Kris Longknife's Replacement: Admiral Santiago on Alwa Station

by Mike Shepherd

  “Very good,” Sandy said. “Now, while that rocket is doing its thing, I find that I must do mine. Is there a restroom near at hand?”

  That drew a blank stare.

  “Toilet facility?” Penny offered.

  Apparently, Mimzy’s second guess was better than her first, and Sandy was pointed toward a door with a triangular sign on it. The one across from it had a straight line.

  Interesting.

  Sandy was half afraid that she’d find herself squatting over some sort of litter box, but she found stalls with toilets she could sit right down on. She closed the door, secured it in a rational manner, and settled to do her business.

  As she contemplated her future with these kinds of creatures under her command, she heard a soft hissing sound. She glanced around to see if she could spot a leak, then recognized a smell. The odor wasn’t offensive, nor was it anything she’d ever smelled before.

  She started to stand, and found herself struggling to get her feet under herself. She reached for her automatic, but before she could draw it she found herself falling face forward onto the door.

  Then she blacked out.

  Chapter 15

  Captain Penelope Pasley, Chief of Alien Intelligence, which seemed to be covering more than one species at the moment, watched the rocket climb. Mimzy translated a lot of the chatter going on around the room. It sounded much like she would have heard from a human team who had just pulled off the Big One.

  No one raised any alarms, but rather soft, confident voices continued a litany of all results being in the ball park.

  The probe reached orbit. The second stage cut off and cut loose from the stage that would hurl it toward the moon and the final stage that would attempt a soft landing. Penny joined in the joy, exchanging well dones with many of the team that had done it and who were only too willing to include a human in their celebration.

  Only when things quieted down did Penny notice a certain lack.

  “Where’s the toilet facilities?” she asked the cat she’d just been hugging.

  She pointed Penny toward the back of the room and down a corridor. Penny quickly climbed the steps to the viewing gallery above the top row of work stations and, catching sight of two rooms with markings, quickly headed in that direction.

  Somewhere along the line, she picked up her minder.

  “Is something wrong?”

  “Where is the admiral?”

  “Possible she stepped outside for a breath of air. Do you humans smoke soft medicates?”

  “The admiral does not,” Penny snapped. She reached the door and pushed it open.

  One whiff of the smell told her she had trouble.

  Stepping back, she let the door swing closed. “General Bruce, we may have a problem. I need a Marine in MOPP 4 gear and I needed him here yesterday.”

  “On his way,” came from Mimzy.

  The door to the front of the control center slammed open and a Marine dashed in, pulling his MOBB headgear shut and zipping it in place. He took the steps three at a time, scattering cats out of his way. Maybe he wasn’t the one scaring the cats. Four Marines with weapons drawn trailed only a few steps behind him.

  He got to Penny in hardly a moment.

  “The problem is in here. A strange smell. The Admiral was last reported in here.”

  “Aye, aye, ma’am,” the Marine said, and pushed Penny gently aside. The Navy captain gave way, and the Marine entered the room and quickly closed the door. From inside, Penny heard a blower being switched on.

  As Penny listened to bathroom stall doors being slammed open, another Marine weaseled her way to the front, knelt, and slipped a device under the door. She scowled, either at the result or at the crashing noise as the Marine inside kicked in a stall, but she quickly pulled a small container from the satchel at her side, attached it to the device she’d run under the door, and then squeezed. it.

  “Three. Two. One,” she counted down. Whether the count was for what she’d just sprayed inside or for the Marine, who slammed the door open, it didn’t matter.

  “The admiral is not in here,” the heavily protected Marine reported. In his gloved hands, he held up her wrist commlink and her automatic.

  “General Bruce,” Penny reported through Mimzy, “the admiral is gone. I assume she has been taken. We are full Code Red.”

  “Roger,” Bruce answered, “We are full Code Red. Drago, I want two battalions of Marines down on my site, a full technical team and all necessary support and I want them now.”

  “They will be dropping in fifteen minutes.”

  “You cats have no idea what kind of hurt you have just brought down upon your heads,” Penny said, turning to her minder. That cat was not in sight.

  “Marines, seal this site,” she ordered. She had two platoons on hand. They would be enough.

  Chapter 16

  Grand Admiral Sandy Santiago came back to consciousness to find herself being towed along on a small trolley through a tight, dimly lit, and leaking dirt tunnel.

  She had lost her pants. Apparently, whoever had grabbed her from the bathroom stall had applied cat logic to her dress and absconded with her in coat, but nothing lower down.

  Her naked lady parts were the worst of Sandy’s problem.

  Her legs were taped together both above and below the knees, her hands were likewise taped across each other at the wrist and her elbows were held to her body by more tape. A wad of toilet paper with a strange taste had been shoved into her mouth, then taped over.

  Someone cornered the market on tape.

  Sandy tried to see where she was going, and got her head scratched by one long claw. Whoever was towing her on this cart had two or three long claws into her dress blues coat and at least one, maybe two more available to cut her throat if the need arose.

  Sandy settled in, made herself comfortable for the moment, and did her best to make sure no such need arose.

  I bet Penny and General Bruce are having a conniption fit by now.

  Sandy did check to make absolutely sure her service automatic hadn’t ended up anywhere on her body.

  Nope, it has gone to where my pants and panties headed off for.

  Refusing to take the counsel of her fears, or let the tight, damp quarters or the dank air spook her, Sandy lay still, took long slow breaths, and waited for the situation to change.

  There was no doubt in her mind that Penny and General Bruce would make sure it did.

  Chapter 17

  Penny set her Marines to tearing the place apart, not waiting for General Bruce’s reinforcements to arrive. There was a rubberlike mat before the sink and mirrors. When it would not move, she had Marines rip it up with their bayonets.

  Under it they found the trap door they were looking for. It opened into a duct with a ladder that led straight down. No sooner was it open, than a female Marine was dropping down it, two rungs at a time.

  “There’s a room down here. I’ve found the admiral’s dress blues pants and shoes.”

  “Is the air breathable?” her sergeant demanded.

  “I think so. I’m breathing it.”

  Penny did not wait for an answer, but went down the ladder, her legs outside it, her hands dropping her two, maybe three rungs at a time.

  Hitting hard, Penny dropped and rolled, taking the place in with a hasty glance. It was a service room. What looked like a furnace stood in one corner, power converters in another. Four quick strides took Sandy to the single door. It opened inward with a click. It led into another dusty industrial area that led back upstairs to the main launch command center.

  Sandy shook her head. No half naked admiral had been paraded through there. “There has to be another way out of here.”

  Returning to the open duct, Sandy call up it. “Sargent, get your team down here. I want this room searched with a fine-tooth comb.”

  In a moment, Marines filled both rooms, each with a square assigned to them, each looking for how this locked room had swallowed their admiral.


  The breakthrough came in the outer room.

  “Captain, you’ll want to see this.”

  Penny was at the elbow of a Marine Corporal. She shone her flash along the side of a supply cabinet.

  “Grease, ma’am. Someone greased the floor here.”

  “Move that thing,” Penny ordered.

  Three burly Marines soon had the cabinet moving. Behind it, carved into a concrete wall was a square close to a meter across. Inside that was a dirt hole. The light showed darkness; the corporal intensified the flash. Light reached deeper into the tunnel.

  It showed a pile of dirt. The tunnel had caved in.

  Sandy needed both arms to keep Marines from scrambling into the hole, to start digging with their bare hands.

  “General Bruce, we’ve found a dirt tunnel that is likely how they got the admiral out of here. It’s collapsed, whether by intent or accident, I don’t know. I need engineers. Mimzy, this is for transmission to all the major powers on this planet. ‘Grand Admiral Santiago has been kidnaped out of the command bunker where she was observing the launch of your moon probe. I call on all of you for assistance to assure her safe return. I need not tell you that failure in this effort will have dire consequences for our future relationship.’”

  That lets the cat out of the bag, Penny thought, and did not suppress a bitter smile at the thought of what must be happening around this world in its halls of power.

  Chapter 18

  Sandy smelled a change in the air before the light started to get normal. She sensed a steady, brighter light, before she was rolled into a small cavern, dirt on all side with rough wood for a roof and a muddy, clay floor.

  Two cats in muddied fur, no harness, no markings, pulled her up from the cart and stood her roughly on her feet.

  “Does anyone speak Standard?” Sandy asked as she swayed unsteadily on her bare feet. She’d lost her shoes somewhere along the line. Standing tall proved to be both hard and painful as the tape pulled savagely on her skin as she forced it to stretch and let her stand.

  “Talk, you, no,” the muddied cat at her right elbow said.

  There were four cats in the room. Two holding her, one who’d dragged her, and was out of breath, and a single other, a male, it’s pelt white where it wasn’t filthy with mud. He was intently staring at some sort of instrument and ignoring the rest.

  “Why am I here?” Sandy asked, trying for simple and direct.

  That got her cuffed. No claws, but those paws packed a wallop. Sandy bounced off the one who could speak and ended up on the muddy floor.

  The two pulled her back up to her feet.

  The one that hit her and the one that dragged her exchanged growls while the possible translator steadied the admiral on her feet.

  That’s gonna leave a mark.

  The male growled something and the other two stopped their argument. He said something more and got an answer from the potential translator. They talked back and forth for a long minute. Through all the talk, the male kept his eyes on the gear he tended.

  Then the translator said. “You. Change. All. You. Sun. Not . . . hot.”

  So, they were giving her an answer. “I will change everything,” Sandy revised the translation slowly, carefully pronunciation each word. “Because of me, the sun will no longer shine.”

  All four cats swung their heads back and forth.

  “I’ll take that for a yes.”

  That got her a gentle cuff from the speaking one.

  “Yes.”

  “Yes.”

  Sandy sighed. So once again, a change agent was taking it in the balls. It was tempting to attempt a long philosophical discussion of just how they’d kidnaped the wrong person. That Sandy and the humans weren’t the ones barreling down on them with murder in their eyes, but Sandy doubted the limited vocabulary that she shared with this one cat would do her much good.

  Next time I come down here, I bring one racy computer with all the bells and whistles and all the languages that Nelly has translated.

  Of course, a fat lot of help that future equipment load out was doing her right now.

  Penny, Steve, where are my damn Marines? You said I had just as heavy a detachment as Kris Longknife would have had. So, would you really have let the princess sweat this long in a stinking, damp hole that looks ready to cave in any minute?

  Chapter 19

  Penny stood on the steps of the command center. She’d called in the world. It was a real hoot to watch the world come running.

  A few miles away was a very long runway. It was now cycling longboats through it at a prodigious pace. First one shuttle would land and taxi around the apron to a stop. By the time Marines had piled out of it and jumped aboard small wheeled transports they’d brought so they could race for Penny’s location, three more longboats were down, and a fifth would land as the first taxied out. While the sixth was on approach, the first would start its takeoff run.

  There were never more than five shuttles on the ground at any one time.

  Admiral Drago was not only dropping two reinforced Marine battalions, but a serious Navy contingent as well. Communications, medical, technical, whatever it took to support and feed this army was landing and moving out with the efficiency that only a highly-advanced civilization can bring to the organization and application of violence.

  Hopefully it doesn’t come to that.

  Racing up the road from town was a different and definitely less well organized effort.

  The first to arrive was a police officer that appeared to be the sheriff of the district. She was quickly followed by the city’s chief of police. On the very bumper of her car were three large, black rigs from which emerged cats, all in black jackets with sliver piping. Apparently, President Almar had her own investigative force and they considered themselves as having primary jurisdiction.

  Penny, the daughter of two cops, understood very well how these things went. She turned them over to themselves and left them to debate the issues to their hearts’ content. Maybe one of them was in cahoots with the kidnapper. Maybe none were. It didn’t matter to Penny, none of them were likely to do anything good or bad while they argued who was head honcho here.

  In the meantime, one of the rocket scientists had gotten hold of the engineers who built the command center. A small fleet of work trucks, rusted, bent and muddy, rolled up to the bunker. Penny had a Marine captain take these engineering bosses down to see what there was to see.

  Four minutes later, engineers and techs in muddy boots and loaded down with gear went running into the building. A few minutes later, the senior engineer was back at Penny’s elbow.

  “Hi, I’m Krysta. I can’t say that I’m pleased to meet you, or you me. To start with, this is lousy ground,” she told Penny. “Water’s almost up to the surface. We had to drive pilings to get the bunker not to sink. How they got that tunnel to hold up long enough to pull this off is a bloody miracle and I spit on the goddess who accepted the offering,” she said, spitting on the deck.

  “Now, we can follow the tunnel, redigging it and supporting it as we go,” Krysta said,

  “or we can forget what’s down there. I strongly suggest we figure out where the damn tunnel is located from up here, safely on the surface, and follow it to where it goes.”

  “I like that,” Penny said and as the locals deployed to do things their way, Penny hollered for a platoon of Marine combat engineers. She told the Marines that the locals had challenged them to a race to see who got to the admiral first.

  Sandy considered for a moment whether she could trust any of the cats in muddy boots not to pull something. Then she noticed the plethora of Marines or Sailors now at nearly every cat’s elbow.

  With a confident grin, Penny stood well back and watched the mud fly.

  Chapter 20

  Before Sandy could make any more attempts to get the one that talked a smattering of Standard to explain why they had risked their necks to kidnap her, the male got excited about something coming
from his board, and Sandy was shoved forward toward a tiny exit. A short passage ended with her neck deep in muddy water. She stood in a small creek or bayou under a low overhang from the bank above. Two meters away was . . . something.

  The object looked part animal, part mineral, with a bit of low vegetation sprouted from its top. Then the top lifted up, and Sandy saw that it was some sort of submersible boat. Two cats were at its controls forward, a third seemed intent on some propulsion system well aft.

  Amidships was a void that two of the cats slipped quickly into with the flowing grace Sandy had come to expect from the cats. The other two held on tight to Sandy’s elbows. The four of them then pushed or pulled Sandy aboard and let her plop onto the bottom of the boat with the rest of the bilge water.

  The last two scrambled aboard, the top was lowered and secured. With a soft hum, the boat began to motor off.

  Sandy had a sense that the boat settled even lower in the water. She suspected that the cats figured that being out of sight would keep them safe and sound.

  I wouldn’t bet money on that.

  Mentally, Sandy began to count down to when these cats would find they were in a world of hurt.

  Sandy had only counted from thirty down to fifteen when there was a thump. That was followed by a crunch and the boat made a decided lurch in reverse.

  One of the cats who was driving raised a tiny periscope arrangement, then let out a yowl. She shouted something. The motor operator hit a lever on her device; it let out a loud protest, and the craft shot into reverse.

  Only to come to a dead halt.

  That stop was accompanied by the sounds of a propeller spinning, bending, and tearing off.