Kris Longknife: Resolute Read online

  Praise for the Kris Longknife novels

  “A whopping good read . . . Fast-paced, exciting, nicely detailed, with some innovative touches.”

  —Elizabeth Moon, author of Engaging the Enemy

  “A fast-paced adventure.”—Booklist

  “Enthralling . . . fast-paced . . . A well-crafted space opera with an engaging hero . . . I’d like to read more.”—SFRevu

  “Everyone who has read Kris Longknife will hope for further adventures starring this brave, independent, and intrepid heroine. Mike Shepherd has written an action-packed, exciting space opera that starts at light speed and just keeps getting better. This is outer space military science fiction at its adventurous best.”—Midwest Book Review

  “I’m looking forward to her next adventure.”

  —Philadelphia Press Review

  “[Shepherd] has a good sense of pace . . . Very neatly handled and served with a twist of wry. A surprisingly talented read from a very underrated author.”—Bewildering Stories

  “Shepherd does a really good job with this book. If you’re looking for an entertaining space opera with some colorful characters, this is your book. Shepherd grew up Navy and he does an excellent job of showing the complex demands and duties of an officer. I look forward to the next in the series.”—Books ’n’Bytes

  “You don’t have to be a military sci-fi enthusiast to appreciate the thrill-a-minute plot and engaging characterization.”

  —Romantic Times

  Ace titles by Mike Shepherd

  KRIS LONGKNIFE: MUTINEER

  KRIS LONGKNIFE: DESERTER

  KRIS LONGKNIFE: DEFIANT

  KRIS LONGKNIFE: RESOLUTE

  THE BERKLEY PUBLISHING GROUP

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  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

  KRIS LONGKNIFE: RESOLUTE

  An Ace Book / published by arrangement with the author

  PRINTING HISTORY

  Ace mass-market edition / November 2006

  Copyright © 2006 by Mike Moscoe.

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

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  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

  eISBN : 978-1-436-28311-3

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  1

  Lieutenant Kris Longknife’s footsteps echoed off the walls of the space station. Kris had expected High Chance to be bustling with business. Instead it looked like a tin can, rinsed and ready to be dumped in the nearest recycle bin.

  There was no sign of a welcoming committee from her new command . . . Naval District 41. No sign of anything . . . alive.

  “They told me it was an independent command,” Kris half whispered to herself.

  “Did they mention it was solitary?” came from behind her.

  Kris turned. Lieutenant Penny Pasley-Lien had been very quiet on the trip out to Chance. Penny was recently a bride and only slightly more recently a widow. Kris measured Penny’s words for joke or serious, and found them balanced on a knife edge.

  “At least there’s no sign of an attack,” said First Lieutenant Jack Montoya, in full battle armor—and paranoia mode. Now of the Royal United Sentient Marines, Jack formally had been in Wardhaven’s Secret Service. The exact circumstances of his change in service were something Kris did not want to think about.

  His uniformed presence at her elbow served as a too-present reminder that even though Great-grampa Trouble was well over a hundred years old, he was still very much trouble. Jack’s M-6 assault rifle tracked his eyes as he surveyed the empty station. “No sign of anything,” the suddenly-a-Marine concluded.

  Kris had had enough of this blind man’s . . . or woman’s . . . bluff. “Nelly, please access the station’s security system.”

  Nelly was Kris’s pet computer. A half kilo of self-organizing circuits wrapped around Kris’s shoulders. Since the last upgrade, Nelly was plugged daintily and directly into Kris’s brain. She was also worth about half of what this station cost. Maybe more, since this station looked much worse for its lack of occupation.

  “Kris, I can’t,” came back, almost plaintively.

  “And why can’t you?” Kris demanded.

  “Cause somebody turned this station off at the switch,” Chief Beni answered as Nelly got out a more accurate explanation that boiled down to the same. Nelly actually sounded huffy as she finished well after Beni.

  This confirmed a growing suspicion that Kris’s electronic tech whiz Beni and electronic tech miracle Nelly were developing a sibling rivalry. Just what I need.

  But she’d needed Beni’s technical wizardry for the last three months during her Training Command assignments. And she’d need him even more at Naval District 41. From the looks of things . . . or lack of things . . . she couldn’t afford to lose anyone.

  And life without Nelly was unthinkable.

  As Kris was learning to do of late, she sidestepped the thornier problem and faced the immediate one. “So where is this switch?”

  “That way,” both the chief and Nelly said. The chief was a bit slow to point since Jack had him in full space armor. Nelly flashed a light at the alley beside The Dragon Queen’s Chinese Take Out among the midstation shops.

  Like everything else, it was boarded up.

  Kris led her crew from the station’s Deck 1 with its usual gray carpets and unusual decorations. Just about every square inch of wall was a painting. The station looked like an art museum. Or maybe art studio. The paintings ran the full breadth of art history from primitive to Impressionistic. Kris’s mother might have bought some.

  Even the dim alley Kris led her three associates into looked like an artist’s day at the zoo.

  It was hard to t
hink of Jack as her subordinate for reasons that were becoming clearer every time the Marine first lieutenant gave her an order. And she’d learned at OCS never to consider a chief as anything less than God. Beni had weakened his case for divinity by failing to locate that bomb on Tristan and just barely spotting the one on Kaylia in time. Still, Kris was none the worse for the two assassination attempts, but she was definitely persona non grata in Training Command.

  Hopefully, Naval District 41 would go better.

  The elevator was in a blandly gray space that still stank of garbage. Jack looked like he wanted to test-ride it, but Kris got to the button first, punched it open, and led right in. She took position at the back, daring Jack to haul her out.

  Jack eyed her for a second like he wanted to toss her over his shoulder and lug her back to Pride of St. Petersburg. He apparently thought better of it as Beni punched Three. Nelly announced the command deck was on three. They took off, Penny standing quietly in her own corner, seeming so much smaller than the beaming woman who said “I do” to Tommy such a short time ago.

  The ride progressed in fits and starts, with I-told-you-so glares from one Royal marine. Kris stared at the ceiling, something she was getting very good at, until the elevator bumped to a stop.

  The doors hung up halfway open.

  Kris leaned over to peer around two male heads eyeballing a large open space dimly lit by one flickering light. Passageways headed off in various directions, some poorly lit. Others dark. Everything was painted a standard Navy gray.

  Except for a splotch on the far wall.

  “Looks like blood,” the Marine lieutenant snapped. “Beni, why don’t you have your weapon out?”

  “Yes, sir,” the chief said, drawing his service automatic.

  “You Navy types keep back,” Jack said to the senior officers present who were craning to get a look over his shoulder. “Beni, cover me,” and the Marine slipped through the door in full-assault mode.

  Since his OCS had been abbreviated to just a Gunny Sergeant showing him how to wear the uniform without embarrassing the rest of the Corps, the Secret Service must have included SWAT drills in Jack’s earlier training. The guy did look deadly and determined.

  Kris figured now might be a good time to pay attention to his concerns. She pulled an automatic from the small of her back. It looked standard Navy issue. But she was one-of-those-damn-Longknifes. Its magazine held three times the normal load of 4-mm darts.

  Penny drew her own automatic, identical to Kris’s. It had been a wedding gift, one of several Kris hoped would make Penny and Tom’s life around her safer if not saner. Silly Kris, she hadn’t wrapped a single gift for blowing up a battleship.

  Kris swallowed survivor’s guilt for the forty-eleventh time.

  Penny had not taken her eyes off the stain as she checked the safety on her automatic. “You sure that’s not rust?”

  “Navy, I told you to keep your heads down,” Jack bit back as he tried to check every direction at once. His M-6 snapping from one hallway to another as he tried to check every direction at once.

  Chief Beni wiggled his growing gut through the stuck door. Training Command chow had been very good to him. He did keep his automatic at the ready . . . sort of. He frowned at the wall and its mottling. Ignoring the Marine, he sauntered over to it, dipped his pinky in the offending matter, smelled it, tasted it, and then looked up.

  “Yep. It’s just water and some rust.”

  “It kind of looked like that,” Penny said, her voice half-distracted. “Tommy would have been able to tell at a glance. He was good at things like that.”

  Kris reached over to rest a gentle hand on Penny’s shoulder. “Yes, he was.”

  “Well, thank all the gods in space it was just a bit of poor maintenance,” Jack muttered at full volume. “You can come out, Lieutenant, Your Highness, Commandership. I hope you keep not needing the Security Chief you so eminently ignore.”

  If Kris followed every instruction, order, or bit of advice Jack was authorized to give her and that she was required by regulation to obey, she’d never set foot outside her bedroom at Nuu House on Wardhaven. Some Naval career that would be.

  But then, both Grampa Trouble and Grampa Ray, his Royal Kingship included, had known she’d keep right on ignoring half of Jack’s orders. Only now he got to nanny her through every square centimeter of space. And she’d been gulled into drafting him into his new authority over her. Grampa Trouble, you are so trouble. And Grampa Ray, you’re not much better.

  Pulling herself up to a full six feet of regal majesty, automatic still at high port, and dredging the Imperial “we” up for impact, Kris smiled. “We appreciate your concern and rest assured that you will continue to spare no effort for the safety of our high and august person.”

  Jack snarled, teeth showing, but he limited his response to drumming his fingers on the barrel of his weapon in silent frustration. He’d been doing a lot of that lately.

  “That’s the door to the Command Center,” the chief and Nelly said at close enough to the same time that only a computer could have told who spoke first. Kris was not about to ask Nelly which one had.

  Computers were supposed to be scrupulously honest, but Kris wouldn’t bet an Earth dollar that Nelly still qualified for that virtue. Not where the chief was concerned.

  As Jack took station to the left of the not airtight door, he motioned the chief to the right. With his free hand, he waved Kris and Penny to spread out. Kris gave some thought to the two bombs in the last three months and decided standing behind Jack and his wide, armored shoulders might be a good idea. She sidestepped to there; Penny stood behind the chief.

  “Open it, Chief.”

  Beni screwed up his face in a “Why me” complaint, courage not being one of his obvious virtues, but then did it. The hinges complained but the door opened better than partway before it screeched to a stop. The room inside was dark.

  Rolling his eyes to the ceiling as if he might find a reason why such valiant effort was suddenly becoming his portion in life, the electronics wizard felt around inside the door with his right hand, keeping most of his body outside. With a click, flickering illumination lit up the space.

  Kris edged out from behind Jack to get a better view. There wasn’t much to see: silent workstations, overhead lights struggling to come on. Some succeeded. Others gave up and settled for dark.

  “No boom,” Penny said, giving voice to all their thoughts.

  “Chief, put those bells and whistles of yours to use for something besides paper weights,” Jack snapped. “Tell me something I don’t already know about that room.”

  Kris might be in dress whites for the change of command ceremony that seemed to be very much delayed, but she hadn’t been totally lacking in survival instincts. Rigged in her hat, indeed in every hat she now owned, were antennas that should let Nelly take the measure of every electron within several miles around her more active than those in a glass of water. NELLY, TALK TO ME.

  THE ONLY ACTIVES IN THERE ARE FROM SEVENTEEN OVERHEAD LIGHTS. NO, SIXTEEN, formed in Kris’s brain a full second faster than Chief Beni got the same words out. “Nothing ticking. Nothing tocking, Your Marineship,” the chief added.

  Beni had never been what the Navy called “spit and polish.” His time in Training Command, bouncing from planet to planet with Kris and her team of hooligan Navy mosquito boats had not been a good influence on him. Clearly, Kris needed to have a counseling session with the young chief soonest. Either that or promote him to officer and have some old chief square him away.

  Since the newly minted Marine officer ignored the chief ’s last remark and began a slow, cautious entrance into the Command Center, Kris assigned the chief ’s future counseling and/or promotion a low priority and returned to the problem at hand.

  Where was her new command?

  Jack and the chief did a quick search of the center. Kris and Penny, their automatics pointed at a nondescript overhead that didn’t dare move, kept an ey
e on the wavering shadows in the several hallways leading off from the elevator. It was spooky, but the shadows stayed empty.

  “I got something,” the chief announced.

  “What is it?” three voices asked.

  “A letter.”

  “A letter?” Kris said.

  “Yeah. On flimsy.”

  “Is it booby-trapped?” Jack demanded.

  “No strings attached, and nothing but the minimum static charge to keep the letters on the page, sir. It’s just a memo, addressed to the next CO. And it’s laid out, each page, side by side, so you don’t even have to pick it up to read it.”

  “What’s it say?” Kris said, ducking her head inside.

  “Ma’am, I think you better read this yourself,” the chief said, sounding, if anything, bashful.

  Kris raised an eyebrow to Penny. If there was a dirty joke in human space that Beni would balk at sharing in mixed company, they hadn’t heard it. What would make the young man unwilling to read them this message intended for Naval District 41’s next Commanding Officer?

  Kris stepped into the empty command center. Her command center. The air was stale like the rest of the station. No low hum of blowers. No human sweat. This was supposed to be the command center for several par secs of human space. It stood vacant, defending nothing.

  Maybe five years ago, when the Society of Humanity’s writ still held sway in human inhabited space, a planet might take such a risk. Not now. Not in today’s worlds of battleship diplomacy. Someone was taking a huge gamble with their future.

  Jack wasn’t gambling with Kris’s personal safety. Like a good Secret Service agent, he backed into a corner that gave him a view of all three entrances to the command center. It had seemed like such a good idea when Grampa Trouble suggested maybe Kris could use a Chief of Security on her new command.

  She’d readily agreed. Too readily, it seemed. Only after the paperwork was cut and a fuming Jack was decked out in dress red-and-blues and sporting a single silver bar of a first lieutenant, one very significant promotion below Kris, did he show up suddenly smiling. It seems that Grampa Trouble had taken him aside and walked him through the new regulations that came into play when a member of the royal blood was a serving member of the military.