Kris Longknife - Emissary

by Mike Shepherd

“You were the Chargé d’Affaires on Savannah,” Nelly put in, “when Ray Longknife and you inspired a change in government. There are strong hints in the record that you were the station chief for the intelligence effort.”

  “As I said, I did my best to stay below everyone’s radar,” she admitted with a lovely smile.

  “Are you going with me to the Iteeche Court?” Kris asked.

  “Oh, heaven no. I’m sure the Iteeche know my name only too well. They would not like to see me at all. At all.”

  “Explain yourself,” Kris said.

  Becky waved her right hand in the air. “Is there someplace we can go to talk privately?”

  “Nelly, tell Jack I’m canceling his day. Alert the car and have Jack meet me there. Amber, you’ve got the shop. Please don’t sink it.”

  “Okay, no sinking. Can I blow it up?”

  “Let me clarify,” Kris said, grinning. “I want to find the place tomorrow morning relatively the same it is now.”

  “Oh, pooh. You’re a spoilsport.”

  “You can start knifing battleship admirals after I’m gone for good.”

  “Alice has started a very nice dagger and stiletto collection.”

  “You all sound like you’ve been around Longknifes too long,” Becky said.

  “Guilty as charged.”

  “Meg,” Kris said as she passed through her outer office. “You’re with me.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” the lieutenant said, and grabbed her blues coat.

  The trip to Nuu house was quick. Nelly had called ahead for a plate of sandwiches and several pots of coffee and water. They were waiting in the safe room when they got there. Nelly took a bit to clean the room.

  Becky was amazingly clean. It was Jack and Megan that had collected spies.

  “Kris, I need some Smart Metal for Meg and Jack’s computers so they can operate their own defensive swarm.”

  “Requisition it, Nelly.”

  When Nelly gave the all clear, everyone was halfway through a sandwich. While the rest finished, Becky began her explanation.

  “Kris, I worked with Ray providing Civil Affairs in the captured Iteeche territory. I was in charge of several Iteeche planets from the time we captured them until the time they were recaptured. I ran the closest thing we could to a government.”

  “I didn’t know that,” Kris admitted.

  “You suddenly own a planet, you have to do something with it,” Becky pointed out. “Back in human history, Civil Affairs followed the battle forces and did its best to bring the city back up to a decent place to live. Power, water, food, some sort of justice. We put things back together so the next government, be it local or foreign, could take over again.”

  She paused. “With the Iteeche, it was a major challenge.”

  “Why?” Kris asked.

  “You have to understand. We didn’t know the language. We didn’t know the customs. We didn’t know the first thing about these people, economic, political, cultural. Nothing. Most of their machinery didn’t make a lot of sense to us. Nothing seemed computerized. We had to go back hundreds of years in human history to figure out how all this stuff worked.”

  “So, how did it go?” Jack asked.

  “Poorly,” Becky admitted. “We did our best to get food moving from the farms to the cities, but agriculture is a whole lot more complicated than it looks like on the surface. The farmers used Iteeche night soil as their main fertilizer. We wondered why they didn’t seem to have any central sewer system. The shit piled up and we had epidemics on our hands before we realized why farmers were all the time heading into the city and being stopped by our roadblocks.”

  Becky shook her head. “That was just one of the messes we found ourselves in. The rulers, administrators, whoever, had fled, maybe on the last star ship out. Maybe into the hills. While we floundered around trying to get something going for the locals, they died by the thousands, tens of thousands.” Becky got a faraway look in her eyes, as if seeing the disaster again.

  “I administered, or tried to administer three different Iteeche planets, each a bigger disaster than the last. By the time we were being driven back, I’d learned a bit about their language, but almost nothing about their culture, government, economy. Nothing at all.”

  She looked at Kris. “I hope you can fill in all the blanks that eluded me.”

  Kris nodded. “Is this why you came to see me?”

  Becky shrugged. “Actually, no. Your father wanted me to talk to you about the structure of your embassy and its staff.”

  “Talk to me,” Kris said.

  “There are five parts to any fully functional embassy. You’re familiar with the consular offices. They’ll issue visas to Iteeche wanting to come here and try to keep tabs on our own citizens in the Empire. Help our citizens out if they get in trouble. Collect the body and ship it home if matters go totally south.”

  “I seem to remember getting my passport handed to me a few times by a consular officer after I was made persona non grata.”

  “They’re your people. There’s also the management types that run the embassy. I suspect you’ll want to have your Abby coordinate with these people. What with us not even knowing what kind of a building we’ll have, we don’t know what to send with you. We’ll try to give you some creative and resilient types.”

  “Creative and resilient,” Kris observed. “I’m going to need a lot of those kind of people.”

  “Yeah. Now, economic officers handle the exchange of technology, science and trade,” Becky said.

  “If they’ve got to coordinate with the likes of my Grampa Al, I’ll need several dozen skilled with whips, chains, and, if that doesn’t work, machine guns?” Kris asked, batting her eyelashes innocently.

  “We’ll get you the best we have, but remember, guys like your Grampa Al can offer more bucks than we can.”

  “Honor, duty, country?” Jack asked. “Aren’t they worth anything these days?”

  “To some of us, yes,” Becky said. “To others? Not so much. This is also the problem that we don’t know anything about how business is done in the Iteeche Empire. Is every load haggled over? Do they want iron clad contracts that last twenty years? Is exaggeration expected or will the slightest lie get a bargainer hung up by their big toes over an ant hill? Different human cultures have taken different approaches to the exchange of goods and services over the years. After running several planets, we still don’t know word one on how the Iteeche do it.”

  Kris shook her head. “Do the damn fools that are all hyperexcited about trade know any of this?”

  “I’ve had talks with several of them,” Becky said. “Do you think any listened to me?”

  “Yeah,” Jack muttered.

  “Moving right along,” Becky said, “We’re looking for some really good and creative public diplomacy officers. People who will get information out to the Iteeche about us nice humans.”

  “You mean propagandists?” Jack said.

  “Oh, that’s such a nasty word. Think more like handing out lollipops to promote mutual understanding between our two people.”

  “Do we know how to do that?” Kris asked.

  “Haven’t a clue,” Becky admitted. “Again, we’ll get you the best people we’ve got, but it will be anybody’s guess as to how they do their job and how much the Iteeche will let them.”

  “Do you get the feeling a lot of people may be coming back on the empty ships?” Jack asked.

  “I hope not,” Kris said. “We need to sell ourselves and build bridges between us. That it?”

  “Nope, I left my old stomping grounds until last. Political officers. We do our best to figure out what the hell is going on in country. We go to cocktail parties, track media . . .”

  “Run spies,” Jack said, cutting her off.

  “Oh, that’s such a nasty word, and we usually have the station chief hidden somewhere among the cultural affairs types.

  “Cultural affairs?” Kris asked. “Another type?”

&
nbsp; “Not usually. They are folks that are just dropping by for a bit. Musicians, writers, people who can actually do cultural stuff for the locals. We’re working on getting some for you.”

  “So,” Kris said. “Back to the political officer that isn’t a spy.”

  “These foreign service types try to keep a thumb on the pulse of the host. Talk to people, listen. Overhear something. Really, most of their information does come from the media and official reports like industrial production, mining output and the like.”

  “Do you think the Iteeche are going to share any of that information with us?”

  Becky shrugged. “I have no idea. Still, this is the kind of staff we put together for the embassy we set up in your Vicky Peterwald’s provisional capital after the Greenfeld Empire split down the middle. It’s what we plan on giving you. Can you think of anything different?”

  “I was kind of hoping you would,” Kris admitted.

  “Yeah. The Iteeche were an enigma even after we conquered an entire satrap. Hell, we thought we’d conquered the whole damn empire. Imagine our surprise when we finally deciphered one of their maps and found out it was one down and ninety-nine more to go.”

  Now it was Kris’s turn to say, “Yeah,” before she went on. “I understand I will have four or five people for every job slot. Is that right?”

  “Your father sent out an invitation for other planets and associations to suggest or offer their people to your embassy. Imagine his surprise, but not mine, when we started getting back a whole lot of responses.”

  “Why are you not surprised?” Kris asked.

  “This is the first embassy to the Iteeche. Yes, you need information, and you will be reporting to King Raymond, but, do people trust your reports? The accuracy of the reports he passes along to the other allies? Anyone who can afford their own eyes on the ground is going to make that investment.”

  “So, my embassy will leak like a sieve.”

  Becky raised her eyebrows. “You can take that two ways. These side channels can be your enemy, or they can be your friends. How fast do you want information to get back to human space? How widely do you want it released? You returned from your circumnavigation of the galaxy. How successful were you in getting your message out?”

  “Nada. Zero and zip,” Kris said.

  “Correct. You lost control of the narrative and others took over getting their message out. Not yours.”

  “Are you suggesting I run my own information service outside of my Grampa Ray’s?”

  “There are many reasons why we are meeting in this secure room,” she said with a cheerful chuckle. “Remember, I was around when the Longknife legend was being built. I know what went into the first couple of layers on the foundation.”

  Kris leaned back in her chair and let that run around inside her skull for a long moment. “So, you’re basically telling me to make sure that I get what I want out of this. It’s time to quit being the wide-eyed, idealistic romantic.”

  Becky said nothing.

  “I don’t think she has to tell you that, Kris,” Jack said. “I think you already know it. She’s just advising you what tools you have that you can use to get what you want.”

  “Yes, I think she is,” Kris said.

  They talked a bit more, refining what they’d already covered. When they got back to the potential mob scene of diplomats all competing to do the same thing, Kris turned to Jack.

  “Maybe if we got all the diplomats on one huge liner, we’d have a whole lot fewer of them by the time we got there?”

  Becky laughed. “Don’t bet on it. You’re much more likely to have a whole lot more people when you get there. We diplomats are not nearly as good at killing folks as, say a Marine battalion, but we’re very good at screwing people.”

  “Ouch,” Jack said.

  Chapter 12

  Kris was not surprised a few days later when Gramma Trouble arranged for both her and Trouble to drop by for dinner.

  The kids loved these two. They filled in a lot of the holes left in their life by absent grandparents and great-grandparents. Grampa Trouble had tales of his adventures, suitably colored for young minds, and misadventures that left them all laughing. After supper, Kris and Jack, Amanda and Jacques, Grampa and Gramma Trouble adjourned to the library for coffee and drinks.

  “So, Grampa, Gramma, have you heard about the diplomatic mission to the Iteeche Empire?” Kris asked.

  “Who with their nose to any grindstone hasn’t, Kitten? And yes, and it’s time and past time we did it,” Grampa Trouble snapped. “We need to normalize things. Get over all the mistakes we made during first contract and get over ourselves. Us vets, included.”

  “I’m glad to hear you talking that way,” Kris said. “My problem is the economy. We have all kinds of huge corporations all set to make massive amounts of money, and I don’t have any idea what we’re headed into. Amanda and Jacques are my leads for economic and sociological issues, but they can’t tell me much. Did you, or anyone in the army fighting the Iteeche learn anything about their economy?”

  Grampa Trouble glanced at Ruth, then seemed to settle back in his chair as she leaned forward. “During the war, I worked with a certain Becky Graven. You should look her up.”

  “She met with me a few days ago, Gramma. What did you do for Becky?”

  “Whatever I could do to keep the Iteeche fed and not killing each other while we were occupying their planets,” Ruth said.

  “She told me about the problems feeding them and how you couldn’t figure out the culture or economy. She didn’t tell me anything about them killing each other.”

  “It was hard to say exactly where all the bodies came from,” Gramma Trouble said, glancing at Grampa Trouble. “We had food riots when the we ran low on their staple food, the tubers they ate raw or cooked. We had people dying of epidemics. Did she tell you about our problems with their sewage systems?”

  “She did,” Kris admitted.

  “Sewage, water, power? We couldn’t get any of them back up or find the Iteeche who could. We got zero cooperation from them. And every morning, among the bodies were Iteeche horribly killed. Bodies mutilated. We never found anyone in the act. We could never figure out why they were killing each other. It was crazy.”

  “How did you finally learn enough about their language to get peace negotiations going?”

  Now the older couple did exchange glances.

  “One of my patrols came across a couple of dozen Iteeche in pretty nice clothes.” General Trouble said. “You have to understand, most Iteeche were naked or just had a pair of pants to their name. These folks had full dress outfits. Mostly Green, with some white, although there were a few gray and golds among them. The patrol found them heading down the road toward them, all four arms over their heads.”

  Grampa Trouble shook his head. “They just kind of followed us home. My people were smart enough not to get too close, but not to try to tie them up. Some lieutenant was the first human to show a willingness to take a chance. Well, I guess those Iteeche took the first chance. They got passed up to me. Between your grandmother here and Becky, we found we had some linguistic resources on planet. It took a while. Boy, Nelly, could we have used your skill set back then. Finally, we started to build a dictionary. That was when we discovered that depending on who you were talking to, the words were different. Every noun. Every verb had to be different depending on your status in the pecking order and the person you were talking to. Good Lord!”

  “And then we got chased off the planet,” Gramma Trouble said. “Becky made sure we got the language team off first. Ray made sure they were pulled well back and out of harm’s way, but not so far that we line beasts lost control of them. What a war. The farther you went from the front lines, the more bloodthirsty the people were.”

  “Hell has no fury like a non-combatant,” Kris muttered.

  “Ain’t that the truth,” Trouble said.

  “Didn’t you find out anything from them about Iteeche
culture, economics, or technology?” Kris asked.

  “Kris, they were Imperial advisors,” Ruth said. “I don’t really think they knew how to change a light bulb or even turn on a light. They had servants. Slaves. Whatever. They did everything for them. Think of them as philosophers. The Navy officers knew a few practical things, but not a lot. They commanded. They had artificers to handle all the technical side of their ships.”

  Kris found herself scrubbing at her face and was glad she’d already washed off the light coat of makeup she’d put on that morning. “These folks really are alien,” she half muttered to herself.

  “That’s what we came to realize. Stranger and stranger. Curiouser and curiouser,” Grampa Trouble said. He glanced at his wife, and again he leaned back in his chair and she took over the conversation.

  “Kris, dear, we’d like to ask you for a favor.”

  “Me?” Kris said, caught by surprise. “Whatever you ask, if I can get it for you, it’s yours.”

  “Don’t be so quick to offer us old warhorses a free ride,” Ruth said, with a soft chuckle. “We know you’re going deep into the Iteeche Empire. We also know that both you and Jack may be up to your ears in alligators. Or squid, if you’ll allow an old vet the use of a banned term. We’d like to come along with you to be full-time grandparents to Ruth and John.”

  Now it was Kris’s turn to retreat back into her chair. She glanced at Jack. He raised her two high eyebrows, but said nothing.

  Grampa and Gramma Trouble were about the only two relatives that Kris would risk leaving Ruth and John with. But she’d always assumed they were too busy with the other grandkids and great-grandkids to have time to devote to just two of the battalion of offspring they had.

  They were, however, Iteeche War vets. Grampa Trouble had led offensives where millions of Iteeche had died. Gramma Ruth had just now admitted to being involved in operating what Ron the Iteeche called the civilian slave labor death camps that figured prominently in the Iteeche stories of the war.

  Becky had said she was not likely to be wanted in the Empire. Were these two any more acceptable?

  So, Kris asked that question.