Deserter

by Mike Shepherd

  “And are very old,” Abby said with a sour frown on her face.

  “Horribly old,” Kris agreed.

  Tiaraed and sashed, Kris made her way carefully down the stairs in heels twice as high as she normally wore . . . which also were prescribed in regulations. Maybe Abby had a point. Whoever designed this outfit sure hadn’t put her physical comfort or appearance at a very high priority. Was the uniform regulations development bureau the last place in the Navy where a woman hater was allowed free rein? Jack, now in a tux, stood at the bottom of the stairs.

  “You going to catch me when I fall?”

  “Looks like it.”

  “You could come up here and help me stay on these heels.”

  “And get spiked by one? Sorry, not in my job description.”

  “Seems like your job description is getting kind of short.”

  “Yes, isn’t it,” Jack said, stepping aside as Kris left the stairs behind her. Harvey brought a monster limo to the front drive. Abby helped Kris arrange her skirt in the backseat.

  Harvey got the limo on autopilot, then turned to take in Kris. “That sash does brighten up a dull outfit,” he drawled. “By the way, can a Wardhaven officer wear an Earth order?”

  “Oh my gosh!” Kris was learning a Princess did not use the S word in public and should practice not using it in private. She reached to unpin the sash.

  “I checked.” Harvey grinned. “Earth, being an ally of Wardhaven . . . in some small thanks to whatever you did or didn’t do at the Paris system . . . their orders are authorized.”

  “Harvey, you could have told me that in the first place!”

  “Yes, but then we’d have missed that look on your face.”

  “What look?”

  “Oh, part shock, part dismay, part ‘Oh my God, I’ve screwed up again!’ It’s very becoming on you.”

  “I did not think I’d screwed up again.” Kris settled for appealing only one of the three charges from her oldest friend.

  The ball failed to match the excitement of its preparation. Kris passed the usual chatter with the usual suspects. Didn’t these people have day jobs to tire them out? Her older brother Honovi was at Father’s right hand, like a good junior member of Parliament, understudying the master. Since there was no immediate political need to paper over their feelings about her career choice, Kris and the Prime Minister ignored each other.

  Mother could not be ignored.

  “What do you think of Abby?” was the woman’s opening gambit.

  Kris took a step back and opened her arms to show off her uniform. “I only fired her twice as she was getting me ready.”

  “You can’t fire her. I’m paying for her. I had hoped she would at least put you in something presentable.”

  “That would require firing her three times in one night.”

  “And I was so looking forward to her dressing you in something that would remove my daughter from the top of the fashion police’s ten-worst-dressed list.” Mother sighed.

  “Have your fashion policia send me the citation, Mother. I’ll file it among my dust bunnies.” Kris moved along as Mother launched into a diatribe to the woman on her right.

  Grampa Ray made the required appearance and was mobbed by both favor seekers and eligible matrons looking to end his long years of widowerhood. Nothing like the chance to be Queen of eighty planets to gather every social climber within light-years. A few were presently married but clearly willing to trade up. King Ray made his way through the bejeweled crowd as a jungle scout might pass through a trove of bothersome flies. But he noticed who he wanted, and that included Kris. He raised an eyebrow at the sash and medallion.

  “Accessories make the outfit,” Kris said. Fashion gossips might ignore the Wounded Lion; people like Grampa knew better.

  “Earth is grateful you saved their bacon.” Grampa Ray grinned. “And their battle fleet,” he added with one of his tight, warm smiles that anyone would risk their life for.

  “There really wasn’t another option,” Kris said. Her eyes suddenly watery, she settled them on the deeply carpeted floor.

  “Been in that horrible position myself a few times,” King Raymond answered. “Lousy situations to be in. But the survivors make for nice company.” Kris was halfway home before she lost the glow from that moment.

  “Kris,” Nelly said, “I have a collect call. I think you should accept it.”

  “Who is it?” Kris quit taking collect calls early in her high school years. It was amazing the people who wanted to talk to a Longknife and expected her to pay for the privilege.

  “A Miss Pasley is calling from the starship Bellerophon.”

  “Bellerophon? Should I know that ship?”

  “It is a tramp, mixed cargo and passengers. Tommy took passage on it, you may recall.”

  Kris had forgotten. “I accept the charges.” A system voice told Kris she would be debited for a price that made even Kris’s eyes widen. Miss Pasley, whoever she was, had slapped a very costly priority on her message. Kris undid the top buttons of her choker collar so Nelly could project a holovid of the call.

  A young woman, long, straight blond hair falling to her shoulders, came up. “Miss Longknife, or Princess Longknife,” she said nervously, “you don’t know me. But I know Tommy Lien, who says he’s a good friend of yours. He told me that if anything strange happened to him, I should call this number.”

  The woman glanced off camera. “I think something has happened to Tommy. He wanted to see the ruins on Itsahfine. We were studying all the stuff about them in the ship’s database. He even had stuff he’d picked up, so I know he intended to go to Itsahfine. But he’s not going there.

  “The Belly, that’s what we all call the Bellerophon, made a stop to refuel or maybe shift cargo here at Castagon 6. A guy came up while Tom and I were talking, said he was Calvin Sandfire and had to pass some words with Tom.”

  “Tom left me, and I haven’t seen him since. The ship’s left the station, and we’re on our way to Itsahfine. I’ve asked all the other passengers, and no one has seen Tom. I’ve called him on net, but he doesn’t answer. I checked with the Purser, but he says Tommy’s room is still his, and he won’t do a search. I think he thinks I’m just chasing him. But I think Tom left the ship with Mr. Sandfire. Maybe it’s nothing, but I thought I ought to let you know that I think something strange has happened to Tom.”

  Kris went over the message quickly in her mind as she told Nelly to save message. “What do you think?” she asked Jack.

  The secret service agent rubbed his chin. “When you’re free and unencumbered, you can change your priorities very quickly. Maybe Mr. Sandfire made him a better offer than crumbling relics of the Three. Maybe he was from Santa Maria and had a message for Tom from his family.” Jack shrugged. “It could be a lot of things that don’t add up to bad.”

  “Or it could be bad,” Kris said. “Nelly, do a search on Mr. Calvin Sandfire. Start with Santa Maria.”

  “Already working,” Nelly said, her voice back to its usual sweet self. Tru would have to wait a while longer to crack the rock chip and the Three. “I am also searching on Wardhaven, Earth, and Greenfeld.” Wardhaven was home to Kris. Earth was Earth. Greenfeld . . . well, that was a totally different can of worms. With luck, Nelly would draw a blank there.

  “Also, Nelly, check ships’ registries for a Mr. Sandfire.” Of course, that would tell them nothing if Mr. Sandfire was getting the use of a ship by leasing, renting, stealing, hijacking, or any of the other myriad of ways that people had of getting around starship ownership while acquiring needed mobility.

  The problem with having readily available information about a hundred billion people on six hundred planets is learning patience while it was converted from “readily” to “available.” The long silence of the drive home was broken. “Mr. Sandfire is not in the Santa Maria database.” No surprise there.

  “Mr. Sandfire is not a registered owner of any starship.”

  “You couldn’t
expect things to be that easy,” Jack said.

  “Mr. Calvin Sandfire is the owner of Ironclad Software, registered on Greenfeld,” Nelly reported five minutes later.

  “Oh shit,” Kris moaned. There were times when even a Princess had to say what she had to say.

  “What should I know about this fellow?” Jack said.

  “He’s not already in your official reports?”

  “Nope, but you have this way of not letting my agency know of all the people that want you dead.”

  “I don’t think Mr. Sandfire has tried to kill me yet,” Kris said, giving Jack a cheery smile. He didn’t look at all mollified. “He is reported to have paid off the man that added a heart attack to the last meal of my previous squadron commander, Commodore Sampson. His software was what Sampson used to keep the ships of AttackRon Six at the Paris system from hearing their attack orders were bogus.”

  “Oh shit,” Jack echoed her.

  Harvey didn’t bat an eyelash at all those answers to his questions about Paris. “Well, at least he’s far away from us.”

  “For now, at least,” Kris said. Jack eyed her, but Kris offered no further comment, and Jack said nothing.

  4

  Kris drummed her fingers on the dressing table while Abby got her hair down. “Search on ships that docked at Castagon 6 a week before the Bellerophon and get their passenger lists.”

  “Yes ma’am,” said Nelly.

  In sweatpants and tank top, Kris joined Harvey and Jack in the sitting room, now an intelligence center. One wall proved to be a screen. It now showed what they knew: not much. Lotty arrived; no one was in danger of starving tonight or going without caffeine.

  As Kris settled into a lounger, Nelly announced the search of shipping to Castagon 6 was negative. Only the Bellerophon had docked there in the last week. “Why do I find that hard to believe? Nelly, Tru has this way of getting better information about shipping. Check with Sam.” Nelly made a call.

  Sam suggested the list of ships jumping to a port often showed more traffic than the list of ships the port said arrived.

  The morning sun streamed through Kris’s unused bedroom before Nelly completed a much broader search. Done the other way around, it seemed that the yacht Space Adder had jumped from Turantic 4 with the destination of Castagon 6 two days before the Bellerophon arrived. The Space Adder was back at Turantic two days after Tom’s ship left. Ah, the bits of information in the public domain databases . . . if you just didn’t get misled by the easily doctored answers.

  Lotty arrived with breakfast as Kris sat silently organizing her day. She should report to the ship. It was Saturday, and she didn’t have to, but the Captain usually put in half a day, and Kris tried to match him. She stifled a yawn and reviewed what Nelly had sifted out of the mass of information available. The wall screen was now full; down one side was a chronology. While Kris had found out about Tom’s travel plans and interruptions only in the last twelve hours, it had been longer in the doing.

  Tommy had messaged her before boarding the Bellerophon five days ago. Being a thrifty, underpaid junior officer, his message went standby and had been bumped from the queue several times in its transit through two jump points from High Cambria to Wardhaven. Kris wondered if that was Tom’s way of ensuring he was well on his way before she could do anything.

  Miss Pasley’s message had farther to go but had spent Kris’s money going faster. Tommy apparently had left the Bellerophon a bit more than two days ago. Which meant he’d arrived at Turantic late yesterday while Kris was passing social chitchat with a thousand of her father’s closest friends. Kris slowly munched one of Lotty’s high-fiber muffins while absorbing the time flow.

  A second section was now a stellar map, showing the planets important to this drill. The Bellerophon’s trip from High Cambria to Itsahfine involved four jumps but only one stop, that at Castagon 6. The round trip from Turantic to Castagon was just two jumps. Wardhaven to Turantic was a three-jump trip along well-traveled trading lanes.

  “Nelly, do me a full political workup on Turantic.” Until recently, human space was human space, and a study of the Society of Humanity supposedly told the tale. Growing up sharing a dinner table with her father had given Kris an early realization that what the high school civics teacher called United Humanity was full of factions that the Prime Minister regularly had to juggle to get anything done. Now those factions were independent associations, and star maps needed not just lines for shipping lanes but different colors to show where the customs inspectors lived and maybe, just maybe, a battle fleet might be making motions toward another color on the map.

  She lit up Earth, the mother of this whole mess. The first two hundred years of human outreach had colonized the Seven Sisters, and then the forty-plus stepsisters, as wags named the next sphere. Nelly colored those planets green, the color of the Society of Humanity back before the Unity War, then immediately added in black the hundred planets that had made up Unity. NO, NELLY, THAT’S HISTORY. SHOW GRAMPA RAY’S UNITED SENTIENTS IN RED. The map changed; a lot of the black went to red, but so did some of the green: Pitts Hope, LornaDo. Surprise for Earth. The red also included the colonies Wardhaven had sponsored in the last eighty years. Still, the red and green were less than a quarter of the six hundred worlds now inhabited by humanity.

  PUT PETERWALD’S FACTION IN BLACK. A fifty-world chunk of the Rim formed a dark cloud, centered around Greenfeld. It seemed to reach out to block Wardhaven from further expansion. Hamilton and its five colonies lay between Turantic and Peterwald’s holdings. THERE ANY BAD BLOOD BETWEEN TURANTIC AND HAMILTON? Kris asked Nelly.

  ONLY THE USUAL TRADING RIVALRIES, the computer agreed. Kris eyed the wall screen, searching for how she and Tom fit in.

  “Kris, you have a collect call coming in.”

  “Who from this time?”

  “Tommy.”

  “Accept it!” Kris shouted, bouncing to her feet. Jack and Harvey were maybe half a second slower shooting from their places on the couch, the long night’s exhaustion forgotten. Abby sat quietly in the straight-backed chair she’d set in a corner. She might have actually gotten some sleep for all she’d contributed to the night’s conversations.

  A section of wall screen changed to show the phone call. There was Tommy, looking disheveled, his skin so pale his freckles stood out like warning lights.

  “Kris, I need help,” he started, no lopsided grin today.

  And the screen went blank.

  “Nelly, where’s the rest of the call?” Kris yelled.

  “It was cut off at the source.”

  “Where was he calling from? Rerun it!” Kris demanded. Nelly reran the call, freezing frame just before it cut off. Kris stared into Tommy’s eyes, trying to plumb them for fear, terror, newfound freedom. The face just looked tired.

  “Talk to me about the call, Nelly,” Kris ordered.

  “The header file has been damaged, apparently in an attempt to retrieve the call,” Nelly said. “The call was made from High Turantic Station about six hours ago, real time. The exact location of the phone is lost, but it was on the public systems in the station’s dock section.” A schematic of a standard, class E station appeared.

  “Not much to go on,” Jack muttered.

  “Six hours ago, Tom was on Turantic and needed help,” Kris snapped. “That’s enough for me.”

  “Enough for what?”

  “To get a search going,” Kris said, pacing the floor.

  “Turantic is twelve light-years away. Six hours by priority mail,” Jack pointed out.

  “So, call in some chits. You’re a cop, aren’t you? Get some of the brethren off their duffs and out looking for Tom.”

  “Kris, we’re personal security. We don’t do kidnappings.”

  “Your agency was all over the dopes who snatched Eddy,” Kris snapped, mad enough not to choke on the name of her six-year-old brother who died under a pile of manure.

  “Eddy was our subject. Tom is not.”

 
; “And would anybody snatch Tom if he hadn’t gotten too damn close to me?”

  Jack’s face was a professional mask; no answer there.

  “Nelly, get me Grampa Ray.”

  Jack’s eyebrows raised at that, but he turned away and retook his place on the couch, folding his hands and eyeing Kris like she had some lessons to learn.

  “Hi, Kris, what you doing up so early on a Saturday after a ball?” Grampa Ray smiled from a section of wall.

  “I kind of have a problem, Grampa,” Kris answered, then filled him in. His smile worked its way into a worried frown as she told him of Tom. When she finished, he nodded.

  “I remember him, a good young man.”

  “He’s been my right arm too many times.”

  “This isn’t going to be easy, Kris.” When a man like Grampa Ray said things weren’t easy, they weren’t. “Turantic isn’t part of United Sentients. They’re playing a coy game, holding aloof and avoiding commitments to any of the sides taking shape. Kris, a year ago, when we were all good citizens of the Society, I could make a phone call as a private person, and half of the cops on Turantic would be hunting for Tommy. Now, I’m a king,” Ray said ruefully, fingering his brow that at the moment was in need of combing, “and I have less leverage.”

  Kris glanced at Jack. He was shaking his head, an I told you so look all over his swarthy features.

  “We have an embassy there, don’t we?”

  “Wardhaven’s business residency was renamed an embassy, but, hon, we’re all having to relearn a lot of stuff about separate and equal from the history books.”

  “I’d appreciate it if you would call who you can and see if they have any way of getting cops out looking for Tommy.” NELLY, SEND GRAMPA A COPY OF TOMMY’S CALL.

  Grampa focused on something offscreen. Kris could hear Tommy’s few words over the line. “I see.” Grampa frowned.

  “If he hadn’t gotten messed up with one of those damn Longknifes, this would never have happened to a kid from Santa Maria,” Kris pointed out.

  “He’s from Santa Maria. Then he’s not a U.S. citizen.”