Kris Longknife Stalwart

by Mike Shepherd

  "He didn't suggest you risk breaking the frozen valve?" Megan asked.

  "Oh, no. If he gave orders that destroyed official property, he could be charged with treason."

  Megan knew that humans did some stupid stuff. Still, the Iteeche had to have us beat hands down.

  Smoke was drifting their way. It was acrid and caused both Humans and Iteeche to cough.

  "LT, Longknife 2 here. This smoke stinks. Does this tell you anything about the fire?"

  "Yes, ma'am. It's chemical in nature. If I may venture a wild ass guess, I think someone stored flammable chemicals too close to a transformer. The water shorted it out and we've got ourselves a fire that floats on water."

  "I was afraid you'd say that. Keep me informed. Has the engineering task group showed up, yet?"

  "Not in sight, ma'am."

  "Thanks."

  Before Megan could ask, Lily replied, "They are down the beanstalk and should be here in ten minutes.

  "Do you know anywhere we can get some foaming fire suppressant, Lily?"

  "Are you giving me permission to do a full search on what serves as the Balan information net?"

  "Log the request," Megan said, "then do it." She glanced back at the six top managers. Clearly they were no smarter than they'd been a few minutes ago.

  "Longknife 2 to Longknife 1."

  "Yes, Meg."

  "We had another explosion here. Our best call on it is that water shorted out a building's power and that exploded some chemicals stored way too close to something explosive. At least, that's what we got from examining the smoke. What we do know is that we have a fire that floats on water. If we don't put it out, we could have everything the water touches go up in flames, and God only knows what else these buildings have in their basements."

  "What are you after this time, Meg?" Kris asked.

  "Enough foaming agent to cover a couple of blocks of flooded streets. You know how the fire departments run in the Empire. I can't get anyone to respond to these fires. More than likely, if I did, I'd get water pumpers that have no water to pump."

  "Can't get there from here, huh?"

  "Exactly, ma'am."

  "Admiral Tong, General Compeel, do either of you have access to foam firefighting equipment?" Kris asked.

  The holographs in front of Megan shook their heads.

  "If we have a fire, we open the space to vacuum. That kills it," Tong said.

  "We blow things up," the general said. "We don't put out the fires."

  That was logical.

  "Sorry, Meg, but this hot potato stays in your lap."

  "Longknife 2 out."

  "Longknife 1 out."

  Megan was getting a sick feeling in the pit of her stomach that there was no way to get anywhere from here. She'd seen how General Bruce used Smart Metal™ to smother apartment fires when the embassy was under rocket attack. That wasn't going to happen here.

  First, she didn't have nearly enough Smart Metal™ to smother something this big. Worse, there was no way she could be sure the buildings had been evacuated. If she locked these burning apartment buildings under a dome of Smart Metal™ she ran the serious risk of killing a whole lot of Iteeche.

  Megan needed a new firefighting plan, but first, she needed to turn off the water. She turned her back on the lowly supervisors and quickly strode back to their lordships. She stopped well short of them.

  "I am about to use my authority to order the pipe supervisors to turn off the water well up the way from here. It seems that the next valves up from these breaks are all broken."

  The Baron for Services actually cringed. "I had their replacement in my budget for the last ten years, but the money was never there," he whined to the governor and mayor.

  "We will talk about this later," the Lord of Planetary Security bit out, eyeing the baron as he might a bug.

  "But if she closes down those aqueducts, a quarter of the capital will be without water. I will miss a mandatory goal for the year. I could be sacked."

  Oh, now I know where this is coming from.

  "It's not my fault. It's the budget for maintenance. It's always cut."

  "Be silent," the security lord snapped, then turned to Megan. "You have the authority to do whatever you think is best. Do it. You need not refer any matter to us."

  Well, that covered his ass . . . and left mine out in the wind.

  "Thank you, Your Lordship. Now, if you will excuse me," Megan said, turned on the s of her feet and shouted, "Turn off the flow of water! Now!"

  Two naked runners were dispatched to carry the message to Iteeche, who apparently, had been standing by for an order.

  "Lily, have you found any foaming agent?"

  "No, Megan. Either I have the wrong word for it, or they don't have any."

  "That would be hard to believe," Megan muttered, not really finding it all that hard to believe. "Lily, can you get me some pumpers that can suck the water that is already out in a lake and then throw a fine mist or spray to cool down the fire?"

  "I do have a design for two firefighting machines. I can combine what you need from both of them into one fire engine."

  "Good. Skipper," she called.

  The commander of the Royal US Marine company trotted toward her.

  Megan didn't wait for him to arrive. "Captain, if you have anyone in your company who knows anything about firefighting or ever wanted to fight fires, now is their time."

  "I have a corporal whose father was a fireman. Is that close enough?"

  "It will have to do," Megan said. "Lily, turn as many of the Iteeche armored gun trucks into fire engines and get them moving. Arrange for a single control station to work everything."

  "Doing it," Lily said, and several Iteeche found themselves standing on the outside of the gun trucks as they transformed into something . . . red.

  The rig now had only four wheels. Out the back was a boom with a hose, ready to plop its end down into a pond and draw water. The other end had another boom. At the end of that boom was a nozzle that would swivel as the fireman aimed it.

  The first of these rigs began to roll toward the fire. A Marine raced to meet it and hopped aboard as it went by him. He slung his rifle and settled into a seat surrounded by knobs, buttons, sensor readouts, and a whole lot of stuff Megan could only guess at.

  The Marine shouted a cowboy cry, as if he was breaking a bronco. Behind him, the water pipe sought Lake 1, and began to suck water. Ahead of him, the forward boom aimed toward the fire below. A fine mist issued from it and began to fall on the fire.

  It hissed as it fell onto the flames and steam rose from the burning chemicals.

  Maybe we can cool down some of these chemicals.

  The mist turned into a thin sprinkle. The amount of steam coming off the fire slowed. In a moment, the Marine took it back to a mist.

  "We need more of these if we're going to do anything about that fire," the Marine shouted to no one in particular.

  Three more Iteeche gun trucks turned into similar engines. Three Marines climbed aboard them and, following the lead and with advice from the first Marine firefighter, they began to lay more mist on the flames.

  Steam rose from the flames in a boiling mist. A pungent odor left anyone who had to breathe it choking.

  "Lily, give me an overhead view and pass it along to your mom."

  A holograph again appeared in the air in front of Megan. It showed panicked refugees fleeing every building in the immediate area. Many were struggling to breathe as they ran.

  Not a few fell and were trampled underfoot.

  The situation was bad and only getting worse. The one bright spot, water was no longer gushing from the bomb crater in the street.

  A column of engineers rolled up. A major dismounted. "How can I help you, Commander?" he asked.

  "If you know anyone who knows how to fight a fire by cooling mist, or has a better idea on how to put out a floating fire without foam, I'd appreciate the help."

  The major spoke to his com
mlink and a squad worth of Marine engineers dismounted and examined the situation. More of Lily's unique fire engines transformed, and one by one, these engineers drove them down the hill. A few started draining Lake 2 to fight its own fire. Others continued draining Lake 1.

  Engineers set to work draining the explosive site, sending more water gushing down into Lake 1.

  Megan surveyed what she'd gotten done in the last ten minutes and liked it. Smoke and steam still rose from Lake 2. It spread out in a huge polluting cloud, making life miserable for everyone downwind.

  "My Lords," Megan said, addressing all six Iteeche. "Do you think it would be a good idea to have people under that smoke evacuate their homes and businesses? Those fumes cannot be good for your people to breathe."

  They looked at each other as if they had never heard anything so preposterous. "It is their fate to live where they live. Maybe their luck has run out, but they will live or die as is their destiny."

  In all Megan's life, she had never heard anything so preposterous.

  No. No, she did remember something like that mindset. The survivors of the Earth survey ship, the Santa Maria, had expressed similar thoughts about the deaths of their colleagues and friends.

  "Their number just came up."

  "Their luck ran out."

  These hard-working survivors, struggling to make a niche for themselves in a world that offered so little had lived on the edge of death every day. They had to develop a fatalistic attitude because they had so little control over whether they lived or died.

  So, why did these clan lordlings take the same attitude toward their own kind? Was it because this fire was burning on the land of a clan that wasn't represented among the six?

  A sickening thought stomped into Megan's consciousness. It was an unusual, but not unheard of, practice by the Iteeche in a war to gas an entire planet and then take it over for the victorious clans to repopulate with their people. Where these people fleeing from the apartments around her from a clan that was on the outs with someone in power? If these people died, would another clan higher in the pecking order step in? Would they choose more younglings from their mating ponds and fill up the niche left by the vanished population?

  Megan knew she didn't have enough information to drop this bomb on Kris. Still, she'd have to keep her thumb on the pulse of developments. If a few more actions authenticated her gut instinct, Kris would definitely want to hear about this.

  Pulling herself out of such thoughts, Megan joined the engineering major examining the hole in the ground. The LT joined them.

  "Here's the take I have from the tiny flitters I've got up the pipes since they are starting to drain," the LT said.

  The three of them studied the video take coming in.

  "That's the end of the damage," the major said. "I can seal that with Smart Metal. I'm going to have the devil's own time repairing the break, though. See, all around the hole the bomb made, the ground has washed away. I need gravel and dirt to fill in the hole and pack it down hard before I put in new pipes."

  "No way to bridge it?" Megan asked. She knew it was a dumb question, but since she wasn't the engineer present, she figured dumb questions were her forte.

  The engineer frowned into the muddy water of the hole, apparently giving serious consideration to Megan's dumb question. "I could suspend a pipe across the space using a suspension bridge arrangement. However, I'd need a solid foundation for the towers, and right now I can't see how I could support four towers. Maybe eight towers, considering our mad bomber hit us at the intersection of two aqueducts. I have no idea what the soil is like below this soup, or how far I'd have to drive piles to reach something solid. Throw in the question of where I'd get pile drivers, and you'd be setting an impossible mission for me."

  Megan called the three Iteeche supervisors over to them and posed the next question to them. "Where do we get a hundred cubic meters of gravel to fill in this hole?"

  The three stared at each other and said not a word.

  Megan chose to walk over to the Iteeche lordlings rather than shout a question at them or call them over to her. Tact didn't cost her that much time.

  "Wise Choosers," she said, hoping that qualified as "Gentlemen." "How can we get gravel and gravel-moving equipment here?"

  Their eyes looked about as blank as the supervisors. Clearly, her question was above one set of pay grades and below the other.

  Megan was getting seriously pissed with this Imperial hierarchical society that not only seemed to limit who knew what, but also who knew what anyone else knew.

  Oh, and no one had a commlink, so you couldn't just get on the net and talk to them. Teen Meg had hated being at the end of a commlink when her mom was nagging her about this or that. Now that she knew what it was like to live without that commlink, she was becoming more and more grateful.

  She strode quickly back to the Iteeche supervisors. None of them had any idea how construction was handled. What they maintained was there when they got the job.

  "I don't remember seeing any construction down here in the capital. They sing songs about all the work being done on Planet 3 and the asteroids, but I've never seen any dirt being moved or any buildings going up," one supervisor admitted. The others nodded agreement.

  Megan walked away from all three groups to find herself a place where she might talk to Kris in private.

  "Longknife 2 here to Longknife 1."

  "What's up?"

  "Not a lot. Can I talk to you in private?"

  "Give me a second." As Kris walked, she said, "I've got some very antsy high-level people up here that can't wait for us to sign this surrender so they can get things going."

  "That's why I'm calling. Admiral, is there any chance we can toss them back and go conquer another planet?"

  "That bad?"

  Megan filled Kris in on what she'd discovered. She ended with, "I'd need to look at their books, but from where I'm standing, maintenance has been shorted for years. Nothing has been built in the capital in anybody's memory. No one knows if there is any gravel available to fill in the crater we have here. None of the maintenance people know where we can locate big construction equipment to fill in that hole. These Iteeche don't know much more than what their pay grade requires them to know. Nothing above it. Not even what's below it. I don't know how many layers of management I've got between the mayor and his barons and the guys actually doing the work so I can't find out how to get there from here."

  "I'll have our imagery hunt you up a sand or gravel pit," Kris said, going immediately into problem-solving mode.

  That was fine for Megan. She didn't want to cry on any shoulder that was nearby. Now then, a certain redhead back at the capital had a great shoulder to cry on.

  "You show me where the gravel is, and I'll have Lily knock us together the dump trucks we need as well as other construction equipment. I may need more Smart Metal, ma'am."

  "I'll have Admiral Tong send you an engineering battalion from the invasion force as well as a battalion of Marines in Smart Metal gun trucks you can mess around with."

  "Thank you, ma'am. We are starting to make progress. We've turned off the water upstream on the two water lines. As soon as we can identify how far back we have to go from the explosion to build a cofferdam, we'll do that and get the water back on."

  "Very good, Commander. Keep up the good work."

  For about the next five minutes, Megan did her best to keep Kris happy and keep up the good work.

  Unfortunately, a building on the opposite side of Lake 2 became involved in the fire despite their best efforts to cool the flames. More gun trucks were switched over to pumpers with remotely controlled nozzles. Sometimes the water played over the building in a stream as hard as concrete, pouring water through a window or other break that left the fire open to assault. Other times, they sprinkled or misted what they could to cool the buildings next over to try to limit the spread.

  The major in charge of the engineers fighting the fires reported
they hoped to bring all the fires under control in half an hour, an hour at worst.

  The more they drained the lake to fight the fires, the less surface the fire had to float on. Or maybe it was burning away all its fuel. Still, they were making progress.

  Kris sent Megan a gravel pit twenty klicks away, but usable. "Although there may be someone there in a hurry to demand payment. I suggest you ask the mayor to accompany the first team you send there. Arrangements may be needed for payment before you can extract any gravel."

  "You're kidding me," Megan answered.

  "Meg, if the Navy wanted gravel from a pit on Wardhaven, we'd have to pay for it. Most definitely, we’d have to pay for it if my Grampa Alex owned it. Avarice seems to be a trans-species norm."

  "Aye, aye, ma'am. I'll talk to the mayor."

  "Longknife 1 out."

  Megan began the walk back to where they'd set up an HQ. A gun truck had been sacrificed to create a pavilion with comfortable stools for the Iteeche lords and uncomfortable chairs for the humans.

  Megan did not want anyone hanging around headquarters. She needed work done.

  She was not yet to the shady entrance when there was a sudden reduction in the amount of noise around her. She glanced around. Most of the gun trucks had cables leading off them to power the hand tools the invading troops were using.

  Longer cables powered the tools Balan's workers were using. Suddenly, they were looking at their tools. Nothing worked.

  "Megan, the local power net has gone down in this area."

  "Thank you, Lily. For how far?"

  "We have drones out searching. It is hard to tell. Most traffic at intersections is directed by Iteeche traffic police. However, people are streaming out of buildings. Those without windows can hardly see in the dark."

  "Keep me appraised."

  A few moments later, Megan was about to enter her HQ when a flash of light occurred, immediately followed by the sounds of an explosion. A pressure wave a second later knocked Meg down and almost blew her ear drums out.

  Megan didn't need to be told. Her problems had just gotten a lot bigger.

  31