“Bluff, huh?”
“Yep,” Jack added.
Captain Ajax shook her head. “God help us when we run up against someone that bluffs just as wildly.”
“Ah, yes,” Kris said, “but remember, we have eight battlecruisers and a personal request from their Emperor to our King. As I see it, we do have five aces.”
“But how many aces does the Empress have up her sleeve?” Jack asked.
Kris was saved from having to answer that by the port captain coming back on-screen. “I’ve assigned all eight of your frigates to Navy Piers 4, 5, 6, and 7,” he said hurriedly. “Your ships will dock across from each other, and you may have use of the A deck area above your piers for inspections and drill. I hope this meets with your approval, Your Highness.”
“It is most satisfactory, and we thank you for it,” Kris said, laying it on thick. She might need this guy for other favors in the next few days. Best to use honey in large quantities. “Your courteous care for our needs will be mentioned when we meet with your Emperor tomorrow morning. Will he be coming up to greet us?”
“I’m sorry, your early arrival has caused some disruption in the Palace’s schedule. I have not been apprised of anything, ah, regarding formal ceremonies. We, ah, have not had anyone do the necessary security checks. I will send your expectations up to my superiors for referral to the Imperial court.”
“We thank you so very much,” Kris said. “Now it appears that we must try to adjust our schedule to your planet’s day. We hope we can get our beauty rest.” Glancing at the comm duty chief, she shook her head curtly. He cut the link.
Kris turned to Jack. “I’m here, at their station, and no one has done any kind of a security sweep of this place. If it’s not safe for their precious Emperor, how’s it supposed to be safe for my precious ass?”
“And very precious derriere it is, dear Admiral,” Jack said. “What do you say that you actually try to get some beauty sleep, and I see what I can do about making at least this part of the station safe.”
“You aren’t going ashore, are you?”
“No, Your Highness, I will stay safely aboard ship and see if a few Sailors and Marines can do some wandering around the piers and A deck. We may not have Chief Beni to check out the place, but I understand I have an entire squad of technical recon types that can do the same job.”
Kris nodded. “Okay, you do your Marine and security chief stuff, and I’ll be a nice mother and admiral, feed Ruth, and get a bit of rest,” she said through a yawn. “Yeah, maybe I will get some sleep.”
30
Kris Longknife came awake slowly, disappointed that she still hadn’t gotten all of her oomph back. Or maybe there was a lethargy that came over her when she nursed Ruth. It seemed to go both ways. Ruth would suckle and fall asleep, and so would her mother.
Maybe it’s Mother Nature’s way of seeing that I get some rest when this little ball of needs and love is sleeping, too. Thank heavens for my support crew, or this one little life would be exhausting mine.
Kris opened her eyes to look down on her lovely child.
She then looked up into the adoring eyes of her husband.
Was he looking that way at Ruthie, or me, or both of us?
“I hope you don’t mind my napping while you’re on the job,” Kris said.
“Oh, I’ve been having fun. Lots of fun,” Jack said.
Kris did not care for the way he said that. “Nelly, could you get someone in here to take care of Ruth. I think I’ve got work to do.”
Akumaa and Fede took less than a minute to appear and gently take a sleeping Ruth off Kris’s breast. As they left, Kris settled her two girls back into a solid support bra . . . no frilly stuff for her. At least not for a while. As she handled herself, she glanced up and gave Jack an encouraging smile.
“I’d love to, hon, but I think you want to hear what I’ve got to say.”
Kris sighed. “I’ll give you a rain check. Just make sure you redeem it real soon.”
“It’s a deal. Nelly, please order up supper and arrange these day quarters into an admiral’s wardroom.”
“Sal warned me you’d need that. I’m ready when you are. How many do we need to feed?”
Jack frowned in thought. “Me, Kris, Captain Ajax. We’ve got to bring her up to date on what I’ve been doing with her ship.”
“Please do,” Kris said. “Remember, we are passengers on her ship.”
“Oh, I do,” Jack answered. “We better include Special Agent Foile. He was in this up to his elbows.” Jack paused, licked his lips. “What do you say that we invite the three heads of your brain trust?”
“Does this involve them?” Kris asked.
“Let’s just say that someone’s tried to kill you today and end this mission before it started. Your troika might want to know what they’re up against.”
Kris licked her finger and made a mark in the air. “Another assassination attempt, and it didn’t even wake me up. They’re slipping.”
“They had a little help from me and Captain Ajax’s crew.”
“Thank you, loving security chief. When should we dine?”
“How about in fifteen minutes. Nelly, can you arrange that?”
“Dinner tonight is lasagna, mixed vegetables, and French bread, with a lettuce salad. The lasagna is just starting to come out of the oven. Most certainly, General, dinner can be served in fifteen minutes.”
“Then please issue the dinner invitations,” Kris said, standing so the room could rearrange itself. The couch she’d been sitting on melted into the floor as the conference table morphed from a wooden-topped table with softly rounded edges to a mess table with square corners and a linen tablecloth. It was a bit strange to see china and silverware form out of the linen, but Kris had gotten used to Nelly’s magic with Smart MetalTM and only smiled at the strange.
Captain Ajax was the first to appear, taking the elevator up from her bridge. She caught sight of Jack and made a beeline for him. “You’re going to tell me why you had me trotting around my bridge like a trick pony, right?”
“Jack, you didn’t,” Kris said.
“I’m afraid I did, Admiral.”
“I want to hear this, too,” Kris said to Captain Ajax.
Special Agent Foile arrived about the same time as Judge Diana Frogmore. Chief Mediator Alfred Fu and Senior Arbitrator William Pierce Gladsten were last, both in intense conversation that only ended as they took in the change in the room.
“Thank you all for coming on such short notice,” Jack said. “We’ve had some interesting developments today, and I thought I might bring you all up to date and eat at the same time.”
“Partaking of food does tend to set one at ease,” Gladsten said. “So what is it that we’ll swallow easier with our salad?” he said, as a salad cart arrived with a chief steward’s mate to do the honors.
Only after everyone was seated and served did Jack begin. “We have been under a bot assault ever since we docked and opened the hatches.”
“Aren’t bots and nanos a normal part of business?” Fu asked as he took his first bite.
“That is true,” Jack said. “But most bots don’t come with explosives attached.”
That got a rise from the table.
“How much explosives?” Kris asked.
“Enough to blow your head off if it got in your ear or up your nose.”
Kris noticed that all three of her brain trust swallowed hard at that.
Captain Ajax frowned. “Was that why you had me running around my bridge like a bot myself?”
“Yes,” Jack admitted. “We surrounded one bot with enough nanos to take it down, and then let it do what it was sent to do. It avoided all the crew, but wandered its way up the ship from the quarterdeck to the bridge. I asked you to block the exit from the bridge to the hatch leading up to Flag Co
untry. Thank you for doing so. It went right by you and kept heading for the admiral. As soon as it made it up the ladder to our deck, we took it down.”
Kris scowled. “So it was after me.”
“It and a whole lot of others,” Jack answered.
“You stopped them all, I assume,” Captain Ajax said.
“I’ve turned my Marine HQ into Security Central. We’ve got a team tracking intruders and taking them down. The other ships have their own nano scouts and interceptors up but show no activity.”
“So they are only interested in the Princess, here, and her mission,” Frogmore said.
“The conclusion seems clear,” Special Agent Foile provided.
“Do we know the source of these nanos?” Fu asked.
“They’re coming from the station, but there’s no way to tell who’s behind them,” Jack said. “Some of the bots are the size of a housefly or gnat. You could buy them almost anywhere, and they’re easy to track and trap. Others are smaller and more sophisticated. It was one of them we let make a go of it.”
“I didn’t see it,” Captain Ajax said.
“When you walked by it, your wake knocked the thing cockeyed,” Special Agent Foile said.
“Your Highness,” Frogmore said, “what do you propose we do?”
“I suggest we enjoy our dinner and see if any ideas come our way. I, for one, am empty-handed for the moment.”
“A Longknife pausing to think,” Senior Arbitrator Gladsten sighed. “Having seen such an impossibility, I can now die fulfilled.”
That brought a chuckle to all at the table.
“Once again, I fail to uphold the Longknife legend. What will become of me?” Kris said through a scowl.
“I’m hoping you’ll die of old age sharing my bed,” Jack said.
Table conversation was light, with a lot of pauses between sallies. Clearly, everyone was distracted. The chief steward’s mate’s offer of a dessert cart was declined; the dishes were hauled off to be cleaned before the ship absorbed them again. Nelly turned the dining room into a comfortable circle of armchairs without anyone’s having to get up.
“So,” Kris said, “have any of you got a suggestion for what we do next?”
Her question was answered by a long silence.
Judge Frogmore finally ventured into it. “We have secured this ship, correct?”
Jack nodded agreement.
“Could we invite the Emperor and Empress up here for our discussions?” she asked.
Special Agent Foile shook his head. “I have been in contact with a certain Baron Martin, Commissioner of Public Safety. He says the Emperor has already issued us a formal invitation to court, and he will provide for your security. I’m no expert in court protocol, but I do believe a Princess goes to an Emperor, not the other way around.”
“The commander of the Marine detachment,” Jack added, “finally got a response out of the Imperial Guard. They are prepared to render all ceremonies to you in your visit, as well as provide for your security.”
Kris shook her head. “A lot of people want to keep me safe. Do you trust any of them, Jack?”
“No farther than I can throw an alien raider base ship.”
Kris snorted. “Thanks, Jack, for reminding me why we have to solve this dilemma. Okay. They won’t come here. I won’t go there. I need suggestions on how we resolve this.”
The silence stretched and began to bend in the middle.
Jack cleared his throat. “I should go down.”
Why was Kris not surprised that he would suggest sticking his head in the lion’s mouth? And an Imperial lion at that.
“What do you expect to accomplish?”
“I don’t know, but there are standard procedures for a visit like this. You stay here while your security team meets with their security forces. We work out necessary coordination. I make sure our Marines are closer to you than their Imperial Guard. Admiral, I need to do everything that I’d normally do.”
“To what end?”
“I don’t know.”
“Are you putting your neck out so the people who don’t like us here can take a swing at you?”
“Now why would they take a swing at me when they’re after you?” Jack said with enough sincerity that Kris could almost believe him.
She glared at him instead.
“Who knows, maybe they won’t make a go for me,” he said.
“And that will leave us where?”
Jack shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe whoever is swarming us with bots will make a mistake, and I can get a handle on them. But, Kris, unless you want to pack up and head home because of a batch of unidentified bots, we’ve got to do something. The book says I go down next. Let’s do it by the book.”
Kris sighed. She hated it when Jack won arguments like these.
“Okay, who goes with you?” she finally said.
31
Jack saluted the commander of the Imperial Guard. He wore the uniform of a field marshal. Jack had already looked up all the falderal on his chest; he’d never gotten a whiff of gunpowder in his life. Still, Jack was a lieutenant general, so he saluted the buffoon.
The field marshal commanded a brigade of fancy toy soldiers in green and black who likely couldn’t hit the broadside of a barn. Jack had a platoon of Marines in blue and red backing him up—every one of them a sharpshooter. Every one of them wore spidersilk armor under their gaudy dress uniforms.
Jack didn’t know when this lion would bite, but he wanted to be ready when it did.
The field marshal had arranged transportation to the Palace for Jack and his escort. “I will be a bit delayed with matters here. I will follow you shortly.”
The small hairs on the back of Jack’s neck stood up and began to do a dance that involved stomping and shouting.
“Very well,” Jack said with an easygoing smile, and boarded a black stretch limo that might as well have had a bull’s-eye painted on it.
The Marines divided themselves among four big, black SUVs, two ahead and two behind. In the limo with Jack were Special Agent Foile and his three agents. Foile sent Agent Sanchez to sit up front beside the driver, a local who had been assigned to them.
As it turned out, each of the SUVs had a local driver. Jack had noted Gunny arranging for a Marine to sit up front before he took the front seat of the SUV directly behind Jack’s limo.
Without delay, Jack’s motorcade pulled away from the space-elevator terminal and headed through a series of twists and turns that ended with them speeding along an expressway. Somewhere during that, they picked up two SUVs of the Imperial Guard and several motorcycle police.
“Everything according to the book,” Foile murmured.
“Yep,” Jack said, swallowing on a very dry mouth.
He was here to make sure his wife didn’t have to be here. Of course, if their enemies were smart, they’d wait until Kris was here before they sprung a trap.
Jack hoped they wouldn’t be that smart.
The motorcade held to the speed limit, maybe a bit below it. They took up the middle lane of a lightly used expressway. It began to look like Jack had gotten all puckered up and would have no one to kill.
Cars had been whizzing by them at the speed limit or a bit more. A truck was overtaking them, one with a canvas-covered bed in back. Suddenly, cars that had sped past them put on the brakes and those behind them sped up.
Jack reached for the service automatic in the small of his back.
It happened quick, but time slowed down for it all.
The canvas cover on the truck beside them flew off as the rope ties exploded with a bang and a gout of smoke. Suddenly, Jack was facing a machine gun. Beside it stood a man with a rocket launcher.
In the front seat, the driver hunkered down. Agent Sanchez grabbed for the wheel even as the driver lost int
erest in it. Sanchez threw the wheel over and the limo slammed into the truck as the first rounds of the machine gun stitched the window and rear end of the limo.
Limo and truck swerved left, driving the truck into the concrete divider. That tossed the gunners in the back around like rag dolls. The rocket hit the road behind the limo and the machine gun’s fire went wild, but not before hits made stars on the limo’s armored glass, caving it in but not shattering it.
Agent Foile shouted for Mahomet to get the windows down. Jack was trying the same, but the switch on his door didn’t work. He needed the glass out of the way. It wasn’t going to stop the next bullet, but it was making a mess of Jack’s own aim.
For Mahomet, the windows moved. Some rolled down. Others halted only halfway.
Still, when the limo swerved away from the truck, Jack and the Secret Service agents had good shots at the men trying to get reorganized around the machine gun.
The guy with the rocket launcher was just jamming in a reload.
Before they could do anything, automatic pistol fire stitched them. They flew in all directions.
“To our right,” Agent Chu shouted, and Jack yanked his attention around. A big sedan was coming up on their unengaged side. Its windows were down, and machine pistols hung out of them.
“Duck,” Jack shouted.
Bullets shattered the glass in the rear window, showering them with shards. Apparently, whoever laid this ambush on hadn’t been able to get rid of the armor in the fenders and doors. That saved their lives.
That, and the thirty-round limit of the machine pistols.
The fusillade of fire lasted only a few seconds. The assassins hadn’t been smart enough to take turns in volley fire.
As one, their machine pistols fell silent. Jack and the agents around him popped up from behind the doors. Several rounds from them and the car swerved into them, then careened into a light pole and came to a shattering halt.
Jack took a moment to look around. Of the Imperial Guard and motorcycle cops, he saw nothing. He still had four SUVs with Marines around him. The road aft of them was littered with wreckage.
It also was clear . . . except for a big twenty-wheeled tractor-trailer. It had been speeding up toward them. Now it was braking hard.
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