Sandy went to bed knowing that a few alien battleships with engineering casualties would probably crash Jump Point Beta at some time during the night. Most of the six ships had managed to arrange their faltering courses so that they’d hit the jump point within a few seconds of each other. They’d be going through at different speeds, but all would be between forty-seven thousand and forty-nine thousand klicks per hour.
Sandy knew that all of them would die within two or three seconds of jumping into this system. Likely, they did too, but they didn’t waver in their murderous intent.
Their crashing the jump was nothing for Sandy to lose sleep over. Like everyone on Alwa Station, she was getting blasé about aliens dying. That was just what they did.
So, Sandy was surprised when her computer interrupted her sleep and told her she was wanted on the flag bridge.
They had the drill down by now. Whoever had interrupted the admiral’s sleep greeted her with a cup of coffee and a slice of hot, delicious, buttered bread and waited for her to say, “Talk to me.”
After Sandy had taken her second sip of coffee and two bites out of the mid rats, Van opened his mouth, then closed it and glanced at Penny.
Sandy’s Alien Intel Chief looked mortified. “We’ve never seen anything like this. I never would have expected it.”
“Spit it out,” Sandy said.
“There are alien cruisers in system B-1. Somehow they jumped from outside our five rings of pickets and shot into the system on the other side of Jump Point Alpha.”
The delicious fresh bread turned to a lump of lead in Sandy’s stomach. She’d wondered why the yeoman of the watch had been standing close by. She handed the plate of bread off to the young woman. “Thank you,” she said automatically as the sailor took it.
“Show me,” Sandy ordered.
“Mmm, Mmm, Mimzy,” Penny stuttered.
Sandy had never seen the young woman so rattled, and she’d been there when they pried her and her dead husband’s body out of Kris Longknife’s fast attack boat.
The star map formed before them. Their system was in the middle. At the moment, only two systems, the ones on the other side of the two jumps out, showed. One had an attack force of eighty-eight alien battleships bearing down on Jump Point Beta. Notes floating in the air beside Beta Jump showed twenty-four battlecruisers. A second reported six alien battleships had been vaporized an hour earlier.
The other system, the one Jump Point Alpha led to, now showed one hundred and twelve light cruisers traveling at over 600,000 kilometers per hour. The number of CL’s had a question mark beside it.
Sandy whistled at the speed. “Have we ever seen any alien going this fast?”
“No, Admiral,” Penny answered back.
“We expecting more light cruisers?” Sandy asked.
“Likely,” Penny said. “The jump buoy came through as soon as it spotted aliens in the system. The two buoys have been swapping back and forth at five minute intervals. Each time they swap, the number goes up.”
“How many times have they swapped?”
“Three times, Admiral.”
“So, they’re not rushing through at one second intervals.”
“No ma’am. It looks like ten second intervals. Still tight, but not a battle jump.”
“Any idea what they intend to do?” Sandy asked.
Penny was shaking her head before Sandy finished the question.
“Any idea if these are from the same wolf pack or are we just getting lucky?”
“I don’t know ma’am. As I’ve mentioned, the smaller cruiser reactors have different fingerprints from the battleships. The cruiser reactors are more like other cruisers not the battleships their mother ship builds.”
“What do you know?” Sandy snapped, then immediately regretted allowing herself the luxury of anger.
Penny shook her head as she took a deep sigh. Sandy feared her Intel Chief was about to break down and cry, but the woman was made of sterner stuff.
“This behavior is outside the book, Admiral. I’ll write it up, and we’ll publish it as a new chapter, but we’re off the map as far as alien capabilities, tactics, and behavior is concerned.”
Sandy stood and rested a reassuring hand on Penny’s shoulder. “Yes, we are. We surprised them with the cat’s bombs and now they’re surprising us with . . . something.”
For a moment, the admiral mulled the map. “Mimzy, if we picked up our skirts and ran for the jump, could we get through Jump Point Alpha and run for home?”
“If we abandoned the scientists on the planet below and ran for it in the next two minutes, we’d need to maintain 3.2 gees for both acceleration and deceleration to hit the jump at 50,000 kilometers an hour. We would then need boost at 3.1 gees toward the jump for home. That would get us out of that system before the aliens could adjust their course and cut us off from the jump.”
“Abandoning those below,” Van said, through a loud gulp.
Mimzy went on. “Admiral Miyoshi’s reinforced task force could not make it to Jump Point Alpha and would likely have to fight his way to the jump in the next system. If the transports waited to pick up the scientists dirt side, they would arrive at Jump Point Alpha behind Admiral Miyoshi. Our forces would be divided into three parts. However, I do not think that you will use that option.”
“Damn straight I won’t,” Sandy said.
“I was not addressing the moral question, Admiral. May I point out that the jump that we use out of the B-1 system is a fuzzy jump. We have made it policy not to let the aliens see us use those jumps since they cannot see them with their equipment.”
Sandy rolled her eyes. “That settles that. We fight here. It’s better to hold the jumps and wipe them out as they come through than it is to give up that defensive position and allow them to get at us piecemeal.”
“Assuming they don’t go for a defensive position as well,” Penny pointed out.
“Oh, shit,” Van muttered under his breath.
Sandy nodded. “That would explain why they’re slowing down so much in the B-2 system.”
“The thought has crossed my mind,” Sandy said
“Two sides, both on defensive, both waiting for the other side to risk a river crossing,” Mondi said. “It’s happened before.”
Penny’s shadow nodded, its whisker’s twitching.
“If we hold on the defensive too long,” Sandy said, “and Admiral Kitano wonders what’s holding us up, a battle fleet could pop out of nowhere in the B-1 system before the startled eyes of our enemy and there goes our secret of the fuzzy jumps.”
Van nodded.
“Okay, I’m open for suggestions on how to force an opposed jump.”
The morning went long and produced a whole lot of strange ideas . . . none of which looked like they’d work.