G rand Admiral, Her Royal Highness, Princess Kris Longknife, Imperial Admiral of the First Order of Steel, and commanding admiral of the Iteeche Combined Fleets, presently in direct command of the First Imperial Battlecruiser Strike Force, eyed the main screen on the flag bridge of the Princess Royal . An analysis of the system they'd just jumped into was rapidly coming up for her review.
The Glorious Golden Eel system was one of the most productive star systems in the Iteeche Empire. The various shipyards on the eleven space stations orbiting GGE 3 and GGE 4 were capable of commissioning a hundred battlecruisers every month into the rebel fleet. Kris definitely wanted to cut this one out of the rebellion.
Adding that production to the Imperial fleet wouldn't be so bad, either.
"Have the scans been updated yet?" Kris asked the commander on sensors.
Sensors didn't raise her eyes as she half-muttered, "Admiral Kitano's flag, the Resolute , has been tracking and recording emissions since they got here. There is very little ship traffic in the system at present. No movement of warships."
"That's not normal," Kris murmured through a deep frown.
"No doubt, Admiral," the commander said. "There are several thousand battlecruisers and scores of battleships of state tied up at piers around the different stations. They're all powering up their fusion reactors and preparing to get underway."
"How strong a force?" Jack asked.
Lieutenant General Jack Montoya, who refused to be made a duke even if he was Kris's husband, was always checking on the worry end of business. That had been his job before Kris married him. Since then, he had only gotten more obsessed with it.
It was to keep Jack happy that Kris's Princess Royal was back with the central force and not leading the vanguard wing right beside Admiral Kitano's Resolute .
"You know, it was a lot more fun when I was just an upstart lieutenant," Kris grumbled to Jack.
"Which is why your great-grandfather, the king, went out of his way to get me in charge of your security. Between the two of us, we kept you alive until you reached this hardening-of-the-artery age of wisdom. I am looking forward to when Ruth is a boot ensign and you are trying to keep her from doing what you did."
For safety’s sake, Ruth had been left back at the Iteeche Capital with her younger brother, Johnnie. When last seen, she was doing her best to sneak her tiny six-year-old body up the high diving board to hurl it into the embassy's swimming pool.
"No doubt," Kris answered, dryly,
The commander on sensors interrupted this discussion of Longknife family values. "There is no way to tell if they've got more ships powered down and doing their best to hide," she said, "but the present count puts them at about four thousand ships."
Jack raised his eyebrows. "For once, you have the enemy outnumbered."
"What a unique experience," Kris said, dryly.
Of course, of the eight thousand ships in her force, some five thousand of them were recently surrendered rebels. They were still crewed by the Iteeche Sailors who had sailed them in the civil war against the Emperor.
Kris had seen to it that the captains and a few senior officers had been taken off. New loyalist officers had been hastily promoted and detached from their ships with a platoon of heavily armed Iteeche Marines to help them sleep better at night. Thus, it was anybody's guess whether the odds were two-to-one in Kris's favor or three-to-one in the rebels. It all depended on who stayed loyal the next time they closed to firing range.
Still, the Iteeche had a tradition for this. The Iteeche, based on ten thousand years of Empire, had a tradition for just about everything. Said tradition held that during a rebellion, lower decks fought for whom their officers fought. The price of losing for a clan chief or senior admiral might be torture and a horribly painful death. In defeat, the common warriors and sailors just submitted and switched the color of their dress uniform . . . assuming they weren't blown out of space first.
Of course, if they were on a planet like the ones ahead of Kris, the fifty billion civilians might be gassed en masse so that the winning side could repopulate it with their loyal supporters.
Kris considered the Iteeche slightly insane. Still, under orders from King Raymond the First to most, great-grandpa to Kris, she was fighting to keep the teenage Iteeche Emperor alive and safely on the throne.
Which created a situation for which the Iteeche had no tradition. What did you do when serving under a hated two-eyed, two-legged human?
Kris had all the rank and all the official command authority. A lovely calligraphy scroll hanging on her day quarters bulkhead said so. Still, there were quite a few Iteeche, loyal to the Emperor, wondering if having a loathed human save them might cost more than losing.
Kris had considered organizing her fleet around the potential loyalty of her different flotillas. Should she assign the recent "recruits" to three of the standard wings that fleets deployed in and hold her loyal ships in the other two wings? That way, if the ships switched sides again, she'd have at least two loyal wings.
Of course, those with freshly turned coats might think that she didn't trust them.
Alternately, Kris could divide her forces equally into five wings of sixteen hundred ships, say fifty of the standard Iteeche flotillas of thirty-two ships. Eighteen flotillas in each wing would be loyalists. The other thirty or so would be recent converts back to the Emperor's cause.
That was the battle array Kris had chosen. Each wing was organized into six task units of eight or nine flotillas, the first three flotillas in each being those previously loyal.
When you commanded thousands of ships, how to organize them weighed heavy on Kris's mind.
Still, Kris had concentrated her hundred and ninety-two human battlecruisers with their crystal armor in the center and van. The ten centimeters of crystal filaments allowed the human ships to survive much longer under laser fire. What with the improved fire control and gunnery, these six flotillas should be able to hold their own against four or five times their number if trouble broke out.
Kris also had one extra ace up her sleeve. Nelly. Kris's computer since first grade, and upgraded year after year, had, somehow after the last upgrade, began to tell horrible jokes and argue with Kris. Her children were better behaved toward the humans they were gifted to, but it was apparent to all and sundry that Kris's computer had made the breakthrough to sentience.
Nelly lived by the nanosecond and could frequently spot problems long before a human eye. She'd spotted at least one developing incident when an admiral turned his coat as he cruised off Kris's starboard bow. Unaware to her, he'd been readying to take her under fire.
On her own, Nelly initiated defensive jinxing. She'd advised Kris to get ready to return fire as soon as she was fired upon.
It was a deadly mistake for the traitor.
Kris had arranged for Nelly and her children to have access to the main computer in every Iteeche ship, both those loyal to the Emperor and these only recently become loyal again. If someone started funny business, Kris would know pronto.
So, while Kris thanked her normal Longknife paranoia for keeping her alive this long, she wasn't feeling more than her usual amount of fear today.
What she was feeling was curiosity. What were the fleets tied up to GGE-3 and -4 planning to do? Kris had trained her Iteeche allies to fight outnumbered three-to-one and win. They'd proven they could fight outnumbered as much as four-to-one and still pull off a victory. Faced with odds of two-to-one against him, what could this Iteeche commander hope to achieve?