“He says he will be at the shuttle landing in thirty minutes and that he will be out pushing.”
Thirty minutes later, Kris was at the shuttle dock when it came in. Steve wasn’t exactly outside pushing, but he was the first off. “We need to talk,” Kris snapped at him.
“Yes, ma’am, but please not here,” he said, taking her elbow and leading her along with him, ahead of a small tide of workers moving purposefully out of the shuttle and off to assignments with hardly a word spoken.
Kris kept her mad up, but she couldn’t help glance over her shoulder at the crew behind her. There were no more perfect gig lines, no one was visibly ex-Navy. Still, she would take them on board any command. A look at their determination said Grampa Trouble would take them, too. Kris found herself edged out of that driven tide and seated at a table in the back of Chang’s New Chicago Pizza and Chinese Waffle House with a deftness that seemed to show planning on Steve’s part.
Once seated, she repeated her opener. “We’ve got to talk.”
He eyed his watch. “One day. Damn, we all lose the pool.”
Kris’s curiosity won out over her anger. “What pool?”
“We figured we’d keep you buffaloed for at least two days, some figured three or four. No one bet on you calling our bluff in less than twenty-four hours.”
Kris leaned back in her seat and took a deep breath. Maybe anger wasn’t the best way to handle this situation. If it was, she could always pull her mad back out and slap Steve around with it a couple of times. But if it wasn’t, well, there was no way to take it back. “What is going on here?” Kris demanded.
“When you took command of that fast patrol boat of yours, PF-109 was it, how much respect did your crew give you?”
Kris frowned in thought. “I don’t know. Some. Not much. They were green as petunias. We skippers were, well, everyone knew we were problem kids. Juvenile delinquents, hooligans were some of the nicer things we were called.”
“I read about you and your helmswoman landing a racing skiff on the green of some golf course.” Steve laughed. “What were you trying to do?”
“Fintch scored off the charts when they used games to test her, but she’d never actually maneuvered a ship, never even been off planet in her life. I figured she deserved a go at something smaller than a PF before she started honking it around the sky.” Kris shrugged. “So she missed on her first try. She was never that far off again.”
“She learned she could respect herself,” Steve said softly. “And the whole crew found that they could count on you to help them do their best. And respected you for it.” Kris nodded.
“How long did you have to get things shipshape before things blew up in your face?”
Kris knew almost to the second how long they’d had from the moment she first came aboard the PF-109 until she’d been relieved of her command and hauled off in cuffs. But that wasn’t the question Steve was asking. “A whole lot more time than you’ve got right now,” she answered.
“All my people know is that you’re one of those damn Longknifes.”
“That’s all one word,” Kris interrupted.
“However you say it, some may hold it against you. Some may look at your grampas and think, wow. Me, I look at the package, and I worry for my friends and neighbors. Just who are you? What have you got to prove? Are you going to turn a perfectly good day into a bloody massacre because you have something to show people who are thirty light-years away? I need answers to those questions before I dare take the muzzle off you.”
The former Naval person leaned back in his chair as Tony Chang settled drinks in front of them and left. “Who are you, Longknife?” Steve asked.
Kris took a long pull on her soda as he did the same. A soda, today, not a beer, for him, too. The place where everyone knew everything wanted this to be a very sober discussion.
“My father, Prime Minister that he is, figured me for the permanent campaign manager for my older brother, maybe his, too.”
Steve frowned at that. “Parents often have the worst expectations for their kids.”
“Mother just wanted me to marry wealthy. Give her a couple of grandkids to mess up as bad as she messed up us kids.” This drew a deep scowl from the retired lieutenant.
“So you ran off and joined the Navy,” he said.
“Fool me, I thought it was one place where I would be just me. Where I could be measured on my own merit.” Kris turned, stared at the bulkhead. “But wherever I go, they’ve heard of those-damn-Longknifes, and I’m just one of them.”
Steve shrugged. “Sorry, kid, but you are.”
“So I’ve discovered. But . . .” she nailed him with her eyes. He did not look away. “Let’s get a couple of things straight. One, I want just as much for Chance to be left on its own as anyone born here. Fourth generation, or whatever. Do you hear me?”
“I think so.”
“Second, I do not want a bloodbath before, during, or after this little squadron visit. I don’t even want Hank to cut his little pinky. I want Hank to come, to see, and toddle right back out Jump Point Alpha, or Beta, or whatever. I don’t like the idea of there being a Longknife and a Peterwald in this system any more than you do. The last thing I want is for us to come to blows. You hear me?”
“I hear you, but, I’m kind of having a hard time figuring out what I’m hearing. I mean, the Battle of Wardhaven and all. I figured you’d be gunning for him.”
Kris eyed the ceiling and said a prayer to any God willing to listen to the likes of her. She let out a long sigh and chose her words carefully. “Steve, you study much history?”
“I like to think I studied a lot of it.”
“What were the longest, nastiest wars?”
He thought for a minute. “Aside from the irregular ones, those where you had a hard time finding one of the sides, I guess I’d say the ones where the two sides were evenly matched. Where neither side would win a solid victory over the other.”
“And so the war dragged on year after year, campaign after campaign, with both doing a lot of hurt to the other, the people paying a higher and higher price for the war, but neither able to swing a knockout blow at the other?”
“Yep.”
“What would you say about the strength of the two alliances, Peterwald verses Longknife.” Yeah, let’s get personal.
“Your Grampa Ray is ahead.”
“Enough for a knockout blow?” Steve shook his head.
“My feelings exactly. Now do you see why I want to make sure this station doesn’t just plop itself into Hank’s lap? And why the games dirtside go smooth as they can?”
“If I didn’t know you better, I’d call you a pacifist.”
“Hell no,” Kris spat. “Given enough time, I figure we’re going to have Peterwald so beat that he’ll give up without a fight, like, what were they? The Soviet Union back in the twentieth? But in the meantime, we have to keep our powder dry and never turn our back on them for a second.”
“So now all I have to do is persuade folks that you will not ride roughshod over them,” Steve said, pushing his chair back.
Kris stood. “When we were trying to get that collection of extraneous junk ready for the Battle of Wardhaven, I did walk-arounds to see how things were going for myself . . .”
“I was planning on doing just that. Why don’t we do them together for a while?”
“Fine, the other was stand-up meetings twice a day. That way folks learned what others were doing.”
“Stand-ups,” Steve echoed.
“Stand-ups. So no one gets comfortable.”
“I like it.
And so security was enhanced, auto guns were checked, cameras were on-line and a small horde of nano-scouts released into the station next morning. The capacitors were full and, just fifteen minutes before Hank’s flag was due to hook up, the reactor came up to cheers stationwide. Oh, and Kris even got six hours’ sleep.
“I guess we’re about as ready for them as we’ll ever be,”
Kris said, turning to Steve. “So, do we meet them at the pier or stay safely behind security in the Command Center?”
“Oh, didn’t Ron tell you?” Steve grinned.
“All my stand-ups, all my walk-arounds, and why do I think I’m about to be slapped with a surprise?”
“Well, the Last Chance Ballet and Modern Dance Class of Mrs. Toronado will be meeting Hank’s flag and giving him flowers and a basket of baked goods from the 4-H prize winners at last year’s Last Chance County Fair.”
“And the other ships.”
“We have kids from the Highland Dance school, and German Culture Classes, the Kabuki Theater, the Desert Dances and . . . , anyway, there will be pretty little girls and boys stammering hello to all the ships and offering them baskets of goodies that won’t have been totally eaten on the ride up.” Steve was grinning from ear to ear.
“Drown them in kindness.”
“That’s the whole idea. Show them that there’s a lot to like about Chance, and not a whole lot we want to change.”
“Hank ain’t gunna like that.”
“Why don’t that bother me,” Steve said through a huge grin.
10
“We have unknown nano-scouts loose on our station,” Beni reported fifteen seconds after Hank’s flag opened its hatch.
“No surprise there,” Kris sighed, and prepared to see that her station stayed her station.
“Our nanos are trailing them and will report on what they are interested in,” Beni added.
While nanos did their tiny thing, locals that were somewhat larger, but still tiny in most perspectives, did their thing. Kris and Steve watched as each of the docking details came face-to-face with a mob of short people, doing cute to perfection while dancing their own particular version of ancient Earth folk dances. To Kris, it looked like the shortest, say four- to six-year-olds, were doing about the same thing. But they were backed up by ten- to twelve-year-olds doing a better job of telling the polka from the Highland fling.
And the adult supervisors made it clear to the grizzled chiefs of the docking details that those cute kids holding baskets almost as big as they were intended to give them up only to the captain of the ship.
Kris’s Command Center struggled only moderately successfully to keep from rolling on the floor, laughing, as chiefs made hurried calls to their superiors and officers arrived, many still putting on formal dress, to receive this bit of local largess.
“Don’t those dolts have any experience with a formal port visit?” Beni asked no one in particular. “Commander Santiago briefed us on what to expect on Hikila. We were all looking forward to topless babes in grass skirts. In zero g.”
“What happened?” Kris asked, remembering nothing like that.
“You went dirtside and we got no show at all. No shore leave, either.”
“No shore leave?”
“Yeah,” Beni sighed. “She kept us locked and cocked for a rescue mission. I heard her tell you that you were on your own, but she was lying through her Navy-issued teeth. If you had so much as whispered for help, she would have had the Marines and half the crew of the Halsey down there in no time at all.”
Which was interesting information for Kris, but only of historical value.
She kept her eyes on several rows of monitors, following the proceedings at all six ship’s landing areas. On the Incredible ’s monitor, four men in civilian clothes slipped across the brow and dodged past the greeting party.
“Mark those four,” Kris ordered. “Keep your eyes peeled for similar teams,” she ordered Jack, Beni and Penny at her side. Steve was talking into a headset. At the top of the escalators from Pier 1, two youths in the uniform of Last Chance Safety and Security joined the four. The uniform wasn’t much, just jeans and flannel shirts, but the smiles from the young man and woman were uniformly wide.
Kris took a step back to evaluate the whole situation. “They’re from Hank’s flagship. Doesn’t look like there are any other groups trying to make a breakout.”
Heads nodded agreement, but eyes stayed on the screens. Now two more came active as the four made their way along Deck 1, not in any straight path, but meandering between different landing areas, eyeing the globes that held the auto guns. Frowning now and then and whispering to themselves or their commlink.
“Commlink,” Beni said. “I’m tracking communications but I can’t crack the code. Kris, can Nelly take a look at it?”
“Nelly, have at it.”
“This should be fun,” her computer said.
“Here comes a second team of walkers,” Penny said.
“Different ship?” Kris asked.
“No, flag. I think Hank’s holding it close to his chest.”
“Let’s see where these go,” Steve said, and whispered into his link. Two kids waited for them as they topped the escalator.
“This is rather easy,” Jack said.
“Well this code is not,” Nelly reported. “It is totally revised from what we saw on Turantic and the six battleships at Wardhaven. I’m going to need a lot more transmissions before I can crack it.”
“Monitor it, Nelly, and have fun.”
Jack was still giving his monitors an unhappy frown. “If I was in charge here, I’d try something outside the station.”
“We’re looking for that,” Steve said. “All the 6-inch batteries at the tip of the docks have cameras.” So saying, he switched several monitors over to show the outside of the ships. “No activity.”
“One of their nanos just tried to burn one of ours,” Penny said. All sixty kilos of Kris’s Smart Metal were nano-scouts.
“Wonder how many scouts Hank has,” Kris said. “Penny, scout weapons release. Let’s see who has the last one flying.”
The battle was short and one-sided. Hank had not brought nearly enough scouts, or they weren’t as heavily armed as Kris’s. Since nanos offered no quarters to each other, there were no prisoners taken, none to interrogate or examine. Well, not many.
“We’ve identified the wreckage of several nanos, not fully burned,” Jack reported shortly after Penny reported the firefight over. “I’m marking them for retrieval. If they’re Smart Metal, we can examine what makes them tick, not tick.”
“Ouch,” Kris said, the realization dawning on her that the ability to program your own metal might offer your enemy the option to reprogram it at the worst of all possible times. “Jack, I do not like your line of thinking.”
“I like you, too, Princess,” he said without looking up.
“That second foursome is making straight for the amidships service area,” Steve reported. “And I think they know where our elevator is.” Four men in bulky coats piled into the elevator that a month ago first brought Kris to this Command Center.
Steve eyed his board. “They punched for two. Anyone want to bet they want 1A?”
“No bet,” Kris said, her eyes roving all the boards.
As programmed, the elevator took them straight to three and opened. “Can I help you,” came a cheerful voice from the desk just outside the welded-closed door of the Command Center.
The four seemed surprised by where they were, but they were good, recovered fast, and stepped forward into the closed-off foyer. Two of them leaned over the desk of a young woman intentionally chosen for her busty blond appearance . . . that covered an honors degree in psychology and counseling. Two men tried in several different ways to ask directions to different places on the station, cutting her off when she made to answer, and in general did their best to dominate her attention and confuse the situation. The other two tested the doors, found them locked, and began to pick them with both electronic and physical tools. The one working hard on the solidly welded Command Center door did not bother Kris.
The other door could be a problem.
“Jack, you’re with me,” Kris said. Jack, in dress blues, pistol, and sword, was right behind Kris as she quick-timed for the left exit from the center. Outside, she turned two corners and brought herself
to a halt before a door, caught her breath and waited only to the count of two before the door opened.
The crewcut and hard muscles of the young man in front of Kris shouted Special Forces. He looked up from where he’d been jiggling the door handle, saw Kris in undress whites scowling down at him, took in Jack with his hand resting on his pistol . . . and had the good sense to close the door.
Kris opened the door, stepped through it, and gave Jack the second he needed to follow her. He shouted “Attent’hut on Deck” and the rest of the proceedings came to a roaring halt as all four of the Greenfeld men braced at attention.
Why was that not a surprise.
“Gentlemen,” Kris said crisply. “As I am sure you have heard from the receptionist, you are in a restricted area. You will remove yourselves immediately. You have received the only warning you will get. Your pictures and basic biometrics have been recorded. If you violate these precincts again, you will be restricted to your ships for the remainder of this port of call. Do you understand me?”
“Yes, sir,” rocketed back at Kris.
“The elevator would be a good exit, don’t you think?”
The four piled in the elevator and the door quickly closed.
Jack stood there shaking his head. “Too easy.”
“I agree,” Kris said. “They were a throwaway gambit.”
“So where’s the main thrust?”
“Yet to come,” Kris said, and turned to the receptionist. “You okay?”
“I’m fine, but this is not working. They blew through our locks like they were hardly there.”
“So I noticed,” Kris said.
“Oh, and this eye-candy gambit,” the gal said, looking down at where her first two buttons were undone. “I might as well have been in a nun’s habit,” she said, redoing her buttons.
“I’ll tell Commander Steve of your observations,” Kris said.
“Better you than me,” she said, and went back to her work.
In her Command Center a minute later, Kris found Steve on the commlink to the Patton. “We need all the machinists and mechanics you can loan us. We’ve got to install physical bar locks on every critical door. And we’ll need your kids to stand behind them and only open them when they’re told to. Yes, I know that’s going to be boring, but these folks brought pick locks that go through our security like it’s not there. Yep, just ask Marilyn. She’s the one that couldn’t keep four guys at her desk for two minutes. Yes, Marilyn. You talk to her but get me those mechanics to install the bar locks and people to unlock them.”
Kris Longknife: Resolute Page 18
