Kris Longknife: Resolute

by Mike Shepherd

  None to gently, Kris nudged the helmsman’s hand. The Resolute rolled right and pushed everyone back in their seats with a sudden burst of acceleration. But just a burst. In a moment, the ship was back to drifting slowly, but in a roll.

  “Helm, what’s wrong,” Captain Drago demanded, his hand still on the open mike. Good. He’s a quick study.

  “I don’t know,” Kris answered before the helmsman could get out a squeak. “It’s that same old problem. It’s back again.”

  Kris tapped the helmsman’s hand again and the ship did another jump and roll. “Captain, we got a serious problem with our lateral stabilizer this time,” Kris added.

  “Well, tie it down,” Captain Drago snapped.

  “Trying,” Kris said, and made sure the ship did another dodge and weave.

  “Looks like you folks could use some help,” came from the other ship. “You go into a jump with a bad stabilizer and the Great Goo only knows where you’ll come out.”

  Bret chewed his drooping mustache, and a bit of his lower lip as well. Then he scowled at Kris, a multifunctional thing. Finally, he looked into the commlink as honest as anyone born yesterday and said. “This is Captain Bret Drago of the merchant ship Resolute out of Lorna Do. Our best mechanic can’t do a thing with the problem. You have anyone good with stabilizers? Maybe thrusters. Could just be the computer.”

  “I’m Captain Arnando Jinks of the good ship Wild Goose. I got people good for what ails you,” the other answered with a wide, friendly smile. “What do you say that you close down all your power systems and we’ll come over?”

  “Captain, I think I can dampen the spin, and leave us dead in space,” Kris said, mouthing “Do it” silently to the helm. He did. “Maybe it would be easier if they just matched hatches to us and came aboard. Save time on hauling tools back and forth.”

  Captain Drago’s tapping toes looked like they were about to blow a fuse, but he turned a bland face to the other captain. “We do seem to be stable. I think we can hold it. I’ll pop out our airlock tunnel. Think you can match with it?”

  “It would be a lot easier on my repair crew. Wouldn’t have to wait for our locks to cycle. And some of my best techs get space sick if you get them outside a solid hull.”

  “Good. I’ve powered down. You match. Captain Drago out.” He killed his commlink; watched it switch from green to red standby. Then he mashed a button and the red light went out. He waved at Sulwan who flipped a switch on her board.

  “We are as silent as a tomb,” she reported.

  “And maybe about to become one. Longknife, what have you gotten me and my fine ship and its very thin-skinned crew into?”

  “That helpful Hannibal is likely the fellow who’s been blasting our buoys. You want to have a shoot-out with him?”

  “No.” Captain Drago agreed, though his expression said he’d rather swallow a dead fish than agree with Kris just now.

  “You can’t tell me that this fine ship and its resourceful crew have never been boarded before. Boarded when you didn’t want to be. Where’s your weapons’ locker. You must have a goodly supply of Pfizer’s best sleepy darts?”

  “And if we do?”

  “We shoot first and ask questions later,” Kris said.

  “What do you take me for, a pirate?”

  “Actually, we were hoping you were,” Jack said. “Our pirates. Not their pirates. Our gal here gets along right well with pirates. When she’s not stealing their ships.”

  “Well, she’s doing nasty things with mine. And without my permission.” Kris considered that charge, evaluated whether or not he was most upset about what she was doing or that she was doing it without first consulting him. She concluded that his main complaint was with the process, not the proceedings.

  “I’m sorry, Captain, but there wasn’t time to staff out our options. I didn’t see a lot of good things happening if we tried to fight. You know what hold-out laser he’s hiding?”

  “Not the faintest,” Drago spat.

  “And, if we do this right, we’ll be hustling through his open hatch to take his bridge well before he can take yours.”

  Drago snorted, seemed to warm to the idea, but still wagged a finger Kris’s way. “Not bad. But next time, young lady, you warn me before you go getting me in a mess like this.”

  “I will,” Kris promised, trying to sound contrite.

  Jack shook his head. “Not a chance. I’d never bet money on that. Congenitally impossible to her whole family.”

  Kris watched Jack and the captain exchange glances, one of those male-bonding moments that would make them friends for life. Why were those moments so often at the expense of some poor woman? Oh well, she had things going the way she wanted. With luck, she’d take that ship with nothing more painful than a few headaches for the Wild Goose’s crew. With luck.

  “You plan on welcoming them aboard in that Navy uniform,” Abby drawled, her head just ducking inside the bridge hatch.

  Kris hit the release on her seat and propelled herself for that same hatch. “Captain, if you will distribute inconspicuous weapons to your crew, we should be in a position to take down our assistants before they can become our assailants.”

  “Sulwan, see to that,” the captain said, not budging from his command chair.

  Jack followed Kris off the bridge; he needed to be out of uniform, too. “Beni,” he shouted. “I want you in my room five minutes ago.”

  Abby had shed her prim skirt and blouse for a tank top and very cutoffs. Any not-dead male, faced with her long legs and full breasts, would be too locked in indecision as to what to lust after to notice minor things like Abby shooting him.

  Kris ended up in a bulky sweater and oversize sweat-pants . . . that hid the spidersilk undies and ceramic armor plates that Abby put her in. “And there’s five minutes of emergency air in that pack between your shoulder blades. If somebody doses the atmosphere, that ought to give us a chance to rescue you . . . again. The undies will help if we go to zero pressure.”

  “Thank you,” Kris said, and then again to Sulwan when she came by with a nasty-looking, but tiny weapon. “Sleepy darts?”

  “Low power for close quarters. What’s your hold-out gun?”

  Kris produced her service automatic from the small of her back. “I’m not using Pfizer’s best with it.”

  “Well, power it down or you’ll be punching holes in Bret’s ship. He doesn’t like that, and it kind of makes it hard for the rest of us to breathe.”

  Kris held the weapon up for Sulwan to see that she already had it dialed back to the smallest squirt of propellant for each fléchette. “Don’t want to make holes in my station.”

  “Should have known I wouldn’t have to teach a Longknife how to kill folks. Or not—if she wanted.”

  The knocking of tubing against tubing had echoed through the hull as Kris changed. Now her conversation with Sulwan was punctuated by the solid thunk of the attachment being made. Then came the whooshing sound of the tube pressurizing. “We better get back to work,” Sulwan said as she did a racing turn and pushed off for the hold to greet their kind assistants. Kris followed, with Jack close behind. He had switched into battle dress bottoms and boots, but a red tank top that showed off nice pecs.

  Beni came up the rear in a rumpled set of khakis with the chief ’s anchors gone. And a sandwich in one hand covering an electronic monitoring station.

  Kris brought them to a halt, then towed her three into a crew-man’s quarters on one side of the hold. With the door partially closed, she watched as six “helping hands” from the other ship followed Sulwan toward the bridge. One of them looked to be the captain of the reputedly good ship Wild Goose.

  Ducking her head out, Kris checked the passageway, then waved her team toward the hold. There they paused for Jack to move to the head of the line. He pushed himself off first, gliding unsteadily into the hold and made an awkward grab for the busted buoy, pulling himself to a halt on it.

  Kris allowed herself to show
more grace as she jumped for one of the new ones, Abby right behind her. The chief held back, out of sight, content to let the three of them go in harm’s way.

  Lounging free beside the open airlock were three from the other ship. Eyeing them as they floated in were two men in shorts and T-shirts, and a redhead in full body armor. Ouch!

  “Hi.” Kris waved. “Captain wants us to get a replacement buoy up and running.” Kris flipped open the maintenance hatch on her buoy and did her best to appear busy.

  The armored woman eyed Kris narrowly. “You do that.”

  The two fellows seemed to lose interest in everything but Abby’s rear once she expertly bent over the open buoy service hatch and waved it their way. Jack fumbled to a second buoy and managed to get it open. Kris had hoped the woman in armor would concentrate on Jack, but she gave all three an eagle’s attentive eye. And her hand kept going to the small of her back. She was packing and looked eager to use it. Kris took a deep breath and sentenced the woman to surrender or die.

  Humming to herself, Kris passed behind the buoy, pulled out her service automatic, switched the power up and the safety off with one sweep of her thumb, and came back in view of the three strangers with her automatic sighting on the woman’s head.

  “We got a problem in the hold,” Kris called on net, switched off, and said, “Don’t go for the gun.”

  Two soft pops of sleepy darts from Abby and Jack and the men floated like jellyfish. The woman sneered at Kris—and reached for her gun. Kris shook her head and fired. The woman’s head disappeared in a red smear before she even reached the gun.

  “Did you have to do that,” Beni asked from the safety of the passageway?

  “She was armed and going for it,” Jack snapped as he moved to the sleeping beauties, checked for a pulse, then put another dart into each butt to make sure they took a nice long nap. Then he frisked them. All three yielded ugly knives and pistols of various flavors. All lethal. No sleepy darts here.

  “We surrendered or else,” Abby drawled softly.

  Captain Drago shot into the hold, deflected himself off a buoy and aimed himself for the open airlock and tube between the ships. “Did you have to start shooting so soon?”

  Jack waved at the captured horde of weapons.

  “Yes. Yes, I know,” Drago said, grabbing the airlock and propelling himself down the tube. “But we barely were in position on the bridge.” Four beefy sailors followed in their captain’s wake.

  “Yes,” Kris agreed. “But that also means they were just getting in position, too.” The captain was too far up the rabbit hole for Kris to hear any reply. She shoved off to follow.

  “Don’t you think we ought to wait?” Jack said.

  “We’ve still got air. Let’s go,” Kris shouted, putting her service automatic between her teeth. She flew past Jack; he scowled. She grabbed for a handhold on the airlock and pulled herself hand over hand into the void between ships.

  Jack shouted, “Beni, get over here,” and made to follow.

  Abby shot in ahead of him. “You could break a nail on these handles. Way too awkward,” she muttered.

  Kris concentrated on grabbing hold and pushing along fast. The tube was clear, though the moisture of their breath was making it fog. Beyond, the dark cold of space loomed, speckled by unblinking, forever-distant lights. Kris had seen this view before, from a racing skiff. She’d always had a well-tested pressure suit hugging her at those moments. She paddled faster.

  The air took on the smell of fried fish and dirty laundry, overpowering even the taste of the weapon in Kris’s mouth. Flashing out into a wide space at the other end of the tube, Kris found two sleepers drifting. Before Kris touched down on the far wall, she had both guns out, covering the passageways up and down in the ship. No head came in view. No nothing.

  There was noise forward and Kris turned to go there as Abby and Jack glided in to do their own check.

  “Hold it,” came from the chief as he wiggled in behind Jack. One hand held his electronic gizmo; his eyes studied its flashing colors. “Something strange going on aft. In Engineering.”

  Kris did a flip and headed that way, Jack right behind her, Abby took station with two guns out, ready to hold the tube against all comers. Beni followed Kris, bouncing from one side of the passageway to the other but his eyes never left the electronic monitoring station in his left hand.

  Kris paused at the open hatch to Engineering. Inside, two men were anchored by their feet to impromptu holds. One held a huge wrench, the other an automatic pistol. He fired off a burst at Kris but couldn’t control the weapon. Rounds went high, then higher, ricocheting inside. Kris shot for the dead center of his chest; he flipped over. He went one way, the pistol the other.

  Kris swung her weapon toward the guy with the wrench. But he’d vanished aft into a maze of machinery. Now the guy in stained khakis strapped into the Engineering command station drew Kris’s attention. He was hunched over a button, knuckles white as he pressed it down hard. Beads of perspiration glistened on his face to form globules and float free into the air around him.

  “You going to shoot me?” he asked, not looking up. Kris saw herself reflected in the instruments of that station.

  “Wasn’t planning to,” Kris said, glancing around for the wrench fellow. Jack followed her in and started doing his own check. Beni held station outside the hatch, but the look he gave the engineer rapidly turned to raw terror.

  “Kind of wish you would shoot me,” the man said. His hand was trembling. “It would solve all my problems. All yours, too.”

  Kris’s father hadn’t raised dumb kids. “That what I take it for?”

  “Probably. The bridge activated the self-destruct sequence. My job is to finish it by letting go of this switch. That’s what they pay me the big bucks for. I let go and the reactor’s containment just goes away. Then we do.”

  “But the folks who put that in your contract aren’t the ones standing here just now,” Jack said.

  “You got that one right.”

  “Somebody really doesn’t want any evidence, do they. And don’t much care who pays the cost for what they want,” Kris said softly. Her knees were starting to shake, making her glad to be in zero g. Floating, waiting to be blown to atoms was a whole lot more nerve-racking than throwing herself into a shoot-out.

  “I’m too old for this shit,” the engineer said. “And I kind of wanted to get older.” He shook his head. “They can’t pay a man enough for this.”

  “Any way to safety the destruct sequence?” Kris asked.

  “You can’t do that,” came the half scream, half screech. “We swore a mercenary’s oath.” The missing fellow launched himself from behind something big and gray. He had his wrench out ahead of him and was aiming straight for the guy holding back the reactor blowout.

  Kris stitched him with a three round burst of sleepy darts.

  Jack launched himself at the suicide, caught him in midair. The two of them crashed into the Engineering station just at the elbow of the fellow with his finger in a most lethal dike.

  “You still have the situation well in hand?” Kris asked.

  “If I didn’t, you wouldn’t be asking,” the guy said with a soft snort. “Listen, my hand is getting a mite tired. You see that blue switch there, just out of my reach if I tried for it?”

  “Yes,” Kris said, gliding softly to the point of interest, but trying to touch nothing.

  “And that red button about half a meter away from it?”

  Kris looked for it. And pointed at one.

  “No, not that red one, the smaller one below it.”

  Kris pointed to the right one.

  “You throw the blue switch. Then you have five seconds to push the red one down and hold it down until you feel it click solidly in place. You got it?”

  “And if I mess up?”

  “You really don’t need me to tell you, do you?”

  Kris wrapped a leg around a stanchion for the work station, stabilized herse
lf, and reached out. For once, she was glad of all of her six feet and the reach that came with it. She had the blue switch under her right hand and wasn’t even stretching to reach the red. “Flip one, then push down hard on the other.”

  “Until it clicks.”

  The switch flipped easily. The button went down. And did nothing. “I’m not getting a click, here,” Kris said.

  “You better before five seconds is up.”

  Kris leaned hard, wishing maybe there was more of her to lean on that button, but they were in zero g and even if she weighed a thousand pounds it wouldn’t matter.

  “Can this thing be turned off,” Kris muttered, as she wrapped both of her legs around the support and bent herself to get more leverage behind her fingers.

  The button sank deeper, but still no click. Kris grabbed for the edge of the work station to get more purchase.

  Beside her, the engineer was muttering, “One hundred thousand and four. One hundred thousand and . . .”

  The button gave a gentle click. “Will it stay down now?”

  The engineer eyed his board. “I think you did it. Keep pushing down on that thing. I’m gonna let go.” He did. Kris counted to twenty. And found she was still here.

  “I think you can let go of that,” the engineer said.

  “You don’t sound nearly as sure as I want you to sound.”

  “Ain’t run this procedure all that many times.”

  “How many times have you run it?” Jack asked.

  “This is the first time I’ve heard of.”

  Kris’s knuckles were white and several, no, most of her muscles were screaming. “I need to let go?”

  “Try it. If we don’t blow up, you did things just fine.”

  Kris considered her options and found that standing here for the rest of her life might interfere with too many things she wanted to do. Like going dancing with Ron and Jack again. She let up and counted to twenty.

  “No boom,” Beni said from the hatch.

  “No boom is good boom,” Kris agreed and offered the Engineering officer her hand. “I’m Lieutenant Kris Longknife of Naval District 41.”