“Yes,” her computer whispered, “I would love that applet.”
Then, without going by his secretary’s desk, they were in the prime minister’s cluttered private office, and William Longknife, Billy to his cronies, was rising from his paper-covered work desk. “So glad you could make it on such short notice,” he said, extending his hand. “It’s critical we discuss…”
Father trailed off as his computer failed to fill in the expected words. As Tru shook his hand, his smile morphed into as much of a frown as the politician allowed himself. “Tru, you haven’t done this to me again.”
“Afraid I have, Billy.”
“Who else have you invited?”
“Just your wife,” Tru smiled, with teeth showing.
Before the prime minister could react, the door to his front office opened, and Mother sailed in. Petticoats were the rage in Paris this year; Mother must have had on a dozen. “I hope I’m not late. I must talk to my secretary. We went over today’s schedule, and she didn’t say a word about meeting you, Trudy. If I hadn’t glanced at my wristwatch, I might have missed it entirely. As it was, I had to just throw on anything close at hand and rush over. Do let me catch my breath.”
“Darling, you look divine,” Tru said, pecking at the offered cheek. “Your breathless rush has gotten you here before we could begin. Woman, you are a wonder.”
From their private talks, Kris knew just what kind of wonder Tru considered Mother: a relic from the middle ages. How a woman could be born into the twenty-third century and act Mother’s part was a wonder to everyone who met her, except that Kris knew several other women of wealth that fit right in with Mother. No way I’m going to be like her, Kris swore. No surprise, Mother threw only a nod at Kris.
Never one for informal chitchat, Tru folded her hands and began. “As you know, Kris recently drew a rescue mission.”
“Yes.” Father nodded.
“No,” Mother breathed in shock. “It wasn’t dangerous, darling. After all we’ve been through with…” The sentence petered out like all where Eddy’s name might be mentioned.
“Mother, of course not,” Kris immediately filled in the vacancy left by the sudden hush, trying to put just the right twist on the words to make them beyond doubt.
“I think we should all be seated,” the prime minister suggested, pointing to a report-laden low table surrounded by worn couches and chairs where he met with his closest staff. Father took the rocking chair at the head of the table, an affectation he acquired after reading about some other politician who reached the pinnacle of power at a young age. Unlike so many others of his fads that were dropped as quickly as Mother changed fashions, the simple wooden rocker remained. Father’s bad back liked it. Mother took the overstuffed leather chair at the opposite end of the table, leaving the two couches in between for the rest. Kris hated it when her mother did that. It left her swiveling her head, trying to keep track of how each of them was reacting to whatever the other was saying.
“What about this rescue mission?” Mother insisted. “If it wasn’t dangerous, why was the Navy asked to do it?”
“Honey, the Navy would never put our daughter at risk,” Father assured her. “I followed the entire thing on net.” He’d told Kris about the family addendum he’d put on his news search after Grandfather Alex did something with Nuu Enterprises that caused Father a lot of political fallout.
Grandfather had resigned the prime minister’s job and demanded his son give up his seat in the House. Not only had Father not left politics, he’d wrangled all his party connections into making him the next prime minister. The two hadn’t shared a word since.
“You knew all about it and didn’t tell me!” Kris tuned out what followed; she’d heard it too many times. While Mother and Father did their individual theatrics, Tru cleared a space for the captured computer and attached its working parts to the table’s station.
“Unfortunately, I must disagree with you, Mr. Prime Minister,” Tru said softly into a break in Mother and Father’s battle of clichés.
“No!” came from both of them. Tru had everyone’s attention.
“Before I begin, let me point out what I am dealing with here,” Tru said, pointing at the computer parts arranged on the table. “Outward appearance is that of a very old, cheap, and battered wrist unit… and they are totally deceptive. Sprayed onto the inside of the case is the latest in self organizing computer hardware. The cost of this alone is several times the ransom demand.” Tru raised an eyebrow to the prime minister but did not state the obvious. Money was not the objective of this crime. Kris’s father rocked back in his chair, hand coming up to rub his chin, but he said nothing.
“You must be wrong.” Mother filled the silence. “No one with money would behave like that.”
That was Kris’s mother’s inevitable answer to money. Not born to it herself, she worshiped it now that her marriage made her the high priestess of lucre on Wardhaven. And since those with money had servants to do their work, they, of course, never did anything nasty.
“I’ve cracked two of the longer messages in his rather sparse collection of mail,” Tru said. “Here is one.”
“They’ve taken the bait. Navy is being called in. Deploy greetings,” appeared on the computer screen recessed into the tabletop.
“What kind of greeting?” the prime minister asked, leaning forward. Kris had a strong suspicion that greeting involved a very invisible minefield.
“Here’s the other message,” Tru said. “We got the ship we want. Activate greetings. Assume plan B,” scrolled onto the tabletop.
“What kind of greetings, and what do they mean, the right ship? I hate it when people don’t say what they mean,” Mother snapped in the voice that had made Kris jump when she was eight or nine. Now she hated it.
Tru, for her part, leaned back into her couch and folded her hands. As she had so many times before when teaching Kris, Tru had laid out the problem; now she left Kris to figure it out. Kris had learned to hate that, too. Where was a role model when a young woman needed one?
Kris leaned forward, looking at the two messages. Assuming the Typhoon was the “right ship,” the “greetings” were…
“The kidnappers,” Kris began slowly, “had a field of Mark 41 land mines scattered around their hideout. Had we jumped as planned, we would all have been killed.” Kris had intended to corner her father about the shoddy equipment. But the busted uplink to the ship had forced Kris to fly the LAC down, making a jump impossible, thereby spoiling the best laid plans of the bad guys. Kind of hard to bitch about the equipment now.
The prime minister mumbled to his computer link. “Mark 41s haven’t been issued yet,” he repeated after his datalink.
“Yes, Father, Navy doesn’t have any. And a field of them would cost a hell of a lot more than their ransom demands.”
“Kristine Anne, a lady does not use such language,” Mother contributed to their considerations.
“Between the traps that wiped out the first three rescue attempts, the mines, and this computer,” Tru pointed out, “this was a losing financial proposition.” The prime minister rubbed his chin some more, raised an eyebrow to Tru, but said nothing.
“But who would do that?” Tommy blurted out.
Mother shot a freezing glower at Tom for interrupting, then an even colder one at Kris for dragging a stranger into something that clearly was a family matter. Well, it wasn’t a family matter when I came here, Kris shot back wordlessly, then remembered she was a serving naval officer, not just Mother’s little darling. Leaning back, she stared at the ceiling.
“I’m staying at Nuu House,” she said. “The place is crawling with guards. One of my great-grandfathers wouldn’t happen to be in town?” she asked the ceiling, wanting to make official what Harvey had given to her under the table.
“Both of them,” Mother spat. Neither were among Mother’s favorite people. Mother blamed Trouble for Kris’s decision to join the Navy. This despite Trouble staying long an
d far from Kris with his job as president of Savannah’s War College, the post he’d taken after retiring from chairman of the Joint Staff on Savannah. Ray had spent the last thirty or forty years since leaving public life mostly on Santa Maria, about as far from the rest of humanity as possible, with his youngest daughter, Alnaba, a researcher. Kris kept hearing rumors that they were going to crack the riddle of The Three real soon, the three species that built the jump points between planets. Hadn’t yet. Maybe Grampa Ray had finally met something he couldn’t do.
“If I identified those troops roaming around Nuu House, they were Earth marines.” Kris found the hint of a grin start to wiggle across her mouth as she turned to eye her father.
“Who they’re meeting with is on a need-to-know basis, young woman. Need I remind you, you’re in the Navy. I can have you transferred to the refueling station on HellFrozeOver,” the prime minister pointed out. “And darling, you should not have mentioned that my grandfathers are here,” he added to Mother.
“You invited them to the reception tomorrow.” Mother pouted. “It can’t be that secret.”
“By then they should be done,” the prime minister answered, a tinge of sadness creeping into his voice. “Until then, we don’t want it blasted all over the news.”
“So you are dividing up the fleet.” Kris said, surprised she could get her mouth around the words.
Father blanched; if he had any faith, it was in the union, the absolute belief that humanity had to go to the stars as one. And the Society was the embodiment of that union. “It is my policy,” Father said, hand going dramatically to his heart, “and the policy of every prime minister of Wardhaven since we were admitted to the Society of Humanity, that Humanity must go to the stars a single people.” Father repeated the words Kris had heard hundreds of times. Missing today was the vigor and confidence that the policy would remain.
Kris shivered and was startled by her reaction. In her mind’s eye she saw the green and blue flag of Earth and its Society of Humanity come down the flagpole, as it did every day at sunset. The thought that some morning was coming when it would not go back up brought a chill to her. How many times had she and her friends debated a new, more proper role for the Society? Now their bull sessions were becoming reality.
“What would be the reaction if not only had a little girl been kidnapped by cheap, Earthy scum, but that a Longknife had died trying to free her?” The words came ice cold from the logical part of Kris’s brain. They were out of her mouth before she remembered Mother was on the other side of Tommy. Mother turned a stony stare at Kris, who ignored it. “Mr. Prime Minister,” Kris said to show she had not been cowered.
The hand that had been over his heart now took a worried swipe at his forehead. “There would be an uproar against Earth,” he said slowly. “It would make my job much harder.”
“And strengthen several different coalitions, would it not?” Tru asked.
“Yes.”
“Including the Smythe-Peterwalds of Greenfeld?” Tru said.
Now Father did rock back in his chair.
“Oh, the Peterwalds are such a nice family. Henry dated me in college, proposed to me on a beautiful moonlit night.”
“Yes, Mother, we remember,” Kris snapped without taking her eyes off her father. “Mr. Prime Minister,” Kris repeated, wanting to hear what was going on in his political mind.
“No,” he shook his head. “No member of any government would dare do that. No policy is worth such a risk. And if it was traced back to a sitting government, it would crush it. They’d never get elected again,” said the head of one government.
“He has a boy about your age, Kristine. You ought to meet him,” Mother added.
“I know, Mother, you’ve only mentioned him a million times.”
“Have you told Kris about the Peterwalds and Longknifes?” Tru put in softly.
“I have told her many times,” Mother insisted.
“No.” Father answered. Mother cocked a questioning eye his way, but his eyes were locked on Tru. “It has never been proven that the Peterwalds had anything to do with either the war or the drug trade. Just because Greenfeld is usually on the opposite side of a major issue from Wardhaven is no reason to ascribe personal motives to them.”
Tru shook her head. “Someone was bankrolling Unity before the war. You’ve read the histories. There was too much corruption at the lower levels. Hardly a dime of tax money reached Urm, yet he was doing more and more each year. When Wardhaven and the Longknifes broke the back of the drug trafficking, the Peterwalds’ fortune vanished, and the family fled to Greenfeld. Ray forced them to give up Elysium after the Treaty of Wardhaven limited human expansion. You agree that the Longknifes have cost the Peterwalds a lot of money.”
“Yes.” The prime minister was out of his chair and pacing around the room, his feet stomping into the plush blue carpet. “But that proves nothing. There’s not a damn piece of evidence that will stand up in a court of law.” He whirled on Tru. “And, woman, I am a man who must deal in the law.”
Tru looked at the table, read from it. “We’ve gotten the right ship. That ship was the Typhoon, your daughter’s ship. It was minus a marine lieutenant. Normally, I would think that would be a very good reason to pick another.”
“The skipper really wanted that mission,” Tommy put in. “The word around the station was that he was calling in all his markers with Commodore Sampson to get it.”
“Understandable for a warrior,” Tru agreed. “Still, I imagine it was also common knowledge that Kris was on that ship and that Thorpe was riding her pretty hard.”
“How’d you know?” Kris said.
“Just because I was Info War Chief doesn’t mean I spent all my time with computers. I’ve known some hands-on warriors who like the smell of powder … and who’d need to know if you’re a warrior or just some politician’s daughter run away from home. If he was a politician, he’d have treated you with kid gloves. If he was a warrior, he’d push you.”
“He pushed me,” Kris grumbled.
Tru turned to Father. “If I could put those pieces together, so could anyone else. The death of a little girl and a Longknife in a botched kidnapping would get the entire Rim up in arms. Internal passports limiting travel between Earth and the Seven Sisters would have passed by acclamation. The Society would be shattered in all but name.”
“Who said anything about the little girl dying?” Kris tried to slow Tru down. What she was saying took Kris’s breath away.
“Excuse me. I forgot. You haven’t seen plan B.” Tru muttered to herself, and the screen on the table changed. “No surprise, I found no reference to a plan B in the computer. No plan A, either. However, the police inventory of the lodge has two interesting items. First, two kilos of high explosives hidden in the bottom of the pack the girl’s clothes were stuffed in, along with a radio squawker and detonator. Second, a tight beam radio, set to the same frequency as the explosives squawker. As I recall, they were negotiating for a shuttle to take them to a starship and the ship to take them wherever they wanted to go.”
“If the leader could manage not to be on the shuttle, he’d be in the right position to blow up the shuttle as it was rising,” Kris breathed slowly.
“That’s certainly the right gear for it,” Tommy agreed. “Blow it up just before it makes orbit, and pieces of shuttle will be coming down over half of Sequim.”
“All that is supposition.” the prime minister snapped.
“All this means nothing,” Mother said, cold and distant.
It meant something to someone. Someone who wanted Kris and a little girl dead. Who would profit from such a losing proposition? Kris didn’t know about the recent one on Sequim. She did want to know about the one ten years ago. “Father, who offered to help you get the money to pay Eddy’s ransom?” Kris asked into the growing silence.
“Kristine Anne,” Mother snapped.
“That’s enough, young woman,” Father shot to his feet.
“Mr. Prime Minister, your next appointment is waiting,” the intercom informed them.
“Send him right in,” the prime minister said. Mother rushed for the private exit in a shower of petticoats, searching through her pillbox. She pulled two, no three of the pink ones out and swallowed them down. Kris shook her head; Mother would probably not remember a thing from this meeting. Tru collected her computer parts as Kris and Tom stood. When the door closed behind Kris’s mother, Father put his face inches from Tru’s nose. “Trudy, you have gone too far this time. I’ve got six hundred worlds flying apart. I do not need you setting my own family on me as well. I’ll be doing good if I get a word out of that woman in the next month,” he said glancing at the door his wife had just left by. He turned on Kris, his face cold rage. “You, young woman, are staying here at the Residency tonight. I don’t want you hanging around this wild woman.”
“Father,” Kris cut in, “there aren’t any vacant bedrooms, remember. You just converted the last ones into offices for special assistants.”
The prime minister muttered to his computer, scowled at the response, then turned on Kris. “How did you get here?”
“Harvey drove us.”
“Harvey will take you to Nuu House. You can do whatever a sailor wants to do on leave, but you will not talk to Tru. I can and will send you to HellFrozeOver if you bring this up again. Woman,” he said at Tru, “my chauffeur will take you home.”
“This doesn’t solve anything, William,” Tru said. “You can’t run away from reality.”
“This will solve it as well as anything can,” the prime minister said, turning his back on them. Tru strode for the door Mother had used just as the prime minister’s personal driver poked his head through it.
Kris, eager to beat a quick retreat, used the door she had come in, Tom on her heels. Halfway to the door, Kris stopped, causing a minor collision with Tom. “Father, I really need to know how you arranged for Eddy’s ransom money.”
Kris Longknife: Mutineer Page 9