Daring

by Mike Shepherd

  Kris again waited. Still not a note of dispute from the men across from her. For the first time, it dawned on Kris who was missing.

  Grampa Trouble hadn’t been invited to this night’s work.

  She should have guessed that would be the case.

  “But eight dinky battleships were hardly enough to take on those aliens’ monster. No sir, I may be a Longknife, but even I’m not that crazy. Or not crazy yet. How many years, Grampa, does it take to get as crazy as the legend needs?”

  “A bit longer, Kris,” he said softly. A stranger might have mistaken it for the caring voice of a grandsire.

  “So you sent me the Hellburners.”

  “Hellburners?” Mac asked.

  “Yeah, that’s what we named the torpedoes with chunks of a neutron star in their warheads. By the way, we managed to spike that stuff with antimatter. Boy, you talk about an explosion.”

  “How did it go?” the king asked.

  “Rather spectacular. That huge mother ship . . . about the size of a big moon . . . we clobbered it. Maybe as much as half of her was gone when we had to duck out on the show in a hurry. Best guess is we killed ten, twenty billion aliens. Maybe more.

  “The problem, Grampa, was that the monster mother ship had kittens. Lots and lots of kittens. Huge things that made our battlewagons look tiny. And boy were they mad. They took off after us like you’d expect someone to chase whoever had just beat up their mother ship.

  “And boy did those kittens pack a wallop. Laser and lasers and more lasers. They didn’t have any armor. Something tells me they’ve been the biggest, meanest bastards around for a long time. Nobody’s got a good hit on them for a while. We changed that. I expect they’ll be slapping on the protection real quick.”

  “I warned you not to use our best weapon right off,” Mac told his king.

  “Duly noted,” the king muttered. “Kris, did you take out the mother ship?”

  “I don’t know. Things got bad, and we had to run. It’s all in my report. But you might want to read the addendum first.”

  “Why?”

  “Because we ran into another alien ship on our way home. It was a scout ship that managed to jump deep into the Iteeche Empire and, bad luck for it, landed in the one worthless system where we were refueling. Likely they planned to make a couple of small jumps, glance into several systems, then run home. That didn’t happen. We killed it.”

  “Good,” Mac and Crossie said.

  “But a couple tried to escape with their babies. Cutest things. We got them alive. Not the parents, the hatch on their craft came open. They’re dead. The kids are alive. And we’ve got a DNA sample of the aliens sniffing around the rim of the Iteeche Empire.”

  “Are they the same as the ones you ran into before?” the king asked.

  “Yes and no. We’ve got DNA from three of the four groups we ran into. If we can trust the DNA results, they are related. Related,” Kris repeated, “but distantly, like no intermarriage in the last hundred thousand years for some. There are three or four of those monster mother ships wandering the stars looking for systems to devour. How much you want to bet me that we’ve found all there are?”

  Each of the three men uttered their favorite swearword. Kris, her report given, settled into the chair she’d ignored.

  “That changes things,” Mac said.

  “No it doesn’t,” Crossie insisted.

  “The people aren’t ready for another long war,” King Ray said in a tired voice. “We need more time to mobilize them. There are enough complaints about taxes as it is. If we start building a huge Navy, there’ll be hell to pay.”

  “Ah, guys, one word of straight dope,” Kris said. “Wars come when someone else decides, not when you’re ready for them.”

  “You shut up, woman,” Crossie shouted. “If you’d done what we wanted, there wouldn’t be any of this trouble.”

  “You sent me the weapons,” Kris snapped. “You didn’t want me to use them? If you hadn’t sent me those Hellburners, I wouldn’t have had two cents to put in. As it was, they were worth a good fifty cents.”

  “Gentlemen, gentlemen,” the king said. “Arguing what might have been is a fool’s game. We have to think of what to do now. Kris, you nailed that alien scout?”

  “Totally. That joker will not be reporting.”

  “So that band of aliens will have a potential hot datum. However, what Kris did on the other side of the galaxy has got to draw their attention. Even if the tribes have wandered far from each other, having one of their mother ships blown to hell will have to focus their attention. That should buy us time. We can use it to start a media campaign to prepare the voters for what’s to come.”

  Kris stood up, shaking her head. “Assuming that what’s to come ain’t coming at you already. You men disgust me. I’ve had it being your cat’s-paw. Mac, give me my papers. I’ll sign them. I quit.”

  For the first couple of years of Kris’s Navy career, every time she was called in for one of these little talks with Mac, he had her resignation papers in hand and was quick to offer them for her signature. Kris couldn’t really blame him; she’d given him plenty of reasons to wish her on someone else’s payroll.

  Now she was demanding her resignation papers . . . and all he did was sit there and shake his head.

  “What’s the matter? You’ve wanted me to quit for years.”

  “We can’t have you out there,” the king said, “on talk shows like that Amanda girl. You’re pretty enough that they’d all want you. And you talking up a war right now is not what we want. Sorry, Kris, but you are in the Navy, and you’ll stay in the Navy.”

  “I’ve finished my service requirement,” Kris said.

  “Yes, but I have declared an emergency. No one leaves without our letting them out. And you, young lady, we won’t let out. Mac here has found a job for you. Madigan’s Rainbow wants a squadron of fast patrol boats to help them control their system’s space. We think you’re just the person to command their boats.”

  “I’ll still find an open mic,” Kris said, standing up.

  “Not on Madigan’s Rainbow,” Crossie said with a grin full of casual evil.

  Kris eyed the three of them and saw only confidence that they had her just where they wanted her. She shook her head in anger, frustration, and disgust.

  Finally, she spat, “Once, you may have been a great general, Raymond Longknife, maybe even a brilliant one. But now you’re just a two-bit politician.”

  Since Raymond was her king, she gave him the opportunity for the last word. He just looked at her, showing no emotions.

  None at all.

  Kris did an about-face that would have made her DI at OCS proud, and marched from the room.

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  About the Author

  Mike Shepherd grew up Navy. It taught him early about change and the chain of command. He’s worked as a bartender and cabdriver, personnel advisor and labor negotiator. Now retired from building databases about the endangered critters of the Northwest, he’s looking forward to some fun reading and writing.

  Mike lives in Vancouver, Washington, with his wife, Ellen. He enjoys reading, writing, dreaming, watching grandchildren for story ideas, and upgrading his computer—all are never-ending pursuits.

  He’s hard at work on Kris’s next story: Kris Longknife: Furious.

  You can learn more about Mike and all his books at his website www.mikeshepherd.org or e-mail him at Mike_Shepherd@comcast.net.

  Ace Books by Mike Shepherd

  KRIS LONGKNIFE: MUTINEER

  KRIS LONGKNIFE: DESERTER

  KRIS LONGKNIFE: DEFIANT

  KRIS LONGKNIFE: RESOLUTE

  KRIS LONGKNIFE: AUDACIOUS

  KRIS LONGKNIFE: INTREPID

  KRIS LONGKNIFE: UNDAUNTED

  KRIS LONGKNIFE: REDOUBTABLE

  KRIS LONGKNIFE: DARING

  eSpecials

  KRIS LONGKNIFE: TRAINING DAZE

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  Mike Shepherd, Daring