Kris Longknife: Mutineer

by Mike Shepherd

  “And why have I come to doubt a Longknife’s definition of smooth?” the Colonel asked in a brogue all his own. “Hancock out.”

  Kris ignored the last canard; her driver led the other two buses onto the apron and parked well behind the first lander.

  Now troopers were filing off both landers, rifles on their shoulders. Under the influence of the pipers, their on-board route step quickly fell in sync as they marched, cutting each corner, to their places in formation under the watchful eyes of sergeants. Their kilts were mainly red, with a bit of green, black, and white in the mix. They wore bonnets of, the same tartan and tan jackets that, in the rain, were quickly turning to a deep brown. As far as the sergeants and men were concerned, though, it might as well have been a balmy summer day back at the cantonment. Their heads were high; their steps were sure. They were on parade, and the devil take the wind and rain.

  Officers dismounted from the forward hatch of Lander One. They also were smartly dressed, with no concession to the rain. Kris shrugged out of her poncho and opened the door. A gust promptly splattered her khakis, but she quick-marched for the rapidly forming command section. A tall, dark-skinned woman in full kilt came to meet her. Kris saluted as they met. “I’m Ensign Longknife, your liaison with Port Athens base.”

  “I’m Major Massingo, Battalion Adjutant,” the other said, returning the salute. The major saw to Kris’s introduction to Colonel Halverson, Battalion Commander. Kris had already checked; Halverson was six months junior to Hancock, so there shouldn’t be any trouble on that account. Halverson seemed jovial and happy to be here. Kris suspected he’d never been anywhere he wasn’t happy to be.

  “Major, let’s get the troops aboard the buses the good ensign has been so kind as to provide us. A few weeks ago when we got our orders, I feared we might have to march into town. Under arms, no less.”

  Kris brought the Colonel’s briefing up to date while the major passed the order to the regimental sergeant major, who shouted the Colonel’s orders to the company sergeants. It was a thing of beauty to watch the workings of a chain of command that had probably been in place when Bonny Prince Charles was learning escape and evasion in the original Highlands of Scotland.

  “I understand that you require an officers’ mess,” Kris said as the troops marched in single file to their assigned buses. Hancock had informed Kris that the informal approach to meals that the detachment had been following would not meet the Highlands’ standards.

  “Quite right, Ensign,” the Colonel nodded. “Mixing officers and other ranks simply is not done.”

  “I’ve found a suitable facility only two blocks from the base,” Kris assured him.

  “Good. We are coming up on the anniversary of one of our proudest battle honors, Black Mountain on Savannah. Colonel Longknife sent us up that bit of real estate.”

  “I have the honor of being Colonel Longknife’s great-granddaughter,” Kris told him.

  “We will be honored to have you as our guest at our Dining In, Ensign.”

  Kris nodded at the offer, then decided she’d better get it all off her chest. “General Tordon is also one of my great-grandfathers,” she added.

  “Good God, ma’ am! Trouble and Ray both in your family tree.”

  “Quite an honor,” she assured the Colonel.

  “If it isn’t a curse.” He chuckled, leaving Kris to wonder if the two Colonels’ had already put their heads together. Once Kris got the troops back to the base and took Halverson to Hancock’s office, the two rapidly made it clear that they had old-time ground-pounder talk unsuitable for an ensign’s delicate ears, so Kris headed back to her office at the warehouse.

  Jeb met her at the gate with Sam Anderson. “Longknife, you mind adding a couple of more foremen to the staff? Nights are getting kind of long for me.”

  “Sam, you want to work for me?”

  “Kind of hard to run cows on a sunk ranch. Folks here around have found space for me and my people to squat, but we got to work, even if the food is free.”

  “Pay’s not all that great,” Kris pointed out. “A Wardhaven dollar a month.”

  “Beats nothing. After that miracle, we figure we owe you.”

  “Wasn’t my miracle,” Kris shook her head. “You folks were working as hard as us to climb that cliff.”

  “I don’t mean the climb out, ma’am. The miracle was you even knowing we were in trouble. That radio we were hollering into. It was good for talking up and down the canyon, but what with the cliffs and all, we never talked to anyone more ‘n say fifteen, twenty miles away. Had a repeater on the top of the canyon, a land line running along the bottom. Both got washed away six, seven months ago.”

  “Satellites?” Kris asked. The prime minister always said miracles were what lazy folks used to explain perfectly understandable happenings… once you applied logic to them.

  “Too low on the horizon. So long as we had the repeater, it weren’t a problem. Once it was gone, so were we. Can’t tell you how surprised we were that you heard our call for help.”

  Not as surprised as Kris was fast becoming. She hired Sam and one of his foremen to work with Jeb overseeing the warehouse. Several of Sam’s men were also available. Others were joining a road-building team that would work with the Highlands’ engineering platoon, putting things like the runway into better shape, knocking together bridges for the supply convoys and, in general, starting to put the planet’s infrastructure back in order. Ester and Jeb saw real growth opportunities for the Ruth Edris Fund for Displaced Farmers. Kris would have to put the fund on a formal basis before leaving Olympia.

  There were a lot of things to think about as Kris settled down to her new desk in her new office on the other side of the building from the burned-out wreckage of her old one. Spens was again at work, checking accounts and keeping her legal. Lots of things to worry about.

  So why did her mind keep gnawing at the question of a radio signal that took a few extra bounces? No question, the atmospheric conditions on this planet had to be way beyond weird. So, no one had ever succeeded in getting a direct message out. Probably, no one had ever been so desperate, so unrelenting in their efforts. Right. A miracle put together by elbow grease and a volcanically hashed E layer or F layer or whatever radio waves bounced off. Easy explanation.

  “Nelly, when did the Peterwald ship break orbit?” Might as well eliminate the first question Aunt Tru would ask.

  “The yacht Barbarossa broke orbit Thursday, 11:37 A.M. local.”

  “When did you intercept the message from the Anderson Ranch?”

  “Thursday, 9:42 A.M. local.” Okay, so Auntie Tru would get to ask a second question.

  “What time did I first activate the liquid metal boat?”

  “Thursday, 10:12 A.M. local.”

  Kris gnawed on her lower lip. There was one more question Tru would ask. “Nelly, did the Barbarossa have a line of sight down into the canyon?”

  “The yacht Barbarossa was in an unusually elliptical orbit that gave it a one hundred-percent probability of a line of sight on the bottom of the Little Willie Canyon three orbits a day, and better than fifty percent for four more orbits.”

  No use beating around the bush with her own computer. “Nelly, did the Barbarossa have a line of sight on the canyon while we were intercepting the Anderson message?”

  “Yes.”

  So there it was. That “miracle” could well have been someone on the Peterwald ship, maybe Hank, maybe not, sending her up a deadly river in a boat with a big potential hole in it. But just because Hank had the potential for killing her didn’t mean that he wanted to kill her. She couldn’t have been that bad of a first date. Kris tried and failed to laugh at her own joke. It made no sense. Why would Hank Peterwald or his dad or granddad want Kris Longknife dead?

  One thing was clear: her mother or father wouldn’t consider that question. “Nelly, search the net for similar instances of liquid metal boats failing.”

  “I have conducted that search. The
re are no instances of similar failures in any of the 53,412 boats manufactured to date. Likewise, there have been no reports of similar failures by spaceships, either during their manufacture or operations.”

  “Thank you, Nelly, and thank you for thinking ahead of me,” Kris told her AI. Tru must have passed along some real interesting upgrades last time.

  “You are welcome. I will endeavor to do similar searches in the future.”

  Kris leaned back for a moment and stared at the ceiling. Once was chance. Twice was coincidence …maybe. Three times had to be enemy action. Question was, who was the enemy? Kris really didn’t want to think a nice young guy like Hank already had an enemies list. Of course, Kris considered herself a nice young gal, and she sure was on someone’s enemy list.

  “Kris,” Nelly said tentatively.

  “Yes.”

  “Are you aware a five hundred thousand dollar, Wardhaven, donation has been made to the Edris Fund?”

  “No, Nelly, I’ve been leaving the money handling to you. Who made the donation?”

  “It is anonymous, but since it came in, I have been backtracking the money transfer. It is very likely that it came from Hank Peterwald.”

  “Before or after his ship broke orbit?”

  “I cannot be sure, but it appears afterward.”

  Kris mulled that over. Hank would not be putting money in the bank account of a dead gal. Not likely. This planet was a major potential nexus for trade. Per Nelly’s financial report, Wardhaven financed half of Olympia’s start-up costs, the rest spread around liberally. How things were now that someone was stealing IDs and selling property off planet, Kris would check on later. But if Hank knew anything about what his papa was up to, he would not be giving Kris money to make things better.

  Kris was surprised at how much better she felt, deciding that Hank was not out to kill her. But if Papa Peterwald wanted Olympia’s jump points, just how far would he go? What more should she do before she left?

  The rain pounded against the window of her new office.

  The windowsill showed caked dirt along with the streams of water running down it. Right, there was volcanic ash in the rain. What else? “Nelly, has anyone visited the volcano that blew up and caused this mess?”

  “No.”

  Then, of course, why visit the volcano when it was coming to you? “Has anyone done an analysis on the ash?”

  “There is no report in the public record of such a study.”

  Kris spotted an empty can next to the coffeemaker. Maybe she was crazy, but maybe it was time to be a bit paranoid. Outside, coffee can in hand, she studied the flow of water. There was a ditch behind her building; rusted pipes from the roof tried to keep up with the rain, dumping what fell into the ditch before the weight of the rain collapsed the roof of the warehouse. Jeb came up as Kris was staring into the ditch’s muddy waters.

  “Can I help you, ma’am?”

  “How much volcanic ash was in the early rains?”

  “Quite a bit.”

  “Think some of that original ash might be down in that ditch?”

  “Wouldn’t be surprised if some was. You want a souvenir?”

  “Ought to have something. Might have it made into a vase or ceramic pretty. You know.”

  Jeb studied her for a moment, then got the attention of a youngster, no more than twelve. “Lady here wants some of the ash from our volcano. You mind getting a bit muddy?”

  The kid looked like he’d been asked if he wanted to go to heaven. In no time he was up to his knees in water, using the coffee can to collect from the lowest part of the culvert.

  “This what you want, ma’am?” he said, presenting Kris with a brimming can of mud surely as proud as any suitor handing a diamond ring to his girl.

  “Certainly is,” Kris said, slipping the top back on the can. From her pocket, she pulled a dollar coin. “For you, thanks.”

  “My mum would never let me take it,” the boy said, bobbing his head and not touching the money. “You been feeding us. She’d wallop me if I took it.”

  Kris pulled out a second coin. “This is for your mother for raising such a good boy. Now take both of them, and run along.”

  The kid did not look convinced, but a nod from Jeb did the trick. He grabbed both coins and ran for the gate, dripping muddy water all the way. “The least I could do for messing up his clothes,” Kris chuckled.

  “And for humoring a woman that’s got to be as crazy as any two coots on this waterlogged planet,” Jeb said.

  Kris looked down at the coffee can in her hand, wiped some of the mud from it, and turned back to her office. “We’ll see who’s crazy,” she muttered.

  ****

  Two evenings later, Kris followed Colonel Hancock into the officers’ mess of the Fourth Highland Battalion, LornaDo Planetary Guard.

  Their invitation was as much due to what Kris and Tom had done for the battalion in the last forty-eight hours as for who Kris was. With the help of Kris’s friends among the local craftsmen, a run-down and abandoned restaurant and lounge was now a spick-and-span officers’ mess and club in the full and traditional meaning of the word. Overstuffed chairs were scattered around the room in tasteful conversational groupings. The walls now displayed photographs of past battalion commanders and groups of officers as well as the battalion’s victorious soccer teams.

  One drop ship had actually delivered carefully packaged oil paintings of several battle scenes from the battalion’s honor roll. The place was heated nicely, carpeted, and smelling of new paint, and Kris could hardly believe it was the abandoned dump they’d started with. Or that such a place could exist in the mildew and swamp that Olympia had become. The books Kris read as a kid told of how a bit of England had been transplanted to India. She’d wondered how that could be. Wardhaven was no Earth and proud of it. Now she saw how…and why…a battalion might transplant LornaDo, or maybe England, to Olympia.

  A new wall pierced by double French doors set off the club from the dining area and the bar. Still, as Colonel Halverson met Colonel Hancock, a young private in full dress blues and kilt hovered at his commander’s elbow to take orders.

  Commander Owing, Hancock’s XO, was already in a corner, deep in an overstuffed chair with a scotch and immersed in a discussion with the battalion’s medical and supply officers of the best single malt in human space. Lieutenant Pearson had passed on the offer with a sniff. Kris had heard her exclaim loudly to the duty section outside the Colonel’s office about drunken debauchers. The Colonel’s hearing must be going bad; though at Kris’s elbow, he didn’t seem to hear a word. Both the other ensigns drew the duty, leaving Kris, Tommy, the Colonel, and all the officers of the Highland battalion free to drink and/or debauch, so long as they dressed properly for the occasion.

  The Marine Colonel and his Navy pair apparently were the last to arrive. Kris’s white choker and pants had been an interesting fashion statement at the recognition reception on Wardhaven against all the bustiers and petticoats; here she was one of the few not showing off knees. But Colonel Halverson made sure that his visiting Marine Colonel in his dress blue and reds and the navy types in their whites were made right at home.

  “What will you have?” the Colonel said, greeting them jovially, then turning to the private at his elbow. “Pass the word to all servers: these people’s money is not good in the mess tonight. Yon woman’s great-grandfather went up Black Mountain with the battalion. He was a Marine, but for someone ashamed of his knees, a damn good fighting man.”

  “Yes, sir,” the boy said, looking at Kris as if she might have just stepped down from Mount Olympus.

  “And pity be if their glasses go dry.”

  “Yes, sir. What are you drinking, ma’am?”

  Kris had gotten comfortable ordering nonalcoholic drinks over the last ten years, but clearly, a soda would put her out of step with these men and women. The Colonel’s scotch hadn’t dragged her into a bottle. Grampa Trouble might be right. Maybe she wasn’t an alki. With a sw
allow and a smile, Kris said, “A seltzer with a twist of lime, please.”

  Tom ordered Irish whiskey, neat; Colonel Hancock ordered what Colonel Halverson was drinking, and the boy marched for the other room. The new Colonel turned to the old.

  “You said she had guts in a fight. Now I see she can be just as stalwart in the mess.” The Highland Colonel turned back to Kris. “By the by, young woman, you’ll not be the only one walking that line tonight. There’s one or two others in the mess that know that beastie. Now, Colonel, I’ve a mind to show you a few things.” And with that, the two senior officers left Kris and Tommy standing in the middle of the club.

  Kris stood there for about two seconds before a young woman in full kilt was at her elbow. “I’m Captain Rutherford. I understand we share the same luck.”

  “I’m Ensign Longknife. What luck might that be?” Kris did not want to spend the evening comparing seven- and twelve-step programs and arguing which was better.

  “Your great-grampa and mine both walked off Black Mountain with their balls still attached.” The woman grinned. “Otherwise, we wouldn’t be here. I’m Emma,” she said, holding out her hand.

  “I’m Kris,” Kris said, shaking the offered hand. “This is Tom. He’s from Santa Maria, but don’t hold that against him.”

  “Ah, then you like our pipes.”

  “Love them, a wee bit of home so far from the old sod.”

  Kris almost choked on the first sip of her newly arrived drink.

  “It can’t be that strong,” Emma said.

  “Exactly the way I ordered it,” Kris assured Emma and the young soldier who’d brought it, while eyeing Tommy like the rat he was.

  “We always have choices,” Tommy reminded her.

  “Social coward,” Kris whispered back.

  “Politically astute. I thought, being a politician’s daughter, you’d have more appreciation.”

  “Am I walking into the middle of something?” Emma asked.

  “Only something that started at OCS when he stopped to tie his shoe in the middle of the obstacle course,” Kris said, nudging Tommy in the ribs.

  Emma studied them for a second longer, then smiled and shrugged as much as the heavy woolen doublet allowed. “Let me introduce you to some of the battalion’s other junior officers.”