“If the locals see your face again, I won’t vouch for you living long enough to see the insides of another liberty launch. Consider yourselves confined to your ships for the rest of this port stay. Lieutenant, establish a permanent record,” Kris said.
As Jack went down the line, Kris turned back to Ron. “Just how many reinforcements are you calling for from out of town?”
Ron eyed Kris. “As many as they can send me. Why?”
“Because I remember Captain Slovo mentioning that all the other ships had left their captains’ gigs behind. ‘So they could carry more liberty launches’ I think he said. But you can stack three or four light assault craft in the space of one gig.”
“You think the light thingamajigs could carry enough Marines to capture a city’s communication center; power plant?”
Kris glanced up and did the attack plan in her head. “Fifteen to twenty LAC’s, five Marines each. Two to a town. How many of your big cities do you think could go silent and you still defend Chance?”
“You know, Princess, there is only one thing worse than having a Longknife at your elbow.”
“Oh?”
“Yeah, not having a Longknife at your elbow when all hell breaks loose,” he growled. No smile softened his words. But then, Kris didn’t expect Ron to smile for quite a while.
“Can you handle getting these sailors out of my sight. I’ve got some calls to make.”
“Can I coordinate with Gassy?”
“To your and his hearts’ content.”
Kris used four busses to move these forty sailors out to the port. She made sure that she had forty guards with them, none drawn from the new volunteers. On the flight line, four from each bus were loaded onto each liberty launch. “See if you can get a throwing-up kind on each boat,” she said. The guards were happy to comply.
She called Captain Slovo to tell him he’d have to arrange his own transportation back up. When he tried to question her further, she cut the line. “Jack, let’s get topside.”
Kris flew the shuttle back with only Jack and headed for the Command Center. Chief Odacheke, whom she’d rarely worked with, had the watch. “Anything out of the usual here?”
“Kind of hard to figure what is usual for this bunch, ma’am,” the chief drawled, taking his feet off his desk. “But we do have plenty of sailors out tonight, visiting what you opened. And we have some walkers, trench-coated guys. So far they just walk and look. Don’t touch.”
“That might change any minute.” Kris watched the monitors and drummed her fingers on a work station. “Your people know they can use their weapons if they have to, don’t they?”
“Yes, ma’am, they know that, but I don’t think most of them much want to.” That was the problem with folks that were used to living and letting live. Peterwald’s people could change the rules around here in a second, and a minute later these poor folks would still be wondering what was going on.
“You know about the riot dirtside?”
“I watched some of the video. Ugly.”
“Things may get ugly here, too. Or they may not. Would you mind if my lieutenant sat out this watch with you?”
“Not a problem. Extra eyes are always nice.”
“Jack, you keep this watch. I’ll relieve you at midnight.”
Jack slipped into a monitoring station. “I’ll call Penny and let her know she’s got the four-to-eight watch,” Jack said. “Don’t argue. We need our sleep tonight ’cause if all hell don’t pop tonight, it will tomorrow, or the next day.”
“Keep your game face on, Jack. You have weapons release.”
Abby went about getting Kris out of social harness as efficiently as she always did. “I done saw the pictures, gal. The fun’s started.”
“Lay out a uniform, and distribute spider silk undies to the team. You have any nice whiz bangs?”
“I might find a few that have fallen down in your luggage.”
“Hunt them up. Tomorrow we rig grenades in the stairwells. I will not have anyone do unto me what I have done unto others.”
“That sounds like a nice way of doing business.”
Kris had Nelly wake her up well before Jack’s call, and was showered and dressed when the phone rang. That earned her a glower as she reported twenty minutes before midnight. She slipped into a seat between the old chief, who was briefing Chief Ramirez, and listened as he basically told her, “Lots of folks wandering around the station. Not a lot of anything going on.”
The old chief of Naval District 41’s personnel nodded agreement and relieved Chief Odacheke a few minutes early.
“Marine, how long were you sharing Andy’s watch,” she asked as soon as the chief was gone.
“An hour, hour and a half.”
“You kept a mighty straight face while he was talking. Andy’s a good man, but a bit blind when faced with a corkscrew.”
“You mean he sees what there to see, but doesn’t draw any conclusions as to what might happen next,” Jack said.
“What have you seen, Lieutenant?” Kris asked.
“I’ve noticed something about those walkers.”
“I did, too,” Nelly said. “I was not asleep.”
Kris rolled her eyes heavenward, or in this case, toward the center of her station. “What did you notice, my fine electronic friend, while this poor body of mine was getting twenty winks?”
“They have checked out all our stairwells, just as I think you expected them to. They have also located all our air ducts and water mains.”
“A water main breaks.” Kris nodded. “The stations starts to flood. Everyone is chasing that. Maybe we even issue a call to the ships to send men to help. Even if we don’t, people might think we had if the troops charging up the gangplank looked helpful. Behind this a few guys with guns slip into our air ducts. Maybe explosives open the most important stairwells. Great plan. For a Sophomore- or Junior-level course, it might earn a B.” Kris grinned. “Not so good against folks like us who teach the postdocs.”
“Let’s not get too sure of ourselves,” Jack said. “There’s lots of ways they could kick this off besides flood—hull breach, fire. What am I not thinking of?”
“I believe your Great-Grampa Trouble once took over a station by hiring the entire computer gang,” Chief Ramirez said. “Or was that someone rescuing him. Anyway, it always made me laugh and cry at the same time.”
“What about our information resources?” Jack asked.
“They’re on our side,” the chief said. “Also I don’t think any of Peterwald’s folks have had much luck talking to them.” She tapped her station, brought up several scenes. “Not that those walkers don’t try to talk to our watch going on and going off. But no one’s hung with them for long.”
“I’ve got Abby going through my or her or whomever’s steamer trunks looking for the odd grenade,” Kris said. “Tomorrow, I want explosive experts to set up trip wires and booby traps.”
Ramirez raised an eyebrow. “You planning on demolishing my station? Don’t know how Steve will take to that. I do know how I’ll feel about it.”
“We have sleepy grenades, flash bangs, plenty of stuff before we have to go to fragmentation or worse,” Kris said.
“Nice to know I’m not the only pacifist in uniform.”
“Grampa Trouble always says the fewer bodies there are to pick up, the easier it is to make friends later,” Kris said. “Assuming they’ll be stopped by something less than lethal.”
“That’s the trick, isn’t it?” Jack said.
They spent the next hour setting up their list of where to booby trap and how deadly to be. Jack dismissed himself to sleep before they finished, once he was sure that Kris was doing it to his high expectations. Kris was well along with the task when Penny came to relieve her at four a.m. The other lieutenant went over Kris’s list. “I like concentrating around the central office area and the reactor. But shouldn’t we do something to make sure the Patton and Wasp—even the Resolute—aren’t hit with some
thing for the opening fire or whatever.”
“We’d like to,” Kris said, glancing at the chief. “But we’re just flat running out of bodies to do things. I don’t dare ask Ron for any more. He’s got a major headache dirtside.”
“Kris, I know the folks working on the Patton. They’re our kind of people. If I ask them to spend more time tomorrow patrolling Deck 1, the docks, and the facilities, they’d do it.”
“The old farts or the kids,” Kris said, not sure which was the worst idea.
Penny chuckled and rocked her hand back and forth. “A bit of both. Some kids for enthusiastic racing around, a few older folks for judgment. Don’t know which will provide the nasty craft and guile, but it will be there.”
“I’ll let you handle that show,” Kris said, and made a note to look at it . . . often and carefully. “We have to remember that Hank decides when things go wrong big time. And it may not be tomorrow. Or the next day. Hank can wait for as long as he wants and we have to stay ready.” The others nodded agreement.
Actually, they were all wrong. Hank didn’t get to decide when to kick off the revolution . . . a drunken sailor did.
15
“HOW’S it going down there,” Kris asked at twenty-three-hundred hours next evening. She’d stayed home to mind the station. No more dancing for Kris until Hank gave up and went home.
“Pretty good,” Ron replied. “They’ve been swilling beer like they’re afraid we’re going dry tomorrow. If I had to make a call, I’d say we’re over the hump. They’re too drunk now to walk straight, much less riot.”
Noise in the background caused Ron to turn off screen. There were shouts, then whistles, like the ones they’d issued to the armbands . . . and young women . . . that afternoon.
“Kris, I have to go. I don’t know what this is. I hope it’s less exciting than it sounds.” Why did Kris think not?
She went back over what she did know from the video of the liberty launches arriving. There were five extra boats . . . say seven hundred and fifty sailors tonight, rather than last night’s five hundred. There were also no sailors in gray whites.
“No agent provocateurs,” Kris muttered.
“Or they’re on to us being on to spider silk and dropped it,” Jack said, fingering the neck of his own armored underwear. “Did you notice what else was missing? No Marines. Ungood, my Princess, when they hold the trigger pullers on a short leash.”
Kris immediately did a full review of her station. With more on the ground, there were fewer being entertained up here. There were also no walkers, no one wandering outside the area dedicated to the sailors’ amusement. Did that mean all the agent provocateurs were dirtside . . . or just holding up in the ships for a sudden sally? Kris ate supper in the Command Post. Chief Beni excused himself at quitting time for another trip down with his drinking buddies from the Resolute.
Kris studied the monitors. She’d had teams from the Patton add new cameras. Now she could look right onto the quarterdecks of Hank’s ships. She eyed all six at once. All she saw were empty decks, JOODs and a few runners.
“What’s happening dirtside?” Chief Odacheke asked. “Shouldn’t we turn on the news?”
“No,” Kris snapped. “Ron has his teams working and doesn’t need us to juggle his elbow. We’ve got our job. Penny, I sure could use help eyeballing these cameras.”
“I understand several of the folks working on the Patton declared a sleepover.”
“Sleepover!” Kris said, wondering what Grampa Trouble would think of kids holding a pajama party on his old cruiser.
“Well, they want the Museum to do overnight stays for kids. They’re testing it out. Anyway, let me make a call and see if I can get, oh, a dozen folks to monitor the cameras in here.”
“Good, quiet camera monitors,” Kris pointed out.
Fifteen minutes had gone by since Ron ran to look into trouble the sailors should have been too drunk to cause, when a half dozen older teenagers in green shipsuits and an equal number of old folks in blue marched onto the bridge. Penny put three kids and three oldsters at six monitors. “Each of these are checking a Greenfeld ship. If you see anything different, holler.” She then took the other six and sat them at a row of stations covering the rest of the station. “We want to know if any sailor, or, this time of night, anyone starts hanging around an elevator, stairwell. Anything!”
The new recruits went to work as silently as Kris wanted. Kris, Penny, and Chief Odacheke quit watching monitors and started monitoring the watchers. Jack stayed at his station. He had control of the whizbangs and the guns. If things got lethal, he would make the call and do the lethal.
For a long half hour, nothing happened. No one left the ships. The quarterdecks stayed empty except for a few sailors returning early from station liberty. At the restaurants, theater, game center, sailors ate, drank, and were entertained, apparently unaware of what was going on dirtside.
At eleven thirty, Chief Ramirez arrived to relieve Odacheke. “How are things in Last Chance?” Kris asked.
“Things were fine when I left home an hour ago. Something go wrong while I was cooped up in the shuttle?”
Kris told her what they knew. The old chief whistled.
One of the teenagers raised a hand. “Ma’am, I’m from Last Chance. I live a few blocks from the university. Before I came up here, they reported a fire around the college, but I didn’t know where? Could you see if there’s anything more to find out?”
“We’ll check,” Kris said. “Everyone stay focused on the station.” Ramirez sat down at a work station and quickly switched it to news. She studied its feed, hitched into Pinkerton’s aerial view, rationalized it to a map, and said, “Son, what’s your address?”
He gave it quickly, she typed it in. “The fire is on the other side of the campus, five blocks from your street.”
“Thank you, ma’am. I hope nobody I know is in the mess.”
“That’s what we’re all hoping,” the chief said gently.
Chief Odacheke quickly filled in Chief Ramirez on the station’s condition and hurried for the shuttle to find out more about things below them. Penny stopped her circling for a moment next to Kris. “Think you ought to call Ron?”
“If I had a mess on my hands do you think I’d want a call from out in left field? No, we have our set of problems. He’ll handle his. The smaller we make ours, the better for Ron.”
They paced around the monitoring stations. At a quarter of midnight, the restaurants started to close, the last movie let out and the gaming hall quit making change. “Think we ought to increase security around the shops?” Jack asked.
“Pull some of the guards that are backing up a couple of the latched doors. Assign them to walking the shop beat,” Kris agreed. They weren’t trained, but they’d look good.
At midnight the shops closed with no more than the usual lip from their last customers. The sailors walked or swayed their way back to their ships. Kris eyed the changing monitors on four stations, when Penny came up beside her.
“I almost feel guilty,” she said. “They’ve got fire and riots on the ground, and it’s as peaceful as a church up here.”
Kris shook her head. “No telling why things happen the way they do. And it could change here at the drop of a hat. Chief, do we have any shuttles headed our way?”
“No, and the first ones should have lifted off by now.”
“Nelly, is Ron’s phone busy?”
“Yes, Kris.”
“Monitor it. Tell him when he’s off that I’d like to talk to him when it is convenient.” Kris kept circling. Monitoring. Waiting for Hank to make a move.
A long two minutes later, Nelly said, “Ron is off his line. I’ve given him your message. He’s got another call.”
Kris waited a tense five minutes before she heard. “How are things up there?” from Ron.
“Boring. Totally dead. I mean quiet. I notice there are no shuttles inbound. What do I tell Hank if he calls?”
“You
can tell that son of a bitch that he can have his sailors back—some of them—as soon as I can sort out the ones that will be seeing a Commissioner in the morning from those that were merely obnoxious and disgusting.”
Kris said nothing for a long moment. “Feel better now?”
“No Kris. This is not something I’m ever going to feel better about. Maybe you Longknifes consider this all in a night’s work, but this is not the way we do things on Chance.”
“We’ve seen the fire from up here,” Kris said.
“You didn’t see the drunken sailors throwing beer bottles at the fire fighters.”
“No. Anyone hurt?”
“None of them,” Ron bit back.
“Who was hurt?”
“Kris, two of our coeds were raped tonight.”
“Did you catch who did it?”
“No. Not in the act and not on a security camera. The women aren’t sure who their attackers were, but they were sailors. Seven hundred and fifty sailors to pick from and they didn’t get a good look at them.”
“Anyone killed?”
“None, so far. Fifty, sixty of our people are in the hospital, some for the night. A couple of dozen sailors are also in the emergency room. Some may stay awhile.”
Kris let that hang there for a while. “When Hank calls, what do I tell him?”
Ron started to snap out an answer, then closed his mouth and looked off screen. His own face was soot-blackened and there was a cut over his eye. Ron had not been monitoring the situation from a comfortable distance tonight. Kris suspected she knew what he’d been through; had been there herself. It was something she would have saved him from if she could.
Finally, Ron looked back at Kris. “You tell the commander of those cruisers docked at your station that he will not be getting his liberty party back on time. You tell him he won’t be getting all of it back tonight, ah, this morning. You tell him to send down some lawyers because his sailors are going to need them.”
Kris Longknife: Resolute Page 27
