Kris ignored that question, and the growing question as to why a Greenfeld officer was highlighting once again how surprised he was to see her. NELLY, MAKE A NOTE THAT IF I EVER GIVE CAPTAIN SLOVO A TOUR OF THE PATTON, ALL THE MUSEUM PLAQUES COME DOWN FIRST.
WILL DO, KRIS.
Captain Slovo let the silence stretch a bit. “You were not briefed on my commodore’s cruise around the area. We were not briefed to expect you. Strange, don’t you think?”
Beyond strange, Kris could agree . . . to herself. To a Greenfeld Navy Captain all she said was, “Interesting. Is there anything specific I can help you with?”
“No, I was just taking a tour of the facilities you have opened for my men. The prices are steep for the pay of my able seamen, but not gouging. No worse than we usually meet with when we visit the inflation-ravaged economies beyond our borders.” He smiled at that bit of political cant.
“I am glad to be of service. Hank said this had been a long trip. Your crewmen need something to break the monotony of staring at the bulkheads of their ships.”
“There is one more thing. It seems that I need a ride down to the planet tonight. My commodore is indisposed and there is a cocktail party that he wants some of us to show the flag at.”
“And you don’t want to ride down in your own captain’s gig?”
“I don’t have a gig. None of the captains have a gig this trip. Our commodore wanted room for more liberty launches and said we could always ride in his barge. Yet tonight, his barge is not available.” The captain coughed softly into his hand.
“And you really don’t want to ride back up in anything like the launches were last night.” He nodded.
“You could have your chiefs provide a bit of leadership.”
He looked away. Kris detected just a hint of a nod.
Kris considered letting him twist on the ropes of this unnamed situation that neither the captain nor the chiefs would talk about. She also wondered if the extra boat space was occupied by assault landing craft. How would this game be played out? And since it was no “game” at all, how many would die? Kris made her call.
“I’d be glad to provide a seat for you on my shuttle. What time is the party? You’ll probably have to pass a metal detector, and please don’t carry any packages that someone else has provided you.” She did not smile.
He did, rather painfully. “I will endeavor to keep you as safe as I do my commodore. The party is at eight. We are scheduled to have dinner with some businessmen beforehand, so could we leave by six? Oh, and I require two more seats.”
“Other captains coming along?”
“Yes, the two that sat with me on the barge last night.”
“Ah, the ones that are trying to provide adult supervision to the kindergartners.”
He made no answer to that but began to salute her most gallantly, signaling her dismissal. She got her salute up before he touched his hat. “You have no idea how close to the truth you are, my dear Princess,” he whispered softly, did a smart about-face, and left her to ponder many things.
Jack joined her a moment later from where he had kept her in sight. “An interesting man,” he said.
“In an interesting situation. Nelly, you better advise Abby that I will be needing my dancing slippers tonight.”
“I told her. You are half an hour late to get gussied up for a night on the town, which will not involve making tar patty cakes or tossing oversize replicas of the male anatomy.”
“If I’m only thirty minutes late, I can still check in with the duty watch at the Command Center,” Kris said, and she and Jack quick walked toward the elevator.
Kris tried to use the time Abby spent flustering over her to think. It didn’t help. Hank’s intentions were ambiguous. This could be just a ship visit. So why did Kris feel she was already in a countdown to a coup? The tightness at the back of her neck that failed to soften even under one of Abby’s world-class hair washings was fed by what the chief and captain left unsaid.
They had a secret they could not share. Was that secret a planetary take down? And if it was, how did Hank plan to do it? The takeover of a planet was not something you just put at the top of your Order of the Day. It took preparation. You needed an excuse to march in and throw out a government. “What are you going to try,” Kris muttered, “and when? And where?”
“You saying something, Baby Ducks?”
“Yes, but I doubt you know the answer.”
“You got that right. No way do I know when Hank’s going to make his play to take over this here planet.”
“So you’ve noticed our predicament?”
“Just cause I’m underpaid, Kris, don’t mean I’m blind.”
It also didn’t mean a lot of things.
An hour later, dressed befitting a princess, despite Abby’s insistence that she needed another two hours, Kris headed for the lander bay. A bright Kelly green cocktail dress with a flounced skirt swished pleasantly about her with each step. Tonight she was wearing her spider silk body stocking. If the other side felt the need for protection, she might as well give Jack what he wanted before he asked. Jack, in dinner blues and reds, fell in step with her before she got to the elevator.
“Do you have a camera in my bedroom?” she asked.
“I refuse to answer that on the grounds that I’d be giving away state secrets and might lose the best entertainment a lonely man ever had. You and Abby are better than any comedy routine this side of Earth’s Las Vegas.”
“Come to think of it, all the bug catchers I have come from you,” Kris said. “Do you give them a blind spot?”
“Or I could just pay Abby a few bucks a month to give me a heads-up on when you’re ready to leave your room.”
“She is always complaining that she’s underpaid. That’s a story I could almost believe.”
“I doubt it would be the first time a maid picked up a few bucks on the side.”
“Nelly, what shape is the shuttle in?”
“I have monitored it since Captain Slovo asked you for a ride. I also reran the records on it for the last twenty-four hours. No events out of the ordinary nor has anyone gone near it that is not on the preapproved list. We should be safe.”
“And I will preflight it,” Kris said.
“I feel better already,” Jack said dryly.
The chief maintenance mech met Kris at the door of Shuttle 41. “It checks out. I’ve been running a positive charge through the skin. If so much as a fly speck out there touched it, we’d have spotted the spark and any nano would have been burned.”
“You’re paranoid. I like that in a crew chief.”
“That was the first question the boss asked me. ‘Do you trust your own mother?’ I said ‘hell no,’ and he said ‘I want you working on my bird.’”
So Kris did her own check. A half hour later, she was just finishing up when there was noise aft. Kris pulled herself out of the command pilot’s seat, using handles on the instrument panel she usually considered reserved for the old and feeble. Still, she turned her ankle before she was standing in the middle of the flight deck. “The working parts of a shuttle were not designed for two-inch heels,” Kris grumbled.
“You might be right,” Jack said, leading Kris aft.
In the shuttle bay Captain Slovo waited with the two older skippers from the Greenfeld ships. “You are here ahead of us,” he said. Jack saluted, and the Greenfelders returned the honor. Kris nodded and offered Merv her hand. He kissed it as did the others as they were formally introduced. Max Göckle of the Eager, Georg Krätz of the Surprise.
“You really are a princess,” Krätz noted in surprise.
“Actually, I just found the tiara,” Kris said, grinning; the officers chuckled politely.
“Hold up,” came a familiar voice from the escalator. Trotting toward them as fast as their overburdened condition would permit were Chief Beni, and three from the Resolute. “Mind if we hitch a ride down with you, Princess. There’s a really nifty bistro on the south sid
e of town we found last night, and I don’t care what anyone says, spaced beer just don’t taste right.”
Kris waved her junior-most subordinate aboard first, as per protocol, though somehow, captains waiting for chiefs to arrive did not seem to fit what traditionalists had in mind when they set that bit of Naval lore. She also wished he hadn’t shouted where he and the Resolute’s drinkers would be spending their evenings dirtside. Hopefully, it would go unnoticed.
Kris boarded after Jack and headed for the flight deck. The captains boarded last. The chief and his buddies buckled into the aft seats, leaving the forward compartment to the officers.
“You are going to fly the shuttle, Your Highness?” Captain Slovo said as he buckled himself in.
“We’re running a bit late and any normal shuttle pilot would have to wait for the next orbit to reach Last Chance. I figure I can cut a few corners and get us there on time.”
That caused a murmur among the captains.
“All ashore that are going ashore,” Jack called as he slipped Kris’s shoes into the pouch at the back of her seat, then closed and verified the lock on the rear hatch. Kris finished her final preflight and glanced aft before she cut them loose. Everyone was seated; no one was pounding on the hatch to get off. How little they know. Guess they really are reading the expunged version of Peterwald’s folder on me.
Exactly thirty minutes later, having shed excess energy with several not-so-gentle S curves that were nothing like those that had won her the trophies back home on her mantelpiece, the shuttle settled to the runway with a kiss and soft caress.
A tug waited for her at the end of the runway, but today they towed her to a hanger on the far side of the field, well away from where the liberty launches would be lined up later. Steve Jr. brought the limo up, now with a top on. Maybe one that could stop a bullet? How things had changed in one night.
Jack slipped her heels out and laid them on the floor for her. Kris had learned to do a lot in the footwear demanded of young woman. Breaking a shuttle to a stop was something done better barefoot than in heels. Captain Slovo rose to offer Kris an arm as she walked into her shoes.
“You are quite an accomplished pilot. Now I think I know why my commodore is so reluctant to let you near the controls of our crafts. You might very well show up our pilots.”
Kris rewarded the thickly slathered on praise with a smile. She noted that the other two captains seemed a bit unsure of how to react to her. Clearly, they needed practice responding to female officers. The flag captain and the royal she exited the shuttle first. Steve Jr. was in formal chauffeur dress and even held the door open. “They’re going to lock down this hanger as soon as we leave and have it under guard and surveillance while you’re away. Dad figured you’d want to know.”
He left the “you” undefined, but Kris found it good to know, and suspected the captain did, too. And if he chose to warn anyone assigned to mess with the shuttle, they’d still have to figure out how to get to it. Kris expected Chance might be harder to crack than they expected.
But Captain Slovo took the information in with no reaction.
The ride in gave time for Max Göckle, of the Eager, to tell Kris, or maybe Steve, all the benefits the ranchers and farmers of Chance would gain if they joined the Greenfeld Confederacy. Or maybe he was just practicing his catechism for later tonight. Neither Steve nor Kris paid him any mind.
The three skippers were dropped off at The Vault, an up-scale restaurant. “You want to join us?” Captain Slovo asked.
“The mayor hopes you’ll share his dinner plans,” Steve said.
Kris smiled. “A gal can hardly pass up an offer from an attractive young man.” That seemed to settle matters.
As they pulled away from the curve, Kris asked Steve, “Should I have gone along with the Greenfeld skippers to listen in on what they might be hatching?”
“They have more chance of hatching a rock than they have of getting anything out of the ten they’re dining with,” Steve said, shaking his head. “If Dad had to pick ten business guys more committed to Chance for Chance, they’d top his list. No, those fellows won’t be finding much to report back on tonight.”
Dinner was at Ron’s favorite steak house. Kris enjoyed relaxing in the company of two fine men who knew how to entertain a woman. And talked shop only as much as she wanted to. Which was to say, way too much of the dinner.
“Folks are pretty disgusted with what came down last night,” Ron said as soon as they’d ordered.
“Never had a fleet in?” Kris asked.
“Actually, we haven’t. I asked one of the networks to check their archives. No Navy here for over sixty years.”
“So this catch-up all at once is something of a shock to the system,” Jack said dryly.
“Is there anything we can do about it?” Ron asked Kris.
Kris leaned back in her chair and watched a ceiling fan make its lazy circles. “Let’s see. You could ask him to leave.”
“He’d laugh in our faces.”
“Insist he make his sailors behave. Tell him we want some Shore Patrol working with your police.”
“I might try that soon.”
“How about having an accident at the brewery,” Jack said.
“No brew. No chance. Our beer comes from small breweries. They’d all have to have a problem. All at once. Now that would be grounds for invading us. Making space safe for the brew,” Ron said, raising his glass.
“Here, here,” Jack agreed, and clinked glasses.
Kris raised her soda water. “So what does that leave us?”
“Waiting for him to decide to leave on his own,” Ron said.
“Waiting for him to drop the other shoe,” Kris said. “This feels like a card game Tommy taught me at OCS. Santa Maria Hold’em. You deal every player three cards faceup. Then two cards facedown. Players can swap out three cards from either group, but no one knows which facedown cards are turned in. Then you place your bets.” Kris shook her head. “We know some things about Hank’s hand. More than we did yesterday. I’ll get to that in a minute. But there’re some things we don’t know. And some things he doesn’t know. Now we’re waiting to see if Hank folds, or stays in the game.”
The men nodded. “What do we know more about?” Ron asked.
Kris told them what Captain Slovo had told her. “So Hank’s flag captain has told you twice they weren’t expecting to see the station defended?” Ron said when Kris was done.
“Seems to want to make sure I got the message. Now that might explain yesterday,” Kris said. “They went for the quick snatch-and-grab as planned, fell flat, and now are rethinking things. What I don’t like is Hank’s up there without his adult supervision. Is he just sulking or is he hatching something?”
“Adult supervision?” Ron said, and Kris shared her comment to Slovo and his whispered response.
“Whose side is this captain on?” Ron asked.
Kris shrugged. “Would you want the job of taking Hank out for a cruise and making sure that he comes home in one piece?”
“Been there, done that,” Jack said. “Got the bruises to show for my failed effort. It’s bad enough having to do it for the Prime Minister’s bratty daughter. No way would I take it from the perspective of a captain to commodore.”
Ron frowned at Kris, then Jack. “You’re a first lieutenant of Marines. She’s a lieutenant in the Navy. Isn’t that the same one-grade difference this Greenfeld captain has?”
“Big difference,” Kris assured Ron. “They make you a commodore and you’re breveted god. While a mere lieutenant occasionally has to admit to error.”
“Not nearly often enough,” Jack pointed out.
“But I have.”
“What, once in the time I’ve known you.”
“That’s still more than I suspect Hank ever will.”
“She’s got me there,” Jack admitted to Ron.
“I would never make it in your Navy,” Ron said, shaking his head. “I make four, five
mistakes a day. And that’s just in spelling on my reports. Wouldn’t survive without Chief Ramirez to save my sorry soul. Speaking of, when do I get her back?”
“Fifteen seconds after Hank and his fleet jump out, and not a moment sooner.”
“I will try to survive,” Ron said sorrowfully.
Steaks arrived, and they proceeded to do honor to them. Kris was the one who broke the pleasant munching to ask Ron, “Do you have reinforcements tonight?”
“Some, not as many as we wanted. I’ve asked other mayors to send me some of their best to stand up with mine, leaving out the untrained volunteers. Most are sending some, but none before tomorrow. Faced with that, I put out a call for former athletes who wanted to spend a night with the kids, any Sunday-school teacher, males only, anyone who wanted to try their hand at riot control. Word has gotten around about last night. If half of the folks who phoned in come, we should have a good turnout.”
“A turnout,” Jack said.
“We’ll have bodies. Skill level is something else. We did have a dozen cabers donated and a couple of friends of MacNab will be helping him tonight. Are you going to toss another one?”
“Not if I don’t want my maid to kill me.” Kris held up both hands. “If she gives me another manicure like the one I suffered through today, I may need prosthetics.”
“I’ll kiss it and make it well,” Ron offered. Kris let him. Jack looked on dolefully.
“If I did that it would be fraternizing,” he grumbled. A while later he added. “If you keep that up, it will qualify as practicing medicine without a license on 212 planets.”
“I’ll give you three hours to stop,” Kris moaned softly. She’d never realized just how sensitive her hands were to a man’s lips. She swallowed hard. More than her hands were responding to this man. A lot more.
“Kris, there’s a call for the mayor, but his phone seems to be off,” Nelly said.
Ron leaned back into his chair. “I turned it off for a reason,” he muttered, pulling a tiny phone out of his pocket and inserting it into his ear. He listened for only a moment.
Kris Longknife: Resolute Page 25
