Kris Longknife: Redoubtable

by Mike Shepherd

  The admiral’s lips were drawing thin and tight. “Send out your scouts. I expect you to use them for nothing more than what you’ve said.”

  “You have my word on that,” Princess Kristine Longknife answered.

  A few moments later, a thin filament was barely visible, floating lightly on the air from the pig’s apple.

  “If your technician will delicately lift that out and deposit it on my portable work surface,” the chief said, pulling a green plastaglass sheet from one pocket.

  The technician looked aghast at the idea and quickly stepped back as a young lieutenant hurried into the wardroom. “You called for me, Lieutenant Peterwald?”

  Vicky quickly explained the problem. The lieutenant produced something that looked like a pair of tweezers patched together by a gear freak and did the service of removing the offending bug to the chief’s examination plate.

  The chief and lieutenant donned different eye-power-enhancement devices and began oohing and aahing over their catch.

  “What should we do about the other four electronic devices the cook has on him?” Nelly asked.

  “He has more?” Vicky said, turning her attention back to the young man.

  “Four,” Nelly repeated.

  “Search him,” the admiral ordered.

  The two Gunny Sergeants received the order with a mutual grin that brought horror to the object of their interest.

  “I don’t have anything on me,” the chef pleaded.

  He could have saved his breath. While four Marines held him down, the two Gunnies, with borrowed bayonets, proceeded to strip him down to the bare skin.

  Kris turned away, unsure if they would stop the knife work at that point. Vicky didn’t.

  “I’ve launched two more scouts,” Nelly said. “I think you’ll find one device on the front of his belt buckle.”

  A moment later, the buckle was on the dining table, and a filament waved from it. The Greenfeld lieutenant didn’t turn from his attention to the initial bug but handed his tweezers off to the technician without even looking up.

  The technician carefully placed the new bug on the glass plate.

  “If we could have his shoes,” Nelly said, and both black leather shoes were on the table a moment later.

  “I think the heels come off,” said Nelly.

  They didn’t budge when the technician tried gently to move them.

  “Ask the man,” Nelly said.

  Kris noticed that Gunny Brown took a step back as the questioning began silently and out of her view. It must have been persuasive.

  “There’s a tiny ridge on the sole in front of the heel,” came in a rush. “Press it with your thumbnail.”

  The technician did, and the heels popped off, revealing two small chips and a tiny power supply.

  They were gently put side by side on one corner of the examination plate.

  “Nelly, are you sure about that other device?” Kris asked.

  “I think I’ve located it. There’s something with a power supply under the skin of the little finger on his left hand.”

  “Left hand?” the Greenfeld Gunny asked.

  “Yes,” Nelly said.

  And a second later, there was a whimper, and a finger, wrapped in a napkin lay beside the green glass pad.

  “I didn’t know about any of those. I swear to God. Somebody must have put them on me,” the naked man insisted, as four Greenfeld Marines hustled him from the room.

  Kris would not want to face that man’s fate. She doubted Greenfeld interrogators would start by offering a hamburger and a brew.

  The chief and the lieutenant continued to mutter to themselves about the new toys they had found. Neither the admiral nor Vicky seemed happy to be so ignored. Before they could start juggling elbows, Kris popped a question.

  “Nelly, have you heard back from your scout that went after the repeater?”

  “I think it just located something in the admiral’s office.”

  That got both Vicky’s and Admiral Krätz’s attention. They and the technician followed Kris there. Nelly aimed them at a power socket that now had one of the thin filaments waving in the soft breeze of the ship’s blowers.

  “Has it been listening to my conversations? Our conversations?” the admiral demanded with a worried glance at Vicky.

  “It’s positioned to be a repeater,” the junior technician said, pulling the device out. “The lieutenant will have to examine it to know just what it can do, sir.”

  “If you will allow me to send a nanoscout down your power cable, I may be able to locate where the repeater is sending its feed,” Nelly said.

  “How much of my ship’s electrical cabling will you have to search?” the admiral asked.

  “All of it, I think,” Nelly said.

  “I cannot allow your spies the free run of my ship,” the admiral said with finality, then turned on the technician. “I was told that we had secured our ship against just such spying devices as you are now holding.”

  “Yes, my admiral, I was assured that it was so.”

  “We will have to talk about this,” he growled as he turned back to the wardroom.

  “Ah, may I suggest,” Kris said softly, “that we continue our conversations aboard the Wasp.”

  The admiral began to snap a quick response, then swallowed it. He glanced at Vicky. “What do you think?”

  “I think the princess has a point. While I doubt she is offering it to achieve our best interests, I do think it is in our best interests.”

  “Then yes, let’s keep our peace until we can talk with fewer ears listening,” the admiral muttered.

  They reentered the wardroom, with its ignored roast pig, but before the admiral could issue any orders, Chief Beni turned to Kris.

  “Commander, you know that jamming problem we’ve had? The one that can’t happen but just keeps on showing up?”

  “All too well,” Kris said.

  “Well, I think this little doodad from his left heel is just the thing that’s been causing it.”

  “What are you talking about?” Vicky said.

  “We’ll talk about it next door,” Kris said.

  And with that, they silently wrapped things up and left.

  17

  As they left the Fury and quick marched for the Wasp, Vicky leaned close to Kris.

  “So, you’ve got more supersmart computers.”

  “They are my children,” Nelly put in before Kris could say a word.

  “Your children,” Vicky said with what sounded like a touch of feigned awe. It might fool a young computer, but it was as fake as any praise Kris ever heard in high school.

  “Any chance I could have one to work with me?” Vicky said cheerfully.

  “No!” Nelly said bluntly.

  “Why not?” Vicky shot back.

  NELLY, SHUT UP, Kris thought. “Because I’m not at all sure Greenfeld has the technology to support a computer of Nelly’s caliber,” Kris went on aloud, “and I’m not about to sell you any of Wardhaven’s superior tech.”

  “Hey, we make our own smart metal and have some pretty good self-organizing computer matrices. I bet if you gave me Nelly’s central kernel, I could have a computer up and running in no time almost as good as Nelly. Maybe even better.”

  “I will not have one of my children in your hands,” Nelly spat before Kris could even begin to organize a response.

  “What does she mean?”

  “Nelly is very much the mother of her offspring,” Kris said slowly. “Each of them is being allowed to develop their own personality. Usually as a reflection of the person they’re working with. But you have to understand, Nelly’s already called two of her kids back from people who weren’t suited for them, and she’s none too sure about Abby.”

  “Not at all,” Nelly sniffled. “That woman is on probation. She still hasn’t named her computer, and she keeps turning her off. If she keeps this up, Kris, I’m going to have to ask you to bring her back to me.”

  Kri
s listened to the computer at her neck and shook her head. “Vicky, you don’t strike me as someone who suffers fools gladly, or listens long to anything you don’t want to hear. I can’t believe you’re serious about wanting to put up with someone like Nelly hanging around your neck.”

  “I expected that I’d be able to teach my computer to behave itself,” Vicky said.

  “Right,” Nelly snapped. “Kris, you heard her. No way will I have her abusing one of my children.”

  “I am ending this conversation,” Kris said, as they walked through the station’s vast main deck. “Nelly, you need to learn to converse in gentle company. People do not like talking to someone who is rude, tactless, and inflexible.”

  “But my children!”

  “Nelly, not another word.”

  They walked on in silence for a few paces.

  “Is she always like that?” Vicky asked.

  “I said not another word,” Kris repeated.

  Vicky eyed Kris with both eyebrows raised in surprise. Slowly it dawned on the scion of the Peterwald power base that Kris did indeed intend to apply the same rules to her as she did to her pet computer.

  The eyebrows came down.

  “You’re mighty quiet back there,” Jack said without looking over his shoulder.

  “We ran out of things to talk about,” Vicky said.

  The Marine and admiral exchanged silent glances, and the party continued on its way to the Wasp.

  Once they crossed over to the Wasp’s quarterdeck, everything came to a halt as Chief Beni and the Greenfeld lieutenant did a complete wash down of the entire party for any kind of electronic device they’d picked up in transit. Though none of the sixteen Greenfeld or Wardhaven Marines were carrying anything but their standard firing computer, still, everyone and everything had to be checked.

  Especially after it was found that the admiral had somehow acquired a stray nanobug on the walk back. Once Chief Beni identified it, the admiral and Vicky quit grousing about the delay and waited quietly until the chief was content.

  By which time the Greenfeld lieutenant was seriously impressed. “How do we get our hands on some of the nifty stuff he’s got?” he whispered to the admiral, who made a serious effort not to hear the question.

  “I’ve reserved the Forward Lounge,” Kris told them, and led the Greenfeld contingent to where Kris and her team had spent so much time with the visiting Iteeche who never were officially there.

  Once at the lounge, Admiral Krätz ordered the junior technician to do a full sweep of the place. Kris gave the chief a quick nod, and he followed the other as they did a serious and thorough search . . . and found nothing.

  Done, the admiral sent his Marines to wait outside with the technician. Jack had Kris’s own Marine escort keep them company. That left only six military personnel from two seriously divided camps to share one huge room.

  “Now that we are truly alone,” the admiral said, taking a seat at a round table in the middle of the room, “what is it that we want to talk about?”

  “Several things,” Kris said, settling into the chair across from him. Jack sat to Kris’s right, Vicky to her left. The two technical experts set themselves up at the next table over and quickly lost themselves in their own separate world.

  “As I would not mention in a potentially public forum, my local network has been jammed several times of late,” Kris said.”

  “Short-range local networks can’t be jammed,” Vicky said.

  “Yes, I know that, and Nelly made sure to remind me of that well-known fact every time it happened, but it just kept happening. That usually was when there was a Peterwald interest at work in my life.”

  “Us?” Vicky said in such surprise that Kris doubted even a Peterwald could fake.

  Or a Longknife.

  “You remember the first time you tried to kill me on New Eden,” Kris said.

  Vicky nodded.

  “The shooters you hired were pretty lame at the assassination business, but the whole time I was running from them, something was jamming the net connection between Nelly and my automatic. In order to get a sight picture, I actually had to risk putting my eyeball behind my weapon. No remote sight picture. Quite a problem at the time.”

  “I didn’t hire anyone to jam you,” Vicky said, thoughtfully. “I didn’t even think to try. Even I knew that you couldn’t jam a local net.”

  “But somehow someone has been doing it,” Kris said slowly

  “Admiral,” Vicky asked, “do you know of anything we’ve got that could do that?”

  The Navy officer shook his head. “No, I don’t, and since tonight I’ve had my nose rubbed in Wardhaven’s electronic superiority over Greenfeld time after time, I’m kind of hard-pressed to believe that we have anything like that.” He paused for a moment, then continued. “However, I do not doubt Your Highness’s word at all. If you’ve encountered it, it is there.”

  “I think we just encountered it,” Vicky said, glancing at the techs mumbling behind her.

  “It seems to me,” Kris said, “that there is a cluster of excellence in electronics somewhere in Greenfeld that has not been brought to the attention of your father, Vicky. Quite probably very intentionally not brought to his attention.”

  “I do not like that,” Vicky said darkly.

  “But why would they do that?” Jack said. “I thought that people that won Henry Peterwald’s good attention were the ones who advanced in Greenfeld. Am I missing something?”

  For a long moment, Vicky let that question hang in midair. Finally, she said, “Some people seek my father’s support and become his supporters as well. But I’ve come to realize that there are many games going on in the Palace, and many people may gain aces in one game but choose to keep them up their sleeves to play in others.”

  “Wheels in wheels inside wheels,” the admiral said, “and please, Commander, you need not point out that these games are now deadly and driving people to risk their lives in flight across the stars. It is the fate of us in this time to pay the price for a foolish game that has been long in progress.”

  “I’m sorry if I made it sound like we folks at Wardhaven had all our problems solved,” Kris said. “We have our own set. If we didn’t, no one would have been able to manipulate our politics to let six strange battleships almost flatten Wardhaven.”

  “Thank you,” Vicky said. “For what it’s worth, I envy you your problems. I’d gladly swap with you.”

  “Thanks, but no thanks,” Kris said dryly.

  There was a brief pause before Jack leaned forward, and said, “So, what does all this tell us?”

  “Someone in Greenfeld has some pretty fancy listening devices,” the admiral said. “You can spot them. We cannot. I can understand the need for you to hold certain technology close to your vest, considering the present state of affairs between our two alliances. Still, I most certainly wish that I could protect my conversations with Lieutenant Peterwald from eaves-droppers. I will leave that for you to think about, Commander. You said there were other things you wanted to talk about?”

  “Yes,” Kris said. “There’s the matter of the pirates. You’re experienced enough with ship maintenance, Admiral, to know that they must have a base to outfit them and supply them.

  “Apparently Major Jackson knew of such a base. At least she led a merchant officer to think that once they had a ship for him to go pirating in, she would tell him where to buy armament and sell off any cargo they didn’t want to use on Kaskatos. Unfortunately, she died without telling anyone where this base is, and her computer was reduced to even smaller pieces than her person. Rocket grenades do that to a body.”

  “Yes, they do,” the admiral agreed.

  “Kris, I figured that you’d want some help with the pirate problem,” Vicky said, “and they are operating on our front door, so I tried to find out something about them. Follow the money is my dad’s usual advice on problems like this. So I had my accountants do a search on money or goods going out of our e
xchange system. They also searched for goods suddenly showing up with little or no documentation.”

  “How’d it go?” Kris asked.

  “Nothing. Not. A. Thing. Even in these troubled times, every item of production is accounted for. No money is unaccounted for. No goods for sale without full documentation to point of origin. I would have expected a few things to get lost. A few accounts not to balance. But everything is just perfect. Not so much as a hair out of place”

  Kris waited as a grin spread on both her and Vicky’s faces, then said, “Too perfect,” at the exact second Vicky did.

  “Just so,” Vicky said. “Now, before tonight’s demonstration of computational wizardry, I was under the impression that the computers used by my dad’s Department of Taxation were the best available. Now”—Vicky brought a thoughtful forefinger up to her lips—“I’m not so sure.”

  “Interesting,” Kris said. “You think all hundred planets in your father’s alliance are linked into one big fake accounting scheme? Could anyone pull off such a huge Potemkin economy?”

  The admiral scowled. “Only if everyone is helping to pull the wool over each other’s eyes. Isn’t this what I was telling you, Lieutenant?”

  Now it was Vicky’s turn to sigh, like a hot-air balloon letting go of its last gasp of support.

  “The admiral has pointed out to me places where warehouse inventories say there are plenty of this or that, yet when the fleet needs something, it is strangely not available or takes half of an eternity to get it, leaving a fighting ship tied up at the pier. Don’t tell your Admiral Crossenshield I said that.”

  “I won’t,” Kris said . . . and meant it.

  Vicky went on. “The admiral here tells me that you cannot build six super battleships in secret without causing shortages. You can’t slap a cruiser squadron together so my brother can play commodore and not pay the price somewhere. I didn’t want to see what the admiral was pointing out to me, but I’m not blind. I can’t afford to be like my brother. Or my dad.” Vicky’s voice now dripped with bitter irony.