Rita Longknife - Enemy Unknown Book I of the Iteeche War (Jump Point Universe 5)

by Mike Shepherd

  One of Edmon’s crew had been on the watch for that. He shot him as he came in the door, and then dispatched a squad of heavily armed guards to Neva’s digs on the station.

  The rest of her crew surrendered without a shot.

  Late that night, one of the captains raised the point that this place of theirs was named for a deadman. Whitebred.

  “Who you think it ought to be named for?” Edmon asked.

  “Anybody but him,” came from a lot of mouths.

  “Why don’t we all put one name in a hat and let someone draw out a slip?”

  “What do you say that all of you put a name in a box, I don’t see any hats,” Edmon said, “and I’ll draw one of your names out.”

  That seemed agreeable to all and in a few minutes, Edmon announced “LeMonte, you win. What you want to call this place?”

  “LeMonte was good enough for my mom and dad, why not here?”

  So LeMonte it was.

  That symbolic change seemed to lighten a lot of loads.

  As the meeting broke up late that night, the first woman to speak sidled up to Edmon. “You done good, old boy. I didn’t think any of you guys had it in you.”

  “Evidently, she didn’t, either. She had the guns laid out on the table, but she wasn’t spending all that much time with her hands near them.”

  “I think she was a knife kind of gal. And, as you said, she was a dumb broad.”

  “Dumb and evil.”

  “Now me, I’m just a broad. What you doing tonight, sailor?”

  “I was planning on going home and sleeping. Alone.”

  “I was too, but I’m willing to change.”

  “You willing to be frisked?” he said, cautiously playing along.

  “I’m even willing to sleep in your bed,” she cooed.

  “Well, we can’t let their bad choices interfere with our good ones.”

  Chapter 30

  General Ray Longknife tried to keep a big grin off his face, but it was no easy task. He was accompanying the spy to a meeting, a meeting he’d set up and the spy had been totally surprised by.

  The putative Mr. Smith looked rather grumpy.

  “Who is this we are supposed to meet with?” he muttered lowly.

  “I have no idea,” Ray said.

  “Who arranged this meeting?”

  “I don’t know. I call them Red Tie and Blue Tie because they’re both in grey suits and that’s the only way I can tell them apart.”

  “Harrumph,” the old spy actually said.

  They reached the crossroads that had been given as their interim destination. Harvey, the young and wounded soldier now hired on at Nuu House as a chauffeur, pulled the car over to the side of the road.

  For five minutes, nothing happened.

  Then a red sports car, top down, with a striking platinum blond at the wheel drove up. She did a U-turn right past them, waved but did not stop.

  “General, if you don’t mind, I’ll follow her,” the chauffeur said.

  “What would your wife say?” Ray asked. The former soldier’s wife had become attached to the Nuu residence as an assistant cook but was rapidly taking over from the older woman in charge.

  “She’d likely say I ain’t dead yet, sir.”

  “I think that wave is a clear signal we are to follow,” the spy said.

  “You may follow her, Harvey.”

  He slowly pulled back onto the road and did follow, at a comfortable distance.

  Several miles further along, they turned off into the trees on a badly rutted dirt road. It stayed that way for only a few twists and turns. Once they were well gone into the forest, the road again became a solid blacktop affair and they sped up to a decent clip.

  Ray was the first to spot their likely goal. It was a large hunting lodge in the old-fashioned manner, made of thick, sawn logs with a high peak roof above the third story or so.

  “I half expect to see a witch lead a pack of kids past it to a gingerbread house,” the spy grumbled. For someone who loved his own melodramatic carrying ons, the guy seemed quite disgruntled to be on the receiving end.

  The sports car came to a halt and the woman, dressed in tight silver pants and a revealing silver top came around to open the car door for them.

  “I’m glad you got my meaning and followed me,” she said. Her voice would have made a songbird blush. There was no way the bird could have held its own against that voice.

  “Our driver is an old soldier,” Ray said. “He was ready to follow you, wave or no.”

  “My husband tells me I have that effect on men,” she said, but did not offer either her name, or her husband’s.

  They were ushered into the hunting hall, as such it was. The great room had a long trestle table made from a thick slab of wood. Banners hung from the walls that also sported the heads of great elk, deer, bear and even a lion. All of them were from old Earth.

  The hall, though great, was cool and drafty. No doubt, in the rainy season it had authentic leaks from the roof. The woman lead them through the hall and off to the right.

  The door she opened was made of just four planks, blackened now with age, either real or created. The room inside was a total change of pace.

  These walls were covered by cream wallpaper with patterns of trees and vines worked into its lush surface. The floor was a thick wine-colored carpet. The ceiling, though high, supported a low hung, sparkling chandelier giving off a gentle light.

  But it was the table before him, and the people seated at it, that drew Ray’s attention.

  A dozen people, Mr. Nuu included, sat around a conference table that had all the modern amenities, built in screens, full net access and at the two vacant seats, a glass of Scotch, on the rocks at one and a martini at the next.

  Ray took the chair with the Scotch; the spy the other. After a sip, which proved it was very good Scotch, Ray glanced around the room. Beside Ernie, he might recognize two of the men and one of the women. One man was among the senators from Earth who had come out to Savannah to meet with Ray. They’d talked, then the senators had left, leaving Savannah in no better shape than when they arrived. Ray hadn’t left Savannah until he’d had a good strong hand in overthrown that dictator and helping the people start on the road to democracy.

  Ray wondered if he’d be more impressed by the senator this meeting.

  Of the other eight at the table, none were known to him and they chose to stay that way.

  “Thank you for sharing your wife’s little talk with that pirate,” said the man at the head of the table. He wore no suit, but rather a blue silk shirt with a mandarin collar. Gold and silver dragons curling about the front.

  “I’m always glad to share information among kindred souls,” Ray said, evenly.

  “What we are remains to be seen,” one of the unknown women said.

  “Yes,” the mandarin collar said. “Do you believe this, ah, story, General?” he said with a dismissive wave of his hand.

  Ray had spent much time thinking about that question. He needed only a moment to reply. “I think it is more likely true than not. When my wife returns from visiting the site of the ship’s wreckage, I will not be surprised at what she has found.”

  “Yes,” mandarin collar said, almost hissed. “It is nice to see that you are a cautious man. Did you learn that in the war?”

  “I believe I was always cautious,” Ray said, dryly. “Of late, I’ve learned to be less eager to be first in.”

  “Ah, the matter of being first in line to die,” the woman agreed. “General, have you studied the history of encounters between cultures of unequal status?”

  “Some of my ancestors back on earth were Native Americans,” Ray said. “Are you speaking of their treatment by the Europeans?”

  “Pardon me, General, I did not expect that you’d still take that personally.”

  Ray frowned. “Oh, I don’t. But I do still enjoy blowing stuff up.”

  That brought no rejoinder.

  After a moment
’s pause to clear the air, the woman began again. “You will understand our need to know the answers to some very important questions. Are we superior to these four eyed, ten foot tall multi-limbed starfarers? Or are we at risk of being on the short end of the coming bargain?”

  “As a soldier, ma’am, I find that I would phrase that question in several different ways.”

  “And they would be?”

  “What are our relative numbers? What is our relative technology? And, to use an old turn of phrase, what is their relative willingness to close with sharp steel, compared to ours? Lastly, as my wife insists I consider, is it war they are seeking, or can we correct these misperceptions brought on by their first encounter with us being with a rather trigger-happy pirate? Can we turn the present circumstances back toward a peaceful resolution?”

  “Do you have any answers to your questions?” the man in the mandarin collar asked.

  “Sir, I’m not even sure these putative bug-eyed-monsters exist. I wouldn’t swear that they aren’t the product of minds intent on persuading us not to string them up, after all due legal processes are completed, of course.”

  “Of course.”

  “Are you suggesting that we do nothing?” said a new man, entering the conversation from the middle of the table, across from Ray, but closer to the head. He wore a light brown leather coat over an embroidered shirt and short, thin tie.

  “No. I have ships out scouring the shipping lanes both for pirates, new worlds and whatever these things are that so terrified the men now in custody. For all three of those efforts, I need more ships. Hopefully, one ship can be used for more than one effort. Besides my own efforts, I need coordination between any ships involved in those efforts. If you’re sending a ship out scouting for planets, I need for it to file a trip plan so we can retrace its path if it fails to return. Do you even know where your scouts are headed?”

  That drew embarrassed looks from around the table.

  “How do we know someone won’t poach on our scouting lines if we publish them?” came from a new man. He was seated on the same side of the table as Ray and up the side that was pretty well blocked by the spy’s bulk.

  “That is a problem,” Ray said. “But it is not a problem that cannot be solved. First come, first search. We keep the scout lines under lock and key on a computer off net so it can’t be hacked by even the best. I don’t know. It’s not important that it is hard to solve this problem, what is important is that we do solve this problem.”

  That seemed to speak to a consensus around the table.

  Ray pressed on. “Let’s face it, scouts can be small, light and fast. To just duck in and look takes very little. You can leave it to some follow-up survey ship to test the atmosphere. Check the water. Decide if the real estate is worth development.”

  Ray paused to do his own survey. Heads were nodding.

  “Chasing pirates and checking around for possible armed hostiles needs something more. A light cruiser maybe, if we can assume that our crews are better trained at their weapons stations than a similarly armed light cruiser of the Daring class.”

  “The treaty said those were to be scrapped,” came from another man.

  “Someone has been bribing Navy personnel to sell off fully armed and combat ready cruisers,” Ray shot back. “At least two Darings and two General class cruisers departed Savannah station with the other twenty or so ships Admiral Whitebred took to go pirating. Trust me, there are dangerous ships out there.”

  “Wasn’t Whitebred Peterwald’s man?” someone said, and was quickly shushed.

  Ray made a mental note. From the ever so slight twitch, the spy had not missed that tidbit either.

  “Given my druthers,” Ray went on, “I’d ask for heavy cruisers to do merchant protection work and be ready to duck out deep to look at anything we think we found out there.”

  “Not battleships?” came from another silent one.

  “We’re still scouting this situation. Battleships take huge crews and national will. Heavy cruisers are a whole lot easier to get commissioned and sent out. I don’t know what planets you are from,” Ray said, “but anything you could do to persuade your governments to either allow the dispatch of your cruisers to the rim, or, if you’re from a rim world, to get some heavy cruisers commissioned and away from the pier would be much appreciated.”

  “One question, if I may?” This was from the platinum blond. “Have either of you gotten anything of interest off the ship’s wiped computers?”

  Ray shook his head.

  The spy, however, grinned and said. “Yes, I think you may find this interesting.”

  He rested his wrist unit near the table’s data link and suddenly the walls on both sides of the room became large screens, one in front of and the other behind Ray. Both showed a motionless picture.

  In the background were the unblinking stars of space.

  In the foreground was an unclothed body adrift in the vacuum. It had been caught facing the camera’s eye. The head had a prominent beak where a human’s nose and mouth might be. Above it were holes for four eyes unevenly spaced around the skull, but paired somewhat on both sides.

  Below a squat neck was a shoulder bone that was socketed for four arms. It was hard to tell how many elbows the four arms had, but it looked like way too many. The same was repeated below a pelvis that was socketed for another four limbs.

  The room was silent except for a number of whispered expletives.

  “Several pictures like this were retrieved from the computer,” the spy said. “Unfortunately, the wipe could not be totally defeated. The metadata attached to the pictures is gone, so there is no proof that this is not some graphic computer jockey’s sick idea of a joke. However, there is one other picture you might be interested in.”

  The screens changed. Now a single structure hovered in their centers. It was a ball. A perfect sphere punctuated by two elongated pods on opposites sides from each other where one might think either the north-south axes were, or the equator.

  “No shipyard in human space ever built a monstrosity like that,” the man in the mandarin collar said with finality.

  “Well, somebody, somewhere, appears to have built it,” Ray said.

  Chapter 31

  General Ray Longknife was asked for his opinion about the efficacy of such a construction. As a gravel cruncher, he declined any knowledge of ship design.

  His admission of ignorance seemed to actually gain him credibility around the table.

  After a few more comments that amounted to little, the mandarin collar nodded at the platinum blond and she rose, tapped Ray’s elbow and ushered him from the room.

  “I believe the spy will be going home with Mr. Nuu,” she said once they were back in the great room.

  Ray measured his feelings about being given the bum’s rush out of the meeting, and found he didn’t like it.

  “What are they talking about now?” he said, using a command voice that fell just short of demanding.

  “Matters that may or may not affect you and your efforts, General,” the young woman said. “However, the decision will be theirs, not yours, so your presence is no longer required.”

  “My interests, and the best interests of the people I serve are most certainly involved,” he said in a voice that brooked no resistance from junior officers.

  The young woman shrugged it off. “We are not talking about the interests of people, but the interests of those particular people, General. It’s best if you do what you’re told and, if nothing comes of this, forget it ever happened.”

  The tone of her voice was different from his. More melodic and lovely. But the underlying message was clear. Others had decided his fate. It was best for him to obey.

  In the here and now, he saw few alternatives and none of them good.

  Later, he would have more options and make better use of them.

  He followed as she led him back to his car.

  Once seated, General Ray Longknife gave Harvey a
vague wave to go, and said not a word, so lost in thought was he.

  So, I’ve finally met the people who pulled the strings.

  He smiled at a thought. Had his killing of President Urm created a world of unknowns for the likes of these?

  Another question I’ll have to try to get an answer for later.

  Ray chose not to returned to the ministry, but rather to Main Navy where he shared the pirate interview with Admiral Zilko. If the content of the interrogation was going public to that select few, it was time for a few good uniformed men to give it their own take.

  The admiral watched the video in silence. Only when it had run its full course did he turn to Ray. “Do you think they found something?”

  “I don’t know, but Rita is out there, now, trying to see if she can verify any of this wild story.”

  “How many ships have gone missing?”

  “A dozen by my count, but that’s only the ones we know of. Likely the count is higher,” Ray said.

  The admiral stared at the blank screen, his mouth gone tight and thin. “And I thought the Unity balls-up was bad. Are we about to take bleeding to a whole new level?”

  “I’m having the same thoughts,” Ray said.

  “Grayson,” the admiral said, hitting his comm buzzer.

  A captain with thinning gray hair presented himself in the doorway in less than a minute. “Sir.”

  “We need to comb through the shore duty establishment. Thin it out as far as you dare, then go another ten percent.”

  “Sir?”

  “There are a half dozen heavy cruisers in mothballs I want fitted out and ready to get underway in a month. Thirty days, and not one minute more.”

  The captain eyed his admiral. “You want to tell me why, sir?”

  “Sorry, Grayson, no. Do it. In a month, maybe two, you’ll find out, along with a whole lot of other folks. Until then. No.”

  “Yes sir. I’ll have a fully worked out staff paper on your desk at oh eight hundred tomorrow morning. Names by noon.”

  “That sounds like a plan. Tell Margaret I’m sorry you’ll be working through tonight.”