“I’ll put these away,” Abby said as she passed Kris.
“I reserved the room next to me for you.”
Penny showed up a few minutes later with Captain Bret Drago. A bit theatrical in gray slacks, a red silk shirt open at the throat, and a drooping mustache, he walked his ship like he knew every weld and chip in it and smiled confidently as Penny introduced the commander of Naval District 41 as his new client.
The smile died. “You look familiar. Have we met before?”
“I doubt it.”
“I never forget a lovely face and you are surely one of the loveliest I have gazed upon. Tell me, when you are not a young lieutenant commanding a Naval District, what name do you go by.”
Jack rolled his eyes; Kris glanced at Penny. She shrugged. “Nelly gave me a credit chit on a holding company. Didn’t have a name. I think Nelly wanted to make it hard to trace.”
“You got that right,” came from above Kris’s collar bone.
“And you have two voices. I must confess, I prefer the one with lips attached.”
“Ever met Lieutenant Kris Longknife?” Jack said dryly.
“You aren’t one of those Longknifes, are you?” The mustache took an extra droop. So did the bushy eyebrows.
Kris came to attention, clicked her heels together, and smiled. “Her Highness Kristine Anne Longknife, Lieutenant, U.S. Navy, at your service, Captain.”
Alarm sparked in two dark eyes as Captain Drago turned to Penny. “You said this was a simple contract. Just jump buoys, transportation. You didn’t say anything about fighting.”
“And we won’t be doing any fighting,” Kris assured him as they walked to the escalator. “I need to check out some buoys, recharge or replace them. I want to do some scouting around this system. Nothing at all dangerous.”
“Says a Longknife,” Captain Drago said gnawing his mustache.
“That’s what I said.”
“And everyone knows a Longknife’s word can be taken to the bank,” Jack said, following right behind them.
“Word on money. Yes. But if problems arise?” Drago asked.
“We’ll blow up that bridge when we come to it. I find it only makes things more difficult when you blow them up before you come to them, don’t you,” Kris said.
“Mother warned me there would be contracts like this.”
New Chicago did take-out, so Kris ordered it in to the wardroom. They were enjoying Greek salads while Abby finished unpacking, and Kris debriefed Penny on the ship.
“The Resolute was in port and available. I ran a background check on the crew. They passed.”
“I’m glad you did,” Kris said. “If you hadn’t, Jack would not let me set foot on the boat until he did one.”
“I’ll need to run my own,” the Marine pointed out.
“I’m not staying cooped up in this station five minutes longer than I have to,” Kris shot back. “They’re going out to tend buoys and I’m going with them. I need to feel a ship under my feet, Jack. I need space time.”
“I need to check these guys out.”
“Check out the background Penny got, then tell me why it’s not good enough. And you better have a good reason.”
Penny shot Jack the report; he spent the rest of the dinner with his nose in his reader. Kris brought Penny up to date on the vets turning the Patton into a museum ship and the extent that the station was customized, which brought up the general situation. Penny shook her head after that part of the debrief. “They are the original ostriches with their heads in the sand.”
“And they’ve gotten away with it for three, four generations. And it’s not as if they haven’t been encouraged to be that way,” Kris said, surprised she was defending them.
“Just how cute is this Ron fellow?”
“He does dance nicely. I’ll have to take you down to meet him. Maybe Jack will let me go down without him if you agree to watch over me. Huh, Jack?”
“Not until we settle his Peterwald connection,” the Marine said without looking up from the background checks.
Later he did look up. “I guess you could get some space time with this crew. You’re going spacey hanging around here.”
Kris exchanged a demure glance with Penny. The woman was working hard at swallowing a smile. Clearly, the female was the smarter of the species.
4
The Resolute had a spacious hold that could be pressurized to work in. Kris found a dozen ancient jump buoys in storage near the hub. The Resolute’s crew made easy work of getting half of them aboard. They were away from the station, leaving Penny in charge, well before noon.
Jack insisted on going. For some reason Abby did, too . . . which did not cause Jack to smile. Chief Beni slipped aboard at the last moment. “Someone needs to help with reloading the software, checking the old code.” He may also have heard of the reputed culinary prowess of the Resolute’s cook.
That left Kris and a very inquisitive Nelly on the bridge as the Resolute headed for Jump Point Beta. The buoy there was not responding to radio checks, and, since this jump point led, via just two more jumps, to Peterwald’s new holding on Brenner Pass, it was Kris’s first concern.
But not Nelly’s. Kris’s computer was all eyes, ears, and whatever a computer could be checking on the navigation readouts. I SEE IT! MY JUMP POINT IS THERE! I THINK IT MAY BE ORBITING THAT GAS GIANT. COULD THAT BE WHY NO ONE NOTICED IT BEFORE?
Kris eyed the navigator’s board. She had to in order to keep her concentration. Having an excited computer dancing around inside her skull was . . . difficult. It reminded her of little brother Eddy. He got so excited at his sixth birthday party. Kris wasn’t joking when she said she could tie a string to his toe and fly him as a kite. Poor, dear dead Eddy.
Kris put Eddy aside. Once he’d been the only death she mourned. Now, he was one of so many. What did Grampa Trouble say—“If you live, they add up. If you don’t. Well, you join them. They’ll wait for you. Trust me girl. They’ll wait.”
Kris concentrated on keeping her head on while one excited computer did her best to blow it off. YES, NELLY, I CAN SEE . . . WHATEVER IT IS.
IT HAS TO BE MY JUMP POINT.
IT DOESN’T LOOK LIKE A JUMP POINT.
YES, IT IS DIFFERENT. BUT IT IS A JUMP POINT.
Kris tried not to be too obvious eyeing the nav computer. The Resolute’s navigator was to the captain’s left. Sulwan Kann was a dark-haired, petite woman almost to the point of being miniature. After getting a good look at the possible third jump point out of the Chance system, Kris backed away and divided her time between nav and the rest of the bridge. The controls were laid out to a standard format. Navigator, captain, helmsman. No need for weapons or defense. The Resolute was a standardly built ship, nothing as expensive as smart metal here. No ice to ward off lasers. Right, Kris, she is a merchant ship.
The crew of eighteen gave the ship just enough personnel to stand three watches, and Captain Drago set his course for Jump Point Beta at a brisk 1.5 g’s. “We’ll get your work done quickly and get this contract over, if we’re lucky, before anything violent comes your way, Lieutenant.”
“I thought my lieutenant signed you up for six months.”
“Right, she did. But if we get all your work done in less, maybe you’ll decide to save money and cut our contract short?”
“Strange behavior from a merchant captain,” Kris said.
“Yes, no question about it,” Captain Drago readily agreed. “But working for a Longknife is bound to bring out strangeness.”
“All too true,” the navigator agreed. Kris noticed, however that her eyes, while staying attentive to Jump Point Beta, did have a tendency to stray briefly, again and again, to the gas giant with the strange, tiny fuzzy presence in its orbit.
SHE SEES MY JUMP POINT!
YES. PROBABLY. BUT, NELLY, SHE’S NOT TALKING ABOUT IT. WHAT SAY WE DON’T TALK ABOUT IT, EITHER. THIS IS ONE SECRET I WANT TO KEEP BETWEEN US GIRLS.
BUT SOONER OR LATER WE HAVE TO
TALK TO SOMEONE IF WE ARE TO GO EXPLORING.
YES, GIRL. BUT LET’S NOT TALK TO ANYONE UNTIL WE ARE GOING EXPLORING.
YES, MA’AM, YOUR PRINCESSSHIP, SLAVEDRIVERNESS.
NELLY, BOSS WOULD DO JUST FINE.
The long day at heavy g went slowly; Kris set out to get to know Drago and his officers better. They were ready talkers . . . about anything but their recent work. Jack flashed Kris a scowl after he tried to turn the lunch conversation toward what their Bid For Contract said was their latest work at Lorna Do. That effort was cut short by Abby introducing the need for Kris to expand her wardrobe to more informal wear that would fit Chance better.
“When we get back, could I have a modiste visit?”
“That shouldn’t be a problem,” Kris agreed, and found that Captain Drago had left the dinning room.
Fifteen hours after leaving the station, the Resolute came to a standstill beside the jump buoy. It was nowhere close to the jump point; they would not have found it except for the flashing beacon. Its radio was silent as death.
Two sailors captured it and maneuvered it into the hold. A quick survey showed it was in sad shape. One of the merchant sailors put her finger into the hole in the fuel tank. “Goes in here and right through to the second tank. Got both.”
Jack studied it up close. “I guess it was a meteorite. Don’t see any evidence of a laser. We can check the tanks better once we get them back to the station.”
“You might as well take the whole buoy back,” Chief Beni put in. “The batteries won’t take a charge and half the solar cells are gone. We were lucky that it had power for the light.”
“Pull out a replacement,” Kris ordered. Twice. The first one came up dead. The second one came up alive . . . once they swapped out the solar cells from the first one.
Two hours later, they placed the buoy on its own and put it to work, passing through the jump point with orders to send the one from the other side through to verify that there was no ship waiting there to come through. It came back.
“I guess no other buoy,” Captain Drago said. He edged the Resolute through carefully, at only a few kilometers a second and rock-solid steady on its lateral stabilizers. Ships that went through at high accelerations tended to end up at jump points they didn’t intend to. Ships that were spinning could end up lost. The navigator of the Resolute was a very careful woman.
“No beacon,” the captain reported, to no one’s surprise. “I’ll have my crew get another spare buoy up and running.”
“But what happened to the assigned one?” Kris asked.
Drago shrugged. His toothy smile didn’t make Kris any more satisfied with her ignorance.
“Beni, report to the bridge. Captain, what search sensors does this ship have?”
“You’ve seen them.”
“I want to search for something maybe blown down to atoms.”
“You sure it didn’t just wander away?” Sulwan asked. “If it lost all its solar cells, it wouldn’t even show a light.”
“Possibly, but humor my paranoid side for a while. Okay?”
Beni and the Comm Chief got to work boosting the Resolute ’s sensor suite. By the time they launched a replacement buoy, Beni was frowning over reports. “This chunk of space isn’t nearly as empty as it ought to be. And the mixture of atoms is about what you might expect if someone blew a buoy to atoms.”
“How recently?” Jack asked.
“Say a month ago.”
“Too recent. Let’s go home,” Jack said.
“Long enough ago that the ship should be long gone,” Kris countered.
“Could be long gone.”
“Is there any ship in this system?” Kris asked Sulwan.
Lips pursed, she studied her sensors. “Doesn’t look like anything’s here but us chickens . . . and one vaporized buoy.”
“We need something more substantial than this to change minds on Chance.” Kris turned to Captain Drago. “Your board shows no buoy at this system’s Jump Point Beta. That’s only two jumps away from Brenner Pass. We need to replace it. How quickly can you get us over there?”
“We can maybe make two g’s,” the Captain admitted.
“And if we get into any trouble, what kind of hold-out guns are you carrying?”
Captain Drago looked pained. “Ma’am, I’m just a simple merchant captain. The Resolute is no kind of a warship.”
“Yes, and I commanded a dozen friendly-looking merchant skippers and their ships at Wardhaven, all just as deadly as they needed to be. What have you got if things get terminal?”
The captain studied the overhead of his bridge for a long moment, then glanced Sulwan’s way. She shrugged. “She’s a Longknife. You knew she was going to ask,” the navigator said.
“Yes, but I was hoping for much, much later.” He paused for a moment longer, then said quickly. “We have two fourteen-inch pulse lasers and capacitors that can normally be recharged in five minutes, assuming everything else is running smoothly and our reactor hasn’t been shot to Swiss cheese.”
“Good, Captain. That didn’t hurt. Who’s your gunner?”
“Three ex-Navy types who know the lasers from soup to nuts.”
“That’s nice to know. Now then, Captain, let us get to the next jump point as quickly as we may. Chief Beni, make sure the software on this buoy will have it go through the jump to report to Chance anytime the other buoy is activated.”
“Already did, ma’am. It’s standard software after that mess up at Wardhaven.”
“Glad to know someone learned something from that.”
“Madame client,” Captain Drago began most formally, “Our high g stations are not nearly so fancy as those on Navy ships. In fact, you may find the plumbing rather crude. May I suggest that you and your maid use your room. The men use their own room while we make Godspeed for where you want us.”
“Thank you, Captain. Jack, Beni, with me.”
“If you think I’m going to leave you all alone when that puffed-up pirate has just told me to leave you all alone,” Jack started as soon as they were alone in the passageway.
“You wouldn’t be half the man I take you for,” Kris said to cut off a long lecture that she already knew by heart. And one, at least today, she agreed with.
“Jack, Beni, get your high g stations. Give Abby and me about ten minutes to get ourselves modestly arranged in our own, then you join us in my room.”
“What about my modesty?” the chief asked.
“Trust me, I’ll close my eyes,” Kris answered.
“Abby probably will, too,” Jack added.
Fifteen minutes later, they were ready for a day-long trip at high g. Jack had his station facing the door of Kris’s stateroom, automatic at hand. Kris had a similar field of fire. Abby had set up a game hologram between the four of them. She started off with chess, but quickly beat all of them soundly. Even Jack. Abby suggested they try their hand at poker, but neither Kris nor Jack were one of those born optimists that ever answered yes to that question. And they refused to let Abby play Beni for a sucker. They settled on bridge at a penny a point.
By midafternoon, they were down to a quarter penny a point and Beni owed Abby his next two paychecks. “Aren’t cards supposed to make this a game of chance. The way she plays, you’d think she was reading my hand. Or my mind.”
When it came rest time, Kris had them rotate sleeping, first the boys, then the girls. “Keep that door covered at all times,” Jack warned as Kris dimmed the lights and he closed his eyes.
NELLY, CAN YOU HEAR ANY TRAFFIC IN THE PASSAGEWAY OUT THERE?
I HAVE BEEN LISTENING SINCE YOU SETTLED IN. ONE PERSON MANAGED TO STALK BY. NO ONE ELSE.
WAKE ME IF YOU HEAR ANYONE COMING.
Jack ended up waking Kris. “You have that computer of yours covering for you?”
“Yes. Nelly, did anyone come by here while we were asleep?”
“No, Kris, it was just you sleeping beauties,” Nelly said.
Kris tapped the
commlink. “Captain Drago, when will we reach Jump Point Beta?”
“We’ll kill the engine in five minutes. You need the time to freshen up?”
“I think I’ll wait until we’re in zero g,” Kris said.
Ten minutes later, Chief Beni was hunting for any evidence there ever had been a buoy at this jump point. He found it, but only at the cooling atomic level. But not that cool. “It was burned, but not too long ago. Not long ago at all.”
“Captain, would you mind nudging us through the jump point,” Kris said, ever so properly for her status as client aboard.
“Shouldn’t we post a buoy? Have it look before we jump?”
“Captain,” Kris repeated less properly.
“Captain speaking,” Drago announced to all hands. “Stand by for a jump we hopefully will all live to regret. You ex-Navy types, I’m not moving until you tell me the board is green on those long-legged ladies we don’t have.”
Kris pulled herself down to a jump seat next to the helmsman and strapped herself in. Jack settled in a spare seat next to the captain. Beni got close to the navigator and her sensors. Then three separate voices verified that the lasers that weren’t aboard were all go.
It took only a moment to glide through the jump, another to recover from the disorientation. “No buoy,” Sulwan said.
“Hot, very hot plasma here,” Beni added.
“And I may know who’s been eating our porridge,” Kris said, “And breaking our chairs. Look what I see.”
Not fifty klicks out hovered a ship. Nice and shiny and new. And easily twice the size of the Resolute. What kind of weapons hid under its bright work was anybody’s guess.
“Howdy folks,” came on guard channel in an oh-so-chummy voice. “What brings you to this part of space?”
Kris took it all in: blasted buoys, a ship too close to the fastest route between Chance and Peterwald space, and the tenor of that hail. Without being able to explain how she got from point A to point Dead, that was where she went. Someone would die in the next few minutes. It wouldn’t be her or hers.
Kris Longknife: Resolute Page 7