Defender

4

“Bath time,” Kris yelled as she led the way from the truncated Forward Lounge. Jack was at her elbow. Granny Rita led the Alwans, who once again looked like they wanted to take flight. Penny followed up the rear, doing her best to shoo along any who tarried without actually touching them.

Alwans did not like to be touched by Heavy People.

That was something Kris hoped Nelly’s translator would explain.

Assuming they survived the next few minutes.

Behind them, the last vestige of the Forward Lounge melted away, as did the passageway they trotted down, just as fast as they left it.

The Wasp was moving to protect herself.

“The jump has spit out a second ship. Same type,” Nelly announced.

The distance from the Forward Lounge to Kris’s Tac Center just off the bridge was a surprisingly short gallop. The water tanks were there, already filled, with lids hanging open like waiting coffins.

The Alwans balked.

“They’re claustrophobic,” Granny Rita said. “I’d better show them how. Is it better not to go into the tank clothed?”

“The Iteeche never wore clothes.”

In a moment, the old girl was down to the buff and climbing into the tank. She was clicking and cooing at the others.

SHE’S TELLING THEM THAT IF SHE CAN DO IT, SO CAN THEY, Nelly told Kris. I’M PRETTY SURE OF THAT TRANSLATION.

Five removed what little they wore and went, reluctantly, into the tanks. The sixth balked.

HE SAYS WE’RE ALL GOING TO DIE, Nelly reported.

“Granny, you tell him that these are the prey we hunt. Yes, they are bigger than us, but don’t the Alwans hunt prey bigger than them?

GRANNY JUST TOLD HIM THAT AND THAT IF HE DIDN’T GO INTO THE TANK, HE WILL BE DEAD MEAT AND DISGRACE HIS TRIBE.

The Alwan went.

Kris, Jack, and Penny gave the tank residents breathing masks and waited as they verified that they worked. Then they sealed them in, locked them down, and let the tanks top themselves off with water.

There was a lot of chatter; the air masks had mikes in them. Granny Rita’s last words to Kris were, “You better get your bare ass into your egg, honey.”

Kris raced for her quarters. Again, they were much closer. Abby was waiting, already stripped. She helped Kris skinny out of her uniform and into her egg, then, as Kris rolled out for the bridge, Abby settled into hers.

“A third ship just joined the others,” Nelly reported. “They are starting a slow, quarter-gee approach to the wreck.”

Kris rolled onto the new Wasp’s bridge. It was just like old times. Captain Drago held the command chair. Penny was at Defenses. An older Chief Beni was at Sensors, assisted now by a shy female chief from Musashi. The woman on Navigation was also Musashi Navy; Kris had not had a chance to get to know her like Sulwan Kann.

“Warning to all hands. We are taking the ship to Condition Zed. We are going to Condition Zed on my mark.” Penny waited a few seconds in case anyone had a strong objection, then announced, “We are setting Condition Zed. Don’t expect anything you’re holding on to to be there in a second.”

Since everyone was already in their egg, they shouldn’t be holding on to anything.

The bridge shrank. The skipper, Kris, and Penny were almost rubbing elbows. The overhead was a good half meter closer.

The only thing that didn’t change was the main screen.

It was still there, showing death coming for them in living color.

“Sensors, anything new?” Captain Drago asked.

“Nothing, sir. They match both the visual and electromagnetic signature of the hostile raiders. Their reactors match to the third decimal. Their radar is active, and they are pinging the hulk.

“Oh, that was rude!” the senior chief added. “They just lased a small rock.”

“So much for drifting up behind them again,” Captain Drago said.

That ambush had worked once. They couldn’t expect it to work forever.

“Any suggestions, Your Highness?” the skipper asked.

“They’re out of range of our 18-inch lasers, but they’ll have to flip ship and decelerate to match orbit with this hulk, giving us some up-the-kilt shots at their reactors. Let’s see what happens then.”

They waited. Waited for something to happen. Waited for the enemy to make a move . . . to make a mistake.

While doing their best not to make one themselves.

“Edge us in closer to the wreck,” Captain Drago ordered.

The helmsman obeyed, but it was no easy job. Even half-destroyed, the hulk was huge, with a gravity well of its own. If Kris and the skipper hadn’t decided to keep the Wasp on the side of the hulk away from the jump point, the natural thing would have been to go into orbit around the wreck.

The helmsman had been working against the nature of things and the laws of physics. Now he worked against them even more. The navigation jets, never intended for this, got a workout.

Maybe those gases showed up as a corona around the hulk. Maybe someone on the other side noticed that there were a lot more hot gases in the general vicinity of the dead wreck. For whatever reason, the three alien ships began to spread out, widening their field of view around the dead base ship.

Hiding behind the hulk got harder.

“That’s not good,” Captain Drago muttered.

Kris grinned. “But we get a crack at them one at a time.”

The skipper frowned at Kris’s optimistic assessment of the situation. “That just might work. Helms, hold steady, but get ready to move us right or left on my order.”

“Aye, aye, sir.”

The long wait continued. A hundred thousand kilometers out, the alien ships did what they had to do if they didn’t want to fly right by the hulk. All three flipped ship and began to decelerate at a quarter gee. If all went well, they would arrive at the hulk with no headway, ready to go into its weak orbit.

Of course, it was Kris’s job to see that things did not go well.

“The right ship has eight reactors,” the senior chief reported. “The other ships have only six.”

“I suppose that makes the rightmost ship our target,” Captain Drago said.

“Main battery is locked and loaded.” The new frigate packed four of those huge battleship guns into her bow. They had great range, but a problem.

They could be fired only fifteen degrees to the left or right, up or down, of the direction the ship was pointed. Somehow, Captain Drago would have to get his ship over to the right of the wreck fast enough to surprise the enemy but arrive with the bow aimed dead on his target.

The brilliant engineer who designed the class hadn’t come up with any suggestions as to how you fought his marvelous new toy.

Then it got more complicated.

“The Alwans want to know if you are going talk to the aliens,” came over the net from Granny Rita.

“We’d kind of planned on killing them, Granny. We are outnumbered, and every time we try talking, they just shoot.”

“The idea of not making any demonstration upsets the Alwans.”

“The idea of our all getting suddenly dead kind of upsets us, Granny.”

The nods from around the bridge supported Kris’s position. They were in the eggs, but the eggs weren’t the all-encompassing containers they would be at four or five gee.

“Kris, honey, I understand where you’re coming from, believe me. I’ve been where you are. But I have to live with these people. I beg you to accommodate them.”

Kris had already offered Granny Rita a ride home, if only for full rejuvenation. The strong-willed old woman had turned her down. The Alwans were in danger, and she was not leaving them in their time of need.

Kris expected that position would cause a lot of trouble. She’d expected that trouble at some indefinite time in the future. Strange how it popped up sooner.

Well, what do you expect from a Longknife, even one that calls herself Granny Rita Ponsa at the moment.

“There was the approach you tried on that scout ship in the Iteeche system,” Penny said.

“There’s not time to launch a communication buoy,” Kris muttered. “Nelly, can you put together some nanos? Make them give off enough noise to seem like a ship, as well as send a ‘we come in peace for all humanity’ message.”

“It will mean that I lose some of my next child’s matrix,” Nelly complained.

“I’ll buy you more.”

“From the other side of the galaxy?”

“Nelly, we don’t have time for this argument.”

“I know, Kris. I’m already collecting the nanos and forming them into the craft you require. There is a hole in the wreck we can launch it out of. I’m using the collection of messages we sent the last time. I hope the Alwans won’t mind us sending in Iteeche as well as human.”

“The hostiles are a hundred thousand klicks out and flipping ship,” Captain Drago said. “I’d like to knock out one or two of them before they’re close enough to ram,” he added dryly.

“Nelly, launch the diversion,” Kris ordered. “Lasers 1 and 2, prepare to fire; 3 and 4 stand by. Laser 5, maybe we can come up with a target for you.” Laser 5 pointed aft.

“Helmsman, prepare to rotate ship ninety degrees to starboard, lay on three gees acceleration for five seconds, then rotate ship ninety degrees to port. Lay on one gee but begin Evasion Pattern 6. Understand?” Drago ordered.

The helmsman was a chief bosun’s mate, but he still blanched at the order. “Sir, I’ll try.”

“Try ain’t good enough, Chief,” the skipper said. “Nelly, can you lay in the course?”

“It is done, Captain.” For once there was none of Nelly’s back talk. Even if this was the first time Captain Drago had trusted his ship to her.

“Make it so, Nelly.”

Over the 1MC, all hands listened to the message being broadcast from the diversion. It demanding to know what ship had entered the system, to whom they offered their oath, and . . .

It didn’t get any farther as all three ships blasted it out of space.

While they shot, the Wasp rotated hard, kicking its crew in the rear with three gees acceleration. Then she gave them whiplash with a second ninety-degree rotation while coasting for maybe half a second.

Immediately, she then put on a single-gee acceleration and launched herself into a jinking pattern that would have slammed heads hard if the eggs hadn’t locked down every inch of their bodies and cushioned them.

Kris had the larger of the three ships in her crosshairs. Twelve huge rocket motors were putting out plasma from four of eight reactors. Kris targeted where she’d expect to find two reactors and fired Lasers 1 and 2.

Apparently engineering solutions galaxywide tend to yield the same answers. Two 18-inch lasers smashed into the engineering spaces of two reactors. Magnetic containment equipment suffered lethal disruption. Twenty-thousand-degree demons that were never meant to know the face of man were unleashed, ripping and tearing, feeding on construction that was not meant for the likes of them.

Two untouched reactors joined the dance of destruction, then their hunger spread the entire length of the ship.

In a blink, where a ship had been were only gases.

Kris would watch this on the recordings after the battle. Once she’d seen the destruction begin, she was already turning to the second ship.

It had not yet reacted to the disaster overtaking her leader. Her slow response was her doom. This ship had only nine rocket engines. Kris targeted two reactors and hit one.

One was enough to begin the chain of catastrophic failures that ate the ship.

The third ship had a faster captain. He’d already begun to swing his vulnerable engines away from this sudden attack. Kris had had Nelly launch four of her limited supply of high-acceleration 12-inch antimatter torpedoes at him even as she concentrated her lasers on the other two. The six 5-inch secondaries added what they could.

The third hostile, though smaller, was still equipped with way too many lasers and was bringing them to bear on the Wasp.

“Flip ship,” Drago ordered. “Get that wreck back between us and them.”

Nelly was already doing it as the helmsman reached to obey.

Kris had her eye on the alien. She still had her rear stinger. If the stern came within fifteen degrees of that puppy, she’d knock a big hole in its bow.

NELLY, CAN YOU GIVE ME A SHOT?

I CAN ADJUST OUR JINKING TO SHOW THEM OUR REAR, BUT ONLY FOR ONE SECOND. AND I’LL BE CHANGING COURSE EVEN AS I’M DOING THAT. I COULD FIRE THE LASER AND ADJUST ITS AIM TO MY JINKS.

DO IT, GAL.

A short breath later, Laser 5 fired. A few seconds more, and the wreck was once again between them and their enemy. The entire sally took less than ten seconds.

As the Wasp returned to the safe shadow of the hulk, and to a more sedate smooth quarter gee, the ship exploded in cheers.

Captain Drago let the crew rejoice for a moment, then punched his commlink. “All hands, good shooting and good ship handling. Two down, but anyone want to bet the third ship heads home with its tail between its legs to let its betters know that the old wreck has a new owner?”

No one offered to take the bet.

Even as he finished speaking, Sensors was already reporting. “Sir, the ship has continued on a course that will bring it around the hulk after us.”

“Then we better play ring-around-the-rosy,” the captain said, and the helmsmen tucked the Wasp in close to the wreck. With one eye on the hulk-mounted sensors, he began edging them to port, keeping the hostile exactly opposite them.

“Well, Your Royal Highness, have you got any more ideas? I’m plumb out.”

Kris sighed. She’d been about to ask Captain Drago the same question.

But she was the Longknife. Admitting she’d scraped the bottom of her barrel of ideas for how to keep alive while killing what was after you was just not part of the legend.