Kris Longknife: Defender

by Mike Shepherd

  “I figured the old bag of wind would be doing all the talking. Ray does have an ego.”

  “Apparently, he must have listened a bit, because those ships are full of stuff you need.”

  “You keep this up, and you’re going to force me to reassess the old fool.”

  “He is a mystery, isn’t he, Granny?”

  “So how soon do we get all these wonderful presents?”

  “The fleet came in by Jump Point Beta and are making a one-gee approach. Say sometime late today. Probably too late to do much until tomorrow.”

  “Do you have port facilities for all of them?”

  “Not even close,” Kris said.

  “Well, have fun. Don’t you hate being a grown-up?”

  “Good-bye Granny.”

  Kris’s next call was to Ada. There was no reason for her to hear the good news secondhand. The Chief of Ministries sent back a “Glory, alleluia” reply and said she’d get the colonials ready for the king’s largesse.

  That left Kris with the problem of conjuring a ship for Penny out of thin air. She decided the shipyard was the best place to look for a solution. Besides, if she did what she was thinking of doing, the yard would have a whole lot of new problems to solve.

  Admiral Benson, ret., was in his office with a large window overlooking the shop floor beneath him. No surprise, he had already heard of the new arrivals. “It’s nice to see the tip of the spear getting a bit sharper.”

  “Thirty-eight frigates to hold off a mother ship and her brood of a couple of hundred huge monsters. Odds leave something to be desired,” Kris said.

  “Yes, but they’re three, four times better than they were yesterday.”

  “I have some problems I could use your help solving.”

  “How many and how bad?” the old Navy man said.

  “First, rumor is I’ve been made an admiral. You didn’t bring along any old shoulder boards, did you?”

  He was grinning before she finished the sentence and reaching into a drawer of his desk. “I kept my first set of admiral shoulder boards around for good luck. May you wear them in good health,” he said, tossing a pair of boards across the desk to Kris.

  “Would you mind helping me put them on?” Kris asked.

  “Shouldn’t your husband do that?”

  “If they’re your lucky shoulder boards, I wouldn’t want to do anything to jinx the luck.”

  He did the honor, then stood back and gave her a salute. He might be a civilian at the moment, but Gunny would thoroughly approve of his form.

  “So, one problem down. What next?”

  “All the auxiliaries are Smart Metal. What kind of warship do you think you could respin two or three of them into?”

  “What do you have in mind? The asteroids are coming up with all kinds of rare and exotic materials, just what we need for making lasers of our own. The crew in my weapons lab can’t wait to get their hands on the old Hornet’s lasers and start reworking them. Same for her reactors though I’m not sure I’d trust them out of my sight. What’s the phrase, they been rid hard and put away wet.”

  “Yes, I suspected you’d say something like that. Yes, I want more support ships for the asteroid mines, but I need to spin out a frigate as well. Are the Wasp’s and Intrepid’s original 18-inchers gathering dust?”

  “We put one of them in each of the Hellburner bases we set up on the moons. Assuming they get slagged real good by the bastards, we’ll need to recut our launch tunnels to get the Hellfires out.”

  “That still leaves eight, or five. Have we dug bases to cover the Beta Jump Point?”

  “Just starting, but those lasers aren’t being wasted. I’ve got them mounted on my station, and we’ve trained Ostriches to man them. Those birds are smart and not afraid to be mean.”

  “Any chance they might sign up for ship duty?” Kris asked.

  “What do you have in mind?”

  Kris told him. His reaction was, at best, noncommittal. “I don’t know. Spin out a frigate to the Wasp’s design? I think we can do that. Find a crew? That might be a problem. You sure the merchant folks arriving planned to stay?”

  “I haven’t asked them,” Kris admitted.

  “Ever heard of shanghaiing?”

  “Likely I’ve been guilty of that a few times in my life.”

  “Come to think about it, a lot of folks might want to hitch a ride back on those empty transports. Any idea how we keep from hemorrhaging our workforce?”

  “By my count, there were twenty-eight frigates escorting those nineteen auxiliary and merchant ships. How many folks do you think would want to ride the convoy home with no escort?”

  “You’re a hard woman.”

  “I’m a Longknife. I’ve got a fight coming and thirty-eight warships to hold the line. Would you lose a few to an escort mission?”

  The retired admiral didn’t say anything for a long while. Finally, he muttered, “I guess I’d look at my orders.”

  “Mine are rather vague. Put up a fight. I don’t have to win, I just have to make it look good enough that the bastards don’t think they need to go looking for where we might be from. Me, I’d prefer to win. I get to stay alive if I win.”

  “We sure don’t if we lose,” Benson agreed.

  “You just get ready to respin a lot of Smart Metal into what we need. Leave the personnel to me.”

  “Gladly.”

  The Wasp was on its final approach. It parked the wreck a good hundred klicks back, trailing the station. Good idea; there might well be more ships stuck swinging around each other if there wasn’t anything to grow the station coming in. The Wasp also dumped the wreckage of the Hornet ten klicks back. Yard tugs were quickly picking though the pieces; the reactors were the first to be towed in for examination.

  There were shuttles coming up from Alwa loaded with boffins wanting a first look at the alien technology. There were also docs who had been dirtside, researching the local biology or starting up the geriatrics clinic. Every medical type available had been recalled to help with Phil Taussig’s survivors.

  Kris was there when they wheeled Phil up from the Wasp’s pier.

  “Good heavens, Kris, you’ve got quite a setup here. Oh, pardon me, Admiral.” In bed, weak as he was, he tried to lie at attention. How many generations of Navy did he have stiffening his backbone?

  “At ease, Commander. I’m just a jumped-up captain my grandfather, the king, frocked up to an admiral. And you’ll be a full commander as quickly as Nelly can cut the paperwork. Listen, Phil, I’ve got a problem.”

  “Don’t you Longknifes always?”

  Kris quickly filled him in on what she’d found on Alwa. “Wow, so we weren’t just fighting for a bunch of weird bird folks, huh?”

  “Nope, my own granny and two shipfuls of survivors and their kids and grandkids.”

  “So, what’s the situation now?”

  “We’ve got a potential alien attack marshaling somewhere out there. They could hit us anytime. My problem is that I want to hang on to every asset I’ve got. My second problem is that if ever survivors deserved home leave, you and your crew do. If I send a ship back for you, I may have a whole lot of people hitching a ride along with you.”

  “I see,” Phil said. His head sank deeper into the pillow. Was moving him tiring him out, or was it the heavy load she’d just dumped on him? Maybe she shouldn’t have said anything. After all, if she got hit with a full-fledged mutiny, or if a couple of those frigates had orders already to escort the merchants back, this might all be for nothing.

  If so, she would do whatever she had to do.

  “We’re here, Kris. That’s all that matters. Do with us what you will,” Phil said, then seemed to collapse into his gurney.

  She left Phil as a flock of people in white coats began to gather around him. Kris found herself in a
situation she was all too familiar with. It was that time before battle, when she’d done everything she could and now had to wait to see if it had been enough.

  She hunted up Jack, and they had a quiet lunch. He listened as she recounted her morning, nodding support, asking a few questions that helped clarify her thoughts. Yes, she was prepared to countermand orders given back in human space.

  What came here, stayed here.

  Would she force the crew of the Hornet to sit out the coming attack in hospital beds? That stumped her. She needed ships. She needed crews. Certainly she owed the Hornet. She and the Wasp’s crew would likely have been stuck there with them if Phil hadn’t gone one way and let her go the other.

  “I think I’m starting to understand how Grampa Ray got to be such a bastard,” Kris finally muttered.

  Kris returned to her desk; reports were piling up. Professor Labao wanted to know if Kris was going to do anything about the possible alien home planet. If so, a lot of boffins that Kris would have credited with good sense wanted in on the mission. Ada had already started making plans to extend the colonial farmlands. Her question was where the labor would come from and did Kris think any of the newly pacified forestland could be made available to the colonials.

  Ada hadn’t yet contacted the Alwan elders about that hot potato. It looked like she wanted Kris to handle it.

  The planetary survey was not quite done. They’d found some rare earths and other minerals needed for lasers and Smart MetalTM, but they were not in places easy to get to. As far away as the asteroids were, it was likely that they could be exploited faster. There was something about biological research that seemed to offer hope of a spectacular breakthrough, but the report was very vague. Like everyone in human space, Kris had heard about potential world-changing science, only to find it vanish down the “no, not really” tubes with as little fanfare as possible.

  Kris read on. About suppertime, Jack came to dig her out.

  “I’ve got something special for you.”

  “Want to show it to me?” Kris purred.

  “You have a one-track mind.”

  “I’ve had a very bad day.”

  The surprise was a new restaurant, The Burger Carnival. The proprietor had painted it up like an ancient traveling circus, complete with clowns and old Earth animals.

  “Remind you of any place?” Jack said.

  Kris wondered if she blushed, but apparently admirals were too shameless for such things. “The place where I decided to draft you,” Kris admitted.

  “I thought so,” Jack said.

  “Can you forgive me?” Kris asked.

  “For starting us on the road to here? What’s to forgive?”

  They ordered hamburgers and fries. Cheese apparently was not available for love nor money. Jack led Kris to a table in the back of the restaurant, which was actually the front of the station. They had a spectacular view of Alwa as it revolved below them. Kris tried not to look for anything she’d read about in her reports.

  I’m having dinner with my husband. Right!

  “Do you know what’s special about today?” Jack said, reaching across the table for her hands.

  “Besides the cavalry arriving to either rescue us or go down in our defeat?”

  “Forget the job,” Jack growled. “Today is our second anniversary. It’s been two months since we let Granny Rita talk us into taking the plunge. Do you regret it?”

  “Never,” Kris said, squeezing Jack’s hand. “Two months. I totally forgot about it. I can hardly keep track of the time. How’d you do it?”

  “I had Sal do it for me.”

  “Nelly, why didn’t you tell me?”

  “I didn’t know it mattered to you. I know it’s a very romantic thing for you humans. I just didn’t know if it would include you, Kris.”

  “Yes, I’m human, and, yes, I’m romantic, at least for Jack, and Jack, why are you doing all the girl things and me doing all the stupid boy stuff?”

  “You’re the admiral,” he said with a shrug.

  Kris let out a sigh. “I don’t like that, Jack.”

  “But you have to. That’s what Longknifes do. They do what they have to do.”

  “Well, I want to do more. Stuff I want to do as well as what I have to do.”

  Dinner arrived, brought by a moonlighting Marine. The haircut gave him away. “Just what you ordered, Colonel, two burgers with all the trimmings and two orders of fries.”

  Kris took a breath, and was transported back in time. Then she frowned.

  “Onions, tomatoes, real potatoes. How’d you do it, Jack?” A quick glance around showed other diners making do with produce from the native Alwan fields.

  “These are from your Granny Rita’s garden. Don’t look too closely at the meat, though. It’s from the deep forest. But I promise, it’s off one of the more delectable vegetarians, rather than a tough type that still thinks Marine might taste good.”

  Jack awarded a grin to their waiter. He blushed at his superior’s attention.

  “You amaze me, Jack. You remember our anniversary and do it enough ahead of time to talk my granny out of the fruits of her garden.”

  “Oh, I didn’t talk her out of anything, it was pure horse-trading. My Marines will deliver a truckload of fish offal to her and all her neighbors’ gardens. Nobody gets anything free from your granny.”

  “Which leads me wondering if she’s all that different from Ray,” Kris said, taking a bite.

  “I will do my best to stay different enough to save you from the Longknife curse,” Jack said as he began to enjoy his own dinner. They ate in quiet ease, content to bask in each other’s company.

  Maybe I can become a comfortable old married woman, Kris thought with as much hope as doubt.

  They were almost done when their view window suddenly lost its view.

  “What the . . . ?” Jack said, standing.

  Kris was on her feet almost as fast. A huge cylinder slowly moved between them and the planet below. On its side was KAGU MARU in Standard and Kanji. There was also the Mitsubishi Heavy Space Industry logo. It was easily as big around as Canopus Station. Maybe longer. Once it was fully in view, it began to edge slowly into formation ahead of the station. When it covered the entire front, the thing began to take on spin, first slowly, then faster, until it was matching the rotation of Canopus Station.

  Then it began to creep back.

  “Somebody’s awfully confident they aren’t going to rupture a hull,” Kris said.

  That brought looks of terror from the other diners, and some abandoned their meals to head for the exit.

  “Both stations are made of Smart Metal,” Jack said in a raised command voice. “If anything rips, they can have it fixed in seconds.”

  The exit slowed.

  The hull rang as the two cylinders made contact. Canopus Station lurched backward, but hardly enough to make Kris sway on her feet. “Not bad,” she said in admiration.

  “Want to bet your buddy Katsu-san is at the bottom of this?”

  “Good Lord, if he came out again, I just might have to send him back,” Kris said.

  “Then again, he might be very helpful in respinning ships.”

  “Now you’re taking on my nasty role.”

  “Whatever,” Jack said with a shrug. “Want to bet the fleet’s in, and you need to see a lot of new officers? Let them see you?”

  “Oh, yes. Nelly, send to all the ships, frigates, auxiliaries, and merchants. Officers’ call in two hours. Captains and execs required. Marines, boffins, engineering and weapons and chiefs of the boat may also attend. The location is the Wasp’s Forward Lounge. Two-drink limit.”

  Kris had been approached by Mother MacCreedy as spokesperson for all the tapshops on station, requesting the two-drink limit. “It will stretch the supply. Besides, we’ve got a foul drink tha
t the Alwans guzzle coming up. Two of them will put any old drunk under the table.”

  Kris had signed the order.

  Kris did paperwork before the meeting. This time it was the good kind, a promotion list. Kitano went to full commander and was frocked up to commodore. She’d find out why later. All the frigate skippers got full commander. They’d have to do the paperwork to promote their XOs and division heads themselves. The Wasp presented Kris an interesting challenge. She solved it in the usual Longknife way.

  “Nelly, activate Captain Drago’s reserve commission, bring him out of retirement, and give him a captain’s rank.”

  “Kris, I’m not sure I can jump a man from lieutenant to captain in one afternoon.”

  “Nelly, he dropped himself from rear admiral to lieutenant in less time. If you have to, ask him how he did it.”

  Of course, Nelly found a way. The magnificent Nelly did not ask mere mortals for help.

  47

  Two hours later, the Forward Lounge was going strong. The crews of Kris’s squadron had arrived first and occupied the tables closest to the bar. Apparently Musashi had been first to dock, probably on their own section of the station, and Commodore Miyoshi and his command teams were catching up with the Musashi Navy folks who had come out on the Wasp. Commodore Hawkings had set up shop for the newly arrived U.S. contingent against the far wall, and officers from Lorna Do, Savannah, and Wardhaven mixed freely. The Helveticans joined the Musashi Navy in the middle.

  The four merchant skippers and their first mates had a table next to the door.

  As Kris entered, she took all this in with a glance, even as someone shouted, “Atten-hut. Admiral on deck,” and she got “As you were” out before most people could even start to get to their feet.

  The merchantmen didn’t even make an effort. They would be a challenge.

  Kris marched to the table in the front Penny had reserved for them. Her shoulder boards showed commander’s stripes. Jack stayed two steps behind Kris. Once at the front of the lounge, Kris turned and let her eyes rove over the young men and women before her. Silence quickly fell.