Kris Longknife: Mutineer

by Mike Shepherd

  A flashing red light grabbed Kris’s attention. “You did it again,” she growled at herself as she yanked her thoughts back to the problem at hand. Around her, the drop bay ran through decompression. Air gone, Kris and her troopers breathed only what their drop suits provided. Kris checked all her readouts. Her suit was good, as good as Navy issue got. So were all of her troopers. “Good to go,” she reported.

  With a thump to Kris’s rear, the LAC fell into silent, black space. Tommy let them drift for only the moment it took Kris to get a good look at the Typhoon, her smart metal hide stretched thin to give the crew individual rooms and spin gravity while in orbit. Her bow and stem was proudly painted with the blue and green flag of the Society of Humanity. Then the LAC came alive; the stick moved as Tommy guided both LACs into reentry.

  Well, if Tommy was doing the work, Kris could use the time to check the ground situation once more. “Nelly, show me the real time target feed,” Kris subvocalized. The hunting lodge filled Kris’s heads-up display. Several dozen human shadows showed on the infrared detection. Six or eight moved around the building… all in pairs. Per the guarantee provided with every human heat decoy sold, there was no way Kris was supposed to know that only five real humans were moving. Thank God the manufacturers had so far stuck to the pledge of silence the government had extracted from them.

  For ten years, no bad guys had tumbled to the fact that 98.6 degrees was only the average human temperature. This late at night most people’s body heat was slipping down into the 97s and 96s. In the six upstairs rooms of the lodge, the heat signatures of six little girls lay chained to their beds. Two gunmen sat at opposite ends of the hall, ready at the first sign of rescue to dash into the one room that held the kidnapped girl and kill her. Thanks to the sensors on the fifty-gram Stoolpigeon hovering 1,000 meters above the log cabin, Kris knew there was only one gunman—and which room held the terrified girl.

  Terrified! Kris ground her teeth, then looked out of the LAC to rest her eyes on the planet revolving slowly below her. She tried to do anything but touch the nerve that took her again into her little brother’s grave. At least these kidnappers had not buried their victim under tons of manure with a damaged air pipe the only lifeline to the world for a six-year-old kid.

  At school, Kris had overheard other students talking, saying that Eddy was dead hours before her parents paid the ransom. She didn’t know the truth of that. There were some reports she just couldn’t read, some media coverage she could never sit through.

  What could never be ignored for a moment were the what-ifs. What if Kris hadn’t gone for ice cream? What if the bad guys had had to take down Nanna and Eddy and Kris? What would a wild ten-year-old girl have done to their plans?

  Kris shook her head, willed away the images. Stay there too long, and tears came. A spacesuit was no place for tears.

  Kris focused on the planet below. The day terminator lay ahead, changing the green and blue cloud-shrouded globe to dark—darkness and storms. A surprise night drop needed thunder to cover the sonic booms, darkness to hide their approach, night to make guards inattentive.

  Kris smiled, remembering other planets she’d watched from orbit, a fast racing skiff under her. And her smile slid into a scowl as the memories she’d been struggling to hold at arm’s length for a week came flooding back.

  Father vanished from Kris’s life the day after Eddy’s funeral. Off to the office before she awoke, he was rarely home before her bedtime.

  Mother was something else. “You’ve been a little savage long enough. Time to make a proper young lady out of you.” That didn’t get Kris off the hook for winning soccer games for Father, or showing up for his political parties. But Kris quickly discovered “proper young ladies” not only went to ballet but also accompanied Mother to teas. As the youngest at any tea by twenty years, Kris was bored silly. Then she noticed that some women’s teas smelled funny. It wasn’t long before Kris got a chance to taste them. They tasted funny, too…but they made Kris feel better, the parties go faster. It wasn’t long before Kris found what was being added to their tea…and how to raid her father’s liquor cabinet or mother’s wine closet.

  Somehow, the drinking made the days endurable.

  Kris didn’t even care when her grades took a nosedive. It didn’t matter; Mother and Father only frowned.

  Other kids at school had fun things like skiff racing from orbit; Kris had her bottle. Of course, the bottle and the pills Mother’s doctor prescribed to help Kris be more ladylike did not help her soccer game. The coach shook his head and sidelined her as much as he could. Harvey, the chauffeur who took her to all the games, just seemed kind of sad.

  But Harvey was grinning the afternoon he picked Kris up from school late. “Your dad’s invited your Great-grampa Trouble to dinner tonight. General Tordon is on Wardhaven for meetings,” Harvey added before she asked. Kris spent the drive home wondering what she’d say to someone straight out of her history books.

  Mother was in a snit, overseeing dinner preparations herself and mumbling that legends should stay in the books where they belonged. Kris was sent upstairs to do homework, but she staked out the balcony, reading with one eye and watching the front door with the other.

  Kris wasn’t sure what to expect. Probably someone ancient, like old Ms. Bracket who taught history and seemed dry and wrinkled enough to have lived it. All of it!

  Then Grampa Trouble walked through the front door. Tall and trim, gleaming in undress greens, he looked like he could destroy an Iteeche fleet just by scowling at them. Only he wasn’t scowling. The grin on his face was infectious; Mother was right, he was totally inappropriate for a “proper legend.” And at dinner, the stories he told.

  After dinner, Kris couldn’t remember a single one of them, at least not completely. But during supper they were all funny, even those that should have been horrifying. Somehow, no matter how bad the odds were or how impossible the situation had been, Grampa Trouble made it sound terribly funny. Even Mother laughed, despite herself.

  And when supper was over, Kris managed to dodge Mother until she excused herself for her whist club.

  Kris wanted to hang around this wondrous apparition forever. And when they were alone and he turned his full attention to Kris, she knew why kittens curled up in the sun.

  “Your dad tells me you like soccer?” he said, settling into a chair.

  “Yeah, pretty much,” Kris answered seating herself ladylike across from her grampa and feeling very grown-up.

  “Your mom says you’re very good at ballet.”

  “Yeah, pretty much.” Even at twelve, Kris knew she was not holding up her end of the conversation. But what could she say to someone like her grampa?

  “I like orbital skiff racing. Ever do any racing?”

  “Naw. Some kids at school do.” Kris tasted excitement. Then she remembered herself. “But Mother says it is much too dangerous. And nothing for a proper young lady.”

  “That’s interesting,” Grampa Trouble said, leaning back in his chair and stretching his hands upward. “A girl won the junior championship for Savannah last year. She wasn’t much older than you.”

  “She wasn’t!” Kris stared, wide-eyed. Even from Grampa, she couldn’t believe that.

  “I’ve rented a skiff tomorrow. Want to take a few drops with me?”

  Kris fidgeted in her chair. “Mother would never let me.”

  Grampa brought his hands to rest on the table, only inches away from Kris’s. “Harvey tells me your mom usually sleeps in on Saturday. I could pick you up at six.”

  Later, Kris would realize that Grampa Trouble and the family chauffeur were in cahoots on this. But Kris had been too excited by the offer just then to put two and two together.

  “Could you?” Kris yelped. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d been up early on her own. She also couldn’t remember the last time she’d done something that wasn’t on Mother or Father’s To-Do List. She couldn’t remember because to do that would be to
remember what life was like with Eddy. “I’d love to,” she said.

  “One thing,” Grampa Trouble said, reaching across the table to take her small, soft hands in his tanned, calloused ones. His touch was almost electric in its shock. His eyes looked into hers, stripping away the little girl that faked it for so many. Kris sat there, with nothing but herself to hang on to. “Your mother is right. Skiff racing can be dangerous. I only take people riding with me who are stone cold sober. That won’t be a problem for you, will it?”

  Kris swallowed hard. She’d been laughing so hard at Grampa Trouble’s stories that she hadn’t stolen a drink at supper. She hadn’t had one since lunch at school. Could she go through the night? “It won’t be a problem,” Kris assured him.

  And somehow she made it. It wasn’t easy; she woke up twice crying for Eddy. But she thought about Grampa and all the stories she had overheard from the school kids about how fun it was to see the stars above you and ride a falling star to Earth, and somehow Kris didn’t tiptoe downstairs to Father’s bar.

  Kris made it through that night to stand at the top of the stairs and look down at Grampa Trouble so magnificent in his green uniform, waiting patiently for her on the black and white tiles of the foyer. Balanced careful as ever she did in ballet class, Kris went down the stairs, showing Grampa just how sober she was. His smile was a small, tight thing, not at all the open-faced one Father flashed all his political friends. Grampa’s tight little smile meant more to Kris than all she’d gotten from her father or mother.

  Three hours later, Kris was suited up and strapped into the front seat of a skiff when Grampa Trouble hit the release and they dropped away from the space station. Oh, what a ride! Kris saw stars so close she could almost touch them. The temptation came to pop her belt, to drift away into the dark, to fall like a shooting star and make whatever amends she could to dead little Eddy. But she couldn’t do that to Grampa Trouble after all the trouble he’d gone through to get her here. And the beauty of the unblinking stars grabbed Kris, enveloping her in their cold, silent hug. The pure, lean curves of skiffs on reentry were mathematics in motion. She’d lost her heart…and maybe some of her survivor’s self-loathing.

  Mother was actually pacing the foyer when they came in late that evening. “Where have you been?” was more an accusation than a question.

  “Skiff racing,” Grampa Trouble answered as evenly as he told jokes.

  “Skiff racing!” Mother shrieked.

  “Honey,” Grampa Trouble said softly to Kris, “I think you better go to your room.”

  “Grampa?” Kris started, but Harvey was taking Kris’s elbow.

  “And don’t you come down before I send for you.” Mother enforced Grampa’s suggestion. “And what did you think you were doing with my daughter, General Tordon?” Mother said coldly, turning on Grampa.

  But Grampa Trouble was already heading toward the great library. “I think it best we finish this conversation out of earshot of little pitchers with big ears,” he said with all the calm Mother lacked.

  “Harvey, I don’t want to go to my room,” Kris argued as she and the chauffeur went up the stairs.

  “It’s best you do, little friend,” he said. “Your mother’s been stretched quite a ways today. There’s nothing to be gained by you pushing her any further.” Kris never saw Grampa Trouble again.

  But a week later, Judith came into her life, a woman Grampa Trouble would probably have enjoyed meeting. Judith was a psychologist.

  “I don’t need a shrink,” Kris told the woman flat out.

  “Why’d you throw the soccer game last month?” Judith shot right back.

  “I didn’t.” Kris mumbled.

  “Your coach thinks you did. Your dad thinks so, too.”

  “How would Father know?” Kris asked with all the sarcasm a twelve-year-old could muster.

  “Harvey recorded the entire game,” Judith said.

  “Oh.”

  So they talked, and Kris found that Judith could be a friend. Like when Kris shared that she wanted to do more skiff racing, but Mother would have kittens at the very thought.

  Instead of agreeing with Mother, Judith asked Kris why Mother shouldn’t have a kitten or two? The thought of Mother with a kitten made Kris laugh, which needed an explanation, and before they were done, Kris had come to realize that what Mother wanted wasn’t always the best, and that the mother of a twelve-year-old girl should have kittens occasionally. Kris went on to win Wardhaven’s junior championship to the prime minister’s delight and Mother’s horror.

  “Get out of your head,” Kris growled in Captain Thorpe’s voice and yanked tight on her restraining harness, a life affirming act that now came naturally to her.

  Then Kris’s stomach shot into her throat as her lander turned dervish, spinning to the right as the bottom dropped out from underneath her and the still-blasting thrusters rose above.

  “What the hell?”

  “Who’s driving this bus?” rattled in her ears as Kris grabbed for the wildly gyrating control stick. Aft, Corporal Li restored discipline with a “Pipe down.”

  The stick fought Kris, refusing to obey. She punched her commlink to the Typhoon. “Tommy, what the hell is going on?” Her words echoed empty in her helmet; her commlink was as dead as she and her crew would be if she didn’t do something—fast.

  Mashing the manual override, Kris took command of her craft. With hardly a thought, her hands went though the motions needed to dampen down the spin and pitch. The LAC was heavier, slower to respond than a skiff. But Kris fought it … and it obeyed.

  “That’s better,” came from one of the grateful marines behind her. Unless Kris figured out fast where they were and where they were going, this momentary “better” just meant they’d be less shook up when they burned on reentry.

  “Nelly, I need skiff navigation, and I need it now.” In a blink, the familiar skiff routines took form on her heads-up. “Nelly, interrogate GPS system. Where am I?” The LAC became a dot on her heads-up, vector lines extended from it. She’d been accelerating rather than decelerating!

  “Corporal, get a line-of-sight link to Gunny’s LAC.”

  “I’ve been trying, ma’ am, but I don’t know where he is.”

  Her computer could probably tell Kris where the sergeant should be with respect to them, but Nelly was doing her best to plot a course that would win Kris another championship.

  They didn’t hand out skiff trophies just for hitting that dinky ground target. They expected winners to do it in style: be on the dot, use less fuel, take less time. Kris gulped as her heads-up display filled with the harsh challenge ahead. The LAC was out of position and lower on fuel than any skiff she’d ever flown in competition. It would take every ounce of skill Kris had to land her marines anywhere within a hundred kilometers of one terrified little girl.

  Kris had raced for trophies. Tightening her grip on the stick, she began a race for a little girl’s life.

  Chapter Two

  Kris acted more on trained instinct than rational thought. Her right hand firmly on the stick, she first stabilized the craft. That done, she spared a second for Nelly’s search to get Kris and her marines down safely. Thank God she’d kept Nelly and refused the standard-issue computer with all its Navy limits. “Nelly, get our present coordinates from GPS. Use the hunting lodge for a target. Now, give me a low-risk flight plan.” Nelly did it in hardly a second; it would get them down safely—but on fumes and fifty klicks past the lodge.

  Even as Kris adjusted her deceleration burn to fit that trajectory, she snapped, “Alternate flight plan. Assume I can bleed off an extra twenty percent of my energy aerodynamically. How much fuel would that leave me?” Kris had to have a cushion. In competitions, each skiff had a two minute separation between the one ahead and the one behind. Today, Gunny’s LAC was somewhere off to her right, no more than ten kilometers, probably less. That might be an acceptable safety margin if Tommy was flying both of them to their drop point, but not now, not with
Kris careening all over low orbit.

  “Nelly, add in the assumption that I need a hundred kilometers north separation from Gunny’s LAC.” In a blink, Nelly modified the latest flight plan, but the result flashed red. Even assuming Kris cut her orbital burn to the bone, there was no way she could aerodynamically dissipate enough energy. She’d have to overshoot the target by a good hundred klicks.

  “Assume twenty kilometers displacement,” Kris reordered; her first S-curve would have to be away from Gunny’s LAC. Nelly quickly generated the requested flight plan; Kris could make it. However, a yellow button on the heads-up flashed a warning. Her fuel reserve would be below competitive standards; she would be disqualified.

  With a rueful shrug for the machine’s concern, Kris said, “Do it, Nelly,” and settled in for the ride of her life. Very early, Kris had learned that every computer-generated course could be improved upon by a human. To take home those trophies scattered around her room, she’d saved a little fuel here, a little more there, always on her own.

  “Sir, I mean ma’ am, I think I see the sergeant.” Corporal Li’s voice was a series of nervous squeaks and cracks.

  Kris was rooted to her machine. Her hand had merged with the control stick; her rear was part of the heat shield and wing’s fabric. Kris’s eyes might as well have been the angle of attack, g meter, and speed gages. To break concentration now would be agony. “Where, Corporal?”

  “Off the starboard bow, two, no, two-thirty, ma’am, low one, one-thirty. I think that’s him. Ma’am.”

  Kris risked a glance. Yes there was an LAC, a bit ahead and below her, still breaking just as she was now. “Try to raise Gunny,” she ordered and went back to flying a miracle.

  “What I’m getting is all broken up and crackling, ma’am.”

  “Right.” Kris kicked herself. “His engine ionization is between us.” A moment later it was time to terminate the burn. She rotated her craft, placing its heat-shielded nose to the atmosphere, and got ready to ride it down. Li made several more attempts to contact Gunny, but LAC Two was still breaking, pointing its ionized exhaust at them. Kris told him to stow it as the nose of her LAC began to wrap itself in dancing light.