Kris Longknife: Furious

by Mike Shepherd

  Kris leaned back in her chair. “I can offer no pay. I have nothing at hand but a chance to risk your neck on the other side of the galaxy. Haven’t any of these people heard about how dangerous it is to get too close to a damn Longknife?”

  “Ah,” the skipper said, “there are damn Longknifes, and then there is Kris Longknife.”

  “I’ve never noticed a difference,” Kris grumbled.

  “We have,” Jack said, and gave Kris’s hand a discreet squeeze.

  Kris shook her head, she’d think about that later. Now she turned to Captain Drago. “Since it’s clear I now have a ship, or at least a hole in space I need to throw money into, I guess you better talk to Admiral Crossenshield. Mind you, he can have no more than a quarter of my soul. An ounce more, and we walk, you hear?”

  “One of his minions is lurking around a dive on High Kyoto. I think I can seal the deal in my blood tonight. No need for you to prick your little finger.”

  “Last time I danced to his tune, I came near to getting my head chopped off.”

  “Almost doesn’t count, insisted my sainted grandfather, veteran of the Iteeche War under your great-grandfather.”

  “Now I know you’re just making things up,” Jack said through a chuckle. “There can’t be a saintly anything in your family tree.”

  “I am cut to the quick,” the skipper said, and dismissed himself.

  “Are things always like this around the princess?” Katsu asked.

  “Nope,” Abby said. “You’re catching her on one of her better days.”

  Katsu studied a piece of fish tempura and seemed to be rethinking his bargain of the afternoon. But by the time he put it in his mouth, he looked less inclined to run for the dock.

  At breakfast the next morning, Captain Drago reported that the deal had been done. The ship now had a sufficient line of credit to draw on.

  “My contact asked me to remind you that the line of credit is the Wasp’s, not yours. It will be audited, and it will be my neck on the block if the bean counters don’t agree with the charges.”

  “Since I am of late only too familiar with having my neck too close to the chopping block, I will try to take it easy on yours,” Kris assured him.

  Kris had hardly gotten a bite of her bran muffin when Nelly interrupted her. “Kris, I have a message from your brother. It’s highest priority, and he sent it in the clear.”

  Kris sat up straight. “What does Brother have to say?”

  A holo of him appeared on the table before Kris. “You were right about Grampa Al. He and several other kings of industry and trade are collecting a fleet of fast merchant ships at star system M-688. Inspector Foile is brilliant; I couldn’t have done it without him. Father has ordered a squadron of heavy cruisers out to chase them down and is sending me for political clout. However, they’re scheduled to leave their collection point soon.”

  The date he gave was way too soon.

  “Kris, we think these ships can do up to two gees acceleration, and who knows how many revolutions, right or left. If we don’t catch them before they head out, we may never. I know I can’t get there before they take off. I hear a rumor that you have a new ship. A new model. Can you get to system M-688 before they jump out of it?”

  Kris turned to Captain Drago. “Can we?”

  The skipper tapped his commlink. “All hands to battle stations.”

  Then he turned to Kris and smiled. “Let’s get to my bridge, where these things can be done properly.”

  61

  Captain Drago settled into his command chair. Kris took her usual station at Weapons. Penny slipped into her chair at Defense.

  “Guns, what’s our status?” Drago asked into his comm-link.

  “Locked and loaded. Get me out of space dock, and I’ll show you what we can do.”

  “We’ll likely do that very soon.”

  “We’ll be ready.”

  Drago tapped off and tapped back on. “Engineering, how soon before we can get under way?”

  “If you give the order, Skipper, I can start heating up the reactors and be at full power in three hours.”

  “Start feeding your dragons, Manuel. I want to be clear of the dock in four hours.”

  “It will be so.”

  “What about the scientists and crew?” Kris asked.

  “Those that are here, like you, spent the night aboard,” the skipper shot back to Kris as he rang off and punched for a new line.

  Kris had spent the night in her new quarters. They were very familiar and also very strange. With the exception of the mattress on her bunk, everything was Smart Metal. Even the cushion on the station chair at her desk was the stuff. She’d given the springs a good once-over; they were metal, and they were soft.

  Stranger and stranger, this ship that was now hers.

  “Cookie,” Captain Drago snapped. “Have you placed your orders for supplies?”

  “Put them all in before breakfast this morning. Enough food to feed the whole crew of the old Wasp. Delivery should start in thirty minutes. Why?”

  “We sail in four hours. Can you get it all aboard?”

  “On the old Wasp, I’d say you were joking. This new one . . . I just might be able to get it all on board and stored away in some fashion. Could I have that nice boy, Katsu-san, help me move the stuff around?”

  The nice “boy” had followed Kris to the bridge looking for all the world like a dazed puppy. Now he beamed, “I can do that. No problem,” and was off at a gallop.

  “What will we do about the vacant crew slots?” Kris asked. Sulwan Kann, the Wasp’s navigator since forever, had found a guy at High Chance and stayed behind when Drago and most of the crew shipped out.

  “Yes, what are you going to do about your vacant crew slots?” A familiar voice said from the main bridge hatch.

  “Captain Miyoshi!” Kris exclaimed. “What brings you to these parts?”

  “My ship sensors report that your lasers are all charged. and your reactors are powering up. The powers that be tell me that your captain here has a full line of credit and is in the final process of fitting out. ‘Very strange behavior,’ say my superiors. ‘Go find out what is going on,’ I am told. So, what is going on?”

  What Kris thought was going on might be nothing at all if some of her more basic assumptions turned out not to be true. Captain Miyoshi’s visit might just pull the rug out from under her.

  Kris began slowly to see how much rope she had and if it would be enough to hang herself. “Captain. I was told the Wasp was a gift to me and mine. Does it fly the U.S. flag or Musashi’s?”

  “Good question. Could it fly the Longknife flag?” Captain Miyoshi asked.

  “Don’t even think that, sir. I about got my hair cut all the way down to my throat because some folks claimed I’d gone pirate. What colors do I fly?”

  “Captain Drago?” the Musashi captain asked.

  “Last night I was provided with a complete set of papers for a U.S. Navy ship. I am prepared, however hastily, to commission this ship as the U.S.S. Wasp.”

  “I believe my superiors can accept that. Now, why all the commotion?”

  “We need to be someplace very quickly,” Kris said.

  “And like so many things about you, Commander, you are less than forthcoming with details.”

  “I’m sorry, sir, but yes.”

  “But wherever you are going, you will need a navigator.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “The assistant navigator on the Mutsu would do very well I think. She should be along in an hour. What other positions do you need filled?”

  Captain Drago shot him a list. Captain Miyoshi studied it, then nodded. “I will send it along to my XO. They should all be here within an hour. Some wives and husbands will be unhappily surprised, but they knew the problem when they married Sailors.”

  “I don’t want anyone drafted against their will,” Kris said.

  “I’ve noticed that about you, Commander. Don’t you think the sight of
this ship fitting out has not caused talk along the docks? The men and women who will be joining you packed their seabags several days ago.”

  The main bridge screen lit up. Kris found herself facing a young commander. “Ahoy Wasp, I am Abe Toshio, commanding the Sakura. I see that you are making final preparation to get under way. Where are we going?”

  Kris glanced at Captain Miyoshi. He grinned. “I will be joining Commander Abe on the Sakura. I have been made commodore of Frigate Division One. My orders are rather vague. What did you say in court? ‘Follow your movements and look out for the interests of my Imperial master.’”

  “Something like that,” Kris said. Then she turned to Drago.

  “What kind of atom laser do we have aboard? We won’t be going anywhere if it’s a standard model.”

  “I didn’t leave Wardhaven without a Mod 12 in my seabag. Big seabag. If I’m not mistaken, the Sakura is also equipped with the latest.”

  Any atom laser below the Mod 12 could not sense the new “fuzzy” jumps that had been critical to the old Wasp’s survival.

  And very likely would be critical to Kris getting to the M-688 system ahead of her brother.

  “Then Captain Miyoshi, you may inform your command that we will be departing under sealed orders in four hours. I will inform you of our destination after the first jump.”

  “One more thing, Your Highness,” Captain Miyoshi said. Kris wasn’t sure, but that might be the first time he addressed her as such. It was certainly the first time he said it and actually seemed to mean it.

  “Yes, Captain.”

  “Usually you travel with a Marine company for protection.”

  “I like to think they are put to more uses than just protecting me,” Kris said.

  Jack shot her a look.

  “I have been asked to offer you the service of the Marine company that protected you at Fujioka House. Captain Montoya, you are familiar with them.”

  “I found them to be the best,” Jack said.

  “For the protection detail, the company was reinforced with two squads of MPs, two squads of sappers, and a squad of forensic experts. My superiors are willing to detach the reinforced company for service aboard the Wasp.”

  Kris liked the offer but saw the problem. “And what will the chain of command for this look like?” she asked.

  “For the Marines, Captain Montoya to Imperial Marine Captain Hayakawa Mikio. For the Sailors, Captain Drago to his division chiefs to the men and women. As for where you fit in, Your Highness . . . ?”

  “I consider myself her flag captain,” Captain Drago said, barely keeping a grin off his face, “and we make do as best we can. I think I understand. If you can loan me a Command Master Chief to work with my Command Master Chief, I think we can fit things together on the fly.”

  “Where there is a will, there is always a way,” Captain Miyoshi said, and departed.

  Kris left her station and quickly covered the distance to navigation. “Nelly, sync with this station and load the new star map that we have.”

  “Doing it as we speak,” Nelly said.

  “Now, find me a way from Musashi to M-688.”

  “There are several routes. What assumptions do we make?”

  “Good point. Let’s take a step back. Show me M-688.”

  It appeared on the nav screen. It wasn’t much of a system. Several planets large and larger were close in to the sun. Farther out were a mixture of rocky and gaseous ones in no particular order. Nothing worth a second look for human or Iteeche.

  There were two jumps in the system. One led to and from human space. The other was marked in red. It led to an equally undesirable planet.

  In the Iteeche Empire.

  No wonder the system had been ignored.

  But if the second jump was hit at a high speed, high acceleration, and a good twist on the ship, what might happen?

  “Nelly, venture a guess for two hundred thousand klicks per hour, two gees, and twenty revolutions per minute from Jump Point Beta.”

  A slice of possible results formed a twenty-degree arc stretching out five hundred to a thousand light-years.

  “That would be well beyond the Iteeche Empire,” Kris muttered.

  “And headed back to where there be sea monsters,” Captain Drago said.

  “Nelly, I want to come barreling into that system via Jump Point Beta. Can we do that?”

  “If we accelerate toward Musashi’s Jump Point Gamma at two gees, snap up to three gees at the jump, and put on twenty RPMs clockwise,” Nelly said, “that should take us to this system with two fuzzy jumps. If I can trust my estimates, we can get up to five hundred thousand klicks an hour and jump to this system.” A red line now connected Musashi to three distant systems.

  “We decelerate after the next jump and come barreling in, as you say, to M-688 at two hundred thousand klicks per hour. I hope no one is in the jump, or even close to it.”

  Kris took a step back, eyeing the course. Once more, she was piling on the risks. If Brother’s information was right, and Nelly’s guesses could be trusted she’d be coming in system a good four hours before the first merchant ship would be trying to make its jump.

  How much did she trust Nelly’s course? Even the computer admitted that high-speed navigation was as much guess as science. And could she count on a fleet of merchant ships drawn from half a dozen different wealthy and powerful men, full of hubris, to follow a leaked schedule?

  “Captain Drago, please tell me that you see a safer course of action,” Kris said.

  Drago just shook his head. “You’re the one with the mouthy computer. Mine just does what I tell it to do.”

  “Kris, I can’t guarantee any of what I’m showing you,” Nelly said.

  “But it’s the best you have,” Kris said.

  “It is the best I can come up with.”

  Kris glanced at Jack.

  He shrugged and smiled. “It looks like a good idea at this time.”

  62

  They were only a half hour late getting under way.

  Then, as they backed out of dock, the first surprise arose.

  “Pier Tie-Down 1 refuses to release.”

  “Can you give me a picture of the problem?” Katsu was in full engineering mode. The picture appeared in a small window of the main screen. He studied it.

  “Ah, some extra Smart Metalis clogging the tie-down. I can fix that.” He started tapping on his Smart Metal Controller.

  “The Sakura is having the same problem,” Senior Chief Beni, ret., called from sensors. He was sharing it with a much younger chief from Musashi who nodded in agreement but seemed a bit too shy to point out the failure of her elders.

  “I’m sending the correction to Sakura,” Katsu announced.

  There was a slight catch as each pier tie-down came up for release, but no further hang-ups. The undocking took only two minutes more than expected.

  They quickly cleared the controlled space around High Kyoto station and went to two gees acceleration for Jump Point Gamma, with the Wasp ahead by a hundred klicks and the Sakura offset fifty klicks to port.

  The trip should have taken four hours. It took more.

  Guaranteed for five gees, things still broke loose at two. Four times they had to slow to one gee. Once, they even went into free fall. The captain was philosophical about it. “New ships need shakedowns. New designs really need a shakedown.”

  Kris didn’t have time for a shakedown cruise. She didn’t have time for much of anything. Katsu was both her enemy and her hero at the same time. She demanded that he quit apologizing for everything that went wrong. “Don’t apologize. Fix it!”

  She relented on her plan to go slow with Katsu and his new computer Fumio. Nelly helped sync Fumio with the Smart Metal Controller, and things moved faster.

  Kris wished she could have arranged for a better interface between her engineer and his new gadget, but there wasn’t time for that. When things slowed down, Kris would fix that.

  No, wh
en things sped up.

  No, when they got where they were going, then she’d take time.

  Right now, time was what she didn’t have enough of, and it was running away from her faster and faster.

  Five hours into the four-hour trip, things seemed to have settled into their new normal. Kris turned to Captain Drago. “If we’re going to high gees after the jump, shouldn’t we be getting into our high-gee stations?”

  “You’ll want to go to your quarters,” Katsu told Kris. “The new system works best as a second skin,” he said with a blush.

  “Well, that should simplify the uniform of the day,” Kris growled, and headed for her room to find . . . something . . . waiting for her. It looked like an egg on tiny wheels. She tapped the OPEN HERE spot, and something that might have been a chair appeared. Stripping quickly, she settled herself into the egg, and it closed around her.

  Just like that, the double weight she’d been feeling at two gees vanished. She wiggled, and the thing wiggled with her. She knew the thing was in touch with every inch of her body, but she didn’t feel that way. Her memories of a summer day at the lake in a bikini seemed more confining.

  She pointed her right index finger at the door, and the egg moved off. The door opened automatically before Kris. Her door was a door, not an airtight hatch. Kris headed for the bridge and found that the egg flowed easily over the hatch coaming.

  “Enjoying your new toy?” Captain Drago asked drolly from his own shiny egg.

  “I think so,” Kris said. “How does it work when nature calls?”

  “It’s supposed to handle both liquid and solid waste. I’m told it will even give you a bath. It would be nice to come out of high gee without the crew smelling like they’d lived in a stable for a month.”

  “We’ll see what we see,” Kris said, only seconds before Katsu rolled onto the bridge in his own egg.

  “What do you think of it? I designed it myself,” he said.

  “Feels pretty good, Katsu-san. Can I fight from in it?”