Her Royal Highness, Grand Admiral Kris Longknife turned to the four faces on the main screen in front of her. She took in a deep breath and began to see if her idea might actually have the seeds of a plan in it.
“I am facing a conundrum,” she began. “If we fight, we fight outnumbered three to one. I don’t like those odds.”
Heads on the screen nodded. Even Ron managed to made some sort of a nod, though it started at his waist.
“It also appears that we cannot run. The only jump point that doesn’t have a stronger fleet between it and us seems to go nowhere.”
The humans nodded again. Ron breathed out something that might pass for a sigh.
“Yet, we cannot surrender. I bear a commission from my king and it does not allow me to take myself off to anywhere a rebel pasha may drag me.”
No one nodded this time. It looked like all four were holding their breath. Waiting for a Longknife to pull another miracle out of some place or another. With a deep breath, Kris started feeling around for a pair of rabbit ears.
“Ron. During the Iteeche War, your warships played hobs with our fire control systems by casting their mass density somewhere else. I believe you used that same capability when you came hunting for me and ran into a couple of Greenfeld cruisers.”
“Yes, we did use the masker then, and we have maskers on our ships now,” he answered, then added, “as do the ships pursing us.”
Kris nodded. One question down, now for the big one. “Have you ever tried putting more than one masker on a ship? Have you ever had one ship throwing its mass in several directions at the same time?”
“No. Why would we do such a thing?”
“I’ll get back to you in a minute on that,” Kris said and switched to her two task force commanders. “How many target drones do you have on board your ships?”
“Normally, we are issued twelve. We replace them as we use them up, but on average, accounting for normal wastage, we’d only have nine to ten,” Commodore Ajax answered. “However, we hadn’t had much chance for gunnery practice before we sailed, so our holdings were pretty close to complete. Then, before we departed, someone shipped a full resupply to us.” Ajax looked off screen to check something. “BatRon 13 has on average twenty-three per ship. I’d have to check with BatRon 14 for their count.”
Afon was ready with his own answer. “BatRon 11 has the same number, say twenty-three on each ship. I’ve made a call to BatRon 12. I should have that number in a moment.”
“Ron, are your battlecruisers carrying any target drones?”
“Yes, we are, Princess. But ours are not so sophisticated as yours. Ours are just balloons with small rocket motors attached.”
Which told Kris that the Iteeche Empire might not be as committed to good gunnery as the US ships were . . . assuming the ships actually did some gunnery practice. Considering how many of their issued targets were still in storage on Kris’s ships, it didn’t bode well for them in a shootout either.
“Okay. Now a question for you, Ron. How badly do you have to be outnumbered before your sense of honor or whatever they were appealing to you for a surrender, would kick in? I don’t mean how badly would things have to be before you surrendered. All I want is a number large enough that they’d turn tail and run.”
“You mean how badly would I have to be outnumbered before I could honorably choose to turn my back on an enemy and still be able to claim the honors of war from my Emperor?”
“I think that’s about what I asked.”
Ron thought for a long minute. When he began to talk, his words came slow and thoughtful. “In our histories, any fleet that is outnumbered two-to-one by a force where all things are equal has been able to depart the field of battle with honor.”
Ron turned and barked a few words to someone off screen. An answer came back a moment later, to be followed by more questions and answers.
“I should have talked to my tactical officer first. If I had, I would not have had to worry that I was giving you a false answer. It seems that our tactical computer is made ready to answer your question. At two-to-one odds, we are required to break off action at all costs and save what we can. At odds of three-to-two we may engage without fear of being asked to make serious apologies for our stupidity to our superiors.”
Kris was left to wonder how different a serious apology was from just a normal old apology, but she didn’t have time to ask that question. “So, we would need twice as many ships to assure ourselves that they would flip ship and run for the nearest jump.”
“Yes,” Ron said, but the word hung in the air as more a question than a statement.
“They have one hundred and twenty-eight ships,” Kris said slowly. “We would need two hundred and fifty-six ships to send them running.”
“Yes,” Ron said, and made his answer sound like a lead weight.
“So, if thirty-two of our ships could pass themselves off as a squadron of eight, we’d have two hundred and fifty-six plus our other sixteen. Faced with that, they’d have to run.”
“Yes, their tactical computers would advise them to break off contact. However, how do we make those thirty-two ships appear to our pursuers as a massive fleet?” Ron asked, puzzled.
“Your sensor suites are pretty much the same as ours. Your range finders and target control systems rely on visual, laser, gravitational, as well as electronic sensors. I propose we use human gear to fool the first two, Iteeche maskers to cover the gravitational, and then jam the rest. Doing that, we show our pursuing Iteeche a fleet of two hundred and fifty-six ships coming back through the next jump. A fleet that they can see, laser, and get magnetic and gravitational anomalies off of, but can only get hash off of electronically.
Kris turned to her commanders. “Commodore Afon, your squadron will be left guarding the jump while the rest of us pass out of the system. Once Commodore Ajax has got our ships multiplied like good loaves and fishes, we’ll come back through the jump and do our best to scare Ron’s rebels out of their pants and out of this system.”
There was dead silence on net for a painfully long minute as people mulled Kris’s latest rabbit.
It was Ron that broke the quiet of the tomb. “Pardon me, Kris Longknife, but I fear that your plan will not work.”
“What’s the problem, Ron?”
Ron gazed at the deck for a moment, then said, “I cannot allow you to place maskers on your ships. Just as you have technology that your government insists must not be given into our hands, we have some things that we are keeping from you. The masker is just such a technology. I cannot allow you to place them on your ships, even assuming that a ship could duplicate its signal seven times. You know, that has never been done.”
“I understand that point, Ron. I was expecting that we could create a masker as soon as we jump out of this system and test the concept.”
“That is another problem. We do not make the maskers out of Smart Metal. To do that, we would have to involve you humans. Even more, I do not know that we could make them out of Smart Metal even if we had the programming skill.”
Kris’s rabbit hopped back into its hat and went poof.
Quickly, she examined her options and found them nil. Well, maybe there was one.
“Ron, if I were to give you one of our prohibited technologies, could you let us have access to your maskers?”
Ron’s head was shaking even as she spoke. On an Iteeche, a head shake wasn’t just a nod. They could turn their neck through almost 270 degrees, something that was a survival skill in the depths of their oceans long ago.
“I am sorry, Kris. I know you mean well, but I do not believe that your writ extends to granting us any embargoed technology. I know that I have no authority in that area.”
“Even for a little while? Just long enough for us to chase them out of the system and reach your Emperor?”
Ron glanced off screen, then stepped out of view. The audio take from his ship dropped out of the net.
“Kris, are you sure you could grant them an embargoed tech?” Jack asked. “Don’t you think you might need to consult with the representatives from the other systems that we’ve got on board?”
Kris had to admit to the possibility that she should be doing what Ron was, going off the general net and holding a powwow with power. However, she had never had to ask permission for how she intended to fight a battle. Of course, avoiding this battle would involve doing more than fighting. Jack might be right.
She was saved from having to start a consultative session with her putative subordinate diplomats by Ron coming back on screen.
“I am sorry, Kris, but my advisors are adamant that I not give you access to the maskers. I can not go against their unanimous advice.”
“I’ve just been advised that I should probably consult my advisors and would, doubtlessly, find myself facing the same brick wall.”
“We are called to court, but there is no way that we can obey. I fear that I will have to make a serious apology to my Emperor if I live long enough to see him again.”
Ron’s words were sad to the point of mortal. Kris wondered if such an apology might be required of her by the Emperor as well. Hmm.
“May I interject myself here?” Nelly said from Kris’s collar bone.
“If you have an idea, Nelly, the floor is yours.” Kris answered.
“It is possible that I can offer another way forward,” Nelly said, and Ron perked up.
“Nelly, you have often been helpful. Do you have an idea?” Ron asked.
“I do not have any idea but Kris’s. However, I might be able to offer a way around your fear of your technology being transferred to the humans.”
“How?” both Ron and Kris said at the same time.
“As a computer, I keep some of my processes in temporary memory. When I wipe that temporary memory, everything that was in it is gone. Even I cannot retrieve it. Normally, I only keep low order functions in temporary memory. However, I could expand my temporary memory and store everything I needed to scope out the specs and workings of the maskers, how to reproduce them in Smart Metal as well as the production, testing and operations of them. Once we no longer need that data set, I would then wipe it out, reorganize the matrix down to the atomic level and reuse it for something else. I would not only have none of the data, but I would have no matrix left that I had organized specifically for handling that data. There would be nothing there, Ron.”
Ron stared through the screen for several long seconds. “You could do that?”
“Yes,” Nelly answered straightforwardly. “In addition, before I wiped that memory, I could provide you with the specifications and supporting programs to create the maskers out of Smart Metal. The Iteeche Emperor would gain something and the humans would gain nothing. Well, nothing but the potential of arranging for the departure of these rebels and our safe arrival into the presence of your Emperor.”
“But if a human asked you to make a full data dump to a backup storage while the operation was in process?” came from the Iteeche side of the screen. An Imperial advisor in green and white court raiment came to stand beside Ron. He said something more; the translation came from Ron’s breast. “If that woman, Princess Kris Longknife, were to order you to do something, you would obey, would you not?”
Kris failed to suppress a smile. Exactly how would Nelly answer that question?
“Statistically speaking,” Nelly said, “I am known to obey Princess Kris some 85% of the time. A further 12% of the time, I obey after I argue with her or give her lip. I believe that in some three percent of the instances where she orders me, I do not do what she wants and she decides that I was correct.”
Kris made a face, “That sounds about right. However, I think I can go one step farther for the sake of your counselor and your Imperial embargo of restricted technology. Nelly, log this order. This order supersedes all orders from me on this subject and is not subject to revocation, change or modification in any other way by me. Are you ready to copy under these conditions, Nelly?”
“I am ready to record in permanent, read only text, Kris.”
“You will work alone with the Iteeche to construct the maskers that we need to get out of the mess we are presently in. You will work with no human. You will store all data you need to complete this project in temporary storage retrievable only by Ron the Iteeche. When you are finished with this project you will provide a complete data dump to Ron and then you will erase that data when the project is over and reorganize the matrix that you have used.”
Kris paused for a moment, then satisfied with that part of her order, she went on, “You will use Smart Metal aboard both the human and Iteeche battlecruisers to create enough maskers to make it appear that each of our ships are followed by seven ghost ships. The maskers that you create on human ships will be operated by you or autonomous systems you put in place. You will make whatever arrangements you need to assure that the maskers placed on human ships cannot be subjected to any examination, by any means you know to be available to human technology. If such an examination is attempted, you will have the Smart Metal of the masker immediately reduce itself to its basic structure. You developed something like that to operate on any of your children if they were tampered with, didn’t you?”
“Yes, Kris, I have and I can apply the same dead man’s switch to these systems.”
Kris looked around her bridge, then back at the figures on the screens. “Does anyone have any further suggestions? Ron, is there any addition any of your advisors would like to add?”
“If one of your masker systems should shut itself down,” a Navy officer in an Iteeche gray and gold uniform said, “that will make our entire operation fail. Ships that can be seen and lazed do not simply lose their mass in the middle of space.”
“That is true,” Kris said. “That logic will encourage my ship captains to assure that all the maskers are under guard at all times.”
“No, that is not what I meant to say,” the Iteeche officer said. “Any system can fail. If your computer designs a system to ensure that our technology is not tampered with, could it not also activate at the worst time for no other reason than a system failure?”
“Nelly?” Kris said, handing it off to her.
“The admiral is correct,” Nelly began, showing that she could now read Iteeche Navy rank, “if I make a mistake, the entire operation could fail. However, sir, I respectfully propose that I can come up with several fail-safeties that will assure that the destruct systems are not activated until and unless there is a breach of your equipment’s security. I had intended to keep myself in the loop to perform an eyes-on examination of the situation as it develops. I could also include Princess Longknife as well as an Iteeche in that loop if you wish. That would mean that we would move a bit slower, but, what with the guards maintained around the physical systems, we should know who did what and how.”
Kris eyed Ron. “We could make the destruction sequence work automatically, or we could make it only work after the attempted breach has been reviewed by a human and/or Iteeche in real time. Which way do you want to go?”
“Give us a moment, please, Kris,” and the feed from the Iteeche flag cut off.
Kris took a couple of deep breaths. “That didn’t go down the way I’d expected.”
“Did I help, Kris?” Nelly asked,
“You were outstanding, gal. I thought we were dead there for a moment, then you came up with the save. This legendary Longknife miracle is officially a shared Kris and Nelly miracle.”
“Thank you, Kris, now about my pay . . .” Nelly began, but the take from the Iteeche flag came back on and attention on Kris’s flag bridge turned to Ron and several Iteeche standing around him.
“Kris, we would like to consider going to a destruction loop that would include both you and I in it. However, we would also like to include in the guard around the maskers Iteeche, ah, you would call them Imperial Marines. Is there any problem with a detachment of eight of them going aboard each of your ships that will be using masker technology?”
“I don’t think so,” Kris said slowly, glancing Jack’s way. His eyes were worried slits but he nodded. “We may restrict their movement the same way you might restrict our Marine guards stationed on your ships.”
“Movement restrictions, so long as they don’t involve the area around the maskers, will be acceptable. We would also like to have them take some sensors for alerting us to probes directed at the maskers.”
“What kind of sensors?” Kris asked cautiously.
“Something to detect x-rays and other invasive probing.”
“Now it’s my turn to need to consult with my staff,” Kris said.
Again, the Iteeche screen went blank.
“Folks, I need input and I need it fast. Sensors.”
“Hard to say, ma’am. I don’t know the state of their sensor technology.”
“However,” Captain Tosen put in, “any device that comes aboard to record x-rays could also take readings from the whole of the electromagnetic spectrum as well as any other sensor that was imbedded in the device. We know that they are very curious about the crystal armor that we use to slow down laser hits and then reflect them back into space.”
“Is the risk of compromising embargoed technology high enough for us to gamble this entire diplomatic initiative falling apart?” Jacques asked, coming out of his seat. Kris had forgotten that he and Amanda had been sitting there; they’d been so quiet. “Kris, do you trust Ron, your Iteeche friend?”
Kris nodded.
“Yes,” the chief of staff said, “but can you trust every Iteeche in those squadrons? Can you trust that someone a whole lot less trustworthy has gotten a few intelligence gathering assets aboard those battlecruisers? Will Ron know and approve every Iteeche that boards our ships? How many intelligent assets do you think Admiral Crossenshield has slipped onto your ships or the merchant ships following us?”
Kris scowled at the screen. “Did you have to put it that way?”
“What other way can I put it, Admiral? I’m paranoid.”
“I’ve worshiped at the altar of that virtue many times,” Kris admitted, and couldn’t suppress a smile. I’ve finally met someone more paranoid than I am.
Kris took in a deep breath and made her decision. “Reopen the comm link with Ron,” and three Iteeche immediately appeared on the screen.
“Ron, I understand your need to know whether or not your tech is being toyed with. I’m willing for you to send over one of your sensor experts. We will show them exactly what sensors we’re using to keep your gizmo secure. He can watch it with our tech. That’s the best I can do. I’m sure you’d be just as concerned if I asked to put sensors of unknown capability aboard all of your ships.”
Ron turned to the counselor in court garments of green and white. “I told you that she would not accept your wild bid. You should be grateful that she didn’t just slam the door in our faces but instead, she has left us an out.”
The counselor muttered something that the translator did not catch.
“What did he say?” Kris whispered to Nelly.
“Something along the lines of ‘Nothing ventured, nothing gained’,” Nelly whispered, “but with strong sexual overtones.”
“Add that one to your dictionary,” Kris ordered softly.
“Done.”
Ron had bumped elbows with the counselor and he fled. That bit of drama over, Ron turned back to Kris. “We will use the option you have just laid out. Our Marines will also field strip their weapons for you and you may apply sensors to anything they bring aboard. No doubt, you will expect that someone will attempt to slip something aboard one of your ships. I will do my best to see that no such device leaves our ships and you should feel free to assure yourself that I have not failed to keep my pledge to you, Princess.”
“I trust your pledge to me, Ron. You may trust my pledge to you. Unfortunately, neither one of us can assure that any of our crew are not in someone else’s pocket.
“A gentle phrase, Kris. I was thinking more of a traitor.”
Kris stored that fact away to discuss further with Nelly. “I believe we are done here. Are you willing to allow Nelly access to your gizmo now or do you want to delay until we are on the other side of the jump?”
“I am not worried about the ships following after us getting anything from your Nelly looking into our gizmo, as you called it. They already know what we all know. Let your Nelly set up a very tight beam to my flag so that they discover as little of what we are about as possible and we shall begin to see if what we are attempting is even possible.”