Kris Longknife: Mutineer

by Mike Shepherd

  “It’s bad out there. I wouldn’t say you couldn’t make it. Who knows, miracles happen.”

  “I’m not trusting my Candi’s life to no miracle. I say we climb the cliffs. We used to do that when we was young.”

  “Yeah. I got all the way up to the top when I was ten.” “When was the last time you tried to climb a fence, Bill?” That ended that part of the conversation with a snort.

  “Besides, we all climbed up Lucky’s Trail. Water’s eight feet deep between here and there,” Sam pointed out.

  “All we got left is Lover’s Leap, and nobody’s climbed that one.”

  “Where is it?” Akuba asked quietly.

  “Right behind us,” Sam said.

  Akuba aimed his light beam. Through the rain and mist Kris could just make out a rocky face with an occasional stunted tree. Muddy water ran down it. The light flicked out. “Bitch of a climb,” came from Nabil.

  “We got some rope. You got any?” Akuba asked.

  “Some.”

  They reached two structures. One was a small cow barn. Four cows, rain streaming off them, looked morosely at the shelter they’d been evicted from. The other was an even smaller one-room house. “Honeymooners stayed here their first year, if they wanted.” Sam supplied the answer before Kris asked. “Let’s see if we can get some food warming before we wake anyone up.”

  Maybe two dozen were asleep on the floor, mostly young or elderly folks. Three women lay in the one bed, sheened with fevered sweat, while two others tried to comfort them. The medic headed that way while Kris followed Sam to the kitchen area and began heating standard field rations. The smell of coffee brought people in. They quietly got what they could, then disappeared back out into the rain.

  Once things were moving along, Sam tapped Kris on the elbow. “We need to talk.”

  Kris followed him to the kitchen table. Sam, Karen, his wife, and a big fellow who introduced himself as Brandon and tried to crush Kris’s hand, took three of the chairs, leaving the fourth for Kris.

  “So, what do we do?” Brandon asked.

  Kris paused, waiting for Sam or his wife to say something, but they were all looking at her. “My medic is taking care of your Grearson cases as best as he can. In a few minutes he’ll start giving inoculations to all of you. After that…” Kris left that hanging.

  “After that, we die,” Brandon snapped.

  “No,” Karen insisted.

  “Yes we do,” Brandon shot back. Around the room others stood against the wall or settled onto the floor. Everyone awake in the house was watching the four at the table, waiting to see what their fate would be. “Face it,” Brandon said, turning to face the listeners more than those at the table. “The water’s been rising an inch or two an hour. By dawn, it’s gonna be in here up to your ankles. There ain’t no cavalry coming to the rescue. The damn Navy’s already here, and you can see she’s in the same mess we are. That was a really cute trick making the boat go away, even for a Longknife.”

  “As you said, I’m in the same boat, or lack of it, that you are,” Kris put in. “But I’m not going to be dead come morning.”

  Brandon snorted derisively. “There a helicopter gonna come and take you away, baby cakes. Didn’t anyone tell you? With all the acid in our rain, they sold all the airplanes and other nice toys off world. Has your Navy brought some back?”

  “No,” Kris said, unwilling to lie to any of the people watching her. She looked around at them, hoping to see in their eyes that they were counting on her, no matter how heavy the burden, to get them out of this mess. What she saw was blank hopelessness, as if they already saw themselves dead. Kris gulped; these people weren’t looking to her for hope, only that last bit of approval so they could quit.

  “So, here we are in the twenty-fourth century, and we got nothing but our own two hands to save us, and little sister, we’ve worked ours to the bone, and we ain’t saved ourselves. If we’re gonna die, I say we take this whole mud ball with us.”

  That absurd statement didn’t even elicit a shuffling of feet among the onlookers. Kris glanced at Sam and Karen. They were looking at the table, eyes as dead as the drowned cows Kris had pushed off from the boat on the way up here. How could anyone become so hopeless? Helpless?

  “Why shouldn’t we take this planet down with us?” Brandon continued. “They didn’t do anything for us. And you all know about the offer Sam’s got. Does little Miss Longknife know? Maybe your grandpa made Sam the offer.”

  “I know little about my Grandfather Alex’s business. In case you missed it, I’m a boot ensign in the Navy and up a muddy river at the moment without a paddle.” Come on folks, laugh, smile, show some emotions.

  The people around Kris just stared at the floor.

  “Sam’s been offered a penny on the dollar for this place, Navy. What do you say to that? When all this is over, we’re gonna be just a bunch of wage slaves like the factory-workers back on Earth. I sure as hell don’t want to live that way.”

  So that was it. Kris swallowed hard; they’d worked all their lives, and now they were losing it. They’d worked under the open sky, and now that sky was falling on them. They’d asked for nothing, got nothing, and now all guys like Brandon had was a mad to hold on to as the river rose. And the fever now gave Brandon someone to aim his mad at. Kris slowly turned in her chair, studying the people standing along the walls, slumped onto the floor. They were beat, at the end of their hope, and waiting for it to end. Okay, Ensign Longknife, how you going to make them want to fight for what’s left of their lives? Talk about a leadership challenge.

  “You want to die?” Kris asked a woman who made eye contact with her for a moment. The woman flinched and dropped her eyes back to the floor.

  “Is that it?” Kris said to a man standing along the wall. “You just want to lie down in the mud and let the river take you?”

  He shrugged. A baby, only a few months old, let out a cry. Her mother rocked her gently, then offered a breast to nurse.

  “You ready to drown that baby?” Kris asked, hard and unwavering.

  “No,” the mother answered, tears in her eyes.

  “Well you better get ready, because that’s what this guy is talking about.” Kris stood. “Okay, you’ve got it bad, probably a lot worse than anyone else in human space right now.” She turned slowly in her place, staring hard at each face as she passed it by, demanding that they look at her, listen to her.

  “When Sam’s dad came here fifty years back, there were lots of corporations ready to stake him …for half ownership, for real control over him. He held out, got a loan…and paid it back. I bet he paid it back early,” she guessed. Apparently right because she got a proud nod from Sam, a scowl from Brandon.

  “Well, I got news for you. There’s a lot of banks around that still lend money that way. Sure they don’t send people out to train wrecks to hunt for folks so down they’ll sign anything. They don’t have to. But when this mess is over, and the sun comes out, they’ll be there for you.”

  “You gonna loan us the money, Longknife?” Brandon spat.

  “Brandon, your hearing’s gone bad. Didn’t I just say I’m Navy?” Kris pointed at the gold bar on her collar. “Navy doesn’t make loans. We’re here to get as many of you out of this mess alive as we can. But Brandon, you aren’t thinking very straight, either. You want to get Grearson fever into the water supply and kill everyone on this mud ball. Folks, think this one through with me.” Kris continued her slow turn.

  Eyes were up now. She had their attention.

  “You let Grearson into the river, and it’s going to poison Port Athens. Folks are sick and hungry down there. They’re going to start dying. A lot of them will be people like me, who came here to help. That the thanks you want to give us?”

  A few heads shook. Finally, they were reacting.

  “Everybody south of Athens is starving. We’re shipping them food just as fast as we can. And if the fever is in our water, that means we’ll be taking them fever, too.
Grearson normally kills half the people who get it. Figure you, your wife get it, one of you dies. Your son, your daughter get it, one of them dies. But folks are starving. They’re already sick. Three out of four are going to die. Your family gets it, maybe you’ll be the one who lives. Maybe just your daughter, Who’s going to take care of a six-year-old orphan kid? There are worse ways to die than the fever.”

  Eyes that had stared back at her empty now showed emotions, fear, terror, anger. Yeah, she had their attention.

  “But you want to know the really sick part of this whole idea of Brandon’s? After Grearson’s wiped out just about every living soul on Olympia, there’s still going to be empty houses, tractors, barns. There’s still going to be farms that dead people worked all their lives to build. They’ll be bought up, for a penny on the dollar. And when the corporations send out their hired hands to make money for them, up in orbit.” Kris waved a thumb at the ceiling, “before they land, they’ll give them a shot like the one my medic wants to give you, and it won’t matter that Grearson’s in the water supply here. The vaccine will keep them healthy so they can work their life away for that corporation. Ain’t that funny,” Kris sneered.

  Nobody laughed.

  Taking his cue, the medic pulled his shot gun from his bag, put a vial of vaccine in it, dialed up the amount, checked it against the one lantern burning in the house and looked around. “Who wants a shot?”

  The woman with the baby shed her coat and offered her bare shoulder. The medic placed the gun against her skin; it went off with a small click. She pulled the child’s diaper down to offer its rump. There was a second click. Sam had his coat off, Karen, too. A line began to form.

  Kris turned to Sam. “I’ve got two climbers ready to go up Lover’s Leap. How much rope do you have?”

  “Plenty.”

  Kris looked around the room. “Who wants to help my people climb that hill?”

  Chapter Sixteen

  “So. Kris, who climbs the cliff and who stays down here?” Tom asked in a tight whisper out of earshot of any rancher. The whisper didn’t hide the tremble in his voice.

  “You don’t have to go if you don’t want to,” Kris said, ready to admit she’d volunteered Tom enough for one day.

  “Cut the crap, Longknife,” he snapped, anger hardening his whisper. “One of us has to stay here. Somebody’s got to give them a kick in the butt if bright boy over there starts something again. You’re probably the best for that. A Longknife staying here shows they haven’t been abandoned.” Tom gave a resigned shrug at his own logic. “I’m going to climb that cliff. If they can’t make it, someone’s got to let you folks at the bottom know. And if I get to the top, I can probably raise the net and get us some help,” he finished.

  “Sounds logical.” Kris nodded, keeping her voice even.

  “Yeah, so why don’t I like it?”

  Kris could think of a dozen reasons. “Beats me,” was what she said.

  “I should have run the first time I saw you. I keep hanging around Longknifes, and I’m gonna end up with a medal. Last words me ma told we was, ‘Don’t you go getting any medals. We have all the metal we need hereabouts.’ ”

  “Why don’t you go see if there’s any little people under that hill that will help you up it?”

  “That’s not a hill, that’s a cliff. Only thing around them is ogres. Don’t you know your fey?”

  “Father read me to sleep with cabinet minutes and political analyses. Never read any fairy tales.”

  “What do you mean, fairy tales? Woman, they’re as real as any political analysis.” Tommy had his lopsided grin back.

  “Can’t argue that with you. So, you’ll go up the hill, and I’ll keep the home fires burning.” Until the river floods the fireplace, Kris left unsaid. They shared a laugh at nothing in particular. The people around them seemed to take heart at that. Together, Kris and Tom stepped out into the pouring rain.

  Sam, Jose, and the two climbers had collected a dozen men and women. A woman brought a thermos of hot tea. As the climbers hefted rope, hammers, and other climbing gear, Sam explained the general plan. “We’ve got tackle for two hoists. I brought it up from the main barn. Should have used it days ago, folks, but I just couldn’t believe it would get this bad. Sorry,” he said.

  “None of us saw it coming,” a ranch hand said.

  “Anyway, we’ll snub down a couple of ropes here; you let out your rope as you climb. Once you’re at the top, you can haul up the tackle and get the hoists going. Then we’ll send folks up. Worst cases you’ll have to haul. Folks that can do something will climb best they can with you hauling some. That ought to do it,” Sam finished lamely.

  “How you know when we’re up there?” a rancher asked.

  Kris tapped her wrist. “Ensign Lien will climb with you. He’ll call me when you’re ready, as well as put in a call to Port Athens for help.”

  “They can’t help us,” Jose pointed out. “There’s three or four deep ravines between here and there. It’s a long drive around. That’s why we used the river.”

  “Tell the Colonel to use the boats as bridges,” Kris said.

  “The boats?” Tom echoed in disbelief.

  “Yes. Ours worked fine the first time, even when I repaired it. Tell Hancock just not to use it a third time.”

  “If you say so.” Tom looked none too sure. Kris was pretty sure Hancock would do just about anything to give them a hand. Well, maybe her. She was one of those Longknifes.

  “It’s either that or the damn boats don’t like Longknifes,” Kris said, ignoring the question of whether its philanthropic provider wanted a certain Longknife dead. That thought would save for later.

  The climbers trudged for Lover’s Leap. Kris followed, trying to spot in the rainy dark where the highest ground lay for her last stand. OCS had included an hour of treading water or a mile swim. She’d managed that fine, but she hadn’t had a hundred sick and half-starved civilians to keep afloat as well. The ground rose slowly. There were stunted evergreen trees on the rocky ground. The closer she got to the cliff, the more there were of jagged boulders, ragged proof that the rocky face before her was prone to landslides. After all Kris had been through that day, a falling rock looked like just another way to die.

  The climbers shared out the rope they were lifting, Nabil and Akuba first, Jose next, the ranchers following. Tommy was last; Kris surprised him with a hug. “Stay safe, Tom, your ma doesn’t want a medal, remember.”

  “A little late for you to start thinking about that,” he grumbled but softened it with a tight smile. Kris had dragged a boy up the river. It looked like she was sending a man up the cliff. “See you in the morning,” he said and turned to follow the others. The ends of two thin lines were tied to the biggest stunted trees available. The climbers carried coils of the rope to let out as they went. It should last them to the top.

  Kris didn’t wait for them to disappear into the mist overhead but turned back to her own work. “There any bales of hay left?” she asked Sam.

  “Not many. We were only a few weeks away from giving up on the last of the herd and eating them. Then the water rose.”

  “Think we could use it to build a dike around here?” They turned back to the cliff, watched as the leader and his light disappeared into the gloom above their heads. “I just don’t know where they’ll set up the hoists,” Kris concluded. That was their problem; much to do and too many unknowns. The two plodded back down the trail for what Kris would quickly learn was a whole new vestibule of hell. At least that was what Tommy would call it.

  Kris had spent four days preparing for the drop mission on Sequim. For that, she’d had data, plenty of data, data overload, except, as it turned out, not the right data. Here she had nothing. There, she’d had gong ho marines. Now her command consisted of everything, from a three-month-old to a ninety-seven-year-old. She had the sick, the depressed, and most of all, the tired and hungry. The tired she let sleep.

  At least with the supp
lies they’d boated in, the hungry got their first decent meal in a year. Enough to give strength for the climb without overfilling half-starved stomachs. As the sleepers awoke, they were fed. Some, the very young or elderly, managed to go back to sleep. Others, feeling almost good for the first time in months, hung around, ready to do something but unsure what. Kris started a list of folks she was about ready to send up the hill on their own. Brandon, who’d somehow missed joining the first string, was at the top of her short list.

  “Aren’t you going to do something?” he insisted for about the forty-eleventh time.

  “Nope.” Kris answered while helping feed a three-year-old. “We’ve moved the rope and the hoists to the trailhead. Some guys are moving what hay bales we have up there. You want to help them?” She’d offered that job before, but it didn’t suit Brandon’s fancy then. It didn’t now. The picks and shovels were already there. What Kris wanted was to know how high the water was, but that was one job she’d never give Brandon. The child fed, her mom took her and began singing a lullaby. Kris glanced at her wrist; three hours until sunrise. Probably three and a half before they got any light down here. Waiting.

  Waiting was supposed to be what ancient women did while the men were away at the war or earning a living. Kris concluded that men were wimps. Turning her back on Brandon, she headed for the door. Outside, she ran into Sam headed in.

  “What’s the river like?” she asked as he backed up.

  “Rising. There’s almost a foot of water at that dip in the ground between here and the trail head. We’re pulling a barbed wire fence down, gonna use it to mark the trail.”

  “Sounds good.”

  “Could you call that other navy fellow, ask him how things are going?”

  “I could, but would you want to answer a phone when you were halfway up that cliff?”

  “No, but it’s just not knowing that’s making everyone edgy.”

  “Sam, they could get two hundred and fifty meters up that hill and be stuck at the last fifty.” Kris didn’t like to think about that, but it was the truth. The sun could well be up, and they still might not know for sure.