“Thank Nelly and her kids for that,” Jack said.
“You’re welcome, my mother says,” Sal said.
“Well, let’s get the kids where they’re safe; and then let’s get the hell out of here,” Doc Meade said. “This place gives me the willies.”
58
Kris shivered as she studied the pictures Jack was sending from the station. She’d would never succeed in wiping them from her mind’s eye.
What must it be like for Jack? She’d need to hold him tight tonight.
So she was a bit surprised when Jack called and said she needed to come down to the brig. “The old woman’s awake. At least as much as we’re willing to let her wake up. She’s babbling a lot. It’s hard to make out, but I think she wants, no demands, to talk to our Enlightened One. Or as she puts it, ‘the vermin with pretenses of enlightenment.’”
“I’m on my way,” Kris said, and, unbuckling from her desk chair, launched herself at the door.
The Wasp was back at Condition Able, big, roomy, and easy to get around in. Assuming you knew the latest configuration.
Nelly directed Kris, and today, she directed her correctly.
The brig, however, was nothing like it had been. Now it consisted of several annexes, with no admittance from one to another.
Kris took the grand tour.
Lieutenant Commander Sampson had her own wing of sorts. It was more like a hospital than a prison. She was still in bed, sedated, and slowly recovering from her brain surgery. Kris might have ordered her to sick bay, but she had no idea what the new normal would be for that woman.
Sampson would stay in the brig until a new baseline for her behavior was established.
Another annex had the youngest children that had been brought aboard. There were five of them. They were likely somewhere around age seven down to three. Now they were bouncing off the walls, literally, in one large room under the close supervision of five young Sailors and Marines and one surprisingly matronlike chief.
The children didn’t know it, but the standing orders for their guards was to spoil them rotten. No surprise, the kids were enjoying it and going along solidly with the program. Presently, they were having a pillow fight with the grown-ups and burning all kinds of energy that they had from a lunch mainly of cookies and ice cream.
No doubt, a nap would be next on the schedule.
Jacques and Amanda had been put in charge of designing a program for the seduction of these children from the dark side into the light.
Kris allowed herself a smile. The gray-haired alien woman would gnash her teeth if she knew what was being done to the children she’d intended to have drive knives into their own brains.
The bigger kids, eight to twelve years old, were getting a different approach, one closer to what Jacques was using for the kids from the tribe Kris had rescued, drafted, enlisted, whatever.
The brig for these five kids had been divided into five roomy cells. Each kid shared it with a young Marine or Sailor who came from a large family and had been their age not long ago.
Each room had one young alien, one young human, and two computer games. The human had started off playing the game by him or herself. Inevitably, or at least in four of the five cases, the kids had come to look over the player’s shoulder.
Two of the boys were now lost in games involving racing around tracks or over wild country while the animal drivers or passengers tossed fruit at each other. The boys were laughing uproariously.
Two of the girls had joined their guards playing something involved with directing different sparkly things into forming a wall. Then they’d wreck it, if possible, with one swing of the wrecking ball, and do it all over again.
The oldest girl was the one holdout. Instead of coming to look over her guard’s shoulder and get involved in a game, she’d launched herself at the bulkhead, headfirst.
The guard had not been so lost in a game she’d grown out of years ago that she missed the move. She intercepted the girl on the fly. Now the girl was cuffed to her bed.
On the wall directly ahead of her, a coyote chased a roadrunner, with hilarious results. The guard laughed on cue with the video.
As expected, the alien girl opened one eye to see what was so funny. As Kris watched, the girl succumbed to watching as one vermin repeatedly tried and repeatedly failed, to get the other.
“I was betting on the roadrunner to drag her out of herself,” Jacques said, drifting up to watch with Kris.
“It she the hard case?”
“Among our kids, yes. I understand from the Royal that they have two hard cases. Both older. Doc Meade wanted to spread the kids out among all the ships, but I told her solitary confinement would be the worst thing we could do to the youngsters. As it is now, we and the Royal are the only ships with nurseries.”
“And most of them are coming around?”
“All the youngsters are moving, at one speed or another. This young woman, hard as she appears to be, is like putty compared to the diamond of the old lady’s personality that you’re about to meet.”
“What are our chances of turning the woman?” Kris asked.
“Somewhere between none and nil,” the anthropologist said. “But Jack had us reduce her sedation so you could talk to her. He thinks it’s important that you hear what she has to say.”
“Is it safe to do that?”
“Jack wants it. We’ve got a pump in her. We’re ready to put her back to sleep at the first sign she’s dangerous to herself. Why don’t you come see for yourself?”
Kris left the girl. Her guard had just brought a pillow to support her head so she could watch the video more comfortably.
The next room was not much larger than the one Kris had just watched. Here Jack stood, wearing only the sweat-stained liner to his battle armor. On the bed, the gray-haired woman was tied down with padded restraints. Her head lolled gently back and forth in zero gee.
Jacques opened the door but stayed outside when Kris entered. He locked the door behind her.
~Our Enlightened One is here,~ Jack said, as Kris came to float beside him.
The woman opened her eyes, took in the scene with a lazy glance, and laughed. It was a harsh, dry cackle.
~Vermin, your false enlightened one is a woman,~ she spat.
~I led the ships that blasted your other ships into tiny pieces,~ Nelly translated for Kris.
The woman turned her face to the wall. ~Yes, yes, yes, the vermin have chewed our toes. You said that before. But you are fools.~
She turned back to face Kris. ~You are a fool. You shot me with your false guns before I could tell you why I chose to live and see the fear in your eyes before I die like my worshipped one, the truly Enlightened One.~
~What will bring fear to my eyes?~ Kris asked.
~They have sent the torch to all the ships. Your luck may have led you to be there when we stumbled, but your luck cannot save you from what is even now moving to obliterate you. We will swim in your blood. We will pile your heads in our Holy of Holies. You will have no children to share the wine of your remembrance.~
She stared hard at Kris. As hard as her drugged state allowed.
~No one will know you ever lived.~
NELLY, SHOW HER THE CRYPT UNDER THE PYRAMID.
WITH PLEASURE, KRIS.
The wall to Kris’s right came alive with a holograph of the hall of horrors under the pyramid.
Even drugged, the woman’s face took on shock. Horror.
~You cannot have been there.~
~I have walked your horror of horrors,~ Kris said through Nelly. ~I have spat on it. This is the message I left for all of you to read.~
Now the stone Kris had used to block the entrance to the pyramid filled the wall.
~You make war on us,~ Kris said, ~we will bury your pyramid under a pile of your skulls. We will flood your plain of glass with your blood.~
~No. No! NO!~ the woman screamed. ~You are wrong. All the ships will come now that the torch has been sent to t
hem. It is you that will be buried in a flood of ships. We have more ships than you can count. Our women are most fruitful. We will destroy you.~
“Jacques,” Kris said aloud, “are you listening in?”
“Yes,” came from a small grill in the door.
“Put her to sleep. I think she’s said all she came here to say.”
“Her vitals are way up. I was about to do it anyway.”
“Do it.”
The woman’s head lolled back on her bunk, and, in a moment, she was snoring.
“They fled here right after the first fight,” Kris said to Jack. He nodded agreement.
“I don’t see any way that this group could have sent any ‘torch’ to the other ships.”
“It’s not likely,” he said. “However, there may be some sort of precedence for them rousing the tribes with a torch.”
“And she’s assuming someone among the others has done that.”
“Like the three ships that observed our last fight?” Jack pointed out.
Kris winced. “Yeah.”
“Any suggestions what we do next?”
“I wonder if there is a library on the station,” Kris muttered to herself. “Someplace that has the history of these people.”
“The only way to find out is to search it,” Jack said.
“I hate to order your Marines into that place.”
“It’s ugly,” Jack agreed.
“You’ll want scientists in the search, too,” Jacques said, joining them.
Kris heaved a sigh. “Captain Drago, lay the Wasp alongside the station, then please join me on the flag bridge. Have the other skippers come, too.”
“Aye aye, Admiral. The Word is already sent to the squadron.”
Kris squared her shoulders. It was bad and would, no doubt, get worse.
59
Kris sat in her day quarters, meetings done.
All four of the squadron’s ships now lay close to the station. The Wasp, Royal, and Intrepid were able to spawn pinnaces. They were out cloud dancing, gathering in enough reaction mass for the squadron’s needs to get them back to Alwa.
Hopefully, it would not take them long to refuel all four ships.
The idea of sending Sailor, Marines, and boffins to root around among all those bodies on the station to see if there was anything helpful left had caused Kris to blanch.
Professor Labao and Nelly had come up with a solution. As Kris sat here, nano scouts were zipping through the station, looking for anything interesting. Nelly and her brood were doing the oversight. Only if they found something really interesting did a human eye get brought in.
Thanks to a merciful God, the A deck with all the bodies seemed to hold little of interest. It was closer to the hub that the scouts found things to refer for human review. There was a file room, huge and full of actual print on paper. There was something that might be a library, but it didn’t have all that many books. There was also a series of large halls that might have passed for courtrooms with judicial chambers off them. In them were loads of officious-looking books. The scientists were all interested in these for lack of something better.
“What we haven’t found,” Professor Labao noted, “is anything like a research facility or labs. Interesting that.”
Kris was finding a lot of things interesting.
The ships swung at anchor as close to the station as was safe. Now there were air locks spaced along the station’s outer hull where longboats could easily dock. Inside, a small team had spread nets across A deck. If it worked as planned, the nets would hold the drifting bodies well back from the people who actually boarded the station to do the scavenger hunt.
Kris hoped they saw no more than was necessary.
For now, Kris stared at the screens in flag plot.
They were blank at the moment.
That was not what she saw.
Bodies drifted across them. Big bodies. Tiny bodies. Bodies that screamed blood at her.
No, none of the bodies had screamed. It was the live one that screamed defiances at her.
If Kris let them, these people would drive her crazy with their wish for death. Death for all living things except that tiny group that was enlightened just the right way.
Kris shook herself out of her reveries. She had things to do and decisions to make.
Not quite. If she was honest with herself, the things she had to do were pretty much already decided.
She needed to return three felines to their planet and get back where she belonged.
Getting there would be no easy job, what with her having only the wreckage of eight ships flying in four loose formations.
Traveling back to Alwa would have to be careful, and therefore slow.
Once she got back, she would, no doubt, face even more problems.
When hadn’t she?
She would also need to get a message back to human space. She’d found out a lot about the aliens. Oh, and she’d found a bunch of talking cats who will need protection, assuming they didn’t want to conqueror the whole human race.
If King Ray had been pissed with her the last time she came back from adventuring, he’d likely have kittens over this one.
Speaking of which, should she take the opportunity to deliver the message in person?
She’d offered the chance to Phil and his crew from the Hornet. They’d passed up the opportunity to get home, and now more of them had died. Maybe Kris could be the messenger.
Oh, right, Kris was the Viceroy and Commander of the Alwa Defense Sector. For her to go home would be to abandon her post.
She could order others home, but go home herself? Not so much.
Kris stared at the overhead. She was starting to sound crazy. Almost as crazy as that old woman.
The two of them were a matching pair.
Or might be if Kris didn’t get a hold on herself.
There was a soft knock at the door of her quarters.
I could use an interruption right about now.
“Enter.”
Zarra and her admiral came in.
“Do you have a moment?” Zarra asked, the epitome of politeness.
“Certainly. No one is scheduled to try their hand at killing me today, and I’m not planning on killing anyone myself.”
Zarra promptly passed those words along to her admiral.
She growled cheerfully and padded her way quickly to one of the stools around Kris’s conference table. She settled there, her tail lazily lashing back and forth behind her.
“Where is your general?” Kris asked for no reason other than it filled the silence.
“She does not take well to space. She is still recovering from, what do you call it? Zero gee,” Zarra explained. “I do not think we can get home fast enough to suit her.”
“We humans do not care very much for it either, but the early space travelers had to learn to survive it. We should be heading back to drop you off very soon,” Kris said.
“That is what my admiral came to talk to you about.” Zarra glanced at her admiral, who made a swatting motion with her paw. Zarra swallowed and went on.
“You have challenged us to a race to our moon. My admiral was wondering if there was any way for you to tow or push one of the dead alien ships into an orbit around our moon.”
“So if you got to the moon, you would also have a chance to look over all this advanced technology,” Kris said.
“Something like that.”
“And if one of these ships was orbiting your own moon, would the race to the moon turn into a real race, with all your zones trying to get their first and gain knowledge they could use to dominate the others?”
Zarra did not flinch. “We do not think so. When we left, the decision had already been made that Columm and the Bizalt Kingdom would working together to reach the moon. Since we have been gone, many others have joined in this group effort. Yes, it is the first such effort across zones that we have ever made, unless there was a war driving us to cooperate to bring dow
n a stronger power, but still, it is happening as we talk here.”
Kris found herself again staring at the ceiling. Should she refer this to her staff for examination? What would Amanda and Jacques think of this idea?
Kris shook her head.
“Yes, the technology on the alien ships is well ahead of what you have, but no, I will not help you get access to it.”
Kris wondered if the admiral intended to roll her body up as if about to pounce, or if it was just ancient body language that no longer presaged attack.
“There are several reasons why I say that, and none of them involve a distrust of you or a desire to keep technology from you,” Kris went on quickly.
“First, the technology we have found in the alien ships is obsolete by our standards. Do you really want to begin building ships that you will quickly be tearing up or throwing away?
“Secondly, the technology these aliens use is much different from what we use. If you are to build ships to fight side by side with us, you will need our communications devices, ranging gear, and weapons. No doubt, you will give each of these devices a unique twist to bend them to your needs; however, a certain amount of commonality will be needed.
“Do you follow the logic of my position?” Kris asked.
Zarra turned to her admiral. The officer nodded as the translator spoke.
Zarra turned back to Kris and began to speak for the admiral. “We have found that to be the case with our own allies. And when one smaller power switches sides, it is often necessary for them to scrap their ships, airplanes, and armored fighting vehicles so that they can fit in with their new overlord. She means ally,” Zarra moved quickly to correct her words.
Kris wondered if the idea of first among equals was just catching on. Or if it would ever catch on.
“There is one more question my admiral asks,” Zarra said.
“Yes.”
“Can we join you? She and I. Can we travel back with you?”
Kris would often wonder why she did not reflect more before giving her answer.
“Yes, you may,” she said.
“Thank you,” Zarra said, and led her admiral from the room.
It would be two days more before Kris could order the squadron to get underway back the way they’d come: first to Sasquan, then to Alwa.
Kris Longknife: Tenacious (Kris Longknife novellas Book 12) Page 34