The floor showed piles of heads. Skulls, carapaces, whatever.
“Sweet ancestors,” came from somewhere, but otherwise, the room was dead silence.
“These aliens are not like any other aliens my species has encountered,” Kris said slowly. “We enjoy encountering different species.” Unless, of course, they go to war with us, but the less said about the Iteeche the better. “These people hate all life not of their own kind. They search space, hunting for life, and then kill it.”
Kris let that sink in.
“Then, once they have plundered a planet down to even its air and water, they take one sample of that life, encase in this plastic cube, and a pile of heads, and take it back to their trophy room. Their room of horrors.”
Kris left the hologram up for a bit longer, then had Nelly kill it. She said nothing as she turned back to the two leaders of this planet’s most powerful governments.
“It seems we have our work cut out for us,” said President Almar, “if we are to keep our heads on our shoulders.”
“Yes. It seems we do,” Madame Gerrot agreed.
Kris’s address to the Associated Assembly after that was a minor affair. She gave the nice, generic speech she had planned, adding in the foolish vs stupid reference to Solzen. It went over big now that she was assumed dead.
Kris made no references to heads or raped planets but left it to her listeners to assume the worst.
No doubt, they would assume far less than what they faced, but hopefully, their fear would be enough to unite them.
She, Jack, and Penny were back aboard the Wasp before it was time for lunch.
Kris still hurt quite a bit from those two slugs. Nelly told her that several religious groups on Sasquan were claiming the miracle of her survival for their gods.
That was another opinion Kris was willing to leave open to whatever interpretation people wanted to put on it.
Captain Drago interrupted her lunch. “The aliens are braking as they come around the sun, but they have launched stone, iron, and lead bullets at the planet. These are not slowing. They’re headed our way at several hundred thousand kilometers an hour, and it looks like they are aiming for major cities.”
Kris tossed her napkin on the table. “Enough of diplomacy. Now we get to fight,” she said.
46
The five-hundred-ton bullets were coming in fast. Twelve of them, each made of whatever the aliens had been able to get their hands on. No doubt, they’d make a major hole in whatever they hit.
And what they would hit would very likely be a major city. If not intercepted, every one of them was headed for an impact within one or two kilometers of the center of a major urban area.
The twelve largest cities on the planet.
“Good shooting,” Captain Drago was heard to mutter.
“Too bad we’ll have to spoil their shoot,” Kris said.
She’d ordered the Endeavor to cast off and head out immediately. As she did, Nelly and Kris went over several possible shoot scenarios.
They ordered the simplest one.
The Endeavor did a deorbital burn, dropped down to graze the planet’s atmosphere, then slingshot herself up into an orbit that put her fifty thousand kilometers above the planet, headed for the incoming slugs.
A hundred thousand kilometers below the targets, she hit the first three with a head-on shot, cutting them in half. Endeavor then did a flip ship and deceleration maneuver, while using her aft batteries to filet the next three. She repeated that again, and there were twenty-four half-size bullets headed in, but on slightly different courses than they had been a few minutes before.
Kris could only imagine the rejoicing among the Ostriches as their lasers sliced targets exactly as they intended. No doubt, there would be a lot of chest bumping later, but not now.
Now they sliced and diced what was left of the bullets hurtling toward the cat world. Every fifteen seconds or so, the Endeavor would lash out at the bullets, dicing them into quarters, eighths, sixteenths, and smaller.
Whatever energy wasn’t needed to recharge the lasers went into the engines, braking the Endeavor in orbit and heading her back down.
It wouldn’t do for the little Endeavor to run into the entire enemy fleet all by herself. Captain O’dell reported, however, that the Ostriches were quite willing to do so.
The aliens’ first shots did slam into Sasquan, but not as five-hundred-ton streamlined bullets. Instead, they hit the atmosphere as ragged, jagged chunks of thirty tons or less, rolling and out of control. By the time the atmosphere had its go at eroding them, they hit the ground as meteorites of ten tons or less.
That might be hard on the two or three dwellings that got flattened, but they were no longer city killers.
Whatever doubts the cats might have held about Kris’s true intent vanished with the demise of the slug strike. The airwaves were unanimous in their praise of Kris as their planet’s savior.
“Let’s hope they’re still saying that after the battle,” Kris muttered.
The Endeavor made orbit again and rejoined the squadron. The problem was, she was low on reaction mass. She’d used a lot going against the laws of physics.
The Bulwark launched its pinnace over to refuel her. The Bulwark had come out from the gas giant with more fuel than the other frigates. It was a joke among the skippers that the skipper of the Bulwark was always afraid of running out of fuel and always took on extra.
Now, no one kidded him, and Captain O’dell was grateful for the help.
For the upcoming battle, Kris intended to use a similar orbit to the one Endeavor had used, only she’d sling herself around the moon to get farther out and be on a better-angled orbit. Like her enemy, Kris would be braking.
But with any luck, Kris would be closer to the cat world as she did so. That would put her in the perfect position to cross the T of the alien line, able to shoot up their vulnerable sterns, hit their engines, and rake their reactors with all her ships while few of them could reply.
At least that was the plan.
And like all battle plans, it didn’t survive contact with the enemy.
47
Kris’s squadron had reached the apogee of their orbit above the moon and were beginning to fall back toward the cat planet. The aliens were off to her left, still braking.
Kris studied their deployment from her flag plot. On other days, it was her day quarters, but today it was organized to command the developing battle. Screens around her reported the availability of every ship’s lasers, armor, reactors, and other critical systems.
Kris had been alone when she fought her last battle from this same space. Today, Jack kept her company. It was nice to have his supporting presence, but she somehow doubted she’d find time to even notice him.
Her eyes roved from screen to screen.
No surprise, the aliens had upped their deceleration for a bit and were farther out than Kris had planned for. The extra deceleration meant they would have to do some reaching to make orbit, but it would allow them more maneuverability when the shooting started. Kris would not always be able to count on having their vulnerable engines and reactors pointed her way.