Tenacious

65

Two days later, the Old Earth fleet arrived above Alwa.

With the Wasp in dock, Kris had no Forward Lounge to meet with all her skippers. She briefly considered having the Princess Royal grow one but quickly dropped that idea. Her adjustments to the fraternizing rule was quite enough. No need to reintroduce alcohol to the fleet as well.

She’d connected Admiral Benson and Mother MacCreedy and in two shakes, Canopus Station now had a very nice Officers’ Club.

As Kris crossed the brow to the station, Captains Taussig and O’dell met her. She’d asked for them, and they’d obeyed her gentle order.

“I’m converting four empty supply ships into two fast warships,” Kris began without preamble. “They’ll have four reactors and twelve rocket motors. Design tells me they’ll easily maintain three gees for as long as needed. One will have all eight of the 18-inch lasers we have left. Four forward, four aft. O’dell, she’ll be your new Endeavor.”

“Yes, ma’am,” the merchant skipper answered evenly but with no visible reaction.

“The other will have six of the new 22-inch lasers. Three forward, three aft. Phil, we’ll name her Hornet.”

“And I take it that she’s mine?”

“Yes.”

He nodded. “The last two Hornets have been good to me and my crew. Though, I must admit, we’ve been hard on them.”

They walked in silence for a moment.

“As many guns fore as aft,” Phil finally said. “What do you intend?”

“I’m sending you two back to Wardhaven with a cargo of information and biologicals that is critical to our survival effort. At least one of you must get back.”

“Ma’am, do we have to take the ships back?” Captain O’dell asked. “I know that me and my crew don’t want to leave you.”

Kris eyed the two. “I’ll make it a written order if I have to.”

“Yes, Your Highness,” Phil said. He knew how much Kris hated to be Highnessed.

“Yes, Phil.” Kris tried to keep her reasonable voice. “This is coming from My Highness and your admiral and the Viceroy all rolled up into one mean package. Both of you saw what’s under that damn pyramid. For the first time, we’ve got a full physiological study of those bastards. We’ve got their intent in their own words as well. There’s something more. The scientists have found a plant here that all sentient civilization needs and we can’t let the aliens destroy it or, worse, let it fall into the aliens’ hands.”

“Are you going to tell us what this is?”

“Not now. Not until you leave. But you will be carrying boffins and cargo that you cannot let the aliens capture.”

“We’ve already had this discussion,” Phil said. “No doubt you’ve had the same one with her,” he said, nodding at Captain O’dell. “If worse comes to worst, they don’t get our ship. They get an expanding ball of gas.”

“That’s why I’m sending you two,” Kris said.

“Will we be taking any other people?” O’dell asked.

Kris grimaced. “If we have space, I guess we could allow some. Likely, we wouldn’t have space enough for everyone who wanted to go. We could hold a lottery for them.”

“Do you really want to send back those who want to go back enough that they’d risk this passage?” Phil asked. “They wouldn’t likely be your best friends.”

Kris scowled. “I need you two to be my ambassadors of goodwill. To tell folks we need more help, and we’re doing good with what they’ve sent us.”

“I think we could be that,” O’dell said. “I’m not so sure that the folks who really want out of here would be much help if someone shoved a mic in their face.”

“More likely, they’d grab the first mic they could get their hands on and never let go,” Phil said.

“I may have to rethink sending you with excess passengers,” Kris admitted.

“If we’re going to be using the three gees you mentioned, I’d prefer a light ship,” Phil said.

“Thanks for giving me your thoughts, folks.”

“Always glad to help a Longknife out,” Phil said with a huge grin.

Rear Admiral Yi was waiting for Kris outside the new Officers’ Club. O’dell saluted him, but Taussig, being in the presence of a vice admiral, acknowledged him with a nod, then saluted Kris and headed into the club.

Kris returned Yi’s salute, the OCS cadet she’d been not all that long ago wondering who was saluting who, as Phil and O’dell slipped away.

“I’ve got good news for you, Admiral,” Yi said, handing Kris a package.

She opened it to find the flag and shoulder boards of a full, four-star admiral.

“You’re out of uniform,” Yi said with a broad grin

“Again,” Kris said, and sighed. “I take it this is still a frocking up? Nothing added to my base pay.”

“‘She’s a Longknife, she doesn’t need the money,’ was what your king told me.”

“That sounds like Grampa Ray,” Kris muttered. Admiral Yi was in Earth dress blues. Kris was in dress whites with all her medals and orders; most were human, but now some were feline.

It added quite a bit to her weight.

Jack was nowhere in sight, unfortunately.

“Yi, would you do me the honor of replacing my shoulder boards?”

“Gladly.” As he did, he spoke softly for her ears only. “There’s a major reinforcement fleet building up to ship out here. It’s holding for something. Just exactly what that something is, I don’t know, and I was specifically told that I didn’t want to know because if I even guessed about it, and guessed too close, I would no longer be deployable.”

“So, what is your best guess, now that you are deployed?”

“Honestly, I don’t know. What I do know is that there are three humongous ships taking shape in orbit over Wardhaven, Pitt’s Hope, and Savannah. No one can tell you what’s in them that makes them need to be so huge, but I can tell you, there are Iteeche crawling all over them right beside the humans.”

He paused to grin at Kris. “At least, that is what I hear.”

“Iteeche?” Kris said, with a raised eyebrow.

“I swear, the demilitarized zone is more like a transit zone these days. We shipped them the specs for Smart Metal. What they paid for it is likely what’s going on around those three monster ships.”

“But you don’t know what that is.”

“Really, Admiral, I haven’t a clue. I was told that when it gets here, you’ll fall in love with it, but until it’s here, they don’t want to risk anything’s being captured.”

“Well, that’s nice to hear,” Kris said. “Now, want to tell me why our radar and lasers are being so attenuated when they sweep your ships?”

“Oh, that’s a surprise of our own. I’m surprised you didn’t ask me on the way in.”

“If it’s a secret surprise, would you want it on the radio?”

“Right, well, quantum computers have been slowing down itty-bitty bits of light for years to speed up their computing. Ever wondered if we could slow down laser beams, spread them around, and maybe send them back the way they came?”

“The thought has crossed my mind,” Kris said. “I understand the small quanta of light in computing are a whole lot more manageable than an 18-inch laser beam.”

“That’s been the thinking for centuries, but back on Earth, we’ve had some of our best research centers and universities working on the concept. You know, not all the smart people are out on the Rim, no matter what you’ve heard.”

Kris knew that the Rim worlds prided themselves on their lead in most scientific and technological advances for the last hundred years or so. She’d never visited Earth, and never had a taste of its chauvinism. Hopefully, the admiral would not be a problem.

But he was still talking. “We made a major breakthrough last year just as we were designing this class of warships. My command is coated with hundred-millimeter-thick specially doped and grown crystals. Once we go to Defensive Condition 5, our whole hull is covered with that stuff, and you can’t get a laser range finder to locate us, and not a lot of radar will bounce off us. And if one of those bastards you’ve had trouble with out here should hit us with a laser weapon, you better believe they’re going to be in for one hell of a surprise.”

“Interesting,” Kris said, trying to stay noncommittal. “That’s wonderful, because I’m about to brief you on just how bad it is out here.”

“Worse than us having to save your bacon from a suicide attacks before we even got to Alwa?”

That wasn’t exactly how Kris would have put it, but she tried not to let her irritation seep into her words. “That’s just the battlefield prep.”

The Earth admiral just kept grinning. “Well, we came out here looking for a fight. It looks like we came to the right place.”

Kris could agree with that. “You most certainly did.”