''You have hardly escaped notice, Sis. But the bugs and rats are no more interested in selling soap to certain approaching markets than you and I are, so they're willing to sit on it. They want to know when they can stop sitting on it, though.''
Kris looked at Sandy. She shrugged. ''I'll give you a guesstimate on that next call,'' Kris said.
''Well, thanks for the early notice. Now, I have to go.''
''Good-bye,'' Kris said to a silent line.
''You'd think they were building a battleship,'' Sandy said.
''Politics is their life,'' Kris answered lamely.
''Well, this could be our death. I wish they'd pay a bit more attention to us.'' So the two of them did pay attention. They studied the battle board and the pieces they had to move around it. They studied the hostiles … no change there. They examined, questioned, and modified their assumptions about the six battleships, then did the same for their own units.
When the first lunch sitting was piped, Sandy ordered something sent down; meatloaf sandwiches with potato salad swallowed with red bug juice. Captain van Horn joined them, borrowed half of Kris's sandwich, and examined how to get the best use out of his missile ships. He tapped the final stretch of yellow approach mapped for the hostiles. ''They'll be coming in on deceleration. Rear end to Wardhaven. Get my missile ships across their sterns early to fire up their soft rears. Sooner or later one of our rockets will hit something that'll hurt them.
''Then you charge in and smash them. Let the rest of the hellions rip what you leave behind, and then I'll mosey in close and send salvos into the shattered wrecks. Take no prisoners.''
''I hadn't thought about prisoners,'' Kris said.
''We'd better. Do we offer them a chance to surrender or no? ‘Cause once the fight gets hot, it'll be real hard to put a stop to it.'' The Captain looked slowly around their small circle.
''If they want to give up,'' Sandy said, ''I'm all for it. But we can't call for their surrender too early. It'll make us look weak. Considering how weak we are, we can't look weak.''
''I agree,'' was all Kris could add. She'd spent all her time thinking how she couldn't surrender. It felt strange planning how to offer that to her enemy. Even stranger to realize that the very offer of surrender was a carefully balanced ploy.
Good Lord, let me do this right, she prayed softly to herself … and any listening God.
''I say we let them surrender when we have them on the ropes and begging,'' van Horn said. ''They call us, we don't call them.''
''They might surrender a bit earlier if we reminded them the offer was on the table,'' Sandy said.
''And they might get all hard and John Paul Jones on us. ‘I have not yet begun to fight,' and such,'' said the Captain.
''Gosh,'' Kris said, all wide-eyed, ''And I took us for the underdog and them for the overconfident ones.''
''Hard to tell,'' the Captain said, dusting sandwich crumbs from his hands and heading for the hatch.
''Very hard to tell,'' Sandy said in agreement.
12
The afternoon went long, with Kris still poring over the battle board. Jack stood close, watching, occasionally asking a question. Few were dumb. ''If the yachts are faking it as PFs, won't it be kind of obvious when the real PFs fire this Foxer decoy stuff, and the yachts don't?'' he asked.
Sandy sighed. ''And the battleships will know exactly who are PFs and who are yachts … and the yachts would die. You want to join up, Agent?'' Jack took a big step back.
The yachts needed Foxers or something like it. Kris took a walk over to the yard to get them welding external tubes to the yachts for firing a few Foxers. They'd have to do it manually, and with no reloads, but it might work … for a while.
To avoid putting a Foxer message on a net that was supposed to be all roses and kisses, Jack went off happily with Sandy's XO to see what the Foxer status was at the Naval Supply Center. They came back way too quickly and none to happily.
''When the fleet sailed, it took a full load of Foxers for every ship. That didn't leave many in stores. Here's the bad news,'' he said, handing Kris a number that when divided by the number of yachts came out between one and two.
Jack drew the job of dropping down the beanstalk to visit the company that made Foxers. Colonel Tye went searching the Army Supply Center for anything that might fake it as a Foxer … and Kris tried not to kick herself for not thinking about this yesterday. This whole operation was a thousand-headed monster … but it grew its heads a day, an hour, a minute at a time.
It was bad the way it was slowly being popped on her. With luck, springing the whole thing on the Peterwald fleet in one big chunk would be a whopping shock to their carefully laid plans.
The 1600 meeting with the PF skippers came before Jack got back. Kris led off with her idea of mixing armed yachts in with the PFs early in the charge to confuse the battleships. Phil looked none too happy. '' ‘Steer clear of the merchie,' my pappy always warned, ‘lest she liven up your day by taking it in her head to ram you.' ''
''They won't go full bore, probably won't go more than two g's,'' Kris answered. ''They'll come in behind us to finish off what we've left crippled.''
The other skippers seemed to like the idea.
Then Kris told them they'd have to share their Foxers.
''Trade-off.'' Chandra scowled. ''All the world is a balance.''
''I hope we get something for that balance,'' Heather said. ''I don't want to get squashed like some wandering frog ‘cause someone is using up my supply of foxy.''
''We're looking into what we can do,'' Kris said.
Penny and Tom took a step forward when Kris thought the meeting was about done. ''We were talking with Beni,'' Tom said. ''We think we can improve our chances of maintaining communications between the ships, letting us talk when we want even if they try to jam, if we set up a continuous battle net with a preplanned swapping of data packets. We'll then piggyback anything we're saying onto the preplanned packet.''
''And Tommy has just the idea for something to play on the battle net in the background,'' Penny said.
''What?'' Kris asked, not sure about Tom's choice of music.
''Trust me,'' Tom said. ''It's something my old grandda says came with the landers from Earth, three hundred years ago. Twenty-first century. Maybe older, from the words.''
''But don't listen to it until we go out,'' Penny said. ''Don't spoil it.''
''Trust you,'' Kris repeated.
''Believe us, it's good. Ask Beni if you don't believe us.''
Kris made a note to do just that, but she also had a note to do something else. ''How's the 109?''
''Good to go,'' Tom said as Penny said. ''Great!''
''Good,'' Kris said.
''A bit more work on her tonight—'' Tom started.
''No,'' Kris said.
''Huh?'' came from both.
''The High Wardhaven Hilton actually is open for business. It's not getting a lot, but it's open,'' she told her two friends. ''I reserved the Honeymoon Suite for you two tonight.'' There were noes and can'ts and other negatives, but Kris talked right over them. ''It's four o'clock, civilian time. I'm sure if you show up by 7:30 tomorrow morning, the Chief can fill you in on anything and everything that's happened in the meantime.''
Penny and Tom were still shaking their heads. Behind them, Phil and Chandra, Babs and Ted were gathering, wide grins on their faces. Heather was making signals to the other skippers. Kris didn't need two guesses about where this was headed.
''Now then,'' Kris continued slowly, eminently rationally, ''You two can either walk yourselves over to the Hilton, check yourselves in, and enjoy the night. Or your friendly neighborhood JO juvenile delinquents can grab you, strip you naked, haul you squealing and screaming over to the Hilton, lock you in your Honeymoon Suite for the night, and leave you showing up for battle tomorrow morning dressed like Hikila warriors … without the tats.''