“Nur Chim, Chief Engineer of the Royal Flush.”
“Not the Wild Goose?” Jack said.
“Oh, were we using that set of papers today?”
“How many sets of papers does this ship have?” Kris asked.
The engineer shrugged. “Ma’am, I’m paid to run a reactor. The fewer questions I ask, the happier the skipper is.”
“Why don’t you help us corral that young fellow that’s watched too many mercenary vids. Grampa Trouble always told me the only true oath one of them took was to get a pay-check on a regular basis or walk.”
The engineer produced wire and helped Jack lash the two together. “Grampa Trouble. You one of those Longknifes?”
“Yep.”
“Just my luck. Any chance I can talk you into keeping me separate from the rest of this bunch. I don’t think they’re going to be too happy to discover I didn’t blow the ship.”
“I think that can be arranged.”
Back on the Resolute, the crew was storing sleepers in three large lockers. Kris might have found their presence a surprise on a merchant ship under other circumstances. She flashed a smile Abby’s way and said. “Glad they have these.”
“Nice of them isn’t it.”
The engineer suggested five guys he wouldn’t mind sharing quarters with. Captain Jinks and the hard cases got another cell. The others filled up the center one. “Now let’s see what we’ve captured.”
Captain Drago was on the other ship’s bridge. He’d found four sets of papers, each for a different ship of the same description, each from a different port. All ports, however, were in Peterwald space.
“Haven’t I heard somewhere that there’s bad blood between you Longknifes and the Peterwalds?” Drago asked.
“Do you believe everything you hear in the media?”
“No, but if I hear something often enough, it kind of makes me shy when I get hit on the nose with something that smells of real proof.”
Kris changed the subject. “Nelly, can you access this ship’s network?”
“No. It’s solid-wire access only, no hot spots for remote.”
“Kind of makes you wonder if someone wasn’t paranoid about their privacy,” Kris said, then shouted, “Chief.”
“I’m here. I’m here. What’cha want, boss?”
“I want to plug Nelly directly into this network. You got an adapter?” It took the chief a minute and three tries, but he finally found one that worked. “Nelly, will you be safe wandering around in this thing?”
“Of course, Kris.”
A moment later Nelly muttered, “Ouch. That was not polite.”
“What?” came from all four humans in earshot.
“Well, everything on this system is encrypted. Heavily. Several different codes. You are right, Kris, your fake friends like their privacy.”
“You’ve handled codes before.”
“Yes, but this nasty idiot sister of mine is loaded with bombs. I go hunting for something, and she sends unpleasant little things right back at me.”
“Get out, Nelly. Now!”
“I am out, now, Kris, but there is nothing to worry about. Do you remember that triple-buffer system Aunt Tru gave me to use when I was looking for data on the rock chip from Santa Maria?”
“Yes.”
“I am using it to buffer me from bombs in this nasty network. None of them have gotten by the first buffer. Kris, I am safe. Now may I continue?”
Kris gnawed her lower lip. Why was Nelly so confident about rushing in where mere humans feared to tread? Did the computer really have the situation in hand or was she just a teenager blind to her risks. “Continue, Nelly. But if any bomb gets into your second level of buffers, stop and bring it to my attention.”
“Yes, Kris, I will most certainly do that.”
“Think she can handle it?” the captain asked.
Kris considered letting him in on just what Nelly had handled so far, then decided against it . . . for now. “She’ll do just fine. You finding anything interesting?”
“Not much hardware I dare touch,” he said. “There’s a lot of workstations on this bridge. Too many for an honest merchant ship. But with them all dead, there’s no way I can tell what they might be used for.”
Kris eyed them: helm, command, navigation. And two more. Weapons and defense she would have named them on the Typhoon.
“That’s interesting,” Nelly said.
“What’s interesting?” Kris asked.
“This merchant ship packs four twenty-four-inch pulse lasers.”
“Four twenty-four-inch pulse lasers! My first ship, the corvette Typhoon, carried that armament. Nelly, keep searching.”
“Kris, I think this ship has Smart Metal.” Nelly said.
“Smart Metal? Beni, what do you show?”
The chief ’s face screwed up in puzzlement as he studied his black box. He glided over to rest it in contact with the steel of the hatch. “No, it’s standard metal, same as any caveman used. But I am getting something. This is weird.”
“Kris, I think it would be best if I activated the defensive station,” Nelly said. “You will need to see what they are doing to get a full understanding of it. It is very unexpected.”
“Do it,” Kris said.
The station next to the helm lit up. On the screen appeared a replica of the ship. Most of it was red. One patch was green. The green section covered the side of the ship broadside to the Resolute. “They sheathed the ship in Smart Metal,” Nelly said.
“I thought you couldn’t mix smart metal and regular steel?” Jack said.
“That’s what the techs at Nuu Enterprises said. When you made a hull half smart, half steel, the new stuff migrates and mixes under unusual circumstances. Like when you’re hit.”
“Someone has put a film of Smart Metal over the regular hull, then shifts it around,” Captain Drago said. “You put this where you’re likely to get hit, and it ablates the laser heat.”
“Glad you didn’t get in a shoot-out with it,” Kris said.
Drago cringed.
“You think someone came up with a smarter way to use this stuff than the folks at NuuE?” Jack said.
“Looks that way. Though I wonder how this stuff does if you get a burn-through. Can it patch a hull breach?” Kris asked.
“Don’t know,” Captain Drago said. “But if it keeps my hull intact through a few hits, I’ll not look a gift horse under the arm pits.”
Kris didn’t like the idea of someone building on Nuu Enterprise’s patents. Or fighting ships like this one. And she liked even less that the idea had come from someone other than Grampa Al’s crew. “Nelly, find the nav and ship control routines and get them working.”
“I am hunting for them, Kris. This is not easy sledding.”
There were muffled laughs from the humans around Kris. “Keep up the good work, Nelly. Let us know when you think the ship is safe to move.”
“You planning on putting a crew aboard?” Drago asked.
“If you will loan me a full watch. Can’t leave this hulk drifting out here. No telling who might steal it.”
“Good point,” Drago agreed with a grin that would have fit well on any pirate from the proverbial seven seas of Earth.
5
Three days later the Resolute docked at High Chance. The ship of many names docilely followed in its wake. Kris spent the time in transit composing a full report of what had happened for General Mac, and a shorter version on developments for Grampa Al. “Your brain trust isn’t being very brainy,” Kris began. Kris composed a request for permission to visit New Bern, the nearest colony to Chance. Normally, she’d just visit a place, but being Commander, Navy District 41, and a princess . . . and a Longknife, New Bern might want to know she was coming before she showed up.
Kris watched the docking from the bridge of the Resolute . When she stood to leave, Sulwan stood as well. “Ah, Your Highness, the crew has asked me to pose a question to you?”
Very f
ormal. Even a tiny ducking of her head for a bow. “Yes,” Kris answered, trying to quickly slip into Noble when all she’d been thinking was Navy.
“About that ship out there. Is it a prize?”
Oh, right. Prize money. How could I have missed that? Kris did some quick thinking. “It certainly looks like a prize to me, but as to whether or not we can keep it, or sell it under the ancient prize rules is a question I don’t know how to answer. Tell the crew I’ll try to have an answer in a day or so.”
The bridge crew seemed content with that answer.
NELLY, LOOK INTO HOW WE CAN MAKE A SHIP APPEAR. PAPERS AS SOLID AS FALSE ONES CAN BE. AND NOT TRACEABLE TO MY HOLDING COMPANY THAT PUTS THE MONEY OUT.
I HAVE BEEN WORKING ON THAT. WHAT DO YOU WANT TO NAME THE SHIP?
Kris had had enough of being all sugar-and-spice nice. THE WASP. CROSS IT AND IT WILL STING YOU.
Penny waited at the gangway, Ron at her elbow. Kris raised an inquiring eyebrow. “A Longknife goes out with one ship and a second follows her home. I figured you’d want to keep it and needed an adult to ask if you could,” the mayor said.
“Depends on what legal niceties Chance will let me pull over some eyes, Mayor.”
Kris filled in both on the vanishing jump buoys and her little discovery of why. Captain Drago wandered up and stood by listening, apparently ready to provide a non-Longknife viewpoint.
“So you blasted the ship blasting your buoys,” Ron said.
“Hardly,” Kris answered. “If there had been a fight, we would have been the one blasted. That ship is as heavily armed as a Kamikaze-class corvette.”
“A Typhoon in sheep’s clothing,” Penny whistled.
“Yes, yes,” Captain Drago cut in. “This young Longknife did very well. She had my ship fake steering problems and we invited the other ship over to help us. Thank heaven for that.”
“We put most of the crew asleep with drug darts,” Jack said, quickly gliding past the “most.” “Upon interrogation, several admitted they boarded us with the intent of seizing the ship and taking us captive. Only the captain knows what he intended to do with us once we were prisoners. He’s not talking.”
“So you did unto them before they could do unto you,” Ron said in summary.
“By about half a second,” Captain Drago said.
“Why was the ship destroying the buoys?” Ron asked.
“Your guess is as good as mine,” Kris said carefully. “There was nothing in their records and those who know aren’t talking. I replaced all the buoys. They’ll tell us if any ships head this way from Brenner Pass.”
Ron looked at Kris like she was crazy paranoid, but didn’t say it. “Where is this ship registered?”
“About four different places, depending on which of its four sets of papers you’re looking at,” Captain Drago said. “All in Greenfeld territory.”
Ron’s next glance at Kris said she was less paranoid than before. “I want you, Captain, to come with me. There’re some folks dirtside that will need your testimony.”
“Not mine?” Kris said.
“I don’t think you could help this matter,” Ron said.
“You don’t trust me because of what Hank told you.”
“I don’t trust either of you any further than I can throw that space station of yours. Kris, until my people can make up their own minds, the less they see of you, the better.”
“We have twenty members of that ship’s crew in custody,” Kris said. “They appear to have been involved in crimes ranging from destruction of government property and endangering the spaceways to conspiracy to commit piracy and maybe murder. I’m not prepared to try them. Can I turn them over to Chance?”
“Judge Maydell is working on that wreck of a ship of yours along with Judges Billie and Ardnet. They should be able to convene a court. Try them. Half a dozen of those old farts have tried or defended cases. It’ll be good for the kids to see justice in action.”
“And the final disposal of the ship?” Kris asked.
“Forfeiture of property involved in a crime is not an unusual penalty here on Chance,” Ron said. “Now, Kris, if you will excuse me and the Captain, we need to leave.” And he did.
Kris waited until the mayor was out of earshot, weighed several dozen nasty things to say, and found that all she wanted to do was ask Penny how things were going. Penny’s brief boiled down to fine. “Everything okay with the Patton Museum?” Kris asked. “No kids hurt?”
“Nothing a bandage couldn’t handle.” Penny studied the new ship through the ports. “She got a name?”
“Several. If I can swing buying her, she’ll be the Wasp.”
Penny considered that for a moment. “Nice name. I think I like it. Armed like the Typhoon, you say?”
“And protected by a Smart Metal cladding. Chief Beni can explain it to you.” Penny’s commlink began flashing.
“That was fast. Judge Maydell wants to borrow our court facilities. Do we have any?”
“If they say we do. Let them have anything they want.”
Kris was surprised, considering how long she’d been left hanging when charged with misappropriation of government property on Wardhaven, to find that the court would convene at noon the next day. She was not surprised to find that the court-assigned lawyers divided up the accused pretty much the way the Resolute’s brig had them. Those with Engineer Chim pleaded guilty to lesser charges, threw themselves on the mercy of the court . . . and turned state’s evidence.
The seven in the middle cells were found innocent of most charges by right of youth and ignorance. They were found guilty of being something that boiled down, at least to Kris, to being stupid and sentenced to probation and community service.
The last six were the hard cases. They denied that the court had any jurisdiction over them, seeing how the actions they were accused of were committed closer to Brenner than Chance, and demanded that they be sent there. They entered that plea on their own after declining the provided legal assistance.
Judge Maydell made short work of that. “You’re here in my court, and I don’t pass off my problems to others lightly. The property you destroyed was from High Chance. The ship you boarded was chartered to High Chance.” Her gavel came down hard. “Prosecution, present your case.”
Kris was the first witness. Again, she recounted the story of how the Resolute and ship of many names came to cross paths.
“You caused the Resolute to appear to malfunction?” Judge Billie, a short, white-haired woman, asked.
“Yes, Your Honor. It was my professional judgment that in a shoot-out, the Resolute would not survive.”
“And what did you find on that ship?” the prosecutor asked.
“It was heavily armed.” Kris described both the ship’s hidden armament and the weapons taken from the boarding party. “And when we boarded, the first officer threw a destruct switch. Only the action of the engineer saved all aboard from death.”
Cross-examination did not go nearly as well. “She murdered my girlfriend in cold blood,” was former Captain Jinks’ opening statement. “She should be here, not us.”
An objection was followed quickly by, “Overruled.”
“I imagine there’s a question in there somewhere for the witness,” said Judge Maydell. “Did you kill anyone?”
Kris swallowed hard and described switching to lethal ammunition to take down the woman in armor.
“See,” Jinks spat. “Cold blood. They say we were armed. Of course we were. There’re crazy people out there in between the stars. Crazy people like this Longknife girl.”
The gavel came down for silence. “Your point is made. Do any of the defense lawyers have anything to add to this matter?”
“Not at this time.”
There was a pause while the judges studied the ceiling, and Kris began to wonder where she could hire a good lawyer.
Judge Billie was the first to speak. “You say this was a judgment call on your part, Ms. Longknife.”
“It was my professional judgment that the woman was armed and dangerous and that the Resolute was in severe danger. I ordered her not to go for her weapon. She did. I shot her.”
“And you based that professional judgment on . . .”
“Combat experience, Your Honor.”
The prosecutor stood. “May I lay the witness’s military record before the court?”
“Please do.”
The prosecutor entered into evidence his exhibit, a three-page listing of Kris’s Navy experience. First copy went to the court reporter, then to the defense, then one each for the judges. Their reading was interrupted by a whistle from Ardnet. “You’ve seen a lot of action, young lady.”
“The prosecution understands that this is not a complete record of her service, but only what is in the public domain.”
“There’s more?” Judge Maydell said, eyeing Kris over reading glasses.
“Yes, ma’am.”
“She should have to give it all up,” Jinks demanded.
“This is a full list of your awards and decorations?” Judge Billie asked. Kris nodded.
“Nothing spectacular there,” Judge Ardnet said.
“Clearly you never served, Ardy,” Billie said. “The Wounded Lion is dated right after the Devolution ceremonies on Paris. I notice that you’ve got a V for combat valor added to your Devolution Medal. Is that a mistake? There’s no official report of any combat taking place while we and the Society of Humanity were arranging that whopper of a divorce.”
“You are correct,” Kris said.
“That there was no fighting, or that you got a V for valor in combat there?”
Kris said nothing.
“She has to answer the court,” Jinks half screamed.
“Not if the court chooses to withdraw the question,” Judge Maydell said. “Judge Wilhelmina?”
“I withdraw the question. I can wait for the memoirs,” the woman said. “But it is clear to me that this young woman has seen combat far beyond what we have come to expect recently of one so young. I find her professional judgment is something this court should respect. What say you, Madame Senior Justice.”
Judge Maydell eyed Ardent. He nodded. “This court finds that no one should have to wait until they are dead to prove that they are in harm’s way. We find that the witness exercised legitimate professional judgment in this matter and shot first. The court will withhold final judgment in this matter until all testimony has been heard. Now, shall we get back to the case at hand.” And the gavel rapped down.
Kris Longknife: Resolute Page 9
