Kris Longknife: Defender

by Mike Shepherd

  Nelly thought on that for a long time, for a computer. MAYBE WE CAN HELP YOU FIND BETTER WAYS TO RESOLVE YOUR DIFFERENCES.

  ANY HELP WOULD PROBABLY BE GREATLY RESISTED, Jack said.

  PARDON ME.

  NELLY, Kris said, THE PROBLEM WITH RESOLVING CONFLICT ISN’T ALWAYS THE HOW WE DO IT. LOOK AT THOSE TWO. THEY ARE AS DIFFERENT AS TWO PEOPLE CAN GET. IT’S NOT THE WAY THEY ARGUE BUT THE HUGE DISTANCE BETWEEN THEM. HOW DO YOU SETTLE THAT? WHO WOULD YOU HAVE GO FIRST FOR REJUVENATION?

  THE ONE WHO NEEDED IT THE MOST AND WOULD BENEFIT THE MOST, Nelly said simply.

  BUT RAY HAS BEEN CARRYING A TORCH FOR RITA FOR EIGHTY YEARS. THEIR UNRESOLVED ISSUES HAVE BECOME A BASIC PILLAR OF HIS LIFE. HOW WOULD YOU TELL HIM THAT HE SHOULD RISK HER NOT GETTING REJUVENATED BEFORE HE LOSES HER?

  The fight was coming to an end only because the two of them were too exhausted to continue. Granny Rita looked as bad as she had when Kris first saw her in the shuttle bay and rushed her to sick bay.

  “Captain,” Kris snapped. “Send a runner to Ada. Ask her to get a medical team here stat. Send another runner to get that wheelchair we left behind.”

  “Aye, aye, ma’am,” the Marine officer said, and obeyed.

  NELLY, GET CAPTAIN DRAGO.

  DRAGO HERE.

  GRANNY RITA IS HAVING A CRISIS. HOW SOON CAN YOU LAUNCH A BOAT DOWN WITH THE DUTY DOCTOR?

  TEN MINUTES. IT WILL TAKE THIRTY MINUTES TO LAND.

  GET YOUR DOC MOVING. ALSO, THAT REJUVENATION CLINIC, GET THEM ON THE HORN AND FIND OUT IF THEY HAVE A STANDBY GERIATRIC SPECIALIST.

  WAIT ONE, didn’t take anywhere close to a minute. THEY HAVE A FULL CRITICAL INTERVENTION TEAM ON ALERT. THEY WERE SURPRISED IT WASN’T THE KING. THEY PROMISE TO BE HERE IN FIVE MINUTES.

  THANKS, CAPTAIN.

  ANYTIME, YOUR ROYAL HIGHNESS, VICEREINE OF ALWA AND GOVERNOR GENERAL.

  FIRST, I’M VICEROY AND THERE’S NO WAY THEY’RE MAKING ME GOVERNOR GENERAL. YOU CAN TELL ANYONE WHO SAYS DIFFERENT YOU GOT IT DIRECT FROM THE PRINCESS HERSELF.

  EMERGENCY GERIATRIC INTERVENTION TEAM JUST CROSSED THE QUARTERDECK. ALL SIX OF THEM WERE PUSHING CARTS. THEY’LL BE DOWN THERE ASAP.

  19

  A quick nod from the captain, and one of the Marines broke rank from her peers and raced for Granny Rita. She pulled a medical kit from her belt and began checking out the elderly woman.

  The king eyed his once and apparently not future wife for a long time, then stomped away. As he passed Kris, he growled, “Walk with me.”

  Kris obeyed.

  He kept stomping as his Marines formed a perimeter around him. That didn’t keep several colonials from walking right through their perimeter as they hurried for Granny Rita. First came Ada, the Chief of Ministries, then Iago, Rita’s gofer, and finally several people whose bags might not have been the traditional medical bags but who nonetheless carried bags and walked with the purposeful look of men and women who fought with death and won as often as possible.

  The Marines let them through their ranks and once even the king stepped aside for an elderly doctor type. The doctor scowled at Ray as if he were personally responsible for this crisis and hobbled on as quickly as his old legs would let him.

  The king turned to Kris. “Can you get the word out to anyone interested, that all those youngsters wanting to return to human space for an education should report to the landing no later than six hours from now if they want to get a ride back?”

  “You’re leaving that soon?”

  “Apparently I came on a fool’s errand. That woman has not changed in eighty years. She was a blind idealist then and is just as blind now. How these poor people survived with her in charge . . .” His muttering trailed off.

  “Anyway, Kris, can you get the word out about the ride home? I was surprised at the reception at how few mentioned wanting to go home.”

  “I’ve been with these people six weeks, sir. They are home.”

  “It’s amazing how quickly peasants fall in love with the mud between their toes,” he growled.

  Kris had seen a lot of things she wished she could forget. Ships blown to atoms. Friends ripped away and lost forever. Here was another one of those moments she’d likely spend her life trying to unremember.

  “Can you put the word out on the net about the lift?” Ray asked.

  “They have no net. We offered Granny Rita one of the best computers out of our ship store. She was fascinated by it. However, I think their grapevine is just as fast. I’ll see who I can get started talking.”

  “She has a computer? I thought sometimes it was like she’d been listening in on our net. Could she have?”

  Kris was saved from having to lie or mumble by the king himself changing the subject.

  “She agrees that this place does not need a governor general and that it would only be a waste of your time to try to run it. She says it can’t be run.”

  “From what I’ve seen, sir, it sure looks that way.”

  “She agrees with you. That’s almost enough to make me change my mind and insist on appointing you.” The king eyed Kris.

  “It would be an endless case of herding cats, Your Majesty, and I’m allergic to cats.”

  The old man guffawed at that.

  “Okay, okay, you win.” He tapped his commlink. “Crossie, we’ve got to change the royal commission I’m leaving my great-granddaughter. Tell the lawyers to take out the parts dealing with the governor general.”

  “That will take a couple of hours, sir. Six or eight,” came over the net.

  “What do you mean? All the way out here those lawyers didn’t develop a contingency if she balked at the GG slot?”

  “Sir, the betting was ten to one that she’d take it, and I was the only one foolish enough to take your bet. I’ll call the ship and get them working. They’ll have to go over every inch of the Commander, Alwa Defense Sector as well as the vicereine’s job.”

  “Viceroy,” Kris shouted at her grampa’s commlink.

  “Viceroy,” he repeated.

  “The feminine is . . .” the admiral started.

  “Usually used for the viceroy’s wife,” Kris shot back before he finished. “It’s viceroy or nothing.”

  “We’ll change it, sir,” the admiral said, and rang off.

  “You’re getting to be a very hard person to deal with,” the king said, stopping to stare hard at Kris.

  “You’re dropping a very hot potato in my lap. One that’s all the way on the other side of the galaxy. A potato whose odds of being diced, sliced, and smashed are too high for anyone to risk a penny bet on, and you think I’m getting hard to deal with?”

  The king grinned. “Point well taken. I’ve watched you grow, kid, from a little girl in a bottle to an ensign who could stop a mutiny with one of her own. You’ve saved more planets than I care to count, and likely more than I had at your age. Yes, this is a hot potato, but Kris, you’ve got the mitts to handle it. Likely, you’re the only one of your generation who can. A hell of a lot more will have to grow mitts for this kind of stuff, but right now, you’re all I’ve got. Take care, please.”

  He turned to go, then turned back to her. “I was planning on taking the Constellation back with me, but she’s one of the heavy frigates with 20-inch guns. I’ll take the Fearless instead. You don’t mind keeping Sampson, do you? I could swap her to the Fearless if you want. We’ll be taking a different path back. Every trip out will take a different route. We don’t want the bastards to notice a beaten path between here and home. It also means you won’t be sending us regular reports.”

  Kris nodded. She couldn’t think of enough answers to all he’d dropped on her. It would be nice to keep the Constellation. Captain Sampson . . . not so much. Good ship. Troubling CO. But having the king make such an obvious change would not look like Kris was in command.

  The idea o
f taking a different route here and back each time sounded reasonable. She should have thought of it herself. Still, how many permutations could Nelly come up with? With the ships coming her way, assuming they actually sailed, taking a different route, how long would that add to their voyage?

  How soon before they stumbled on something that didn’t like being stumbled on?

  Did anything good ever come without a downside?

  The king glanced back at where he could just barely see the clump surrounding Rita. “You better go see how things are going there. Let me know, if it’s not too much trouble. Oh, and get the word out for kids that want the ride back to meet at the fleet landing.”

  “Yes, Your Majesty,” Kris said, saluted, and left the old man staring back at the woman he had claimed for eighty years to be dead and the love of his life.

  Now he knew she was alive.

  Was there any love left in his life?

  Kris double-timed up to the huddle around Granny Rita on the bench.

  “There is nothing wrong with me that having to spend half an hour with that pigheaded, power-hungry megalomaniac didn’t cause. Just give me some air.”

  The crowd stepped back, leaving room for Granny Rita to breathe, just as a doctor finished deflating a blood-pressure cuff. “Pressure is 163 over 92. A bit high, but not dangerous.”

  “Good, good,” Granny Rita said, just as the opening around her let her get a look at Kris. “So, what did he have to say? Is he going to waste your time being a governor general of all Alwa?”

  The look on Ada’s face told Kris that this was the first the Chief of Ministries had heard of this and what she thought of it.

  “No,” Kris said. “Despite you being against it, he’s going to let me beg off. It is causing him trouble. My commission as Commander, Alwa Defense Sector, Vicereine, and Governor General will have to be rewritten. I imagine the switch to viceroy won’t be too much trouble, but he was told the lawyers may need six to eight hours or more to comb through the whole thing and eliminate the governor-general stuff.”

  “Good, good. That will take him time. Anything else?”

  “He wants all the kids interested in an education back home to report to the fleet landing for a ride up to the Monarch as soon as possible. The ship’s leaving in eight hours.”

  “Oh, that’s even better. Surround him with a gaggle of hero-worshipping kids, and he’ll totally forget what time it is as he tells them all kinds of lies. Great. Kris, I bet your orders to take command of this sector don’t show up in the mail before the Monarch jumps out.”

  “So?” Kris said.

  “So, kid, I’ve done a lot of funerals since we landed, and I’ve enjoyed doing a lot of weddings, too. Still do both, even if they are trying to put me out to pasture,” she said eyeing most of those around her. Most of whom found now to be a good time to study the sway of the trees above them.

  “Now, Kris, I penciled in a funeral for this afternoon. I figured Raymond was sure to pop an aneurism or have an apoplectic fit, but what don’t you know, he survived me, and I survived him. No accounting for how the universe turns, is there? Now, that leaves me with time on my calendar for something. The best use of my time that I can think of would be a wedding.”

  “Wedding?” Kris echoed.

  “Yes, kid. Just how gutsy are you? You’ve blown away monstrous alien ships, can you grab your chance for happiness with both hands? As I see it, right now, this young Marine captain reports to Captain Drago. You don’t report to nobody. In a few hours, that’s gonna change. Likely never unchange. You can get married to this guy in the next four to six hours or you can forget it until, well, forever. What do you say?”

  Kris looked at Jack. Jack looked at her.

  “Which one of us goes first?” Kris asked.

  “Traditionally, it’s the guy, but you’ve got the rank. Oh, and you’re the princess. You call it.”

  “Jack, if you’re going to say something, you go first.”

  Jack reached for her hand and stared deep into her eyes. “Kris Longknife, will you marry me and make me the happiest man this side of the galaxy?”

  Kris had forgotten to breathe. She was half-afraid he would not say a word. Now she nearly had to gasp for breath. “Yes, Juan Montoya, I will marry you, and it will make me the happiest woman in the entire galaxy.”

  “Well, folks,” announced Granny Rita, “we got a wedding to put on and four hours to do it. Let’s get moving.”

  20

  There was a lot to get moving.

  “Ada,” Granny Rita ordered, “get back to the reception and get the word circulating that anyone who wants a trip back home needs to be at the fleet landing in the next two to four hours.”

  “That fast?” Ada asked.

  “First, we got to get Raymond distracted. Second, we don’t want any of those leaving to know too much about the wedding.”

  “Good point,” Ada said, and headed back for Government House.

  “Nelly,” Kris said, “contact Captain Drago.”

  “Yes, Commodore Viceroy, or whatever I should call you.”

  “We’ll figure that out later. Listen, Granny Rita isn’t in quite as bad a shape as we thought. You can cancel the emergency team.”

  “How not bad?”

  “She’s going to be doing a wedding in four hours.”

  “Oh. Anyone I know?”

  “Just me and Jack.”

  “Finally! You are, of course, inviting all the ship’s officers and senior chiefs and NCOs.”

  “Of course, but there is this problem.”

  “Isn’t there always where Longknifes are involved? What is it this time?”

  “You’ve heard the king plans to make me Commander, Alwa Defense Sector?”

  “Yep. It’s on all the best gossip shows.”

  “Well, as soon as he does that, Jack goes back into my chain of command, and we can’t get married. We’ve got to do this before the orders are issued.”

  “Smart. Very smart. I smell Granny Rita’s hand in this.”

  “She’s doing the wedding,” Kris said dryly.

  “So, you don’t want the Wasp’s comm center to log your orders until after the wedding.”

  Kris sighed. It would be so easy to take the skipper up on the offer. “No, Captain, we are not going to do anything like that. If the orders come in before Jack and I say ‘I do,’ the whole thing is off. Bring anyone down here to the wedding that you want, but leave someone in charge of the comm center you can count on to pass those orders immediately to Nelly.”

  “And you’ll make sure that Nelly tells you?”

  As often, the skipper had a good point. “Also have him call you on net. So, you see, you’re all invited to the wedding, but we can’t let the other ships in the fleet know what’s going on. Certainly not the Monarch.”

  “Mum’s the word. Oh, I’m going to send down the emergency medical team anyway. They’re ready to go, and if we don’t send them, it would cause talk.”

  “Okay,” Kris said, “heaven knows there were enough old folks at the reception that they ought to be able to keep the docs busy for a week.”

  “What time’s the wedding?”

  “In four hours if I can pull it off.”

  “We’ll be there, Kris. Don’t you go walking down any aisle before we get there.”

  “I don’t even have a wedding dress. I’m having a hard time believing that even Granny Rita can pull this all off in four hours.”

  “Well, you left here in dress whites. Oh, was Jack in dress red and blues?”

  “Yes, he is,” Kris said.

  “Good. I don’t have to find a uniform for him. Bye, dear, have fun, I hear there’s nothing quite as joyful as wedding prep.”

  “Good-bye, Captain Drago,” Kris said dryly to his lie.

  This
wedding was not to be a simple elopement. It seemed that every two or three months there was a wedding; one of Granny Rita’s great-grandkids or godchildren or just someone from the crew that wanted his latest descendant married by the old skipper.

  For example, the ring bearer, a lad of five, had admirably performed that service three times in the last six months. Each time with more and more proficiency and less and less hijinks.

  He was eager to do it again. Of course, his dress pants were tight and very high up his legs, but his mother assured Kris she had socks just as black as the pants. The cute little coat proved totally unusable. The shirt and tie would do if the top button was left undone.

  Kris was offered two choices: break in a new five-year-old and break this one’s heart, or go with the boy who pleaded so artfully for the chance, even if he was the very advertisement for back-to-school shopping.

  Kris let the boy do it again. After all, Rita said all the couples he’d handled the ring for were still happily married. That was more than she could claim.

  Kris checked with Nelly. Only three and three-quarters of an hour of marriage preparations left. How could women stand months of this?

  The three flower girls also turned out to be a bit long in the tooth and short on the hemline. All of eight, all experienced, all pleading for just one more chance to walk down the aisle strewing flowers. Oh, and they knew where to get the best flowers and how to convert them to petals themselves.

  Kris assented, wondering just how short their dresses would be when they showed up.

  That brought Kris to her own choice of wedding dress. She was not getting married in uniform. Not her.

  Three dresses were readily at hand. The first bride had been petite, a tiny slip of a thing. They held the dress up to Kris and put it back in the protective bag.

  The second bride had been pregnant at the time. It was a bit longer, but it had space in all the places Kris didn’t need. Back into the box for that one, too.

  The third bride had all the curves Kris dreamed off. All of them and then some. She was taller than the other two. With help, Kris managed to settle the dress around her shoulders and watch as it fell . . . to well above her knees. The waist was a bit tight, but she could give up deep breaths for a few hours. The bust was . . . way too busty.