“Oh,” Foile said. “A shuttle takes off from Longknife Towers and lights up the sky, not to mention makes a roaring mess of a lot of people’s sleep. Anything about that?”
“Again, sir. Nothing. If I didn’t know it was impossible, I’d say someone told the media not to cover it.”
“But that, of course, is impossible,” he said.
The two exchanged sardonic grins.
He turned for home, then thought better of it and turned the other way. In five short minutes, he was standing at the front door to Government House. A flash of the badge and he was in. The elevator responded to his punch for the Prime Minister’s floor.
Apparently, someone had given him access and not yet taken it back. They probably would by morning. Which meant it was a good thing he hadn’t gone home.
He quickly found his way to the Prime Minister’s outer office and walked in. “Senior Chief Agent in Charge Foile to see the Prime Minister,” he said, not slowing down as he headed for the door he now knew led to the Prime Minister.
“You can’t go in there,” the secretary shouted. “You have no appointment.”
He went in.
The Prime Minister was behind his desk. He glanced up from his screen, then leaned back to give the agent his full attention. “You,” was all he said.
“Yes, sir. Me. Your daughter is safe and no longer on Wardhaven.”
“So I am told. Yet you did not apprehend her.”
“She is a rather elusive person.”
“So she is.”
“Why was she trying to see her grandfather, and why was he so intent on not seeing her that he abandoned his home and flooded a portion of it with poison gas?”
The Prime Minister stood from behind his desk. “I sent you to secure her. You don’t need to know why. Most certainly, since you failed to do what you were ordered to do. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to be about the people’s business.”
“What is going on here?” Foile demanded, but he was speaking to the Prime Minister’s back as he left his office by a back door.
Foile considered chasing after the Prime Minister, but the door behind him opened, admitting two burly security guards who, no doubt, had been instructed to pay no attention to anything so minor as a Bureau ident.
Foile went before he was forced.
This matter was not finished. He’d have to look for someplace else to find his answers. Where could Kris Longknife fly a shuttle to? She hadn’t landed on Wardhaven. That left only one other place for her to go.
40
Kris was surprised to find that Jack was having a bad case of the shakes, too. She’d always managed to get to her quarters before the shakes got too bad. To find that Jack had them, too, was . . . interesting . . . on several different levels.
“You’re shaking?” was her first reaction.
“Yes. I do it a lot after I’m around you.” That didn’t keep him from hugging her close. Somehow, they found themselves on one of the sofas.
“I didn’t think you . . .” Kris couldn’t find a word to finish her thought.
“Had any weaknesses,” Jack finished.
“I didn’t say that.”
“Kid, everyone gets the shakes. Didn’t they teach you that in school?”
“No.”
“Bad school. They warned us at the Academy. Grizzled old agents talked about what it’s like after the shooting stops. Some have to change their underwear. Others get the shakes. Some have a crying jag.”
“Then I’m normal?”
“Kris, love, you are never normal,” Jack said through a grin. “But yes, Kris, your body shares some traits with the rest of us humans.”
Kris considered that as she listened to the pounding of his heart slow. And felt the pounding of her own heart go from a gallop to a walk.
She was normal. Everyone felt this way.
How interesting.
She rested in Jack’s arms and let that thought soak deep into her. The world didn’t go away. Outside the door, there were still lions and tigers and bears waiting. But here, in Jack’s arms, they weren’t gnawing on her. She could relax.
She did.
There was a knock at the door.
“The quiet sure was nice,” Jack said.
Kris stood, adjusted her borrowed uniform. It was wrinkled and a mess, but it had come by all the sweat and stains honestly. “Come in,” she said.
Captain Miyoshi entered. “There is a very upset Royal U.S. Navy captain busy reporting to his superiors that you are not available.”
“Thank you, sir,” Kris said.
“My Mutsu now has a Royal U.S. Marine honor guard standing proudly at each of my gangplanks.”
“I am sure they will do you honor, sir.”
“I told them you were not leaving.”
“That is correct, sir.”
“Commander Longknife, you are a lot of trouble.”
“Usually, sir.”
“Sit down, sit down,” Captain Miyoshi said, waving her at a chair. “You are no cadet, and I am no drill sergeant. I have taken the liberty of ordering some tea and sandwiches brought up. When did you last eat?”
“Yesterday, about fifty thousand years ago,” Kris said with a grin.
“I thought so. I am already in receipt of a request to return that shuttle you rode in on. Am I to assume that you came by it somewhat irregularly?”
“Somewhat, yes, sir. It is Longknife corporate property, and I am a major shareholder in our family corporation, but no, I’m afraid I forgot to sign it out through proper channels.”
The captain listened attentively to her story, weighed it carefully, found it wanting . . . and went on. “I have some personal questions for you. There is no recorder in this room. These are purely questions I have not been able to answer for myself about your recent . . . experiences. Would you mind my asking you?”
“You can ask, sir. I can’t assure you that I can or will answer,” Kris said. There might be no recording device. Still, many courts of law would allow secondhand statements when a person gave it against their own best interests.
“My sister’s husband was XO of the Chikuma, you see.”
“I’m sorry to hear that, sir,” Kris said. So this was personal. She hadn’t considered when she chose the Mutsu to surrender to that she might be placing herself in the hands of someone who personally bore the grief for her actions. Then again, every Navy she’d encountered was a small world.
“Could you tell me how my brother-in-law died?” The words were simple and direct. She certainly owed this man, and his sister, an honest answer.
“He died honorably and courageously, fighting against impossible odds,” Kris said, keeping her words simple and direct.
“Yet he was running away from the alien base ship. Or did I misunderstand the reports in the media?”
Kris nodded and chose her words carefully. “We are both correct, Captain. The Chikuma and Haruna were fighting courageously against impossible odds. They were, at that time, opening the range between them and the alien base ship. That was according to the plan I had presented to the admirals, which they had accepted.”
The captain of the Mutsu frowned.
Kris went on. “Sir, it was critical for the battle line to draw and hold the aliens’ attention. If they did, there was the barest of chances that my squadron of corvettes could survive long enough to launch our Hellburners and destroy the base ship. We knew the odds were against us. None of us realized just how badly. Still, the battleships achieved their mission. The aliens fixated on them, and my corvettes gutted the base ship. There were just a whole lot of alien ships left over.”
“I think I understand. You set a rabbit trap and caught a bear,” the skipper of the Mutsu said.
“I prefer to think that we set a bear trap that caught the biggest bear ever. But there were a whole lot of other bears that were quite upset with us.”
“That might be a better comparison,” Captain Miyoshi agreed. “I hav
e just one more question.”
“Yes, sir.”
“My brother-in-law wrote home that you said the mission of your Fleet of Discovery was to look and report back. So why were you carrying those huge torpedoes? What did you call them, Hellburners?”
Kris nodded. Yes, she could imagine some people found what she said and what she did two very different matters. “When I told your brother-in-law that discovery was the mission for my squadron, I truly believed that was our one and only mission. When we departed Wardhaven, none of our ships were equipped with Hellburners.”
“Then when did you get them?”
“I shipped home the wreckage of the first alien ship we encountered. The one that attacked us, then destroyed itself. When my messenger returned, he had three freighters and a repair ship with him, gifts from my King and Grampa Ray.”
“I don’t understand. You had not yet encountered the worst evidence that you found, yet your king sent you those weapons.”
“Yes, Captain. I left those weapons behind when my squadron made the long search. It was only after our long search that we knew we had some real monsters out there, and that one of them was about to destroy a civilization. If I had not had the Hellburners, I could not have taken on the monster. I did have them, and we chose to do something about them.”
“I heard that you offered to let any Sailor go home.”
“Yes. I did. Your brother-in-law and everyone else who followed me after the aliens knew what we were getting into, or at least as much as we knew about them, and accepted the risks we were taking to save the bird people.”
“Now it all makes sense,” the captain said. “I’m afraid what I took from the media reports did not add up.”
“I think it was politically advantageous that two and two not add up,” Kris said. “I am sorry that it left you doubting the honor and courage of your fellow officers.”
“Yes. This is very different. I will have to think upon this. Then I will message my sister.” Captain Miyoshi stood and turned to leave.
Suddenly, he stopped.
“I have a message for you. There is a man on the Mutsu’s quarterdeck. He says he is Taylor Foile, a senior chief agent of the WBI. Do you know him?”
“I’ve been doing my best to avoid meeting him face-to-face for much of the last week,” Kris admitted.
“He would like to meet you. He says he has no arrest warrant, just questions. Apparently, I’m not the only one who wants answers from you tonight.”
Kris shrugged. “Your Marines have orders to keep me here. I expect them to come to my aid if he tries to drag me out of here.”
Captain Miyoshi actually chuckled as he authorized the agent to come aboard.
41
Senior Chief Agent in Charge Foile followed the young lieutenant assigned to lead him through the labyrinth of corridors, ladders, and gear that seemed indigenous to a man-of-war. He had been on two before and needed a guide both times. The walk gave him time to consider where he might find his wayward princess. He concluded that the ship’s brig was her most likely abode.
So he was quite surprised when the lieutenant opened a door marked ADMIRAL’S IN PORT CABIN and ushered the agent in. There were four very alert, armed, and battle-dressed Marines guarding the door, so it did leave the agent to wonder just what were the circumstances the princess had landed herself in this time.
A young woman in a baggy and sweat-stained brown uniform stood in the center of the large and well-apportioned room. He recognized her immediately. Clearly exhausted and bedraggled, she was still quite beautiful. The word Agent Chu regularly used came to mind. “Gorgeous.” Her hair looked longer than it was in most of the pictures Chu had shoved under his nose to admire.
Foile stepped forward and gave her a slight bow from the neck. “Lieutenant Commander, Her Royal Highness Kristine Longknife, I presume.”
The young woman offered him her hand. “After tonight, I may be back to just Kris. I’m not even sure the Longknife applies.”
Foile took the hand, considered kissing it, then shook it instead.
“Your father had me chasing after you for the last several days,” he said. “I doubt he’d do that if he planned to disinherit you.”
The woman smiled; it was a lovely little thing. “Don’t be too sure. Water seems to be a lot thicker than blood where my family’s concerned. Now,” she said, offering him an overstuffed chair, “you said you had questions.”
Foile settled into the offered chair; the princess took one across from him. Another man, olive-skinned and alert, and, if the pictures were right, Captain Juan Montoya, the princess’s security chief, stayed on the couch.
“May I first say that you have led me on quite a chase. No matter where I was, you’d just left. Professionally, I must admire you.”
“I had a lot of good help,” the princess said. “Jack here, and Penny. She’s asleep in her new quarters. At least I hope she’s getting some rest.”
“And others?”
“No one helped us,” the princess said, and did not flinch even a little at the lie.
Foile raised an eyebrow. Many a criminal’s facade had crumbled at that raised eyebrow, following a lie with the blurted truth.
The princess folded her hands in her lap and waited patiently for him to go on.
Damn, she’s good, Foile thought, but then, she learned from the best.
“Your father asked me to catch you before you got yourself killed and others with you. I did not catch you, but you seem to have not gotten yourself killed.”
“I’m rather well practiced at that.” She flashed her security chief a smile that clearly gave evidence of what the forensic team had found in the lodge.
Foile found himself wishing them the best of luck where that was concerned.
“There is the matter of why you almost got yourself killed this evening,” Foile said. “I asked your father about that, and he told me to forget it. He strongly hinted I should forget the entire last week.”
“I imagine so. Father does tend to want to forget problems he can’t solve.”
“I’m having a hard time forgetting you risked your life just to talk to your grandfather. And the extent he went to avoid you.”
Now it was the princess’s turn to raise an eyebrow. “Sarin gas. That was a bit extreme. Are you sure he gassed the place?”
“I told you what I was told,” Foile admitted. “I did not check out the facts, and you did kind of trash the building in your exit.”
Both the princess and her man laughed heartily at that. “Yes, that exit was spectacular even by my standards. I hope everyone got out of the building. We restored power to the elevators.”
“Yes, I know. From what I heard, the building was empty when you left.”
The princess seemed relieved at that.
Foile saw his opening and took it. “But what was so important that you risked your life to see your grandfather?”
“And why was he so intent on not letting me get a word in edgewise?” the princess said thoughtfully.
“Exactly.”
The princess leaned back in her chair. She glanced at Jack, who raised an eyebrow, then returned her gaze to Foile. “Are you sure you want to know?”
“I pursued you for four days. I forced myself on your father, the Prime Minister, and I came all the way up here and managed to crash your present security. By the way, are you seeking political asylum?”
“I’ve turned myself in. I expect I’ll be facing a Musashi court in a few days, but back to your question. Once again, I must ask you, do you really want to know the answer? If I tell you, you will likely never sleep as soundly as you have.”
Now it was Foile’s turn to sit back in his chair. He’d spent twenty-five years as a good man of the law. He read the cartoon in the daily news and ignored the political topics like a plague. Apparently, this young woman was about to initiate him into the inner secrets of those he served.
He took a deep breath and leaned forw
ard. “Can what you tell me be any worse than what I’m imagining?”
“Very likely,” the man on the couch said. “It’s dangerous to get too close to one of these damn Longknifes.”
“I suspect I have been too close to you Longknifes ever since your father summoned me to his office. Enough beating around this bush. Would you please answer my question?”
The princess gave him a sad smile. “Unfortunately, I am not all that sure what the answer is to your question. I assume you know that I seem to have started a war with some hostile aliens on the other side of the galaxy.”
“It was in the all the news,” Foile said. “My Agent Chu, a fan of yours, made sure I saw the worst of it. Then, suddenly, it wasn’t there anymore.”
“Yes,” the princess said. “There seem to be major differences in high places just how to respond to the hot potato I dropped in their laps. My great-grandfather Ray, King Ray to you, appears to be trying to raise a Navy without raising taxes.”
“How’s that working for him?” Foile asked.
“Not so good. Quite a bit of resistance all around. But it’s his son, my grandfather Al’s reaction, that is causing me trouble.”
“What is his reaction?”
“Nothing, officially, but there’s chatter, not a lot of it, but it seems that Grampa Al wants to take a different tack from his father. Being the hardheaded businessman that he is, it appears he wants to get the aliens talking to him, open trade, whereas the excitable and shoot-’em-up types like Ray and me only get them shooting first and neither asking nor answering questions.”
“What do you think your grandfather Al will try to do?”
“How about sending out a trading fleet loaded with all the goodies that we make?” the princess said.
Foile saw the problem. “And if these bad actors capture the fleet?”
“They get all the computers and navigational material to take them right back to us,” the young man said, getting up from his couch to pace.
“A lot of good people died under my command,” the princess said. “Every ship that was hit dropped its reactor containment and blew themselves to atoms so that the aliens could get no navigational data from them. It looks like Grampa Al will give it to them on a silver platter.”
Kris Longknife: Furious Page 20