Daring (31 page)

Kris ordered her fleet through the jump into the next system. There, they'd make a mad dash to the jump the aliens would be entering from. If they got there first, they could set up an ambush.

If the aliens came through the jump before they got there, Kris would have to give the order to run for it.

And some very nasty aliens would know there was a starfaring race out here that they should hunt down and destroy.

Well, they'd encountered the
Hornet
before.

One small scout was one thing. It could be ignored. Eight large battleships would be something else entirely.

Kris led PatRon 10 through the jump, the tiny
Hermes
trailing only behind the
Wasp
. For her coming role, she'd need to be up front.

Kris found herself holding her breath.

First Sulwan announced that they were in the system they had aimed for.

Then the chief announced that they had the system to themselves. A few minutes later, he reported that all eight battleships had followed PatRon 10 through and were now in the system.

Only then did Kris take a breath.

Krätz had not turned back. For better or worse, Kris would have all the ships she needed for her tragically tiny ambush.

Once again, she was assaulted by the question. What was it in her that pushed her to take the entire human race to war? Not only the humans, but the Iteeche as well, to war with someone they had never met?

Kris had written in her report to King Raymond that she was doing this to save the avian people. She'd never met one of the bird race. She'd seen pictures brought back by the
Intrepid
. She didn't know if they were a good people or were just as steeped in evil as the alien mother ship thundering down upon them.

Still, she and her small band of Navy and Marines were willing to risk not only their own lives but the future of their entire race to stop the hostile aliens.

Was it hubris or was it right?

Part of Kris wanted to run home and hide under the bed. She'd done it once, when a soccer game had gone horribly wrong after she'd been so drunk she made a series of stupid blunders. First she fell all over the ball, then she yelled at her team players. Then she screamed at her coach.

When Longknifes screw up, they do it big.

Was she committing the greatest Longknife screwup of all times? Was she about to top even Grampa Ray?

If she kept this up, she'd end up hiding under her bed on the
Wasp
. Her bunk had pullout storage drawers under it. She'd really have to work to curl up in one of them.

Kris took a deep breath and let it out slowly.

Generations from now, they would still be debating what she did here.

Assuming the human race survived long enough to have more generations.

“Captain Drago, take us to the next jump point at best speed,” she ordered.

A moment later, the
Wasp
began to accelerate smartly to 3.5 gees. Behind her, a tiny fleet followed.

Kris, and the entire human race, were committed to battle.

41

The
Wasp
was in free fall, but Kris was tightly strapped into a high-gee station chair, as was everyone else on the ship. At any moment, the
Wasp
might slam into high-acceleration maneuvers; but for now, it drifted in space, making like a rock.

It even looked like a rock. The defensive shield was deployed, but rather than looking like a parasol with a smooth, reflective surface, it was intentionally textured to resemble the surface of an asteroid. An asteroid that rolled gently as it drifted through space.

Nelly had added that bit of realistic artistry.

The other three corvettes of PatRon 10 drifted in a very loose formation around the
Wasp
, following the general orbit of the jump point. Their defenses also were deployed to make them look like rocks when observed from the nearby jump point.

In the back of Kris's head a children's song kept repeating itself annoyingly. “I'm just a little rock asteroid, pay no attention to me.” The words of the ditty were wrong; she didn't remember how the melody went. But somehow it all fit the situation she found herself in.

While PatRon 10 drifted a scant twelve thousand klicks from the jump point, the eight battleships marched and countermarched in a line some eighty thousand klicks away from where they expected the alien ships to appear. That was close to maximum effective range for the 18- and 16-inch lasers of the battleships. Hopefully, whatever battle lasers the aliens had wouldn't be all that better at that range.

With any luck, they'd be a lot worse.

In a short while, they'd know.

The
Hermes
was stationed at the jump point. It was just deploying the periscope. Kris adjusted her Weapons station to get that feed when it produced the first glimpse of what was taking place in the next system.

Kris's gasp was joined by many others.

The view was of the rear end of the mother ship, so huge it had to be seen to be believed. A hundred (Nelly counted them) monstrous rocket engines blasted away, decelerating the alien ship as it finished its breaking maneuver and came to rest at the jump point. The sight of the roiling engines filled the view, leaving hardly a rim of black space around it.

The picture winked out as the visual periscope was withdrawn and an electromagnetic sensor took its place.

“Do we have an analysis of those engines?” Kris asked.

“Bigger than anything I've ever seen,” the chief said. “I'd give my right arm to run a spectrum analysis of what's coming out of those engines.”

“What's on your mind, Chief?”

“It might tell us where they got their reaction mass. Also, it might tell us how good they are at recycling. If they're dumping all their trash and sewage in their reaction mass, then they're going to need to plunder a planet more often than if they're green.”

“I don't think they really care,” Captain Drago said. “Talk to me about what you do know, Chief.”

“There's an extra huge reactor behind each of those hundred rocket engines, feeding plasma directly into them. There are another several hundred or so reactors, just as huge, distributed along the length and breadth of that monster. What is it, four thousand kilometers long?”

“Something like that,” Kris said.

“Along the surface of that thing there are thousands and thousands of reactors. Maybe tens of thousands of reactors. Smaller, but big. Battleship-size reactors in the tens of thousands.”

“That's the fleet of big ships Commander Taussig warned us about.”

“Is it too late for us to run away,” the chief almost whimpered.

“Yes, Chief, it's too late. We either talk or fight. No running,” Kris said. But the feelings in her gut were no different from those the chief must be feeling.

The time for second thoughts was past. “Battle line. Turn toward the jump. Accelerate toward it, then, on my order flip ship,” she commanded.

The battleships had been ignoring normal orbital ballistics and instead had marched and countermarched eighty thousand klicks from the jump. Sometimes Admiral Krätz was in the lead, then they reversed course, and Admiral Kōta had the honors. Since no one complained, Kris guessed it was working.

As luck would have it, Krätz was currently in the lead. At his order, the battleships did a right turn, in column, and accelerated toward the jump.

Kris watched her board as all the information coming in from the
Hermes
's probe reported on the mother ship. It seemed to be just about dead in space, several hundred klicks from the jump. Ponderously, it began to twist in space to bring its bow head on to the jump. The view that they got of its length and width was enough to make a brave man cry.

“I've got several of the smaller reactors jacking up power,” Chief Beni announced.

“That would be the scout ships,” Kris said. “So, she is going to send a few scouts through before she comes herself. Chief, I would dearly like to know how many of those huge scout ships we're going to face.

“Admiral Krätz, would you please flip your battleships and begin decelerating at one-half gee toward the jump,” Kris gently ordered.

“It is done,” the Greenfeld admiral answered.

“
Hermes
, you may depart the jump.”

“Moving, Commodore,” Lieutenant Song answered.

The tiny courier ship jetted away from the jump, then cut all power and flipped ship, pointing her small silhouette back at the jump point. Then she did something that no courier ships had ever done before. She deployed a tiny Smart Metal
^TM
shield and did her best imitation of a rock.

It wasn't very thick, but it did cover all her nose . . . and gave her the look of just another asteroid, only this one was clearly headed harmlessly away from the jump.

To give the
Hermes
even that small a shield, they'd scrounged all the scraps of Smart Metal
^TM
in the fleet. They'd pinched a kilogram off each of the corvettes' shields. But a large chunk of that shield came from Kris's new shoes.

Abby had groaned as she plopped the new pair of sparkling high heels down on the wardroom table two mornings back. “You paid a pretty penny for those shoes, Your Highness.”

“And that's important just now why?” Kris asked.

“You're all the time complaining about how your ball shoes hurt and why can't someone come up with a stylish shoe that isn't torture.”

“I think every woman who's lived for the last five hundred years has made that complaint,” Penny said.

“Well, these shoes are Smart Metal
^TM
,” Abby crowed. “If you're dancing or showing off, they're stylish. You sitting down, or maybe running for your life, and they're sensible pumps. Just tell Nelly, and it's done.”

“Why didn't you get me a pair of these earlier?” Kris yelped.

“These very shoes are the first sale ever made by the new company, woman. I get them just for you, and what do I get, you giving me lip and demanding to know why I didn't get them for you yesterday.”

“I don't think we'll be going to many dances in the next week,” Penny pointed out.

“But the
Hermes
does need a shield to hide behind,” Kris agreed. “Turn them in. We need to hide the
Hermes
a whole lot more than my feet need to be comfortable at the next dance.”

“Assuming they throw a victory ball for us,” Abby said dryly.

So the
Hermes
now drifted away from the jump. She hid behind her shield's camouflage and closed down every electronic device on board, making like a hole in space just like the other ships of PatRon 10.

For what seemed like forever, nothing happened. The battleships closed to sixty thousand klicks from the jump and continued breaking. Kris didn't want them much closer.

But she very much wanted them to look like they were breaking toward the jump when they encountered the hostile aliens.

Kris wanted a lot of things. It didn't look like the gods of war were going to give her any of them.

“What's taking those aliens so long?” she muttered.

“Well, we did get here before them,” Captain Drago noted. “They don't seem to be all that well organized.”

Then an alien ship popped into existence smack dead ahead.

Admiral Krätz's ships were ranging the jump point, so their lasers and radar hit the ship and bounced off it. The backscatter was picked up by the passive sensors on the
Wasp
and the other corvettes. It told them a whole lot about the alien ship without them having to make so much as an electronic peep.

The alien ship was ten kilometers long. Its hull was elliptical, some five kilometers around at its widest point. Its skin was marked irregularly by lumps and bumps that did not proclaim their usage.

Admiral Krätz played his part superbly.

“Who are you?” he announced on the radio, pumping plenty of surprise into his voice. “And what are you doing here? Unknown ship that just jumped into this system, identify yourself,” he demanded in perfect admiral mode.

His battle line also poured on the coal and went from decelerating at half a gee toward the jump point to accelerating at three gees away from the newly arrived alien ship. There was very little way on the ships, so they started opening the range between them and the alien ship in a matter of seconds. The impact on the crew must have been brutal, but they were battleship sailors and supposed to have hair on their chests.

And they'd been warned to prepare for just that.

The corvette crews weren't the only ones waiting in their high-gee stations for the fight to start.

The alien ship said nothing. It sent no signal at all. It did goose its engines enough to push it away from the immediate area of the jump. A half minute later, Kris saw why.

A second ship, just as huge, popped into view.

It also gave itself a bit of a power boost and was joined thirty seconds later by a third ship. While there had been utter silence from the alien ships so far, now the first ship fired off a ten-second message.

At that, the newest-arrived ship did a 180-degree flip. Which left Kris wondering again what it must be like to be crowded into one of those huge ships while it did maneuvers that knocked around the crew of ships as small as the
Wasp
.

Nose to the jump, the ship accelerated and disappeared back into the jump.

For the long minute while all this happened, the battle line did its best to make contact. The Greenfeld ships continued to demand communications with the stranger. The Musashi flagship sent a sequence of dots signifying the numbers from one to ten, as well as tonal sounds built around middle C. The Helvetica ships sent pi.