Kris Longknife - Admiral

by Mike Shepherd

  And, somehow, being tossed in the middle of that other Longknife’s life had not scared her off and here she was, accepting a job on her Navy headquarters’ staff and now gallivanting off into the heart of the Iteeche Empire two steps behind the woman.

  “I’ve got to be crazy,” Meg muttered to herself.

  But the stairway down into the first basement of the Rose Coral Palace was exactly where Nelly’s map said would be. A hand light showed her where to go in a vast and empty sub-floor that was broken up by thick stone pillars that looked more gray than rose down here.

  There wasn’t even dust on the floors. Somebody really cleaned this place out.

  She found what had been the Iteeche communications center. The humans had already installed a small server farm. Several techs smiled at her, then ignored her and went back to their business.

  Except for one.

  A tall, cute looking guy with a shock of red hair that couldn’t decide to flip right or left rose from the chair where he’d been working at three keyboards and five monitors.

  “Can I help you?” he asked.

  Meg considered the question for a moment, then decided it might be fun to see if he could do just that. “I’m looking for the terminator the Iteeche installed when they cut the lines between the in-palace net and the rest of Iteeche land.”

  That got her a curiously raised pair of eyebrows that formed a bushy V. “It’s right over here,” he said with a wave of his hand towards a hole in the wall. “May I ask what your interest is in it?”

  “Yes, you can, but if I told you, I’d have to tickle you to death.”

  The guy eyed Megan up and down. She’d liked the way he looked her in the eyes, but she guessed he deserved the full survey, considering the answer she shot back at him.

  “You’re attached to that woman that sets all those rules.”

  “Yes, I am the aide de camp to Grand Admiral Longknife, the first ambassador to the Iteeche Empire.” Megan had to suppress an urge to go into some variation of “I am the very model of a modern major general.” She got that urge a lot in this job.

  “Hmm,” he eyed her, but when she didn’t flinch, he went on, “You won’t get anything from it. We’ve tried all we got to get something from the other side, but it’s a solid block of concrete. Maybe they put something in it, but it’s dead concrete. No conduction.”

  “Have you tried to pry data loose?” Megan asked.

  “Listen, my bosses don’t like being in the dark any more than your Navy bosses, okay? Everybody want information to stay alive. They want information to make a buck. So far, nothing, nil, nada.”

  “Could you get me a chair?” Megan said, heading for the butt of the concrete slug.

  “Okay, it’s your grave,” and the cute redhead went to get Megan the requested chair.

  Megan had known she had this power for a long time. The first time she probably used it, she was four and fell asleep under her father’s desk with her head against his business computer. Her vivid dreams that afternoon had been of fluffy clouds and plush puppets; she’d never forgotten them.

  She was seven the afternoon she went hunting for something, she couldn’t remember what, and bumped her head against her brother’s computer. The visions she got that time had knocked her on her bottom and left her head reeling with scary visions and sick smells. After that, she stayed away from computers as much as she could.

  She’d been in middle school when her teacher insisted that she had to use a personal assistant. She picked the most basic version she could get away with, and nothing happened . . . for a while. Then she started seeing things: labyrinths, puzzles, caves, all with information in them. The first time she realized she was looking at the next day’s math test, she knew she had a good thing going.

  That didn’t work out so well. After she aced two math tests in a row, she and her mother got called into the head mistress’s office. Meg had managed to stutter her way through the confrontation, but on the walk home, her mother had eyed her weirdly for a bit, then said, “So you have the gift, too.”

  That had gotten her a trip to her old Aunt Lily and a lesson on the family blessing and curse. “We are blessed with the ability to know what others don’t. That’s also our curse, because they don’t much care for that.”

  Under Aunt Lily’s guidance Megan had begun to learn how to find her way into and maneuver through databases. Once she had someone to go through the mazes with her, it was as easy as falling off a log. Megan found that she didn’t even have to be in touch with the physical network. If it was broadcasting on net, she could get in it, so long as she had her pet computer to open up the net.

  Soon, the problem turned to how not to get lost in every net she got anywhere close to. There, again, Aunt Lily had been a godsend. It was she who taught Meg to ignore most of what came at her and keep her sanity as middle school turned to high school. Meg could never have attempted the return to a major planet like Wardhaven if she hadn’t learned to tune it all out.

  It had been a while since Megan had attempted a major systems entry. She settled into the offered chair and considered her options.

  “What Navy gear have you got?” the red headed guy asked, glancing around for a kit bag or something.

  “Why don’t you and your friends go out for coffee?” Meg suggested with a friendly smile.

  “Crew. Take fifteen,” he ordered.

  “I just got back from a coffee break,” one shot back.

  “So take another. Out of here, all of you.”

  There was some grumbling, but apparently Meg had picked the boss. He said go. They went.

  “You’re not going?”

  “Nope. You want to crack this, Navy, I want to see what you got that I don’t have in my kit bag. By the way, my name is Walt.”

  “There’s nothing here but me, and my name is Megan,” she said, spreading her hands open.

  “That’s what I’m wondering about,” he answered, looking a bit puzzled.

  Meg considered her options. She could leave and come back all ninja tonight, and maybe have to go through this all over again with a night shift, or she could let this guy see a whole lot of nothing.

  Nothing, assuming the Iteeche net didn’t knock her on her ass like her brother’s net did.

  That is a thought. It might be a good idea to have those nice strong arms catch me if I get knocked silly.

  Meg decided to let him stay.

  She stared at the cylinder of concrete. It was darker than most concrete, and showed small stones mixed in the aggregate. Try as she might, she could spot no tiny bits of metal, but there might be nano tubes in the mix and she’d never see them.

  From where she sat, and from all she could see or hear, it was just a block of concrete filling up a conduit that must once have carried one huge cable run into the palace. For a moment, she wondered why they’d need such a big conduit, then she squelched the question. She wasn’t here to discuss Iteeche building design, she was here to crack into their net.

  YOU READY, LILY?

  I’M HERE AND MOM IS STANDING BY TO HELP. WE CAN ALL BE HERE IF THINGS DON’T GO RIGHT.

  OKAY, LET’S SEE WHAT THEY’VE GOT.

  First, Megan rested her fingers tips lightly on the concrete. It was cool to the touch, maybe a bit wet. Likely, it hadn’t finished setting. Those were all the kind of sensations anyone would expect to get from concrete.

  Below all that was a kind of hum that vibrated in the bones of her finger.

  She’d never felt that before.

  She pressed down firmer, full palm on.

  The hum stayed in her bones, but suddenly, a stink filled her nostrils. Her tongue tasted sour from something metallic.

  ARE ANY OF YOU GETTING THIS?

  GETTING WHAT?

  THE FEELING IN MY BONES. THE SMELL? THE TASTE?

  WE CAN HEAR AND WE CAN SEE, MEG, BUT WE CAN’T FEEL, SMELL, OR TASTE. IF YOU’RE GETTING SOMETHING LIKE THAT, IT’S NOT GETTING THROUGH TO US.

&
nbsp; OKAY, Megan answered. All this was new. She knew that what she observed in this strange state were all illusions, attempts by her brain to process inputs the human mind had never processed in all its millions of years of evolution. She knew that her brain was getting some sort of signal and converting it into something the best way it could manage. Aunt Lily had told Meg how Grampa Ray’s experience with the planet-wide computer had usually come out as battles.

  “He was a soldier by trade, so most of what he saw were fights,” Aunt Lily explained. “Of course, most of what he was doing when he faced the stone was fighting with the computer.”

  Megan ran all Aunt Lily’s help and all her own previous experiences around her skull a couple of times. She came up with nothing helpful.

  With a deep breath, Megan closed her eyes and leaned her forehead against the stone. For a moment, it was just cool.

  Then things got weird.

  Something was swimming at her in the dark. It had a snake’s body, but its huge mouth was lined with teeth, dagger-long and sharp. Its eyes glowed green.

  Meg considered two options. She could go big, and stomp this thing that was likely an outer defense, or she could get small and dodge it. She was shrinking down to a mere dot before she even knew she’d made her decision . . . but a dot with jet propulsion.

  She dodged right and the serpent swam by her.

  Expanding herself to cover the distance faster, she kept her jet packs and the swimming analogy as she sank deeper into the dark.

  Something clamped onto her leg. A glance back showed something like a ball and chain bound fast to her ankle. She shrank her leg and the shackle slipped over her tiny feet. But while she’d been looking back, she’d swum head on into a mass of what appeared to be jelly fish that immediately began to stick to her.

  They also stung.

  This time, Megan went large, expanding her self-image into a giant. With one hand, she swept the tiny stickers from her face and shoulder and squished them between her fingers and thumb.

  All this was not new to Megan. Her mind had used imaginings like these to explain computer system defenses before when she’d gone where she wasn’t supposed to.

  What came next was new.

  Her swimming brought her to the shore of some sea. She rode the waves in and found herself wading through surf to a beach of soft black sandy. Some four hundred meters across the flat sand was a wall. Even blacker than the beach, it rose high into the sky. It had no visible gate, but it did have spikes. Lots of spikes. Big ones, little ones; there were even spikes jutting out from spikes.

  NICE BUNCH, THIS LOT, Lily observed to Megan.

  DOESN’T LOOK LIKE THEY WANT COMPANY, DOES IT?

  SO, DO WE GO OVER OR DIG UNDER? Nelly tossed in. Nelly always seemed to be eager to see what would happen next. No doubt, it came from living at picosecond speed and watching meat creatures that moved at the speed their muscles could manage.

  Megan eyed the base of the colossal wall with all its spikes. Some of those pointy things were even angled down to below the sand. Somehow, she doubted the big thing was built on sand. Besides, she’d been a mole a couple of times and hated digging in the dark.

  In a flash, she was an eagle. She spread her wings, then with two hops and a flap, she was airborne, felling the wind flow beneath her wings and climbing into the sky.

  Megan loved this part. If she could, she’d be an eagle in all her dreams. She soared higher with each beat of her wings. The beach fell away, the warm air rising from it helped her to gain height. The view to seaward was spectacular.

  The view to landward was a wall. A spiked, black wall and nothing else.

  Look right, look left, look up. Wall and spikes.

  As she was shaking her eagle head, life got exciting.

  Diving at her, fast and sable as the wall, a half-dozen creatures came bearing wings, teeth, and claws. They didn’t seem to have much of anything else. Doubtlessly, a date with a cute redheaded guy named Walt was not in their programming.

  Strange what you think of when you’re facing death, Megan thought, and transformed herself into an armed attack jet. Flying an airplane wasn’t as much fun as flying like a bird, but it had its advantages.

  In a wink, she had one of the birds in her sights. A pull on the stick, a brrrrrip and the bird was a mass of flesh, blood, and feathers flying in loose formation. She kicked her rudder right, and whipped out three birds as her guns swept past them.

  Her next target snapped rolled out of her targeting computer picture as it converted into a sleek ebony jet fighter in its own right. Movement brought Megan’s attention away from her escaping target to the sight of a dozen or more jets diving at her.

  WE CAN’T LET THEM GET AWAY WITH THAT NOW, CAN WE, MEGAN?

  PLEASE, NELLY, LET’S NOT, she agreed.

  Suddenly, Megan was surrounded by a dozen silver jets of her own, zooming ahead of her and spreading out to take on the incoming defenders.

  While Nelly and Lily’s fighters spread out, Megan converted herself into a heavy bomber and began sending large rocket-accelerated bombs at the wall. Not so much as a spike did their explosions knock loose.

  With the battle going her way for the moment, Megan converted herself into some sort of insect and buzzed quickly to the wall. Flying as an insect was nowhere near as fun as being an eagle; the buzzing about did something to Megan’s ear or stomach.

  Or both.

  She worked her way through the spikes to the smooth, slick onyx of the wall’s surface. She had to add suction cups to her feet before she could settle on it. Done, she converted her snout into a drill and applied it to the wall.

  She made not so much as a mark on the wall. Worse, her spinning nose slid off.

  She switched her proboscis to a laser and concentrated on cutting through. In rapid succession, more under Nelly’s control than Megan, her nose transformed through several different types of lasers. A blue-green color was reflecting back at Megan when a tiny hole appeared in the wall. The laser intensified and its focus widened; the breach got wider and deeper.

  Megan found she was now a worm, long and thin, rocket propelled, and with a glowing blue-green nose. She was racing through a cavern whose walls must have been red hot, but appeared only warm to Megan’s hide.

  It seemed like she sped through the deepening hole forever, but in another frame of reference, it was but a blink of an eye before she broke out into a dimly lit void. It appeared to have no limit, no top, bottom, or sides. It just was.

  In the hazy light, creatures moved. In front of Megan were more and different kinds of creatures, way more than she could ever have dreamed up on her own. Some had eight legs, other more, some less. A few had no legs. They moved in straight lines, or flitted about with no apparent goal visible. Some had eyes, others none. Many moved in groups, some larger, others huge. There were a few that formed a kind of train. Among those, none of them were the same except for some kind of mandible that they used to latch on to the creature ahead of them in line. In the three “conga lines” Megan spotted, only the first animal in line had eyes.

  One of them was heading toward her at speed. Its eyes blinked and the whole lot of them took off with a hard right-climbing vector. The last one in line came loose during the turn and began to flit aimlessly, but sometimes faster, other times slower.

  I THINK WE NEED TO EXAMINE THAT ONE, MEGAN.

  I AGREE, LILY.

  Megan found herself with a cowboy hat and boots, astride a magnificent palomino. She nudged the lovely beast in the side and she took off at a gallop for the meandering creature. Megan pulled the lariat she found hanging from her saddle horn and began swinging it out into a lasso. In a flash, she had the maverick roped, and all ten legs hog tied. The weird critter was going nowhere.

  SO, WHAT HAVE WE GOT HERE, MEGAN?

  From the outside, it looked like the kind of crazy vision that might haunt a fever dream. Its body was cylindrical, its legs spindly with no knees, and its neck was so short as
to be practically nonexistent. The creature looked unable to twist its neck about much. Of a face, it had nothing. There was neither an intake for food nor an exhaust for waste.

  CLEARLY, THIS IS NOT MEANT TO BE ALIVE, IN THE NORMAL MEANING OF THE WORD, MEGAN.

  SO, WHAT IS MY HYPERACTIVE IMAGINATION TRYING TO TELL US, NELLY?

  YOU HAVE MORE EXPERIENCE IN THIS WORLD. IS THIS ANYTHING LIKE BEING IN ONE OF MY DATABASES OR A NAVY ONE?”

  NO, OUR DATABASES HAVE STRUCTURE. I CAN ALWAYS FIND FILING CABINETS TO RANSACK IF I FOLLOW THIS OR THAT TREE. MOST TREES HAVE SOME HINT OF WHAT’S OUT ON THE LIMBS, NELLY.

  THIS WORLD IS ALL CHAOS. Even in Meg’s head, Nelly seemed more to muse on that thought than own it outright.

  SO IT WOULD SEEM, Megan agreed.

  COULD WE CUT IT OPEN? Lily asked. She might be all up with Megan on her own, but with her mom looking over her shoulder, Lily could get very tenuous.

  CERTAINLY MEGAN SHOULD TRY.

  So it was that Megan found a large Bowie knife at her waist. She wasted no time applying it to the soft underbelly of what she’d come to think of as a data packet. Thus, she wasn’t totally surprised when Iteeche letters and numbers spewed out of its belly.

  THEY’RE IN NO ORDER, Lily exclaimed.

  BE SURE TO GET A GOOD LOOK AT ALL OF THEM, Nelly shouted as the things tried to scamper away.

  Megan found a net at her belt, next to the empty knife sheath, and began stuffing the run-away alphanumerics into it. As she shoved the last one in, she spotted a pack of very ugly critters, with many teeth in their mouth and long claws on their many legs.

  I THINK IT IS PAST TIME TO GET OUT OF HERE.

  I CERTAINLY AGREE.

  And Megan blacked out.

  She came to, half in the chair she’d been sitting in, half out of it and in the delightfully strong arms of a certain cute redhead.

  “You okay?” he asked, concern in both his voice and those lovely green eyes of his.