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

by Mike Shepherd

  Rita considered the question for about a second. This wild story did have her curiosity up.

  “Keep talking.”

  “We had a master sergeant from the Savannah army. He led the boarding party. They were lured into a trap, then shot at. He came back screaming about these things, ten feet tall, four eyes, four arms, four legs. I didn’t believe a word he said.”

  “Like I’m not believing a word you’re saying.”

  “Yeah. Maybe. But our boarding party bailed out of their ship real fast, and as I’m trying to recover our lifeboats, the damn things fires some sort of explosive bomb at us. Knocks us all around and smashes our last lifeboat up so that it dumps its people into space. People with no space suits.”

  The man looked at Rita as if he was still hearing the screams.

  He shook himself. “After that, we used our lasers to cut the ship up. That’s when I saw them. We all saw them. Bodies floating in space. Skulls with a beak and four eyes. Bodies with eight arms and legs. Four up top, say arms. Four down low. Call them legs. I tell you I saw them.” His eyes had that thousand-yard stare Rita had seen in some shell-shocked soldiers.

  Suddenly, he grabbed through the bars, clutched her elbow.

  “Lady, you think you got problems, but what we got is nothing. We’re not alone anymore. We are not alone.”

  He let go of her arm and pushed himself back to the prison cot. He stretched out to float a few centimeters above it. His eyes closed, but his body stayed rigid.

  Rita tapped the bars and propelled herself toward the door. She paused there to glance back at him. He still hovered, rigid as a board, above his bunk.

  Lost in thought, Rita made her way back to the bridge. “Hesper, make sure that Marine does not tamper with the computer memory over there.”

  “You told me to tell him not to,” her old shipmate said.

  “Well, tell him again, and emphasize it like a herd of elephants.”

  “Yes, captain. Is something wrong?”

  “I don’t know. I really don’t know, but I’m hoping it’s not as wrong as that pirate captain thinks it could be.”

  Rita checked with the ship’s computer. There was a recording of all activity in the brig. She pulled up her conversation with the captain and replayed it. Unlike some official recordings, this one captured their talk very well. She ordered a copy of that meeting saved to her commlink, then had another one attached to a message she sent off to Ray. CONFIDENTIAL AND PERSONAL, she labeled it. And from her.

  Then she had Hesper check on the computer memory from the pirate ship. “All of it.”

  “Yes, ma’am. It’s coming, Captain.” Hesper’s tone of voice said she’d been micromanaged enough for one day.

  “As soon as we get our Marines back aboard, set us a course for Wardhaven. Best speed,” she told Ursel Jannson.

  “Aren’t we going to take the pirate ship in, ma’am?”

  “No time for that. She’s not going anywhere. Let her drift. Just get us moving for Wardhaven.”

  “Aye, aye, captain.”

  Thirty minutes later, the Exeter got underway. As soon as it was through the jump, it put on 1.25 acceleration for the next jump. It would be a fast trip.

  Chapter 25

  General Ray Longknife finished his third run through the recording. The first time, he’d been soaking in the sheer joy of seeing Rita and almost missed what the guy was saying. The second time, he concentrated on the man’s words.

  The third time, Ray focused on his eyes.

  Ray didn’t much care for the conclusion he was drawing.

  He called for Andy to come in and silently handed him the message flimsy from Rita.

  He read it. “Good, we finally got one of those bastards. What kind of shape is the computer in?”

  “Watch this recording, please,” Ray said, and activated the large screen in his office.

  The former Navy captain watched the interrogation with intense eyes.

  “Can you replay the last two, three minutes or so,” he said and got up from his chair to stand close to the screen, almost eye to eye with the pirate/explorer captain.

  “Rita sent this to you?” he said, still eyeing the final picture of the captain floating above his bunk.

  “Express. My eyes only. You’re the first to see it besides me.”

  “The guy is telling the truth. Or at least he’s telling the truth as he thinks he experienced it. Do we have their computers?”

  “Rita says there, at the bottom of her message that a subordinate ran a damn good cleansing program on it. She’s bringing them here for a friend of hers, Trudy Seyd, to see if there is anything recoverable.”

  “She’s coming back here?”

  “Just as fast as the Exeter can carry her.”

  “So she does think this is real dope, then.”

  “It looks that way.”

  Andy came back to the conference table, took his seat across from Ray, clasped his hands in his lap and studied them for a long minute. “It’s a big galaxy,” he finally said. “We were bound to find someone we shared it with sooner or later.”

  “Yeah, but did pirates have to make the first contact?”

  “Are you sure this is first contact? How many exploration ships have we got missing? What about the Goose? Maybe it wasn’t a pirate that it ran into.”

  Ray groaned at that. “Damned if I know,” he whispered. “What with new real estate being a private business matter, no one wants anyone to know what ships they have out and where they’re going. Has anyone admitted that one of their private scout ventures is overdue?”

  “If they have, it hasn’t been to this ministry. You think if we tell them that there are four eyed, four armed, four legged, ten-foot-tall monsters out there, they’d run over to tell us?”

  “You think any of them would let a minor thing like a ten-foot-tall monster stop them from this land rush they hope to make bushel baskets of money out of?”

  The old Navy man winced. “Not likely.”

  “Yeah. How do we confront a problem that is an economic and political inconvenience? And with just the unsubstantiated word of a bunch of pirates at that.”

  “Damned if I know,” Andy said with a nervous laugh. “That’s why I took the easy job. All I had to worry about was some dude with a lot of explosive blowing me to kingdom come.”

  For a moment, they shared the laugh.

  “You going to do something about this?” Andy asked, waving a hand at the screen.

  “Whatever I do, I’ll have to be very careful. I’ve got dinner with my in-laws tonight. I think I’ll talk it over with Ernie.”

  Dinner was a quiet affair. The man who ran a quarter of Wardhaven’s industry shared with his wife some of the day’s events. Ray tried to be attentive, but his mind kept wandering. About his own day, he mumbled about paperwork and left it at that.

  After supper, he and Ernie retired to the library.

  “What’s eating you, son?” his father-in-law demanded.

  “I got a recording from Rita.”

  “And you didn’t share it with her mother and me?” was hot with anger.

  “It wasn’t about us,” Ray said, as he slipped a storage device into the screen opposite the couch Mr. Nuu sat on.

  “Doesn’t she look lovely,” the father said, eyes for only his daughter, then his eyes narrowed. “Let me run that back again,” and he jumped the recording back a minute.

  He said nothing as he listened to the rest of it.

  “Damn,” he muttered when it was done. “My daughter does get herself into the worse fixes of any young girl in human space.”

  “So it seems,” Ray said.

  “Is this true, that story he told her? That was the pirate captain, right?” Ernie said.

  “The computers on his ship were wiped,” Ray answered. “Rita is bringing them back so one of her specialists can take them apart with utmost care, but for now, all we have is the word of a bunch of pirates.”

  “Da
mn. No way are any of my hard-headed business associates going to believe a wild ass tale like this.”

  “That was what I was afraid of.”

  “But if it’s true . . ..” the industrialist seemed to wander off in thought.

  Ray let him wander for a long minute. Then let the silence stretch to two.

  “How many ships do you say have gone missing?” Ernie finally asked.

  “Maybe a dozen, maybe more. They range from the Prosperous Goose way off away from human space to a couple of ships on the opposite side of human space from us. But a good three quarter of the missing ships seemed to be on our side of the human sphere. Maybe more.”

  Mr. Nuu worried his lips. “And we can’t be sure that just the missing ships we know about are all the ships that have gone missing. Who sends out an exploration ship to deep space and then lets everyone know it’s gone missing? Are any of us sure a deep scout is missing or just maybe found something and doing a full work up on it?”

  “So not all missing ships get talked about.”

  “Right,” Ernie said, now staring at the ceiling. “You going to take this to the prime minister?”

  “Not this story. Not to that guy. I’m not that stupid. Not after the last visit.”

  “Good, ‘cause if you were, I was going to suggest you shoot yourself first.”

  “Yeah. He didn’t make a fan of me last time we met. Damn politician. Someone with a soul and a serious intent on solving problems ought to run for that job someday.”

  Ernie laughed. “And they would lose the election, flat. No, my boy, we’ve got to handle this one carefully or we’ll be called the boys who hollered wolf. I used to like that story. The wolf showing up when no one expected it.”

  The old man eyed the screen. “Have we found the wolf?” he muttered softly.

  “Maybe we’ve found it. Maybe we haven’t,” Ray said. “Even if we have, the potential human repercussions are way too wild for me to risk shouting wolf.”

  “We’ll see what happens when Rita gets back. When is she due?”

  “She’ll be here just as fast as the Exeter can get her here. I suspect your grandson is going to be very strong, what with him growing up a lot in one and a quarter gees.”

  “It will be nice to see little Alex. I hope he remembers me,” the grandfather said, wistfully.

  Chapter 26

  General Ray Longknife was on the pier watching as the heavy cruiser Exeter caught the first tie down and was hauled into the pier. Beside him was Captain Andy Anderson, retired. Not too far away were Mr. and Mrs. Nuu, eager to see their daughter and grandson. Not too far behind them was an attractive young woman Ray had never met before. His computer said she was Trudy Seyd, Chief of Information Warfare for Wardhaven.

  A bit behind her was a rotund man in a rumpled white silk suit. So, the spy had heard and invited himself to the family gathering.

  Further down the pier, a large Marine detachment under heavy arms had also arrived – the greeting party for the pirate crew.

  Ray had coordinated it all. All except for the spy, of course. No one told that man what to do. Somehow, he knew it all before anyone else did.

  Ray wondered if the spy had watched Rita’s report before he had?

  He wondered, but not for long. So far, the man was a force for good. His grampa had taught Ray early that you don’t look a gift horse in the mouth.

  Then the locks unsealed. The one before Ray was for personnel; one further aft was usually for supplies. Today, the prisoners would use it.

  Two Marines from the ship’s company took station at the end of the brow. A lieutenant (j. g.) with Junior Officer of the Deck brassard and a clip board stood between them. “General Longknife, you are expected. Please come aboard,” she said.

  “This is Captain Andy Anderson of the Ministry of Exploration,” Ray said.

  The J.G. checked her clipboard. “He’s on my list. You may pass, sir.”

  “This is Mr. and Mrs. Nuu, your skipper’s parents,” Ray said, making no move to board.

  The young officer didn’t quite make a face. “Sir, they are not on my list.”

  “Then contact whoever made up your list and get them added.” Ray had commanded junior officers. He fixed her with “the look,” and waited.

  Not wilting at all under pressure, the JOOD stepped back and talked to her wrist computer. It didn’t take but a moment before she stepped forward. “Mr. and Mrs. Nuu, you are invited to the captain’s cabin. I will have a runner take you either there or to the nursery.”

  “The nursery,” Mrs. Nuu blurted.”

  Those two left with happy noises.

  Down the pier, the cargo hatches had been opened and a second brow swung acrouss to the cruiser. Ship’s Marines guided a long single line of scruffily dressed men in handcuffs down to the pier where the local Marines took over. A bus with barred windows rolled down the pier and began to load. A second bus was not far behind it.

  Back in front of the JOOD, Ms. Seyd stepped forward, gave her name and was admitted. Ray had waited for what came next.

  The spy stepped forward.

  “I believe you have a Mr. Smith on your list,” he said with bored assurance.

  “Yes, sir. You and the General and his party are to meet Captain Longknife in the wardroom. I have a chief to take you there.”

  Andy and Ray exchanged a glance. Andy looked just as disappointed that the spy had gotten away with such a transparent bit of chicanery, but the deed was done and they could do nothing but follow a chief through a maze of passageways and ladders until he stopped before a door marked Wardroom. He opened it and stood aside.

  The Exeter’s wardroom was a much bigger affair than the cubby hole on the Friendship, but some things never changed. Rita was at the table closest to the coffee urn, a cup already in front of her. Seated down the table from her were Hesper and Jannson.

  Not seated at the table, but rather in chairs against the wall, were four people in cuffs. Ray recognized the former pirate captain; the other three he would have to be introduced to.

  While the cuffs kind of gave them away, the white engineering shipsuits they wore had been dyed orange, or at least someone had attempted the change in color. What they’d achieved was more akin to some ancient hippie tie-dye. The affectation had made a comeback during some protests against the Unity takeovers on Wardhaven.

  It hadn’t lasted long under the Unity thugs.

  While the exact color of the former pirates’ clothes was open to debate, there was no doubt about the PRISONER stenciled both front and back.

  Ray debated giving his wife the hug and kiss her long absence normally drew, but since they were in her wardroom and not on the pier, he decided it best to postpone any public displays of excess affection.

  They did exchange smiles and she did help him draw a cup of coffee.

  Once everyone had a steaming cup in front of them, the briefing began. Lieutenant Jannson stood, and the screen in the wardroom showed the interview between Captain Longknife and the former pirate captain.

  It was only half way through when there was noise from the passageway. Rita did a quick check of her commlink and the door opened. A Marine Gunny ushered Ernie Nuu in. His blue suit showed evidence of contact with little Alex and his troubled tummy, but the grandfather wore the mar on his suit with a happy grin.

  That went away as he took in the screen.

  Rita made a move to get him his own cup of coffee, but he waved her back to her seat while they listened in deadly silence to the final comments.

  The silence lasted for a serious moment after the screen went blank.

  “I regret to report that we have nothing to add to that report,” the lieutenant said.

  “Have you attempted to access any data on the wiped computers?” Trudy said from where she sat.

  “No ma’am. Our techs tell us they were good and wiped. Any attempt at data recovery will require skills above their paygrade.”

  “I’d like to see them
when it’s convenient,” the woman said with assurance, and took a sip of tea. She alone defied Navy tradition and had chosen tea over coffee.

  “We’ll see that you get them, and a Marine guard,” Captain Longknife said.

  “Good.”

  Rita stood and her navigator sat down. “We think we have an idea where this encounter took place,” she said, standing before the screen as it came to life as a star chart. “Our ‘guests’ here are very circumspect about where their little voyage of discovery started,” she said, eyeing the pirates. “They seem to think that they can trade it for something. However, they have given us more information about their path back to human space. It appears they want to make official their claims to two possibly habitable planets as well as give us some idea of where they left the wreckage of this ball.”

  The pirate captain nodded. The two young men beside him smiled nervously. The young woman seemed more intent on buffing her nails. Not easy in cuffs.

  “It is likely that the fight took place well out from human space. We think it’s likely at M-688, a star system on our sky charts but hardly one that anyone had touched on before.”

  “What are you suggesting?” the spy asked.

  “I suggest we take a major force out to look for the wreckage and go over it with some serious scientific expertise.”

  “How major a force?” Ray asked.

  “A couple squadrons of battleships. Plenty of support ships. Two or three liners filled with the best scientists we have.” Rita said, and had the good grace to grin at her joke.

  “From my contacts with Admiral Zilko in your absence, captain,” Ray said, “I doubt if he could get a pair of battleships crewed, fitted out and away from the pier in less than six, maybe twelve months.”

  “More likely two budget cycles,” Ernie Nuu muttered under his breath. Since Wardhaven’s parliament voted appropriations on a two-year authorization, that added up to four years.

  “So, I can forget the battlewagons,” Rita said.

  “We have the Exeter and the Northampton,” Ray said, dryly “with maybe a few more scientists than Matt’s got on his boat already.”