Kris Longknife's Bloodhound, a novella Read online

  47,500 words

  Kris Longknife’s Bloodhound

  A novella

  By

  Mike Shepherd

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  An early look at Kris Longknife – Defender

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  An early look at To Do or Die

  ONE

  TWO

  THREE

  FOUR

  FIVE

  Chapter 1

  Kris Longknife stood alone in the middle of her prison.

  So what else was new?

  That her prison was an admiral’s in port cabin didn’t calm the roiling of her emotions. Her mouth was dry and her stomach seemed ready to leap out of her mouth.

  She had failed.

  Not only had she failed to meet with her Grandfather Al, she’d almost gotten her best friends killed.

  Jack killed!

  They were just getting to know each other and one of her wild goose chases had damn near gotten Jack and Penny gassed!

  What was even a Longknife doing with Serin gas! Much less using it on three stories of his penthouse offices.

  Kris wanted to scream.

  What she really wanted to do was crawl back into Jack’s arms and pretend the world wasn’t there.

  Better yet, pretend that she hadn’t just turned herself over to Musashi justice. Justice that could end with her kneeling, waiting for the headsman’s cut.

  The back of her neck itched. She didn’t scratch it.

  Instead, she took three deep breaths, rolled her shoulders to get some of the tension out and smiled at this, her pursuer. Her Javier.

  Wardhaven Bureau of Investigations Senior Chief Agent in Charge Foile even looked the part. Tall and rail thin, he wore a tan raincoat cinched in at the waist and a brown fedora hat. The hat came off immediately as he entered her borrowed quarters.

  The agent had the somewhat dazed look of a civilian who had just been lead through the maze of passageways, ladders and hatches that was a warship. The look vanished as he spotted Kris. His eyes narrowed and Kris find herself facing an appraisal more calculating than she was used to. He paused as their gaze locked.

  Kris struggled to keep her face bland if not innocent. She found herself fighting the need to blurt out her entire life story to those hawkish eyes.

  She kept her mouth shut and swallowed hard.

  The agent stepped forward and gave Kris a slight bow from the neck. “Lieutenant Commander, Her Royal Highness Kristine Longknife, I presume,” he said with just a twitch of a smile at the corner of his lips.

  His gentle formality gave Kris her opening to fall back into her royal persona. She offered him her hand. “After tonight, I may be back to just Kris. I’m not even sure the Longknife applies.”

  Foile took the hand. For a moment, Kris thought he’d bend and kiss it. Instead, he shook it.

  “Your father had me chasing after you for the last several days,” he said. “I doubt he would do that if he planned to disinherit you.”

  Kris had to smile at that. The agent was so innocent of the internal workings of the family that spawned her. “Don’t be too sure. Water seems to be a lot thicker than blood where my family’s concerned. Now,” Kris said, and pointed him at an overstuffed chair, “you said you had questions.”

  Foile settled into the offered chair without breaking eye contact with Kris. Upon reflection, she took one across from him. Unfortunately, that left Jack alone on the couch.

  No more cuddles tonight, did not come out in a sigh.

  The agent did not let the silence go long. He steepled his fingers, eyed her over them and said, “May I first say that you have led me on quite a chase. No matter where I was, you’d just left. Professionally, I must admire you.”

  “I had a lot of good help,” Kris said with a light chuckle. “Jack here, and Penny. She’s asleep in her new quarters. At least I hope she’s getting some rest.”

  The agent canted his head a tiny bit. “And others?” he said evenly.

  “No one helped us,” Kris said, keeping her words even and her face bland. No doubt the agent would take her answer for a lie, but good people did not deserve to be dragged down into this, her latest fiasco.

  Foile raised an eyebrow.

  Kris recognized that eyebrow. She’d suffered under it from her Grampa Trouble and, on rare occasions, from her father, the Prime Minister. She’s met it from quite a few Navy officers. She’d learned to keep her mouth shut and not even blink.

  Today, she folded her hands in her lap and waited patiently for this to pass.

  When the silence had stretched and was in danger of bending, the man gave just a hint of a smile and spoke. “Your father asked me to catch you before you got yourself killed and others with you. I did not catch you, but you seem to have not gotten yourself killed.”

  Kris breathed a sigh of relief that the eyebrow thing was over and gave Jack a wide open smile from her heart. “I’m rather well practiced at that.”

  Agent Foile seemed to settle back into his chair, as if she’d passed some sort of test. Then he went on.

  “There is the matter of why you almost got yourself killed this evening. I asked your father about that and he told me to forget it. He strongly hinted I should forget the entire last week.”

  Kris shrugged. “I imagine so. Father does tend to want to forget problems he can’t solve,” she said softly, trying not to let any bitterness slip into her words.

  “I’m having a hard time forgetting you risked your life just to talk to your grandfather. And the extent he went to avoid you.”

  Yeah, right!

  But Kris needed to dodge, not play into some trap this wily agent no doubt was setting. “Sarin gas. That was a bit extreme. Are you sure he gassed the place?”

  Agent Foile shrugged. “I told you what I was told. I did not check out the facts, and you did kind of trash the building in your exit.”

  Kris allowed herself a hearty laugh. From the couch, Jack joined in. It was good to hear him laugh.

  “Yes,” Kris admitted, “that exit was spectacular even by my standards. I hope everyone got out of the building. We restored power to the elevators.”

  “Yes, I know,” the agent said. “From what I heard, the place was empty when you left the building.”

  Kris breathed a sigh of relief at that. But before Kris could enjoy that for a moment, the agent was back at her.

  “But what was so important that you risked your life to see your grandfather?”

  Kris raised both eyebrows and answered his question with one of her own. “And why was he so intent on not letting me get a word in edgewise?”

  To her surprise, the agent’s answer was an even, “Exactly.”

  Kris leaned back in her chair, weighing the options that answer seemed to open up to her. She glanced at Jack; he raised an expressive eyebrow of his own.

  She eyed the agent again. “Are you sure you want to know?”

  The agent didn’t even flinch at the question. He answer was as even as she’d ever heard. “I pursued you for four days. I forced myself on your father, the Prime Minister, and I came all the way up here and managed to crash your present secur
ity. By the way, are you seeking political asylum?”

  That twist surprised Kris, but she had her answer already prepared for whomever asked it. “I’ve turned myself in. I expect I’ll be facing a Musashi court in a few days.”

  Maybe she should have left it at that. Maybe the agent had intended to flinch away from the larger question. Maybe she should have kept her mouth shut.

  But then, when have I ever?

  “But back to your question. Once again, I must ask you, do you really want to know the answer? If I tell you, you will likely never sleep as soundly as you have.”

  Agent Foile sat back in his chair. Now his hands grasped its upholstered arms. He seemed to think long and hard. No doubt, if Father had called on him, he was a good and faithful servant of the people of Wardhaven. Did he really want to be initiated into all the twists and turns of the inner circles of those he served?

  He took a deep breath and leaned forward. “Can what you tell me be any worse than what I’m imagining?”

  “Very likely,” Jack cut in from his place on the couch. “It’s dangerous to get too close to one of these damn Longknifes.”

  Kris sighed. Jack had a life before he got too close to her. What had she given him in return?

  The agent did not flinch. Not even a little bit. “I suspect I have been too close to you Longknifes ever since your father summoned me to his office. Enough beating around this bush. Would you please answer my question?”

  Kris could only shake her head and give the man a gentle smile. “Unfortunately, I am not all that sure what the answer is to your question. I assume you know that I seem to have started a war with some hostile aliens on the other side of the galaxy.”

  “It was in the all the news,” Foile said in a matter-of-fact voice that made Kris smile. “My Agent Chu, a fan of yours, made sure I saw the worst of it,” he said, sounding like a father who had been dragged off to a rock concert. “Then, suddenly it wasn’t there anymore.”

  “Yes,” Kris said, trying not to sound as forlorn as she felt by someone else drawing that conclusion. “There seem to be major differences in high places just how to respond to the hot potato I dropped in their laps. My great-grandfather Ray, King Raymond I to you, appears to be trying to raise a Navy without raising taxes.”

  “How’s that working for him?” Foile asked.

  Kris knew that the question was a throw away. She smiled and answered, “Not so good. Quite a bit of resistance all around. But it’s his son, my grandfather Al’s reaction, that is causing me trouble.”

  There, she’d let the cat out of the bag.

  The agent canted his head. “What is his reaction?” came at Kris evenly. The pounce might be soft and quiet, but the force of it was overwhelming.

  Kris only reflected for a second before laying all her cards face up on the table. “Nothing, officially, but there’s chatter, not a lot of it, but it seems that Grampa Al wants to take a different tact from his father. Being the hard-headed business man that he is, it appears he wants to get the aliens talking to him, to establish trade. Whereas the excitable and shoot’em up types like Ray and me only get them shooting first and neither asking nor answering questions.”

  The agent took her words in without reaction. He seemed to mull them over for a moment. When he spoke, it was a question.

  “What do you think your grandfather Al will try to do?”

  Kris took a deep breath. She opened her mouth, but nothing came out. She took another breath, let it out slowly and crept up on her worse nightmare.

  “How about sending out a trading fleet loaded with all the goodies that we make?”

  Foile pursed his lips in thought, then leaned forward, slipping to the edge of his seat, “And if these bad actors capture the fleet?”

  Kris scowled and prepared herself to dive deeper into that nightmare.

  Jack got there first. “They get all the computers and navigational material to take them right back to us.” he said. Then he rose from the couch to started pacing out his nervous energy.

  Kris envied him his active release, but stayed in her chair, hands now folded tightly in her lap.

  “A lot of good people died under my command,” she said. “Every ship that was hit dropped its reactor containment and blew themselves to atoms so that the aliens could get no navigational data from them. It looks like Grampa Al will give it to them on a silver platter.”

  Now the agent nodded. He seemed to smile into himself. “This was what you wanted to question him about?” he said as if he had finally solved the perfect crime.

  “Yes.” Kris said, giving the word all the finality it could carry.

  “And rather than talk to you, or tell you some lie, he ran away.”

  “Yes,” Kris said, then added with her own raised eyebrow. “Interesting reaction.”

  “Very interesting,” the agent agreed. He seemed to realize he was on the edge of his seat. He forced himself to settle back, but if he was trying to relax, it didn’t look like he succeeded.

  “You see why I was willing to risk everything to get a few words in,” Kris said.

  “I do,” the agent said, “and may I say that I’m glad that I didn’t keep you from getting as far as you got.” He chuckled. “I don’t often fail. I’m glad I picked this time to have one of my rare breaches.”

  Kris shrugged and waved limply at the quarters that were her prison. “I did fail. Now all I can hope for is to get my day in court and present my case to the public at large. Clearly, I will not be talking about vague rumors and innuendoes for which I can produce no basis in fact.”

  The agent nodded vaguely, apparently lost in thought. When he spoke, it was with a smile. “On the other hand, it is frequently my job to produce just the sort of facts you lack.”

  “Be careful,” Kris said. She said that a lot. It usually didn’t do much good.

  Jack ceased his pacing. “While her Grampa Al might not be willing to use violence against Kris here, his subordinates, or their helpers, have been known to get very enthusiastic in their effort to get into his good graces. Remember ‘will no one rid me of this troublesome priest?’ The same could be said of a princess or a cop.”

  The agent nodded at the warning, but his smile grew wider. “Minor minions are wont to go off half-cocked. However, they are often the ones that crack under pressure and give us our first handle on a rope that leads up the chain of evidence.”

  The agent paused. Kris could almost see him organizing his thoughts, his plans. They cascading out behind his eyes.

  “I think I know a couple of trees to shake,” he finally said. “This could be very challenging. Challenging and fun.”

  “You have a weird sense of fun, then,” Jack said.

  You’re one to talk, said the look Kris shot at him.

  So sue me, he silently shot right back.

  The agent stood purposely, then paused, “One word, Princess. If memory serves, Musashi still has capital punishment.”

  Kris nodded. “Your memory is correct. Nelly advised me of it before we landed on the Mutsu, but thank you for the thought.”

  Kris paused, trying to figure out if there was anything she could do to help this man, this bloodhound who was willing to take on an impossible search for her.

  “If I may add, if you insist on taking on this quest for a damsel . . . and all humanity . . . in distress, you might want to talk with my brother Honovi. He’s a member of parliament and not as blind to some things as my father. You might also want to talk to my Grampa Trouble.”

  The agent laughed. It was something that started deep in his belly and rose to light up his face. “If you mean General Tordon, I talked with him. He was a most reticent witness.”

  Kris joined in with a chuckle of her own. “He’ll loosen up when you get to know him. Tell him I sent you and that I dropped the Grampa Al monkey on your back.”

  “Thank you,” the agent said, then hastened to correct any misperception. “Not for the Grampa Al monkey, but for
the secret handshake for General Trouble.”

  “Just remember,” Kris said, shaking her head in warning. “He’s trouble for everyone, even me. Oh, another thing. I left my luggage in the Downside elevator station. Is there any chance you could send it on to the Mutsu?”

  “The police impounded it, but with no case filed, I can likely get it loose.”

  “Thank you.”

  “There is just one more matter, Princess. One of my agents, Leslie Chu is a great fan of yours. Is there any chance I might have your autograph?”

  “I have a fan club?” Kris said, not believing her ears.

  “It seems so,” the agent assured her.

  Jack just shook his head.

  Kris found this almost as hard to accept as an Iteeche Death Ball appearing off her bow. She’d adjusted to that; she could adjust to this. “Is there any paper here?”

  “I can print out one of your pictures,” Nelly said, and the admiral’s desk began spitting out a print. Kris took it from the printer, sat at the desk and found a pen. She thought for a moment, signed it with a flourish, and then added.

  “Sorry I missed you.”

  The agent allowed her another one of his hearty laughs and, with a solemn bow from the waist, turned to take his leave.

  Chapter 2

  Late the next morning, Senior Chief Agent in Charge Foile knocked at the front door of Nuu House. The portico and wood carved door was either imposing or intimidating, depending on your perspective.

  Agent Foile considered it an interesting piece of history.

  From nowhere in particular a voice inquired, “Who may I say is calling?”

  “I am Taylor Foile, calling on General Trouble.”

  He’d considered his words carefully. Intentionally, he’d dropped his official credentials. He was on leave. His boss had signed for a month off. This was not bureau business. And, having been tasked by Kris to meet and seek the help of the legend, it seemed appropriate to use the legend’s name.

  A long moment later, the door opened and Taylor found himself face to face with the legend himself.