Kris Longknife: Tenacious (Kris Longknife novellas Book 12) by Mike Shepherd Read Free Book Online Page A

needed redoing in view of the new arrivals.
    “Commodore Kitano. We need to reorganize the fleet again. Pull enough ships out of the other squadrons to form five divisions.”
    “If we spread the fifteen ships into five divisions of three, we won’t have any combat-ready squadrons.”
    “That’s a risk we’ll have to take. Each veteran division will be assigned to one incoming squadron. The Helveticans get the Esperanto and Hispania contingent. Nelly, contact Commodore Miyoshi and see if his division would like to work up with the Yamato squadron. I don’t know who to team together on the others. Maybe during our first meeting in the Forward Lounge, we can find some folks who know each other.”
    Kris paused to pull her thoughts back to what her mouth was saying.
    “The point is that we have to retrain and restructure these new ships to fight the way we fight. You remember the first drill when you tried to follow one of Nelly’s jinking patterns without enough steering jets, and your ships weren’t battened down for the hard lateral gees.”
    “I remember it all too well,” the commodore agreed.
    “You can pull ships’ maintainers out of our plucked chickens to help them make the necessary mods before you run them out for a drill.”
    “You’re being nice to them.”
    “If I’d known it, I’d have been nice to you. I was learning how to maneuver large ships in formations the same time you were learning how to drive them.”
    “We all learned a lot.”
    “And these new folks have to learn it, too, but fast. Match battle-experienced ships with newcomers. Have them compete to get ready. Have the ships that make the grade drink the beer of those that don’t.”
    “That assumes we have beer.”
    “How much you want to bet me those newly arrived supply ships have some good drinking whiskey, beer, saki, you name it. When they discover there won’t be any more of that until the next crop comes in, a bet backed up with that will be a whole lot better training aid than their getting knocked around a bit.”
    The commodore chuckled. “I’m starting to see why you Longknifes are legendary.”
    “You’re starting to see why we’re still alive. And some of those who follow us as well.”
    Kris finished a few minutes later with Commodore Kitano and sent her on her way. Admirals Benson and Hiroshi were next on her meeting list. They’d already established contact with
Portsmouth
and
Sasebo
. Yes, they were yards and both admirals present agreed they should hook into Canopus Station.
    “There’s some risk putting all our eggs in one basket,” Admiral Benson said, “but there are advantages to keeping the fleet together. If we grow much more, we’ll need a second base to avoid congestion, but we’re not there yet.”
    “Can you make sure they match the station without denting anything?” Kris asked.
    “I did it fine,” Admiral Hiroshi said. “They can, too. Besides, we’ll put the pilots that docked me aboard them. First, I’ll hitch Tomiyama’s Sasebo yards to me, then Benson can hitch the Portsmouth yards to him. Two days after they arrive, we will be in fine shape.”
    Kris liked to hear that.
    Which left her with the business side.
    Pipra had enough on her plate to keep Kris busy until the cows came home, as the young woman put it, or, at least, until the fleet arrived. There were supplies to distribute among the mining concerns, plans to convert the new arrivals into system freighters, and production schedules at the fabricators and mills to balance.
    Putting agriculture, fisheries, and the basic industries that supported them as first priority was nice, but it left raw materials and production facilities underutilized. A bit of juggling and you got a bit less food produced, but reactors moved along the production line with more Smart Metal TM and electronic goodies that tied the colonials and the Alwans tighter into a seamless net for survival.
    Pipra showed up with a list of what manufacturing