Between brother and sister might be kind of different, too.
“What do you want?” the young woman asked.
“My sister wants to lead out her squadron obedient to our orders. She begs that she not be required to sail in Wardhaven’s defense as a rebel against verbal orders. If they have the loyalty, the courage, and the willingness to risk their lives, the least we can do is give them our permission. That’s all I ask. Your dad can stay Prime Minister in the Government of National Unity. My father would like Defense. We can work things out if you have problems. But whatever we do, we have to have this done before they sail.
“When’s that?”
“Kris?”
“We need to be away from the station eight hours before the hostiles arrive. Say go into the boats two . . . three hours before that. Give us an hour before that to pass the message along the pier. If you could, Honovi, Kusa, we need twelve hours before their scheduled arrival.”
“When’s that?” Brother asked.
“Assuming they continue their one-g deceleration, and that they want to make orbit with standard energy . . .” Sandy tapped the battle board. Kris read off a time not quite two days hence.
“Not a lot of time,” the young woman said.
“I’m hearing that a lot from yard workers, ship fitters, engineers,” Kris said. “If we’d been ordered to go tomorrow, we’d go, but our chances of getting those battleships are a whole lot better for having had three days’ preparation.”
“Three days?”
“I came right up here,” Kris said.
“One more thing,” Kusa said. “I expect that my dad and your father can agree to most of what they presently differ over, Honovi. But one thing must be clear before any further talks.”
“Yes?”
“When this naval force sails to engage the, what did you call them, hostiles, there will be no Longknife aboard them.”
Kris swallowed hard. There it was again. Nobody, but nobody, wanted her in the squadron. Not Grampa Al, for his reasons. Not Honovi. Not the Pandoris for their own reasons. She half expected Brother to snap, “Deal.”
There was silence from the other end of the line.
“Sis,” Honovi finally said slowly, “I’d love to agree to what she just asked.”
Kris stood, her finger hovering over the Talk button on the commsole. All she had to say was “Yes,” and she was out of this suicidal charge. She’d live!
To see what? Live under whose idea of a government? Before Kris could stab the comm button, Sandy got there first.
“This is Commander Santiago, skipper of the destroyer Halsey. Princess Longknife is in my Combat Information Center, and we’ve been listening in on this conversation. And Ms. Pandori, before you go through the roof, let me assure you that those listening will hold this conversation in utmost confidence until their dying day. Which, I suspect, isn’t all that far off, since my ship and I will be doing our best to punch a hole in the battleships’ defenses for the fast boats to slip through.
“You say you do not want a Longknife with us when we sortie tomorrow. Sorry. We want her. Not only do we want her with us on that sortie, but we demand that she lead us. We demand that because the odds are that a hell of a lot of us are going to die on that sortie. If she’s leading us, there’s a damn sight better chance that we will not die in vain. Am I clear on that point?”
“Yes, Commander,” came a rather cowed woman’s voice.
“I understand your political objective. As a Santiago, trust me, I don’t like Longknifes any better than you do. However, I’ve seen the files of what she did in the only practice run this squadron got to make. I’ve watched her pull this lash-up together. When all hell’s a-popping, you send for the bastards, and there ain’t no bastard better than a Longknife bastard. From what I’ve seen, this one has the makings of a damn fine Longknife bastard.
“So, ma’am, when we sortie, we sortie behind her, or your father may find that those of us presently in rebellion by preparing for what we were told not to prepare for, will be in rebellion by refusing to sail for what we damn well have gotten ready for. Do I make myself clear?”
“Perfectly, Commander.”
“This is Lieutenant, JG Tom Lien, commanding PF-109. I’ll be in one of those toys that will be doing its best to close with the battleships and blast them out of space. Every one of us skippers wants Kris and that crazy computer around her neck to be calling the shots on when we dodge and how we do it. Eight of us tried attacking just one drone battleship, and eight of us failed. Four followed those two and we four got our fake battleship. That tell you the way it is?”
Well, maybe I don’t get to stay home and knit, Kris thought.
“I will tell my father that keeping Princess Kristine out of the attack on the invaders is not an option,” the young woman said. “I may require further concessions from you, Honovi.”
“You’re going to ask me for concessions so my kid sister can run off and get herself killed?” her brother growled.
Kris mashed the Talk button. “Down, Brother. Remember, you’re the politician. I’m the one who gets to break things.”
“Kris! Please take care.”
“As much as the circumstances allow.”
“Yeah, right,” he snorted. “I think this tells you all you need to know, Kris. Kusa, shall we continue our talk privately?”
“Very privately,” said the young woman’s voice.
“Kris, you really will see that this does not leak.”
“Brother,” Kris said, glancing around the CIC, giving every soul present a look that would sear steel, “what they heard here they have already forgotten.”
“Thank you. Good-bye. Stay safe.”
“Good-bye. Don’t forget to take care of yourself. Some of those lasers may be aimed your way, too, Brother.”
There was a bitter snort. “You. Worrying about me!” and the line cut off.
“You weren’t really looking for an out option, were you?” Sandy half asked.
“No, though I have to wonder a bit. Everyone keeps throwing them at me. Kind of makes me wonder if it’s just me that wants to make this crazy run. Nice to know I’m wanted,” Kris said, giving Tom a hug. Penny joined in from the other side.
“Yeah, I think we want you, or your computer.”
“It is nice to be wanted,” Nelly said.
“When you’re finished with that love fest, could you help me?” Sandy said as gruffly as the grin on her face would allow. Tom and Penny broke from the hug, leaving Kris once more alone.
“Yesterday, Winston Spencer, a newsie who did a story on what it’s like to be a destroyer sailor last year, called me. Good story. Wanted to know if I’d be doing anything interesting soon. I told him I’d heard the Navy was only doing nice things just now. He said he’d heard the same, but if things changed, he’d sure like to go out with me. Friends for old times’ sake.”
Kris measured that against what her brother had said. Patriotism wasn’t something limited to just a day here and there, to this group or that. She shrugged. “Ask him if his insurance is paid up and if his wife and kids would mind if he got suddenly dead. Then offer him a berth. Assuming you don’t mind.”
“He did a good story. If he lives, he’ll do another one.”
“Boy, aren’t we a gloomy bunch,” Penny said.
Tommy glanced at Penny. “Sure you want to ride the 109?”
“Will you be in it?” his bride asked. Her groom nodded. “Can anyone make that board do its tricks better than I can? Oh. Right. Nobody can make it do anything. Aren’t we supposed to be talking to someone about that?” Penny said, glancing around.
“Yep, that nice guy snoring over there,” Kris said.
“Who, me?” Beni said, sitting up, eyes open now.
“Can we borrow him?” Kris asked. “Tom stole this intel station, but we can’t get it to tie into our sensor array. At least not consistently.”
Sandy grinned. “Beni don’t need s
leep. Grab your toolbox and head up the pier, First Class.”
“I keep saying I got to make Chief. They never do a lick of work. This being first class is just too much of a bad thing.”
“You could apply for OCS,” Kris suggested.
“Yeah. That would be the ticket. Officers never do nothing. Be an officer and just stand around drinking the coffee the Chief brings you and telling jokes. That’s what I need to do. Which boat is it you need fixing?”
“The 109,” Penny said. “I’ll take you there.”
Tom started to follow, but Kris grabbed his elbow. “We have a four o’clock stand-up on the pier. Maybe after it, Penny and Beni will have your problem solved.”
“Stand-up on the pier?” Sandy said.
“Yep, that’s why I dropped by. To tell you about it.”
Sandy got off her stool. “Glad you mentioned it.”
“Say nothing of it,” Kris said as they headed for the hatch.
11
If Sandy got the Word late, milling around the pier was evidence that others had gotten the Word wrong. The armed yacht skippers stood there at the 4 o’clock meeting beside the Cushing instead of their own 4:30. Rather than send them back to their boats to grumble for half an hour, Kris invited them to lend an ear to what the fast boats were doing.
It was a good idea.
“Can we have some of those? Anything that will keep those damn battlewagons busy elsewhere has got my vote,” was Captain Luna’s response to Chandra’s briefing on the AGM 944 missiles. She got solid nods from her fellow yacht skippers.
Van Horn turned wordlessly to the Army Colonel who’d arrived late and breathless from his supply trove. “The Navy’s pretty much stole all my 944s,” the soldier said. Before a groan could get really going, he added, “But I got plenty of AGM-832s. I even got the launchers they come in. Normally truck mounted, they ought to go nicely on your boat hulls. The 832s aren’t as quick on the acceleration as the 944s but they still kick like a mule, and we pack twelve of them to a box.” He grinned to show one gold tooth in front. “And we got loads and loads of them.”
“Anybody told you lately that they love you?” Luna said.
“Not since my wife left town with a traveling Bible salesman,” the Colonel said. “I’ll start shipping 832s to the Nuu yard just as soon as I get back.”
“You do that, love.”
“Moving right along,” Roy said, turning to Phil, who launched quickly into his efforts to cool his engines down fast by replacing the radiators with ones of his own design. He finished with a big grin on his face.
Then Tom took a step forward. “And if we do it that way, we’ll end up dead in space with our coolant blown.”
“What’da’ya mean?” Phil shot back.
“You’re using small-tubed radiators. Small tubes from beginning to end.”
“The smallest possible to get the maximum radiation area.”
“You also get the maximum turbulence in the coolant mixture. On Santa Maria, we intentionally use something we call Nano Mix Overheat to get the max from our mining slurry. But to keep from wrecking the nanos, we cool them down before they overheat. We tried the small tubes. And kept blowing them out. Perturbation in the liquid mix when the outside cools too fast and tries to swap with the inside but there ain’t enough inside. You need a larger tube to start with at the front end of the radiator, then it narrows and splits into finer tubes. Fast, but not too fast.”
“We did a computer simulation on this,” the yard worker at Roy’s elbow put in.
“You have any solid data to simulate from?”
“Well ...” he started.
“Did you do a search of the literature from Santa Maria?”
“We did a search. We didn’t get anything from Santa Maria.”
“Man!” Tom spat. His lips got thin as he shook his head in short, choppy snaps. Kris made a note that this was what Tom looked like angry; too bad Penny wasn’t here to see. “We’re halfway across the galaxy. Transportation costs eat our hide. We have to have some ways of being competitive,” Tom said, the true son of a Santa Maria mining family. Then he rattled off a long search string that only ended with “heat transfer.”
At Roy’s elbow, the yard worker talked rapidly to his computer, but Nelly was faster. A hologram sprang from Kris’s chest. A schematic of a reactor, small-tube heat exchanger, red-lined. Explosion. New schematic of the same reactor, a heat exchanger that blended larger tubes that fed into smaller tubes. This time the red line bled smoothly to green.
About the time the second hologram ended, the yard worker looked up. “I found it. That’s about what it says, and no, I’d never have found it doing a regular search. Damn.”
“I guess I need Tom’s designs and a new set of heat exchangers,” Phil said, quick to change from he-bull facing he-bull to student bowing to teacher.
Tom shrugged, lopsided grin out to deflect so much of the bad that the world might have thrown at him. “I’m just glad I could help. It is an old family secret, and I’m gonna get my hide walloped for talking out of school about it.”
“We’ll try to keep it a family secret, just between us and Nuu Enterprises,” Kris said, then leaned close as Tom stepped back into the circle of skippers. “There was a reason I wanted your nose out of that engine room,” she whispered. “You’re better used here than at a job the yard could do just as well.”
Now Tom blushed.
“Now that that’s settled, I been thinking,” Luna said . . . to catcalls from her fellow skippers. “Back at the yacht basin, there’s a few armed yachts that ain’t going nowhere, just gathering dust. I figure one bit of brilliance deserves another, and what with us using bubble gum to stick some of that nice man’s rockets on our boats, why don’t we borrow some of those and stick a few rockets on them? So, what do you say to us dropping by, and, real friendly like, taking what we need?”
“There must be a guard or two,” Kris said, suspecting larceny like this must normally be frowned on.
“There are, honey, but they’re old and decrepit or young and want to live to be old and decrepit. What say you and I and a few of my crew go pay them a friendly visit. I really think you ought to come along. That bit of frippery around your neck is good at picking locks, I hear.”
Kris turned to Captain van Horn. “Sir, you strike me as none too happy watching us kids having all the fun. Want to put together a hooligan flotilla of your own?”
“I was planning on calling up more reserves to man the tugs and other yard craft. Use them to provide search and rescue in orbit,” van Horn said, pausing for a moment in thought. “Maybe a couple of armed yachts backing them up might come in handy.”
“Some of the larger unarmed runabouts might handle the ship-to-ship rescue work very well,” Kris said. “The Coast Guard Reserve could crew them.” Most of the time, the Coastie Reserve just did safety checks and caught the odd boat that got in trouble before it burned itself up on reentry or vanished forever into deep space. They were civilians for the most part, owners of small-system runabouts. Kris had gotten to know them during her skiff racing days. They were good people; would they appreciate the job she was calling them in on?
Van Horn nodded. “I have a liaison with the Coasties. I’ll see if I can’t get some of them up here and give them the Search and Rescue job. That would free mine up for something.” The Navy Captain turned to the Colonel. “How many of those AGM-832 missiles can you lay your hands on?”
“How many you want?”
“What if I were to load up two, four small container ships with your missiles?”
The Colonel whistled. “A whole arsenal. Hmm. You swabbies would need some help aiming them. I know just the red legs to do that. Let’s you and me talk.”
Kris found herself ignored as the Captain and the Colonel walked off in animated conversation. Luna shook her head. “Now that looks damn dangerous. There’s a reason we like the Navy and Army hating each other’s guts and brawling properly in
any good bar. When they start working together, freedom for dishonest people like me is seriously in jeopardy.”
“Then we better be off quickly and commit whatever piracy you have planned before they can get the world so organized and law abiding that there’s no room for an honest and free woman.”
“I knew a Longknife would understand,” Luna said, grinning. “Now, do we take the sabers, or just our smiles?”
At Kris’s suggestion, they settled on smiles. With Jack at one elbow and Luna and her crew of time-displaced pirates at the other, Kris quickly found herself at the yacht docks. They were pretty much abandoned, as was most of the space station once you got away from the yards. Only an old man and his teenage grandson stood guard at the gate to the main pier.
“Was wondering when you’d show up,” the old man said, staring up at her from where he sat in a small guard-house beside a flimsy gate that hardly blocked the main pier’s access road.
“Wondering,” Kris echoed, trying not to give away anything more than the presence of her and Luna’s crew did.
“Yeah. The Shipwright’s Daughter just outside Nuu Docks’ gate is the only place open an old man or his grandson can get a bite to eat. Luna and her cutthroats move their overstoked tubs there. And there’s talk of a Longknife on the base.” The man’s grin at Kris was missing three teeth. “I served with your great-grampa at the Battle of the Big Orange Nebula.”
He glanced over to where long, wide windows on the floor of the station showed row upon row of yachts tied up. “Owners that buy armed yachts don’t do a lot of talking about what they got under the hood, but I’ll bet you that you’ve come for the five, six boats that are still parked and that have lasers behind their brightwork. And I’ll bet you I know which ones they are.”
“Sorry, Gabby. Betting against you would be betting against a sure thing,” Luna said. “You gonna let us at them, or do we need to rough you up for appearances?”
Kris Longknife: Defiant: Defiant Page 22
