Kris Longknife: Redoubtable

by Mike Shepherd

  “Ms. van da Fitz, I’ll get back to you in a moment,” he said, and hung up.

  They stared at each other, Kris and the admiral. Neither blinked.

  “It seems we have a bloody mess on our hands,” he finally said.

  “With ‘bloody’ the operative word,” Kris said, risking a glance at the bodies on the screen beside her.

  “Could you please reduce that down to a size more suffer-able,” the admiral said.

  “Nelly.”

  “If you say so, Kris,” Nelly said.

  The screen stayed full size.

  “I’m saying so, Nelly. We can’t be running out to the head to vomit every time we look at that.”

  The picture shrank to something the size you might find in a history book. It also changed to black and white. THANK YOU, NELLY.

  I SWEAR, KRIS, IF THESE SAILORS’ DEATHS GET SWEPT UNDER THE RUG, I’LL PUT IT BACK UP FULL SIZE AND IN BLEEDING, BLISTERED COLOR.

  I HEAR YOU, NELLY. NOW LET ME WORK.

  “So, Admiral, what do we do with this mess? And I hope you’ll excuse me if I push for something to be decided quickly. I fear if we blather for too long, others will make the decisions for us.”

  “Vicky, will you please explain to Her Highness here that N.S. Holding Group is not someone you want to get on the wrong side of.”

  “I already did, sir. I don’t think mere money and political power impress the lieutenant commander all that much.”

  “How commendable,” the admiral said with a sigh. “However, us simple working folks are expected to bow and scrape and work for the likes of Ms. da Fitz,” he said.

  “Even to the point of covering up murder?” Vicky asked.

  “I truly hate working with idealistic young people,” the admiral grumbled. “People, I want this room. Commander, could you please have a sailor show my staff to your wardroom for a cup of coffee. I’ll call you back when I need you.”

  Nelly quickly made the arrangements. Penny was just returning to the room as the last of them filed out. Colonel Cortez was at her elbow this time.

  The colonel eyed the procession leaving and turned to Kris. “Should Penny and I follow their lead?”

  “Please don’t,” Vicky said.

  Her admiral raised an eyebrow, but Vicky stood her ground. “What’s the use of having advisors if you send them away when you need advice? I wish I had not let you talk me out of bringing Doc Maggie along from the Fury. I do not think I will back down next time.”

  The admiral rolled his eyes at the overhead. “Is the girl learning or just still too headstrong and stubborn?

  “Probably both,” Kris said. “Now, there are a lot of slaves down there. Do we free them or not? Oh, and there may be some distressed mariners. Do we rescue them or let them be slaughtered?”

  “If only the question were that easy,” the admiral said.

  “Tell me why it’s not,” Vicky said.

  “You know why, young woman. N.S. Holdings is a major presence in the court. I fully expect that old biddy down there will be on your father, the emperor’s, first list of ennoblements. She’ll be a grand duchess, same as you.”

  Vicky made an ugly face at that prospect.

  “But our problem today is that she says this planet is already established and registered to N.S. Holdings. They are the law here, not us.”

  “Since when does the Greenfeld flag fly over slaves,” Vicky shot back.

  “Slavery is against the law, and officially, there are no slaves on Port Royal. Oh, she says that’s the planet and city’s name. In honor of your father.”

  “Gee thanks,” Vicky said, dryly. “And the slaves?”

  “What slaves? All these people are paid regular wages.”

  “Nelly, can you verify that?” Kris asked.

  “Yes, Kris, I have access to the payroll records of the entire planet,” Nelly said proudly. “And I got that access even as they were being loaded at 11:20 this morning.”

  “Loaded,” the admiral said.

  “At 11:20 this morning. Before that, nothing.”

  “I’m sorry, Vicky, Kris,” the admiral said, shaking his head. “I believe your fine computer, Miss Nelly, but in a court of law on Greenfeld, I don’t see that standing for very much.”

  Kris wondered if anything would stand for much in a Greenfeld court if it had to stand against money and power. Kris wondered, but bit her tongue and said nothing.

  “Kris, Jack wants to talk to you,” Nelly announced. “Are you available?”

  “Make it quick, Jack. You know those elephants we talked about this morning? Well, I’m surrounded by a herd of them. They can’t decide whether to ignore me or stomp me into the ground, but what they won’t do is what I want them to do.”

  “Better you than me, Commander, but I may have something that will help you.”

  “Please, make my day.”

  “We found the two missing sailors.”

  Around Kris, the room lit up in smiles. Even the admiral. “Talk to me, Jack.”

  “When these two heard the sonic booms of our assault boats, they wisely decided to make themselves scarce. Good thing, because from where they were hiding out under crates of drugs, they saw their buddies get gunned down. They weren’t too sure how to react to our Marines, but when we announced that we were going to burn the drug barns, they figured they’d better come out.”

  “Who are they?” the admiral asked.

  “I’ll put them on view,” Jack said.

  The screen beside Kris changed to show two scarecrows in rags, but these scarecrows were grinning from ear to ear. They were seated at a table, spooning in a thin soup as medics checked them out.

  “I’m Sam Hatzo. I was wiper on the engineering crew of the Hawaiian Star out of Brenner Pass. This is my buddy Oka Akino, he was a deckhand on the same. I can’t tell you what a lovely sight your ugly jarhead mugs were to these two sailors.”

  “Thank you,” Kris said. “Nelly, do we have IDs on these two?”

  “Yes, Kris,” and two merchant-sailor union cards appeared beside the former slaves. The pictures didn’t look all that much like the scarecrows, but Nelly quickly ran a facial recognition program and got ninety-two percent matches. “Fingerprints also match,” the computer concluded.

  “So,” said Kris, eyeing the admiral, then Vicky, then back to the admiral, “we have at least two merchant sailors who were taken by pirates and sold into service vile. We have their witness to five of their comrades being murdered. Admiral, will you release your Marines to join my Marines in sweeps of the farms below in search of slaves and distressed mariners?”

  The admiral took a deep breath. “I always told the missus that someday I’d take up chicken farming and be underfoot twenty-four hours a day. She said it would never happen. She would never live so long.”

  He shrugged. “So, what’s the worst that can happen? I get to raise chickens, and Vicky here has to find another old coot to educate her in the ways of the world.”

  “Five will get you ten you get a citation for this,” Vicky said.

  “Young woman, I have warned you against gambling on my ship.”

  “It’s Kris’s ship.”

  “Worse, you’re gambling before the . . . ah . . . a Longknife. Behave yourself. Nelly, would you call my staff back in. It seems we have a jump mission to plan.”

  39

  Captain Jack Montoya, Royal United Sentient Marine Corps, was having a good day. On the average.

  He’d gotten to rescue a certain twelve-year-old girl. She and her aunt were on the first shuttle back to the Wasp. Jack had looked Cara over. She looked a lot older . . . and her smile was missing.

  Cara had come aboard the Wasp a frail waif who had just lost her mother and grandmother. Then, she’d looked like serious was her first, last, and middle name.

  Then the smile slowly found its way out. Jack felt like he was watching a beaten and abused kitten discover that it could play when a ball of twine was dangled in front of h
er.

  In no time, that waif and her smile had wrapped most every member of the Wasp’s crew around her little finger.

  But the smile was gone now. Gone, leaving Jack to wonder if it would ever return.

  That many of the men and women who had stripped Cara of that smile were dead was not an even trade in Jack’s book.

  Jack sighed. There were professionals on the Wasp whose job it was to help little girls find their smiles.

  No doubt, in weeks to come, they would bring out their best solutions for Cara.

  Today, Jack was only too happy to try his own.

  The first shuttle down after the combat drop had brought a Navy landing party led by the Command Master Chief Mong. He and his team brought down a boatload of flamethrowers and were busy applying them to the local crop of poison.

  Not that much fire was needed to put the fields aflame. The leaves of this particular plant had an oily feel and were only too eager to burn. This was nice, because Master Chief Mong and his sailors were enthusiastically torching them.

  Marines were still moving from one farm to the next, looking for sailors and blowing up processing plants. There was occasional opposition.

  Jack would hear the low report of a slug pistol or rifle. It would immediately be followed by the high-pitched snap of an M-6. One hostile shot. One Marine reply.

  Then a long and death-filled silence.

  So far, no Marine had requested medical assistance. Only twice had a call come in for assistance to a down civilian . . . and one of them had been for an innocent bystander who got hit by the initial pistol shot.

  It’s a good day when a Marine can contribute his little bit to evil’s getting its comeuppance.

  That didn’t mean there weren’t annoyances.

  Gunny Brown had called in with a civilian. Fellow was berating Gunny about this being private property and a business operation and that Gunny had no right to come in and disturb his operation.

  Problem was that Gunny’s team had already found an open grave with a dozen bodies, all in different stages of decomposition, out behind the drug barns.

  The creep had the gall to claim that those were just workers who’d died on the job without taking out the offered funeral insurance.

  The story from his slaves was a bit different.

  Jack had ordered Gunny to document the situation and bring the guy in in cuffs along with some witnesses. The Marine captain had no idea how the local legal system would handle a case like this, but he would make sure it had to face it.

  The pictures that Gunny showed of this man’s slaves were particularly troubling to Jack. All of the slaves here were on short rations, but this fellow’s slaves were little more than scarecrows.

  What was it with these people? They had already beaten their workers into submission. Why weren’t they at least giving them enough food to keep body and soul alive? What good was a starved and dying worker?

  This whole situation made no sense to Jack.

  It didn’t. Unless and until he factored in the simple fact that here, on this planet, the owners could treat their slaves this way. For the plantation owners and the whip-cracking overseers, that was all they needed. If they could get away with brutalizing this part of humanity, they would brutalize it.

  Jack shook his head. Hopefully, Kris would see that the local elephants did something about all this injustice, which cried out for its day in court. A real court.

  “Jack, are you there?”

  “Yes, Kris, I’m here,” he said, forcing his voice to professional calm. “How’s it coming with your elephant taming.”

  “It’s taken an interesting turn. I’m coming dirtside.”

  “Hold it. I thought your new duties required you to hold yourself aloof from our low-class fun and games.”

  “Maybe not so much.”

  “You want to tell your lowly minion what you’re up to.”

  “I’d rather not. Let’s hold this for face-to-face. By the way, have you gotten ahold of much transportation?”

  “Yes, I’ve got several sets of wheels.”

  “Get more, we’re going to need them. See you in a bit.”

  40

  “We’re going to arrest who?” Jack asked, incredulously.

  “Ms. van da Fitz,” Kris answered, as if it was the most rational idea in human space.

  She glanced around. Jack had collected the Wasp’s Marine company and several cars and trucks. The Marines showed their usual patience as they stood by the transportation, checked their weapons, and readied themselves to follow her next order, whatever it might be.

  “And if Miss van da Snooty doesn’t want to come along peacefully?” their captain asked.

  “That’s why we’re taking a whole Marine company,” Kris said.

  “Any chance we might get a couple of battalions of Imperial Greenfeld Marines?” the Royal Marine asked.

  “Not a good idea,” Kris said, unrolling a large flimsy that showed the details of Port Royal and stretching it out on the hood of their potential staff car. “Greenfeld Marines know very well how much money Fitz has in her change purse. Very likely, she’d buy her way out. Certainly, she’d know we are coming well before we got there. Admiral Krätz felt it would be a good idea if we did it using only Wardhaven assets.”

  “And if we get killed doing this?”

  “No doubt Emperor Henry will make him a duke for being the guy who finally killed Kris Longknife,” Kris answered evenly.

  “Kris, did you hear what you just said,” Jack growled. “You’ve gotten us into some bad situations, but this has got to take the cake.”

  “Don’t be so sure, Captain. This may only be practice for my next, even worse, idea.”

  “Such as?”

  “Let’s save that for later,” Kris said. “Colonel Cortez has gone over the map, and he thinks there are three distinct approaches, one for each of the platoons,” Kris began the briefing for her officers. “Our target is the N.S. tower, right here on the bay front. Notice how all roads lead straight to it.”

  Two hours later, Kris had driven straight to it without so much as a shot fired. As she arrived two blocks from the tower, First Lieutenant Stubben reported the first platoon deployed to her right, in the buildings along Harbor Road East. Gunny Brown deployed the third platoon covering Kris’s left, in the smaller businesses along Harbor Road West.

  They awaited her orders.

  Kris and Jack drove up State Street and parked their rigs behind an imposing two-story stone bank building. The rest of the platoon took its time taking up shooting positions in the stores across the street and in the bank.

  Now Kris stood in the shade of the bank entrance eyeing what lay before them.

  “How are we supposed to do this?” Jack said as he surveyed the tactical problem. N.S. tower was a good twenty stories high in front of them, the highest building in the new and growing town of Port Royal.

  Laid out like a fan on its shoreward side were parking lots and a park with statues, a fountain, and palm trees. Lovely open spaces stretched for the thousand meters between the bank and the tower.

  It looked like a lovely place to visit.

  Attack it?

  Not so much.

  “You think they have any autocannons?” Kris asked.

  “They had plenty on their space station. What makes you think they’d scrimp around their ground headquarters?” Jack asked, answering her question with a question . . . and maybe a bit of sarcasm to boot.

  “It’s not my place as an admiral to interfere with you gravel crunchers’ tactical problem,” Admiral Krätz said on net, “but have you ever considered calling on her to surrender like any law-abiding outlaw?”

  “So nice of him to have suggestions since he’s not down here risking his neck,” Jack muttered to Kris, hopefully off net.

  “Anything’s worth a try,” Kris muttered back, and jacked up the power on her battle suit’s loudspeaker. “You are surrounded. Throw down your weapons and come
out with your hands up, and you will all survive today.”

  For a long second, nothing happened. Then another long second went by. Maybe enough time passed for Ms. van da Fitz to quit laughing at the joke.

  Or maybe she hit the automated defense button in midlaughter.

  The fountain quit spewing water, and an ugly twin-barrel device rose from the pond at its base. It took a second for the guns to level and point themselves right at Kris—but only a second.

  Then it started spewing big ugly slugs.

  A chunk from several of the tree trunks retracted, and more weapons let loose. Where stone statues stood, suddenly the stone faces of the cube pedestals fell away, showing a machine gun behind each quarter. They opened fire, spraying fire in four different directions.

  Lucky for Kris, Jack had grabbed her elbow the second the fountain gave up flinging water skyward. He pulled her after him as he half fell through the bank door.

  A Marine sapper still stood behind the door whose lock she’d recently blown so Marines could enter. Even as the sound of weapons fire filled the air, the trooper pushed the door open for Jack and Kris.

  “Thank you,” Jack said as he half yanked, half pulled Kris through the door.

  The Marine said, “You’re welcome,” and winced as cannon fire slammed into the door, half knocking her down.

  Most of the weapons fire missed Kris. Not all. One round clipped her ankle, shattering her armor there, but it did its job and protected her soft flesh.

  Still, it stung like the dickens.

  As the door swung closed behind them, it was stitched by slugs. Good armored glass that it was, it held, showing shattered stars where it was hit. As it slowly closed, shattered stars got shattered stars on them. The glass bowed in from the pressure of all the high-powered rounds it was taking.

  “Let’s get out of here,” Jack said.

  The sapper held open the second door, and they scooted inside.

  “Admiral Krätz, that didn’t go so well. You got any more bright ideas,” Jack snapped.