“Strange that.”
“What side agreements do you have with Captain Drago?”
That did catch the maid by surprise. “Penny, here, signed the contract. Why ask me?”
“Because I can’t help feeling you and Drago go together, not like salt and pepper. More like nitro and glycerin.”
There was a hint of a smile at the edge of the maid’s mouth. But she worried her lower lip for a moment before attempting an answer. “I suspect that you’ll have to ask him, maybe his whole crew. What they signed for back then, and what they might do just now could maybe be two different things.”
Kris nodded. “Not a bad idea. Now, back to what is such a bee in Jack’s bonnet. How do you think Hank came to find out about our little secret?”
“I don’t know. I do know he didn’t get it from me.”
“You didn’t send him a message, like you sent that message after we jumped into this system on the St. Pete?” Jack snapped from over Kris’s shoulder.
“I did not.”
“Did not send the message to Hank, or the message from the St. Pete,” Kris fired back.
“I said I sent no message to Hank. Nelly, you haven’t cracked the cipher on the message from the St. Pete, have you?”
“No, I could not break the code.” There was a pause. “Oops, was that a question I was not supposed to answer?”
“Don’t worry, Nelly,” Abby said. “I paid good money for that cipher. Even you shouldn’t be able to crack it.”
“And what are you sending in such a muscle-bound code?” Jack demanded.
Abby eyed Kris who raised an eyebrow to reinforce Jack’s question. “That the princess, here, arrived safely at Chance.”
“Nothing else?” came from both Kris and Jack.
Penny leaned forward from her place on the bed. “So that’s how you earn extra money, reporting for the social circuit?”
“I’ll never get rich like Kris here, but it does add to my retirement account.”
“You’re reporting on my movements?”
“Only what you’d read on any social page in a few days,” Abby said, evenly.
“Social spy?” Jack didn’t quite get it out evenly.
“I’m surprised you didn’t spot it sooner,” Penny said. “I used to get those reports and, frankly, I’m glad that no one asked me to write them. Saved me time.”
“You knew!” Kris said, half out of her seat.
“Kris, servants have been making extra money reporting on their, ah, clients for years. It’s part of my basic training to know who to hit on; how to. Not really necessary, now that most of them are working for your standard information providers.”
“But if she gave out the wrong thing, it could . . .” Jack sputtered. “Kris could get killed if people knew . . .”
Kris, now standing, looked hard at her maid. Abby seemed intent on studying her hands. She didn’t look up when she said. “I have never passed information that I knew or even suspected could lead to my employer’s harm.”
“But it didn’t always work out that way,” Kris said.
“No.” Abby looked up. “There was one time when what I said, and what a couple of other people said, not all of us in her employ, added up to what someone needed. Yes.”
Kris shook her head. “I need time to think about this, absorb it. Abby, consider yourself under house arrest. Don’t even try to send out a message, coded or not.”
Kris turned to the door. “Kris, I’ve been there for you,” Abby said to her back. “I covered for you. I’ve never done anything to harm you.”
Kris said nothing, but continued out the door. Jack and Penny followed her to collect in the hallway.
“Should I post a guard?” Jack asked.
“We don’t have anyone,” Kris said, thinking on her maid’s words. “And who could stop her. You want to guard her?”
“I’m supposed to be guarding you,” Jack said.
“Captain Drago is in the Command Center,” Nelly said.
A moment later, Kris found Captain Drago at a workstation playing a complicated game against the computer. He stood when Kris entered. “Steve said you needed to see me.”
“You know about Hank’s U-turn at the jump point?”
“Rather hard not to.”
“What are your plans for the immediate future?”
“I was thinking of heading for Jump Point Beta, until Sulwan showed me where it went. Peterwald. Peterwald, or, ah, Peterwald. Not so good an idea, I decided.”
“What are you under contract for?” Kris asked.
“Ah, I signed up to check and restation jump buoys, at least that was what your lieutenant told me. But I’ve been rereading my contract and find that it’s rather vague in key sections. Sections I don’t much like at the moment.”
“Hank and I are about to have a fight.”
A wave of relief flowed over the captain’s face. “Oh, much better. You two, pick your weapons, find a nice field down on Chance. Then you and him fight. Man to man, or girl to girl.”
“Peterwald to Longknife,” Kris said dryly.
“Right. You know what I mean! Just the two of you, cause if you were thinking of fighting it out, his squadron against whatever you can scrounge, and I know you’re quite a scrounger, but, senorita, even you couldn’t win against those odds. My Resolute, that ancient cruiser, and maybe your Wasp if you could find a crew for it. No. That is not a fight. It is suicide.”
“We won’t be using the Patton,” Kris said.
“Right, good,” the captain smiled. Then swallowed his smile. “We. Won’t. For what?”
“For the coming fight. Just me on the Wasp, you on the Resolute,” Kris said.
“Senorita!”
“You want the money for keeping the news about the aliens quiet?” Kris said.
“Woman, you drive a hard bargain,” Captain Drago said, scowling. “I will talk to my crew.”
“And check in with them about who might want to fight the Wasp with me,” Kris called as he stomped out.
Kris turned to Steve, but he was eyeing his board. “Ron’s calling. Want to take it here or in your room?”
“How are things dirtside?”
“Went from dancing in the streets to digging shelters in about two seconds,” Ron said. Kris hoped that was hyperbola. “I think I know how Hank found out about your alien find.”
“What’s your guess?” Kris said.
“No guess. I just finished talking to a barkeep of a small bistro on the south side. A couple of days ago, some of the crew from the Resolute took to drinking there with that chief of yours.”
“I think I heard about it,” Kris said. Jack nodded.
“That last night, while all of us were otherwise occupied, it seems two fellows, decked out like locals but as strange a pair as this barkeep ever saw, were buying drinks for that table. After your chief and sailor left, the strangers and the last two did some serious drinking. They talked in whispers, got real quiet when he was around, but one word came up several times while he was in earshot. Aliens.”
Kris said a very unprincesslike word.
“Yeah, kind of my thoughts, too.”
“Well, it takes a lot of pressure off my maid, though I’ve found out more about her than I really wanted to. How are things really down there?”
“About what I’d expect. Some of our businessmen are making plans to profit from the coming adjustments. Other folks are stocking food and ammunition where they figure to need it. Have you noticed how some of the planets that the Peterwalds take over just drop off the news coverage. I don’t think Chance will be getting many tourists if Hank takes over. Much of anything.”
“I’ll try to do something about that,” Kris said.
“That a Longknife promise?”
“Yep.”
“Don’t promise more than you can deliver.”
“Right,” Kris said. “Now, I’ve got to talk to some folks on the Resolute, then explain to some optimists that they can’t fight
a ship as old as the Patton, then get ready for a fight. At least this time, we won’t have to wait so long. Hank’s coming in at two g’s.”
“Good luck on the Patton,” Ron said, and hung up.
Kris headed for the door, but paused. “Steve, can you get four shuttles up here to evacuate the Patton?”
“I’ve got six shuttles due in two hours. That enough?”
“Probably,” Kris said, and headed for her contract ship. On the Resolute, Penny did the interrogation. It quickly became apparent that Chief Beni and the Comm Chief had left the bistro early to catch the midnight shuttle. That left the Engineer and Doc. Both returned late the next morning and claimed to remember little of their talk with their benefactors. Pressed on the point of aliens, they allowed that the topic may have come up but that they had said nothing, or had no memory of it. Really, they had no memory of saying anything.
Captain Drago took Kris aside. “You think my guys spilled the chili peppers?” Kris nodded.
“You’re going to fight this Hank fellow.”
“Can’t let him take this planet down. Folks dirtside are getting ready to form a guerilla resistance. Least I can do is try to hold the space above them.”
The captain shook his head, then glanced around his bridge. Sulwan Kann shrugged. Most of the crew looked like they’d rather be boosting out, but . . . “I guess we’ll be fighting with you.”
“Thanks. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to rain on some happy optimists’ parade.”
“You aren’t cutting us out of any support, are you?”
“None that would really matter,” Kris said, and left the Resolute before the captain could raise further debate.
At the Patton’s pier, Kris had Penny go aboard and order all hands to form divisions on the pier. Then Kris took position at parade rest, facing the quarterdeck. Slowly at first, then in a flood, the green and blue shipsuits poured out of the cruiser. The kids in green seemed to come at a gallop; the blue suiters came slowly, some hobbling with canes. They formed in divisions across from Kris. Maybe they were a bit ragged at first, but the old hands hadn’t forgotten and the new kids were quick learners.
It would have been easier on Kris if it wasn’t so. Finally, two lone women, their gray hair in buns marched across the brow as smartly as their wooden canes allowed. They marched through the space between Division 2 and 3 to stand at attention before Kris. The one on the right saluted.
“Ship’s crew is formed, Commander. We await your orders.”
“Place the crew at ease,” Kris ordered, and it was so.
Kris reviewed the speeches she’d made. She’d talked unprepared troops into a firefight . . . once or twice. She’d talked ships into mutiny and battle. Talking willing hands into standing down was something she’d never figured to be a part of.
“You have done a fantastic job of turning a hazard to navigation into a functioning ship. And you did it in an amazingly short time.” The ranks rumbled with pride at that.
“You have formed yourself into one of the finest crews that a commander could ask for.” That got a roar of approval.
“Four cruisers, however, are heading in, only a day out.”
“We can beat’em,” someone shouted from the rear ranks. That also got a cheer.
“You are not going to make this easy for me, are you?” Kris said. That brought silence.
“The heart of a warship is steel and gear, lasers and crew. It also is training. And training for a fight is one thing that time has not allowed you. Will not allow you.”
The old woman who’d ordered the crew to stand easy frowned into the silence that brought. “A lot of us that fought the Iteeche didn’t get much training before we faced those monsters.”
“And a terrible lot of you died because of that,” Kris shot back. “It makes for heroic vids, but I’ve seen the look in my great-grandfather’s eyes as he remembers the orders he gave. Sees again the faces of those who died on his words.”
Kris let her gaze wander over the puzzled faces before her. “I do not want to be seeing your faces for the rest of my life. You will not take this relic into battle.”
“But we want to, Your Highness,” the older woman said. “You see this ship as just a hulk your great-grampa once sailed in. We know it’s better than that. It’s good to go, ma’am. We may be gray or green but we’re ready to take her out. We can do it.”
Kris took a deep breath, and closed her eyes for a second. That was a mistake. She saw the faces of a family that had crewed its system runabout. It had been converted into a missile boat, a decoy for Kris’s mosquito boats.
Every system runabout died defending Wardhaven.
“You are correct that you are gray,” Kris said, saying her words carefully; slowly. “To stay alive in a fight, the Patton must dodge at two or three g’s. It must jink at those g’s. Do you honestly think that your bones could take that punishment?”
“Yes,” the gray head replied.
“I respectfully disagree,” Kris snapped back. “All it would take is one person crumbling at a key moment to cost all of you your lives. Just one green sailor’s misstep and again, you are dead. Battle is not forgiving. I know. I’ve been there.”
“So have we,” the woman said. She turned to look around. “I dare say none of us ever wanted to go there again.” Gray or bald heads nodded agreement. “But here we are. Chance needs us. I figured I’d done the bleeding and sweating for my family. I sure as hell didn’t want my great-granddaughter to ever go through what I did when I was her age, but she’s here, and I know she’s training and she says she wants to fight for Chance. Who am I to say she can’t? And who are you, Kris Longknife?”
Kris had tried all the logic she had. She hated to be reduced to what was left. “I am Commander, Naval District 41. That ship behind you is in my jurisdiction. The station you stand on is under my command. You are trespassing on Wardhaven Property. I order you off this property.”
That caused consternation in the ranks.
“We could refuse your orders,” the woman said. “I understand that you’ve had some experience in that.”
“I have,” Kris admitted. “If you refuse to go, I will give you no orders. You will be a rogue ship in the middle of a battle. You’ll be a danger to yourself and those around you.”
“You are a hard, obstinate young woman.”
“I’m a Longknife. I do what I have to do. Now, please face your crew left and march them down to the shuttle bay. There will be transportation in fifteen minutes to take you dirtside.”
“You already had your mind made up.”
“Yes,” Kris said. “I’ve buried all the optimistic amateurs I can bear for one year.”
“Maybe you have, but you’re making a mistake here.” Then the woman did an about face, steadied herself on her cane, and in a voice that belied her years, announced, “Ship’s crew. Left. Face. Ship’s crew, by divisions. Forward. March.” And a moment later. “Incline to the right. Green suits take the stairs. Blue suits, as necessary, fall out and take the escalators. We’re heading for the shuttle bay.”
“Jack, I saw a couple of kids duck out of ranks and sneak back aboard. You and Penny police up the ship for strays.”
“As you wish, Lieutenant,” Jack said, his voice brittle.
“What’s the matter, you agree with the old lady?”
“I just never figured you to discourage service.”
“I’ll get better with practice,” Kris grumbled.
“I hope you’re right to send them away,” Penny said. “We are in quite a mess.”
Kris had no answer. She turned on her heels and hurried to catch up with the Patton’s erstwhile crew. They’d broken ranks to get up from the pier area. At the top of the stairs, Kris found divisions marking time to give the escalator contingent time to rejoin, then they marched off at a slow pace. The scene would give any Gunny Sergeant DI at OCS apoplexy, but—in its own way—it was smart enough.
Kris slow marched w
ith them. Every once in a while, she’d catch a head turned her way. The eyes were puzzled, angry, and stubborn. But they marched. The drop to the shuttle bay meant another stair/escalator exercise. There, the woman tried twice to order the crew into the waiting shuttles, but broke down both times. “I can’t do it. You’ll have to,” she whispered to Kris.
“By divisions into the shuttles,” Kris ordered. “Column of files from the right to the left.” She paused as file leaders shouted, “Follow me” or “Stand fast.” Damn but someone had trained them well. If only she could trust them with lasers.
“Forward March,” Kris ordered.
“Belay that order,” boomed from Deck 1 above Kris.
As the divisions fell into the confusion of “Order. Counter order. Disorder,” Kris whirled to find Lieutenant Steve Kovar standing at the top of the stairs. Before she could get out a demand, he answered her question.
“You can’t load a shuttle until it’s unloaded, Your Highness, and those shuttles are loaded.”
Kris whirled again . . . this is making me dizzy . . . to see old chiefs and petty officers in uniform, younger folks in blue shipsuits, and more in green file out of the shuttles. Kris quick marched for the stairs as Steve came down them. She waited until they met in the middle to ask, “What’s going on here?”
“The retired staff of Naval District 41, the associated volunteers, their kid brothers, big sisses, dogs, and cats are coming back to roost. We’ve got a station and three ships to crew and that’s going to take quite an effort.” He coughed into a hand. “It’s not for me to tell you how to crew your district assets, ma’am, but you might want to reconsider sending all these folks home. Some of them, the grayest, the greenest, do need to go dirtside, but all of them?”
Kris felt a flash of anger. “I told you I wasn’t going to fight a defenseless station, a museum relic. I won’t have people dying for nothing.”
“If we lose the high ground, Lieutenant, a lot of my friends are going to die in a hopeless resistance. Kris, Chance was never meant to be occupied; ordered around by someone like Hank. He’s called us out. It’s personal now. We fight him on the high ground. We fight him on the shuttle landing grounds. We fight him in the streets and in the hills. I read that somewhere. Forget who said it, but he could have been talking about us here.
Kris Longknife: Resolute Page 34