Kris Longknife: Mutineer

by Mike Shepherd

  Kris tried her hand at another sticker, Equal Taxation.

  Tommy pulled off one announcing, Humanity—No Limits.

  Harvey went around to the driver’s side, growled, and pulled off a sticker saying, Remember Little Edith.

  “Do I hear some jingoism jangling?” Tommy asked.

  It wasn’t a joke to Kris. “Looks like the opposition has discovered its slogans. Doc Meade said a good slogan could be more dangerous than an assassin at starting a war.”

  “Maybe.” Harvey shrugged as he got the car into traffic, wipers struggling to clean the window of egg.

  So now there were liabilities to licence plate PM-4. As the car pulled into traffic, she leaned forward. “I take it my problem meeting Tru isn’t just that my father doesn’t want me to.”

  “Right. Feelings are running high, daily protests against this or for that. Then there’s the news snoopies looking for any scrap of trash to put on the media. They must get paid by the second. Anyway, our place is surrounded. So is Tru’s. I had a bloody tail when I left to pick you up.”

  “It’s still there,” the agent said, turning around in his seat. “By the way, ma’am, I’m Jack. I’ll be going with you whenever you leave the grounds.”

  “Not bloody likely, Jack,” Kris snapped, pushing herself back into her seat.

  “You might find me handy to have around.”

  “There’ve been three attempts to kill me in the last month. So far the score is me three, them nothing. I don’t need help.”

  “They only have to get lucky once to make it them one, you nothing,” Jack pointed out softly.

  “You snooping for the prime minister?”

  “I take it your father doesn’t want you meeting this Tru person. You intend to, come hell or high water, and you consider meeting him or her more important than me keeping you safe.”

  “I consider me meeting her a damn sight more likely to keep me safe than you hanging around and telling the PM what I do.”

  “I’m a big girl now, so buzz off and leave me alone,” he translated for her.

  “Gosh, they actually assigned one that understands plain English,” Kris marveled in pure sarcasm.

  “Listen, my report only has to say you went out, you came back, I was with you. That’s a Navy uniform you’re wearing. You give orders and expect obedience. How much trouble do you want to make between me and the guy issuing my orders?”

  Tommy snorted at that. “Nice try, Jack, but you haven’t been around Longknifes long, have you? They don’t care a whit for the problems they cause us lesser humans.”

  Kris shot Tommy a scowl. Then again, she guessed she did deserve it. With a sigh, she gave in. “I’ll see what I can do to help you and your boss stay happy. What would you call it, Tommy, penance for how I treated Colonel Hancock?”

  “More like how you treated me. And I’ll believe it when I see it,” he said, settling deep into his seat and folding his arms across his chest.

  Ten minutes later, Kris muttered, “I may need a little help breaking out of this place,” to herself as the car drove into Nuu House. Marines stood at the gate, checking IDs; others walked the perimeter wall. They had to. There were five news trucks parked across the street. All sported satellite transmitters up and sending any and all feed from around the house. Kris spotted at least six news types following the progress of the car.

  “They also have airborne cameras,” Jack said before, Kris asked. “But if you really want out of here unseen, I might be able to lend you a hand. You scratch my back, etcetera.”

  “I think I’ll take you up on the etcetera. You got any running clothes?”

  “I do, if you’re willing to wear the Wardhaven U sweatshirt I give you,” Jack said with a conspiratorial smile at Harvey.

  “Uncle Harvey, have you been telling stories on me?”

  “If it will get you a sweatshirt that will stop a three-millimeter dart at twenty paces, you’re damn right I’ll tell stories.”

  “You wouldn’t happen to have an extra one of those?” Tommy gulped.

  “From good old Santa Maria U.” Jack smiled.

  An hour later, Kris was wearing gym shorts and a sweatshirt with a bulletproof lining. She, Tommy, and Jack were jogging their second lap of the ivy-covered wall, approaching Kris’s special section when Jack muttered, “Okay, guys, close them down,” and led Kris through her very own private escape hole.

  “How long have you guys known?” she demanded a minute later as they walked nonchalantly away from the stone perimeter wall.

  “Probably before your great-grandmother paid to have it installed when she was a girl.”

  “The Nuus weren’t political then,” Kris shot back.

  “They had money, and there’s no such thing as money not being in politics,” Jack reminded her, sounding very much like her Political Science 101 professor. Kris knew a losing argument when she stepped in one.

  “Nelly, hail a cab.”

  Two minutes later, they were headed for the Scriptorum, the one place Kris had been able to tell Tru to meet them without actually saying the name. Tru seemed just as reluctant to trust the public net as Kris. Jack headed them for a dimly lit corner, usually reserved for the young and restless and in love types; it was early in the day and unoccupied. Kris and Jack got their backs to a wall. Tommy scowled and settled into the chair between Kris and the front door; “Don’t like it?” she asked.

  “Don’t like having my back to whoever might be shooting at you,” Tommy said with a glance over his shoulder.

  “Don’t fidget, and don’t look around,” Jack told Tom sharply. “Don’t worry, I’ll keep a lookout. Our biggest worry is a newsie shooting her with a camera. Heaven knows why.

  “Heaven knows why they’re not using a gun?” Kris asked.

  “I doubt you have to worry about a shooter today. The prime minister’s politics are not that divisive.” Jack told her, apparently unaware that Kris had not been joking about three attempts on her life. Well, the prime minister had overseen Jack’s briefing. Kris started to bring Jack up to date, but he was still talking background and he was interesting to listen to.

  “Right now, folks aren’t sure what’s going to happen. Some big people with lots of money in the betting pool don’t take well to that. They want to know which way to jump well before the time comes. But you learned that at your father’s knee.”

  “And some of them like to get a thumb on the scales that decide which way we all will jump,” Kris finished the statement.

  “You’re the expert on these things.” The agent shrugged.

  Kris ordered soft drinks all around when the waiter came. It was the same one who’d served them before, but with them in the student spring uniform of the day, he paid them no mind. Tru arrived when the drinks did and slipped into the vacant chair, backing it up against the wall so Jack’s view was unhindered. In slacks and a sweatshirt that bore a university logo that was twenty years out of date, she looked the perfect old professor.

  “Good to see you,” she said. “You having an interesting break?”

  “Travel is a very broadening experience,” Kris offered. “Good to be back where the sun shines.”

  “Right, I’ve been rather busy with local matters to keep my thumb on what you’ve been up to. Just why do we need to meet?”

  Kris wanted to scream at Tru that Olympia and Willie’s death and all the civilians she’d killed were worth people’s time. Still, the fair part of her had to admit her personal struggle on that sodden planet hardly held a candle to all humanity choosing up sides and deciding whether to go their separate ways in peace or settle it with a long, bloody war. Kris pulled two vaccine bottles from her belly pouch and handed them across the table. Tru took them, held them up to the light, and frowned.

  “What is it?” Kris asked Tru.

  “Obviously not what the label claims.”

  “No. Fifty thousand liquid metal convertible boats have come off the assembly line. The six that end
ed up in my little sideshow are the only ones to date that developed a peculiar tendency to turn into liquid mercury the third time you change them. Those are small samples of what was a thousand-pound boat one moment, a bunch of metal droplets in puddles the next.”

  “Kind of leaves you up the river without a paddle or a boat,” Tru said, unashamed at not passing up the opening.

  “In the worst way at the worst time,” Kris agreed dryly.

  “Assassination attempt number two,” Tru said, and Jack’s head jerked around to look at Kris. Yep, dear Father had only told him what met the prime minister’s elevated burden of proof.

  “Nope, probably number three. A rocket took apart my desk the day before. I wasn’t there, being at a long lunch with a friend of yours, Hank Smythe-Peterwald. Thirteenth of that name. He saved my life, Tru.”

  Tru raised a doubting eyebrow at that. “Any idea what earned you a rocket?”

  “I took down some local warlords the day before.”

  “So the rocket was probably a local response to a local stimuli.” Kris nodded. “And what was Hank doing on Olympia?”

  “Delivering aid. Food supplies we needed. Thirty trucks we were desperate for.”

  “Any boats in the delivery?” Tru asked, rolling the vials between her hands.

  “Six of them. Three went poof. Three will spend their lives permanently as bridges.”

  Tru pocketed the bottles. “Most labs probably couldn’t tell you anything from these. I know a few that might. Would be nice to get a look at one that still thinks it’s a bridge.”

  “Nelly,” Kris said out loud, “buy a dozen liquid boats from different retail sources on Wardhaven. Ship them to Olympia. Ask Colonel Hancock to accept them as a trade for the three defective bridges. We want them for further analysis.” Kris paused for a moment. “Want to bet the three somehow get activated for the third time before we can get them to a lab?”

  “Hire a security team to escort the new ones out, be sure the old ones come back. I’ll have Sam give Nelly the number of a reputable one.”

  “What I can’t understand is, why?” Kris allowed herself to muse out loud on this attack for the first time. “I mean, trying to kill me while rescuing that little girl on Sequim, that would have gotten half the Rim worlds up in arms against Earth. But me drowning while on an emergency medical run? What political purpose would that serve?”

  Tru just shook her head. “Sometimes I wonder what you Longknifes use for blood. Honey, your dad, your Grampa Trouble, your Grampa Ray are up to their receding hairlines trying to hold on to at least a part of the Society. You add grief to the load they’re carrying, and they are bound to start making mistakes they wouldn’t otherwise.”

  Kris listened to Tru, tried to picture her father broken up over her passing. The picture didn’t fit. Then she thought of all the changes in the family after Eddy’s death. It had cost Mother and Father. Would her death cost them as much?

  Maybe.

  “I’ll think about that,” she told Tru. “What’s happening here? Are we going to war?”

  Tru blinked at the sudden change in topic. She took a moment to rub her eyes with both fists. For the first time in Kris’s life, she realized that her old auntie was old. Very old, probably over a hundred, and those years hadn’t been gentle. “I hope not,” Tru finally whispered. “It would do few any good.”

  “Who thinks it would do them some good?”

  “Old farts who’ve fought one war and forgotten what it’s like. Fresh-faced heroes that are tired of doing a great job of nothing and have no idea what the real face of war is like.” Kris winced, remembering her hero wanna-be. But he was just a kid…and now would never grow up to learn different.

  Tru eyed Kris, seemed to measure the wince against some godlike scale, and shared with her a tired smile.

  “You’ve grown up since I last saw you.”

  “Aged,” Kris offered in its stead.

  Tru nodded. “Then, of course, there’s the nutcases who want to be emperor of humanity, for reasons comprehendible only to shrinks. Included among them are your friend Hank’s pappy and grandpappy. They’re forming up their own alliance anchored on Greenfeld, fifty planets strong. Earth has forty or so that will hang with her. Your father has sixty to a hundred leaning toward whatever Wardhaven does. Other folks are looking around…trying to figure out who they should join, better join, or have to join.”

  “Have to?” Kris asked.

  “Peterwald’s Greenfeld Group has the mortgage on lots of worlds and is squeezing them damn hard. His planet has a good collection of warships. They were the first to haul ships out of the Society fleet. Folks are looking at geography differently. Short trade routes might be fast invasion routes. Take that disaster you call Olympia. Forty-seven planets within one jump of there. Nearly one hundred and fifty within two. A quarter of human space could be defended by a fleet stationed there…or invaded. Why do you think Wardhaven was so quick to take an interest when it got in trouble?”

  “Milk of human kindness?” Tommy offered.

  “Right. Want to guess who bought up all those farms that suddenly came up for sale? Peterwald and associates.”

  “I was wondering about that. You saved me a search,” Kris said. “Anything else new there?”

  “Maybe. Seems one of Smythe-Peterwald’s ships paid a visit to Olympia two years back. According to the automated control station in Olympia orbit, it left a week later. There’s no record of that ship showing up anywhere for a solid year. Olympia has an asteroid belt. How long do you think it would take to usher one onto a collision course with Olympia? What kind of a volcanic explosion was it that wrecked Olympia’s budding economy?”

  “You can check it out,” Kris said. “There’s mud in with the liquid metal. See if it’s got asteroid dust in it. If that’s not enough, I’ve got a small can of the stuff in my duffel.”

  “Young woman, you are paranoid.” Tru beamed.

  “I contracted it from the people around me.” Kris got to her feet. “Nelly, order a cab. I want to go see Grampa Alex.”

  Tru shook her head. “He’s a harder man to see than the prime minister.”

  “I suspect so, but I need some answers, and old silent Al is the only one that can even guess at them. Jack, you ready to protect me from high-paid private security guards?”

  He made a face. “Overpaid, in my book.”

  “Kris, can I walk home from here?” Tommy squeaked. “Remember, I don’t like guns. I don’t like power lunches. I’m just a simple country boy from Santa Maria.”

  “Come on, Ensign, let’s march,” Kris started, then froze in place, remembering Colonel Hancock’s little talk in the truck. “Tom, if you really want to sit this one out, it’s okay by me.”

  Tom reached for her forehead, felt it. “You sick, woman?”

  “No, but I’m remembering what Colonel Hancock said. Sometimes I think too quickly about what I want and too slowly about what others need.”

  “Good God,” Tru drew herself up to her full height, turned her head to first stare at Kris with her right eye, then her left like some monstrous bird of prey. “Are you growing up, woman? You’re actually starting to sound mature. Be careful about that. You can never follow in your father’s footsteps if you start considering other people’s needs. Come to think of it, I’m not sure any of your ancestors suffered from that affliction. Some of them did have the saving grace of putting their necks out a few millimeters more than the ones they were pushing.”

  Kris shrugged off the theatrics. “Maybe I acquired a little humility with all the mud on Olympia.”

  “No.” Tru shook her head dourly. “More like wisdom. A horrible weight to bear for one of your disadvantaged upbringing. However—” Tru grinned, all teeth, “since you’re headed off to meet your old grampa, I don’t think you’ve acquired too much of it to dampen your fun. Now, excuse me, I’ve got a couple of holes to fill in on a very big jigsaw puzzle.”

  “The cab is at the
door,” Nelly reported.

  “Well, Jack, you and me.”

  “And me,” Tommy added.

  “I thought you wanted out.”

  “Hey, a guy’s got the right to at least say what’s smart, even if he doesn’t have the smarts to do what’s smart. Okay?”

  So, a half hour later they paid off the cabby at the door of the Longknife Towers. They’d had to pass through three checkpoints to get that far. Their IDs had gotten them past the first two, but only Kris’s not insignificant holdings of Nuu Enterprises preferred stock had gotten them past the last.

  The tower was really two skyscrapers linked at the bottom by food courts and other services for those who lived and worked there. Kris had heard that her grandfather had not been out of this building for ten years. She knew that was bum data; Grandpa regularly inspected his plants in orbit. Still, he moved at odd hours and kept his whereabouts as hard to follow as any spy. Kris had previously put that down to eccentricity and old age. Of late, she suspected the eccentricity might be responsible for that old age.

  Under an information sign was a guard station with camera monitors and a half-dozen men in matching green blazers. One rose with a smile and a “May I help you,” as Kris led the men through the automatic door.

  Kris ignored both the smile and offered help and quick marched for the bank of elevators. Several were open; Kris picked the far one. Marching in, she took station in the middle of it, leaving Jack and Tommy to arrange themselves to each side and behind her. “Floor two-four-two,” she ordered.

  “Thank you, ma’am,” the elevator answered.

  The guard was now running to get to the closing elevator. The doors quit closing.

  “Your order has been overridden,” Nelly said.

  “Override the override,” Kris ordered. The doors finished closing a second before a rather startled guard would have lost an arm. Kris turned to check out how her men were taking matters. Tommy’s eyes were not quite as large as when he was introduced to the pipes up close and personal. Jack seemed nonplussed as he removed his badge and ID from the pocket of his running shorts and palmed it for ready use. Good.