Kris Longknife: Furious

by Mike Shepherd

  “No,” he said with maddening calm.

  Kris kicked one of the large leather chairs that surrounded a heavy wooden table. That hurt. She took a deep breath.

  “Okay, then what are you doing?”

  “They are calling you a fool. A young fool, but a fool nonetheless. Have you read the ribbons on their chests?”

  “No,” Kris admitted. Musashi decorations were not in her training.

  “I had a retired general of my own do that. All of that fruit salad, that is what you call it, isn’t it?”

  “Yes.”

  “All of it is for peacetime activities. Not one of those mighty men has ever faced combat. My retired general showed me a picture of you in full dress uniform. By the way, you will wear it the day you testify. Every decoration you have involved combat, does it not?”

  Kris mentally went down her own fruit salad. “Pretty much.”

  “Let them talk. And quit making faces when they say things. There are cameras in this courtroom. Your faces will be on tonight’s news. Some of the more unscrupulous news sources will doubtlessly take your reactions and put them out of context. Please give them as little to play with as you can. Now. I have things to do, and, certainly, you must have also.”

  “I need to go to the bathroom.”

  “Please do and don’t bother me.”

  Kris retired to the ladies’ room, did what she needed to do, and found that she had the place all to herself. She kicked the wall, careful not to hurt herself this time. Rather than punch the wall, she tried slapping it a few times. She found the window would open, so she did and tossed a few primal screams at the wind.

  This was so different from what she was used to. Yes, it was tough waiting for that right second to slam a hostile with lasers or torpedoes, but she was doing something. Here she had to sit, and sit, and sit.

  But she could end up just as dead.

  She kicked the wall again. Gently.

  She was almost calm when a young woman member of her legal team timidly stuck her head in the door, and announced, “It is time to return to court.”

  They continued picking apart Kris’s every decision, every move, for the rest of the day. The prosecutor had them talk. Kris’s own defense asked its one lone question. It went on and on until even Kris was finding it repetitive and boring.

  She wasn’t alone, it seemed.

  As the time drew close to recess for the day, notes flew up and down the bench between the nine judges. As the last witness for the day stepped down, the chief judge called the prosecutor to the bench.

  “It has been pointed out that none of the last three witnesses have added anything new to the record before us.”

  “Well, Your Honor,” was cut off.

  “Will any of the, ah, eight witness you have scheduled add anything new to the record? I notice that all but one of them is a former general or admiral.”

  “The exception to that is an expert on international law. He will testify that a declaration of war is not an action for an individual but for a sovereign state or planet.”

  “Mr. Kawaguchi, will you stipulate that an individual does not have the right to declare war?”

  “Under normal circumstances, yes, Your Honor.”

  “The court has before it a stipulation that no individual has the right, under normal circumstances, to declare war. I assume the defense accepts the burden of addressing the matter of ‘normal circumstances’?”

  “We are prepared to do that.”

  “Then, Mr. Prosecutor, it appears that you have presented your case. Are you prepared to rest?” carried a strong hint that he better be.

  Not surprisingly, the prosecution rested.

  “Mr. Kawaguchi, are you prepared to present your case in the morning?”

  “This is a little sudden, Your Honor. We are still attempting to locate a witness.”

  “See that your witness is located by tomorrow. We will allow you to introduce this surprise witness, assuming his or her testimony is relevant. I’m sure the prosecutor will see that you verify it is.”

  “Certainly, Your Honor.”

  The gavel came down. “Court dismissed until nine o’clock tomorrow morning.”

  Everyone rose as the judges departed.

  “Now, my fidgety, angry, young woman, you will have your day in court. I suggest you get a good night’s sleep, and oh, see that your maid has your dress uniform ready in the morning with all the trimmings and sauces.”

  “Fruit salad, sir, is never served with sauce,” Kris said.

  “No sauciness, please.”

  “I will try, sir.”

  Kris took a shower before dinner. It left her feeling less . . . tainted. Jack and Penny did their level best to talk about anything but the trial. Kris discovered that Jack had once been expelled from school briefly for a rather spectacular invitation he made to a girl for the prom.

  “Did she go with you?” Penny asked.

  “No,” Jack said forlornly. “I was expelled for the great night. Worse, she went with my best friend, and they were a couple after that.”

  “So clearly,” Abby said, “you signed up with the Foreign Legion and ended up in the Secret Service.”

  “Something like that. Never a girl in my life.”

  Kris got away with giving him a hug and kiss to solace his loneliness. Sadly, the kiss was little more than a peck because a serving girl came in to refill water glasses.

  Dinner done, they adjourned to the drawing room to sample the night’s news. They’d come to categorize them as those who were after Kris’s head, those who weren’t, and those who hadn’t made up their minds yet. Even that middle group seemed taken aback by the universal condemnation of her battle plan. Several left their audience with a final question. “Why would someone as experienced as Admiral Kota follow such a flawed plan?”

  Penny turned off the monitors before the talking heads got going.

  Kris went to bed early but found sleep hard. She kept waking up from dreams of her facing the headsman in a white kimono.

  A headsman who looked too much like her lawyer, Mr. Kawaguchi.

  53

  “Would you please state your name and job for the record?” Mr. Kawaguchi said. He had waited a few moments for Kris to get comfortable on the witness stand; her heavily starched white pants and choker collar scratched her skin, and she needed the time to arrange herself.

  “I am Her Royal Highness, Princess Kristine Anne Longknife. I am a lieutenant commander in the Royal United Society Navy. I presently command Fast Patrol Squadron 127, but I believe the court is most interested in my previous command of Patrol Squadron 10 and its voyage of discovery that circumnavigated the galaxy.”

  “Hmm, yes we are,” her lawyer muttered absently, not looking at Kris but studying his notes.

  “How long have you been in the Navy?” he said, as if coming to a momentous decision.

  “A little more than five years, sir.”

  Tsusumu scratched behind his ear. “Not very long, then.”

  “At times it’s seemed much longer.” Kris’s quip drew soft chuckles from the watchers, but they halted at a glare from the Chief Justice.

  “Yes, I imagine it has.” Again, Tsusumu seemed distracted as he studied his notes.

  “I can’t help but notice that blue sash you are wearing. What is it?”

  “It’s the Order of the Wounded Lion. Earth awards it,” Kris said.

  “Is it easy to get? Are there a lot of them around?”

  “I understand that the last ten people to receive it did so posthumously. I’m the first to earn it and live since the Iteeche War.”

  “Oh,” Tsusumu’s eyes widened. “What did you do to earn it?”

  “I’m sorry, I can’t answer that question, sir.”

  “May I remind you that you are sworn to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.” The witnesses yesterday had been sworn in differently, but Kris, as a Christian, had gotten the whole treatment,
Bible and all.

  “I’m sorry, sir, but under the State Secrets Acts of both Wardhaven and the U.S. federal statutes, I am forbidden to answer your question.”

  “You are sworn to this court,” the Chief Justice pointed out.

  “Yes, Your Honor, but I am sworn to my king first.”

  “Your Honor,” Kris’s lawyer said, “give me a moment to see if we can work our way around this.”

  “Make it quick.”

  “Yes, Your Honor. Commander, I have seen pictures of you in formal dress. You only began appearing with the blue sash after the Treaty of Paris was concluded.”

  “Yes, sir. It arrived in the mail shortly after that. I checked that the address was correct and that it was addressed to me.”

  “No citation.”

  “None, sir.”

  “So can we conclude that this honor has something to do with that meeting of humanity’s fleets in the Paris system?”

  “I think I can answer yes to that, sir.”

  “Objections,” the prosecutor said, jumping to his feet. “They are trying to make this award into something involving battle when it was awarded following a peaceful meeting of the fleets. Worse, during this time, the princess here was charged with mutiny.”

  The word “mutiny” ran through the gallery as well as along the bench. The taste of it was sour.

  “Do you have something to say before I rule on this objection?” the Chief Justice asked.

  Tsusumu raised an eyebrow to Kris. She sighed.

  “There have been rumors of my leading a mutiny at the Paris system since the fleets met there. It has been investigated, and no charges were ever filed. It is true that I relieved my commanding officer at that time.”

  “And your rank was?” one of the justices asked.

  “I was an ensign, sir. As low as you can get on the totem pole.”

  “Interesting,” said the justice.

  “Objection, whatever it was, is sustained. Kawaguchi, can we get on?” said the Chief Justice.

  “Commander, I also see that you wear the Golden Starburst. I believe that is the highest award made by the Helvitican Confederacy. Can you tell us how you earned that?

  “I am allowed to, but it also arrived in the mail with no citation. However, that was shortly after I assisted the independent planet Chance in resisting a forceful takeover. Chance then voted to join the Confederacy, and I think several people involved in that fight received these Starbursts. Lieutenant Lien-Pasley of my staff commanded a ship in that fight and received a Starburst.”

  “Was it much of a fight?”

  “It could have been a lot worse,” Kris admitted.

  “That blue-and-gold cross thing around your neck,” Mr. Kawaguchi began.

  “Objection, Your Honor. Where is Mr. Kawaguchi going with all this?”

  “If the court will indulge me for a few more minutes, I believe that my intentions will become obvious to all.”

  “You may have a very few more minutes,” the Chief Judge said. “Objection denied.”

  “That award, Commander.”

  “It’s the Pour la Mérite, the highest award of the new Greenfeld Empire. This one is awarded for combat, or that is what I am told the oak leaves denote.”

  “Did that one also come in the mail?”

  After a brief pause for the chuckles to run down, Kris answered. “No, it was personally delivered by Vice Admiral Krätz. However, he advised me that there was no citation included, and I was free to ascribe any one of several instances to it.”

  “Any one of several instances?”

  “I led the assault that put down a pirate lair that was raiding in Greenfeld space, sir. Another time, I saved the Greenfeld Emperor’s life.”

  That drew comments all around, enough that the Chief Justice gaveled the room to silence.

  “Very eclectic collection you have there. Now, I see among all those medals on your chest a small one, a red-and-gold ribbon with a simple bronze medallion hanging from it. What’s the name of that one?”

  Kris glanced down and fingered that one reverently. “The Wardhaven Defense Medal, sir.”

  “I understand you commanded the defense of Wardhaven, or at least the fast attack boats that did the defending.”

  Kris took a slow breath. “I was in tactical command of the twelve small fast attack boats that destroyed most of the attacking battleships, sir.”

  “Could you describe, no, compare these ‘boats’ and battleships for us?”

  “The twelve fast attack boats were about a thousand tons of hope, each. The six battleships weighed in at over a hundred thousand tons.”

  “A real David and Goliath matchup, huh?”

  “We could never have done it alone, sir. A lot of people pitched in. By the time of the battle, we were throwing into the line merchant ships loaded with over-age and obsolete Army rockets and Coast Guard Auxiliary volunteers with system runabouts. In the last desperate moments, even fleet tugs were in the charge, doing anything to make a hole for the fast attacks to get in and make a hit.”

  Kris took a deep breath. “It was a bare-knuckles fight for our planet’s survival.”

  “Something like the attack on the alien base ship, huh?”

  “Different in the way we went at them, but, yes, sir. Just as desperate and violent. And just as brutal in our losses. So, yes, I guess you could say they were kind of the same.”

  Mr. Kawaguchi turned to the Chief Justice. “Your Honor, the commander here has been with the Royal U.S. Navy for a bit more than five years. But during that time she has fought in space and on land. She has battled pirates, invaders, battleships, and slavers. I have here a list I would like to enter into evidence of her official recognitions and her battle record. Ah, the record that is public.”

  He paused to let that hit hard. “I also have here the official awards and career histories of the witnesses the prosecutor paraded by us yesterday. They are good men. Honorable men. But all of them have served Musashi during the long peace. Not one of them has ever heard a shot fired in anger. Not one has engaged an enemy intent on killing him or his command.”

  Mr. Kawaguchi turned to the gallery. “Musashi has enjoyed a long peace. I’ve enjoyed it as much as anyone. But it does not put us in a very good position to judge the actions of this young woman. She has fought for the survival of her own planet and several others. She has experience making the hard calls when the devil is calling the tunes, and what she does next may result in her death and the deaths of hundreds, maybe millions of others.”

  Her lawyer turned back to the bench. “You sit here in judgment of her. That is your duty and obligation. No one questions that. However, I ask as you decide her fate that you remember none of you have walked in her boots, faced the terrors she has faced.”

  “Is that a closing statement?” the Chief Justice asked sourly.

  “I’m sorry, Your Honor, I did get carried away. No, Your Honor, in the words of an ancient Navy captain, ‘I have not yet begun to fight.’ Commander,” he said, turning back to Kris, “what was the purpose of your Fleet of Discovery?”

  “I used Caesar’s ancient words, somewhat modified, ‘We go, we see, we run home fast and tell the story.’”

  “And what were Admiral Kota’s orders?”

  “I don’t know, sir.”

  “You don’t know?”

  “No, sir. Neither Rear Admiral Kota, Rear Admiral Channing, nor Vice Admiral Krätz shared their orders with me. After all, sir. I am just a lieutenant commander, and they were admirals.”

  “You never saw their orders. Did they give you any hint at what they might be?”

  “Objection! Calls for supposition.”

  “Sustained.”

  “Let me rephrase myself. Commander, did the actions of the admirals cause you to develop a working hypotheses as to why eight battleships were following in the wake of your Patrol Squadron 10?”

  “Yes, sir. It appeared to me that all three admirals had orders to fo
llow where I went and assure that their governments’ interests were considered.”

  “And did they follow your squadron?”

  “Yes, sir, with two exceptions. The short search where my squadron broke up into individual ships and scouted around the area where we were first attacked, and the long search when the squadron again broke up and did risky long jumps to take a sampling of what was out there.”

  “And what did this risky long search find?”

  “One plundered planet with its population murdered. One new civilization, and one alien base ship that gave all the appearance of heading for that new civilization with plunder and murder as their intent.”

  “So you decided to go to war with that base ship?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Then what did you do?”

  “I examined my options, sir. Obviously, if there was nothing I could do to help the targeted civilization, there was nothing I could do. When we departed on our voyage of discovery, we were hardly armed for a fight with something as huge as the alien base ship.”

  “Did that change?”

  “Oddly enough, it did. For no reason known to me then nor explained to me since, my king sent me three neutron torpedoes, we called them Hellburners.”

  “Could you explain what that weapon is?”

  “It is the most destructive weapon man has ever used. Possibly worse than the banned atomic weapons of old,” Kris said, then explained herself to a very quiet court.

  “And having these weapons available gave you the confidence that you could stop the base ship from destroying its targeted civilization.”

  “Objection, ascribes intent to the alien ship not in evidence.”

  “I’ll withdraw my statement. Commander, your having this capability, did it change the attitude of the admirals you did not command?”

  “Only Admiral Kota at first, then Channing, and finally Krätz. Yes, sir.”

  “Objection, we have only her hearsay evidence that they did this, Your Honor.”

  Tsusumu flashed Kris a brief grin, then sobered as he turned to the bench. “This War Council was recorded by several people. I am prepared to enter into evidence the recording of the council made by the commander.”