Kris Longknife: Deserter

by Mike Shepherd

  “Rather expertly,” Klaggath said. “Haven’t met many who could jab a knife in a man’s back right at the kidney.”

  “The Gunny said a knife in the kidney was the fastest way to kill a man. I guess he was right. Sorry I lost your knife.”

  “Plenty more where that one came from,” Jack said.

  The woman’s face showed rage. “One dart shattered her backbone,” Klaggath said. “All she could do was sink.”

  “She was forcing a rebreather on Nara. I don’t know if the girl was too busy fighting to take it or what.”

  “So it was a kidnapping,” the Inspector said, covering the body and standing.

  “It looked that way to me at the time and still does. Maybe they left something ashore. Have you tossed their homes?”

  “We’ve run their fingerprints and retina scans through central. They aren’t in our database. And no, it’s not like Turantic has no thugs that would take a contract like this. We’ve got our share, but it looks like these were off planet.”

  “And you can’t do a search of off-planet criminal files just now, can you?” Jack said, a tight frown on his face.

  “We’ve got a copy of everyone else’s databases, no more than a month out of date, but these two,” Klaggath nudged one of the bodies with the toe of his shoe, “are not in there.”

  Kris nodded. It was not unheard of for people to disappear from the record. Political operatives, some criminals, maybe even her Grampa Al had paid to have his official ID removed from Wardhaven’s central records. People had a right to privacy. Still, your money only bought you out of the present database. “What about your backups?”

  Klaggath chuckled. “I expected you’d take longer. Then, you are one of those damn Longknifes. I had a check run against the backups. Nothing in the last two years.”

  “How far back do you go?” Penny asked.

  “Two years,” Klaggath and Nelly answered together.

  “Only two years.” Tom scowled.

  “Law passed two years ago,” Klaggath said, eyeing Kris’s chest where Nelly’s voice had come from.

  “But hard media can last a hundred, some say a thousand years,” Penny said. “All you have to do is store it.”

  “And be able to retrieve it,” the cop said dryly. “Too much old media lying around, and you can’t find anything. At least that was the argument when they passed the law,” Klaggath said, still eyeing Kris. “Your Highness, is there any chance that computer around your neck has backups from off planet?”

  That was the first time Klaggath had gotten his tongue around her royal title. Was he just asking a favor, or did it mean more? “Nelly, answer the good Inspector’s question.”

  “I am sorry, but my resources are not unlimited, and Kris has me concentrating in other areas than criminal records,” Nelly said, sounding rather contrite and not at all like a computer.

  “Didn’t think so, but I had to check.”

  “So we have two kidnappers who can’t be traced to Turantic. That leaves only five hundred ninety-nine other planets to choose from,” Kris said, upbeat and chipper anyway.

  “And no doubt our media and various talking heads will draw freely from their own biases when they decide where these two perps came from.”

  Lots of questions. Few answers. Kris shook her head. The western sky flashed lightning. Tom jumped, but the others took it in stride. Kris took in a deep breath laden with water, both lake and rain. “Smells like a storm coming up. Can we get off the lake? Any chance we can avoid the newsies when we do?”

  “I’ll see what can be arranged,” Klaggath said.

  “Can I see the Kriefs now?”

  “Follow me.”

  He took them back to the launch and belowdecks. The family was in the aft cabin. Nara was asleep on a couch, her head in her dad’s lap; the Senator sat across from them. Both eyed the child as if she might vanish if they once looked away. Kris swallowed hard, remembering the wall Mother and Father built between themselves and her after Eddy’s funeral. If he’d been found alive, if he’d escaped capture, might her own parents have been so enthralled by every breath he took? Kris shook her head; life was too busy to fill it with might have beens. The Senator started when Kris rested a hand on her shoulder.

  “Can we talk?” Kris asked. Reluctantly, the mother joined Kris in the break area amidships.

  “Thank you for saving my daughter’s life,” she said, taking a seat at Kris’s elbow. “I couldn’t have done it. Mel either.”

  “I’m glad I was there. But why? Why kidnap your daughter?”

  The Senator shook her head. “I have no idea.”

  “Did it strike you as strange,” Kris said, “that suddenly the President called all his party associates to the ranch, leaving the presidential yacht full of opposition members?”

  Kay eyed Kris for a moment. Then she shook her head ruefully. “You are a Longknife. You’ve been here one week.”

  “Not yet a full one.” Kris sighed.

  “Mel and I weren’t the only opposition members that found somewhere else to watch the race. The yacht sailed with a load of office functionaries but few elected officials.”

  “So everyone is getting paranoid.”

  “Let’s say that caution has become a byword on Turantic. What we know, we trust. What we don’t know, we are learning to approach cautiously.”

  “What do you know?”

  The Senator shook her head. “Less and less, since the penalty for espionage, industrial or otherwise, became a matter of life imprisonment for both the agent and the procurer of their services. And some prisons have become notorious for very short life sentences. Haven’t they, Inspector?”

  “The new contract prisons do seem to have more prisoner-on-prisoner violence than the jails we run,” the Inspector agreed. “Our unions have been strangely unsuccessful in getting any parliamentary attention on that.”

  “But any hint of malfeasance by your fellow officers makes the headlines in seconds.” The Senator’s smile flashed white.

  “In the last two years, you say,” Kris noted.

  “Two very interesting years,” the Senator said.

  “I met a woman a few days ago. She told me business had gotten very difficult of late. Seems her boss was expected to pay a bribe if he wanted to get the contract.”

  “Not a bribe,” the Senator corrected. “That would be illegal. No, nothing so crass. Rather provide extra product for ‘test purposes,’ or ‘promotional efforts.’ ”

  “I believe my Grampa Al would call that a bribe.”

  “He’s not on Turantic.” The Senator sighed.

  “You can’t run a world like that without fallout. Yesterday my friends and I tried to get a handle on your planet. We used the official sites, analyzed the numbers. The numbers didn’t add up. Didn’t cross-check. You have three definitions of profit and only one of them shows growth,” Kris said, as much the industrialist’s granddaughter as the Prime Minister’s daughter.

  “Ah.” Kay chuckled. “Our stock market has grown for six straight years, hasn’t it, Inspector?”

  “Every year I get glowing reports from my fund managers claiming spectacular growth. Strangely, for the last three years there hasn’t been much extra money to show for it.”

  “Productivity up?” Kris asked.

  “The official reports say so.”

  “Where’s the money going?”

  The Senator shrugged.

  “It’s going somewhere,” Kris said.

  “Certainly. But,” the woman spread her hands wide, “I can’t tell you, and could get locked up for looking too hard.”

  “Nelly, have you got an answer?”

  “I noted discontinuities when I first researched Turantic. Now here, I could attempt a better answer, but I would have to go beyond what is available in the public domain.”

  “So even your computer can’t find a pattern in the available data. If she goes beyond what’s posted, you break laws this government is quic
k to prosecute.”

  “Nelly, hold off on further research,” Kris said, not willing to risk jail for her computer’s newfound initiative.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  But Kris wasn’t willing to quit without tackling at least one more question. “Nelly, the civilian Turantic fleet has been brought in for upgrade to new safety standards. Should the work required by law be completed by now?”

  “Yes, ma’am. It should be done.”

  “Yet shifts go on around the clock in the yards. Equipment, some of it quite large, still goes up the elevator.”

  The Senator shrugged. “And I hear, with so many people out of work in our foreign trade, even more are hiring on at the yard and the plants that feed into it. Interesting, isn’t it?”

  “More than interesting. Do you know anything about what’s being shipped up to the yard?”

  “Don’t know a thing. Some of my biggest supporters bid on those contracts. All went to a Tory supporter. Strange, that.”

  Kris thought for a moment. “Have any of your friends hired anyone away from the winners?”

  That drew a chuckle. “You sound more like a business-woman than a Navy type. As a matter of fact, no. Lately there hasn’t been much job changing. And there are very draconian laws enforcing the nondisclosure agreements that several companies require their staff to sign. I am not sure any manager or scientist could change employers just now and not violate them.”

  “Draconian laws passed in the last two years?”

  “Three years, I believe, for that one.”

  “We’re tying up now,” an Agent announced. The Senator joined her husband and groggy child. Kris let them have a fifteen-minute lead before she and her crew went topside. Other larger yachts were already tied up at the new Yacht Club. On their decks, music, laughter, and talk wafted on the fitful breeze as parties continued, unaffected by death or weather.

  “I thought the race was still going,” Kris said.

  “It is, but some, like Tommy here, take less chances with the wind and rain than others do,” Jack said, giving Tom a nudge.

  Klaggath signed that his team was ready. Kris made ready to dodge the newsies ranked before her at the foot of the pier.

  “Was this another attempt on your life, Princess?” shouted several at once. “Do you credit Nuu Enterprises’ withholding of vaccines for this public hatred?” was there, too. “Didn’t you consider you were putting that little girl at risk when you went racing with her?” rankled, but “Is Wardhaven going to invade Turantic?” stopped her. Jack was stepping forward to do the usual begging off, she was tired, routine, when Kris stopped him with a gentle elbow to the stomach.

  Gluing on a sincere and flashy smile, Kris stepped forward. “I’m sorry. The police haven’t told me what happened out there.” That was true; she’d been telling the police. “You will have to ask them. However, I can tell you everyone at Nuu Enterprises is moving heaven and earth to get the people of Turantic what they need to beat this threatening epidemic. Remember, I can’t leave your beautiful planet until the quarantine is lifted. And I’m just as much at risk as any of you.” Kris let that sink in. Most of the newsies were nodding agreement.

  One wasn’t. “But isn’t Wardhaven’s Navy, some of it paid for with our tax money, poised to invade us if we don’t accept membership in their new Society?”

  Kris kept her face blank; Nelly was chasing rumors, but that one hadn’t shown up. This was probably the launch for it. Kris spoke carefully. “Wardhaven prospered in the last eighty years of peace. I don’t know anyone on Wardhaven who wants to throw that away. Our Navy is the minimum needed for defense.”

  “But aren’t they drafting everyone? Even you, a Princess!”

  “Lord no. I volunteered, much to my father’s dismay and my mother’s disappointment,” Kris said, trying to keep anger out of her voice and her pacing slow and friendly. She put on one of Tommy’s lopsided grins. “I could have those reactions confused. Mother’s dismay. Father’s disappointment. It was rather noisy around the house that evening.” That drew understanding laughs.

  “But isn’t it true Wardhaven attacked Turantic in 2318, and King Raymond led that assault?” her inquisitor shouted. Heads turned toward the reporter; he had their attention now.

  Kris allowed herself several blinks as if she was deep in thought. She’d read just about everything in print on her great-grandparents, including the obscure stuff before they started filling up the school’s history books. It was a minor part of Grampa Ray’s early life, but Kris remembered it.

  “I think you have the date wrong,” she said. “It was over a hundred years ago. Those were the bad old days before the Society. Before even Unity. And as for my Grampa Ray leading the attack, you have to be kidding. Back then he was a brand-new Second Lieutenant. As a fresh-caught Ensign, I can tell you, we don’t lead anything. We go where we’re told. And I’m told I have to go now, so I hope you will excuse me.”

  The assenting murmurs drowned out the next question from the gadfly, and Kris made good her escape to the limo.

  One woman newsie managed to slip through the security screen. “I see you’re wearing a police department sweatsuit. Is it going to be the latest in fashion statements?”

  “The cop who gave it to me said I’d earned it,” Kris said.

  “Takes a lot to earn this crew’s respect.”

  “Then you’ll have to ask them what they liked,” Kris said as she settled into her seat and Jack shut the door.

  “Who was she?” Kris asked as Klaggath took his place. A bang on the limo’s roof, and the car pulled away.

  “Her old lady’s a retired cop,” Klaggath said. “She brought Amy around to the station when she wasn’t a week old. I thought for sure she’d follow her mom onto the force, but she got bit by the writer’s bug and went bad.” That drew a laugh.

  “But the stories she writes are good. She knows how to dig and doesn’t settle for the easy crap. And her editor has guts enough to publish what she brings in. I expect her story tomorrow will make interesting reading.”

  A pouring rain started that caused the limo driver to slow. Kris rested her eyes out the window at a view that went from wealthy retreat to rural and then well-treed suburbia. She knew about as much as she was going to learn . . . without breaking a law. At her father’s knee she’d learned information was power. Somebody here wanted all that power. If Kris was to do anything but react to that power, she needed a lot more information than she had. Interesting do-loop she was caught in.

  Kris came up for air just long enough to argue with Penny when she asked to be dropped off a few blocks from her apartment.

  “We can drive you there.”

  “Hey, Princess, it’s quit raining. It’s a beautiful evening. And I could use the exercise. Maybe you haven’t noticed, but chasing after you mainly required me to sit on my butt. Enough; let me walk.”

  So Kris gave up and let her walk.

  13

  Kris paused a moment after Klaggath opened the limo door, her eyes resting on the loading dock across the parking lot from the public space elevator terminal. She could make out the names of a half dozen companies on the trucks backed up there. NELLY, YOU HAVE THOSE NAMES IN MEMORY?

  YES, MA’AM.

  “Thank you, Inspector. It’s been a long day. I’m ready to call it quits as soon as I get in. Why don’t you and your team save yourselves a run up and down the beanstalk?”

  “No problem, Your Highness.”

  “Then let me call it noblesse oblige and dismiss you to your families.”

  The man chuckled. “You don’t want us around, huh?”

  Kris swallowed. Am I that transparent? “I’m glad for all the hard work today, and I expect a lot of hard work in the coming days. Why take more from a limited resource?”

  “Then we’ll do it your way. I will, however, see you safe to your ferry and have someone waiting topside for you.”

  “That should be fine.”

  Onc
e the car began its climb, Jack leaned close to Kris. “What was that all about?”

  “Tell me, Jack, you’re my Security Agent. What would you do if you heard me planning a crime?”

  “I doubt if I’d change what I’ve always done when you do: try to keep you safe and unconvicted.”

  “That’s nice of you, but do you think Klaggath would have the same doting attitude?”

  “He has my sense of humor. Why not?”

  “Then let’s just say, I don’t choose to include him, okay?”

  “Spoilsport. What do you have in mind?”

  “Why don’t you leave that to me and Nelly.”

  “You girls have all the fun,” Jack said, but he leaned back in his chair and went into his usual practice of looking in 360 directions at once.

  YOU HAVE SOMETHING ON YOUR MIND? Nelly put in.

  THAT TIARA MOTHER BOUGHT ME: HOW MUCH SMART METAL DO YOU THINK IS IN IT?

  FOUR HUNDRED TWELVE GRAMS.

  HOW MANY ARMED RECONNAISSANCE BUGS DO YOU THINK YOU COULD MAKE FROM IT?

  THAT WOULD DEPEND ON THE CAPABILITIES YOU WANTED IN EACH.

  SNAPSHOT VIDEO, FULL SPECTRUM MESSAGE INTERCEPT. AND THE ABILITY TO DEFEND THEMSELVES IF ATTACKED BY ANY OF THE BUGS WE’VE RUN INTO.

  INDOOR OR OUTDOOR?

  OUTDOOR.

  I AM ACCESSING TOMORROW’S FORECAST. WINDS WILL BE FIVE TO TEN METERS PER SECOND, FROM THE WEST. FIGHTING THAT WIND COULD TAKE A LOT OF FUEL. THAT ENLARGES THE BASIC STRUCTURE.

  WHAT IF I RELEASED THEM UPWIND AND LET THEM RIDE ACROSS THEIR TARGET?

  THAT WOULD CUT DOWN ON THAT REQUIREMENT. LET’S ASSUME I COULD GIVE YOU BETWEEN TWO HUNDRED AND THREE HUNDRED BUGS. WHAT WOULD WE TARGET?

  LAY OUT THE MANUFACTURERS’ PLANTS FEEDING PRODUCT UP TO THE YARDS. ESPECIALLY THE ONES SENDING THE BIG STUFF.

  THEY ARE ALL WITHIN THIRTY KLICKS OF THE ELEVATOR.

  “You’re mighty quiet,” Tom said. “Cat got your tongue?”

  “Sometimes, after a long, hard day, a girl just wants a bit of peace and quiet,” Kris said as Nelly named off a route that would cover all the major targets.

  THAT SHOULD DO IT, Kris thought and sighed. Tomorrow looked like another busy day.