Rita Longknife--Enemy in Sight

by Mike Shepherd

  “Engineering answers to 1.25 gees, ma’am. We are accelerating at 1.25 gees,” and Ray found himself getting heavier. He had been standing behind his wife’s command chair, there being no spare seats on the bridge. Not that there wasn’t room for a few kibitzing slots on the bridge of a heavy cruiser.

  The damn place was so much bigger than the close, should he say, intimate, cockpit of Rita’s last transport that you hardly believed it was a ship going anyplace.

  Hell, am I waxing nostalgic for the mess we were in, what was it, eighteen, twenty months ago? I need to have my head examined.

  No doubt, the doc would think he was there to talk about his sudden urge, at a comfortable middle age, to go chasing off after heavily armed pirates with just a battalion behind him.

  Fool doctor. That was the fun part of life.

  It was all the budgets and meeting that were driving him crazy.

  Oh, and standing around on a bridge, listening to his arches fall as his wife raised his weight by some twenty-plus kilos.

  “You going to have business for us?” Becky Graven said, coming on the bridge. Right behind her was a rather pregnant young woman.

  “Ruth, what are you doing here?” Trouble demanded of his wife.

  “You got anyone else here authorized to arrest miscreants?” she shot right back at the Marine.

  “But you told me . . .” got cut off.

  “You told me we’d just be drilling green troops, as I recall, that night you sweet-talked me into this,” she said with a wave at her swelling belly. “That there’d be no more bad guys to chase after.”

  “But . . .”

  “No buts about it, Marine. Unless you plan to kill all the bad guys, you’re going to need someone with a badge who can arrest the survivors and see that enough evidence is collected to stand up in a court of law. That’s my job. Okay?” was not a question.

  For someone who regularly won battles against impossible odds, watching the Marine lose one to his wife was almost comical.

  Except Rita was eyeing him with a clear message to keep out of this and let Ruth stand on her own two pregnant feet.

  Ray nodded submission to his own big dog.

  “I’ll get you a room in the most hardened section of the ship,” Rita said.

  “May I have the next one over?” the ambassador asked.

  “Certainly, ma’am.” Rita said, and the women left to look into feminine things, leaving Ray and Trouble to head for the coffee urn in the wardroom to discuss and cuss how men of such successful military careers could be put to rout by the other half of the human race. The ones with no balls.

  No obvious balls.

  But they were all back on the bridge as they slipped through the next jump.

  “Damn,” was not the comment you wanted to hear from sensors. Even if it was little more than a whisper.

  “Tell me the bad news,” Rita demanded.

  “There’s no ship here, skipper. There are three jumps in the system. One’s doesn’t matter; it’s way over on the other side of the sun. However, the other two, Captain, you could easily reach either of them at one gee in the time it took us to get here, but they’re in different directions.” The gal at sensors flew both her hands across her chest going in directly opposite directions.

  “Damn,” Rita muttered, wishing the Northampton was right behind her, not still somewhere behind her playing catch up.

  24

  Commodore Rita Nuu-Longknife did her best to keep her face blank. She regretted the one explicative that had slipped out. A captain must be a rock for her crew to draw steadiness from.

  Still, there were two holes that damn pirate could hide in. And Rita was more and more sure this was someone with a bad conscience doing everything he could to avoid a conversation with the powers of good.

  There was no two ways about it, she’d have to split up her tiny squadron. “Dan, what kind of shape are the Artful’s engineering spaces in?” Being a guy under the Navy scheme of things, and not having been limited to transports, he was senior officer present. Rita, however, had used her political connections to trump the old boys club and had taken command of the squadron she’d raised the money and political will for.

  No way would she give up command of her squadron. However, if she had to split it up into divisions, Dan had seniority.

  “Not as good as I’d like them to be,” he admitted. “But we’re keeping up with fleet speeds. Why, Commodore?”

  Rita liked him using the commodore handle. “As Sensors has no doubt told you, we got two jumps out of here that pirate may have grabbed. Bitch is, they’re about as far from each other as they can be. If we had the Northampton and its sniffers, we might know which one has the damn pea hiding under it, but we don’t.”

  “So you go one way and I go the other, huh?”

  “Two ships right, two ships left.”

  “Thanks, Commodore, I’m glad not to be heading out alone.”

  “Which one do you want me to go for?” Captain Izzy Umboto asked.

  Exactly how the chain of command worked here, was subject to what you considered the proper relationship between old Earth and her Society of Humanity, and the outer colonies and their recent induction into said Society. Since Wardhaven had built the ships and was paying the crew’s wages, Rita tended to think of them as hers. In theory, Izzy had been a captain in the Society Navy long before any of the Wardhaven officers.

  Hell, they had all fought in the war on the side that fought the Society.

  “If you don’t mind,” Rita said, “I’d like you to follow me. I’ve got the ambassador and the Alcohol, Drug and Explosives Enforcement Agent on board.”

  “It seems to me that some might consider that a case for me going the other way,” Izzy said.

  “You want to?” Rita asked.

  “Nope, if you want me with you, and are betting you’re guessing right, I’m right behind you.”

  “If Don wins the toss, he’ll have to send one ship back to get us. If we do, I’ll have to do the same,” Rita said.

  “It sounds to me like you’re kind of cautious about taking on this pack of dogs.”

  “Twenty, twenty-five ships left Savannah with Whitebred, or so I was told. How many Daring class light cruisers do you want to take on with a pair of Astute class cruisers?”

  “Point well-taken. Am I the one that gets to run for help?”

  “You’re the one with the 6-inch lasers.”

  “I’m gonna have to do something about that,” Izzy was heard to mutter.

  The ships split up, and went to two gees. The Astute and its sisters had been fitted out on a shoe string. What that meant was that they had about half the high gee stations they needed. Rita ordered half her crew to bed.

  “You going to stay up here?” Ray asked.

  “Yes.”

  “I don’t have a high gee station.”

  “None of you gravel crunchers do.”

  “So you’re ordering me to bed?”

  “It kind of looks that way.”

  “Alone?”

  “I assure you, at double our weight, neither one of us could dare to be on bottom.”

  “There are other options. I got this nifty book called the Kama Sutra or something.”

  “To bed, Ray Longknife.”

  “Going, going, Commodore slave driver.”

  Rita got lucky. The putative pirate was halfway across the next system when they ducked through the jump. She sent the Alacrity back through to set a buoy to alert Dan and his division to come join them, then judging the Brannigan’s Special Ale to be making about one gee, she took off after her at the same acceleration.

  Rita did send orders for the Ale to drop her acceleration and provide her papers for review.

  The freighter kept running and sent back not a word.

  The Alacrity came back through the jump and set an acceleration that would have her pulling up alongside the Astute and Patton about the time they flipped ship and started decelerat
ion for the jump point.

  An hour later, the jump buoy came through with a message that Dan had found nothing and, as they no doubt had guessed by now, was heading for their jump at 2.5 gees.

  The jump master assumed that if the other division could hold that acceleration, they’d be joining up with Rita about the time they arrived at the next jump point.

  Ray thanked Rita for going to one gee and got Trouble and his troopers out hiking the ship’s corridors and doing what training they could.

  He thanked her much more personally that evening.

  The stern chase might be boring and slow, but it had some advantages.

  For some.

  Becky and Ruth were sharing a table in the wardroom when Rita and Ray came in the next morning. Trouble was nowhere to be seen.

  After taking her own tray through the chow line, Rita joined the other women. Ray being a man of great daring, with no sense of self-preservation, joined them.

  “Thank you very much for cutting the acceleration to something I can stand,” Ruth said.

  “You volunteered for this,” Becky said. Rita noted the lack of a ring on her finger. So there was one unmarried woman at the table.

  “Tell me about it,” Ruth said. “I didn’t think this little darling could be all that much of a problem, but I hadn’t counted on it doubling in weight from one moment to the next. Or the rest of my innards doubling with it.”

  “Last trip out, I was still nursing,” Rita said. “I held the acceleration to 1.25 gees, but these still hurt like hell,” she said, waving at her breasts.

  “These aren’t going to quit hurting any time soon?” Ruth said, frowning down at the breasts straining at her shirt.

  Rita shook her head dolefully.

  “You took your nursing child out on a warship?” Becky said, her incredulity was not softened by even the tiniest bit of diplomatic tact.

  “I raised the money to commission and fit out a cruiser. I was damned if I’d let some man command it. I was relegated to the transport fleet in the war. If I was doing all the scat work to get a ship away from the pier, I was going to be walking its bridge.”

  “Is that normal?” Becky said, and seemed to be angling the question toward Ray.

  “No,” he said, and quickly added, “but there is nothing normal about my wife, now is there, hon?”

  “I’d rate that a 6.0 save, I would,” Ruth said, writing the numbers in the air.

  “Five point four in my book,” Rita said, but couldn’t keep her frown from turning into a soft smile.

  “Things have changed a lot since the war ended,” Ray said. “Some of us remember when this was supposed to be just an Exploration Service. It being the new kid on the block, it didn’t have an old boys network, and my wife did a very good job of seeing that it wasn’t getting one. Then along came these pirates and our scout cruisers were all that was available. And now there seems to be something else out there.”

  “Something else?” Ruth said, then adjusted herself in her seat to attempt more comfort. From the look on her face, she failed.

  “She doesn’t know?” Becky said.

  “Know what?” Ruth said, irritation now blooming.

  “Did your husband try to keep you from following his ship’s movement?” Rita asked.

  “Yeah. I’ve heard all that bull pucky before. I was the contract hydroponic farmer on the Patton. Who knows, maybe I still am. I’ve logged plenty of time in space.”

  “Ever chased pirates?” Ray asked.

  “Wrong question, love,” Rita said.

  “I was captured by slavers,” Ruth snapped. “Not once, but twice. That’s how I met that lunkhead of a Marine. I woke up chained to him, not just once, but twice. Worse luck, I started to like it and so did he, it seems. Anyway, I’ve arrested drug lords and slavers. I figured I was about due for a pirate or two.”

  “How about aliens?” Ray asked.

  That caused a pause in the conversation.

  Ruth put down the banana she’d been eating. “Aliens?”

  All three nodded.

  “As in bug-eyed monster aliens?”

  “No, these are more like four eyes, four arms, four legs aliens,” Rita said.

  Ruth leaned back in her chair and patted her stomach.

  “You know, baby, Daddy might have won the argument if he’d played that card.”

  “He didn’t?” Ray asked.

  “Operation Security,” Becky said. “Isn’t that what you folks call it?”

  Ruth shook her head. “I’m never gonna live this one down.”

  “You going to stay home next time?” Becky asked the gestating one.

  Ruth slowly rubbed her belly. “That will depend.”

  “On what?” Ray ventured to ask.

  “A lot of things,” was clearly a cut off.

  “So, how’s this pirate chasing going?” Becky asked Rita, changing the subject.

  “We should be back into one squadron when we do the next jump,” Rita said. “As to what we do then, it depends on a lot of things,” she said, eyeing Ruth.

  The women enjoyed a laugh.

  Ray finished his meal and stood. “I think I’ll go look for someone to discuss blowing shit up with. It seems like a safer way to spend the morning.”

  And the women enjoyed a second laugh.

  25

  “How are we going to get those ships off our tail?” Constantine said. He struggled to avoid sounding like he was whining. He didn’t sound successful even to his own ears.

  “Maybe we don’t,” Captain Grace O’Malley said, using a stylus to scratch the skin inside her cast. “Damn that itches.”

  “But if we don’t lose them, we’ll lead them right back to . . .” Conny ran out of words. What exactly were they? Pirate lair? Colony? She couldn’t let the Navy cruisers chase them all the way back to the gold planet.

  Captain Ed Lehrer would have their heads if they let those Navy ships do that. Assuming the Navy didn’t blow them out of space or shoot them first. Maybe hang them second.

  Constantine didn’t like not knowing what was about to happen next. He’d been feeling like that a lot since he fled Savannah. But that was nothing compared to this.

  “Pull up your big girl panties, Conny. On you, they don’t look so good puddled at your ankles,” Grace said.

  Constantine took two step backs from the pirate captain. He did not like the look in her eyes. “Okay, what are you going to do? You’re the captain.”

  “And you’re not, so quit bothering me,” she snapped at him.

  He took two more steps back and found his back against the bridge wall. He studied her as she eyed the star chart she’d made the front screen into.

  She tapped the commlink on her command chair. “Reactors, can you keep this up for another two days?”

  “Your guess is as good as mine,” came back at her.

  “Any chance we could go to 1.15 tomorrow?”

  “There’s a chance for anything, boss. Hell, tomorrow I could learn to sing.”

  “God protect us from your practicing,” the guy in the jump master’s chair said, but he whispered it softly. Reactor and him had a thing going.

  “Okay, the next jump takes us to LeMonte. We need to get out of that system fast. You think you might give me some extra gees.”

  “I can try, dear. Nothing beats that but a failure.”

  “We’ll try that then.”

  “You’re not going to drop me off at LeMonte,” Constantine said, coming forward again.

  “Not very likely.”

  “But I’m the acting captain.”

  “So, we can make someone else acting captain. Likely we’d better make him First President. Those are Wardhaven ships behind us. They’d like something with a democratic or capitalistic tinge to it. Not too capitalistic. That might sound like pirates or something.”

  The bridge crew enjoyed a chuckle.

  Constantine didn’t. “But those ships. They’ll want to see me. I’m the
one who bought all those things. Food. Great canned hams. All that ammo. You need for me to be down there to talk to them.”

  “He’s got a point,” the jump master put in.

  “Yeah,” Grace said, “they might want to talk to you.” She pulled her dirk from her belt and tapped the point on her cast.

  It looked wicked sharp.

  “Some Second President might just have to report that you got killed when some crates of delicious canned hams fell over on you.”

  She smiled at him. At least her lips spread apart. All Constantine saw were teeth.

  He fled the bridge. Behind him, there was a lot of loud laughter.

  He was fighting back tears as he reached his stateroom. Once in, he locked the door. He threw himself on the bed, then realized that the flimsy door would hardly hold back a strong shoulder.

  “Lights. Out,” he said, and huddled in the dark.

  26

  Captain Rita Nuu-Longknife studied the system before her. Exactly why had she not tried to close the distance between the freighter and her squadron?

  Clearly, it had been a mistake.

  Rita had assumed she’d have more time to weigh her options. Now it didn’t look that way.

  Ahead of her was a planet. Along its rim they could clearly make out the blue of an atmosphere.

  In its orbit was a space station with one lone ship.

  The ship squawked as the Brannigan’s Special Ale.

  “But ma’am,” Sensors reported, “its reactors are cold and so are its engines. No ship that’s been rid hard and put away wet cools that much that fast.”

  “What about jumps out of here?”

  “Four of them, ma’am. Two are equally distant from here and close enough that the ship we’ve been chasing could have ducked through them.”

  “Could any ship that went through the dirty jumps that wrecked the sniffer have gotten here?” Ray asked before Rita could. Rita tossed him a nasty look for taking one of her prerogatives on her own bridge.

  He tossed a light shrug back.

  “Yes, ma’am. This is about the fastest set of jumps between here and Savannah. If you were going to intercept the colonial convoy to New Pusan, that other route would be faster. There are other, longer routes as well between here and Savannah, ma’am.”