Deserter

by Mike Shepherd

  Grampa Trouble was off doing General stuff. Grampa Ray had not returned her call of last night. Kings were busy people. And maybe it was better to get the Navy out of the way before she faced her family.

  Auntie Tru had called only seconds behind Mac. Over Nelly’s objections, Tru was third on Kris’s cleanup to-do list.

  Jack stood at the foot of the stairs. “Your car’s here.”

  She smoothed down her undress whites. Decorations were an option for this uniform; she chose to leave them behind. Whatever was the intention of this command performance, she’d rise or fall on herself, not glory that some said was borrowed. Heels clicking on the tile floor, she let Jack open the front door for her. He also opened the door of a modest sedan, no limo today, let her settle into the backseat, then joined Harvey in the front.

  The old chauffeur knew this morning’s destination. He speed-dialed Main Navy and set the car in motion. The silence went long, like a funeral might. Still, she was among friends, as close to friends as she might ever know.

  Kris let her eyes rove the familiar streets of Wardhaven, watching the walls of new construction go up from deep pits. Those mimed the answer to some of her questions.

  A wall of money separated her from Tom and Penny and Jack.

  A deeper pit separated her from Hank. Kris’d had her fill of being one of those Longknifes long before she ran off to join the Navy. She’d had her fill of Father’s politicking and Mother’s socializing. She was ready to hunt for where the glitzy press releases ended and the truth began.

  Hank was not there yet. Might never be there. Hank Smythe-Peterwald the Thirteenth was still the loving and trusting son of Henry Smythe-Peterwald the Twelfth. Maybe when Hank started eyeing the fine print on his birth certificate, started looking deeper into the family business than the official reports told him, maybe then there would be someone for Kris to talk to.

  Now, he was just a balloon filled with his father’s hot air.

  The car came to a stop in front of Main Navy’s old concrete facade. Pigeons flew as Jack opened the door for her. She passed through security quickly, then marched down the polished tile halls for the Chief of Staff ’s office. Today’s appointment was for oh eight hundred. Not bad, considering she’d only disembarked from the Barbarossa at nine-thirty last night. Either Penny was filing reports very fast, or Mac had his own little birdies following her.

  The Secretary passed her in without hesitation. Jack fell out to a chair, opened a magazine, and settled into his usual reading fake. Physically, Kris had nothing to worry about here. The only threat of death this morning was to her soul.

  Cutting her corners sharp enough to warm the heart of any Gunny Sergeant, Kris presented herself at rigid attention. Her salute passed precisely up her gig line. Mac waved in the general direction of his forehead without looking up from the three flimsies he was reading at once.

  He also didn’t release her from attention.

  Kris stood like a board as sweat trickled down her back.

  “Quite a mess you left,” General McMorrison said, still not looking up.

  “Looked to be a bigger mess if I did nothing.”

  The general’s “Hmm,” told her nothing. “There’s a revolution or rebellion or some such thing causing quite a dustup on Turantic.”

  “Yes, sir.” Two days after Kris busted out of Turantic space, a rather large task force from Wardhaven made orbit above that troubled planet. The Navy brought vaccines against several kinds of Ebola and a new comm suite. The Navy had been welcomed with open hands by all factions, but stood aloof officially, while distributing the vaccine and getting the comm link back up between Turantic and the rest of human space. The last Kris heard, President Iedinka had suffered an accident, died of natural causes, or been assassinated. What all reports agreed upon was that he was no longer among the living. Now the people of Turantic were struggling to clean up the loose ends of his administration.

  “You have anything to do with the President’s death?” Mac said, for the first time looking up at her.

  “Not to my knowledge, sir. I suspect I encountered several of the major players on Turantic, but I neither encouraged them to do anything nor promised anything in the name of Wardhaven.”

  “That’s nice to know, Princess Kristine.”

  So it was going to be a “Princess” dressing down. There was no avenue for her to appeal that. She made none.

  “You overstayed your leave. You also missed a ship’s movement.”

  “I understood that the Firebolt was to be tied up for four weeks, sir, as Nuu Docks worked on the Uni-plex.”

  “Nope. Firebolt’s Engineer lit a fire under the yard. Also seems there’s quite a bit of money to be made in the dumb metal stuff, and Nuu Enterprises moved ahead faster than they thought possible.” Grampa Al must be looking at a lot of money to push matters that fast.

  “They took the Firebolt out for its tests last week. Passed with flying colors.”

  “I didn’t think the Engineer would go out without my personal computer riding shotgun on the tests, sir.”

  “Seems new computers for the test were financed out of another fund, Princess. You are not irreplaceable.”

  “No, sir. I didn’t think I was, sir. However, sir, when I found myself quarantined on Turantic, I did check in with the local military authority at the embassy. There should be a report from them of my unusual circumstances.”

  The General leafed through his flimsies. “Nope, nothing here, Princess. Not a word. Oh, excuse me, here is a report from the embassy. Seems you played the Princess rather strongly. Tied up several of their people full time. Interfered with them making normal reports. Put several of them in life-threatening situations. On first read, it pretty much sounds like normal damn Longknife behavior.”

  “The embassy doesn’t say anything about me checking in with them.”

  “Not a word, Princess.”

  There were a lot of things Kris could say. I did, too. They’re not being fair. Somebody’s out to get me. None sounded appropriate for a naval officer. She said nothing.

  That got her another “Hmm.”

  “I understand Admiral Crossenshild made you a job offer. Offered you a job in intelligence gathering or analysis.”

  “Yes, sir, he did.”

  “You turned him down.”

  “Yes, sir, I did.”

  “At ease, Lieutenant. You want to explain why you did? Sit down, take a weight off your feet,” he said, waving at a chair beside his desk.

  Kris relaxed . . . about one tenth of a degree. She slipped into the offered chair, tried to calm the storm raging in her stomach, her blood, her head. This “counseling session” is not fair. It is not right. But Lieutenants don’t tell four-star Generals that, not even when they’re the Prime Minister’s brat and a Princess. Especially not when they have that family baggage.

  “You know, Lieutenant, this latest, ah, experience of yours kind of points out something me and Crossie agree on. You’ve got the head for irregular situations. Damn, but you came up with an irregular solution to one hell of an irregular situation.”

  “Yes, sir. I did what I had to do. But that doesn’t mean that I enjoyed it, or would be good at it on a regular basis.”

  “Why not?”

  Kris took a deep breath. Could anyone understand what she was about to say? “Sir, the people in my family have made a tradition out of doing what has to be done in really crappy situations.”

  “That’s one way of putting it,” the General said, what might pass for a smile crinkling the edge of his mouth.

  “None of them ever sought to be in that kind of mess.” She laid that out, pure and simple. If Mac saw it, grasped what she meant, she didn’t need more words. If he didn’t get her meaning, more words wouldn’t do her a lot of good.

  He sat back in his chair, head slowly nodding. “You have a point there. I sometimes wonder if some of Crossie’s folks don’t get too much fun out of what they do.”

&nb
sp; “Sir, I don’t want to become someone who enjoys that kind of stuff. I don’t think it would be good for Wardhaven to have a damn Longknife who does.”

  “Now that is a scary picture. Say no more. I’ll talk to Crossenshild. He won’t bother you anymore.” Mac tore up one of his flimsies. “But you are long overdue from your leave,” he said, eyeing her like a vulture long overdue for dinner. “I can bring you up on charges, but I don’t think your pappy would be very happy to have you splashed all over the newsies. You may have missed the latest from Wardhaven, but the Prime Minister’s lost a few bielections, and the opposition is breathing hot down his neck. You could just resign for, shall we say, health reasons so you can concentrate on your regal obligations.”

  Kris did not need to think about his offer. “Sir, I will not resign, and I might caution you.” Lieutenant JGs did not caution four-star Generals. That was the rule. Kris had not broken one of the damn rules this morning. It was time to reduce one to kindling. “If you bring me up on charges, it may be difficult to prove that I did not check in with the embassy as required by regs. I don’t pass through anyplace without a whole lot of people noticing me.”

  Mac eyed another flimsy, sighed, and tore it up. “I told Crossie that wouldn’t work. So, Princess, what do I do with you?”

  “Sir, I am a serving Lieutenant, Junior Grade, and there have to be many places you can safely dump me,” she said, risking a smile.

  “I send you off to a wet, hot jungle, dump the worst excuse for sailors and Marines we’ve got, and you rehabilitate the damn command . . . including one of the best officers I’ve ever had to want a resignation from,” he said, shaking his head.

  “I make you a boot Ensign under a hard-driving Skipper . . . and you relieve him for charges and win a war I don’t want to fight. I give you the worst excuse for ship duty, and then you run off, crash a diplomatic crisis, and hand me back a situation well on its way to comfortable normalization. Young woman, I can’t think of anyplace I dare send you where I will get anything close to what I think I’m aiming for.”

  “There’s got to be someplace,” Kris squeaked before she remembered that Junior Officers don’t plead with Generals.

  Mac picked up another flimsy. “That was some interesting ship driving you did, shooting your way out against a six-inch cruiser.”

  “Sandfire did not have a trained crew,” Kris pointed out. “And while mine was small, it was a small ship.”

  “But one with structural problems. Who would put lasers on a boat and not cool them? Even dinky twelve-inchers. And that fire control system. A piece of crap.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “You put it through its teething problems rather quickly.”

  “Nothing like a cruiser bearing down on you to give you a strong incentive, sir, and concentrate your mind.”

  “I can imagine,” he muttered as he eyed the last flimsy. “Twenty years ago, we tried to come up with a fast patrol boat, something just for planetary protection. To keep the politicians happy we wasted a small fortune on a fleet of a hundred boats. Ended up using them for customs work.” He tossed a picture Kris’s way. She glanced at it but did not recognize the ship.

  “This Uni-plex stuff has some of our designers thinking they might try PFs again. Small, fast, high acceleration. Have to be young to stand the g’s. Four eighteen-inch pulse lasers could put a dent in a battlewagon if handled right. Decent fire control, though you might have a different opinion. Interested in skippering your own boat?”

  “Yes, sir,” was out of Kris’s mouth almost before she opened it.

  “Why am I not surprised?” He leaned back in his chair. “Now you still won’t be out from under the chain of command. Some poor Lieutenant Commander will be stuck with a bunch of prima donnas as bad as you, no doubt. Maybe if I put all you brash puppies in one place, you can keep yourselves busy chasing each other’s tails.”

  That didn’t require an answer. Kris just tightened her smile.

  “I can’t have a JG commanding a commissioned ship. The Skipper’s slot is a full Lieutenant. So,” he said, standing, “it looks like I’m going to have to promote you again.”

  “I can see how much it pains you, sir,” she let slip.

  From his top desk drawer, he pulled out a set of Lieutenant shoulder boards, two nicely thick strips, unlike the ones on Kris’s shoulders where one strip was anemically thin. “I had my secretary get these for me this morning. There’s nothing special about them. Just what she grabbed from the store downstairs.”

  “You knew you’d be giving them to me,” Kris said, raising an eyebrow.

  “Last time we had one of these little counseling sessions, you wouldn’t quit. Remember why?”

  Kris remembered only too well. When you finally find the words that contain your soul, you don’t forget them. “I’m Navy, sir.”

  “And I’m beginning to think that you are.”

  Kris stood, accepted the boards, saluted, then left. Maybe she was a bit dizzy. Maybe she didn’t cut the corners quite as square as when she went in. And maybe she was just a bit starry-eyed.

  In the waiting room, the secretary gave her the kind of sweet smile Kris dreamed of getting from her mother. Jack rose, took the Lieutenant’s shoulder boards in, and raised an eyebrow.

  “I’m getting my own ship,” Kris crowed.

  “Oh Lordy,” Jack breathed. “The Navy is in for it now.”

  About the Author

  Mike Shepherd grew up Navy. It taught him early about change and the chain of command. He’s worked as a bar-tender and cabdriver, personnel adviser and labor negotiator. Now retired from building databases about the endangered critters of the Northwest, he’s looking forward to a serious study of human folly and glory.

  Mike lives in Vancouver, Washington, with his wife, Ellen, and her mother. He enjoys reading, writing, dreaming, watching grandchildren for story ideas, and upgrading his computer—all are never ending.

  You may reach him at Mike_Shepherd@comcast.net.