Kris Longknife: Tenacious (Kris Longknife novellas Book 12) (27 page)

When the enemy saw that the day was lost, all the ships that had fallen by the wayside began exploding, as containment fields were dropped and plasma was intentionally let loose to finish what the fight had begun.

“Not one surrender,” Kris groaned.

“They never do,” Jack agreed.

The
battle was won, but the squadron was still in dire straits.

“Kris, did you know that many of the French and Spanish ships the British captured at the great Battle of Trafalgar were lost when a storm came up and blew them all onto the rocky shore?”

“Yes, Nelly, I seem to remember reading that somewhere.”

“We’re in danger of smashing ourselves onto the planet below.”

“Yes, I noticed, Nelly. Now shut up.”

Kris motored her high-gee station onto Captain Drago’s bridge. “Can the
Wasp
make orbit?”

“Yes. We’ve got one reactor off-line, but we can make it. I can’t say the same thing for the
Hornet
,
Constellation
, and
Bulwark
. They’re both down to a single reactor, and none of them are in good shape.”

“Could we loan them a pinnace?”

“If I do, I’m none too sure the
Wasp
will make orbit.”

“Penny,” Kris said, turning to her only staff officer, who had spent the battle on the
Wasp
’s defensive station shuttling Smart Metal
TM
around to cover for hits on the armor.

“Yes.”

“Can you merge the
Hornet
onto the
Wasp
? Say something like a pinnace.”

Penny was already shaking her head before Kris finished. “No, Kris. The pinnace is a subsystem of the ship. The programming to generate it is there. Remember, the hull is a special program with all sorts of security overrides. You can’t just slide it all away from, say, one beam to let another hull merge with it.”

Kris said a most unprincesslike word. But then she was an admiral today, and she’d been told that Sailors cussed.

“We’ve got ships that aren’t going to make orbit if we don’t do something. Get me a fix, not back talk.”

“Maybe we could adjust the two ship’s hulls so they could come alongside and kind of dock together.”

“Make it happen, Penny. Find a good chief and do what you have to do. Otherwise, some of our ships are going to burn up on reentry. That’s bad for our people but worse for the people on the planet we’re supposed to be saving.”

“I’m on it,” Penny said with a huge sigh her late husband’s Irish grandma would have been proud of.

Whether it was Penny, or, more likely, a lot of good chiefs on the
Wasp
and
Hornet
, the two ships did end up docking hard but docking enough that between the
Wasp
’s two good reactors, and the one they could keep running on the
Hornet
, they made orbit.

Once Penny and the chiefs had shown it could be done, the
Constellation
and the
Royal
got cozy, and the
Bulwark
sidled up and not quite rammed her bow into the
Congress
.

Captain O’dell asked permission to try the same with the
Intrepid
. One of the
Endeavor
’s reactors was out, and the other two were none too reliable.

Eight ships had gone out to face the aliens. Four of sorts succeeded in reaching orbit again.

On the ground, you could easily see fireworks and great rejoicing. In Kris’s day quarters, there was little to celebrate.

She had the butcher’s bill to read.

The frigates were crewed by four hundred men and women; two hundred and fifty boffins and fifty Marines topped them out at seven hundred. The
Wasp
tipped in at some nine hundred, what with extra Marines and scientists.

Her squadron had avoided the catastrophic failure of a reactor that consigned all aboard to a fiery grave. Still, the enemy lasers had cut deep.

Kris read the list: 612 dead, 1,452 wounded with some still likely to die despite all that modern medicine could do. The
Hornet
,
Connie
, and
Bulwark
were hardest hit, although the
Endeavor
’s smaller crew had suffered heavier casualties in proportion.

What had shown up on Kris’s boards as bright red for damaged armor, lasers, and engineering had been real men and women dying as lasers slashed hard into their ships and defensive stations juggled armor around desperately to keep disaster at bay.

Kris leaned back in her chair, stared at the overhead, and found she could fervently pray. “Please, dear God, may I never fight another one like this.”

But there was more to do than mourn the dead. The living needed to eat, and they needed to celebrate that they’d once again faced death, looked it in the eye, and walked away from its hungry scythe.

“Kris, do you have a moment?” Captain Drago said after knocking on the doorsill.

“Talk to me,” Kris said, putting down the report of blood and loss.

“Cookie tells me that he’s got a deal on meat. Cheap. As in free. All we have to do is go down and get it.”

“Can we afford the reaction mass?”

“When our longboats go down for chow, they’ll be bringing back water as well. That’s one way to feed the reactor and feed the crew.”

“Free meat. Are you sure we can eat it?”

“The boffins are pretty sure. The meat offer came with a full scientific analysis of what goes into the local’s digestion. A certain President Almar wanted you to know that they were providing the full details on their physiology. To make sure, I’ll be sending down a doc to make the necessary tests, but I’d rather try it than not.”

“If Cookie says he can make it taste good, go for it. And the water. We aren’t bone dry on reaction mass, but we’ll need to refuel before we leave here.”

Captain Drago stepped in and closed the door. “Let me guess. You want to refuel from the gas giant on the other side of the system. The one where the aliens set up a base.”

Kris made a sour face. “I’d like to wipe this system clean, but these damage reports,” she said, waving her hands at her boards.

“Yeah. It would be nice if we had a repair ship to tie up to, but we have a lot of good ship maintainers, and we can do a lot with this Smart Metal.”

“We’ve done a lot.”

“I’ve got some folks working on figuring out if we can drain the Smart Metal from our two wrecked ships. Maybe move the reactors out of them and into a ship that still has some fight in it. I’ll have that report cycled through to you as soon as they’re done.”

“Do,” Kris said.

She ended up studying reports for the rest of the evening. Jack brought her a meal from the wardroom, and Kris ate it at her desk.

It was quite late when Jack finally hauled her off to bed.

When she ignored the wonderful things he was doing to her breasts, he rolled her over like a log and began doing even more wonderful things to her back.

“Am I distracting you, yet?” he asked.

“Well, you are definitely attracting my attention,” Kris admitted. She stretched and found it made a lot of her feel very good.

“Good, because I am not stopping, young lady.”

“Persistent, huh,” she said into her pillow as he did something wonderful to the lower part of her back. And then went lower.

“You fought your fight. You won. I’d like to celebrate that I’m alive if you don’t mind.”

“And you want to celebrate it with me?”

“Most definitely.”

She rolled over and smiled at her persistent husband. “Then I guess I’d better let you celebrate.”

So he did. Then she did. Then they both did until they fell asleep in each other’s arms.

The
ship’s moaning around them woke Kris in time for breakfast. They quickly showered. Jack kissed her very black-and-blue spots where she’d been shot, then found some cream to put on them.

It seemed he now had a supply of medical ointments and drugs for all the particulars that ailed her.

Husbands were nice.

They made it to the wardroom while the officers were still eating.

“What’s with the racket?” Jack asked, as they found a space at Captain Drago’s table.

“We’re pulling the Smart Metal out of the
Hornet
and re-
spinning it into the
Wasp
. The
Hornet
’s hull was barely holding out the vacuum by the time the shooting stopped. Their wardroom and mess, along with most everything else, got smashed up pretty bad, so you may notice some new faces at our tables.”

Captain Phil Taussig of the
Hornet
arrived as he spoke. He had a bandage over one eye and an arm in a sling, but he was balancing a plate full of eggs and bacon with great aplomb.

“Welcome aboard,” Kris said.

“I can’t tell you how glad I am to be aboard. I seem to be making a habit of this. Coming aboard your flag in a roughed-up state. I’ll try to avoid it in the future.”

“If you need a port, we’ll provide the storm,” Nelly said.

“That was a joke,” Kris said.

“Of course.”

Phil took a bite of his bacon and made a face. “I’m not complaining, but this is a bit on the strange side.”

“Locally grown,” Drago said. “Just arrived last night.”

Phil took another bite. “Not bad. Will it mess up my gut anything like the last local rations I had to share?”

“I have it on the best of confidences,” Captain Drago said, “that this chow is as good for you as any you got from your mama’s breast.”

“I was a bottle baby,” Phil said, “much to my wife’s delight in my adult fixations. So, we have ourselves some locals that are really glad for something our princess did. Isn’t that unusual.”

“No doubt, and totally,” Captain Drago agreed. “But there is no accounting for tastes, and we are enjoying their, no doubt, short-lived appreciation.”

“Don’t I ever get credit where it’s due?” Kris asked the overhead.

“No,” “Nope,” and “Not likely” seemed to be the table’s consensus. At least it was from the general and captains. There were a few lowly lieutenants at the foot of the table who kept their own counsel, and, no doubt, tried not to be shocked by the carrying-on of their seniors.

“How’s the reaction mass coming along?” Kris asked.

“Much better than I expected,” Captain Drago said. “Thank heavens for Smart Metal, again. We’ve rerigged several of our longboats into water tenders. They drop down and pick up as much freshwater as their antimatter engines can lift. By late today, we should have enough aboard to allow us to motor quite stately out to that other gas giant you were interested in. By tomorrow morning, I expect to have enough for a safety margin that will warm the cockles of even an old nanny such as myself.”

“Gas giant?” Phil said, swallowing his dried eggs and bacon.

“I want to clean out the last of this rat’s nest,” Kris said.

“They sent twenty-two of their twenty-four ships,” Drago said. “That leaves two, plus whoever they have keeping their hands warm around the four large reactors we’ve spotted over there.”

“What do we have left to fight them with?” Phil asked.

“That’s what I’m waiting to find out today,” Kris said, “and no, Phil, if we don’t have enough firepower, we go home. I’ll even allow for a fifty-percent safety margin.”

“Do we know these dudes well enough to know what fifty percent
is
for our safety margin?” he asked with a grin.

“You’ve been with me too long,” Kris said with a sigh.

“And, I’d like to point out, I’ve survived all of it. So far.” Phil looked around. “Drago, is there any wood to knock on?”

“It’s all Smart Metal,” the skipper of the
Wasp
reported.

“I have a real wooden desk,” Kris said. “You can drop by after breakfast and knock on it. You can also try your hand at figuring out what a fifty-percent safety margin is.”

“I think I will.”

So it was that Jack and Phil ended up sitting around Kris’s conference table studying the schematics of the revised and readjusted ships when Penny and Masao dropped in.

“Is that what the new ships will look like?” Penny asked.

“I have no idea what they will actually look like from the outside,” Kris said, “but this is what they will be packing and what will be pushing them through space.”

“Each ship is different,” Penny said after a quick glance at the boards.

“It all depends on what the BEMs left us after the last fight,” Jack said.

“The
Wasp-Hornet
looks to be in the best shape,” Kris said. “Between the two of them, we can patch together eight forward 20-inch lasers. We have two of the
Wasp
’s reactors and one from the
Hornet
to go with the one from the
Sisu
. We only have three aft lasers. The bad guys were aiming for the stern, and it was hard on reactors and aft batteries.”

“Any chance we can move one of those lasers aft?” Phil asked.

“Not in the time I’m willing to take,” Kris said.

“Sorry about the stern,” Penny said dryly. “I had armor shuttling back and forth from the bow to the stern depending on which way you had us going. So, what will our armor thickness be?” Penny asked, herself likely to be responsible for the defensive station in the next fight.

“Even at Condition Zed, we’ll only have eighty-five percent of the planned defensive depth.”

“How much hell will I have to protect us against?” Penny asked no one, then went on, “What about the
Royal-Connie
?”

“Aside from getting the best name in this lash-up,” Phil said, taking over the story, since he was standing in front of that pair of ships’ schematics, “it looks like there are only seven lasers surviving from their forward batteries. Aft, we have two lasers and three reactors. Pretty heavy casualties for those two. The armor belt will only have sixty percent of the norm.”

“That’s kind of thin,” Penny said.

“The
Intrepid-Bulwark
has another good name,” Jack said. “She also has seven lasers forward. Her reactors are in the same state as the
Wasp
’s, with two of her own good, one of the larger reactors from the
Bulwark
,
and the borrowed one from the
Sisu
. Aft, she has three lasers. Her armor has again been thinned down a bit. Sixty percent. Maybe fifty-five, depending on how small we make the ship in Condition Zed.”

“The
Congress-Endeavor
,” Kris said, taking back the story, “sounds somehow dirty. Or maybe Jack’s just having an evil influence on me.”

Jack allowed that he might, and Phil congratulated him on that.

Kris went sternly on. “Only two of the
Endeavor
’s six lasers survived—one fore and one aft. The casualties among the Alwans were high. Only one of her reactors is still workable. The
Congress
is in pretty good shape. Four lasers forward and two aft. Two of her reactors are also online. Almost all of the armor they have is from the
Congress
, and it’s only going to give fifty-five percent of the depth she had in the last fight.”

Penny fixed Kris with a jaundiced eye. “And you want to take this collection of patchwork wrecks into another fight?”

Kris winced. “But there are only two warships over there. For all we know, the reason they stayed behind was that they are not fit for space. We need to wipe this bunch out, once and for all.”

“But if they are combat ready and looking for a fight to defend what’s left of their wives and kids . . .?” Penny said.

“Then we approach them carefully. Come to a halt well out of range and use the advantage our 20-inch lasers give us.”

“Does that sound like a plan to any of the rest of you?” Penny demanded.

“Pretty much,” Phil said.

“Have any of you considered that the more time we spend with this crazy woman, the more likely we are to trot along eagerly with her next insane idea?”

“Yep,” “Pretty much,” and “That’s what I see happening.” That last came from Masao and was accompanied by a broad smile.

“You men!” Penny said, but her show of exasperation was mellowed by a growing grin as well. “Okay, count me in, too.”

Through the day, the schematics of the four compound frigates began to grow on Kris’s boards as chiefs and Sailors went about rationalizing and resolving some of the more difficult problems of pulling gear from one ship and mounting it on another. Storerooms, quarters, water mains, and air ducts had to be moved around as reactors were slipped from one hull to the next. Slowly, a single hull began to take shape that men and women could live in, fight in, and, if necessary, die in.

Kris had made the decision to merge her squadron’s eight ships into four. With that decision made, she found herself mainly an observer as chiefs and Sailors did the work under the supervision of the division heads. Occasionally, a decision got passed higher up.

Phil left most of the calls to his Executive Officer, but occasionally the XO would call him. He’d listen, then politely excuse himself from Kris’s day quarters to consult with Captain Drago on his bridge. They’d talk, resolve the problem, and pass it down.

Kris never had a question passed up to her level. She wasn’t sure just how she felt about her new, rarefied rank that left her twiddling her thumbs as all those around her stayed busy.

When she tried to involve herself in Amanda and Jacques’s work, she found them pretty much ignoring the aliens on board so they could study the society sprawled across the planet below them.

“It really is amazing,” Amanda said. “They have little or no computers, but their economy is complex and global. I know that, historically, we humans did something like this back on Old Earth, but I’ve never had a chance to closely observe a mash-up like this. It’s like I’m in a time machine.”

Kris went back to her quarters and watched as more spaces vanished or were moved around in her ships.

As supper approached, Phil ducked out to talk to Captain Drago for a moment, then both of them presented themselves.

“Admiral, you are invited to a dinner in your honor in the Forward Lounge,” Captain Drago said.

“Dinner in the Forward Lounge?” Kris said.

“The uniform is dress blues with all your medals and decorations,” Phil added.

Kris gave them both the evil eye. “What’s going on here?”

“We will see you in an hour,” Drago said.

“Don’t disappoint us,” Phil added, as the two left.

Kris found her day cabins suddenly emptying as Penny and Masao also vanished away.

“Jack, Nelly, what’s going on?” Kris demanded of the only two who were still with her.

“Nothing mutinous, my love,” Jack said, grinning his most lopsided grin ever.

“So you’re in on it.
Et tu
, Nelly?”

“Your Latin pronunciation is atrocious, Kris, but yes, I do know, and no, I won’t tell you.”

“Honey, you just have time to shower and get dressed,” Jack said, bowing and ushering Kris toward their night quarters. “Shall we?” was not a question.

“So, just time to shower and get dressed. Not a second for something else?” Kris said with a sly grin.

“Be a good girl, and we shall see.”

“But you always say I’m best when I’m naughty,” Kris said.

Jack sighed. “Naughty and nice, in one long, tall package.”

So she was.