Kris Longknife: Resolute

by Mike Shepherd

  “Hank ordered the squadron to form line on the flagship,” Steve said from the comm desk. “No hostile sensor reports from our ships.” The former and very recent commander of the station was in jeans . . . a chicken farmer once more to all appearances.

  “Keep our lasers sighted on his rocket motors,” Kris said.

  “That’s what I’m doing,” Jack whispered. Out in space, the cruisers jockeyed into their positions. They were now a battle line. Kris held her breath.

  “Message from the flag,” Steve reported, the relief in his voice already telling Kris what would follow. “Begin one g deceleration on his mark. His mark is . . . now.”

  And the squadron broke orbit.

  And the bridge broke out in cheers. Decorum regulations were excused long enough for everyone to hug someone . . . or two . . . or three. Well, not quite everyone. Kris stood like a rock at her station, watching as the ships continued their orbital change. Beside her, Jack sat, eyes on his board, looking for any change. Then, as the ships fell further and further away, he said, not looking up at Kris. “Permission to stand down.”

  Kris took a second to make sure she saw nothing wrong. Nothing changing. Then she sighed and sat down in the chair next to Jack. “Permission granted, Marine.”

  Jack eyed the people celebrating around them. He reached over and gently stroked Kris’s back. She shivered at his touch. And his hand went away after one “pat on the back” that wasn’t. “You did it, Kris. You took this planet through a major crisis, stopped a patented Peterwald takedown, and did it without a single person dying. This is better than Turantic.”

  “I had more support here. Ron was for me. And we did have two rapes. Them and buildings burned.”

  “Kris, no one gets a perfect score on one of these.”

  “What are your orders, Your Highness,” Steve asked.

  “You know you don’t have to do that,” Kris said. “I don’t think Chance will ever recognize Wardhaven nobility.”

  “No, but I think a lot recognize you. Now, again, I ask what are my orders, or do you want me to salute?”

  “Genuflecting should suffice,” Jack said.

  “And when did a squid ever take advice from a jarhead.”

  “Gentlemen,” Kris said, “I’ve avoided one war this week. I don’t have enough in me for another. Steve, tell your personnel to stand down. They can order whatever they want from the station’s restaurants, watch a movie, whatever. The station will pay. I want a minimum staff left on all sensors. Keep the lasers charged. Hold everyone here for the next six hours. I want to make sure Hank’s got a solid head of steam up for a jump point . . . and I want to know which one he’s headed for.”

  Now Steve did salute, an informal thing that bore more respect than most in the history of that honor. “Aye, aye, ma’am. Now, if you don’t mind me saying so, you look exhausted. You, too, Marine. Why don’t the two of you get some sleep. I’ll keep the watch. Anything goes wrong, you’ll hear real fast.”

  “I could sleep the clock around,” Kris said through a yawn.

  “Me, too,” Jack agreed, offering her a hand up. Somehow the hand stayed on her back as they left the Command Center. It was good he did; she kind of needed steering toward her stateroom.

  Jack opened the door. Kris thought of inviting him in for a drink. But she saw her bed and had just enough energy to fall in that direction. A moment later she felt Jack removing her shoes.

  She rolled over. And found herself smiling at Abby as her maid slowly unrolled her from undress khakis. Kris was asleep before her maid was done.

  Quite awhile later, Kris awoke to find the clock across the room smiling at her as it told her it was eight o’clock. Having slept six hours solid, Kris hurriedly pulled on a shipsuit and shoes and headed out to look in on the Command Center.

  “What’re you doing here this early?” Kris asked Ramirez.

  “I’m not the one that’s early. You’re the one that’s late. Steve called to ask if I minded taking an extra half watch so he could go back to sleep.”

  Kris glanced at the duty board. “Oh lord, it’s not eight p.m., it’s eight a.m.! Where’s Hank?”

  “Still got his duckies in a row, following the leader right out of my, now quiet, system. Long may we never see him again.”

  “Which jump?”

  “He’s going for Alpha. Strange that. I’d have expected him to head home by Beta.”

  Kris slid into a seat next to the old chief. For a moment she studied the board. Yep, Hank’s squadron had done a flip over and now decelerated toward Jump Point Alpha. “That is strange. Any idea where he’s headed?”

  “Nope, and no way am I calling that bunch of hooligans and asking. You want to?”

  “No,” Kris said. “Anyone else up?”

  “We’ve got a full crew working. I’m powering down the laser capacitors; feeding their charge into the main power grid. We’ve got the reactor dialed down. They’re doing maintenance they put off while that wild bunch was here. We’re also policing up all the ammunition we signed out, getting it back under lock and key.” Ramirez smiled. “We’ve got a couple of extra boxes of grenades. I understand they’re from your personal reserve?”

  “Give them back to Abby, my ofttime maid. Let her see if any are missing.”

  “Will do. You hungry?”

  “Starving.”

  “Well, someone declared chow free yesterday, and I didn’t get my meal. I don’t think you did either. And, since, if the budget don’t cover all the free food, Tony Chang says you get the bill, you might as well enjoy one.” Kris laughed, and followed the chief down to a rather scrumptious breakfast buffet that did its best to make up for the last couple of days.

  Stuffed to the gills, Kris did a friendly walk around the station, recognizing jobs well done, hearty efforts and, in general, letting all hands see that the boss was very grateful. Kris also did her own check that stairwells were no longer booby-trapped and auto guns had no belts. She eyeballed all the things that told her the station was back to normal and wouldn’t give some unsuspecting kid a 4-millimeter buzz cut when someone leaned on the wrong section of board.

  And there were plenty of kids underfoot. The Patton was booked solid for the next month with high school and junior high school classes doing sleepovers. The oldsters . . . and the high schoolers that had been working with them . . . put the final touches on everything before putting “their” ship up for viewing. Penny was up to her ears in that.

  Kris corralled her for supper that evening.

  “You should see what they’ve done with the old boat,” Penny said, ignoring the menu. Kris told her of Captain Slovo’s shock at being scanned by a fully commissioned if somewhat long-in-the-tooth light cruiser.

  “I’ve got to tell the crew that. No, Your Highness, you have to tell the crew. Coming firsthand from you, they’ll be good for another thousand hours of volunteer service.”

  “Don’t they have lives?”

  “I thought you were pretty happy with your Navy life?”

  “Yes, but it’s not like they can join up with Wardhaven or United Sentients. Chance is for Chance.”

  “Maybe things are changing. I know these folks have helped me change . . . see things . . .” Penny glanced away. “See that there is life after your heart’s been ripped out of you.”

  Penny scanned the menu for a second. “You know that half of the old ladies working on the Patton are widows. About half of the old men are widowers. Despite all the hell we were in, two of them got married a couple, three days ago. Life goes on, Kris. It goes on and we might as well go along with it. Cause, kicking and screaming or willingly, we’re going. It’s either that . . . or get off. Tommy’d kick my butt if I did that.”

  “Both of ours,” Kris said. She put her menu down. “You like these folks. I figured that you’d be concentrating on the Wasp, not the Patton.”

  “Oh, I’ve shanghaied a few folks from the Patton to get the Wasp good to go. And I’ve stolen a fe
w hours out of Captain Drago’s crew to get both of the other ships up. Fact is, Drago wants to swap me Resolute for the Wasp.”

  “I’m the one he has to talk to about that and there is no way I’m trading him even. He’ll owe me if he wants my hot rod.”

  And that was the way the dinner went, half banter, half serious, half something far deeper than that. Right up to the time when both women refused the dessert tray and Penny got ready to go. “Oh, wasn’t there something you were excited about when you came back from your vacation? You were going to tell me about it, but Hank jumped in.”

  “Right,” Kris said, and leaned back in her chair, checked that they were pretty much alone, and said, “You’re a very wealthy woman, or likely to be.”

  “Not from the last pay stub I looked at.”

  So Kris told Penny how she’d sworn the crew of the Resolute and her team to secrecy and what she was paying them to keep quiet about. “I guess I’m glad you included me in that, whatever it is, but since I don’t know what you found, I don’t really feel like I deserve being a part of it.”

  “Penny, if you hadn’t been holding the fort back here, there’s no way I could have gone off,” Kris leaned forward and reduced her voice to a whisper “and found the biggest alien treasure chest since my Grampa Ray stumbled onto Santa Maria.”

  “Aliens!” Penny said, leaning forward herself and, if anything, getting out an even softer whisper.

  Kris nodded. “A planet full of the stuff. Actually, two, but one of them’s kind of gone back to nature. The other one is in pristine condition.”

  “Pristine condition?”

  “Too pristine. The defensive gear is still on-line. Almost reduced us to dust. Getting there is just a start. Staying alive while we figure out the stuff will be a huge challenge.”

  “You’ve been sitting on this the whole time Hank was here!”

  “Not exactly the thing I’d tell him. ‘Pardon me while I run back to Wardhaven and give them the greatest news since humans first went into space. Oh, and by the way, don’t bother anything here.’” Kris snorted. “No. I sat on it. But as soon as Hank jumps out of this system, the Resolute and I are headed back to Wardhaven, fast as we can go. You up to holding the fort again?”

  “I’m getting good at that.” Penny glanced at her wrist.

  “About time for Hank to make his jump out. Come watch it from the Patton.”

  So Kris found herself aboard Grampa Trouble’s old ship, making nice noises to some very eager high schoolers and older folks. The kids were delighted to show Kris just what they could do with the ship’s sensors. She was watching Hank’s ships on their main screen as he came up to the jump.

  The Incredible slowed to a crawl, taking the jump even more carefully than Kris would have, but there was no accounting for just what risks Hank was willing to take.

  Then the Incredible flipped, goosed itself away from the jump and blew the jump buoy to bits.

  “There is a call for you at the Command Center,” Nelly said.

  “No surprise,” Kris muttered. Into the murmuring of the bridge, she said loudly, “Let’s pipe down folks. We’re about to face that gun-happy nut. Let’s look professional here.”

  She stood, knowing her game face was back on. Beside her, Penny eyes had narrowed; her lips were thin. Game time. Kris glanced around the bridge; young faces eyed her, swallowed their shock, and put on the bland, if not deadly, face she showed them.

  “They’ve seen what the Patton can do. You worry them. Let them stay worried. Okay, Nelly, tell the Command Center to pipe it through to the bridge of the Patton.”

  And there were Hank’s perfect features, bigger than life. He had the camera tight on him, leaving his bridge out of focus behind him. “So, I caught you wasting time with kiddy cruisers. I thought you’d have bigger fans after what you did to me.”

  “I did nothing to you that you didn’t do to yourself.”

  “Well, I know what you were doing. You may hoodwink that planet, but you can’t keep a secret from good Peterwald intel. I know what you found on your little cruise. I know why you were willing to risk massacring all those people on Chance.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Kris said. At least, not the way you’re talking about it.

  “What’s the matter, Longknife, don’t want to admit you found a fortune in alien goodies even now. Afraid of what they’ll do to you now that they know you were playing them for suckers.”

  “The people of Chance stood up to you because you were a bore and a bully who let rapists hide behind your uniform, Hank. I had little to do with you falling flat on your face.”

  “Oh, you’re good, Longknife. Just like your old man, those old dotards pretending to lord it over the eighty worlds they’re tyrannizing. But you screwed up, little girl. You’re hanging out with no support. And now that I know your game, I’m going to pluck you like a chicken. This will be Peterwald space.”

  “Hank, I’m not out here alone. As you’ve already seen, there’s a whole planet of folks that don’t much care for you and what you’re doing. Now, if you don’t mind, I apparently have some unfinished business that needs taking care of.”

  “I’m coming for you. I’m going to slash your space station to wreckage, and that old wreck you’re on, too,” Hank was shouting as Kris cut the connection.

  She paused for a moment to clear her mind, then said, “Steve, did you copy that message?”

  “Kris, I’ve passed it dirtside. You want to talk to Ron?”

  “No, I figure he’s got enough problems at the moment,” Kris glanced around the bridge of the Patton. Eager eyes, some youthful blue, others gray and bespeckled, looked back at her.

  One of the old ones stood. “Your Highness, the Patton may be old, but she’s no wreck. We’ll show them. They’ll see, right crew!” The shout echoed through the whole ship.

  Kris bit her lip. Now was not the time to force these enthusiasts to face reality. That would come later. “Thank you. I have to talk to Commander Kovar. Penny, you’re with me.”

  As Kris fast marched for the Patton’s gangway, she told Nelly to raise either Chief Beni or the Resolute’s Comm Chief. They both came up together. “We’ve got a problem,” Kris said.

  “So we heard,” both answered.

  “Close down the buoy at Jump Point Beta. No communications in or out and see that it doesn’t make any jumps. Also, after you’ve done that, check its buffers and see if it sent anything from Hank in the last three days.”

  “We’ve been monitoring it. Nothing was sent,” Beni said.

  “Had the destroyed Alpha buoy sent anything from Hank?”

  “No. Nothing. Other than playing boats right, boats left with his toys, Hank didn’t send any messages.”

  “Double-check that. There’s a lot riding on it.”

  “And it ain’t our bonus for silence,” the Comm Chief said.

  A fast walk brought Kris to the command deck. There were several watchstanders, some in Patton greens. “I’d like to talk to Commander Kovar in private,” Kris said, then waited as the rest filed out of the center.

  “I, ah, didn’t cut the commlink between me and you,” Kovar said. “I heard the Patton crew offering you their services. I also remember you saying you’d buried enough enthusiastic amateurs after that Wardhaven dust-up.”

  Kris nodded. She studied the system board. While two ships hovered at the jump, four of Hank’s ships were incoming at 2 g’s acceleration. He’d be back in a day. Not much time to prepare even Kris’s paltry force.

  “Commander, I need your help.” Kovar nodded.

  “As I see it,” Kris went on, “the odds against me are two to one, assuming I can get the Wasp and Resolute both fully crewed and involved in the fight.”

  “Four cruisers against an armed merchant ship and a corvette look like worse odds than that,” Kovar said.

  “I won’t argue. The station has no ice, and its lasers would be powerless once the cruisers cut t
he cables to them. We can’t fight the station. You’ll have to order it abandoned.”

  Kovar nodded, but said nothing.

  Kris turned to Penny. “How far does that contract you and Abby signed Captain Drago to go. Can I count on him in a fight?”

  “I don’t know. You’ll have to ask him. And a few things may have changed since then, if you know what I mean.”

  “Nelly, find Captain Drago, send him my compliments, and ask him to meet me in my cabin. And where is Jack? I’d have figured him to be locked onto my elbow by now.

  “He’s in your cabin,” Nelly answered. “With Abby.”

  “Good, that was my next stop. Commander Kovar, can you begin arranging for the evacuation of the station?”

  “I think I can arrange things on the station the way you’ll need them. What do I do about the Patton?”

  “That’s something I’ll take care of myself.” Kris glanced at Penny. “Maybe we can use whatever respect they have for my Princessness to keep them from letting their optimism kill them. Now, Penny, let’s go see what Jack’s doing with my maid.”

  In Kris’s quarters, Abby sat in a high-back chair facing Jack. “When did you tell Hank?” the Marine demanded.

  “I didn’t tell Hank anything.”

  “What did you tell him?” shot back in rapid fire.

  “I didn’t tell him anything.”

  “Why did you tell him?”

  “I didn’t tell him anything.” Despite the repetition, Abby made each answer come out fresh.

  “How much did he pay you?”

  “I’d never take money from that self-centered snot.”

  Jack turned and seemed to notice Kris for the first time. “She’s your maid. You try getting something out of her.”

  Penny, the professional interrogator, sat down on Kris’s bed, apparently content to leave this matter domestic. Kris got comfortable in the chair across from Abby, crossed her legs, and said, “Hank’s headed back here with lasers charged.”

  “I heard something to that effect.”

  “He knows about our alien discoveries.”