Kris had been expecting this. “Sir, the Anderson ranch had a medical emergency that involved a threat to the public health of this planet. Exercising independent judgment and within calculated risks, sir, I led a boat expedition to their relief. Our efforts were hampered by what I can only assume at this time is a flaw in the design of the liquid metal boats. We were in the process of rescuing the ranch hands when you arrived, sir.” There, she’d made her report, and every word of it was true … even if the color was off a bit.
Hancock just shook his head. “So you didn’t have time to call me, to run your approach through your commanding officer?”
“Sir, you were committed to a convoy mission. There were no roads to the Anderson ranch. A boat was the only way to reach it,” Kris said, knowing full well the truck she was riding in raised certain questions about her estimate of the situation. “Until the liquid metal boat just became liquid it wasn’t going so bad, sir. The boat formed up like it should. I even repaired the prop when it got bent—on a log. Sir, we didn’t have any other choice.”
Colonel Hancock’s face remained a hard mask as Kris tried to explain why she’d done what she did. If anything, the tightness around the eyes got tighter. “You’d activated the boat modification system twice already.”
“Yes, sir. But I didn’t know it was a problem.”
“If you’d touched that keypad one more time on the way up, it would have dumped you and your entire party into the river.”
“Yes, sir,” Kris agreed lamely.
“I found out the damn system was a piece of crap while using it for a bridge. It broke while no one was on it. In one day I already knew we had a problem, and no lives were put at risk. None but yours, because you didn’t have any choice.” Kris didn’t have an answer for that.
“Ensign Lien, Tom isn’t it.”
Kris was grateful to have the Colonel’s full attention shift from her, then felt guilty all the same. Tom hadn’t done anything she hadn’t asked. No, this was the Navy. She’d ordered him to do what he did. She was the senior. She was responsible.
“Yes, sir,” Tom answered.
“Did you have no other choice?”
“No, sir. I had choices.”
The Colonel already had his mouth open. He closed it and eyed Tom for a moment. “What makes you say that?”
“We always have choices, sir. At least, that’s what my grandma always says. No matter how bad it looks, there are always choices.”
“What choices did you have today that Ensign Longknife didn’t seem to notice?” God, the sarcasm was thick.
“We could have called you, sir. Asked for your advice. At least kept you informed of what we were doing. I didn’t think about driving up here like you did, sir, but maybe if we’d kicked things around a while, we might have thought up that idea. But sir, we didn’t have the lift crane for moving the bridges on and off the trucks. I’m not sure we could have done that, sir.”
“But you didn’t think about it then, did you?”
“No, sir.”
“Why?”
“Kris said to take the boat, sir, and I followed her lead.”
“You followed her, without question.”
“Yes, sir,” Tom said.
Kris knew that wasn’t quite true. Tom had griped, questioned, complained, but she’d ignored him. Ignored him just like she always did.
“You’d follow her if she led you into hell.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Or off a cliff.”
“Or up one, sir.” Tom actually managed a lopsided grin.
“You listening to this, Ensign?” Kris had the Colonel’s full attention again, but she was busy digesting what Tom said.
“Yes, sir.”
“You hearing it?”
Kris took a moment before she answered. “I think so, sir.”
“You are a leader. Probably the best damn leader this lash-up has. You filled a vacuum I let happen. For that I bear a great degree of responsibility. However, young woman, you can never slough the responsibility for the leadership you provide. From the moment you set foot on this planet, you’ve been leading. People who were bitter or lost or struggling on their own found they could trust you to lead them. That’s the way it’s supposed to be. But damn it, woman, you’re in over your head. You are an ensign in the Navy. That means a lot, but it doesn’t mean anywhere near what you, Ensign Longknife are making it mean.”
Kris had done her best to follow the Colonel, but somewhere in there, he’d lost her. “Sir, I don’t understand.”
“You are a Longknife. You don’t have a choice. That’s what Ray Longknife said after he killed President Urm. ‘There was no alternative.’ That’s what your Great-grandpa Trouble said after he took a battalion up Black Mountain and kicked a division off it. Just like Tom here learned from his grandma that there were always choices, you learned at your great-grandfathers’ knees that there are no other choices.”
“That’s not true, sir. I can count on one hand the number of days I’ve seen Grampa Ray. And Grampa Trouble is my mother’s least liked man in the universe. He hasn’t been in our house since I was twelve.” And he saved my life. “The whole reason I’m in the Navy is to get away from being one of those Longknifes. Sir.” He wasn’t being fair to her.
He didn’t know anything about her. And he probably didn’t care, either. Kris put down her hardly touched mug of coffee, folded her hands, and prepared to ignore the rest of what Colonel Hancock of machine-gun-crowd-control fame had to say.
But the Colonel said nothing.
Instead, he leaned back into his seat and studied her for a long moment.
Outside, the rain was still coming down, making the truck’s cab rattle like a drum. The driver and his mate carried on a conversation mainly of “There’s a big rock.” “Watch that hole!” “That mud looks too deep, go right.”
Kris was tired … exhausted by the day and drained by the Colonel’s critique. She just wanted Hancock to finish his say and let her get some sleep.
Then the Colonel smiled.
“Family is a strange thing. I remember visiting my old man when my son was seven or eight. I can count on one hand the number of days my dad spent with my son. But I kept having to swallow a smile that weekend. You see, my son had mannerisms just like my dad. Now, on a seven-year-old, they were cute, kind of rough and jerky, but looking at my dad push his hair back just so or tug at his ear just the way my son did tickled me. Funny thing was that, as I said, my son and dad hardly ever saw each other, so I kept wondering how they got the same mannerisms,” the Colonel said, brushing his hair back with his right hand, then tugging at his ear. Almost Kris smiled.
“Your son got your dad’s mannerisms from you,” Tom said.
“Yeah, and, of course, I don’t live in front of a mirror, so there was no way I could notice what I did. But my son did. And I guess I noticed what my dad did.”
“But not consciously,” Kris said.
“Never consciously.”
And Kris unfolded her arms, ran a nervous hand through her hair, and started thinking out loud. “I remember Father telling parliament that they had no choice but to keep capital punishment on the books until Eddy’s killers swung at the end of a rope. I can’t count the number of times I heard him say, ‘There are no other options.’ That was the way he’d send me off to a soccer game. ‘Win. There is nothing else.’ ”
“You couldn’t lose?” Tommy asked, incredulously.
“Not as far as my father was concerned,” Kris assured him. Then she frowned at the Colonel. “But sir, when I first saw the base, it was a mess. I knew we had to do something about it. I knew we had to clean up the mess hall, improve the chow. The alternative was just to wallow in the mud.”
“Yes, and you did good. Thank God you did what you did. You’ve given me a second chance. You’ve got my command moving up, rather than lying on its back looking up. You’ve fed a lot of people. You chose right that time.” The Colonel held Kr
is with his eyes. They were just as demanding, but somehow not as hard as they had been when he’d climbed in the rig.
“This time I chose wrong.”
“Yes.”
“But how do I know when I’m gonna be right and when I’m headed up a cliff?” Kris demanded.
The Colonel leaned back in his seat and snorted. “That’s the question every ensign wants answered.”
“And…” Kris insisted.
“With luck, you’ll have a pretty good handle on it by the time you’re a full lieutenant. You better know it damn good by the time they pin eagles on your collar.”
That only added to Kris’s confusion. “Sir, that doesn’t answer the question, does it?”
“No. You’ve got to find the answer yourself. Better yet, the answers. There’re a lot of answers you think you know that you don’t.”
“Sir?” That one really puzzled Kris.
“Who killed President Urm?” the Colonel asked Kris softly.
Kris blinked and said the first thing that came to mind. “My Great-grampa Ray.”
“Right, it was in all the papers. Not a history book disagrees. How much have you read about that operation?”
“All the books, I think. The city library had a couple of bookshelves on that war that I went through when I was thirteen.” And drying out.
“But you’ve never read the classified post-action report that Army Intelligence did, have you?”
“If it wasn’t in the library, I guess not.”
“You’re cleared for it. It’s old news now. Next time you get close to a secure station, call it up.”
Kris didn’t want to know later; she needed to know now. She was about to have Nelly get it any way she could, when Tommy leaned around her. “Colonel, what does it say?”
The Colonel chuckled at the unexpected source of the question, but he went on. “It says that Colonel Longknife and his wife Rita have got to be two of the gutsiest people in the universe. They flew halfway across human space with a bomb, then carried it through the tightest security devised by man up to that time. And they did it calm and cool as you please, never giving anyone a hint of what they were doing. Not the crew of the ship carrying them and not the security guards they walked through. Damn, that’s guts.”
“So they did kill President Urm,” Kris said.
“It would seem so. But there’s a few questions the poor intelligence weenies writing the report couldn’t answer. As a visitor, the Colonel was seated about as far from the podium where Urm was presiding as the security guards could get him. Yet the autopsy report says the bomb went off right in the president’s face. There were flechettes that went in the front of his skull and were halfway out the back.”
“How do you get a briefcase in someone’s face?” Tommy asked.
“A good question.” The Colonel chuckled. “A better question is, how do you get said briefcase in someone’s face and live to tell about it?”
“But Grampa’s given hundreds of interviews about the assassination. Are you saying he lied to all those reporters?”
“I’ve read a lot of those interviews, young woman, and I’ll bet you money that your grampa has not told a single lie to any of those media meatheads. If you’ve never been out on the tip of the spear, Kris, you have no idea what goes on there. Those reporters ask the questions their editors think the average Joe on the street wants to hear. Figuring out the facts of what actually happened is as far from them as”—he snorted—“this planet is from drying out. No. Reporters may understand garden parties, and they think they understand political campaigns. But understand what a soldier does, a sailor? You might as well ask a pig to sing opera.”
Then the Colonel turned his full concentration on Kris. “But you know what it’s like. You’ve been the spear two or three times. And if you’re going to keep putting expectations on poor guys like Tom and those boatmen and your warehouse department, you better have a damn sight better understanding of just what the people did who made ‘those damn Longknifes’ into one word.
“Now get some sleep. We’ve got good people taking care of things around here. The Fourth Highlanders will be down tomorrow, and we can turn a lot of this stuff over to them.” The Colonel got a strange smile on his face. “And maybe I can talk their Colonel into throwing a Dining In before I ship you off planet.” Kris didn’t like the look on the Colonel’s face. There was something about the Highlanders or the Dining In that held a surprise for her. It couldn’t be the Dining In; that was just a meal. “The Highlanders, sir,” she coaxed.
“LornaDo’s Fourth Battalion, Highland Regiment. I think Regimental Sergeant Major Rutherford is still with them. His dad was with the Fourth and that platoon of marines that your Great-grampa Trouble led up Black Mountain. A battalion and a platoon out to evict a division from a mountain they’d dug in on. Not just any division, but one whose officers were indicted war criminals and whose sergeants and men knew they were going to jail if the newly elected government on Savannah wasn’t run out of town fast. You know the story.”
Kris nodded; of course she knew the story. At least, she knew the story the way the history books told it.
“Well, Sergeant Major Rutherford’s dad was one of the few Highlanders to walk off that mountain on his own two feet. Gives him an interesting perspective on how the battalion won that particular battle honor.” And with that, the Colonel turned to the window and, bumpy road or not, went to sleep.
Kris was maybe ten seconds behind him.
Chapter Seventeen
Kris missed the sonic booms of the incoming landers, what with the rattle of the wind-whipped rain on the side of the bus. She kept her eyes on the end of the runway; sooner or later they’d have to break out of the mist and scud. The weather folks had promised rain and warm for today. As usual, the rain was here, but warm was not. Kris wore a sweater and undress khakis.
Despite the injunction of the commander back on Wardhaven who’d briefed Kris for this operation, she’d brought along two sets of khakis and one set of dress whites. Upon return from her river trip, Colonel Hancock ordered her, effective immediately, only to wear them for the rest of her stay on Olympia. “Maybe you’ll get in less trouble if you don’t dress for it.” He might be right; for the last thirty hours she hadn’t caused or gotten into anything the Colonel didn’t approve of.
Of course, the Colonel hadn’t gone off base, and Kris was restricted to it. Well, maybe not restricted, more like grounded. When her parents grounded Kris, it wasn’t an excuse to skip soccer or ballet or any of their stuff, only her stuff; same with Colonel Hancock. She could run the warehouse. Indeed, she was expected to get it in shape to turn over to the Highlanders. Tommy was still running the motor pool. He likewise was cleaning up the loose ends for a transition. It was just that neither one of them was supposed to take a step out of the warehouse or base or the direct line between them. And the Colonel had taken to dropping by at odd times to make sure. Five or six times a day.
It was as if he didn’t trust Kris any more than her mother or father had when she was sixteen. Then, the Colonel had better cause for that certain lack of trust. Accompanying the rented buses and vans was Kris’s first trip beyond her short leash. Kris had asked Tommy if he wanted to meet the Highland battalion; he’d jumped at the chance. Kris also asked the Colonel if he’d like to go.
“Who’s riding shotgun?” he asked without looking up from the reports on his desk.
“A couple of contract riflemen from the soup kitchens.” Again today, just about the entire navy detachment was on the road delivering food.
“You going to start a war or do anything else that will increase the amount of paperwork on my desk?”
“No sir. Definitely not, sir. Straight boot ensign stuff, sir. No Ensign Longknife stuff either, sir,” she grinned.
“Get lost,” he grumbled. Then thought better. “But leave bread crumbs. I want you back here for supper.”
“Yes, sir.” She saluted. His return salu
te actually qualified as a military honor.
Both landers broke out of the scud at about the same time. Kris shook her head. This bunch were real hard cases; the landers were trying to set down side by side. On the collection of potholes Olympia called a duty runway, that was suicide.
Apparently, the pilot of the second lander took one look at the runway and came to the same conclusion. He added power and climbed into the overcast for a go-around. The first lander went long, missing the worst potholes, and did a reasonably smooth run out. It was taxiing toward the number-one parking slot when the second lander touched down. Unwilling to be soaked, Kris waited on the bus to see what happened next. Only when the second lander was at a full stop did both landers lower their aft loading hatch.
Two men in plaid kilts and tall fuzzy hats marched smartly to either side of the hatch. Then the most interesting noises began.
“What are those women doing to those poor cats?” Tommy asked on net.
“Be careful who you’re calling a woman,” came from the Colonel, apparently monitoring the net.
“And that racket you’re complaining about is bagpipes,” Kris added.
“I thought all you Santa Marians were fake Celts,” Hancock said. “Don’t tell me you don’t know what a bagpipe is.”
“And didn’t it not survive the hungry survival years?” Tommy answered in the thickest brogue she’d heard him manage. “And don’t we thank Jesus, Mary, and Joseph every day for that small grace.”
“And I thought I was shipping you off planet because you were too tied up with that Longknife person. Ensign Lien, you’re not going to survive the night.”
“And am I supposed to be afraid of men in skirts?”
“Ladies from Hell.” Kris had read a bit of history. “Now Tommy, me lad, you can either start walking back to the base—” The heavy rain picked that moment to get heavier—“or you can move your two buses around to Lander Number Two.” Kris pointed to her driver, and she got in gear. “I’m bringing my three buses to Lander Number One. Don’t worry, Colonel, we’ll manage this evolution real smooth.”
Kris Longknife: Mutineer Page 28