Somewhere, some sense of proportion must have survived. Four dishes formed a square to hold Kris at bay while the other one, what was left of the lower dish, went to the aid of the stricken mother ship.
Six more Hellburners were already launched at the alien. Five were spotted and shot out of space, with their huge explosions wasted on nothing but rock dust. The sixth made it into a formation of a half dozen monsters, busy trying to figure out how to approach the twisting mother ship. The Hellburner blew one up, hurled its wreckage against two more, and sent them hurtling into the mother ship.
Still, the aliens struggled to succor their mother ship, leaving Kris to wonder if there was someone or something they held so sacred that they had to save it.
Kris had other problems. From the looks of it, some fifty of the ships she had just fought were refugees from the ship she’d fought earlier. Did she want to fight all these ships again, after they joined up with the three watchers?
Not really.
The odds were now down to just 120 of them to 38 of hers. They were the best she’d had all day. She measured the situation and found she liked it.
Quickly, she ordered three BatRons to hit the saucer at the left-hand corner of the square. BatRon 1 and the survivors of BatRon 5 with Kris’s flag division would hold off the rest.
The aliens must have been distracted. Half the dish vanished under her frigates’ fire before the survivors broke ranks and fled. But not all were running. The right-hand dish launched itself at Kris’s flank. Her two battered squadrons held the line long enough for Kris to bring the rest around to reinforce them. The second dish crumbled as half or more of its ships vanished into balls of glowing gas.
Now the other two dishes broke and ran.
Kris ordered her commodores to pursue, but cautiously.
“Damaged ships will fall out of line,” she ordered, which left a dozen frigates forming up slowly in her rear. Kris didn’t mind that; she needed ships to give the final coup de grace to alien ships that were damaged themselves and unable to keep up with their fleeing comrades.
The aliens were in a bad way. To flee, they had to show Kris’s ships their vulnerable engines, and they fled at a slower acceleration than Kris’s fleet pursued. Twice, fleeing alien ships turned and tried to charge Kris’s reduced battle squadrons. Twice, Kris had the fleet dance back out of the aliens’ desperate grasp.
The Atago approached three hulks spinning in space and prepared to give them the coup de grace. One came to life and shot toward her. The Atago and the alien died in one ball of gas.
Kris ordered her cleanup ships to be more careful. She doubted that order was necessary.
A dozen ships around the dying mother ship held station too long and were destroyed in Kris’s sweep.
None offered to surrender. None in final distress deployed lifeboats.
Kris was sickened by the slaughter, but she did not order her ships to break off. It was several hours later before the final ship, running for the jump point at 3.25 gees, crumbled under the fire of the Haruna. That was fitting, because Commodore Miyoshi’s BatRon 3 had led the pursuit.
“Now we are avenged,” he reported to Kris when the final ship was disposed of. “Banzai! May their brave spirits now rest in peace.”
Kris thanked him, but when the remnant of his squadron came to a halt before the jump point with only four ships still with him, he asked Kris if he should continue the pursuit. Kris didn’t have to think long on his question. She ordered him to stay in system.
“We don’t know what they’ve got waiting for us and we’ve just shown them how to hold one side of a jump point.”
Commodore Miyoshi did not question the order.
Indeed, Kris could hardly count on half of her ships being in any kind of fighting shape.
The jump brought a question to Kris. “Nelly, did you notice when the three alien observers ducked out?”
“They took their leave shortly after the mother ship was hit, and the general rout began, Kris. I can’t tell if they’d seen enough or whether they wanted to get a good head start on us pursuing them.”
Kris took a second look at her options of charging through that jump point; she carefully checked her board. Not one ship was undamaged. Even the Wasp had been lased hard during the long battle.
“Nelly, if I ordered a pursuit at 3.5 gees, could I catch them before they jumped out of the next system?”
“The next system has four jumps. It’s very unlikely you could catch all of them, assuming even a 2.5-gee flight, before they jumped out of that system. You know very well how hard a stern chase like that can be.”
As a survivor of one, Kris did. The idea of ordering her ships to stick their noses in that noose when the pursued aliens could be waiting for them with atomics gave her the shivers. “This battle is over,” she pronounced, and found it good.
She gave the order to the commodores to bring their ships back to the station at whatever acceleration they thought they could maintain. The cost of a battle is not tallied until the last ship made port.
“Jack, I think we won,” she reported. “But I need your help. Some of our ships are dead in space. Could you get the crews of the repair ships to the head of the line for the trip to Canopus Station? We need them out here, helping our worst-hit ships limp back.”
When she got his reply of, “Thank God and the Navy. Help is on the way, hon,” longboats were already lifting from Alwa.
Help didn’t arrive soon enough. The Warrior of Lorna Do suffered an internal fire they couldn’t control. It reached the reactors. They succeeded in abandoning ship before it blew.
Kris had started the battle with forty-four ships. Seven had paid the ultimate price to save Alwa.
This time.
“Kris, a ship just jumped into the system,” Nelly said. Before Kris could hit the panic button, her computer added, “Its signature matches the Endeavor. I think Penny’s back.”
A message from Kris’s friend arrived hours later. “Kris, just a quick report. We found the alien home world! I think. More interestingly, we found a world just one jump from it that was attacked with atomics and rocks until it’s nothing but a blackened jumble. Hardly anything alive right down to bacteria and viruses. Someone seriously wailed on that planet.
“The home planet shows some serious hits from space, too. But it still has people. Primitive hunter-gatherers, not even farming. Our probes got DNA off several. They match the aliens we’re fighting, but no likely mixing for over a hundred thousand years.
“Oh, and get this, one of the badly damaged areas, little more than a glassy plain, has a pyramid right in the middle of it. We didn’t land. Your orders, remember. But I’d sure like to see what someone built in the middle of a dead zone. I’ve got a lot more. Seems like you’ve been busy. See you back at Alwa.”
Kris sent Penny a “See you at Alwa” response.
That would wait. Other things couldn’t. There were wounded. Not many. With Smart MetalTM, damage was either controlled or catastrophic. No, a memorial service would have to be near the top of Kris’s to-do list.
Kris tallied her losses and wondered what more might be added to them before the last ship struggled back to Canopus Station.
“And, Kris,” Nelly said, “you promised yourself and Jack some more of that honeymoon time, too. Don’t forget that. I doubt he will.”
Kris looked at what she had done and could only mutter, “I hope not. I sincerely hope not.”