Then again, they’d spent a day getting ready for this and weren’t making any of the mistakes Kris’s first squadron had in their first drill.
Kris crossed her fingers and ordered the fleet into a line abreast to the left. Ponderous battle lines had done this in years gone by, with the lead ship making a hard left turn and then having all the ships follow, making their turn at the same point in space. Then, when all the ships were in a column going left, or whatever degree had been ordered, they would all turn ninety degrees again and be in the desired column abreast.
Kris very much doubted the bastards would give them time for all those twists and turns.
Her fleet did it differently. The lead ship held its course and acceleration. The other ships altered course a few degrees in the desired direction and added a fraction of a gee to their speed. The entire line swung wide into the line Kris wanted. Once in position, the ships altered course and acceleration back to the fleet’s course, and there they were. All thirty-four of them with their six 20-inch lasers pointed at whatever they were headed toward.
“About-turn on my mark,” Kris ordered. She paused for acknowledgments from the squadron leaders to come in. They waited until all of their division flags reported that each ship had The Word.
This takes way too long!
Kris drew up a revised plan for her fighting instructions, where every ship would send its acknowledgment straight to her board. She’d implement that before they finished today’s exercises, but for now she was doing it the old Navy way.
“Execute about-turn,” she said, and the fleet did it at two gees. There were some interesting burbles in the drill. Some ships flipped up, others down. One ship swung to the right. Kris smiled. An old-line admiral would probably throw a fit, but she wanted her ships to be unpredictable.
“Well done, fleet. I liked the uncertainty in your maneuver. We never help the enemy by being predictable.”
How many of you commodores are biting your nails at that?
They went through the order book, with Nelly sounding more and more proud of herself. There were no surprises though Kris decided that she’d never have her ships at less than double interval when hard maneuvering was expected. Ships needed their room.
They were in two lines abreast, one atop the other, doing 3.75 gees and following Nelly’s jinks pattern 6, the toughest, when they approached the asteroid belt. Kris had altered the course to keep them clear of the big ones that had mining operations going full tilt. Still, she restricted her target practice to rocks of less than half a meter in size. There were plenty of targets, and few of them survived long enough to need a second shot.
Kris had wondered how good her personnel were. A cursory review of their files showed them young, fit, and all volunteers. Their officers were young, too, promoted ahead of their classmates. Often twice. The records had given Kris pause. Now she saw she had no reason to doubt them.
They drilled like grizzled vets. When they faced a wall of hostile fire, would it be another matter?
They made orbit around the gas giant, and each ship deployed a pinnace to refuel it. Again, Kris had the ships convert to Condition Able with extra fuel tankage. They loaded almost four times their maximum reaction mass and headed back to Alwa, looking like a maternity ward waiting to happen. Kris held the acceleration down to 1.5 gees and no jinks. Still, they went through different maneuvering drills and swept another section of the asteroid belt free of small targets.
They were back by 0900 the next day.
Docking didn’t go as smoothly as the departure. Several ships missed their hook to the station and had to wait for a second revolution to catch the pier. Still, when the Wasp came in last, the fleet landing had taken less than twice as long as it would have if done perfectly.
Kris called for her commodores and independent division heads to report.
“Well done. I know the book I gave you just hours before we sortied was different from any you ever would have expected.”
“I know Longknifes,” Commodore Miyoshi said, “and I expected strange, but you managed to surprise me.”
“With any luck, we’ll surprise the enemy. Have you reviewed thoroughly the reports of my last two fights?”
“Yes,” Hawkings said. “They’ve added some kind of stone armor, at least to their bows, but the 20-inch laser seems to have the range on them.”
“Exactly,” Kris said. “Our maneuvers are designed to take advantage of the longer range. We can expect to fight running away from them, so flipping ship will be a regular and reoccurring maneuver. Did jinking at 3.5 gees cause any crew casualties?”
Commodore Bethea from Savannah shook her head. “They told us you preferred young crews. I thought it was just because of your youth. Now I see why.”
“I’ve tried those jinks patterns with fortysomething officers and CPOs with disastrous results,” Kris said, and found herself wondering how Cookie, Mother MacCreedy, and some of the older boffins managed. None had ever complained. Likely it was a secret the old farts were keeping to themselves. Kris wondered if the day would ever come when she’d need to beg admission to their secret society.
“Kris, the Endeavor is about to seal locks,” Nelly reported.
“If we have nothing else, I’d like to see that ship off. Maybe it will find some answers about the people who insist we kill them or they will kill us.”
No one had any further business, so Kris fast-walked the short distance to where the Endeavor was tied up. Kris requested permission to come aboard from an Ostrich who seemed very serious about being the OOD. She quickly passed through familiar territory. The Endeavor was a replica of the earlier Wasp before the recent changes.
“Admiral on deck,” surprised Kris as much as it did the bridge crew.
“As you were,” still left a bridge watch of civilians, borrowed Navy, and Alwans of both varieties a bit flustered. Before anyone could speak, Kris said, “I’m just here to say good luck and Godspeed. I want you to come home with information.”
“We’ll do you proud,” Captain O’dell said.
“And we’ll come home, with as much to report as we timid souls can find,” Penny added.
“Fair winds,” Kris said, and excused herself.
As she walked back, the Endeavor was already backing out. Was that quick visit a waste of her time? Kris shook her head. A fighting team is a lot more than metal and circuitry. It was human heart and blood. Had Grampa Ray forgotten that, or was it just harder to spot under all the scar tissue? Jack was waiting as she returned to the Wasp.
“You give them a good send-off?”
“The best a Longknife can do.”
“Then they are well sent.”
“So why are you here?”
“We’ve got a report from one of our probes, and it’s ugly.”
Kris started to jog for the Wasp, then slowed. Admirals don’t jog. Not in public. Not when people around the A deck of the station are watching and looking worried. Kris walked briskly beside Jack, smiling, and even managed a laugh. Let the watchers wonder about the joke her security chief had told her.
She arrived in her command center only a few seconds later than a jog would have gotten her there. “What do we have?” she asked Captain Drago.
“A series of reports, of sorts, from our probes at Datum 2, the one that leads to the Beta Jump. We sent a probe through, and it reported several thousand reactors. More than it could specifically count.”
“That’s a mother ship and brood,” Kris said.
“Likely,” Drago agreed. “It pulled back and sent the report as expected. Then we sent the other through with orders to stay an hour and report back. It never did.”