Rita Longknife--Enemy in Sight

by Mike Shepherd

  “The depredation on our colonies are coming from humans. We have witnesses that tell us that humans landed at their towns, emptied their grain silos, slaughtered their cattle and pigs and stole their daughters. That’s something we humans have been doing to each other for a very long time. We should do what we’ve always done to put an end to it.”

  Ray paused to do a check of his listeners. As he’s expected, Ernie was all with him. The rest, from the spy to the beauty to the two ties were blank faces. He’d have better luck getting a reaction from a fire plug.

  No, he’d get water from a fire plug. He’d get nothing from these four.

  “As for the attrition to your deep scouts, that’s another matter, and one I think we ought to examine carefully. Do we want to keep sending ships out to get picked off, or is it time for us to put together a fleet of contact? A decent sized fleet with some serious technology and ethnographic experts to see how well we can do with our first aliens.”

  Ray eyed the non-reaction he was getting, and chose to give them nothing back in return. Then he had a stray thought.

  “I’m assuming that none of you have got a ship back that reported shooting it out with some strange ship and winning?”

  The three, red dress and both ties, actually had to glance at each other.

  It was a while before the woman said, “We’ll have to talk about that, won’t we boys?”

  “Yeah.”

  Ray was a soldier. Soldiers lived and died on whether the intelligence was good or bad. Their life depended on the man to their right and the woman to their left. He’d had about enough of this selfish shit.

  “People, folks are dying out there. Can you at least agree to give me the data I need to keep more from dying? Have any of you got a ship back that shot it out with a round ball of fuzz and lived to tell of it?”

  The three of them stood, shared not a word with Ray, and left.

  “That didn’t go all that well,” General Ray Longknife said, stalked to the liquor cabinet where he poured himself a tall Scotch over very little ice.

  “You got their attention, General,” the spy said. “Before you popped your little question, I doubt either of those three factions had considered it. Now, it’s out on the table. I suspect there will be some serious discussions tonight.”

  “But will there be any trust behind the words?” Andy asked.

  “And will it matter?” he added. “Often, when a ship takes a hard hit, the reactor loses its containment and you don’t want to be around when thermonuclear hot plasma gets loose in your ship.”

  “What you’re saying is that just because one of their ships survived a fight with an alien ship, doesn’t mean it knows any more than our pirates knew when their fight ended,” Ernie said.

  “Less,” Andy said. “Our pirates got a picture of an alien body. If a ship blew from the reactor out, there may be nothing left bigger than an atom.”

  “So, again I ask,” said the spy. “What do we do now?”

  “We wait for my wife to get home with our son and tell us what she saw,” Ray said. He took a sip of his drink, thought some more, then downed the rest in one gulp, “and hope she’s willing to leave the rest of the recon contact to someone else.”

  Ray went to refill his drink. Maybe he’d see something in the map when he was roaring drunk that had evaded him when he was stone cold sober.

  4

  Captain Edmon Lehrer, the very titular head of this pirate kingdom thanks to murder and assassination, finished counting the raised hands of the captains at the table. Most had a bottle of rum in front of them. The three woman captains had red wine.

  “I see twelve hands for us moving farther out to the new base,” he said.

  The grunts from around the table concurred.

  “So, the count of captains is twelve that we stay here at LeMonte and twelve that we move our base to Port Elgin.” Captain Lehrer glanced around the bare bones conference room on their bare bones space station and said. “Ladies and gentlemen, we are tied.”

  “So twelve of us will go,” said Captain Maynard, the spokesmen for the Port Elgin faction. “Ed, you ain’t been nearly as bad to work for as Whitebred. And smarter than him, but face it, it’s best if we do split up.”

  Lehrer shook his head, but only a bit. “There’s strength in numbers, Billy.”

  “There’s also advantages in keeping a lower profile,” Captain Maynard said, continuing the pre-vote debate. “You been shearing a lot of sheep in this neighborhood. Do that too often and somebody’s bound to holler. If we move out a bit and over some, we’ll be shearing a whole different herd. And besides, Ed, Port Elgin is pretty damn near heaven itself.”

  “Yeah,” one of his supporters jumped in. “You can swim in the ocean. Eat the fish. Hell, half the stuff growing on the trees there you can eat.”

  “The half that don’t kill you,” came from one of Lehrer’s supporters.

  “Nobody died.”

  “They just wished they had as they tossed up their toenails.”

  “So, we don’t eat that one again.”

  “Okay, okay,” Captain Lehrer said, pounding the table with a wooden door knob someone had found on a captured ship. “The count is even. Half of you captains will go. The other half will stay. For the crew, we’ll let them vote with their feet. If some of yours would rather stay, we’ll find a berth for them. If any of ours want to join you, they’re free to go.”

  “And we’ll find a job for them with us,” Maynard agreed.

  Lehrer took a deep breath, and prepared for what might bring them to blows. “Billy, the station will stay.”

  “I never said it wouldn’t, Ed. Hell, we had enough trouble setting it up; no way would I try to stuff it back in a box and take it out of orbit.”

  “Good,” Lehrer said, and found he was letting out a deep sigh. Then he went on with the practical matters. “You know you’re going to need to work on your ships sooner or later.”

  “And we’ll pay well to have the yard here do the work. It’s damn sure we can’t go anywhere else.” That drew a laugh.

  “And Ed. All of you,” Captain Maynard said, sweeping the table with a sincere smile. “If it gets too hot here, you know where you’ll always be welcome.”

  Maynard nodded. So far, the route through the nova and nebula had stayed a secret. “Billy, I’m more afraid of them chasing you down.”

  “We’re going out far enough that they’ll be hunting for us until long after we die of a happy old age,” the other pirate captain assured him.

  “Okay, Bill. When do you intend to pull out?”

  “It will take us a day to get the other icicle ship ready to move again. Thanks, Ed, for letting us have half the laborers.”

  “Even if this place is as nice as you claim, I still suspect you’ll like an occasional good old Earth dinner.”

  “Yes, we will.”

  They settled the rest of the outstanding matters without coming to blows. It hadn’t come to that yet. Fights at the captains’ table? Not quite.

  Still, maybe it would be easier to manage things when they were down to only twelve.

  Edmon Lehrer snorted softly at the thought. They were pirates. No pirate wanted someone to tell him what to do.

  5

  Captain Rita Nuu-Longknife was overjoyed to see Ray waiting for her on the pier as the Exeter was drawn into its berth. As was traditional, some of the best optics on a warship were focused on the dock as crew searched for their waiting loved ones.

  Just because she was the skipper didn’t mean she was immune to an ancient Navy tradition.

  The fact that Ray was not alone was to be expected. Her mom and dad were there, no doubt waiting to get their first look at Alex in far too long. He’d taken his first step, or so the nannies told Rita.

  He had yet to take a step with her in attendance.

  The spy was there, as well as a most striking platinum blond who was way too close to Ray. What had she said about what was good en
ough for the goose being fine for the gander?

  Well, Ray better give her his full attention. She’d sent ahead a very brief message that they had found the target. If anyone wanted to hear more, they better come to her.

  And they did.

  Her mother was ushered off to the nursery, but the rest were directed to the Exeter’s wardroom. While they waited, Rita oversaw the change of her ship from underway watch to in port watches, as well as the engineers putting the reactors down for their nap.

  Actually, the ship’s three reactors never fully went off line. One or two might be cut out for maintenance, but one was always up, running at least a trickle of plasma around a superconducting magnetohydrodynamic race track to generate electricity for the ship’s needs.

  Only when all her duties as a ship’s lord, master, and captain were complete did she breathe a sigh of relief, adjust her uniform and head for the wardroom.

  Her breasts were feeling full, but she’d expressed extra milk so Alex wouldn’t go hungry. No doubt, her mom would be in heaven to have a chance to feed her first, and so far, only grandchild.

  Rita would make sure the meeting did not run too long. A nursing mother with an uncomfortable pair of breasts was even more motivation to short meetings than an old man with a bladder problem. No doubt about it.

  Rita entered the wardroom to find that Matt had already made it over from the Northampton. Ving was over from the Second Chance as well. Both had brought a major portion of their science teams with them. Boffins, as Matt called them.

  None noticed as Rita entered the room; all were congregated around not the coffee urn, but the large screen that took up a chunk of the wardroom’s forward bulkhead.

  Rita was getting herself some coffee when she recognized the screen as a star chart. And the section of stars represented by it.

  She forgot the need for coffee and headed for the projected star map.

  Her husband spotted her. His eyes lit up and his worried mouth twisted into a bright smile. She found she was giving him just as bright a smile right back. If she wasn’t careful, they’d start acting like just two kids in love, not two senior officers that should set their subordinates a good example.

  “Folks,” Ray’s command voice carried. “Let’s take our seats. It’s better we give you a full explanation of the map so that you can give us a full explanation of what you found out there.”

  People broke for chairs, still the three ship’s companies managed to sort themselves out and seat themselves together. Rita found herself unexplainedly relieved when the stunning platinum blond in the tight electric blue dress settled into a chair beside the spy. Ray waited for Rita to take a chair, then booted Hesper out of her chair so he could sit beside her.

  “Andy, you’re getting good at this briefing. Do it again,” General Ray Longknife ordered.

  The retired Navy captain brought Rita up to date on what had been going on in human space while she’d been busy. Andy showed the proposed search sweeps of missing exploration ships but did not explain how they came to have the trip plans for a dozen privately funded exploration voyages.

  “What’s the name of that ship that went close to our alien hot datum?” Rita asked. “By the way, the wreckage wasn’t there, but three star systems over.”

  “That’s the Jackpot No. 27. Missing from Savannah.”

  “Was it a Daring class cruiser by any chance?” she asked.

  “No, it was a General class cruiser,” the retired Navy captain said without having to refer to notes. “That class they built before the Daring, although I’m told they were a lot alike.”

  “Well, they are, and we found a chunk of it.”

  The ships’ crews were ready for that, but it ran like wildfire through the folks that had just come aboard, which she saw now included her dad.

  “Well, captain,” her husband said, “why don’t you fill us in on what you found.”

  Rita stood, and went down the short list of what they knew about the alien ship and the wreck of the Jackpot No. 27. “Crazy as it may seem, the aliens appear to use salt water for their reaction mass.”

  “Salt water?” came from most of the Wardhaven contingent.

  “There is definitely sodium in their reaction mass. Why?” Rita said, and shrugged. “Your guess has to be better than ours, but I won’t take any bets.”

  Ray and Andy just shook their heads.

  “Hey, they’re alien, so expect something alien from them,” Rita put in.

  “Do you have any of their bodies?” Ray asked.

  “There are about a hundred of them in our freezers,” Rita said.

  “Can we have priority access to a dozen of them?” the woman in the bright blue dress asked.

  Damn, even her voice is beautiful, Rita thought. Who are you?

  Ray didn’t introduce her, but nodded. “You have first call on a dozen. After that, you have to wait in line.”

  “A dozen will satisfy the labs we have lined up on Earth and a half-dozen other planets,” the woman said.

  So who is your ‘we’, lady?

  The lady didn’t say and Ray didn’t ask. Ray, we have to talk when this is over.

  “Doctor Qin, would you care to report on what we do know about the aliens?” Rita said.

  “They are big, and have very well-developed musculature. In a physical encounter, they would likely win unaided by weapons or technology. Their DNA bears no relationship to ours. We doubt there is any way for a human and one of these to exchange germ material.”

  “Huh?” the spy said.

  “No way will there be babies between us and them,” Rita translated.

  “Oh,” several of the civilians said. Rita noted the platinum blond did not react to the translation. Either she got it the first time or she was too cool to let surprise show.

  You’re good. I hate you being anywhere near my husband, but you’re good.

  “We found several other examples of animal life that shared the same DNA history with the aliens, although we expect they were no closer to these aliens than, say a pig or chicken is to us. They appeared to have been alive when they went into space, so we think the aliens like their food raw. It’s possible that they were storing fish like food in their reaction tanks and that might explain the salt water.”

  “An interesting hypothesis,” the spy said.

  “It’s little more than a guess,” Doctor Qin said.

  “We’ll accept guesses for now. We can reject them or not when we get more data,” said the spy.

  Dr. Qin went on with a short list of what they knew and a long list of what they didn’t before sitting down.

  Rita stood up again.

  “So, there you have it. We do indeed share the galaxy with another space faring race. How good they are is still a question on the table. What they’re intentions are toward us is also an unanswered question. We’ve collided with them and blood has been spilt. Not a lot so far. However, if we don’t do something about it, there may be a whole lot more. May I suggest that our first order of business is to put our own house in order while we see what more we can learn about these aliens?”

  “Put our house in order?” the blond asked.

  “Put the pirates out of business before they kill any more of these aliens,” Rita snapped. “If ever we needed a single policy initiative, we need one toward the aliens. At least we’re all one big, friendly Society of Humanity now. The sole exception to that seems to be the pirates who, it seems, are also searching the same space.”

  “We’d prefer to see some immediate effort made to meet these aliens,” a civilian in a gray suit with a blue tie said.

  “I think the captain has a good point,” Ray countered, in more of a growl than the voice Rita usually expected from him. It was also nice to see him backing her up.

  “Please, boys, the captain and her husband have a good point,” was not the back-up Rita wanted. It came from the gorgeous blond. “It shouldn’t take much of an effort to suppress the pirate problem.
Certainly not if we make it a concerted effort.”

  “Are you going to back closing down the exploration missions?” snapped the fellow in a red tie. Rita studied the three civilians, two males and one female. Expensively dressed, they were young, too pretty to work for a living, and, apparently, not on the same team.

  “No one from any association is trying to tell anyone else what to do,” the young woman said easily. “Still, we all have to agree on a unified policy, or we all have to agree we are free to go our separate ways. However, it seems to me that we can all agree that getting enough of a Navy out to put down the pirates would be a good idea. As to our different exploration efforts, so long as everyone continues to report their voyage plans so that if your ship goes missing, we know where to look for the aliens, it’s no skin off anyone else’s nose.”

  She finished with a smile that emphasized her pretty little nose. Rita fought to like the woman she so wanted to hate.

  “I’m not so sure I agree with you on that last matter,” Rita said. “We’ve gone over all the machinery and electronics we salvaged from the alien wreck. For now, we can’t make any sense of it, but that doesn’t mean we won’t succeed if we keep on trying. The same thing applies to the aliens. The more of our gear they find in our wrecked explorer ships, the more chances they have to find out something important about us. Like where we live.”

  That sent a noisier wave of discussion around the wardroom than Rita was used to having in one of her Navy meetings, but this one did have a batch of scientists as well as a few humans that were acting like a bunch of kids that had never learned to play well in the sandbox.

  Which left Rita promising herself that she’d see that Alex did learn to play well with others even if she wasn’t there to watch his first step.

  Something was clearly wrong with this picture, but Rita was busy at the moment and needed to chase down her present set of problems.

  “I don’t know who you work for,” Rita said, rising her voice to be heard above the low roar, “but our first meeting with aliens needs to be handled well. So far, it’s being botched. Would you please tell whoever your associates are that we need to speak with one voice and act with one accord?”