He glanced around. “I don’t think you’ve failed to notice. We desperately need battle commanders, and experienced ones are in short supply.”
It was tempting to remind him that she’d been just as battle experienced when he shipped her off to East Siberia to command a mosquito boat flotilla for Madigan’s Rainbow, but she bit her lip and went to what she knew had to be her next question.
“You know, sir, this is a suicide mission. I don’t see any way we can survive another attack like we faced last time. Recently, we encountered hostiles. They were shooting at anything that drifted into their space. Anything!”
“You’ve encountered more hostiles?”
“Yes, sir. Are you ready for my report?”
The king downed the rest of his Scotch in a single gulp and slammed it down on the table. “Damn, that’s good stuff. Okay, you bring in your team, and I’ll bring in mine, and the other frigate skippers,” he said, waving at Admiral Crossenshield. “You show me what you’ve got, and I’ll show you what I’ve brought. Yes, you’re a forlorn hope, all the way hell and gone across the galaxy, but I’ll be damned if you won’t have a fighting chance.
“Yes, we want you to put up a fight. A fight that will leave these bastards licking their wounds and, if they beat you, celebrating that they wiped out a nest of the worst sons a bitches the galaxy ever spawned. We need you to buy us time—win, lose, or draw—to build the fleet back home that will take them apart piece by piece until they either holler uncle or, to quote an old sea dog, ‘their language is only spoken in hell.’
“But no, Princess Royal of my blood, you and your crew are not expendable. What you’re looking at is just the first of several squadrons that were fitting out for the long jumps here when I departed human space. Those huge, bloated transports can spin out four big frigates between them to double your strength. And, as you may have heard”—this last came with a raised eyebrow—“there are factories and mining ships in them, too.
“And all of what’s coming isn’t just from the U.S. Musashi tells me that they’ll send their 3rd Frigate Squadron just as soon as they have three others to defend themselves. Other planets are kicking in squadrons, too.”
He almost smiled. “You showed with the Fleet of Discovery that you could lead a mismatched, divided bunch of commanders and ships. I’m glad you had the practice. You’ve only just begun to fight, my dear. You’ve only just begun.”
“Then I better let you know the extent of the threat, Your Royal Majesty. This planet is beleaguered, and it looks to only get worse.”
17
The glass section receded into the deck. Mother MacCreedy had already expanded the open section of the Forward Lounge twice. Penny looked none too happy to be giving up armor, but the system was clear except what was tied up to Canopus Station.
Oh, and the two, still-unbalanced monsters doing their best to swing around each other two hundred klicks behind the station and wobbling all over the place as they tried again and again to balance themselves.
Kris did her best not to look at the jig those two were doing. It would not do to get the giggles in front of the king over something his regal decree had insisted was all well in hand.
No. Not at all. Not at all.
Between her discovering she could giggle and finding out how good it felt to make long, passionate, languid love under a palm-fringed tree, Jack was proving a very bad influence.
She dearly wished she could have some more of that bad influence, but Kris declared over this minivacation in her head, stood up, and began to brief the king, his staff, and more importantly, the frigate captions and their XOs, senior scientists, and Marine-detachment skippers of what were to be her new squadron.
The scientists surprised Kris. All of the frigates had a civilian contingent of fifty to sixty boffins, as well as a platoon of Marines reinforced with heavy weapons. Clearly, what she’d started with the Wasp was being adopted for the fleet. At least the fleet that volunteered for exile to the other side of the galaxy and a potentially suicidal fight.
“Your Royal Majesty, Admiral, Captains, skippers, ladies and gentlemen. We have defeated the enemy, but they are still sniffing around here. That’s the bad news. The good news is that they’re only sniffing, not massing for an assault. At least not within two jumps of Alwa. One of the things I hope we can do very quickly now that there are more ships available is extend our early-warning system to six, then twelve systems out,” Kris said, glancing at the king.
He nodded agreement. Admiral Crossenshield made a note.
The king nodded a lot during Kris’s briefing, and Crossie took a lot of notes.
Kris was left wondering in that tiny portion of her brain not taken up by the briefing how it happened that the king showed up with the chief of his security and intelligence agency at his elbow. Was Crossie that important, or was Ray not about to leave human space with Crossie not under his watchful eye?
Meanwhile, Kris kept talking.
“The aliens removed all their dead from the wreckage of the mother ship. However, our nanos found one boot with part of a leg in it. The aliens we’re dealing with are the same ones we ran into four other times, including the raped planet. Based on genetic drift, this group, however, has not had contact with the other groups for somewhere between ten and fifteen thousand years.”
“Brutish and solitary,” the king muttered. “Do you think they fight among themselves?”
“No way to form an opinion on that, sir.”
“What’s your defensive position here?” Crossie butted in.
“Rather simple for the Wasp,” Kris said as offhandedly as she could. “If a single three-to-five-hundred-thousand-ton ship shows up, we’ll fight it. If two come through the jump gate, we’ll assess our situation and try to fight them. If one of those monster base ships jumps in system with a fleet of two hundred of those huge ships, we run.”
“But now you’re reinforced,” a lieutenant commander, one of the frigate skippers, said.
KRIS, THAT’S CAROLYN SAMPSON. YOU MAY REMEMBER HER DAD. HE COMMANDED ATTACK RON SIX WITH THE TYPHOON IN IT AND ORDERED THE ATTACK ON THE EARTH FLEET AT THE PARIS SYSTEM. HE DIED OF A HEART ATTACK BEFORE THE INVESTIGATION WAS EVER STARTED. SHE’S THE SENIOR-MOST FRIGATE SKIPPER, LIKELY THE REASON YOU GOT PROMOTED TO FULL COMMANDER. HER SHIP IS THE CONSTELLATION.
THANKS, NELLY.
Kris would likely never forget Commodore Sampson. Because of his early death, the investigation that might have cleared Kris of mutiny had ended without a conclusion.
What are you doing here, Commander Sampson?
“Yes, having seven frigates does change matters. If seven huge alien ships jump in, we fight. If fourteen or so jump in, we fight. If that monster base ship with all her nasty kittens jumps in, boys and girls, we run.”
“And she’s supposed to be the best fighting commander we’ve got,” Sampson whispered, loud enough for the entire room to hear.
“Yes, Lieutenant Commander,” Kris said, intentionally not giving a ship’s skipper the usual courtesy of being addressed as a captain. “I do fight. I do not fight against suicidal odds. Not if I know it. Not if I can help it. Now that you are all here, we’ll look at our options and see if we can come up with some surprises for the bastards.”