Kris Longknife: Resolute

by Mike Shepherd

  “I figured I should check in with you,” Kris said. “I’m told there’s been a lot of work done since I was last aboard.”

  “You bet’cha there has been, young lady,” the woman said, dark eyes lighting up. “Just look at this battery. These twin 5-inchers can train as fast as they did the day they were first put aboard. And look at the plaque, there,” she said, pointing.

  Kris did, and saw the use for that white plastic she’d brought aboard. Beneath a quick explanation of what secondary armament was good for on a cruiser, and another short one on how the 5-inch lasers worked, was an additional annotation.

  This battery was manned by the Marines of

  First Lieutenant Terrence Tordon detachment during

  the suppression of pirates during the inter-war

  years. He went on to be known as General Trouble

  to both friends and enemies.

  And big trouble to his great-granddaughter, Kris didn’t add. “Thank you,” she said to the youngsters looking on. “Grampa would be proud that his guns are being so well cared for.”

  That got happy smiles. When Kris left after getting a demonstration of how fast the 5-inchers could move, Ananda followed. “Thank you,” she said, once out of sight of the kids.

  “Thank me? For what?”

  “For not pointing out that the Patton’s secondary battery during the Unity War and the Pirate Affairs were 4-inch lasers. These 5-inchers only came aboard during the Iteeche Wars.”

  “Couldn’t fight off Puff Balls with 4-inchers,” Kris said.

  “So my mother told me,” Ananda said ruefully. “Still, there is something special for the youth, working on a laser that your Grampa may once have touched. It adds something special.”

  Kris smiled. “Your mom fought such a gun?”

  The woman beamed proudly.

  “That ought to be enough for anyone, but yes, keep letting them think Grampa Trouble worked that laser, and I’ll keep not telling them stories about my Grampa that just might ruin everything for them.” They shared a laugh.

  Kris considered the long list of things to do before Hank and his minions showed up, found it very long and, worse, not a single thing she could do just now, and sighed.

  “Kris, Penny wants to talk to you,” Nelly said.

  “What’s happening?” Kris said.

  “Your old lover boy is calling.”

  “He was never my lover boy,” Kris spat.

  “Well, that’s how he introduced himself to Jack and Beni just now. Did he do anything you don’t know about?”

  “Only in his dreams,” Kris said. “Put him on.”

  “Hi Kris,” he said in an all-too-familiar voice. “Too bad you don’t have a visual. I wanted to show you the latest in blues.”

  Kris was glad she didn’t have a visual. She could see perfectly well his perfectly sculptured face, one well-manicured hand waving at a sleeve with a very wide commodore’s strip.

  “To my eternal regret,” Kris said, returning the sarcasm.

  “My flag navigator tells me we’ll be docking at High Chance at noon tomorrow. My sensor crew reports that you don’t have your fusion reactor on-line. Will you be able to provide conventional housekeeping services to my squadron?”

  “I don’t see a problem,” Kris said, praying she was right.

  “We’ll also want to give our crews shore leave, get down, get our land legs back, meet the locals. Maybe paint an orphanage or poor house. You must know the drill.”

  Kris’s experience with port visits had been limited to saving a kidnapped kid and stopping six battleships from paying such a call on Wardhaven. A normal old-fashioned fleet visit was quite beyond her short experience in the Navy. “I think the locals are planning quite a show,” she said.

  “And I think we can return the favor. Just make sure you’re ready to render services, Longknife, and that there’s plenty of beer dirtside. Don’t want things to get out of hand, do we.”

  “I’ll look into that myself,” Kris said, and found she was talking to thin air.

  “Penny, where can I meet up with you?” Kris asked, assuming that anything she said on net was being listened in on.

  “I need to do some stuff at Pier 62. Can I meet you there?”

  That being next to the Patton, Kris had no trouble being back up on Deck 1 when Penny sprinted down from the Command Center area to stop at Pier 62 where the Wasp was refitting.

  “How’s the Wasp coming along?” Kris asked.

  “Beautifully,” Penny said. “We’ve erased all its software right down to the stuff that was in firmware for permanent load. We’ve copied most of what we want from the Resolute’s basic load. That boat has quite an interesting collection of software.”

  “No doubt. Just how much did Abby help you in hiring it?”

  Penny frowned in thought. “I didn’t think she did all that much. I was looking at a couple of other ships, but Abby pointed out their weaknesses. Resolute was strong in all areas. Even had a formerly military crew. I liked that. And the Doc almost was a doctor, not your usual first-aid type. Why, Kris?”

  “Nothing. You know she’s packing a pair of 14-inch lasers.”

  “Yes. Now. I needed that software for the Wasp, so I’m glad it had it. Kris, are you concerned about something?”

  “Just my usual question as to where Abby really comes from? What she’s up to? You know.”

  Penny shrugged and changed the topic. “You called for me?”

  “Yeah, I need to drop down to Chance. Among other things, Hank hinted if the beer runs out, his sailors might get rowdy. I need to talk to Ron where I can’t be listened to.”

  Penny nodded, then focused on something behind Kris. Kris turned to watch a wiry young woman race up the escalator three steps at a time. She arrived not even out of breath.

  “You Miss Longknife?” she asked. Kris admitted she was. “We’ve got the Patton’s sensors fully on-line and were watching the approaching ships. Kind of training, you know?” Kris admitted that she did. “Anyway, the chief said you might want to know that the ships have upped their acceleration to 1.5 g’s. They’ll be here well before noon tomorrow.”

  “It’s nice to have eager guests,” Penny muttered.

  “Penny, you’ve got the watch. I’ll be dirtside,” Kris said.

  A yellow cab waited for Kris, driven by a kid that looked a lot like Steve but not nearly old enough to drive. At least on Wardhaven. But then, the kid didn’t exactly drive, it was more like flying low in a racing skiff. Kris tightened her seat belt and managed to say nothing.

  Ron was still at the sports arena. There were small rooms under the stadium, all now filled with tables, computers, and people doing things intensely. Ron came out to greet her.

  Inside, Marta Torn and two men stood around a table with a map spread across it. Marta looked up and grinned. “I hear you’ve heard from your lover boy.”

  “News travels fast when some idiot uses an open net, and may I point out you only heard his side. We went to lunch once and dinner once. Not much loving. And my office was rocketed during the lunch and there was a bombing halfway through our dinner. Didn’t even get to dance.”

  “I hadn’t heard about the lunch date,” Ron said. “But you left out how you ended up on his yacht late one night.

  “That doesn’t count as a date,” Kris snapped. “I was looking to steal the fastest boat available. I didn’t even know it was his.”

  “Someday you must write a book about your love life,” Ron said, grinning. Similar grins grew on the other faces in the room. Even his mother’s. “Me, I’m hoping to have a nice long chapter devoted to me. Lovingly,” he added.

  “You can hope for anything,” Kris said, not really minding Ron’s ribbing. Or was it a proposition. Certainly it didn’t rise to the level of a proposal. They joined the group involved in the map exercise. “What’s happening?”

  “We picked up your conversation with Hank,” Ron said. “The Beergartens along Hamburg
Street will turn the whole five blocks into an Oktoberfest. They have plenty of practice and plenty of beer, right, Hans.”

  “Bismark Park will be set up with arcade games, penny pitch, good fun stuff,” said a round fellow with just a hint of an old German accent adding interest to his words. “We garten owners have plenty of good beer, but only the prizes left over from last year. Our new production run isn’t done yet.”

  “Then we better have something lined up in case we run out,” Ron said with a worried frown.

  “The Highland Games are held here at the college,” Marta said, pointing to a large area two blocks off of Hamburg Street. “They do a caber toss, rock toss, and races. The prizes are just ribbons. I think we can stretch that out through a lot of match contests before we get to the prize rounds.”

  “Gasçon is our Chief of the Peace. Can you handle it?”

  A tall, lanky fellow a bit older than Ron shook his head. “Mayor, I won’t know until I see what I get. You going to staff me for a riot, or for a quiet night?”

  “If we staff you up, we look like we’re looking for a riot,” Ron said slowly.

  “And who’s going to pour my beer,” Hans said. “We can’t throw a party if you put everyone in an arm band, Gassy.”

  The Chief of the Peace nodded. “Ain’t you glad you didn’t lose that last Mayor race?” Ron made a rude noise.

  “You need enough folks pulling beer to keep it flowing fast,” Kris said slowly. “And enough safety and security people walking the streets to see that any problems are handled quickly, in the early stages before they grow into something ugly.”

  “I know,” Ron said. “I’ve seen enough news to know how the Peterwald work this scam. We throw their sailors in jail,

  ‘on trumped-up charges,’ they come down to liberate them from terrorists, and somehow, in the process, a government falls and another planet ends up in Peterwald’s hip pocket,” he growled at Kris, but the others around him nodded along.

  Kris was glad to hear that from Ron. Apparently those years on Greenfeld hadn’t blinded the mayor to what his benefactors did. But then Kris knew a Peterwald and wasn’t in bed with him.

  “You know,” she said softly. “Those ships are going to arrive at my station well before noon tomorrow.”

  “No,” echoed back at her.

  “Yeah, the Greenfeld squadron has hiked up its g’s.”

  “Will they be down here earlier?” Gasçon asked.

  “No way of telling,” Kris said.

  “So they’ll have more time to wander around your station,” Ron said, rubbing his chin.

  “A station that still doesn’t have a working reactor,” Marta pointed out before Kris did.

  “This is not good,” Hans said. “Not good at all. Those auto guns need to be tested. My boy Alex is supposed to be up there checking them out before the ships get here. If he’s up there, he won’t be pulling beers down here.”

  “We need power to test those guns,” Ron said.

  “How many back-up generators do you have?” Marta asked.

  “Two,” Kris said. “One for the aft set of shops that’s going now, and one that we aren’t using for the midship set.”

  “So you could double what you have,” Ron said, running his hands through his hair.

  “The Patton’s not taking any power from the station, or so my kid brother says,” put in the Chief of the Peace. “Could it kind of donate power?”

  “I’ll check on that,” Kris said slowly. “If we managed our power carefully, we might bring up some of the gun stations a few at a time for testing, then close them down.”

  “I’ll see that you get extra antimatter,” Marta said.

  Kris eyed the map with its Oktoberfest and games. “I take it this is your answer to the last part of Hank’s transmission to me, the part about his boys getting rambunctious if they don’t get shown a good time.”

  “Yeah,” the Chief of the Peace said. “Normally they say visitors are like fish, they smell after three days. This guy ain’t even here yet and I’m detecting an unpleasant aroma.”

  “Watch it, Gassy,” Hans said softly. “We don’t want feelings like those showing through.”

  “I know, I know,” Gasçon said, eyeing Marta. “We don’t hold against this bunch what we may have heard through the news. But can I hold against them what I’m seeing right now?”

  “The plan is to smile, smile, smile,” Marta said. “It’s harder to invade a planet that’s smiling at you. Don’t give them an excuse to do something we’ll all regret.”

  The others around the table nodded along with Marta’s words, which Kris suspected by now must be an oft-repeated mantra. She’d been taught in OCS that hope was not a plan. She weighed Chance’s plan and found it loaded with a whole lot of hope. It was clear that one Longknife was going to have to provide the iron to counterbalance all that hope.

  “If you’ve got the party well in hand, and I’ve got some power options to look at, I’ll head back upstairs.”

  “Kris,” Ron said as she turned away. “You did bring your dancing shoes and a couple of nice party dresses, didn’t you?”

  “And if I did,” Kris answered noncommittal.

  “We figure the officers won’t be all that interested in seeing how much beer they can guzzle and still toss a caber. We’re planning some social events that will equal the best you ever saw on Wardhaven. Thought you might want to give your maid advanced warning to get the swirly stuff ready. I’ve heard a lot about your maid. Abby’s her name, isn’t it?”

  “Yep, and I’ll tell Abby to get ready to do that princess thing she does so well. That is unless you think I should leave the tiara in the box.”

  “Oh no.” Marta grinned. “That’ll be half the fun. Seeing who fawns all over a bit of royalty, and who doesn’t.”

  “I’ve used the princess card for a lot of things,” Kris sighed. “This sounds like it will be a whole new gig.”

  “I get the first dance,” Ron said as Kris headed out.

  Kris didn’t look back. “You and Hank can arm wrestle.”

  “Well, at least that Marine won’t be ahead of me in line,” Ron called after her. Almost, Kris turned back to see the look on Ron’s face. Was he joking? Or actually glad to be considered ahead of Jack on Kris’s dance card.

  A lot was going to be revealed come tomorrow night.

  Steve Jr. was waiting outside to take Kris back. And he did get her back safely to the shuttle, if a bit worse for the experience. Strange how a battle-hardened vet could find riding with a teenaged driver a terrifying experience. Course then, enemy fire and a spun-out car left you just as dead.

  The shuttle had extra antimatter, as promised, and a couple of passengers. Most looked like craftsmen and -women to go with the toolboxes stored in the proper bins. One was older, grayer, and carrying a nicely sized potbelly. And though he wore a plaid flannel shirt and jeans, Kris greeted him with “Hi, Chief.”

  “You’re not supposed to know. What gave me away?”

  “Well, you’re wearing an old Navy-issue belt.”

  “Lot’s of folks do. They’re cheap.”

  “Yeah, but others don’t have a razor sharp gig line.”

  The old chief sucked in his gut and looked down. Shirt, edge of buckle, and fly were so straight, they could have been done by a theodolite. He hitched his belt around, disrupting the perfection of habit. “You won’t tell the commander, will you.”

  “Mum’s the word. What part of my station are you going to look at.” Kris didn’t emphasis the “my” in station, but she got it out there in clear sight.

  “The auto guns. That’s what all of us are here for.”

  “News travels fast,” Kris said.

  “This is Chance, ma’am. Everybody knows everything.”

  Kris delivered them smoothly to her station, arranged with Tony Chang to have two of his boys get the other auxiliary power station up and running just as soon as the lunch rush was over, and headed for Eng
ineering aboard the Patton.

  “Was expecting you,” a woman said as Kris entered the other holy of holies aboard a ship.

  “Everybody on Chance knows everything,” Kris said.

  “Glad you’re getting the hang of the place,” the gal said with a grin. “The second reactor is dead, but the first is running solid, and I’m expanding the racetrack to give us more power and feeding it up the line to the station’s capacitors.” Electricity to run the ship and power the lasers came from sending plasma through a magnetic field. When the ship was doing 1 g in space, there was plenty of juice. When the ship wasn’t under way, there was a, usually small, racetrack they ran a trickle of plasma around. Kris hadn’t heard of anyone expanding the track, but she was glad this woman could.

  “The capacitors should be full in a few hours,” the woman went on, “but there’s enough for Chief Tando to bring up guns. If the station needs more power, we’ll give it.”

  Kris didn’t want to ask the wrong question, but if everyone knew everything . . . “Do you know how things are going with the station’s reactor?”

  The engineer shook her head. “They had a major failure last time they tried to bring it up. This station was in need of major work when they shut it down. They’ve ordered some parts, but they’ll have to be machined from scratch. I’d expect the reactor to be on-line by noon tomorrow.”

  So everyone didn’t know everything. “The ships are arriving before noon.”

  “I’ll pass that along. We’ll need to speed things up.”

  Kris did her best to suppress the anger rising in her as she walked slowly from Engineering. This was her station. She should not have to play silly games like this to find out what she needed to know . . . and to see that people who should be her subordinates knew what she needed them to know and did what she wanted them to do.

  “Nelly, find out who’s in charge of the contractors on this station right now and tell him or her to see me at Pier 61.”

  “Kris, Steve will be arriving on the next shuttle and he requests that he be the one to talk to you.”

  “You tell Steve he better get out and push that shuttle cause I want to have this talk soonest.”