Kris found herself trying to remember a blizzard of names made easier by a regimental tendency to give everyone a nickname. Chalky was Second Lieutenant Sutherland who had an unruly thatch of white hair. Tiny was, of course, well over two meters tall. In general, the junior portion of the officers’ mess seemed comfortable with their place and delighted to meet Kris.
It was when Emma passed Kris to Major Massingo for introduction to the senior members of the mess that things got complicated. The corner with Commander Owing had acquired several more officers by the time Kris was pointed in their direction. Kris wasn’t sure, but it seemed the mess server had made quite a few trips to this circle to refill empty glasses. The doctor looked unlikely to be vertical by the time supper was announced. After the obligatory round of names, Kris was prepared to bow out and return to the juniors when the supply officer, a major, blurted out, “And what does a Longknife think of devolution? You aren’t going to stand with Earth, are you?”
A bit surprised, still, Kris found that an easy one. “I’m a serving officer, sir, I stand behind my commanding officer and in front of my troops,” she said, deflecting the question.
“So you’ll just do whatever you’re told,” the doc said, leaning forward in his chair and almost falling out of it. A friend helped steady him.
“I’m kind of new at this, just a boot ensign, but I understand that we’re supposed to follow orders.” Kris smiled and took a step back. It wasn’t enough to get her clear of the conversation circle, however.
“But what if a greater good is involved?” put in a major with crossed muskets on his doublet. “If some idiot orders me to charge a heavily defended bunker, it’s usually understood that I can use smoke and hunt for a flank.” That got nods from his messmates. “So what’s our duty to the greater good? It was a Longknife who killed President Urm. Was he following orders?”
“No,” Kris agreed.
“So, when evil’s rampant, the soldier, for the greater good, may have to act on his own?”
“The books I’ve read said Urm was pretty bad,” Kris pointed out. “I don’t see anybody around like him. Do you?” Kris wanted out of this discussion. It didn’t look like anyone was taking notes, but you could never tell when someone might have their personal computer set to record. “Nelly,” Kris said subvocally, “start recording.” At least she’d have a transcript of this conversation if it did hit the Wardhaven media.
“Yes, evil as barefaced as Urm makes it easy to know a soldier’s duty. But what if it’s an insipid, tepid evil, wearing away the soul and psyche of humanity a little at a time? Evil that seeks to turn virtue into vice and pass vice off as virtue a bit today, a bit more tomorrow?” That didn’t require an answer from Kris; she’d learned long ago to keep her mouth shut. No reporter ever got a sound bite from silence.
“Yeah,” another officer filled the dead space. “When did you ever hear a civilian say anything good about duty? I don’t even think honor’s in their vocabulary. My kid’s going to college, got her a new set of writing gear. Damn computer asked her how to spell honor. Wasn’t in its database.” That got snorts all around. Kris couldn’t believe it was true, but it made a great story.
“Strange, it was in mine,” Kris said before she knew her mouth was open. Damn, Judith said she had too much fight in her for her own good. And after all those therapy sessions, it was still there.
“Your father is rather high in the government. Your grandfather is running Nuu Enterprises. Some might see you…” A hand waved diffidently as if searching for words.
“As part of the evil,” Kris supplied.
“More like allied with its sensibilities,” the major countered. “Listen, we soldiers know the score. The game is rigged from the top. When common people don’t like it, we’re the ones that get called in to keep them placing their bets at the table. Look at your Colonel Hancock. Some farmers on Darkunder don’t like the way the cards are falling, him and his battalion get called in. Dumb farmers don’t know when to call it quits; so a lot of them die. Hancock did what he was told to do, and see what it got him. He had the power on that mud ball. When they ordered him off to face a court-martial, he should have marched his battalion down to that bunch of fat money men that passed for a parliament on Darkunder and sent them all scurrying for their rat holes. Then the media would have made him the farmers’ bloody messiah rather than their murderer.”
Kris couldn’t say she was shocked. Back at the Scriptorum, there’d always been the right-winger, ready to call for war.
“What people need is fire and duty to purify them from the greasy money men and their cheap, easy ways.” The vets on Wardhaven had said the same thing. Why was hearing it from a serving officer sending chills down Kris’s spine?
Because these are the blokes that are supposed to stand between civilization and the rack of war, not the ones to bring it. The real question for Kris was, was this guy serious, or was it just the whiskey talking? Was he just pissed that his battalion was stuck in the mud on do-gooder duty, or might he really want to march down the street and take over Olympia’s government? Kris suppressed a smile. He’d have a hard time finding any government to take over. The exhibit barn the legislature shared every three years with the weekly cattle auction had collapsed months ago.
If this guy was for real, he wasn’t Ensign Longknife’s problem. Colonel Hancock would have the job of facing him down. And if it was only talk, whether drink- or anger-inspired, it still wasn’t Kris’s problem. She’d faced kidnappers’ guns and roving bands of heavily armed hungry. She’d shown she had the stomach for a real fight. This kind of O club bull session seemed rather tame now.
“Excuse me. Nature calls,” she said and wound her way out of the group to head for the ladies’ room. Facing the stalls, Kris concluded her heavily starched whites would come away looking like an accordion, and wondered if Wardhaven had any Highland units. A transfer might not be a bad idea, except these guys charged machine guns when they went into battle, and the Navy was smart enough to take along a nice bunk and good chow when they went to a fight. Kris splashed water on her face, told Nelly to quit recording, and prepared to go public again. Major Massingo and Captain Rutherford were waiting for her.
“That fellow is a blowhard,” the major assured her. “You did well to let it roll off your back.”
Kris snorted. “I kept wondering if someone had a mike recording. I learned long ago to be careful what I say.”
“Must not have been easy, growing up a politician’s daughter,” Emma said.
“Not many realize just what a pain it was,” Kris agreed. “Can I dodge Blowhard for the rest of the night?”
“Shouldn’t be any trouble,” the major assured her.
“We have a skiff racing team, one of the best on LornaDo. The coach and pilots are dying to talk to you.” Emma said.
“Let’s talk racing!” And that provided plenty to fill the time until dinner was announced, and announced in a most unusual way. One of the servers stopped to whisper in Major Massingo’s ear. She rose, adjusted her tunic, and faced the door. “Pipe Sergeant, pipe us to dinner.”
A sergeant in full regalia presented himself at the door, doing one of those strange double jumps that the Highlanders seemed to do as they came to a halt. “Ma’am,” he shouted. After the most pregnant of pauses, he continued. “Pipes and drums, dinnerrrr paaa-rade.”
With that, the sergeant marched forward, followed by two pipers and a drummer. At the spaceport, the sound of the pipes had carried. In the confines of the officers’ mess, it threatened to crush skulls. Almost, Kris had Nelly do a double check on the structural integrity report they’d gotten on the building, but she was having too much fun watching Tommy.
His mouth hung open, his eyes were larger than dinner plates, and his ears were hanging on by a thread. “Take that, you liar,” she mouthed at him. She could have shouted it, and no one would have heard her. But Kris could only relish Tommy’s shock for so long. The officers wer
e moving, some none too steadily, to form a parade behind their music. Major Massingo led off, as president of the mess, with the Colonels right behind her. Lieutenant Commander Owing and the majors were next, the battalion’s company commanders, captains, right behind. Kris figured she and Tommy, as junior ensigns, would bring up the rear, but Emma gently took Kris’s elbow and led her to join the company commanders and their first lieutenant execs. Tommy fell in somewhere with the platoon leaders.
And thus they marched into a dining room resplendent with linens and crystal, china and silver. The smell of roast beef almost knocked Kris off her feet, but a crescendo from the pipes carried her away. The walls were hung with battle flags. The Society flag held pride of place behind the head of the table with LornaDo’s flag, but other flags the battalion had carried or captured hung along the wall as well.
Unity’s red and black was there, along with several planetary flags that must have been captured in the wild days ninety years ago before Unity brought its brutal order to the Rim, then went down in defeat before the Society of Humanity’s massed power. Did devolution mean a return to the days when every planet fought its neighbor for trade, for resources, for reparations that were little more than extortion by the more powerful from the weak? The battalion’s battle flags were a visual reminder of humanity’s history among the stars, and not the best part of it. Too bad something like that wasn’t hung along the walls of the Scriptorum. Now, that would be a real education for the students.
Kris took the place Emma pointed her at. The chaplain offered grace, half thanks and half proud highlighting of battles won. The mess president followed the prayer with a toast, “To absent friends,” that seemed as much a prayer as the chaplain’s. Then, as the pipes paraded out, the soup was served.
“I understand you’ve had an exciting time of it,” one of the captains said to Kris. With that opening, Kris provided all listening a quick overview of what she’d done and discovered about the local situation.
“So the fighting is pretty much over and done with,” another captain summarized the most salient point of Kris’s brief.
“Some of the farms still won’t give the swamp runners the water off their septic tanks. You can spot them easily. They’ve got more bunkhouses than people in line to draw food. Others are just the opposite. Long lines of hungry, and you’ll have no idea how they sleep them.”
“How do you think it will shake out when this is all over?” a different captain asked.
“Your guess is as good as mine. I’m just glad that is not part of my mission. If you don’t mind some advice, I’d suggest you don’t let it creep into yours. There are some real nasty things at work here that you’re not going to solve with a rifle.”
That drew nods. “No surprise there,” Emma added, “considering the strategic value of this system. You know you can reach almost fifty systems from here. Most of human space is less than three jumps away.”
“I came across that when I was boning up on this place. It has great trade potential.”
“Or military value,” a captain added.
“Military value is nice, but it only pays when you’re at war,” Kris pointed out.
“You haven’t been paying much attention to the media, have you?” the captain said.
“When you’re up to your neck in snakes and wildebeests, it doesn’t leave much spare time,” Kris replied.
“You might want to bone up on the news on your trip back,” Emma suggested.
“What’s happening?”
“There’s a lot of unhappy people in the Society,” a captain said.
“And getting unhappier,” another one added.
“You know that little girl you rescued?” Emma said. Kris nodded. “Hardly a day goes by that she or the criminals that grabbed her aren’t in the news.”
“I thought that would have blown over.”
“It’s not blowing over,” Emma assured Kris.
“Or isn’t being allowed to blow over.” Kris’s comment was greeted by shrugs from her messmates.
The pipes were back, escorting the fish to the table. When it quieted to the dull roar of table conversation, Emma went on. “Several planets have already set up travel restrictions. Anyone born on Earth or the Seven Sisters has to request a visa to enter them. No visa, no entry. Some Earth business types are screaming its just a way to restrict trade, cut them out of business.”
“Let me guess,” Kris cut in. “Anyone serious about business writes ahead for a visa. The ‘One Flesh, One Galaxy’ types or those more interested in media attention, don’t.”
“Got it in one.” A captain grinned. “I always said Longknifes did, too, have the brains God promised a billy goat.”
Kris flashed a toothy smile at her supporter.
“Some planets already have taken ships back,” Emma said, “painted on their flags, and declared their fleet not subject to Society orders. Earth is demanding the ships back or payment.”
“A lot of those ships were built by the planets that manned them,” Kris pointed out. “Wardhaven has several squadrons we paid for. Have we withdrawn them from Earth command?”
“No, your father has dodged the issue so far. But you’re right about the problem. The planets that have taken ships back say they don’t owe anything. They built them because Earth didn’t provide enough to patrol the Rim. Earth says the ships were gifts in lieu of higher taxes and wants cash.” So it was back to the tax issue that had put Kris on the beach and the Typhoon in stand-down mode. In college, Kris had been surprised to discover that Earth’s tax burden was about the same as Wardhaven’s, 30 percent on average. But much of Earth’s tax money went to social services. Earth investments were usually where there were cops on the beat. Wardhaven spent a much higher percent of her taxes on research and extra military ships, which were mainly used to patrol the new start-up worlds where much of Wardhaven’s private investment capital went.
Earth and the Rim, even after eighty years, still had very different ways of looking at things and different ideas about what was important. Question was, could her grampas find enough shared interests to manage the change coming without it all coming apart with a big boom? Different officers at the table had different opinions. Kris kept her own to herself.
Sometime during this discussion, a piper had begun a tune. Several junior officers took claymores from the wall and began sword dances. Tommy was out of his chair, watching one dancer real close. There were shouts for Tommy to join in. Kris suspected the dancer had more to do with Tommy’s attention. That particular second lieutenant had a lightness to her step and a particularly broad smile when her whirling brought Tommy in view.
Emma bent close to Kris’s ear. “Your ensign seems to have found a friend.”
Kris shrugged. “Plenty of my friends have friends,” she assured her. The story of my life.
The dancing was interrupted as the beef was announced. This particular animal got major honors. Sergeant, pipes, and drums led the way as two servers carried a full roasted carcass in on a pole. The mess cheered as the first slice was cut and offered to the president of the mess. She deferred to the Highlanders’ Colonel, who in turn deferred to his Marine guest. Hancock accepted it, cut a large portion off and, with his fork still in his left hand, bit into it. Only after he declared it perfect did the servers begin to cut and distribute choice cuts to the rest of the mess.
“You have a very interesting way of doing things,” Kris told Emma when the pipes marched out again.
“It’s our tradition.”
“When we are done with this fine beef, I have a question about your traditions.” A thick slab of roast beef was soon set before Kris. She discovered that Yorkshire pudding looked more like a roll and that at least the English tradition of stewing their vegetables had not survived. That was one bit of merry old England that Kris would not mourn. When the cheese and fruit were brought in with much less fanfare, Kris turned to Emma.
“Was it traditions like these tha
t took your battalion up Black Mountain?” That got nods from all in hearing. “My Colonel suggested I hear from Regimental Sergeant Major Rutherford the story of Black Mountain, the way he told it to you both before and after you put on the uniform. Colonel Hancock thought he’d tell me about it during the Dining In.”
“Oh, no,” Emma shook her head. “The Regimental Sergeant Major would never enter the officers’ mess. Certainly not during Dining In.” Kris was beginning to suspect there was the right way, the wrong way, the Navy Way
, and the Highlander Way
. No wonder the Society of Humanity was having so much trouble keeping them all together.
One of the captains turned to Emma. “Why don’t you tell her the story. I’ve heard you enlighten your new lieutenants. It wasn’t just the nuggets that were spellbound in the mess those nights.”
It took a bit more coaxing, but soon Emma turned from her selection of cheeses and fruit. She patted her lips with an immaculate white linen napkin, laid it down, then started. “If you paid attention in civics class, you know the situation on Savannah was bad. The old government had used its army to beat the civilians into submission. The soldiers spent more time on rape and murder than drill. More hours roaming the streets with knives and clubs than on the rifle range.
“Then Savannah had its first free elections, thanks in no small way to Kris’s dear, if not yet departed, ancestors. The big players ran for the exits, taking with them their numbered bank accounts on Helvetica. That left just the little people, the ones who did the raping and the murdering, not the ones who ordered it. The army, such as it was, retreated back to its cantonment in the hills above the capital. Most folks were glad to be quit of them. Let them stay up there and starve was the mood of the man on the street. Unfortunately, the man in command knew there was a dam up there under First Corps control. Open those sluice gates, and the capital, with most of its people, would be washed away. They’d made Ray Longknife a general, but put few troops at his command. Those he had were professionals. And those he had included the Fourth Highlanders of proud LornaDo.”
Kris Longknife: Mutineer Page 30