Kris Longknife: Defender (3 page)

“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.

S
HE’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.

H
E 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?

G
RANNY 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.

N
ELLY, CAN YOU GIVE ME A SHOT?

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

D
O 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.

For
the next quarter hour, they circled the wreck.

Then the alien got sneaky and reversed course.

The
Wasp
also quickly flipped ship and took off in the opposite direction.

Unfortunately, that gave away that they had better situational awareness than the hostile. He noticed that quickly enough and started shooting up the hulk with all those lasers the aliens seemed to oversupply their ships with.

In fifteen minutes, they’d lost so many sensors that they could no longer communicate with them by tight beam. Rather than lose more of Nelly’s next child’s brainpower, they closed their net down.

“He’s going to switch his direction real soon,” Drago muttered.

“So let’s change the game. How about hide-and-seek.”

“Explain yourself, Princess.”

“There’s a big hole in the wreck. I’d hate to take the love-boat-size
Wasp
in there, but at Condition Zed, we’re pretty small.”

“Nelly, have you mapped that hole?” the captain asked.

“No, but Professor Labao’s computer has.”

“Lay in a course to back us into said hole next time we pass it. Be careful with my ship, Nelly. I like it just the way it is.”

A few seconds later, Nelly flipped the
Wasp
, slammed on the brakes with a three-gee deceleration, and brought the ship to a dead halt in space. In a human blink, she swung the ship around, aft end to the hole in the hulk, and did a little twisting dance as she backed it into a hole that was doing its own bit of rock and roll.

There was no crunch of metal.

They were hardly in the shade of the hole before the alien ship slid by a good thirty thousand klicks out. Not only was he changing his direction, he was also edging out to get a longer horizon.

“Now what do we do?” Drago asked.

“Nelly, deploy visual sensors to the right and left, above, and below our hideout. Whatever direction he comes from next time, I want to get enough warning to accelerate out after he passes and get a shot at his engines.”

“Doing it, Kris. By the way, Kris, we got the full coverage of that ceiling I wanted and one of the nanos discovered a boot with the leg still in it. We should be able to get DNA off it.”

“Good! Now, Nelly, where are my visuals?”

“Coming online.” The forward screen divided to show what was ahead of them as well as a large cross in all four major points of the compass.

“Kris, dear,” came Granny Rita’s voice over the net, “I do hate to joggle your elbow again at a time like this, but the Alwans would like you to make a new try at contacting the alien. They feel that the demonstration you have given should persuade it to surrender to your will.”

“Sorry, Granny, it ain’t gonna happen. This is the fifth time we’ve run into these bastards. The only one that didn’t end with one side annihilated was the one where our ship managed to run away. Fights with these people are to the death. Tell your friends to get used to it. Either they die, or we die, and I’m busy doing everything I can right now to make sure they’re the ones dead.”

“Thank you, love, I had to try.”

N
ELLY, WHAT ARE THOSE CRAZY BIRDS TALKING ABOUT?

S
ORRY,
K
RIS,
I
CAN’T FOLLOW THEM.
T
HEY ARE USING TOO MANY SOCIAL REFERENCES TO THINGS THAT HAPPENED IN THE PAST.
L
ANGUAGE IS MORE THAN EACH WORD.

E
NOUGH,
N
ELLY.

The alien was getting smarter. He’d adjusted his orbit by fifty-five degrees. Kris barely caught a glimpse of him as he headed for an orbital crossing that wasn’t too far from their hideout. He was also blasting away at the wreck, using his firepower to swat at anything and nothing.

“There’s a chance that one of his wild shots may blast our hole,” Nelly said. “Should I back us deeper?”

“No,” Kris and Captain Drago said at the same time.

“Get ready to boot us out of here on my order,” Kris said. “Jink the way you think you have to, Nelly, but get the forward end of the
Wasp
aimed at that bastard.”

“Jinking pattern standing by,” Nelly said.

Kris forgot to breathe as the alien slid close to their hole but didn’t pass directly over them. The cave did take a near hit. A girder collapsed across the exit.

K
RIS,
Nelly started.

R
AM IT,
Kris ordered. D
RAGO CAN COMPLAIN TO ME ABOUT THE DING.
N
OW GO!

The
Wasp
leapt into a three-gee acceleration, then warped its bow around to chase the alien across the sky.

The crosshairs on the lasers settled on the now-targetable aft engineering space. Kris fired three, holding just Laser 4 in reserve.

Two of the lasers slammed into the ship but seemed to do nothing. The other one did critical damage to one of the reactors. The ship began to slew around as a couple of the rocket engines vented plasma. Its lasers were suddenly aimed at empty space, but they kept right on firing even as the rear of the ship began to vaporize.

Kris put her last 18-inch laser into where she would have put one of the two forward reactors, the ones that powered the life support and the lasers. Her guess was good. The hit loosed demons that gobbled up the bow of the ship.

Its lasers only died as the entire ship converted itself to a ball of expanding gas.

Nelly cut acceleration to a single comfortable gee as the bridge crew silently took in that they would live. The aliens were dead, paying the full price for starting this fight. The humans would live to see another sunset. They would taste dinner. They still had the chance of finding someone who might love them back as strongly as they loved them.

“Is it over?” Granny asked over the net.

“It looks that way,” Kris answered. “Nelly, do you have a visual on the jump point?

“Yes, Kris, and it’s quiet. I’m launching two standard low-tech buoys to take up station on either side of that jump. It will tell us anything we need to know while we drop back to the wreck and pick up the nanos we left behind.”

“Do we have to?” the new navigator asked.

“Those probes are Smart Metal that we can use for armor and matrix that Nelly intends to use for her next child,” Kris said. “Yes, we will return and pick them up. Who knows? Some of the nanos may have data we didn’t get a chance to download while we were fighting for our lives. Battles can be so distracting,” Kris said through a grin.

“I am so glad that Your Highness understands the hunger of her scientists for discovery,” Professor Joao Labao added on net.

That drew boos from several of the bridge hands, but they were careful to keep their comments low and see that their mikes were off.

Thirty minutes later, Nelly reported that all her probes that were still able to move were back on board.

“Navigator, set course for Alwa,” Captain Drago ordered. “One point five gees, if you please. All hands, we will maintain battle stations until we exit this system. Defense, we will maintain Condition Zed until the same. Commodore Rita Nuu Ponsa, if you feel that the one and a half gees is too much for your delegation, you may invite them to stay in their gee tanks. Since we won’t be jinking, I believe that we can pop the lid off the tanks and let them breathe on their own.”

“Thank you, Captain. Please have someone get us out of these coffins.”

Kris rolled her egg for what would have been her Tac Center.

Jack made to follow.

“You can park that egg wherever you want, Jack, but not where I’m going. Granny is not presentable and, if I have to pop this egg open to help her and her Alwans, I won’t be either.”

Jack eyed Kris as if to say, “And I’d be seeing what that I haven’t?” but kept his reply to a gentlemanly, “Aye, aye, ma’am.”

Penny rolled her egg after Kris. “I can lend a hand.”

H
OW COME THE
A
LWANS GET TO SEE YOU NAKED AND
I
CAN’T?
Jack said over Nelly Net.

B
ECAUSE
I
SAY SO, AND LET’S SHUT THIS DOWN.
I
DON’T WANT TO SCANDALIZE THE COMPUTERS.

K
RIS,
I
FIND HUMAN SEXUALITY VERY INTERESTING, BUT HARDLY SCANDALOUS.

N
ELLY, SHUT UP.
J
ACK, SHUT UP.
P
ENNY, LET’S GET THIS OVER WITH.

So they did. Kris found it interesting the way the Alwans looked anywhere else but at the naked humans who helped make their lives less claustrophobic.

To no apparent question from Kris, Granny whispered, “I’ll explain later.”

The sigh as the
Wasp
edged through the next jump had to be measured on the Richter scale.