Kris Longknife: Defender

by Mike Shepherd

  The frigates began to look like they had broken out in hives as they converted their armor to more and more storage tanks for the reaction mass. When the pinnaces returned with their last load, they kind of hitched onto their ship, leaving the whole squadron with a lumpy, bumpy look all over, and a very pregnant bulge where the pinnace settled in.

  “I hope we don’t need to fight,” Captain Kitano said, but under her breath.

  Kris chose to hear the question. “If we do have to fight, we’ll vent most of this to space. If we don’t, we get back to Canopus Station with needed reaction mass so the private ships can fuel up, and the ships that we send out to plant buoys can depart with a full load. There should even be some to spare in case we do need to fight.”

  “So this was a training and logistics run,” the captain observed.

  “We have to kill three birds with each stone if we’re going to survive out here.”

  The trip home was slower, never more than 1.5 gees, but they still got in a good shoot as they passed the asteroids.

  Captain Drago was waiting on the pier as the Princess Royal pulled in. He met Kris as she was just settling down to read more fun reports from dirtside and the potential moon base.

  “The Wasp is out of the yard. Do you still want to chase after the Hornet’s ghost?”

  Kris frowned. She wasn’t sure whether it was the question or the reports. Or the fact she was starting to like reading reports. That would be a truly horrible fate.

  “The Hornet is not a ghost until we bury her,” Kris said. “We leave no one behind. I will not have a ship stumbling upon that wreck twenty years from now to find that they survived for one, two, three years hoping for someone to come for them.”

  “‘Leave no one behind’ is a good motto,” Captain Drago said, “but you’ll be leaving a lot behind you if you go. Can you afford the time to bury those who are most likely dead? We’ve already found the expanding gas clouds that were all that was left of the battleships.”

  Kris eyed the contract captain. “Why are you arguing with me?”

  Captain Drago took a seat beside Kris’s desk. “Commodore, there are good reasons to go and good reasons to stay. I want to know if we’re doing this for the right reason. If we’re going just because you feel you have to, or maybe it’s a Longknife legend thing, I might have a problem. Since we’re in private, I’m asking the question.”

  Kris shoved away the report she’d been reading. Captain Drago had followed her to hell . . . and gotten back only by the skin of his teeth. He’d earned the right to question her decision when all hell wasn’t snapping at their heels.

  “Captain, on the old Wasp, how many times did we come within a few kilos of reaction mass from being stranded in space?”

  “More times than I care to be reminded,” he agreed.

  “I don’t know what we’d have done if it had come to that. No one knew where we were. No one could have rescued us. Maybe I’m heading out on a wild-goose chase, but I owe it to Phil Taussig and his crew to chase them down. To do everything I can to help them if they are in need. We went one way. They went the other and led the bastards off our trail and after them. If that’s not a good enough reason for you, Captain, I can’t think of a better one. It’s good enough for me, and I will be going. You want me to take another ship?”

  “No, Commodore. The Wasp is at your disposal. We are resupplied and are taking on some of that fine reaction mass you just brought in. I plan to take aboard enough to make all the jumps we did, and a couple extra for good hunting, then return on one tank.”

  “It sounds like you plan a fast trip. Give me an hour or two to sort things out here, and I’ll be back aboard the Wasp.”

  Captain Drago rose and saluted. “We await your pleasure, Your Highness.”

  Kris called her next meeting. Captain Kitano had only to step inside Kris’s day cabin. Granny Rita and Pipra attended by conference call. Kris quickly told them of her intentions to leave Alwa for a couple of weeks to discover the fate of the Hornet.

  Pipra began to object, but Granny Rita cut her off.

  “A commander never leaves shipmates behind. I was wondering when you’d go after the Hornet as soon as I heard how you escaped.”

  Captain Kitano just nodded, leaving Pipra to shake her head, and mutter, “Navy,” in exasperation.

  “My problem,” Kris said once that was settled, “is that I’m wearing three hats at the moment: military commander, viceroy, and CEO of half our industrial wherewithal.”

  “And you called us three why?” Granny asked with a sly smile.

  “Captain Kitano, I want you to take over the defense mission. You will dispatch two ships to spread surveillance buoys at all jumps within six jumps of Alwa. That won’t leave you a lot of ships here until the four new frigates complete their shakedown process, so concentrate on them. Do you have any questions?”

  Captain Kitano seemed a bit stunned by the load that had just been dumped on her but said nothing.

  “Granny, can I trust you to function as Ray’s royal viceroy for a month without starting a war between me and Ada?”

  “Kris, my child, you wrong me greatly,” Granny said through a grin. “Yes, I’ve been following what you and Ada have been up to. I should be able to maintain your momentum. And if we have any problems, I’ll call the captain here, or Ms. Strongarm.”

  “You’re dumping the industrial mess on me!” Pipra said. She greeted Kris’s nod with a serious scowl. “I’ve hardly gotten used to having to juggle Nuu Enterprises and the other two companies that joined us, and now I have to handle the other three as well!”

  “Lead,” Kris said, “not handle. If you run into trouble, call on Granny.”

  Kris and Pipra both got a look at Granny’s big grin. It had a lot of teeth showing. “Or, on second thought,” Kris added, “you can threaten to bring Granny into it.”

  “Yes, that should work,” Pipra finished, almost under her breath.

  “I am foully slandered,” Granny said, grinning.

  “Some of us have been dirtside long enough to pick up stories of the early days of your colony,” Pipra said.

  “Lies, all lies,” Granny said, smiling as she lied through teeth.

  “A reputation is a great thing,” Kris said, herself grinning. “Don’t waste it. Put it to use. You can never tell when you’ll need it to scare some kids into going to bed on time.”

  “I’ve had a few Sailors bring me up to date on you, kid,” Granny said.

  “And doubtless they traded you some good sea stories. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to transfer my flag back to the Wasp and see if I can talk my security chief into coming with me.”

  That brought another round of canards which Kris strove not to participate in. While she was letting that wash over her, she had Nelly ask Penny if she’d like to be included in this trip. She did and asked if she could bring along Masao. Kris agreed.

  An hour later, Abby had Kris packed and a half dozen Sailors lugging several hand trucks full of gear from the Princess Royal to the Wasp.

  A corporal and two privates brought along all of Jack’s gear.

  Next morning, they were away from the pier at 0730.

  36

  They had already left a buoy at the jump into the system where the battle took place. Now they headed for the desperate jump they’d taken out of the system. They passed close to the still-tumbling wreck of the alien mother ship.

  A thorough scan showed no new changes in the wreck. Maybe they’d scared the bastards off. Kris could only hope.

  They dropped off a buoy on the other side of the jump. The vacuum there still glowed from the wreckage of so many alien ships and the little bit that was the Fearless. They followed the same course and acceleration to the next jump. At this speed, they could not leave a buoy. It would have to be covered by another ship.

>   They made the same long jump they had last time. This system had seen no fight, so they sped on, picking up speed, but at a slower acceleration. The old Wasp’s engines had started to show wear from heavy use.

  The next jump brought them to the system where the limping Intrepid had fought its last fight, struggling to buy time for the Wasp and Hornet to make their escape. Once again, the scientific measurements showed a much more crowded and warmer vacuum.

  The Intrepid had died hard.

  This time, the new Wasp headed for the closest conventional jump. The Hornet had taken that one, letting the old Wasp slip away through the new fuzzy jump before the aliens had a chance to take notice. They had to guess a bit. The Hornet probably also had to slow down its acceleration. Still, they put on forty revolutions a minute and crossed their fingers.

  The jump took them close, Captain Drago’s low whistle said way too close, to a gas giant.

  “There’s a lot of vaporized ship out there,” the sensor team reported. “Can’t tell how much at this point, but there was a fight here.”

  “Nelly, could Commander Taussig have done a loop around the gas giant and come back at the aliens following him?”

  “I’ll have to back the system up a few months. It’s impossible to say where this jump was then. They do wander. However, it does look like he could have used several of the moons as well as the gas giant itself to help him break. It might have added some fuel to his tanks as he did it. It would have been a lot harder on the Hornet than any of the cloud dancing we did.”

  “But his ship didn’t have all the containers the old Wasp had,” Captain Drago pointed out. “It would be easier for him than for us.”

  “Is there any ship in this system?” Kris asked Senior Chief Beni, ret.

  “I show no active reactors. No squawkers are talking to me.”

  Kris let that walk around in her gut for a second. She didn’t like it, but it might be what she would have to take home with her. Two of her corvettes had fought the aliens, and both had died. If a fight had taken place here, the odds were that it had cost the Hornet’s crew all they had. Jack maneuvered his egg over to hers, once more at Weapons on the Wasp, and rested a supporting hand on her shoulder.

  She gave his hand a squeeze.

  “If I were stuck out here in this corner of the universe, I’d choke my squawker,” Jack said. “Is there any way to interrogate a squawker that’s been turned off?”

  “Our Identification, Friend or Foe has three levels,” Captain Drago said. “On, off, and passive. What were the codes we were using on the old Wasp?”

  Senior Chief Beni needed a moment for his computer to call up the old code and send it. The interrogatory went out at the speed of light as they broke at two gees toward the gas giant. Minutes went by. Ten. Twenty. Thirty.

  “Are there any planets in the Goldilocks’ zone?” Kris asked, trying to fill time as the clock went longer and longer.

  “There are three,” the chief reported. “One a bit close to the star. The other’s a bit far out. There’s one about in the middle, but it’s on the other side of the sun at the moment.”

  “So it might need a long time to reply to our message,” Jack said.

  “Yes,” the chief answered. “Hours. A day.”

  The time passed slowly as the Wasp decelerated, aiming to graze past one moon, then another as she swung around the gas giant. Time for a reply from the closer planets came and went.

  “I’ve got something,” the chief didn’t quite shout, waking Kris as she dozed in her egg.

  “What?” Kris demanded.

  “It sounds like the reply code,” Chief Beni said. “It’s weak and a bit garbled, but it’s got four of the right alphas and numbers.”

  “Captain Drago, will you please set a course for the other side of this sun?”

  “Happily, Your Highness. Very happily.”

  With a sigh of relief and hope, they set a long, slowing course for a responder that had hardly responded at all.

  37

  “That’s the Hornet,” Captain Drago said, as they closed on their target.

  “What’s left of her,” Kris agreed. Half the engines were shot away. The hull had been holed clear through in three, maybe four places. The ship now tumbled in space, derelict.

  The docking bays were empty. The longboats were gone.

  “It appears to have been evacuated,” Kris said. “Comm, broadcast on the longboat frequencies that we’re here.”

  That brought no reply. Ahead of them, the planet turned. They continued broadcasting as Captain Drago brought them into a parking orbit a hundred kilometers from the hulk. The planet remained silent, refusing to give up its secret.

  “Sensors,” Kris ordered, “get with the boffins and map that planet. Somewhere down there are four longboats and a gig. They can’t have disappeared. Find them.”

  What they found was a planet that looked like a pit of hell. Or maybe what Earth itself looked like when giant dinosaurs roamed it. The huge landmass that rolled below them was covered with dark swamps and marshes. Huge creatures chased the smaller ones, and rarely did they evade becoming dinner.

  “How could humans survive down there?” was a question Kris heard far too often as the mapping progressed.

  “Even if the humans haven’t, monsters don’t eat longboats. Find me the boats, guys. Find me those longboats.”

  The search continued.

  It was near the end of their sixth orbit, over nine hours after they began, that the morning beneath them coughed up an island. A volcanic central core rose almost to the clouds, surrounded by sandy beaches and reefs. There, drawn up on the water’s edge of a lagoon protected by the reef, were the four missing longboats and a smaller gig.

  The longboats were as dead as beached whales, their antimatter pods exhausted. Unfortunately, a study of the island revealed it as dead as the boats. No smoke rose from fires. No sign of human habitation showed on the optical scans.

  “They couldn’t have come this far and . . .” Kris ran out of words.

  Captain Drago turned to Jack. “Colonel, prepare a Marine landing party. You drop next orbit. I would recommend fully armored space suits.”

  “Yeah,” Jack agreed. “Don’t drink the water and don’t breathe the air. If that planet’s a killer, we won’t bring it back.”

  An hour later, Kris gave Jack a kiss. “Find them, if you can,” she whispered, “but don’t you go dying on me.”

  “Trust me. I’m good at not doing that. I’ve had a lot of practice around you.”

  Kris would have slugged him, but he was in full armor, and even a squid had to learn sooner or later not to punch people with hides as tough as Marines.

  “And thank you for not coming,” Jack whispered back.

  “I’m learning to be a boring senior officer,” Kris grumbled. “Don’t get too senior, or I’ll be telling you not to go fun places, either. It would serve you right, you know.”

  That got a chuckle out of Jack, and Gunny at his elbow, even as the NCO tapped the watch at his wrist. Their time together was gone.

  Kris drifted back, and Jack shoved off for Longboat 1. He didn’t look back, and she didn’t expect him to.

  Kris glided back to the bridge. All good stuff was going on elsewhere. Why wait for it to be processed and passed along to her station? There was a limit to how much she’d let herself be senior officered out of the fun.

  As she went, she couldn’t help but think about her and Jack. She’d often wondered how a woman could kiss her man and wave him off to where he might die. Now she found the answer. She did it because she had to. Jack was Jack, and he had a job to do and it was a job worth doing.

  Meanwhile, Kris was Kris, and she had a job to do, as well. “Nelly, get ready to spawn some nanos. That wreck ahead of us came with two good reactors and four 24-inch puls
e lasers. It may be a hunk of junk, but it’s my hunk of junk, and I will not ignore anything that might help me and mine stay alive.”

  38

  Jack had often wondered how a man could kiss his wife good-bye and head off to where he might get his head blown off. Now he knew. You went because you had a job to do. A job that someone had to do. It didn’t mean he loved Kris any less. In fact, he was kind of glad to go, knowing that she would be staying behind, out of harm’s way.

  There wasn’t a lot of time for introspection. He did have a job to do. He had Sal project an overhead picture of his target. It showed a big, lush, green island. At a glance, it could pass for a paradise.

  So, what was wrong with this picture?

  For one thing, there was no sign of humans. No huts, no smoke, no cleared area. The Hornet’s crew had been here for four or five months. Why was there no human footprint?

  The good news was that the picture showed no evidence of the monsters they’d spotted on the mainland. There were a few instances of something large and nasty driving fish to jump out of the water, but those were all outside the reef. It looked like the reef was keeping the monsters at a distance. Jack wondered what the fishing was like.

  All the time they’d studied the island, no human had gone down to toss in a line.

  Jack did a quick check of his fire teams. Every other trigger puller had a grenade launcher attached to their M-6. If there were monsters, they were ready. All of the four Marine teams had a medic attached. There were extra medical supplies secured in the back of the shuttle. Every one of his ten fire teams was prepared to fight or save . . . very likely both at the same time.

  Longboat 1 made an easy landing in the lagoon, then motored slowly for the beaching area. Jack and Gunny studied the long, wide, sandy beach. The noise of their sonic boom should have brought Sailors down to greet them.

  The beach showed something like a turtle making its way back to the sea but nothing human. “This is past strange,” Gunny muttered.

  “Okay, Marines,” Jack said, turning to his teams. “There may be monsters, so be ready. But for God’s sake, let’s not be too itchy on the trigger finger. We don’t want to kill any good guys.”