Tenacious

63

Several hours later, Jack had rejoined Kris on the new flag bridge aboard the Princess Royal. He’d brought their private gear. Amanda and Jacques, Penny and Masao sat around the conference table with Professor Labao and Admiral Kitano.

Reinforcements were arriving.

The first ship through was the George Washington, with Rear Admiral Yi of Earth. It was a 22-inch frigate and led the Abraham Lincoln, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and the John F. Kennedy.

“Our problems have even Old Earth rearming?” Jack observed.

“With frigates, Jack,” Kris pointed out. “They’re cheaper, and their smaller crews cost less come payday.”

“It’s still nice,” Penny said.

“I’ll take any help we can get,” Admiral Kitano muttered.

“Next up we have the Lenin, Khrushchev, Bismarck, and Frederick the Great,” Kitano reported.

“Do they have the Lenin and the George Washington in the same squadron?” Amanda said. “I thought those groups didn’t like each other.”

“The bigger reach,” Nelly said, “is the Kennedy with the Khrushchev. The two men almost blew up Old Earth during the first atomic crisis. I am told this class is made up of great war leaders or peacemakers.”

“Well, they didn’t blow up Earth, and we got to be here,” Kris said. “I’ll put those two down as peacemakers.”

“Kris, Chief Beni is having a problem with these ships.”

“What kind of problem?” Kris asked. Haven’t I exhausted my supply of new problems yet for this month? she managed not to whine aloud.

“The radar image he gets off these ships is nowhere near as large as his mass-density detector says it should be. His laser bounce from them is even less. Our gravity detector says there’s a good fifty thousand tons of ship out there. The reactors are what you’d expect, but the radar bounce is more like a fifteen-thousand-ton corvette and the laser reflection is more like a five-thousand-ton schooner.”

Kris eyed her staff. She got a lot of blank looks in return.

“I guess Old Earth’s dog may have taught itself some new tricks,” she said.

Nelly went on. “The next division is led by the Charles de Gaulle; there’s another Churchill, Clemenceau, and King George V. They’re all 22-inchers.”

“Nice. Very nice,” Jack said.

“Get your history book ready for this one,” Admiral Kitano said. “Admiral Yamamoto, Chairman Mao Zedong, Admiral Togo, and Sun Tzu. All 22-inchers again.”

“No, Nelly, we don’t want a history lesson,” Kris told her computer as it began a dissertation on who these ships were named for. “Earth can name their ships after anyone they want. Just so long as we get them to fight with us, it’s all very fine by me.”

“But, Kris, a lot of these people were at each other’s throats.”

“That was four hundred years ago,” Jacques said. “A lot can change in four hundred years.”

“Unless you’ve got an ‘Enlightened One’ passing down the same old same old,” Kris said.

“Yes,” came from everyone present.

“Leading off the next division is the Nelson Mandela, followed by the Shaka Zulu, the Simon Bolivar, and the Jose de San Martin.”

“I guess we know who paid for them,” Amanda said.

“Here comes the last division,” Kitano reported. “Julius Caesar, Alexander, Saladin, and Genghis Khan. Behind them are a dozen merchant ships named Apple Blossom, Cherry Blossom, Pear Blossom, and the like. Lots of flowers. Oh, and what looks like two more stations. At least, that’s what I hope Shang-hi and Plymouth mean when you put the names on huge ships.”

Kris stood and walked over to examine the board with her order of battle.

Of the thirty-four that had sailed out to meet the enemy in the last battle, twenty-six were ready to answer bells and get underway. There were seven more in dock. Maybe four could be made battle ready in a few days.

It was anyone’s guess when the Hornet, Constellation, Royal, and Bulwark might sail again. If they ever did.

Admiral Kitano had trained up another thirty-two. They were drilled and ready. The twenty-four that Earth had just provided would need to adopt to Alwa battle methods and be put through a few shakedown cruises.

With luck, the enemy would give them the time they needed.

Kris really did have a fleet now. Eighty-two, maybe eighty-five frigates.

Almost triple what she’d had the last time the aliens attacked.

Of course, at least three times as many aliens were likely to come at them.

The screams of the old woman echoed in Kris’s mind. “All of them are coming for us. Jacques, how many is all of the alien base ships?”

“We’re studying the writing on the wall, Kris. As best we can tell, there are at least thirty of them. There are some that seem to have left only one memorial and pile of heads. If they are still out there and come calling, there might be as many as fifty.”

Kris shook her head. “We’ll worry about them later. Just now, we have this other problem—fast movers. Let’s see how we handle them.”