Kris Longknife: Defiant: Defiant

by Mike Shepherd

  Two hundred meters to Kris’s left, above a twenty-meter wall, was the upper level. Along its rail, eight rifles showed. Maybe the terrorists behind them were awake. Maybe they slept. No telling from this angle. From the heat intel, Kris knew that there were tables on their sides up there and more shooters. That was why she was down here.

  Two hundred meters to Kris’s right was a drop down to the lower level. There were gunners there and a whole lot more trouble that would come running up here and hit her from behind, but all hell would have to break loose before she’d have to deal with them.

  The sapper signaled the meeting room beside them was safe. Kris handed off her M-6A4 to a corporal, the next-best shooter, and took his M-6. The Sergeant signaled him and a private to hold this area, and Kris entered the meeting room, crossed it quickly, then waited while the engineer crawled across the way to check the next one. Since that put him in full view of the two card players, everyone quit breathing for a while, then quit breathing some more as they did their own trip.

  But the card players played on, undisturbed.

  That move, with a zig through a service area, brought Kris and her team to an almost unnoticeable workers’ access door right next to the wall. A hundred yards away was another one of those small doors that the public ignores but workers put to good use.

  Here was the problem she had never solved. If she ran for the door, they’d mow her crew down. If she fought her way there, they’d have time to blow the hostages a dozen times over.

  Kris took a deep breath. “Command center, Regal is at Alpha. I would appreciate that demonstration.” Hopefully the SWAT teams in their battle suits could distract the upper and lower hall terrorists enough. Kris had learned at OCS that hope was not a plan, but hope was all she had just now.

  “Slight change in plans,” came on net in Santiago’s voice. “Zodiac landers 1 and 2 will engage the hostiles in five seconds, three, two, one.”

  There was a crashing noise of glass, metal, and whatever else might exist under God’s heaven. “Weapons free,” Kris shouted.

  “Go, go, go,” she waved at her team as Abby took off sprinting for the door across the way, a Marine right behind her. Penny and Kris on their heels.

  Jack and the Sergeant took a second to drop the card players, then a second more to get two sleeping beauties that reached for their guns instead of keeping on sleeping.

  Kris wondered, as she sprinted, if she should worry about what was happening above her, but then a body plummeted from up there and she decided maybe the Halsey and all that noise was taking care of that.

  Ahead of her, Abby slowed to let the Marine take the door for her, roll through it, and shout “Hostages, stay down.”

  Abby raced through the open door, shot, hopped over the Marine, dropped, rolled, fired again, then repeated the process.

  Kris slammed to a halt at the door, her rifle ready. Someone was up, firing at the space above where Abby was rolling.

  Kris fired a long burst. The first few rounds to shatter ceramics. The later ones to do their worst. They did. Her target went down.

  Penny went through the door without slowing down, headed for the explosive charges along the wall, and started yanking exposed antennas, detonators, whatever looked like it might stop the boom. Since any one of the packets could go boom in her face as she raced by, Kris could only admire the courage of a woman fighting for her bridegroom’s life.

  Someone across the room raised a rifle, aimed at Penny. Kris fired a long burst. The rifle went one way, the gunner rolled another way and lay still.

  “Tom, stay down,” Kris ordered. “Where are the terrorists?”

  A familiar figure elbowed himself up to look around. “I think you have most of them. Four bolted for the back exit.” He nodded to where a door was wide open in the south wall.

  “Command center,” Kris called on net, “Look for four terrorists attempting to escape from the loading dock.”

  “We have their van in our sights. They won’t get out of the parking lot.”

  Beside Kris, the sapper came through the door, took in what Penny had done, nodded, and headed for the opposite wall and its charged explosives. Kris would be writing a lot of medal recommendations for this night.

  “Could we start moving these people out to safety?” Princess Aholo called from where she lay between Tom and, yep, there was Sam. Kris signaled for Abby and all available Marines to form on her as she trotted to the Island princess.

  “At the moment, Aholo, this may be the safest place in town,” was backed up by a burst of automatic weapons fire from outside. “We’re working on securing the rest of the building, but . . .” Kris left the rest unsaid.

  “Can I talk to Grandmama?”

  KRIS, I HAVE HELD A CIRCUIT OPEN FOR HER, BUT THERE’S A PROBLEM. Kris found herself put through to Dr. Kapa’a’ola.

  QUEEN HA’IKU’LANI TOOK THE NEWS OF THE HOSTAGE SITUATION WELL. SHE SMILED A MOMENT AGO, WHEN WE TOLD HER THE PRINCESS WAS SAFE, THEN GOT A QUEER LOOK ON HER FACE AND TOLD US SHE THOUGHT SHE WAS HAVING ANOTHER STROKE. WE’RE TESTING FOR IT, BUT WE WON’T KNOW FOR A WHILE. COULD YOU GET AHOLO HOME . . . FAST?

  “Better yet,” Kris told Aholo, “there’s a shuttle at the airport, we’ll get you to her within the hour.”

  “What’s wrong?” The girl went pale beneath her tattoos.

  Kris swallowed several lies . . . and told Aholo the truth. A murmur ran through the hall. Sam tried to hug Aholo, but the plastic restraints had them cuffed to each other in circles of five or six facing out. No hugging allowed. Abby produced a knife and started cutting them loose. Now Sam was hugging a softly crying Aholo, and Penny was hugging Tom, and Kris didn’t care who was crying there. She spotted Sergeant Li.

  “Sergeant, secure this area. Don’t let anything happen to that princess. Jack, you’re with me.” Abby handed off her knife and fell in step with them as they headed for the common area.

  Rifles at the ready, they crossed back into what had been a shooting gallery. It looked quiet for the moment. Kris hunched down, prepared for appearances to be deceiving. “Captain Santiago, you available on net and have a second to chat?”

  There was a series of grenade explosions from the upper level. “Now I do. What’s happening?”

  Kris filled her in. There was a pause when she was done. “Liberty launch 2 could do a suborbital to drop you into Nui Nui in thirty minutes. We’ll have to send the gig down to refuel it, but no problem.”

  “Captain, I’d like to thank you for the support here, and I’d be honored if you’d accompany us to Nui Nui.”

  “Glad to back up a well-ordered plan, Lieutenant Longknife. And I’d be honored to go with you. Ensign Konti, police up this area, cooperate with the local officials to the maximum possible, and see that the Marines don’t break anything more.”

  “Yes ma’am,” came over the net.

  Kris remembered being the Boot Ensign and getting those orders. She hoped Konti enjoyed them as much she had. Back in the hall, the hostages were milling around. To soft cheers, Kris announced that their building was now safe, and they’d be going in just a moment. But one man righted a table and climbed atop it.

  “Hold it, hold it. Queen Ha’iku’lani is dying, murdered as much by these . . . unspeakables . . . as any of our colleagues who were gunned down.” He looked around at the former hostages. “I don’t know about you, but I came here with a pretty good idea of what we really needed to do. No expectation that we could do it. No idea how we’d get the will to do it. You know what I mean?”

  A lot of heads nodded.

  “Well, I’m mad. I’m mad at having a gun shoved in my face. I’m mad at seeing my friends murdered. I’m even mad at seeing Islanders I’ve argued with for twenty years gunned down. I say we came here to do a job. I say we do it. I’ve got proposals, ideas for how to reorganize Hikila over there in my computer.” He pointed at a collection of personal effects like wallets, purses, and computers dumped in a corner. “I bet a lo
t of you do.”

  “You bet.” “Of course.” “Who doesn’t,” answered him.

  “Let’s give Queen Ha’iku’lani a burial gift the likes our ancestors will be praising long after we’re gone.”

  “Can we at least go to the bathroom?” came plaintively.

  “And order in some food.”

  “Fifteen minutes,” the guy said. “A real fifteen-minute break,” he insisted.

  Aholo shook her head. “That man has no idea what the line will be like at the ladies’ room.”

  “Who is he?”

  “He’s the mayor of Brisbane,” Sam told them. “But my dad’s right there with him, and he was cuffed to two of your chief adviser’s, Aholo, and I saw them talking. I think this is real.”

  “You are coming with us,” Aholo said to Sam.

  “I’m not leaving your side. Ever.”

  And when the kids asked how Mommy and Daddy met, Kris could just imagine the story.

  THERE ARE POLICE CARS WAITING TO TAKE US TO THE AIRPORT, Nelly said. Kris formed her Marines to escort the princess one last time.

  “Nelly, you remember those tattoos you put me in of Pacific Island warriors?” Kris said.

  “Yes, I do. They were quite fierce.”

  “Think you could turn our black camouflage paint to that?” Kris asked, a grin spreading across her face.

  “You bet,” Nelly said, and a wave passed down the line of Kris’s rescue team. As they made their way gingerly around the wreckage the Zodiac lander had made of the west entrance, the media lights came on to show Princess Aholo on the arms of two attractive young men and escorted by the most ferocious bunch of practically naked tattooed Island warriors, rifles at the ready. All except one.

  Kris’s fierceness was somewhat spoiled by her cute bunny white tail.

  Liberty launch 2 ran itself right up onto the beach before it popped its hatch. A cart was waiting for them, and in less than an hour from the last shot, Aholo and Kris’s team, Santiago included, were in the queen’s presence.

  “Is this Sam?” was the queen’s first question.

  “This is the one, Grandmama,” Aholo said, putting her hand in her great-grandmother’s.

  With an effort, the old woman reached across with her other hand to take the young man’s hand and pulled it forward to rest on Aholo’s. “May the sun and the sea smile upon the two of you and your children,” she said, then lay back exhausted.

  The two youths knelt beside her bed, young hands in hands, resting on the withered parchment of a hand that had seen so much of human history.

  “And you, Princess Longknife, you have found your warrior’s face, I see,” the queen said, rousing herself. Kris knelt by the other side of the bed and took that ancient hand. But the queen squinted into the shadows. Kris wondered what she sought.

  “Aren’t you a Santiago?” the queen whispered.

  “Sandy Santiago. I skipper the Halsey,” its Captain said as she came to kneel beside Kris.

  “Oh, good. So Kris has found a Santiago to save her ass. With a good person like you to cover her back, maybe she’ll live to be as old as that rascal Ray.”

  “I’ll see what I can do,” Sandy said in promise.

  The eyes closed. The breathing slowed and became irregular. The wrinkled hands would have collapsed back onto the bed were they not held by loving hands on both sides.

  KRIS, I AM GETTING A CALL FROM THE MAYOR OF STANLEY. THEY HAVE BEEN TRYING TO GET A CALL THROUGH TO THE QUEEN, BUT THE DOCTOR WILL NOT PUT THEM THROUGH. HE SAYS HE THINKS HA’IKU’LANI WILL DIE HAPPY IF SHE HEARS THIS.

  “Your Majesty, can you hear me?” Kris whispered.

  There was a fluttering of eyelids.

  “We freed the hostages, but the delegates insisted on staying to do what they came to do, giving Hikila a new government, one that will last.” Was that a smile adding to the lines on the old woman’s face?

  “Would you like to hear what they have done?” Behind Aholo, the doctor was waving, No, no. Eyelids seemed to flutter Yes.

  Kris raised an eyebrow and a question to Aholo. Tears ran down the princess’s face as she nodded. NELLY, PUT THEM THROUGH.

  “Your Highness,” the mayor of Brisbane began softly and without preamble, “we assembled here are proud to present you with a first draft of our efforts. There will be many devils to tame in the details, but we propose to structure our government around ports. Thirty ports in the Islands and seventy on the Mainland. We will have two bodies in our legislature. The House will be elected based on population, but each port will have at least one representative. The Senate will have two people elected from each port and must approve all important votes by 60 percent.

  “We recognize that such a distribution does not guarantee that the Islands can block something they strongly oppose. We have agreed to give the queen a veto of any legislation that she thinks goes to the heart of the Island culture for twenty years. A mere majority vote can continue that veto in twenty-year increments. We hope this meets your wishes.”

  Aholo squeezed Sam’s hand and her queen’s. “I doubt that I will ever have need of exercising that authority,” she whispered, her voice choked her with contesting emotions.

  The smile seemed to deepen, but then the mouth fell open, and it was clear that the deathwatch had begun.

  “The queen, my mother’s grandmother, smiles her thanks, but now I beg you leave us to a very private time.”

  The Brisbane Constitutional Assembly bowed off-line with expressions of sympathy. Kris watched Aholo for a sign that she was included in that dismissal, but none came. Her own father’s grandfather had sent her here to hold a war buddy’s hand.

  God knew, Kris had killed men and women in the last year. She’d watched the results of what she’d done and, while it turned her stomach, she regretted none of it.

  But this was different. Old and failing, still the queen’s body refused to give up the fight for each breath, each heartbeat. Kris found herself wanting to refuse the finality of this, to order the doctor forward, to do something, anything.

  Through it all, Aholo knelt there, tears softly making their way down her cheeks. Finally, she bent to kiss a cheek. “Go, Grandmama. Go to the sea where the wind is always fair and the sun never fails.”

  The funeral was the next day, with all local Islanders in attendance. The funeral bier was Afa’s canoe. Since the tradition of just setting the body to drift on the sea tended to draw sharks, the Islanders had borrowed a page from another book and included firewood on the canoe. They fired it as it drifted out of the lagoon and let it burn.

  The queen’s head, of course, was handed over to the elder women for honors. On the anniversary of her death, Queen Aholo would install it with her own hands in the niche reserved for it in the Long House.

  Kris did attend the coronation of Queen Ha’iku’aholo . . . both coronations. One at Nui Nui and a second at Port Brisbane before the Constitutional Assembly, where there were still demons of various size and nastiness being wrestled to the ground and dehorned. It was agreed that the vote to approve the new constitution and join United Sentients would be on the same ballot.

  Kris attended the coronations as a representative of United Sentients, in dress whites. She found herself looking at the Islanders longingly and pulling on her choke collar more than once. She was also there when Queen Aholo explained to Sam’s dad that the simple blessing that her grandmama had passed over them was all that was needed for a wedding among the Islanders.

  Aholo demonstrated superb diplomacy when she had a more traditional Mainland wedding appended to her Mainland coronation. There wasn’t a dry eye in the Brisbane Convention Center, the only place large enough to hold the show.

  There being something contagious about weddings, before Aholo’s, Kris found herself with Afa explaining to the young man that she really appreciated his offer to move with her to the Big Island and accept her as a business partner, but she really wasn’t prepared, just now, to marry him . . . “or
anyone else.”

  “My good name is slandered on Wardhaven. I have to return to face those charges,” Kris reminded him.

  “Maybe you’ll come back then.”

  She left it at that.

  The voyage back to Wardhaven was almost fun. The Halsey’s crew was in full celebration mode. Clearly, they ruled. Their time, from drop to last shot, if you started the clock from when the Zodiacs hit, had to be the best, rated per dead terrorist body, that anyone had done in eighty years. And since it had been a Navy and Marine team, the whole crew was riding high.

  Kris got the skipper’s approval on the scope and range of her medal proposals before she had Nelly start the write-ups, then when Nelly finished so well, and so soon, offered to have Nelly pitch in on the rest. Kris had yet to meet a Naval officer who enjoyed paperwork, so it was no surprise when Sandy jumped at the help.

  That left them more time to join in the wardroom talks over coffee. Now, nothing was off limits, and all topics were fun.

  But Kris saved the most tactful one for a drop by the captain’s private cabin. “Why’d you chose to back me up?”

  Sandy put aside a reader. “You had a good plan.”

  “I had a good plan when I left the ship. Why did you wait to back me up until I was standing there at the gate of hell?”

  The Halsey’s skipper took in a deep breath and blew it out. “Because I needed to see if you were just good at shoving my sailors out there onto the tip of the spear or if you’d be out there yourself, leading the way. You may have noticed lots of people can talk the talk. Don’t meet many who match it with the walk, do you?”

  “No,” Kris agreed. “But it sure would have saved me a bit of tummy lining if I’d known you were coming. Might have had Abby bake you a cake.”

  “With what in it? Who is that woman?”

  Kris shrugged.

  “And besides, who says I’m supposed to worry about your stomach ulcer? As I recall, my great-grandpappy didn’t give yours much warning before he walked off with that bomb for President Urm. You big people got to realize that you aren’t the only ones making plans. Us little folks make plans, too. And sometimes we are going to surprise you.”