Kris Longknife's Relief: Grand Admiral Santiago on Alwa Station

by Mike Shepherd

  No one spoke up.

  “Okay, so if we don’t trust any one person, how do we fill Kris’s shoes? Who do we let not so much call the shots as call us out when we are clearly chasing off after the wrong goal?”

  Abby paused to take a breath. No one made any effort to fill the silence.

  “Okay, one can’t do it. Two can’t break a tie if they’re both at logger heads. Three can vote two to one and get something done, or rather stop something from being done that way. We also talked about five or even seven, but the more we talked about them, the more we had to agree that the more you let talk, the longer it takes and time is often in short supply around here.”

  Abby again paused to glance over everyone at the table.

  “So, here’s the proposal from the working stiffs. When it comes to deciding how our nationalized industry will work, we expect that we will continue to have a whole lot of people at the table. The Colonials will always be there. Admiral Benson and his base force will, no doubt, be there. Pipra and her managers have to be there. Grand Admiral, if you want to be there, ain’t nobody gonna stop you. What we want is to have at least one person, chosen by us workers, be there and have one third of the voting power to close down the process and redirect its priorities if it’s headed off cross-country and down into the swamp.

  “Who those other two might be, will, no doubt, be a subject for a lot of hemming and hawing from the rest of you around this table, but the union takes no interest in them. Now, I’ve said my piece. Anyone who wants the floor can have it.”

  No one was in any hurry to fill Abby’s silence. Ada looked at Rita who looked back; the both of them glanced at Sandy.

  Sandy turned to Penny. “Captain, would you have the wardroom serve up tea, coffee, whatever, as well as some decent rations? I think we will need a coffee break to discuss this.”

  “Aye, aye, Admiral. We should have the coffee here in two or three minutes. Maybe sooner.”

  “Oh, I can make it sooner,” Mimzy said, and a table extruded itself out from the wall behind Rita. A moment later, several carafes and mugs formed out of the table in appropriate places.

  Now it was Sandy’s turn to lean forward. “Abby has proposed a three person body with the power to stop the prioritization process when two of them conclude it’s headed off course. I note that she is giving this group only negative power. They can stop and redirect the process. They cannot mandate its final product. I foresee the potential for problems if two of these people have an agenda that is totally at odds with where the overall group wants to go. If they repeatedly reject the product it can have the effect of driving everyone to a result that those two want. We’ll have to think on that a bit.” That did get a few heads raised in thought.

  “Abby also proposes that one of those three be appointed by labor. By my count, that leaves four other groups to compete for those other two seats. That might be met by having a five person committee, but as Abby has already pointed out, that leads to a hell of a lot of yakking before anything can get done.

  “I see that the sandwiches and other nibbles have arrived. Let’s take a break and see what we think when we get back together.”

  Sandy stood, and everyone in the room stood as well. Most made a beeline for the coffee; Sandy strode over to the opposite wall and gazed at its reproduction of the space outside the station. She took the time to take several deep, slow breaths.

  How the hell did I get into the job of counting paperclips? she thought to herself.

  “It comes with the territory,” Penny said, from directly behind her.

  “I thought I was only thinking that,” Sandy said, turning to meet her staffer.

  “Pardon me, Admiral. Sometimes we think loud enough to transmit on Nelly Net. I’m afraid you just did. If you want to be left to yourself, I’ll go get tea and tell Mimzy not to pick up anything you’re thinking hard on.”

  “I’ll also tell Mata to not pass along anything to Abby,” Mimzy said.

  “Abby heard that?” Sandy said, hunting for the former maid.

  Said troublemaker had just gotten her coffee and was filching half of a sandwich. She did turn to face Sandy with two raised eyebrows. Was she admitting to being embarrassed to have horned in on Sandy’s thoughts or was she gloating? Hard to tell.

  “Okay, so I’m the virgin on this process of hammering out production priorities. Is it as bad as they say it is?”

  “We live or die based on how we guess,” Penny said. “If we don’t have the defense we need when the alien raiders show up, they’ll wipe us out. However, you can’t sit under Damocles' sword forever without taking a break. We can’t keep the birds on our side unless we give them the stuff they want. Construction folks, Sailors and Marines need breaks so we came up with the homesteading effort. All of those require consumer goods. It’s a very sharp sword we balance our lives on. Kris could throw herself into the balance to make sure we kept ourselves in balance.”

  “And this troika will do the balancing act for us now.”

  “Aren’t there stories,” Admiral Benson said, coming up to join the conversation, “of hard Russian winters and wolves? Didn’t desperate people sometimes toss folks out of the troika to the wolves?”

  “I’ve heard that story a time or three,” Sandy admitted. “I take it that the aliens are the wolves?”

  “That’s why we call a mess of alien warships around a mother ship a wolf pack,” Amber answered.

  Sandy turned from the false window on the stars to find that the Navy had coalesced around her. Strangely, Abby, Ada and Rita were forming a distant triangle, sizing each other up. As Sandy watched, Abby kind of sidled up to Ada. Not to be left out, Rita took a few steps closer. Ada said something to Rita and soon the three of them began talking in low voices.

  “I need some tea,” Sandy said. “Is there any of that relaxing herb tea?”

  “I believe so,” Penny said. “Would you like me to get you a mug?”

  “No. Why don’t you Navy types put your heads together a bit while I stroll over and get a bite to eat?”

  So saying, Sandy left her subordinates behind and made her way to the refreshment table. She noticed that as she got there, the three civilians had slipped over to where the door would be. The Navy officers had taken the corner about as far from those three as they could get. All were talking in low voices.

  Sandy got herself a mug of tea, a delicious looking half sandwich of whatever passed for ham and cheese locally with a luscious slice of tomato and some crisp lettuce. She then gravitated to the other corner, a good distance from both factions.

  I don’t want either of them to bend my ear just now. Abby was right; two was too small. You needed a tie breaking vote.

  Somehow, Sandy suspected, she’d have the last say in this.

  MIMZY, DO YOU HAVE A RECORDING OF ANY OF THOSE PRODUCTION PRIORITY MEETINGS? I’D LIKE TO SEE HOW KRIS HANDLED THEM.

  YES, ADMIRAL. I CAN GIVE YOU THE SYNOPSIS OF SEVERAL MEETINGS. I ALSO HAVE COMPLETE VIDEO OF AN INTERESTING INTERVENTION BY KRIS LONGKNIFE.

  SHOW ME THE INTERVENTION FIRST.

  A window opened in the star scape. It showed a large room full of busy people. Long lists and spread sheets filled the walls and table tops as several different groups worked intently.

  It sounded like Nelly was talking. “Kris, I hate to say it but the black plan is starting to look more and more like a turquoise plan. Plenty of growth for butter, some for industry, not a lot of guns.”

  “How bad?” Kris asked.

  “Something like sixty, thirty, ten.” Nelly said.

  “That bad, huh/”

  “Pretty much.”

  “Okay, Nelly. Please have your kids save all the plans as they now exist.”

  “Done, Kris.”

  “Now, clear the boards.”

  “Kris,” came in four-part harmony from the staff around her with a lone “Done,” from Nelly.

  “What the hell?” seemed to be one of the more neutral respon
ses around Kris as every wall and table top became just a flat surface. Not a number was in sight. Everyone in the room turned to eye the Longknife standing next to Penny.

  Kris let the uproar run for a moment, then said in a command voice that carried, “Now that I have your attention,” and the room fell silent.

  “Boys and girls,” she began in dripping sarcasm. “I gave you free run to see what you would do. I do not find the present trend acceptable. Sixty percent for consumer goods and only ten percent for defense is not what I had in mind when you started this exercise.”

  “But we need this for homesteads dirtside,” came in a plaintive cry from a corner of the room.

  “Maybe we need to be clear about those homesteads. They are not dude ranches,” Kris said. “I expect those farms to grow food. One person enjoying the good life on their private half time bit of heaven is not something we can afford; not out here in the dragon’s mouth.”

  Kris glanced around the room. Few met her eyes.

  Sandy noted that Abby, however, was not one of them. She had a tight smile on her face and was nodding. Apparently, Kris’s former maid had been expecting something like this.

  Sandy glanced over her shoulder, Abby, as well as most of those in the room were watching her watch the replay of their own planning session.

  Kris’s voice drew Sandy back to the screen. “Now then, let’s start this over again, and let me give you more precise guidance. Defense will be lowered from sixty percent of our effort to thirty. Industrial growth will raise from an anemic ten percent, which was barely enough to provide spares and support infrastructure growth for the colonials, to a solid thirty percent. Consumer goods will stay at thirty percent.”

  “And the remaining ten percent?” Pipra asked.

  “Will be apportioned as best to level out resource usage,” Kris said. “You can juggle the top two or three percent of the thirty percent if it gets the most production. Understand?”

  “Got you,” was said by several of the people now sharing this room with Sandy.

  “Now,” Kris said in her most reasonable, but still very Longknife voice, “Let’s go back to work as adult men and women.”

  Sandy turned. “How’d that work out?” she asked the room.

  “The dude ranches got turned into shared working farms,” Penny said. “Kris allocated farming gear by a lottery. If eight, twelve, sixteen people went in together, half could have the farm one week, the other half the next and they got more tickets in the lottery and more chances to get an early start.”

  “That sounds like a win-win,” Sandy said.

  “We also discovered that if we built light fabrication plants,” Abby put in, “we could get more commercial products out of them and save the heavy fabs that came out from human space for defense and making our own fabs.”

  “Another win-win,” Sandy said. “So, let me see if I get this right, by closing you down, and getting some guff, Kris got you using your heads and figuring out better how to use your limited resources.”

  “That gal could sure do both,” Abby drawled. “Drive you up the walls one minute and make you the best you could be the next. Damn Longknife.”

  That got a general, all around chuckle.

  “So, Abby, you plan on being the Union Rep to this troika?”

  “No way, José. The plant folks know I work in Pipra’s office. They got two or three good first line supervisors they’re looking at to join the process. All of them got good heads on their shoulders.”

  Sandy mulled that over for only a second. “Then is Pipra going to want to be in this threesome, or will she want you?”

  “Pipra will have to be in the meeting,” Abby said. “Likely she should have been in this one as well. Still, she’ll be up to her ears in making things happen. It seems to me that she’ll be too busy cutting down trees to get much of a view of the forest. Same for me. No, you need someone who knows the process but can take three steps back. For that matter, Ada will be a very interested bystander. She’ll be up to her armpits in snakes. We agreed over tea to scratch her off the list.”

  Sandy shook her head. “Do you three realize what you’ve gone and done?”

  Rita, Abby and Ada turned to frown at each other, then turned back to Sandy with nothing but puzzlement in their eyes.

  “You don’t see the circle you’re trying to square, huh?”

  It was left to Penny to say, “I don’t see it either. What are we missing?”

  “This kind of an exercise takes the best brains you have on this station, right?” Sandy turned back to the frozen picture she’d been watching. “I see Pipra, and you, Admiral Benson, and Ada and Rita are on the screen, participating. Abby, you’re there.”

  “All of us are,” Abby admitted.

  “All the boss types are up to their elbows doing their damndest to make this happen, and then Kris Longknife grabs you all by your choke chain and brings you up short. Right?”

  “Right,” came from several in the room.

  “Now, let’s say that we replace Kris with a union rep from way down the promotion ladder. We toss in a Colonial type from deep in Ada’s bureaucracy and add on a Navy type from one of your shipyards, Admiral Benson. Admiral, how are you going to take to some lieutenant commander or first line yard boss telling you that you’ve got to scrap everything you’ve been doing and start all over again?”

  A nervous laugh quickly sprinted around the room.

  “How you gonna square this circle, folks?” Sandy repeated herself.

  The room mulled the problem over for a long minute.

  “Maybe we should let Rita do it,” Ada said.

  Every head in the room, except hers and Rita’s was swiveling in the negative.

  “Sorry, Rita,” Sandy said, “but you have too long a history here to be trusted at this. You’ve provided good service, but you and these people have paid a very high price for their survival. You need to give it a rest.”

  “But who? You?” Rita spat back.

  “No way, St. Josefina,” Sandy said, borrowing a female from Abby’s pantheon of holies. “I’ve got a fleet to command. I’m one third of your customer base. I’m most definitely backing one of the oxen in this goring contest, so nope.”

  “Kris Longknife did it,” Ada pointed out.

  “Need I repeat, she is a princess and a Longknife. The king made her Viceroy and she also holds voting stock in Nuu Enterprises. All of those said she could control production if she wanted to. She, however, was smart enough to let people do what they did best while she just kept an eye on what was best for all of us.”

  “Well,” Admiral Benson said slowly, “if the Colonials would vote you, Admiral, the Downside Viceroy as well as Upside, you’d have full Viceroy control. That, and being responsible for the Alwa Defense Station might get fairly close to Kris’s power, especially if we kept the Nationalization Decree in place.”

  “But do we trust her?” Ada said. “She’s Navy. How can we make sure she won’t go wild on us?”

  “She’s the Viceroy responsible for Alwa,” Abby said. “All of Alwa. That means the birds, Colonials as well as immigrants, be they Navy, Marine or fabrication worker. If she wants all the pieces to hold together, she’s got to look out for all of them.”

  “But if she’s got all the Viceroy’s power, there’s no way she’ll undo the nationalization,” Ada pointed out.

  “Can I ask a stupid question?” Penny said.

  Sandy shrugged. “This entire conversation is not going anywhere. A good question might help with all these bad answers.”

  “Does the present production schedule need to be revamped?” Penny asked.

  Sandy took a poll of the room. Abby shook her head when the new admiral eyed her. Ada joined Abby when Sandy’s eyes came to her. Admiral Benson said, “Nope, I got all I need to keep my yards producing what the fleet needs. I’m happy with things the way they are.”

  “What about my brat trying to take over the Nuu part of the fabs?” Ri
ta asked. “Can Sandy stand up to his lawyers?”

  Ada had an answer for that. “His lawyers will have to make their case in a Colonial court.”

  “And they wouldn’t get much work out of a work force out on a general strike,” Abby pointed out.

  “So, do we really need to have this conversation?” Penny asked. “Yes, Granny Rita stirred up a hornet’s nest with her Nationalization Decree. Very likely, she needs to have her hands slapped and her Viceroy name badge taken away from her. I think it might be a good idea to let Sandy have the full title like the king suggested when he gave it to Kris. For now, why not keep on keeping on? If we do need to tweak production, there’s no reason why we can’t try it on our own and if we like the results, we can go with it. We’re all grown-ups here. Most of the time.”

  “So, we solve our problem by avoiding our problem,” Rita growled.

  “No, we solve our problem by getting the one person responsible for keeping us all alive the power she needs to see that we do,” Ada said. “Sorry, Rita, but as soon as I can get a Senate quorum, we’ll be stitching those two jobs back into one. And you back into retirement.”

  “It’s nice to be so loved,” Rita drawled.

  “Commodore, we do love you,” Ada said. “It’s just getting hard to live with you.”

  “I think we have a family counselor somewhere in my fleet,” Sandy said. “Why don’t you two schedule some time with him or her?”

  Ada and Rita made nasty faces at each other.

  “Penny, get the appointment for them, and, if necessary, detail a platoon of Marines to see that they make the sessions.”

  “Aye, aye, Admiral,” the captain said with a delighted look on her face.

  Sandy let out a sigh. “I think you all have wasted enough of my time. Admiral Kitano, will you please brief me on the state of our defenses as they now stand? Penny, if all these people don’t vacate my day quarters in two minutes, call the Marines and tell them to show up with fixed bayonets.”

  “With pleasure, Admiral.”

  “Oh, and Penny, get my quarters back to standard Navy. I know the stars. I don’t like them looking over my shoulders.”