Kris Longknife: Resolute

by Mike Shepherd

  Some chief must have dismissed the sailors from attention, because they provided their commodore with a rousing cheer. The fence was just as quiet as it had been through the entire spiel.

  Hank muttered something to his young captains. Kris could just make out his words. “They’ll learn. We’ll show them.”

  Kris did not stand until Hank and team were down the stairs and Penny reported they had boarded limos and were leaving. Protocol requires the senior to lead. And while Penny and she were both lieutenants, Penny had Kris beaten by over a year in rank. Still, with a smile, Penny deferred. Jack stepped to the door, took a long look for snipers, grenadiers, others who might ruin his yet untarnished record of keeping alive human space’s most available target, and nodded Kris forward.

  Kris stepped onto the landing, smiled at everyone in sight, gave a wave as she’d been taught, and started to head down the stairs, ignored by all but the last few media hounds who hadn’t yet followed Hank into town.

  “Hey, there’s our princess,” someone shouted.

  And a cheer went up. Kris found herself waving at a fence line of people. Kids, women, men, waved back at her and gave her the cheers that had somehow eluded Hank’s little sales pitch.

  She stood there for a long minute waving back and feeling the roar wash over her. There were a few shouts for “Speech, Speech,” but they never caught on . . . to Kris’s relief. Hank would be an easy act to follow, but she’d rather not have to play in the muddy waters he’d left. Let the full impact of his words sink in . . . and her humble quiet and friendly smile.

  The crowd was still waving and cheering when Kris made her way slowly down the steps. A limo stopped at the foot of the stairs. Surprise, surprise, Steve Jr. was driving.

  “Jack, would you please inform this young Kamikaze pilot that we do not have a schedule that requires us to be anywhere anytime soon and that he can drive us slowly into town.”

  “Dad said to set a new record for the drive,” Steve Jr. beamed.

  “He did, did he?” Jack said, sliding into the front seat.

  “Yep, longest time to cover the distance,” the boy said. “Which is gonna be hard to do, cause Tanona is driving that kid admiral, and she’s the slowest driver on this planet.”

  Kris waved at the crowd as Steve headed for the gate. Most were walking to their cars, but one little girl was waving hard enough that Kris feared her arm might fall off. Kris gave her a big smile and hearty wave. As they stopped briefly at the gate, the six-year-old turned, and Kris caught the eager exchange.

  “Mommy, Mommy, the princess waved at me. Just at me.”

  “I’m sure she did,” her mommy answered without looking up from strapping a younger sibling into a car seat.

  “No Mommy, she really, really waved at me.”

  The mother turned, picked up her little treasure, and saw that Kris really was close. “I hope you waved back.”

  “I did, Mommy,” the girl shouted excitedly, waving back some more, just in case Kris had forgotten her earlier effort.

  Kris smiled at the two and waved. There was one vote for joining Grampa Ray’s association. Of course, the whole issue would be settled long before that girl ever got to vote. And if it went the wrong way, she might never cast a vote in her life.

  Kris turned to face front, and waved at others walking along the side of the road. It was all about that little girl and other little girls and boys like her. They were the reason Chance was what it was and had to remain that way. Kris gritted her teeth and swore that she would not forget little girls.

  Beside her, Penny wiped a tear away. “It would have been wonderful to have a little girl like that. One that looked a bit like me and a bit like Tommy.”

  Kris reached across with the hand she was not waving to rest it on Penny’s knee. “Yes it would have.”

  Penny eyed the cars ahead of them. “That son of a bitch. It’s all a game of smoke and power puffs to him.”

  “And you and I and Tommy have made them fall flat on their faces,” Kris said through her smile.

  “But it wasn’t any skin off their noses. They never said so much as ‘ouch.’”

  “Now is the time to smile and wave, Penny,” Kris said as gently as she could.

  Penny waved, tears running down her cheek. “Sorry, Kris, I should have stayed on the station. I didn’t know it would hit me like this.” Kris kicked herself. Why hadn’t she thought of it.

  Because you were so busy figuring out how to pop Hank’s bubble that you didn’t remember how badly the Peterwalds had popped Penny’s life hopes. Damn it, Longknife, but you can be so focused on ‘them’ that you forget everything else.

  “Steve, is there a service station ahead?” Kris asked.

  “Yes, but it would be a bit of a detour.”

  “I have a sudden need to powder my nose. Take us there.”

  “No, Kris. No.”

  Steve Jr. looked over his shoulder at the two women. “I command here,” Kris snapped. “Make the detour.”

  Steve did. No cars followed them; there was only one car in the station when they pulled in. Fortunately, the essential rooms were on the right outside wall and weren’t even locked. Penny disappeared into the ladies room. Jack got out to do a thorough inspection of their surroundings leaving Kris to answer Steve’s “did I do something wrong?”

  “No.”

  Steve Jr.’s teenaged helplessness at the soft sobs coming from the ladies’ room left Kris no option but to fill the broken silence with words. “Penny loved a friend of mine. They were married and, three days later, Tommy died fighting off a Peterwald invasion fleet trying to flatten my home planet.”

  The youngster didn’t seem any more enlightened. “But that was a Peterwald talking to us. Why aren’t you at war with him?”

  “When the fight was over, there was no proof of where the ships came from, no survivors from the invasion fleet.”

  “That’s not possible.”

  “Not accidentally,” Kris agreed.

  “Good lord, what a mess,” the young man said with brilliance that often evaded those many times his age.

  “Yes, what a mess.”

  A few moments later Penny emerged, her face washed but now devoid of make-up. She settled into the backseat. “I’m sorry to be such a blubberer, Kris. I didn’t see this coming.”

  “I know,” Kris said gently.

  “Do you want to send me back to the station?” Penny asked.

  “Not unless you want to go.”

  Penny considered the matter, then nodded. “I can’t trust myself around Hank. I could collapse at the wrong time. Let Steve take me back to the port after he drops you off. I can catch a work shuttle back up. Hey . . .” She brightened a bit. “I could relieve the chief, let him have some fun tonight.”

  “Yes you could,” Kris agreed. She’d wanted Penny along to show the flag. More importantly, to show battle medals without Kris having to wear a lieutenant’s uniform and take the flak Hank had planned. In truth, she’d abused Penny, but in defense, neither Kris nor Penny had expected one of them to have such a visceral reaction to the sight of the boy-man.

  “We’ll do that,” Kris agreed softly. The glance Jack threw Kris was hard to gauge. If he felt Kris was out of line toward Penny, he didn’t let it show. Then again, he’d been around Longknifes so long, he might be just as coldhearted a user of people as they were. Tommy would have called Kris on that.

  She missed Tommy.

  The rest of the drive was quiet. Downtown, Steve pulled over. “You ready for me to drive you in?”

  “Let me out here,” Penny said. “Then come back for me.”

  Kris agreed. That would keep Penny out of the lights, keep her from questions being raised about why she stayed in the limo.

  Penny got out, then held on to the door. “Kris, this is not your fault. I figured out what you were using me and Jack for. That you wanted that bunch of rear echelon commandos to see what a team of killers looked like. I wanted to spi
t in Hank’s eye,” she said, looking away. “So to speak. I had my anger to keep me strong. And it did, Kris. It did, right up until I saw that little girl waving at you. And then I lost it. For Hank I could be hard as nails. But that little girl. She’s the reason we do what we do. She has to be the only reason we do these things.

  “But the moment I looked into her eyes all I saw was what Tommy and I have lost, and I lost it. Don’t worry, I’m not going to start bawling again,” Penny said, closing the door. “You go give Hank hell and I’ll free the chief to drink a couple of dozen Greenfeld chiefs under the table.”

  “Plan B will work just as well as Plan A,” Kris assured her. Steve Jr. drove off, leaving one Navy lieutenant to pace the sidewalk until he got back. Kris wondered if Penny would be safe, then measured the set of her subordinate’s jaw and decided anyone who gave that woman grief tonight was in for a whole world of hurt.

  “For what it’s worth, I didn’t see that coming, either.”

  “Thanks, Jack. Strange, we’re ready for our enemies and the hard-fought campaigns. But it’s the love and grace that brings us to our knees in tears.”

  “How else could it be. You okay?”

  Kris did a gut check, found it riled but willing, checked her face and found it solid. “I’m good to go.”

  “Then we’re on,” Jack said as Steve Jr. came to a stop in a covered driveway in front of a towering hotel. Jack was out of the car in a second, opening Kris’s door.

  She descended from the limo in the most regal of fashions. There was a crowd and newsies. Kris smiled and waved. She spotted a teenaged boy waving, and blew him a kiss. He looked ready to die from the embarrassment and was the immediate envy of all his peers who had been too cool to wave.

  Kris took Jack’s arm, and leaning properly on it, passed into the hotel. Inside, a man directed them to the ballroom. Kris paused long enough to have Jack check the wrap Abby had equipped her with “in case the night is cooler than advertised or you want to show less skin.” Kris measured her dress against what other women were wearing and found it far from scandalous. She also noted that others were handing over invitations. The man at the metal detector turned it off as he waved them through.

  “We’re getting the royal treatment all the way,” Jack said.

  “Just means we are not getting a choice between steak, chicken, or fish. We’ll get whatever they’ve got left over,” Kris assured him from experience.

  It was showtime. With a smile and a flourish, two girls in white bow ties and tails opened the tall, gold-and-glass doors into the ballroom and Kris passed within.

  12

  Kris paused just inside the ballroom to orient herself. The huge room was organized with dinner tables to her left, a dance floor to the right. A small orchestra played background, but looked ready for dance music later. The place smelled of pride and confidence . . . oh . . . and hard-earned money.

  Kris was not announced; Chance was too egalitarian for that. Still, heads turned in a spreading wave as word raced through the hall. The campaigner in Kris put attendance at about two thousand. The blue dress uniforms of a hundred Greenfeld officers were bunched protectively in six clumps Kris suspected represented ships. Whether or not there was safety in numbers, there surely was comfort.

  While she and Jack came down the steps to the main floor, Kris spotted a large congregation of locals in full dinner dress around Hank and his captains. The locals’ heads joined the general turn toward her. Hank ignored her.

  No doubt, he did not appreciate the drop in attention. Into the silence he said, “Greenfeld will have no truck with royalty and the tax burden it adds.” It might have been better argued by someone who didn’t so obviously hold his present position by birth. Maybe Kris should have worn her Navy uniform to better show the balance between hard won and easily given.

  No, the reaction she was getting as a princess, from Hank, from that little girl, and from about everyone in this hall was well worth the extra weight of the tiara on her head and the delightful pleasure of satin swishing around her legs. Yes, tonight was definitely worth putting on stockings.

  As per Father’s early-taught instructions, Kris tried to circulate quickly, passing from one group to another with only a few words spoken or a quick smile. The men in black tuxes or white dinner jackets, the women in dresses as colorful and light as Kris’s wouldn’t let her. Many had fathers or grand-mothers, younger brothers, kid sisters, or older sons and daughters of their own working on Kris’s station or the Patton. Everyone on Chance seemed to be related or know someone working in Station Security or the Museum or something topside. Kris thanked them for the assist and that seemed enough of a toll for her to be passed on to the next small knot.

  Shortly, one of the young ladies in formal tails and white bow tie appeared at Kris’s elbow with a glass of soda water and a suggestion that dinner was ready to be served if “Her Majesty would kindly take the seat prepared for her.” Kris saved the girl from a mortal case of embarrassment by not pointing out that only King Ray merited the “Majesty” . . . she was just a “Highness”.

  The room followed her move to their chairs. Hank was slow at getting the word, or maybe he intended for his six officers to be the last ones standing. Kris did note that they were eating at tables as far from hers as physically possible without knocking out a wall. Kris also noted that Ron personally escorted Hank to his table. Kris’s unbidden question as to who might be Ron’s date for tonight was answered as his mother took the seat next to him. Poor Ron. Then again . . . lucky Kris. Or was Marta in cahoots with her son on seeing that he had nothing on his mind but Hank? Or maybe Hank and Kris?

  It would be so nice if I could read that woman’s mind, Kris thought . . . and turned to her dinner partners and prepared for the usual table banter that passed for warfare by other means.

  To Kris’s great surprise, she was not immediately asked what Grampa Ray was up to or for the latest rumors about the ongoing Constitutional Convention still talking to itself on Pitts Hope.

  No, the man next to Kris was the owner of a machine shop and foundry. “You’re employing some of my best workers, don’t you know, Your Highness.”

  “Then I much appreciate your loan,” Kris said.

  “I may need them back real soon. A consortium of us is bidding to build a Kawanashi plant to fabricate the larger sections for fusion reactors. We lost a similar bid with GE just a few months ago. They chose Turantic for their new Rim plant.”

  “Seems Turantic was considered a better bet than us, or safer,” another man around the table added with a scowl.

  Kris nodded, but declined to point out that Turantic had just joined Grampa Ray’s United Sentients and was now recovering from a rather lengthy financial slump.

  “Anyway,” the first man went on, “the Rim is growing and we need fusion reactors. Chance has a highly trained and competitive workforce. We’re a growing population, over a hundred million now,” he said, and smiled lovingly at his wife.

  She patted the swelling roundness of her stomach. “A hundred million and one next month,” she told the table, and received happy, encouraging noises in return.

  “Then we want to make sure that your . . .” Kris paused.

  “Daughter,” she provided.

  “Has the same chances that her mother and father had.”

  Several men nodded and glanced across the ballroom to where Hank was talking loud enough to be heard above the soft roar of the room. Dinner talk continued in that local vein, them telling her why she should love Chance, her occasionally highlighting the present question before them. There was only one break from that when the woman to Jack’s left spoke.

  She’d been silent the entire dinner, not talking to her partner or to Jack. Her own dessert untouched when most were finished, she turned to Kris and said simply, “Why are you here?”

  The question was so out of step with the rest of the evening that Kris faltered for a moment and said the first thing that came into her hea
d. “I was invited to dinner.”

  “Not here tonight,” the woman said, tapping the table. Her hand shot up to point a finger at the ceiling. “Here, on Chance. Out on the Rim. Despite what Ted says, we aren’t that big a market, yet. Why send a Longknife? And that’s before we go into what you did on Turantic and Wardhaven’s recent battle and all that other stuff. What war are you supposed to start?”

  “Ginjer, that is out of line. May I apologize for my wife,” the man next to her said, half rising from his seat and placing a hand on his wife’s elbow to move her in the same direction.

  “No, no,” Kris said with a dry chuckle. “She has probably just asked the question on half the minds in this room. Wouldn’t you like to hear my answer?” Ginjer’s husband seemed torn between excusing himself or settling back into his seat. The other men around the table looked uniformly embarrassed.

  The pregnant mother rubbed the top of her extra curve very protectively and said, “Yes, I would like to know what war you are here to start.”

  “Alice!”

  “So would you, Theodore. Shut up and let the woman tell us something. We can decide later how close it is to the truth.”

  Now Kris did laugh. “Candor is something I encounter so rarely, it’s a joy to run into it twice on the same night,” Kris offered in explanation for her mirth. She reached for her napkin, patted her mouth, then mused out loud.

  “Why am I here? What war will I start?” Kris frowned. “You know that I have only two officers, a chief and my maid with me. Kind of slim pickings for starting a good-size war.”

  “Weren’t most of them with you on Turantic?” Theodore, who still grated at that planet’s winning of the GE plant showed that he did, indeed, know a bit about what went on there.