Kris Longknife's Assassin

by Mike Shepherd

  Vicky shook her head in silence. So did Captain Krätz.

  “I have pictures of his pod. I could show them to you now, but I won’t.” Vicky saw her brother alive, near godlike in his last visit to the palace before he shipped out to forever. Did she want to see a picture of his cold dead body? She didn’t demand the pictures from the Longknife bitch. She did whisper, “Do you know Hank’s survival pod number?”

  “Ninety-seven thousand, five hundred and twelve,” Kris Longknife said evenly.

  “Holy Mother of God,” Captain Krätz muttered.

  “That’s impossible,” Vicky snapped.

  Kris rolled her hand, palm up on the table. “My computer has all the photos taken on my space station of your brother’s pod, both before it was opened and after. Several of them clearly show the pod number. Do you know the pod number on your battle station, Ensign?” Kris asked.

  The woman looked at her captain. “Yes, I do.” Her station in communications had a number. She’d followed procedures and memorized it.

  “I also know mine,” the captain said. “And it’s nowhere near ninety thousand.

  “Why was I never told this?” Vicky demanded.

  Now it was her captain’s turn to roll his hands open, palm up.

  “Do you believe her?” Vicky spat.

  The captain was silent for a long minute. “There is talk, late at night, in the back rooms of private clubs,” he said slowly. “Some in the Navy wonder. Some in the Navy remember Ralf Baja and Bhutta Saris and wonder why they’re not around anymore. The Navy is not that big a place and you can’t have the crews of six super battleships vanish without them being missed. So, yes ma’am, if you had to pick between the words of a woman who just as cool as could be shot out a pirate’s bridge and the babbling of a political officer, who would you trust?”

  A waiter appeared, kept his distance until several sets of guards waved him forward, then took orders from only those at the captain’s table. He left quickly.

  All the time the others were ordering, even while Captain Krätz was ordering for her, Vicky’s thoughts tumbled and swirled.

  “I don’t believe you,” Vicky whispered when the waiter was well gone.

  “Care to tell me why?” Kris Longknife asked gently.

  “Let’s say my Dad’s Navy just tried to pound your planet into rubble. Let’s say you were decorated for stopping them. How many friends did you lose?”

  “A lot,” Kris said evenly.

  “And yet, you are sitting here talking to me and my captain. Eating dinner with us. No. You’re lying.”

  Kris nodded slowly. “How much history have you studied?”

  That sudden turn in the conversation left Vicky blinking. “Quite a bit,” Vicky claimed. Not nearly enough, she thought.

  “What happens when two evenly matched countries go to war?”

  Vicky had never given that question a moment’s thought. Puzzle, she glanced at her captain.

  “When two nations of nearly equal strength resort to war to resolve their differences it is usually a disaster for both,” he said. “The war is long, bitter and indecisive. Neither side can win, but neither side will give up. Generations may perish in the fight. Nations’ treasures may waste away and nothing is proven. Is that what you are alluding to, Your Highness?”

  Kris Longknife nodded. “That is what the wiser heads in my father’s high command tell me when I get angry at the deaths.”

  “That is what the wiser heads in our command councils say,” Captain Krätz said. “So far, they have prevailed.”

  Vicky felt like she had become the punching bag for her captain and Kris Longknife. “Why are you telling her this?”

  “You could just as easily ask her the same,” Captain Krätz said.

  Vicky turned to Kris, more confused than she’d ever been in her life.

  Kris shrugged. “Two plus two is four. A war between ninety planets and a hundred will be a bleeding ulcer. Neither of these can be made a state secret. Only a fool would try. I’m not asking your captain how many battleships are building on Greenfeld. He’s not asking me about Wardhaven or Pitts Hope. He has his guess, I have mine. We probably aren’t off by more than two or three. But none of that really is worth the time of day. Let me ask you a question I’d really like to know,” Kris Longknife said, turning to the captain.

  “I have four armed security men to my back. I assume you will not ask me to commit treason within their hearing,” Captain Krätz said with a grin Vicky would never have expected.

  “I will assume they have no better sense of humor than my Marine escorts do,” Kris said. There were chuckles from both group of guards.

  Kris waited as the salad arrived, laid a napkin in defense of her disgusting dinner dress, and picked up a fork. The others did likewise but waited when Kris paused before spearing a bit of her Caesar salad.

  “Why are you here?” Kris Longknife asked Vicky Peterwald.

  “I was drafted and ordered to the Surprise,” Vicky grumbled. “Now I go where he goes,” she said with a rueful nod to her captain.

  Kris Longknife did not seem satisfied with the answer. She turned to Captain Krätz

  “Georg,” Kris said. Vicky had already learned that a junior officer, even a lieutenant like Kris Longknife, are not familiar with a captain. “How many Greenfeld naval officers have as great a love of daughters as you have?”

  Captain Krätz had begun to frown at the familiarity. No doubt, he did not want Vicky developing bad habits. But at the reminder of his daughters, he smiled.

  “I don’t think there’s a captain in the fleet who’s resigned himself to enjoying, maybe I should say, surviving, feminine surroundings as much as I have.”

  “Your oldest,” Kris Longknife went on. “She should have graduated from college by now. Did she join the Navy?”

  Krätz ruefully shook his head. “Commissioned in the Nursing Corps on graduation day.”

  “Is she on the Surprise?”

  “I would have gladly had her here, but there is a boy.”

  “Isn’t there always?” Kris interjected.

  “Sad to say, yes. He comes from a good family and he is on a battleship. So she asked for orders to that battleship.”

  “Do you trust him?”

  The captain almost smiled as he started again. “I will let you in on a state secret, Longknife girl. In Greenfeld, a loyal wife, be she wealth or poor, will take nine months to present her husband with a fit little baby. However, blushing brides, in their eagerness, almost always do it in six or seven months. Strange that, no?”

  The security guards behind the captain had tensed up at the mention of “state secrets. Now they relaxed back into their seats.

  “And your daughter?”

  “Has been courted for almost six months and is still on active duty?”

  Even the mighty Kris Longknife did not seem to understand the meaning of that count. “Get pregnant, get discharged,” Vicky said dryly.

  “How medieval,” Kris Longknife said.

  “I mentioned that to my father,” Vicky said, now desert dry. “Let’s say we agreed to disagree. Thank God I know where to get birth control.”

  “Not on my ship you don’t,” Captain Krätz snapped. Clearly what was passed around the junior female officer’s quarters did not reach his ears.

  Vicky Peterwald wisely took a bite of salad and said nothing.

  Leave it to Kris Longknife to send the conversation off in a totally different direction. “When I asked why you are here, Vicky, I didn’t mean in the Navy. What I was really asking was, why aren’t you back on Greenfeld? You cost your father a lot when he sent you to Eden, and I doubt your stay in the Navy will be any less expensive.” The way Captain Krätz rolled his eyes told Vicky that the Longknife brat was right once again.

  “But what I really wondered, girl to girl, is why you aren’t tending to your knitting quietly back home?”

  “I don’t knit, and I never do anything quietly,” Vic
ky shot back, “And I could ask you the same question. Why aren’t you doing something ...” Vicky seemed at a loss for words ... and settled for “back on your lovely Wardhaven.”

  “Why am I not on my lovely Wardhaven?” Kris Longknife said. She arranged her croutons in a row before saying. “I don’t want to be any closer to my mother or father than I have to.”

  Vicky snorted at that, but Captain Krätz seemed thoughtful.

  “I’m committed to a Navy career and for some strange reason, the fleet can’t find any job for me near my father, the Prime Minister.”

  Vicky could only imagine someone telling her Daddy that she didn’t want to go where she was supposed to go. Or worse, that she insisted on going someplace different from his will for her.

  Kris Longknife went on. “I refuse to become involved in politics ... and every time I get near Wardhaven, I get sucked into that mess again, and my father gets even madder at me. How am I doing?”

  Vicky had to grab for a napkin to suppress her laughter. As much as she hated Kris Longknife, the look on her face was . . . unforgettable.

  Captain Krätz eyed the Marine seated next to Kris Longknife and got a serious nod of validation. Then the captain shook his head. “Your file is making more and more sense.”

  “And if you report all this,” Kris Longknife said, “do you think it will make better sense to your intelligent analysts?”

  “They wouldn’t believe a word,” Captain Krätz said, dryly.

  Kris Longknife thought for a moment before going on. “Then let me add one more bit of wisdom. They shipped me off to Eden because they thought it was the only place in human space where I’d be safe.”

  “And you might have been if I wasn’t there,” Vicky said proudly.

  “Hire better assassins next time. I didn’t even work up a sweat doing my escape and evade from those bozos.”

  “I captured your grandmother,” Vicky shot back.

  “Major mistake on your part. The Marines took it personal. You never want a Marine company mad at you.”

  “You realize she’s critiquing you,” Captain Krätz said.

  “I thought she was just bragging.”

  “You might learn a thing or three if you listen to her. Your father or his minions have been trying to take her out for a long time and she’s still wrecking their plans.”

  “More often than not, the only reason I’m messing with their plans is because someone’s messing with me,” Kris said. “I wish they’d just leave me alone.”

  “Is that why you’re out here?” Vicky asked.

  “I figured if I was out beyond the rim, I might get some peace and quiet. That why you’re out here?”

  Vicky turned to her captain and raised an expressive eyebrow.

  “Strange, isn’t it,” the captain said, “when chasing after pirates is safer than being back home.”

  “Are we chasing pirates,” Vicky asked, “or is the Surprise just making like it is?”

  Captain Krätz shrugged his shoulders. “How’d you get a shot at a pirate?” he asked.

  “Notice how the Wasp looks like a simple little merchant ship,” Kris Longknife said. Vicky nodded, as did her captain. “They took the first shot. I got the last.”

  Their steaks arrived with appropriate trimmings. All paid appropriate homage to them before Kris Longknife threw out the next question.

  “How bad is it, being a boot ensign in the Greenfeld Navy? My memories of being the junior officer aboard ship are much more fondly memorable as they disappear in the rear view mirror.”

  “You started as a boot ensign?” Vicky asked, more than surprised.

  “Yes, with a captain that made my life far more miserable than I suspect Captain Krätz is making yours.”

  Vicky allowed a raised eyebrows to cast doubt on that possibility.

  “Making ensigns miserable is one of the prime perks of a captain’s job,” Captain Krätz insisted. “Is that not so, Captain?” he said to Jack.

  “We have a thing called the Fifth Amendment, sir, and I’m going to invoke its protection, sir. Otherwise, I might have to apply for a transfer to your Navy.”

  “We’re always looking for a few good men.”

  “What is it about men?” Vicky exploded. “I get handed this ensign gig. My brother starts out as a commodore. He bosses Captain Krätz around. Me, I get bossed around by just about everybody. It’s not fair,” she growled at her captain.

  He said nothing, just took another bite of his steak, chewed it for a moment, then waved his empty fork at Kris. “As a lieutenant, two mighty promotions up from a lowly ensign, would you have any advice for my J. O. here?”

  Kris Longknife weighed the question for a long moment, then shrugged. “As a wise chief once told me, if you don’t want to be Navy, get out.”

  Vicky scowled sidewise at her superior officer. He shook his head. “That is not an option for the moment.”

  “I see,” said Kris, then reflected a moment before going on. “Your brother started his Navy career as a commodore.”

  Vicky nodded vigorously at that.

  “From where I sat, that was part of what killed him.”

  “What!” Vicky yelped.

  “Would you disagree, Captain Krätz?” Kris asked.

  The captain patted his mouth with the white linen napkin and then put it down. “I can’t say that I do.”

  Vicky studied the two of them for a long moment. All the confused thoughts that had been tumbling around in her head began to fall into place. Well, maybe some of them.

  Vicky eyed Kris Longknife. “Explain yourself. I would have thought that a commodore was safer, more powerful. As an ensign I sure don’t feel any power. Or very safe.”

  Kris Longknife eyed Krätz, as if offering him a shot at the answer.

  He shook his head. “I can offer only advice. You have walked in her shoes and survived. You can speak to her from experience.”

  Kris Longknife put her napkin down and pushed back from the table. The Marine beside her did the same. Around them, the security people turned their chairs to face out, giving them as much privacy as their station and risk allowed.

  “A commodore does seem to have a lot of power ... if he or she knows how to use it,” Kris Longknife said, slowly. “Captain, did Hank know how to use the power of a commodore?”

  The captain shook his head. “Sadly, no. He played with the power, but he neither understood it, nor did he knew how to wield it.”

  “That was my observation, too,” Kris Longknife said. “Captain, how long have you been preparing to command a cruiser?”

  “Ensign to command captain, twenty years,” Krätz said, “including two years commanding a destroyer.”

  “How long had Hank worn the uniform?”

  “Four months when he died.”

  “That, Vicky, is what killed your brother. Power he didn’t know how to use. You’re an ensign. Do you have any power?”

  “Painfully little.”

  “Are you able to use it properly?”

  Vicky eyed her commanding officer. “I am learning to be a very good assistant communication officer.”

  “You are,” he agreed.

  Vicky turned back to Kris. “Are you saying that it’s better to do a job you know how to do than fake a job you don’t?”

  “I think so.”

  “I paid good money to get a copy of your file,” Vicky Peterwald said. “It sure doesn’t look like you practice what you preach.”

  Beside Kris, the Marine snorted. “Amen to that.”

  “Whose side are you on?” Kris said, and elbowed the fellow.

  “The side of me staying alive,” he said.

  Kris got serious. “You bought my file,” she said to Vicky. “You read it. Did an analyst explain it to you?”

  “I just got the file,” Vicky admitted. One thing about being a communications officer; a lot of classified stuff crossed her desk. That, and a connection she’d made with a cute ensign on the Politic
al Officer’s staff and bingo, she had a copy of Kris Longknife’s file. She hadn’t had time to slip off to the paint locker with him and have him explain it, or get naked before she was found there with a hunk of an ensign from gunnery. She still smarted from Captain Krätz’s dressing down. No more paint locker for her.

  For a while.

  “Captain, you might walk her through it,” Kris Longknife said. “You can explain to her where I was just bleeding lucky and where maybe I had a little help from my friends.”

  “Would you, sir?” Vicky almost pleaded. There are things I just don’t understand here.

  “My orders are to educate you,” Captain Krätz said, his voice almost fatherly. “To help you stay alive and learn. I think that could be considered part of my job. Though I warn you, your father probably would not consider Kris Longknife a proper role model for his daughter.”

  “I don’t think any father would consider me a good role model,” Kris said dryly.

  “Certainly not for any of my daughters,” Captain Krätz agreed. “But I remind you, Ensign Victoria, anyone without dumb Longknife luck would have died a dozen times doing what is recorded in that file. And no, none would have occurred when you were paying the piper.”

  That hurt, but Vicky was thinking that pain like that might teach her what she needed to know to stay alive.

  Captain Krätz and Kris Longknife talked on for a bit more, but Vicky was lost in her own thoughts. They tumbled around in her head like a basket full of kittens chasing a dozen balls.

  Hank got himself killed. He was doing something foolish, but it was survivable except for a sabotaged survival pod. Was it someone who lost a loved one during the attack on Wardhaven, or did someone else take advantage of the defective pod production? It would have had to have been someone with access to Hank’s ship, the Incredible. The more Vicky thought about it, the more she knew it was an inside job and not by any minor player.

  But why would someone kill Hank?

  Am I next?

  Can an ensign keep her head down lower than a commodore?

  Can Captain Krätz keep me alive?

  Too many questions, and none of them had any answers. Vicky changed her reflection to a problem might have an answer.

  Kris Longknife asked why I am here. Why am I here?