Kris Longknife Stalwart

by Mike Shepherd

  The table set, the bars rose just high enough to admit the table's edge, then opened further to allow the meal to pass into the cell.

  A stool rose from the deck to give him a seat at the table. In order to accommodate him, the table had to raise a good half yard higher. Megan's side of the table soon rose just as far. Her chair converted to a tall bar chair.

  The Iteeche looked on, his beak slack, his mouth hanging open.

  Megan sat, then invited the Iteeche to share the meal with her. It took him a bit to step forward. Megan had to have his meal pulled back to her side of the table so she might taste the contents and assure the prisoner there was no poison. She also tasted the whiskey. Considering the horrible taste of the rotgut that the Iteeche favored, Megan deserved a medal for not making a face as she tasted it.

  Satisfied he wasn't about to be poisoned and make a Complete and Formal Apology to the Emperor, the Iteeche finally sat down. He filled a mug with whiskey, sat down, and took a sip.

  "This is very good. The best," he told Megan, as he took a deeper pull on the mug.

  "We serve it when we entertain," Megan said. "I don't think the Admiral carries anything less than the best."

  "You actually work for the impressive Human admiral?"

  "Yes. I have that honor. I am her aide. Think assistant for minor things."

  "Like chasing down bombers and doing miraculously fast repairs?"

  "I do whatever she tells me to do," Megan admitted.

  On that note, both Megan and the Iteeche criminal began to eat. As he did so, he kept wagging his head back and forth.

  "You are feeding me live lollarm. The chum is sliced so finely as are the yellow seaweed bulbs, and you have warmed the saltwater to just the right temperature. You are treating me to a meal fit for a Clan Lord."

  "It's the same meal that Admiral Tong, the deputy commander of the Combined Fleets, is eating with Admiral Kris Longknife," Megan explained.

  "Why are you treating me like this?"

  "Why should we have the cook make two Iteeche meals? The Clan Lords who came up from Balan are eating this."

  The Iteeche paused, spoon halfway to his mouth. "I didn't expect to be fed. If I was, I doubted that it would be better than a half-rotten yam."

  "We don't have any half-rotten yams in our fleet," Megan told him.

  "I thought that was what the Navy fed sailors? They have a choice between red or yellow yams, boiled or baked."

  "We're trying to improve the food in the ship's messes," Megan said.

  The prisoner began to talk about his favorite places to eat in the Imperial Capital. Megan let him talk, encouraging him with a remark or small question. The interrogation proceeded apace with him doing all the talking. Megan provided some careful direction, discussing the décor of some of the eateries she'd enjoyed on Wardhaven as well as some that Kris's flagship had been turned into for Imperial visits where she wanted to impress visiting dignitaries with the palatial nature of her battlecruiser.

  That resulted in a quick tour down to the places to eat on the Battleship of State he'd come in on. It didn't last long as he realized he was talking too much about something close to home.

  He also didn't notice just how slow his beaker of whiskey emptied. A few moments after he poured another mug and returned the pitcher to the table, it had refilled to almost the same level. He drank quite a few cups.

  "Nelly, is any of this conversation helping you locate where he lived in the Imperial Capital?"

  "Sadly, the answer is yes and no, Kris."

  "You’re not being helpful," Kris sang back at Nelly.

  "Each clan has its palace and district. Some palaces for the smaller clans aren't much bigger than a small apartment building. The block may be their district. However, all of them have annexes, places farther from the Imperial Palace where many of the minor clan officials live and work. Iteeche who are clan affiliated, but just one step up from servant, guard, or soldier. Apparently, this guy is one of those very junior types. What he's describing to Megan has helped me locate him to a fifty hectare area, but it is way out and a jumble of different clans. There are even Iteeche living there with no clan affiliation at all. Think slum, Kris, with Iteeche packed in like sardines."

  "Okay, pass that along to Megan. How's the sergeant doing? Any better?"

  "He has the guy drinking and talking as openly as Megan. I think the two of them are getting along even better. However, we have a major problem with locating anyone on Balan. No maps. Apparently, a map is a top secret document. People know where they live and how to get around their neighborhood, but they don't know where anything is."

  "You're kidding me," Kris said, exasperation creeping into her voice.

  "Sorry. We are working on remedying that. I've got drones out mapping the capital city and going up and down the streets, looking for the names on the doors or windows. We're not having a lot of luck. A lot of apartments have no name out front and many of the eateries are located in basements with no sign out front except maybe a picture of one or two of their specialties. Many are very similar."

  "This is ridiculous," Kris burst out. "How do they deliver the mail?"

  "Kris, the lower levels don't send messages and the high clan lords send a runner."

  Kris turned to Admiral Tong. She hoped her face didn't look as if she was pleading.

  "I am sorry, My Most Eminent Admiral, but your computer, ah Nelly," he hastened to correct himself, "has the right of it. Our ships are so much the same that it is an accepted fact that we will sail with two or three missing and two or three aboard that got confused."

  Kris wanted to face-plant on the table, but kept to the decorum as befitted a flag officer.

  "Nelly, can you run some of those places by our guests from Balan? See if they know any of these locations the prisoner has named."

  "I am already doing that. Unfortunately, I am having no better luck. The Lords know their way around their district. They know where the Planetary Overlord's Palace is as well as their equal or superiors. They take their meals either in their palaces or in places that befit their rank. The chasm between the upper crust of this society and the lowest commoner is vast with no real way to span it."

  Kris closed her eyes and counted to twenty, then started over and counted to thirty. "How can anyone run a planet like this?" she finally demanded.

  "Kris, this is feudalism pure and simple. Actually, it's not all that different from ancient Earth during several times in its early history. A peasant, serf, or slave had no idea where they were or what was going on. Their local lord was only slightly better informed and knew little beyond his lord's realm. You had to be a duke or count or something to pay any attention to the king."

  "How did we get out of that?"

  "Literacy and bureaucracy," Nelly provided. "If you can't read, you can't read a road sign. The bureaucracy was mainly to see that the king got his taxes. It put an end to tax collectors and soldiers riding into town, taking anything that wasn't nailed down, and eating up most of it before it got to the king."

  "Thank you for the lesson in government, Nelly. I do have a degree in the subject."

  "But you're having problems applying it to something that is borderline anarchy."

  "You got that right, Nelly. Now, how do we crack these two?"

  "I am amazed," Admiral Tong said, "that you have them talking as much as you have. If I had turned them over to one of my interrogators, we would have a lot of blood on the floor, but very little said through their bloody mouth."

  Kris stared at the overhead. Her family had some experience in getting information, even willing help from some of their enemy's troops.

  "Admiral," she said, still thinking, "what level are your ship programmers?"

  "Mid-level. You might think of them as warrant officers."

  "And you need more of them, don't you?"

  "Yes."

  "If you had two new ones added to the fleet, is there anything that you could do to make the
ir past life disappear? Make sure that they could go ashore for a beer and not be mugged and dragged off to die slowly?"

  "There are ways to change an Iteeche's appearance," the admiral agreed.

  "Do you have a problem with me offering these two jobs as programmers on two of your ships?"

  "They are traitors and deserving of the honor of making a Most Sincere and Very Complete Apology to the Emperor."

  "Wouldn't the Emperor be served if someone higher up in the clan made that apology?"

  "I might think so, but I was always taught to see that a traitor made his apology as soon as possible."

  "Has what you've seen this morning shown that there might be an advantage to slowing down the rush to judgement?"

  It took a long moment for the admiral to answer. When he did, it was a curt "Yes." Then he added more thoughtfully. "Yes. I think you have once again shown the weakness of the Iteeche Way." After a pause, he added, "Or the way that it supports the continued power of the clans."

  Kris nodded, but remained silent. She did not want to interrupt a man fighting such a bitter battle with himself and what he had been taught all his life.

  When the Iteeche admiral leaned forward and said, "Make the job offer to these fools. They may just be drunk enough to agree to it and start talking.”

  Kris had Nelly pass the word along to Lily for Megan to deliver. A text message went out to the sergeant. Kris watched as his commlink beeped. He read part of the message, then looked at his prisoner.

  "I'm being told to make you a better offer than being sent to a start-up planet. The other guy is getting this offer too. You might want to decide this quick. The first one who takes it gets a warrant officer's job in the Navy, programming the magic metal." He went on reading the offer to his luncheon partner.

  Meanwhile, Megan was doing the same. When she finished, she was met with an incredulous stare.

  "The Navy would train me to program magic metal and use me to move it around in your ships?"

  "Yes, we move walls around to make loading go faster. We expand the ship to give sailors more room to live in."

  The Iteeche looked at Megan sideways, using three of his four eyes. "You wouldn't dare trust me to program this magic. What would keep me from just programming the hull over the bridge to vanish and let vacuum onto the bridge?"

  "You wouldn't have the code to program that part of the ship. The hull, engineering, and some of the space around the lasers is under a much longer and more complex password. All the computing power on an Iteeche battlecruiser couldn't hack that password in ten thousand years. But it wouldn't matter, the code is changed every day or two. As I said, you could move walls. In your department only."

  Here, Lily widened his cell.

  "You could make tables."

  Lily now turned the table into gold, the legs loaded with fancy curlicues. Sparkling diamonds, rubies, and emeralds filled the center of the swirls.

  "You could work on coming up with a better stool," Megan finished, and her own chair converted into a recliner and let her get comfortable.

  "You might be asked to work with the Marines to produce tanks and fighting vehicles from a standard pattern.”

  Here, Lily really outdid herself. A gun truck, complete with eight wheels grew out of the deck.

  "You expect me to believe you made an infantry vehicle in this space?"

  "Actually, yes. It's armored. A shot would have no impact on it.”

  A 12-millimeter automatic appeared on the table in front of Megan. She picked it up and shot it at the truck. The soft lead bullet turned into a splat on the front of the rig.

  "Here, you take a shot," Megan said, and passed the weapon through the bars to her prisoner.

  He took it gingerly. He pulled out the magazine, checked its load, then, with magazine still in one hand, the gun in the other, he said, "Why give me a gun? Why give me a chance to kill you?"

  "Because I doubt that you could kill me," Megan told him. "Why give up your own life for mine when you can have a long life in my Admiral's new Navy?"

  The Iteeche slowly reloaded the magazine and pushed it home with a click.

  "You may shoot from where you sit, or you can stand. Don't move any closer to me or the weapon will explode in your hand."

  "So, you've given me a bomb. Kind of sounds familiar."

  "Actually, I have given you a standard weapon," Megan said. "It's just that Lily, the computer around my neck, has more computing power than several Iteeche flotillas worth of battlecruisers. If you take a hostile act against me, she will likely know it before you can even finish the thought. You may shoot at the gun truck, like I offered. Anything else will not go well for you."

  The Iteeche stood. He took three steps back from the table.

  Unknown to him, Lily stood ready to immediately convert his cell from bars to a solid bullet-proof wall the instant that he began to swing his weapon toward Megan. The bullet would splat on the cell wall, and that would be the end of their negotiations.

  "I should tell you," Megan said, as if she didn't much care, "that your associate is trying to sweeten the offer. He wants to be commissioned an ensign." Megan knew nothing of such bargaining. Still, knowing what she knew of buying anything in an Iteeche bazaar, haggling seemed in every Iteeche DNA.

  The Iteeche raised the automatic and fired at the gun truck, aiming for the same spot where Megan's slug hit. He missed it by less than five millimeters. It also deformed until it was almost flat.

  The armor showed no effect.

  "I will take the offer. Now, can I bargain for ensign’s rank?"

  "Let me check in with my admiral," Megan said.

  She left her prisoner to stew in his own juices and stepped into Kris's day quarters. Across from her, the sergeant was coming through the opposite door from the quarterdeck.

  "Come, sit down. Would you like some tea?" Kris said.

  41

  Kris was in no rush to finish the plea bargains. At least, no hurry to finish within the next five minutes.

  She waited until her two prison negotiators were seated at the table and had poured themselves a cup of chamomile tea before she said, "I've been following your negotiations. You have both managed to arrive at the same point at the same time. Admiral Tong, you will be the one hiding these men in your fleet. Are you willing to pull this off?"

  "I hate to give comfort to traitors," the admiral answered, as if almost in physical pain.

  "Admiral, may I ask you a question?" Kris said.

  "Of course, My Most Eminent Admiral," he answered quickly.

  "You command a fleet that has battlecruisers with crews that were in rebellion against their Emperor until only a month or so ago. We are looking to add a thousand ships from Balan who have not quite finished their surrender. Now, I admit that these two planted bombs that killed my people and caused me great inconvenience. However, some of the ships under Admiral Coth's present command are in ships that destroyed our own ships in the Battle of the Arteccia System. How is this different? How is it wrong if it gets me the names of the clans that have violated my trust?"

  "When you talk of it in that way, I agree with you. You are once again, Admiral, pointing out the strange logic of the Iteeche Way. However, you Humans have a saying, 'A fish cannot discover water.' Until you Humans came, I had no idea what I was swimming in."

  "Thank you, Admiral. You have a standing invitation to Wardhaven. I wonder what water we are swimming in that you could tell me about."

  The admiral laughed at Kris's offer.

  "I may take you up on that. Now, about our situation. I can give these men new papers and put them into an apprenticeship. We should be able to keep them out of harm's way in the fleet with not too much trouble."

  Kris measured her options, then turned to Megan and the sergeant. "I'm not willing to offer too much until I find out what they have to offer me. We have promised them a warrant officer’s rank. Tell them that what they tell us will decide if they enter the Navy as a w
arrant officer, chief warrant officer, or ensign."

  Megan looked at the sergeant. "I think we have our marching orders. See you back here in a few, Sergeant."

  They put down their still-steaming tea and headed back to work.

  Megan found her prisoner staring at the automatic in his hands. The barrel had spooled itself up into an interesting roll of metal.

  "I wondered why you did not retrieve your gun," the Iteeche said, and handed it back to Megan through the bars. She took it, rolled the barrel out straight, and set it on her table next to her drink.

  "You do that as if it is nothing. As if you do it every day."

  "We program Smart Metal to what we need," Megan said, with a shrug, "whatever we need it to be. That's the job we are offering you."

  "But at what rank?" the bomber shot back.

  "Admiral Longknife has told me to make you this offer. We will help you disappear into the Navy. You will be protected from the wrath of the clans by the Navy's security net. We will bring you into the Navy as a warrant officer and train you as a Smart Metal programmer. Depending on the quality of the information you give us, you may be brought into the Navy as a chief warrant or as an ensign. It all depends on who you can name for us."

  For a long moment, the Iteeche wore the closest thing Kris had ever seen to a frown on one of his four eyes. Finally, with a sigh, he began to talk. He was from a minor sept of a medium-sized clan. The guy he'd been caught with was from a different minor sept of that clan. A senior clan lord had provided him with the C-14 and instructions on how to blow the water lines to cause the most trouble. He'd later been ordered the night before by the same lord to work with the other fellow to build and position the second bomb.

  "How did you get through our security perimeter to plant the second bomb?" Megan asked, saving Kris from having Nelly tell Lily to have Megan do it.

  "Not all of the tunnels under the city were flooded. There were things some people liked to do and not be noticed. Between the storm sewer and certain other private tunnels, we got the bomb in place without having to go up to the surface."