Kris Longknife's Assassin

by Mike Shepherd

  And as she sat at her station, she had flashbacks to what it had been like to watch Hank and his friends play. They’d played their games and left little room for Vicky.

  She had so wanted to play with them. Their games looked so much better than what she and the girls her age could play. Yet, Hank played on with the girls and boys of his age, leading the fun and never having a moment for little sister.

  Vicky had been here before, over in the corner, feeling small.

  If the four sharing her watch had been boys, she might have tried some of the things she learned when the two gals showed up on her chest. That left Vicky wondering why the watch she had replaced had so few women and this one was all female?

  She began to examine her work station. It didn’t just have the Mark VI, mod 4. There were readers, several dedicated to the equipment, how to trouble shoot them, how to take them apart, order replacement components and put them back together again. There was also one in a green cover marked Personnel. It opened to her palm print.

  Vicky looked up her own file. It was sparse to the point of nonexistent.

  I guess if you need to know anything about me, you know it already, and if you don’t, then you don’t.

  Vicky had no idea who she was sharing the midnight watch with, but the files had pictures. Since it was limited to the officers and ratings of the Communications Division, it didn’t take her long to have four files open.

  Amala Muller was Vicky’s first class comm tech. She’d been passed over for chief three times running and had been put on report twice in the last year for a slovenly uniform. Her latest fitness report said she was not a leader but recommended her retention as a competent technician.

  So why did I draw her as senior tech on my first watch?

  Her three other technicians were more of the same. Good technical skills but no real future in the Navy. Still, they were all three 2/c petty officers. Why were they in the Navy? What had they expected when they joined? What did they expect now?

  Vicky frowned; there was little chance they’d tell their new watch officer any of that, even if she led them on a raid of the nearest cookie jar.

  Nothing I’ve done before prepared me for this.

  So, you going to sit back and let Amala run this watch?

  No.

  You going to charge in their like Daddy or call State Security to take names and haul people off to jail, like you’ve heard happens?

  Vicky answered that with a deep sigh.

  I’m an ensign in the Navy. I seem to have some authority, but not a lot. How am I going to use it so that I’m trusted with more? Sitting on my duff here isn’t getting me anything.

  Vicky went through the files on her people again. Amala’s scores on her technical and leadership tests had been trending down. Not enough to get someone with fifteen years in the Navy kicked out, but how could someone who had done better before do worse now?

  Maybe she just doesn’t care.

  Vicky checked the other ones as well. Two hadn’t even bothered to sit for their technical tests the last time they were offered. None had done anything to improve their leadership qualifications in the last year.

  Do any of them care?

  Vicky did a check of the entire divisions personnel. There were only two other women in the division. They were younger, dare she say, prettier, and they were testing every chance they had.

  “Computer,” Vicky whispered softly, “have you copied the personnel data I have been looking at?”

  “Yes, ma’am. I could download a complete set if you wish.”

  “No, don’t touch any database aboard ship. Don’t do anything I don’t tell you to do.”

  “Understood.”

  “Map me the career progressions of the chiefs in the division.”

  It quickly did. It showed that every chief was a graduate of C school, a hard technical course, as well as several leadership schools.

  All of Vicky’s watchstanders had applied for C school. None had been selected. The same went for all the leadership schools. The four of them had been on straight ship duty since they graduated from B school.

  What had she heard her chief say at OTC. “In this man’s Navy.” She’d said it several times. She’d never said, “This woman’s Navy.”

  Vicky went back to her own four. All of them had qualified for C school years ago. They all had the knowledge, though it seemed to be getting stale.

  The game ended, Amala went to change the channel. Vicky walked over and hit the breaker switch on the power cord.

  There was dead silence in the room.

  “I’m your new watch officer,” Vicky said into the silence. “I expect I’ll be the midnight watch officer for a long time.”

  That got a rise out of several of them, but still not a word.

  Vicky eyed them as hard as she knew how. “You’re stale in your training and out of shape in your gut. This morning, we will work on technical skills. After our shift, we will repair to the ship’s gym and see what we can do about the other.”

  “Oh,” came from most, but it was the “Why bother?” from Amala that brought the rest to silence again.

  “We’ll get in shape,” Vicky said, “because I had to run a message up to the captain and don’t want to have to do that again all out of breath and slow. If I’m down with a hot piece of metal in my leg, Petty Officer Muller, you would have to run the Class J message up to the skipper. How long do you think it would take you?”

  “So he gets his message about today’s goulash a few minutes late. Listen, ma’am, I don’t know who you are, but you better learn that there’s really no place in this man’s Navy for a woman.” She made both words sound like curses. “You can learn it now, or you can learn it later, but you’re gonna learn it.”

  Vicky wondered if Kris Longknife ever faced stuff like this. Instead of wilting under her subordinates gaze, Vicky put her hands on her hips. “Maybe you have, but it’s not something I intend to learn in this Navy. Now, half the stations are unmanned and off line at this hour. Let’s tear them apart and see what makes them tick. You, with the network station, you go first.”

  Scowls she got aplenty, and slow was the operative word, but the silent network station got torn down under Vicky’s intent eyes. Amala even took to answering Vicky’s questions. They were putting the telephone station back together when their reliefs showed up.

  Vicky led the way to the ship’s gym even as the three 2/c techs grumbled about supper, but they all went. There, Amala asked Vicky if she’d hold the punching bag for her.

  Vicky did, and got knocked back quite a few times. Then it was Vicky’s turn. She’d been watching Amala and at least knew how to hold her fists.

  After Amala got knocked back a few times the petty officer grinned. “You got some anger management issues, there.”

  “A few. Likely not as many as you.”

  “Likely not. You’re still young. You got time to collect them, ma’am.”

  “Or to knock them for a loop.”

  “I thought that way once.”

  “Let’s see what we can do about it.”

  Vicky had intended for the watches to continue on as she had begun, but the Surprise got underway while she was asleep. Her next watch had plenty of message traffic to keep them busy. The Surprise was hunting pirates and that meant listening to everything that happened in near human space.

  Chapter 22

  Hunting pirates turned out to be as boring as being alongside the pier. They were never where the Surprise was.

  Vicky brought calls for help by merchant ships under attack up to the bridge. By the time they got there, space was empty except for the occasional bit of wreckage where someone had been damaged.

  Vicky wasn’t the only one frustrated. The punching bag in the gym had a long line most times. Fortunately, the hour after the day watch went on duty was usually light.

  Since hunting pirates wasn’t all that busy, Vicky found plenty of time during and after her watch
to study. The leadership tests for Chief and J.G. weren’t all that different. She and Amala started studying during the slow times of their watch. Then Amala joined Vicky at the training center to work on them in their off times. Their answer to leadership challenges started to get closer to what the tests showed as optimal.

  Not that Amala always agreed with the optimal answer. “That’s not going to motivate anyone. Words don’t mean a thing unless you got the walk that goes with them.”

  Training with Amala was an interesting experience.

  Then Vicky found a note on her bunk left by a runner. They were about to make port at Cuzco. Vicky had heard that. The rumor out of engineering was that one of the reactors was going lame and they desperately need a spare part. With luck the ones available on Cuzco might be better quality than the one they just finished installing on High Anhalt station.

  Vicky expected some quiet watches.

  The note appeared requiring her to present herself tomorrow at 1600 to accompany Captain Krätz to a formal dinner ashore.

  “What do you wear to a formal dinner?” Vicky asked the room in general and no one in particular. “Your dress blues?”

  “Formal dinner dress, deary,” Lieutenant Schnoor tossed at her with a wicked smile. “You’ll love it.”

  Vicky went hunting for Zenzi. “Oh, formal dinner dress,” was her response, too. “You better drop down to the ship store and see if the seamstress can help you.”

  So it was that at 1600 the next day Vicky waited just short of the quarterdeck for Captain Krätz. If she’d had any doubt about how much the Navy men hated the women, what she wore verified it all.

  The white skirt hung on her like a gunny sack. Even with the expert work of the ship’s seamstress, the blue dinner jacket didn’t fit at either waist or boobs. The shirt had ruffles down the front. Who wore ruffles these days? And the shoes! They were hardly better than those she’d done her first run in.

  Worse, she wore a tiara that was nothing more than a jumped up beret with her officer’s hat insignia on the front. Not side. Front!

  She would be laughed off the floor at any dance at the palace.

  Worse, Captain Krätz looked gorgeous in his own dinner jacket. His white trousers and his blue dinner jacket fit him perfectly. If he wasn’t her boss, she’d take him off to the paint locker for a trial run.

  He saluted the flag on the aft bulkhead, saluted the officer of the deck and was piped over the side. “Surprise departing.”

  Vicky followed silently in his wake like a dingy being towed along by some huge man-of-war.

  “Are things going well?” he asked.

  “Yes, sir,” Vicky answered properly.

  “I understand you’re studying a lot.”

  “Yes, sir,” this time from Vicky was a bit cautious. Did the Navy want its ensigns studying? Or just its male ensigns?

  Down girl. Don’t let your talks with Amala ooze into the wrong conversation.

  “Are you learning anything?”

  “I passed my proficiency test for communications yesterday,” Vicky answered.

  “Good. We must rotate you through several more divisions,” he said, smiling happily.

  Vicky thought about that for a moment. Did she want to become someone who glided in and glided out of a division? She’d done that for a lot of during factory visits.

  Did I really learn anything?

  “If possible, sir, I would like to continue working with my watch mates,” Vicky risked.

  “You would, huh?”

  “They are all overdue for promotion. I have worked with them, preparing them for their tests. I think they have good prospects.”

  “You do, do you?”

  Vicky had seen Daddy when his mind was made up and nothing was going to change it. Had Captain Krätz already made up his mind about her watch mates?”

  “Yes, sir. I do.”

  “Then we will have to see how they do, won’t we?”

  “Yes, sir,” Vicky said. And prayed her girls did as well as she hoped.

  They were approaching a fine restaurant. At least, fine for a space station; it was nothing like the best restaurants in Anhalt or the palace. She only realized she had been surrounded by security teams, Marines and State Security both, when their perimeter collapsed around her and Captain Krätz as they entered, then expanded to take over half the dining room.

  The captain seated her at a table set for four. Apparently, captains were courteous to women in this miserable get up.

  Vicky said nothing. The captain said nothing. The silence stretched. Some of the security team actually started to fidget.

  What’s going on here?

  Then the captain stood. Vicky stood and turned to follow his gaze.

  More security types were coming through the door. Some were clearly security from the suits they wore. Others were in the Red and Blue that so many Marines in human space used as their uniform.

  Then Vicky saw who they were protecting.

  Princess Kris Longknife!

  Vicky’s stare went from neutral as befitted a junior officer to feral. Her hands formed fists and her teeth gritted tight.

  Can I kill you with a butter knife? A fork? A spoon?

  Worse, Kris Longknife’s dinner dress wasn’t as miserably frumpy as Greenfeld’s issue.

  Vicky suppressed a snort at that.

  Krätz swept Kris Longknife a full bow from the waist. When Vicky just stood there like a glaring statue, he tapped her elbow, a clear order, “She’s a princess, you are not. This is Navy business. We will do it my way.”

  Vicky gave the Wardhaven princess a quick, shallow curtsy like she’d learned at six.

  Captain Krätz stayed in his full bow.

  With a scowl, Vicky curtsied again. Lower. And did not recover, but went a bit lower. Then some more.

  Finally her head was even with her captain’s.

  Only then did Kris smile and give them a most regal nod of the royal head. “Thank you Captain, Ensign, but we are in Cuzco space and I seriously doubt their government recognizes United Sentients patents of ennoblement.”

  “But graciousness is recognized throughout human space,” Captain Krätz said, rising from his bow. “Your highness, may I present to you my new junior communications watch officer, Ensign Victoria Smythe-Peterwald.”

  “I am glad that we are finally formally introduced,” Kris Longknife answered.

  All the times they’d met, and all the times the Longknife bitch had dodged her bought and paid for death cascaded through Vicky’s mind. She grit her teeth but said nothing.

  Her captain eyed her. Under his demanding pressure, Vicky bit out, “It is good to meet you.” Each word felt like fire in her mouth.

  The Marine officer with Kris held her chair for her to sit, and her captain did the same again for Vicky. It still seemed unbelievable that a god would hold her chair just because she was a woman. All things considered about what she was learning about a woman’s life in the Navy, it was downright unbelievable.

  Kris Longknife spoke first. “I was rather surprised to see the Surprise tied up along the next pier. If it isn’t a state secret, can I ask how you come to be here?”

  “Some people might consider it just such a state secret,” Captain Krätz said, with a Father Christmas chuckle and a glance at Vicky. “But a look at the ship you escorted in tells me that both our planets are concerned about the same matter. How did that freighter come to be so shot up?”

  “I’m afraid that I did it,” the Longknife girl said trying, but not succeeding at all, to look bashful.

  “It fired on the Wasp while we were making like an unarmed merchant,” Longknife said in formal report mode to Vicky’s captain. “I was on weapons and returned the compliment. I put a 24-inch pulse laser through their bridge and that was the end of the discussion.”

  “Just like you did my brother,” Victoria Peterwald shot back.

  “Ensign,” her captain said, giving warning.

  Kri
s shook her head. “Excuse me, Captain, if you will, but Ensign Peterwald and I need to get this out in the open. She may never agree with me, but she needs to hear my side.” And Kris Longknife turned her full attention to Vicky.

  “You killed my brother just like you did that freighter crew,” Vicky spat out before the Longknife bitch could confuse the matter.

  Kris Longknife seemed weight carefully Vicky’s words before she said, “Yes, I was involved in your brother’s death, but not just like those people on the pirate’s bridge.”

  Vicky already had her mouth open to shoot down any defense that Kris Longknife girl offered, but the glower from her captain caused her to bite her tongue.

  “Your brother had my ship on the ropes. It was his ship and crew or mine. I fired 6-inch lasers, aimed for his engines, not bridge. His evasion actions, or maybe it was just dumb luck, put his bridge where we were aiming.

  “On his ship, every crewman had a survival pod. We did not find a single one on that pirate ship. When I opened up their bridge, they were all doomed. Most of their bodies were blown out into space.

  “On your brother’s ship, they all activated their survival pods. With the exception of your brother’s, they all worked. His didn’t. Consider that.”

  Kris paused, eying Vicky. If she was expecting to see acceptance and forgiveness on Vicky’s face, she was sorely mistaken.

  “There is one more thing I can add, though I doubt if anyone in my government will back me up.”

  “What is that?” Captain Krätz asked. Vicky couldn’t seem to open her mouth.

  “If it’s not a state secret, could you tell me what were the series numbers of the survival pods on the Incredible?”

  “The Incredible and the Surprise were built at the same time. We all used 68000 series pods,” the captain answered.

  Kris nodded then went on. “The defective pods on the battleships we fought at Wardaven all had a 90000 series identifier. Do you know what the number on Hank’s pod was?”