Tenacious

47

Kris’s squadron had reached the apogee of their orbit above the moon and were beginning to fall back toward the cat planet. The aliens were off to her left, still braking.

Kris studied their deployment from her flag plot. On other days, it was her day quarters, but today it was organized to command the developing battle. Screens around her reported the availability of every ship’s lasers, armor, reactors, and other critical systems.

Kris had been alone when she fought her last battle from this same space. Today, Jack kept her company. It was nice to have his supporting presence, but she somehow doubted she’d find time to even notice him.

Her eyes roved from screen to screen.

No surprise, the aliens had upped their deceleration for a bit and were farther out than Kris had planned for. The extra deceleration meant they would have to do some reaching to make orbit, but it would allow them more maneuverability when the shooting started. Kris would not always be able to count on having their vulnerable engines and reactors pointed her way.

Trade-offs, trade-offs. This was a surprise Kris had ex-

pected.

Then they did the unexpected.

The first seven upped their deceleration, which put the other fifteen rapidly climbing up their rear. However, as the next eight overtook the vanguard, they slewed aside to take station on their far side. Then they also upped their deceleration. The last seven ships slid in smoothly on the side closest to Kris’s squadron. That done, they all resumed their previously scheduled fleet deceleration.

Instead of facing a long line whose T Kris could easily cross, she now was confronted by three much shorter lines. One was a few hundred kilometers closer to her, but the other two were in a perfect position to flank Kris if she tried to have her squadron take that line on alone.

“They’ve formed squadrons,” Kris said softly to herself.

“I bet you didn’t see that coming,” Jack said.

“Actually, I kind of expected something like that,” Kris said, still half talking to herself. “I was thinking they’d form a dish like in the last fight, but three lines have advantages as well.”

“They aren’t dumb,” Jack said.

“I never said they were.”

“No, I don’t believe you have,” he agreed. “So, now what?”

“We use our 20-inch lasers for best effect, and boy, do I wish I’d brought along just two of those 22-inch war wagons.”

“This will be a slugfest,” Jack concluded.

“It’s looking that way. They outweigh us. If they manage to come alongside and board, they’ll bury us in bodies. However, we have the reach, and, unless I’m mistaken, they don’t have any armor.”

“Kris, Chief Beni has been doing his best to get a solid-mass determination on those ships,” Nelly said.

“And they do have armor,” Jack said softly.

“The ships are massing more than they did the last time we met them. Every one of them is different, but there seems to be between forty-five and seventy-five thousand tons more ship there.”

“Nelly, how many extra tons were on the ship we shot up at the Hornet’s arsenic planet?”

“I estimate there were fifteen to twenty thousand tons of rock, Kris, that we had to punch through before we could hit the soft, chewy center. There is likely double or more armor on these hulls.”

“So it’s maybe twice as bad as the last time?”

“It looks that way, Kris.”

“Pass that word to all the captains with my compliments and suggest that they plan on hitting the same place on their target’s hull as hard as they can, as often as they can.”

“I’ve sent it, Kris.”

They were at three hundred thousand klicks and closing when Kris ordered the fleet to set Condition Charlie. She saw no reason to let the aliens know any sooner than she had to that their targets could get smaller. The former mutineers pitched in, manning the Wasp’s extra reactor. Those who weren’t engineers mustered with the Marines to repel boarders.

Sampson stayed sedated in the brig. It was tiny, but it was locked.

Jacques and Amanda joined the twenty alien recruits in a space reserved for them at the center of gravity for the Wasp. Hopefully, that would make the jinking around easier on them.

And hopefully, Jacques could find words to explain what was going on.

Kris had so wanted to talk to an alien, ever since the first time they gave her a choice between killing them or dying herself. Now she had her own pet aliens, and she hadn’t found a second to talk to them.

The problem, of course, was that these aliens were of a different tribe from the strong, silent types that wanted her dead.

Oh, and the tame aliens didn’t have all that big of a vocabulary.

Someday, the world would have to present Kris with a few easy problems.

Someday, hopefully, sooner rather than later.

Physics ruled space warfare. In ancient days, ship battles had depended on the wind. No wind, no battle. Too much wind, and the ships might find themselves struggling to stay afloat more than fight each other.

Space battles were very much like that, only it was gravity that ruled the roost. And while gravity might be more constant than the wind, it was no less a master of the battle.

The alien warships were decelerating, aiming to make orbit around the cat world. What they’d do there was an exercise best left to horror.

Kris was on a course to intercept them.

Gravity ruled both their vectors.

But laser power might very well trump gravity’s vectors.

At 160,000 klicks, Kris ordered all her ships to Condition Zed. Thirty seconds later, she ordered them to cut deceleration and face the enemy. Seven of her ships lashed out at the closest seven enemy ships with six 20-inch lasers each.

No surprise, the targets shed rock and droplets of steel. Some shot off steam as ice burned away to gas. The targets got fuzzy but showed no serious damage.

Kris flipped ships, paused for a second or two for the gunk to fall behind, then hit them with the aft batteries.

The targets fizzed as ice and rock armor ablated away under the lasers’ probing, but again, no explosions.

Kris brought her squadron back on course and returned to a deceleration burn as her lasers recharged.

Twenty seconds later, she repeated the double volley.

Twenty seconds after that, she did it again.

This time, the closest enemy squadron showed damage from the pounding. One blew up, and two staggered out of line, their engines firing in directions they weren’t intended to.

The other four turned bow on to Kris’s squadron and charged.

Above and below those surviving four, the other two lines of ships did the same. Their commander was now much less concerned with making orbit than getting in range of Kris’s ships and slamming them with their main battery of more lasers than Kris had ever had a chance to count.

Maybe whoever was giving the orders didn’t care if they made orbit so long as they destroyed Kris’s ships.

Who’s your Enlightened One?

Kris ignored the question and ordered her ships to flip. They began jinking and danced away.

Now Kris was between a rock and a hard place. Specifically, the moon she’d been using to swing above now was coming up fast below her. The enemy, desperate to get in range to use their own huge battery of lasers, were coming up nearly as fast behind her.

Kris’s ships emptied their now-recharged aft batteries. One more ship blew up, but the surviving close-in three absorbed their hits and kept coming.

The Hornet at one end and the Bulwark at the other end of Kris’s line took on the new ships coming in range. They fired . . . and got only fuzz to show for their shooting.

Kris flipped ships again. Her middle three ships finished off the first squadron they’d attacked. Two ships blew, and the last lost all acceleration and just drifted in space.

However, the other two squadrons had closed the range as Kris’s ships exterminated their fellows. Enemy lasers began to crisscross the space around her ships. In her flag plot, boards began to slip from green to yellow as ships reported their armor taking hits.

Reaction mass and water bled out of the damage into space to disrupt the lasers just as the enemy’s rock, ice, and steel armor had splayed out Kris’s lasers.

It was the same for both sides, except that while the aliens’ gunk quickly fell behind the decelerating ships, Kris’s bleed of ice and hydrogen fouled the middle ground between them for a few critical moments more.

Now, fifteen alien ships charged in to narrow the range for their four to five hundred tons of angry, suicidal commitment to Kris’s doom.

“Kris, we will miss the moon,” Nelly reported, “But if we keep this up, we’ll have trouble making a good orbit around the planet.”

“We’ll worry about that later, Nelly.”

Kris studied her boards. Now her ships were slugging it out as best as they could, dancing the crazy jig that never kept them on a straight course for more than two seconds. A dance that dodged the aimed enemy fire.

The enemy’s fifteen ships were huge and overweight. They were too heavy on their feet to dance like Kris’s, but what they lacked in finesse, they more than made up for with their huge batteries.

Kris’s ships fired and reloaded. The aliens fired and fired and fired; never for a moment were they silent. Worse, most of Kris’s ships now faced two of them. Only at the head of the line was the Endeavor able to fight a single alien, applying her limited battery of six 18-inch lasers as best she could.

The big war wagons, the Hornet, Constellation, Royal, Wasp, Congress, Intrepid, and Bulwark, each divided its attention between two ships, firing bow batteries at one, aft batteries at the other. This kept each of the enemy ships shedding bow armor; rock, steel, and steam spread down the hull, dispersing their own lasers and occasionally causing damage.

That was good. The bad news was that her ships weren’t hammering through the alien armor to smash reactors inside.

The worst news was Kris’s ships were taking hits; damage was accumulating.

Kris could lose this battle if she kept fighting it this way.

“Wasp. Congress. Intrepid. Concentrate on one ship opposite you and kill it,” she ordered bluntly.

Seconds seemed to take forever, and minutes vanished in a blink. The battle went on with her ships firing, flipping, firing, recharging, then doing it over and over again.

The enemy fire hammered them. The Constellation suffered damage to a rocket motor and zigged out of her place in the line. Unfortunately, she also steadied on a course for more than two seconds.

The luckless Connie took more hits.

The Royal changed fire from the two she faced to slice at the one that had the Connie’s number. It worked . . . for a second. The enemy ship’s fire faltered and the Connie got her engines under control.

But Royal paid for saving her shipmate as her own two targets got off scot-free for a few seconds. Now her armor showed bright red on Kris’s boards.

Across from the Wasp, the enemy ship rocked as a laser slashed through its bow and cut deep inside. It hit a reactor and freed the demons inside. Gouts of plasma shot out its sides, but its huge batteries kept shooting.

Kris watched the readout on her board as the Wasp’s armor went from yellow to red.

The Wasp flipped, and the bow lasers fired. There must have been nothing left of the aliens’ bow. Six lasers cut through it and deep into its guts.

More fire blossomed within the shattered hull. But angry lasers still reached out, cutting through the thin vapor of the space around the ship. Even as the reactors lost containment and the plasma demons gobbled up the ship, it was still spitting death at the Wasp.

“Captain Drago, engage one of the ships fighting the Royal.”

“On it, Admiral.” The Wasp didn’t miss a beat as it flipped ship and began slicing into the ship that Royal had been splitting its fire with.

“Royal, the Wasp has the ship closest to it. You concentrate on the other one,” Kris ordered.

“Great, an even fight,” Royal’s skipper said, and laid into the one target.

The Intrepid did not finish off its ship in quite as spectacular fashion as the Wasp. Its target ended up rolling in space, a silenced hulk with fires gutting it from stem to stern.

Kris ordered Intrepid to turn its attention to the ships attacking the Bulwark. She did it none too soon.

The poor Endeavor was in trouble. She only had six 18-inch lasers, and her armor had been thin to begin with. She was hurting.

The Bulwark switched fire to engage the Endeavor’s ship. The forward end of Kris’s line was still two ships against four, with the Endeavor giving all that it could.

In front of Kris, her boards showed way too much red.

Suddenly, two alien ships blossomed into gas, and there were no ships facing the Royal and the Wasp.

“Royal, help the Connie. Wasp, help the Intrepid.”

Now there were four fair fights. The gallant Hornet was still being hammered by two, as was the Bulwark, but the enemy ships must have been hit just as hard as Kris’s.

The end came quickly, but none too soon. Enemy ships began to burn and explode even as the Connie, Hornet, and Bulwark limped out of the fight, reactors dead, overheated, or redlined.

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.