Kris Longknife: Mutineer

by Mike Shepherd

  “We’ll know soon.”

  A minute later Scirocco cut power. “Hurricane, call it quits,” Kris called. “You don’t have any future. Don’t let the commodore drag you down. Somebody over there put a stop to this before the ship blows out from under you.”

  No answer. Kris studied the track of the Hurricane on the screen, matched it against her refined estimate of the jump’s actual location. With the Patton as a gravimetric arm, she got a much better reading than the Hurricane could. She tested for the location of the jump point one more time and smiled.

  “Hurricane, you have misjudged the jump. It’s to your right. I repeat, Hurricane, you are going to miss the jump entirely. Cut your acceleration and prepare to be boarded.”

  “She’s zigging to the right,” Addison said.

  “And waving just a bit too much of her engines at me,” Kris muttered. She dialed her three lasers into a loose pattern, put in the best estimate she had of range, and selected one-quarter power. Shooting a three-laser salvo, she got a good spread. All missed, but number four missed the least. Quickly, Kris tightened her pattern and re-formed it around number four. Again, she racked up three misses, but this time number two was closest. Reworking her solution, tightening her salvo spread, Kris moved her fingers over her battle board as quickly as three and a half g’s allowed.

  She had juice for two more shots.

  Again number four was closest. Kris adjusted her salvo for her final shot as she listened to Tommy praying fervently for the lives of the Hurricane’s crew. Kris had gotten three shots off without the corvette changing course.

  She paused for a second, her fingers on the fire buttons. The flag began a zig to the left. Kris made a quick adjustment and fired.

  For a long second she waited. She’d shot the Typhoon dry to wing the flag, slow her down, make her unstable, and just maybe help any sane person on board get a drop on the commodore.

  Somewhere in the Typhoon, radar and laser pulses went out and came back. Somewhere gravitational and optical systems did their measuring. Somewhere a computer assessed all that feedback and reported it to Kris’s battle board. It seemed like ages that the blip on her screen continued, unaffected, on its way. Then the blip wavered for a second and began a wild series of loops.

  “By God, Kris, you winged ‘em!” Tommy screamed.

  “Just a second,” Addison shouted. “Just a second. Yes. They’re out of range of the jump. They can’t make the jump.”

  Kris let her hand collapse on the commlink “Hurricane, you are out of control. You cannot make the jump. For God’s sake, cut your engines before they explode. Don’t let that bastard kill you all,” Kris pleaded. “Damn it, I fired a captain. You can sack that damn Sampson.”

  The Hurricane seemed to settle again on its course. Then all acceleration died.

  “This is Captain Horicson. I am surrendering the ship to a junior officer. The commodore is unconscious. What do you want me to do?”

  “Put one g deceleration on your boat,” Kris ordered.

  “See that Sampson gets some medical attention. There are a lot of officers that want to have a word with him.”

  “They can have him,” came back from the Hurricane. “He damn near killed us all.”

  ****

  So the strange tale of Attack Squadron Six ended. The celebration at Paris 8 was long finished and the fleets long gone to their respective homes before Kris got the Typhoon, Hurricane, and Scirocco down to a manageable speed. Most of Scout Squadron Fifty-four didn’t miss the festivities, but Patton drew the duty of rendezvousing with the remnants of AttackRon Six to pass reaction mass.

  The Typhoon was bleeding sewage into the reactors before she fell in formation with the old cruiser. No sooner was a fuel line passed than Tom was tapping Kris’s elbow. “We got a coded message coming in.”

  Kris ran the number groups through the decoder. It didn’t seem all that secret to her. She tapped her commlink. “The Typhoon, Hurricane, and Scirocco are ordered to rendezvous with the battleship Magnificent still in orbit around Paris 8. All personnel suspected of being involved in the attack conspiracy will be transferred to the Magnificent and returned to Wardhaven under guard. All other officers are ordered to the Magnificent for debriefing and TDY to Wardhaven as material witnesses. The corvettes will draw new officers on temporary assignment to get them back to High Cambria.”

  That left the crew in a happy mood. Tommy eyed Kris when she didn’t join in the smiles. “Anything in there about you?”

  “Yes. Ensign Kris Longknife is detached from the Typhoon, with orders to report to Wardhaven,”

  “Detached?”

  Kris knew they couldn’t very well make her captain of the Typhoon, but to yank her off of it like this? She tried to look at the bright side. “At least I’m not under guard.”

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Kris paused at the top of the stairs. It was early morning; the sun shone through the crystal chandelier in the foyer of Nuu House sending tiny rainbows dancing on the spiral of black and white tiles below. On early mornings like this, a much younger Kris and Eddy had tried to catch the rainbows, hoping for the promised pot of gold. Was she any closer now to finding the end of her rainbow? A deep sigh drew in the smell of memories and morning, breakfast and wood…and the inevitable hint of electronics. Such was a grown woman’s world.

  The Magnificent had docked late last night; Kris and Tom were two of the few who left her. As expected, Harvey was waiting for Kris at the elevator exit. Surprisingly, two messages had quickly come in to Nelly.

  “So you made it back alive.—Al,” was Grandfather’s cryptic response, which also included Kris among the few people allowed to call him Al. The note from Mother had simply said, “We are expecting you for supper tomorrow.” So, at least the family was not distancing itself from their mutineer.

  As on a long ago morning, Grampa Trouble was downstairs. Today, Kris stood stiff in starched undress whites; Grampa Trouble wore civilian clothes. He stood with his back to Kris, talking with Grampa Ray. His voice low, his hands flew wildly as he remonstrated with the former president. Ray shook his head. He’d been shaking it since Kris first spotted him; he kept right on shaking it. Then he noticed her.

  His eyes took on a sparkle, and his mouth morphed from frown to smile in the second he took to look up. Trouble paused his argument in mid-hand wave, turned to see what Ray was beaming at, and did his own version of proud great-grandfather. “Have we told you lately what a fine young woman you’ve turned out to be, Ensign?” Trouble smiled proudly.

  Kris started down the stairs, feeling the scratch of the starched uniform on the back of her legs. “What got you two up so early?” she asked in a soft voice that filled the vast space.

  “Meetings!” Ray spat. “You?”

  “Another session with my inquisitor. He asks me the same questions. I give him the same answers. He likes oh eight hundred meetings.”

  “I survived that inquisition a few times,” Ray assured her. “You will, too.”

  Kris nodded; she’d faced rifle fire and heavy lasers. Why worry about a little talk with an intelligence weenie? Or supper with Mother and Father, for that matter. Somehow tonight didn’t hold nearly the terror it once had.

  “What are you two doing for lunch?”

  They exchanged a look. “I am not going to lunch with that bunch,” Ray snorted.

  “Before Kris shipped off last time,” Trouble said, “she wanted to ask us a few questions.”

  “Questions?” Ray raised an eyebrow.

  “One of my skippers, not Thorpe, said that if I intended to be another one of those damn Longknifes that I better get a solid handle on just what damn Longknifes really did and how they survived doing it. How come an autopsy showed a bomb went off in someone’s face, but the bomber walked away?”

  “Oh,” Ray said, glancing at Trouble, who only raised an eyebrow in reply. Ray shook his head ruefully. “Should have known you’d be asking that one. Okay, Kris, t
ell you what, if you survive your little morning talk, and if I don’t get lynched by the mob old Trouble here has matched me up with, we’ll meet around ten-thirty for an early lunch.”

  “Ten-thirty!” Trouble protested. “That bunch of longwinded yappers and yammerers will just be getting started.”

  Ray gave Trouble a wide-mouthed, full-toothed grin. “Who do you want to spend time with, them or her?”

  Trouble snorted. “Her.”

  The three of them turned for the door. Outside, Harvey had brought Kris’s car around, but a huge black limo was ahead of him. A marine in Savannah greens held the door open for the two senior officers. Grampa Ray boarded the land dreadnought as if it were carrying him to a funeral…his own.

  Kris headed for her car. Harvey was behind the wheel; Jack rode shotgun. Neither made a move to open her door. With one of Grampa Trouble’s trademark shrugs, Kris opened her own door and slid into the backseat. She waved a hand at the monster ahead of them. “What’s a gal got to do to get service like that?”

  “Save the world a couple of dozen times,” Jack grinned. “Until then, exercise is good for you.”

  Kris licked her finger, then drew three lines in the air. “Three down. How many to go?”

  “Too many,” Harvey grumbled and put the car in gear. “You know, an old grandfather like me could get used to a world that was nice and quiet. Maybe even boring. It’s kind of pleasant for an old fart to have the kids come home every night.”

  Kris frowned a question at Jack. “His youngest grandson has a date with a recruiter for a swearing in this afternoon,” Kris’s Secret Service agent explained. “After whatever it was at Paris system, Wardhaven is expanding the Army and Navy.”

  Kris opened her mouth to say something to her old friend, then closed it. He’d cheered her when she joined up, but your adopted kid was one thing; the baby of your own flesh was another. She searched for words…and discarded I’m sorry, I’m glad for you, and I hope he’ll be a great soldier. I hope he’ll come home after two very boring years almost made it of out her mouth. “I’m sure you raised him right,” Kris finally said.

  “Yeah. Maybe too damn right.” The driver checked his board, then turned to face Kris straight on. “Is all this messing around going to be worth it to us who just want to do our jobs and come home at night to enjoy our kids and grandkids?”

  “I don’t know what you heard about the Paris situation,” Kris started slowly.

  “Not much,” Jack interrupted. “The media feed was cut off rather suddenly,” he said, leaving Kris to suspect her agent knew a bit more than her driver. Once upon a time, she thought Harvey knew everything. The times were changing, leaving Kris sadder for it.

  “Yeah,” Harvey said. “We went a whole day without news. Longest news blackout ever. Then the cameras come back on, and the generals and admirals are smiling and spacers are guzzling beer. So why is your pa asking parliament to double the defense appropriation and my baby to give up a good job to be a spacer?”

  Kris leaned back in her seat. She’d been so busy on the trip in, what with prisoners and debriefings that she’d had no time for news. She waved off the temptation to have Nelly give her a quick briefing. If the truth, the real truth, and what was actually happening were as confused as Harvey seemed to be, even Nelly would be hard put to separate the signal from the noise.

  “I don’t know,” Kris finally said.

  Harvey turned back to watching where the car was taking them. Jack gave Kris what might have been a nod of approval, but then again might have just been a bump in the road, and turned back to being a lookout.

  When Kris got out in front of Main Navy, Jack joined her. “You coming to my meeting?” she asked.

  “I understand your last cruise got a bit exciting.”

  Kris smiled. “People were pointing guns at me. You volunteering for ship duty?”

  “Maybe you ought to avoid duty where I can’t provide my services.”

  That sounded like a line. “And what kind of service are you providing?”

  “I take your bullet,” he said simply, eyeing the hallway ahead of them. “Other grief you earn is your problem.”

  “I’m sorry,” Kris said and found she meant it. She’d been so concentrated on her own job, she’d forgotten the jobs others had. And after the reaming out Colonel Hancock had given her!

  Jack opened the door signed OP-5.1. “Ensign, you have your job. I understand you’re getting rather good at it. I have my job. You concentrate on yours, and I’ll take care of mine.”

  Kris identified herself to a civilian receptionist who pointed her at a conference room. Its door was closed; a sign flashed In Use—Top Secret beside it. Jack raised an eyebrow as he settled into a chair and picked up a magazine.

  Inside, Kris found the lieutenant who had been questioning her twice a day since she came aboard the Magnificent, as well as a new commander, forty-something, black hair just starting to gray. He wore neither name tag nor ribbons on his khakis. The lieutenant began with his usual questions. What was Kris’s job on the Typhoon? What did she know of its voyage? What happened on the bridge that morning?

  Kris gave her usual answers. That took the usual hour.

  Then the commander leaned forward. “Who helped you plan your mutiny, Ensign Longknife?”

  “Huh,” Kris bridled at this new line of questioning. “No one.”

  “How long had you been planning your mutiny?” he shot back.

  “I did not plan it.”

  But the rapid-fire questions kept coming. After five minutes of who, what, when, where, and how questions all ending in that nasty word mutiny, Kris’s temper snapped. “Commander, Captain Thorpe’s and Commodore Sampson’s actions didn’t leave me a lot of options. What was I supposed to do? Follow orders and shoot up the Earth fleet?”

  “No, no, Kris,” the lieutenant jumped in. “Still, you must admit that the smooth way you took over the ship leaves people wondering if you hadn’t planned something on your own and just got lucky when their illegal actions gave a fiction of legality to your previously planned course of action.”

  “Horse shit,” Kris spat. Then she spent the next hour explaining to the commander why armed marines chose to follow her lead rather than obey the orders of the ship’s captain. That she’d been right didn’t matter one bit.

  Kris was drained by the time they let her go. Leaving Jack to follow in her steaming wake, Kris stomped for the nearest exit. Outside, she found a day too damn beautiful for how she felt. She spotted a small attempt at a garden. Someone had arranged three trees and a half-dozen bushes around a stone bench. She collapsed onto it.

  “How’d it go?” Jack asked, taking station behind her.

  “Haven’t hung me yet,” Kris growled. She was mad; she wanted to hang a few folks herself, starting with a nameless commander. What did he expect her to do? Follow orders, slag the Earth fleet, and when the war was over, tell the newsies from the winning side, “Well, I was just following orders”? No way!

  Kris took a deep breath; it carried a faint hint of evergreens and turpentine, but the smell of rubber and concrete was not held at bay by the wilted greenery. “Hell of an end to the rainbow,” she muttered.

  Jack kept up his quiet surveillance as Kris tried to organize herself for what was left of a miserable day. Several deep breaths brought in only the stink of warming concrete. She ought to do something. What was on the schedule? Right, a meeting with Grampas. Wouldn’t that look great, they accuse me of mutiny, and I run off to tell my Grampas. Have to cancel that.

  Why? They were wrong about her mutiny, and they’d be wrong about her and her Grampas. Damn it. Here I am just getting to know them, and I’ll be damned if I’ll let that commander stop me. Kris stood; she’d never find the end of any rainbow if she let people like the commander call her shots.

  After two steps, she paused. She’d planned to include Tommy in her meeting with her Grampas, let him get a look at what “those Longknifes” were rea
lly like. No way was she going to change that. “Nelly, call Tom.”

  “How’d the meeting go?” came a second later in Tom’s voice.

  “Not too bad,” Kris said. “Want to get together?”

  “I’m not due for another beating by my inquisitor until 1400 hours.” Tom laughed. “Where you want to meet?”

  “I’ll have Nelly call you back in a second,” Kris said and rang off. “Nelly, get ahold of either Grampa Trouble or Ray.”

  “How’d your meeting go?” came back a second later in Trouble’s voice.

  “Nothing I couldn’t survive. How’s yours going?”

  “I think we’ve done all the damage here we can,” was followed by a laugh that from anyone else would sound evil. Grampa Trouble didn’t have an evil bone in his body. Or did he?

  “Where are you?” Kris asked.

  Grampa rattled off an address; Nelly brought up a map for Kris. “You’re in my old stamping ground around the university.”

  “Yep, some folks thought it would be easier to dodge the newsies. Seems to have worked. Know any good place to eat?”

  “There’s the Scriptorum. Shouldn’t be anything but students there. Nelly, flash a map to Grampa.”

  “See you there as soon as we close this down, say in about fifteen minutes,” was Trouble’s closing remark.

  That didn’t go too badly. Kris smiled to herself. “Nelly, tell Tom to meet me at the Scriptorum.” Jack coughed. “You’re not warning him who he’s meeting?”

  “Why ruin his morning?” Kris laughed, feeling a big chunk of the morning’s misery sloughing off her.

  Harvey didn’t have any trouble finding a place to park.

  Jack preceded Kris into the student dive. Even this early in the morning there were students here, dodging class, cramming for tests, just hanging. Jack stepped aside, giving Kris her first view of the quiet corner where she met Auntie Tru last. The woman sat there, smiling sunnily and holding down two tables.

  “What are you doing here?” Kris demanded.

  “You keep asking Nelly to take updates from my Sammie, you got to expect that your old auntie can at least get a calendar out of your computer.”