Rita Longknife--Enemy in Sight

by Mike Shepherd

  The three too-pretty civilians looked at her like she was a mentally deficient child.

  Her father stood. “The captain has a point. I’ll see that it is carried to the highest levels of your three associations. For now, I’m asking you to hold up all scout initiatives for a month, two weeks at least.”

  Red Tie looked about to come out of his chair. The woman threw him a look, and Blue Tie rested a restraining hand on his elbow.

  “Two weeks,” he muttered.

  “That will give me time to see that the captain’s reasonable concerns are raised to the highest level,” Ernie said.

  “Now, about the pirates,” her father continued.

  “I’ve met with Admiral Zilko of the Wardhaven Navy,” General Ray Longknife said. “He’s fitting out six heavy cruisers to go pirate hunting. He’ll need money to pay for the steaming days, though.”

  “I think we can get an allocation of funds from the Society’s Navy appropriations,” the platinum blond said. The first thing Rita had heard from her that she liked.

  Maybe you’re not all bad. Just don’t look at Ray like that.

  “That will go a long way towards us getting our house in order, as the captain so wisely put it,” General Ray Longknife said. “First, we put down the pirates, then we send out a task force to see where these big fellows come from and say ‘hi, we want to be friends’.”

  Ray would remember those words a lot in the coming years.

  6

  Captain Maynard hammered for silence. He didn’t have the wooden door knob Ed Lehrer had, so he hammered with the butt of his pistol.

  We’re pirates, what better way to make noise?

  But before each meeting, he was careful to take the magazine out and clear the action.

  Right now, he was about ready to reload the pistol and fire off a shot.

  Ed could never have done that on the station. There were benefits to being on a planet.

  And Port Elgin was a beauty of a planet. The meeting hall was just a few logs holding up a roof made from tree branches that almost looked like palm fronds. The place was open to the sea breeze and the sunlight reflected off the harbor where the ships’ shuttles were drawn up.

  Hell, even the farmers were having it easy. All you had to do was drop a seed in the ground and it sprouted in no time. Several were actually putting on weight even though they’d raised a bumper crop of the drugs.

  The only question was would any of the shit get bailed up and hauled off for sale back on Earth or one of the other big markets?

  If the story he’d just heard was true, maybe it didn’t matter.

  Pirate Captain Maynard slapped the magazine into the butt of his automatic, chambered a round and fired a shot through the frond-covered ceiling.

  “Shut up,” he shouted into the duller roar.

  Things actually got quiet. Captain William Maynard gave the hall his best glower. It stayed quiet. Each and every one of the captains crammed around the table or the small mob standing around ten or more deep were just as eager as any captain to hear if the latest rumor was true.

  Come to think of it, having all this space is a bitch. Ed could have just us captains in his conference room. I must have half the crews and not a few of the farmers listening in.

  “Okay, Captain Ben Hornigold, can you tell me how you just happened to sneak up on this planet full of gold? I mean, if there were really alien ships around it, how’d you get in close.”

  Captain Hornigold bristled where he stood.

  “Don’t get me wrong, Ben, I ain’t calling you a liar or anything. I just want to know.”

  Bill’s question was back up by a lot of “Yeahs,” “Right,” and even a “Nobody’s that lucky.”

  Ben hitched his belt up, and let his hands come to rest near both of the pistols at his waist. “We was lucky,” he said. “And smart. None of yous dumb guys could have pulled off what we did.”

  That got a lot of people talking to the person next to them, but the room seemed more interested in hearing what he had to say, so it quieted.

  “Yeah, we spotted a strange ship. Not much more than a ball. Nothing like you’d think a ship should look like. Anyway, we was just coming into a system as it was jumping out. So real quick, we jetted over and took a peek at where it went.”

  Ben paused to give the room a wide, toothy grin.

  “And jumped right back out of that system. Hell, there was three of them round ships in orbit around one planet. Now, that might have been it, but we got this great kid for a navigator. Yee ain’t much to look at, and he don’t got a lot of schooling, but he likes to read and he knows star charts. He comes to me with this idea that we duck around, do five jumps and come back at this star system from a different direction.”

  Now the meeting hall was overflowing with murmurs of admiration. Beside Ben, this short thin, beanstalk of a kid with black hair was beaming.

  Captain Ben seemed to enjoy being the center of attention. It was a bit before he went on. “By the time we got around to the back door, all the ships was gone, so we kind of tiptoed up to orbit the planet and took ourselves a good look at it.”

  “Didn’t they spot your approach? Give you a call?” Captain Bequia asked.

  “Nope. No radio calls. No radar. Tell me, if all the ships was out, what kind of lookout do you keep here at Port Elgin?”

  That kind of put the kibosh on the talking for a moment while people looked around. Some of them even looked thoughtfully.

  Bill made a note to himself to do something about that, though there was usually a ship or two in orbit.

  Yeah, but how many of them have an active sensor suite going?

  “Once we gets into orbit,” Ben went on, “we looked the place over real good. There was this town, of sorts. It looked thrown together, just like Port Elgin do. There was some poor dumb sods scraping in the dirt, but there were just as many standing up to their knees in the river that ran by the place. From where it emptied into the sea all the way up about a hundred klicks. Lots of folks panning the gravel.”

  Ben patted the skinny kid on the shoulder. “Reads-a-lot here said that was how you find gold, and damned if we didn’t when we sent a longboat down, real careful-like, to get the lay of the land. Yep, that river was running with gold.”

  “You sure it’s gold?” put in Bequia.

  “Not even Reads-a-lot could answer that, but we brought it back and one of the icicles was a chemist. We thawed him out and he says it’s gold. Even did a test on our nuggets. You better believe it’s gold,” Captain Ben Hornigold said, proud as paint.

  He paused for a moment to hitch up his gun belt again before continuing. “There’s a mountain of silver too that they’re digging out. That and I don’t know what all. I tell you, they are sitting on a mother lode of shiny shit.”

  The room exploded in talk.

  Bill ignored the talk. He locked eyes with Ben. Ben looked right back at him. Then the two of them nodded.

  In one voice they shouted, “Shut up.”

  And for the first time Bill could remember, the pirates shut up.

  “Okay, they are sitting on a pile of shiny shit,” Bill said. “What do they do with it?”

  “Just about all of them have a gold or silver chain around their necks,” Ben Hornigold said. “And they got big necks. They go in for bracelets, too, and they got a lot of arms. Legs too.”

  “Just who, or what are these dudes?” Bequia put in.

  “They’re tall,” the kid put in. “And big. You don’t want to meet one of them in a dark alley. Not unless you got a gun and they only got a knife.”

  The pirates got even more quiet.

  “Did you see many guns?” Bequia asked.

  “Not among the diggers, but there were some big dudes with what looked like rifles guarding the only decent building in the town. It looked to be mud brick, but it was big and guarded, kind of like a fort.”

  “So we ain’t going to just walk in and take gold like candy from
a baby,” Bill pointed out.

  “We got guns,” came from somewhere in the crowd.

  “And we ain’t afraid to use ’em,” followed it quickly.

  The ‘Yeah,” “Right,” “You bet,” and nodding heads included even the farmers that were standing around.

  Bill eyed Ben and Bequia. They all nodded together. They’d need to take every willing soul and every gun they could lay their hands on.

  “Okay, folks,” Bill shouted, “I’m putting it up for a vote. We’ve raided farmers for a few potatoes. Who’s for raiding this place for gold?”

  The shout was a roar.

  “Anyone want to say no?”

  The silence was deafening.

  “Then I think we captains need to have a talk. I’m inviting every ship’s captain over to my place for a drink. On me!”

  That got a cheer from all.

  Some of the skippers were a bit slow in moving. They were locked in talk with the leaders of their crews. No captain dared do something without the crew’s hearty approval. Some had tried the “Me boss, you shit,” approach and had woken up dead. Bill respected the need for those captains to talk, and only made his way slowly back to his place.

  Like the hall, his captain’s cabin was little more than a roof with some logs holding it up. Around here, no one did anything that wasn’t open for anyone passing by to see.

  Some called it the local theater, and some drama queens did provide entertainment.

  Bill and his girl tried to keep it simple and fun. His crew who had put up shacks and lean-tos around his cabin said they liked it that way for their captain, seeing how he was the boss captain.

  Which was to say that anyone from the hall could have followed him home and not gotten a door slammed in their face. However, with him asking them nice, none had. The captains collected around his table while Bill’s girl and a couple of other women crew served the beer, whiskey, vodka, and rum.

  “To rich booty,” Bill shouted as he raised his mug of rum.

  “To rich booty,” they echoed, even some of the gals.

  “Assuming we have enough guns to take it,” Bequia said after taking a long pull on his whiskey.

  “Yeah,” came from about half the captains at the table.

  “So, how do we get more guns?” Bill asked right back to them.

  “We’ve took some from the farmers we raided,” came from down the table.

  “But we don’t raid no farmers that got too many guns,” came from further down.

  “So, do we take on some better armed colonists to get their guns?” Ben asked. “Or maybe see if some of those armed colonists aren’t averse to taking some gold.”

  “Or do we send a ship back to Ed at LeMonte and ask him if any of his trigger-pullers might be interested in shooting some big dudes in a shooting gallery,” Bill said.

  That idea got some consideration.

  “Do we want to share our booty with Ed and his boys and girls?” came from one of the women servers standing back from the table.

  “You planning on carrying a gun in this show?” one guy captain asked, and found a small pistol expertly aimed between his eyes.

  The young woman’s smile was deadly. “Nobody’s gonna stop me.”

  “No one is, pretty lady,” Bill said. “Put the iron away, Dilly. You’ll get your fair share, and, no doubt, a couple of guys’ shares as well.”

  “As I’ll deserve,” she cooed, as the pistol disappeared under her short hem.

  “Again, I ask, do we ask Ed to send us some shooters? Not anybody that ain’t got a gun,” Bill said.

  Nobody liked sharing, but then, no one wanted to take a bite out of this goldmine only to find they’d bit off more than they could chew. After all, those dudes doing the panning were big fellows. Big and strange.

  “I say we let Ed and his crew in on us taking down this planet. He can have a chunk of what we capture right then. After that, he’s got to find his own goldmine,” Billy finally said.

  “Huzi, you take your Ill Met By Moonlight, and head back to LeMonte, you and Ed always was close. You tell him we want his trigger-pullers. No one else, although a light cruiser with a full 6-inch battery wouldn’t be rejected if it brought a lot of rifles with it. You know what we want.”

  “Yeah. They pull their weight if they want any of the take.”

  “And tell them to be quick about it,” Ben put in. “We ain’t gonna sit around here forever. If they got three ships taking gold out of there, we want to get there before they get back.”

  “We’ll get this moving,” Bill assured them.

  There was a knock on one of the beams that held up the roof. They’d been so concentrated on their planning that they hadn’t noticed the quiet approach of Kim, who spoke for the farmers.

  “You got something to say? We’re kind of busy at the moment,” Bill said. He got along well with Kim and his kind, but some of the pirates looked down on the kidnaped farmers no matter how much they ate the food they grew.

  Bill did his best to walk a fine line.

  “My people want to be included in this raid for gold.”

  “Kim, there will likely be fighting. People may get killed,” Bill said.

  “And you guys don’t have no guns,” Ben put in.

  A very sharp knife appeared in Kim’s hand. A blink of an eye later and it thudded deep into the log holding up the roof; the log the long way across from where Kim stood.

  The knife had flown across most of their heads to reach its target.

  Guns came out around the table.

  “Put them away,” Bill was saying before any of them could swing around to face the farmer.

  “You think that because you found us as frozen icicles that we are defenseless. Maybe we were, fresh out of deep sleep. But we’ve got our muscles back, and our coordination isn’t bad.”

  Another knife appeared in Kim’s hand, “You cannot put us to work growing your bread without letting us have some sharp tools. Now, you can worry about this the next time you can’t sleep, or you can make us equals in the quest for gold.”

  “I think you have a point,” Bill said.

  The table chuckled cautiously at his pun.

  “Why don’t you see how many of your people want to join us? See what weapons you can bring to the business, and we’ll talk about this,” Bill said.

  He glanced around the table. He saw cautious approval and stiff-necked opposition, but those opposed to the farmers had a tendency to let their eyes wander to the knife in the roof support.

  We may have to decide which we prefer. A full stomach or a good night’s sleep? Or sharing the gold a bit wider.

  “Ben, just how much gold is there?”

  “Lots and lots of it. We saw them taking it down stream on these six legged animals. They were taking a train of twenty of them things out every other day. And the silver mine. It’s a mountain, I swear to you. And they’re lugging it away twenty or thirty wagon loads at a time.”

  “They ain’t got no trucks?” a skipper asked.

  “None that we seen. They was really primitive.”

  “So having some dirt farmers along with knives on long sticks might work out just fine in cutting their numbers down,” Bill said, thoughtfully.

  “Let’s not cut down too many of them. I don’t like the idea of having to stand knee-deep in no river panning for gold,” Bequia put in.

  That got a laugh.

  Bill frowned at the point. They’d been treating the farmers like slaves. Now they’d just shown a surprising bit of mettle. If the pirates and the farmers let these big dudes live to work for all of them, what surprises might the farmers have in store a bit down the road?

  What did grandma say? Don’t count your chicks before the eggs are laid. Hell, these eggs are little more than a gleam in my eye. Be careful, Billy Boy.

  7

  Captain Rita Nuu-Longknife settled into the rhythms of life at Nuu House with a song in her heart. She didn’t miss the hum of ship plate
s under foot one bit.

  And little Alex did like all the attention, and a single weight, though he was growing like a well-fed weed. What with mom and dad, and Ray as well as Rita making regular pilgrimages to his nursery, he showed them all that he could take steps without them holding on to him one bit.

  “He’s lovely,” Ray told her as they lay in bed at the end of a busy day at the ministry, which ended with a nice meal and three visits to Alex. It had been a very nice day.

  “You glad to have me back?” she asked, nuzzling close.

  “After last night, do you really need to ask?”

  “Well, I know I have the attention of one of your heads. I was just wondering what the other one was thinking. That was one mighty gorgeous gal you brought on the Exeter.”

  Ray shook his head. “Her first comment to me was about her husband. And woman, that gal scares me. She’s dangerous!”

  Rita stroked his chest. “I command a heavy cruiser with twelve 8-inch lasers and you tell me you’re scared of that civilian?”

  Ray pulled her chin up to face him, kissed her mouth rather solidly and then said, as his lips wandered her neck, “Yes, captain, you are dangerous, but you risked your life to save mine. You’re the kind of dangerous I want beside me. Her, I don’t know who she is, what she’s up to and I do not want her behind me. She might have a spare knife she needs to sheath between my shoulder blades.”

  “I’ve got a sheath for you,” Rita purred, “and it’s not between my shoulder blades.”

  It was a very nice night.

  And in the morning, she managed to make them late for breakfast and late for work.

  Andy eyed them as they walked into the outer office, and just smiled. “Good to see the two of you back and happy to be so,” he said.

  “I’m glad to be back,” Rita said.

  “You got the gallivanting out of your system?” the old Navy captain inquired of the younger.