Kris Longknife: Furious

by Mike Shepherd

“Just be sure to get ashore when we tell you to. Our next stop is a long way from your wife and kid.”

  “Soon to be kids,” Brother interrupted.

  “And as my captain likes to say, there be sea monsters where we’re going.”

  “About those sea monsters,” Brother said. “I’ve brought you some gifts. Four of those transports are carrying Hellburners. A gift from Grampa Ray.”

  “And what am I supposed to do with them this time?” Kris asked with a jaundiced eye. She was still wanted on 162 planets for what she’d done with the last three, and Grampa Ray, King Raymond to most, had been noticeably silent about what he’d intended her to do with those gifts.

  “Maybe we should talk about this in private,” Brother started, then seemed to catch the full drift of Kris’s question. “No, I don’t care if everyone here hears this. Father was there with half his cabinet when King Ray told me you should use these where you see fit. ‘She’s going into hostile country. She needs the best we have.’”

  The lounge had grown silent as Honovi talked. Half the people there were listening as Kris got her orders. Okay. Fine. Maybe.

  “Four?” Captain Drago said.

  “Two for the Wasp and two for the Sakura. I’m told the frigates can handle two each.” At the next table, Katsu was grinning from ear to ear and nodding.

  “We are most definitely headed into ‘hostile country,’” Kris said. She’d first heard the expression “hostile country” in an ancient vid. It was 2-D no less. Then she discovered that the original words “Indian country” had been blocked out of the sound track. The blood of Apache, Sioux, Blackfoot, and Crow flowed in Longknife veins. Kris didn’t like the meaning of “Indian country” or “hostile country.”

  Then she discovered the original meaning of “off the reservation.” The idea that human beings would lock other human beings up in such squalor! The more Kris studied old Earth, the less she liked it.

  Kris chose to rephrase her orders, using an old sea dog for her guide. “Give me a well-armed ship, for I intend to go in harm’s way.”

  “That’s my sis,” Bro said, raising his glass. Kris’s glass arrived just in time for her to share the toast. Then the work of the night began. Bro stood up, called for silence, and told the ship captains gathered there that they would be following him back the way they came.

  A burly captain stood up and spoke for everyone. “I don’t take my orders from you even if you are one of those damn Longknifes.” The general rumble of the room strongly agreed with him.

  Kris tugged at her brother’s arm. “Bro, let me handle this one.”

  “It’s all yours,” he said, sounding relieved as he sat down.

  Kris stood and eyed the standing captain. Under her glare, he sat down, and the room acquired silence. “Just for the record, would one of you mind telling me what you intended to do with all these ships loaded up with the best humanity has to offer?”

  “We was going to find them aliens you pissed off,” a tall thin man said as he stood. “Show them us humans could be reasonable. That we all could benefit from trade.”

  “And they would do what?” Kris asked, just as nice as a sweet princess could.

  “Open trade. They’re not stupid. If we don’t go off shooting at them, they won’t go all bloody on us.”

  Kris glanced back at Jack and the crew that had fought with her. As one, they shook their heads.

  Kris thought for, oh, a second. She’d met a lot of folks who didn’t have a clue as to what happened out there. Maybe she could catch more flies with a little education. “Nelly, run the film of our first encounter with the small alien ship.”

  The four forward screens showed the ship of connected spheres launch itself from the moon. The audio gave voice to the Wasp’s effort to establish contact.

  Then the ship fired on them.

  “Notice, we talked. They shot,” Kris said. In a few moments the ship exploded. “Note that my shots only damaged the ship. They blew themselves up.”

  There were murmurs among the ship captains.

  “Show the alien advanced guard,” Kris ordered.

  The two aliens that came through the jump gate before the mother ship filled the screen. Once more, the audio was filled with different efforts to establish contact. On view, the eight human battleships did an about-turn and began to open the distance between them and the aliens.

  Then, without a word spoken, the two aliens blew Fury out of space.

  “You’ll excuse us if, after that, we blew them to pieces as quickly as we could,” Kris said, as the alien ships did, indeed, explode.

  In a blink, Nelly let the mother ship fill the entire forward screens. Now the room was silent enough to hear several people chug their drinks.

  The retreating battle line was still sending contact signals as the huge ship opened fire, and battleships began to explode.

  “Nelly, zoom in on Chikuma.” The battleship was mortally wounded and spewing survival pods. Lasers swept through them, vaporizing all. “Under the laws of war, agreed to by all humans, and now, even the Iteeche Empire, survival pods are sacred and noncombatant. You can see how these aliens treated them.”

  Now the screen showed the Hellburners smashing into the huge alien ship for a few seconds, then Nelly let it go to black.

  Hands on hips, Kris eyed the merchant skippers before her. “You are not going out there. You aren’t going because I say so and because every one of you and all of your crews will be dead in a month, maybe in a week, if you don’t do what I tell you.”

  The lounge got even quieter.

  “But we aren’t warships. We’re unarmed merchant ships that just want to talk to them. Open trade negotiations,” the burly captain insisted from his chair.

  “You think that will make a difference? Four times we met these vicious space raiders. Every time I did everything within my power to open communications. Three times they tried to kill us, and the fourth time, we ran away before they got the chance. You think I wanted to fight that huge bastard? I’m a Longknife. I’m not insane.”

  The room stayed silent as what they had seen slowly sank into thick skulls.

  “What am I going to do?” a captain grouched. “I can likely sell my cargo, but I signed on extra hands. Even if I lay the rest off, I got a year’s worth of food for my normal crew.”

  “We can probably take some of it off your hands,” Kris said.

  “Don’t you go paying too high a price for that,” Mother MacCreedy called from the bar. “We got a shipful of fine victuals. This is not a seller’s market.”

  Kris let others handle the haggling. For once, she enjoyed kicking back and catching up on family matters. When was the new baby due? Had Grampa Ray actually sounded like he intended to take responsibility for what Kris did with this set of Hellburners? She introduced Honovi to Jack and let the two males do their thing.

  “Inspector Foile is a good cop. A very good cop,” Brother said. “I understand that you and my sister are friendly. Very friendly.”

  “She certainly can use someone covering her back,” Jack said.

  Kris decided to cut this guy stuff out. “Brother, I intend to marry Jack. Assuming he’ll have me, and that things ever slow down so we can.”

  Jack showed thunder at his brow for a second, whether because Kris had stepped into a guy thing, or because, as he said next, “I’m glad I’m not the last to hear about that proposal.”

  “I said ‘if you’ll take me,’ Jack. And we haven’t exactly had two seconds to call our own since we quit being fugitives from the law and gave ourselves, well, myself up. I figured I’d better get my bid in before some other girl comes along and gives you a better offer.”

  Jack squeezed her hand, what looked to be all the intimacy the Wasp was going to allow them. “There will never be another woman in my heart.”

  “Hey, as a member of parliament, I can marry people. You want to do it now?” Honovi sported a wide grin.

  “And have Mother nev
er speak to Kris again?” Jack said.

  “It sounds better and better,” Kris said.

  “Um,” Brother switched to a frown. “But I share a planet with Mother and regularly work with the old gal, Sis. I’m afraid I’m backing out of my offer.”

  “Coward,” Kris said.

  “From the looks of things, you got all the courage in this generation, and I think you need it.”

  Kris couldn’t disagree with that. So they talked the night away, and Kris stayed an unmarried lady. Jack did squeeze her hand regularly, and they managed a good-night kiss at the door to her cabin when they parted early the next morning.

  64

  Captain Drago ordered refueling after breakfast. That involved separating the Wasp into two ships. This time, the smaller, single-engine half did the cloud dancing. The Sakura did the same. Kris mentioned she’d like to go along.

  Jack said nothing, but the look on his face told her all she needed to hear. She dropped out of the expedition. Katsu insisted he should go, “just in case.” He returned several hours later, white as a sheet. “We don’t pay the guys who get our reaction mass nearly enough. Not nearly enough.”

  Kris had been busy while the two fragments were gathering reaction mass. “Where do I get one of those?” was on several lips, including Brother’s. Kris gave Mitsubishi Heavy Space Industry a full promo, pointing out that the cost of the Wasp, assuming mass production, could be the same as a Typhoon-type fast corvette.

  “There are nine construction slips at Nuu Yards on High Wardhaven, three of them battleship-size from the Iteeche War,” Kris pointed out. “They could be turning out a dozen of these frigates every four months. They cost less, have a smaller crew, and are just as good as a battleship.”

  “But how much will Mitsubishi want for the modified Smart Metal?”

  “I have no idea,” Kris said, “but I hope squabbling over money doesn’t stop Grampa Ray from getting the fleet he wants.”

  Honovi just shrugged, as if Kris really didn’t understand the real world.

  The Vulcan came alongside, and the two frigates stopped their circling long enough for some heavy stuff to be brought over. Wardhaven had had more recent experience in shoot-outs, and Kris had considered the Wasp too lightly armed.

  Now the repair ship sent six twin batteries of 5-inch secondary lasers over to both frigates, and Katsu found himself very busy making adjustments. Kris wanted the Wasp expanded, not just to accommodate the Marines and boffins more comfortably but also to carry enough reaction mass to make all the jumps to the other side of the galaxy without refueling. Grampa Ray’s gifts didn’t just extend to the Hellburners and secondary guns. Both frigates got two dozen of the fast-acceleration missiles with antimatter warheads as well as plenty of foxers and chaff pods.

  Next fight, Kris would be loaded for bigger bears.

  While shipfitters roamed the Wasp, Kris took Senior Chief Beni to lunch and asked him if he’d like one of Nelly’s kids. Professor Labao just happened to be in earshot and asked if he could be included. Captain Drago was also within hearing, but he declined with haste. “Watch out for the nightmares,” he warned.

  “What nightmares?” the chief and professor asked together.

  “I do not make mistakes twice,” Nelly assured them, as they adjourned to the ship’s electronic-maintenance shop so Nelly could guide the chief in creating the headgear his son had designed to help her kids commune directly with their humans. Kris corralled Katsu and included him in the upgrade.

  An hour later, Kris left three new man-machine interfaces. The old sea dog was deeply intent; the professor and the engineer looked downright euphoric.

  The Wasp’s crew was also augmented by quite a few Sailors from the old Wasp. That included the old Marine company at full strength, leaving Kris with two Marine companies on board. While Captain Drago grumbled and had Katsu expand his ship, Abby was quite happy to have Sergeant Bruce in easy reach. Nelly was also glad; Bruce brought Chesty with him.

  Now all six of her surviving kids were home.

  Two days later, the frigates got under way for Jump Point Beta at two gees while the U.S. cruisers herded the merchant ships toward Alpha at one gee.

  The Wasp and the Sakura hit the jump at two hundred thousand klicks, spinning at thirty-five RPMs clockwise and goosed up to 3.5 gees. Nelly was quite pleased with the results.

  “We jumped right over the Iteeche Empire and we’re within five light-years, both in azimuth and range, of my projections. This system has three of the new jumps. Aim for the middle-distant one and let’s hold four gees. We’ll take this one at thirty-five RPMs counterclockwise and tack toward the edge of the galaxy.”

  Nelly guided them on a course that first headed them toward the edge, then more inward of the galaxy. After the next jump, they were up to seven hundred thousand klicks, and they made their way to the next two jumps at a pleasant one gee.

  The Wasp had started out at thirty-five thousand tons. The Hellburners had added thirty thousand tons; these were slightly smaller than the first ones. Tests had showed that the antimatter hadn’t gotten to all the neutron material, and rather than waste three thousand tons of the stuff, these missiles were smaller. At sixty-five thousand tons, the two frigates had then added thirty thousand tons of reaction mass spread around in a whole lot of medium-size tanks. A conventional ship could never have done that.

  More and more, as the Wasp grew and shrank around Kris, she was sure she was riding the wave of the future.

  On the far side of the galaxy, Nelly ordered them to four-gee deceleration, and they came to rest in a system closer to the rim but only one slow jump from where the Intrepid had located the new civilization.

  Kris ordered the two frigates to a gas giant. The Sakura Jr. headed down to do some cloud dancing and capture needed reaction mass. The Wasp Jr. trotted over to the jump that should take them to the bird people and poked the periscope through.

  Everyone held their breath while Senior Chief Beni went through the electromagnetic spectrum. “There’s radio and TV signals from there. They’re in the bird format. None of that impenetrable space-raider crap. I think you folks did it.”

  That brought a cheer and a sigh and a lot of other hard-to-name feelings. Too many good men and women had died so the people in that next system could live.

  Kris found herself whispering a prayer of thanksgiving to any god listening.

  “Kris,” Nelly said. “My kids and I have been going over the original traffic that came back with the Intrepid. Yes, I know we should have done this sooner, but we’ve been kind of busy until now.”

  “Spit it out, Nelly,” Kris said.

  “The Intrepid thought they’d just made their first space launch. I’m not sure that’s entirely right. They may have been returning to space. And the rig that they used. There were no close-ups of it. And what we saw was very grainy. Optics is not their strong suit.” A picture appeared in a window of the bridge’s main screen.

  It was way past blurry. “Can you clean that up, Nelly?”

  “We’ve tried, Kris. The bottom is clearly an old-fashioned liquid-fuel rocket, obsolete since before humans got serious about leaving Earth. It’s what’s on top that has us puzzled.” Nelly zoomed in, and the picture got even worse.

  “I can’t tell anything about that,” Kris said.

  “Yes, I know, Kris, but it’s about the right length and width for the kind of gigs they knocked together during the Iteeche War to move a few people from ship to ship or ship to planet.”

  “Do we have a picture of one of those gigs?” Jack asked.

  “Yes, but not really,” Nelly said. “It’s from an archive that no one thought we’d ever need. It’s been compressed six or seven times. The metadata is vague.”

  “So is the picture,” Kris said. She looked at the two pictures and could tell nothing about either. She told Nelly so.

  “Yes, Kris, I know they don’t look like much, but our analysis says there is a fifty-percent c
hance that they are one and the same. Usually, I don’t bother you with fifty-percent probabilities, but this one . . .”

  It was unusual for Nelly to be at a loss for words. Very unusual.

  “Let’s get this fueling over with and see what’s over there,” Kris said.

  Twelve hours later, they took the last jump at dead slow with the frigates rock steady.

  Once in system, they put on one-gee acceleration toward the source of all their curiosity.

  65

  “Nelly, how’s the translation business going?”

  “Better than you have any right to expect but not nearly as well as you clearly want,” Nelly shot back. Kris noticed that Jack and Penny and all the others with one of Nelly’s kids had been leaving their computers alone.

  Kris decided to leave Nelly to her work.

  An hour later, Nelly said, “Kris, we have identified references to three kinds of people. There are The People, and then there are the Old People and the Heavy People. The difference between the Old and the Heavy is a slight inflection in what sounds like the same word to me. Worse, the Old ones appear to be more mythical, although they are referred to a lot.”

  “Gods?” Jack asked.

  “That’s possible. The Heavy People are spoken about in the present tense, we think, but not a lot.”

  With little more than that, they continued to close on the planet.

  It was the old chief who made the next discovery. “I’m getting a beeper. It’s not much of anything, but it sounds like a ship’s navigational warning signal.”

  “Have you interrogated it?” Kris shot back.

  “I’ve tried, but it doesn’t respond. It could be something entirely different from what I’m taking it for.”

  “We’ll see,” Kris said, and settled into her Weapons station. All four lasers were charged and locked. Beside Kris, Penny was shrinking the Wasp down to fighting trim, Condition Baker. Not enough to make staterooms disappear, but empty spaces were getting smaller as the hide of the ship thickened, and reaction mass was sent to cool the honeycombed places beneath the armor.