisers.

The engines from the old
Hornet
could not be recertified for space. They also headed for the moon to release more power plants for ships.

A suggestion came from one of the loadmasters that the three cargo ships just park their containers in orbit a few klicks from the station. Then they could start splitting the cargo ships into smaller ore carriers and get them headed for the asteroid belt.

Kris slapped her forehead and agreed to the change. That likely meant more containers routed wrong, but there was nothing critical for the moon in the shipment, and the asteroid ore was desperately needed for the laser-building program. The change was made smoothly.

The ordered chaos lasted all day as decisions were made and their application identified problems. Those were examined by not only the command staff but the people doing the work and better ideas often came up. Kris was amazed at how fast the decision cycle could whirl through that process, but her people were good.

They knew their lives were on the line.

Jack took Kris to dinner. This time it was Kiet’s Thai Food, and the stir-fry was distinctively local. Even the spices had been replaced with things available dirtside. “Some of my customers are telling me I should change the sign to
KIET’S ALWAN FOOD
, but a couple of Alwans have dropped by,” Kiet himself explained to Kris as he seated them. “Both the Roosters and the Ostriches turned up their noses at my best.”

“No accounting for taste,” Jack said, and ordered from the menu for Kris. “One of my officers suggested this. I think I can trust her taste.”

As it turned out, they very much could. The food served them had the echo of ancient Earth behind it, but it clearly was something new. It delighted Kris’s taste buds.

“This is the first time humanity and another species have come together without trying to kill each other,” Kris muttered when the meal was done. “We’ve got to save these people.”

“That’s what you’re doing your level best to do,” Jack said.

The meal was wonderful, romantic, and relaxing, even if they were interrupted twice. Jack took Kris back to their quarters and insisted on taking his time to fill the evening with slow lovemaking. Kris smiled and relaxed into his arms, knowing full well they’d be interrupted before Jack got too far along.

Surprise! Kris’s expected calls never came. Next morning, Jack admitted to having bribed Nelly to hold all calls. How he bribed a computer he didn’t say, but Kris’s call-back list didn’t turn up anything during breakfast that hadn’t been solved without her.

“Who says you Longknifes are indispensable?” Jack said with a knowing grin.

The fleet sortied at exactly 0900. Division 10 with the
Wasp
and
Intrepid
dropped back to a trailing orbit while Div 9’s four frigates pulled away to form up forward of the station. That smartly done, the four battle squadrons began to spin off the station smoothly. Each BatRon was to form on the station at ninety-degree intervals—north, east, south, and west of the station’s long axes. Each rotation, a ship would spin off at each major point of the compass and head out to join its squadron flag. Eight rotations, and the eight ships of each squadron were in line.

Kris looked upon what she had ordered and found it good. “Deorbiting Burn 3 on my mark,” she sent. It had been years since battle fleets had formed up. And those fleets had been ponderous, ice-encrusted monsters that lumbered along in formation, hardly budging in their course, confident in their powerful lasers and thick ice armor.

Kris had never gone to war in such a line, and she had no intention of doing so now. She was a product of the fast attack boats: nimble, quick, thin-skinned but heavily armed, and deadly. That was how she intended to fight this new enemy. In a battle formation, but with each ship free to do its own dance with death, dodging and thrusting while laying on heavy laser fire at the longest range possible.

It had worked for her before. She intended to make it work now.