Kris Longknife: Mutineer Read online

  Mutineer

  Kris Longknife

  Book I

  Mike Shepherd

  Penguin Group (USA)

  Pub. Date: January 2004

  ISBN-13: 9780441011421

  CONTENT

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter One

  “There’s a terrified child down there.”

  Captain Thorpe’s baritone reverberated off the hard metal walls of the Typhoon’s drop bay. Marines, a moment before intent on checking their battle suits, their weapons, their souls for this rescue mission, hung on his every word.

  Ensign Kris Longknife divided her attention; part of her stood back, studying the impact of his speech on the men and women she would soon lead. In her short twenty-two year life, she’d heard a lot of fancy oratory. Another part of her listened to her commander’s words, felt them roll over her, into her. It had been a long time since mere words had raised the hackles on her neck, made her want to rip some bastard limb from limb.

  “The civilians tried to get her back.” Kris measured his pause. He came in right on the downbeat. “They failed. Now they’ve called for the dogs.”

  The marines around Kris growled for their skipper. She’d only worked with them for four days; the Typhoon had sortied on two hours’ notice! Captain Thorpe had gotten them away from space dock, short half the crew and without a marine lieutenant to command the drop platoon.

  Now a boot ensign named Longknife was surrounded by marines with three to twelve years in the Corps, champing at the bit to do something definite and dangerous.

  “You’ve trained. You’ve sweated.” The captain’s words had the staccato of a machine gun. “You’ve drilled for this moment since you joined the Corps. You could rescue that kidnapped girl with your eyes closed.” In the dim light of the drop bay, eyes gleamed with inner fire. Jaws tensed; hands closed in tight fists. Kris glanced down; so were hers. Yes, these troops were ready, all except one boot ensign. Dear God, don’t let me screw up, Kris prayed silently.

  “Now drop, Marines. Kick some terrorist butt, and put that little girl back in her mother’s arms where she belongs.”

  “Ooh-rah,” came back from twelve hyped men and women as the captain slow marched for the exit. Well, eleven hyped marines and one scared ensign. Kris put the same angry confidence into her shout as she heard from the rest. Here was none of the calm, the cool of Father’s political speeches. Here was why Kris had joined the Navy. Here was something real; something she could get her hands on and make happen. Enough of endless talk and nothing done. She grinned. If you could see me now, Father. You said the Navy was a useless waste of time, Mother. Not today!

  Kris took a deep breath as her platoon turned back to their preparations. The smell of armor, ammunition, oil, and honest human sweat gave her a rush. This was her mission and her squad, and she would see that one little girl got home safe and sound. This child would live.

  As the memory of another child rose to fill her mind’s eye, Kris stomped on the thought. She dared not go there.

  Captain Thorpe paused in his exit march right in front of her. Eye to eye, he leaned into her face. “Keep out of your head, Ensign,” he growled in a whisper. “Trust your gut. Trust your platoon and Gunny. They’re good. The commodore thinks you have what it takes, even if you are one of those Longknifes. Show me what you’ve got. Take those bastards down hard. But if you’re as empty as your old man, let Gunny know before you funk out on us, and he’ll finish the mission. And I’ll drop you back in your momma’s lap in time for the next debutantes’ ball.”

  Kris stared back at him, her face frozen, her gut a throbbing knot. He’d been riding her since she came aboard, never happy with her, always picking at her. She would show him. “Yes, sir,” she shouted in his face.

  Around her, the troops grinned, figuring the skipper had a few choice words for the boot ensign, none knowing just how choice. The captain snickered. A scowl or a snicker or a growl was all she’d ever seen on his face since coming aboard. Was there a different crinkle to his eyes, a new uptwist to his lips? He turned before she could read him better.

  It wasn’t her fault Father had signed all Wardhaven’s legislation for the last eight years. She had nothing to do with her great-grandparents splashing the family name all over the history books. Let the captain try growing up in shadows like those. He’d be just as desperate as Kris was to make her own name, find her own place. That was why she joined the Navy.

  With a shiver Kris tried to shake off the fear of failure. She turned to face her locker and tried again to adjust the standard-issue, size three battle spacesuit to fit. Six feet tall and too small everywhere else was her usual requirements for a suit. She’d never had a civilian suit that didn’t leave her plenty of room for her pet computer to conform around her shoulders and down her arms, but those suits weren’t semirigid plasta-steel a centimeter thick. Nelly, worth more than all the computers on the Typhoon and probably fifty times as capable, was a problem in battle armor.

  Marines were expected to be lean as well as mean; nothing extra was allowed anywhere. Kris tried slipping the main bulk of the computer down to her chest. She didn’t carry much there, and most marine males seemed to be a bit bulky in that spot. Resealing herself in, she rotated her shoulders, bent, then stooped. Yes, that worked. She put on the helmet, rotated it until she got a firm click. With the faceplate down, the suit was a bit warm, but she’d been hot before.

  “Krissie, can I have an ice cream?” Eddy wheedled.

  It was a hot spring day on Wardhaven, and they’d run to the park, leaving Nanna well behind them.

  Kris fumbled in her pocket. She was the big sister; she was expected to plan ahead now, just like big brother Honovi had done for her when she was just a little kid. Kris had enough coins for two ice creams.

  But Father insisted that planning ahead included making things last. “Not now,” Kris insisted. “Let’s go see the ducks.” “But I want an ice cream now,” came in as much of a wail as an out-of-breath six-year-old could muster.

  “Come on, Nanna’s almost here. Race you to the duck pond.” Which got Eddy’s feet moving even before Kris finished the challenge. She beat him, of course, but only by as much as a ten-year-old big sister should beat a six-year-old kid brother.

  “Look, the swans are back.” Kris pointed at the four huge birds. So they walked along the pond, not too far behind the old man with the com who always fed the birds. Kris was careful to keep Eddy from getting too near to the water. She must have done a good job because when Nanna finally caught up with them, she didn’t give Kris a lecture about how deep the pond was.

  “I want an ice cream,” Eddy demanded again with the single-mindedness of his few years.

  “I don’t have any money,” Nanna insisted.

  “I do,” Kris put in proudly. She had planned ahead, just like Father said smart people should.

  “Then you go buy the ice cream,” Nanna grumbled.

  Kris skipped off, so sure she would be seeing them again that she didn’t even look back.

  There was a tap at her shoulder. With a shiver, she turned to
see a freckled face and raised her faceplate in time to be met with a “Need help, short fork?”

  The drop bay was busy and noisy, and her shiver went unnoticed. She managed the cheery “No way, wooden spoon,” reply the infectious grin and challenge demanded.

  Ensign Tommy Li Chin Lien had been born to a family of Santa Maria asteroid miners. Rather than hang around that isolated world, he’d joined the Navy to see the galaxy, thereby greatly disappointing his folks and, per his great grandmother, his ancestors.

  At Officer Candidate School, they’d passed hours swapping stories about how their parents had stormed and ranted against their career choice. Kris was surprised by how fast they became friends, one from supersophisticated Wardhaven, the other that crazy blend of Irish and Chinese that so much of Santa Maria’s working class still held to.

  Right now, Tommy waved his universal tester in Kris’s face. Raised in vacuum, he distrusted air and gravity and viewed mud-raised people like Kris as hopeless optimists, dependent on him for the proper paranoia toward space.

  Kris raised her left arm for Tommy to plug his black box into the battle suit she’d been issued. While he ran his checks, Kris worked with Nelly, running her personal computer through interface tests with the command net. Auntie Tru, now retired from her job as Wardhaven’s Info War Chief, had helped Kris with Nelly’s interface, as she’d done with most of Kris’s math and computer homework for as long as Kris could remember. Nelly lit up Kris’s heads-up display with every report or screen authorized to a boot ensign on a mission… and a few it was better the skipper did not know Kris had access to. Kris and Nelly finished about the same time Tommy detached his tester from Kris. She flipped up her faceplate.

  “Your camouflage adjustment is about five nanoseconds below optimum, but it meets Navy standards,” Tommy grumbled. The Navy rarely met his expectations for perfection.

  “Your coolant system isn’t all that far into the green, either.”

  “I’m more worried about my heater. It’s arctic tundra where I’m headed, haven’t you heard?” She grinned.

  He refused to swallow his scowl for her attempt at a Santa Maria brogue. “And there’s a bad gasket in there somewhere.” They’d been over that one before; one of the battle suit’s jelly seals was a slow leaker, but every suit aboard had at least one bum seal. It was a bitter joke among the troops; good seals went to the civilian market, weak ones went to lowest-bid government contracts.

  “I’m not working the asteroids, Tommy. I won’t be living in this suit for a month.” Kris gave the standard reply the procurement chiefs gave her father. The prime minister of Wardhaven always accepted it. But then, he didn’t do drop missions. Today, his daughter was. “I’ll only be in vacuum an hour, two at the most. Sequim’s atmosphere is good.”

  “Mud hen,” Tommy answered in disgust.

  “Space head,” Kris shot back, giving Tommy one of his own trademark grins, then turned to the Light Assault Craft that would be carrying her and her squad. It was the minimum vehicle that could get you from orbit to the deck, not much more than a heat shield that doubled as a wing and a flip-on top that was just there for stealth. Then again, Kris had raced in smaller skiffs. “This check out?” she asked, serious once more.

  “Didn’t I test it four times?” Tommy grinned. “Didn’t it pass four times? Your humble servant will get you there.” Which only left Kris struggling to keep hold of her temper.

  The Navy trusted the marines to put their asses on the line, but not with the car keys. It would be Tommy’s job to fly the two LACs from the Typhoon in orbit to the ground, all except for two or three minutes when ionization took the two LACs out of radio touch—and they’d be on autopilot for that. All the while, Kris and her eleven marines were supposed to sit there dumb and bored. That was just one part of the approved plan she would like to change. But a boot ensign does not change plans that her skipper and his Gunny Sergeant like.

  “Help me on with my kit,” she told Tommy. Along the bay, the platoon members were paired up, checking each other’s suits, loading them up with weapons and drop gear. Corporal Santo went down Gunny’s squad, Corporal Li checked Kris’s. Gunny would double-check them; then Kris would triple-check.

  Kris’s load was a tad lighter than her teammates’ since Nelly weighed in at half of a standard-issue Navy personal computer while holding all the command, control, communications, and intelligence—C³I in military speak—that an ensign could ask for. Still, hanging from her armor or carefully stowed in her pack were rocket-propelled grenades of many flavors; six spare magazines for her M-6, half of them rounds of nonlethal intent, the others real ones; as well as water, first aid, and food. Marines never left home without lugging a ton of stuff. Fully loaded, again Kris rotated her shoulders, twisted her hips, checked the load if not for comfort at least for problems. She’d carried more backpacking through the Blue Mountains on Wardhaven during college vacations. Those carefree months of outdoor living was one of the reasons she was here.

  Tommy eyed her as she did a deep knee squat and bounced back up. “You good for this?”

  “Everything’s in place. Not too heavy.”

  “You good for this business? Rescuing a kidnapped kid.” The grin was gone; she saw what the Santa Marian looked like serious.

  “I’m good for this, Tom. I’m the best Navy small arms weapons qualifications on this boat. I’ve got the best Navy physical training scores, too. The skipper’s right. I’m the best he’s got. And Tommy, I want this.”

  “Ensign Lien to the bridge,” came over the ship’s MC-I, ending any further questions. Tommy clapped her on the back. “The luck of the little people and God go with you,” he said as he headed for the hatch.

  “No spare seat for Him in an LAC,” Kris shot back over her shoulder, another salvo in their long-running debate. But Kris was already trailing Gunny, rechecking the fall of gear, re-verifying weapons loads. She finished a second behind him.

  He went over her kit, and she went over his. He tightened one of her straps and growled, “You’ll do, ma’am.” She found nothing to modify on him; she hadn’t expected to. Gunny had practiced for this moment for sixteen years. That this was his first live-fire mission in all that time didn’t seem to bother him or Captain Thorpe.

  “Let’s drop, team!” Kris called to her loaned platoon.

  With a shout of “Ooh-rah” the two squads turned in unison to face opposite bulkheads and board their two Light Assault Crafts. Kris went down the line of her squad one more time, checking their restraining harnesses and the arrangement of their gear as they settled into their low seats in the LAC. All readouts showed green. Still, Kris gave each a good hard tug. That webbing was the only thing holding her troopers in. Satisfied, she settled her own rump onto the low composite seat in this minimum spacecraft and stretched her legs out ahead of her, careful to avoid the control pedals. The legs of the tech seated behind her surrounded her. Kris had once tried a toboggan. Mother had refused in horror when Kris asked to take a ride downhill. That toboggan was roomy compared to an LAC.

  She rechecked to make sure her harness was firmly attached to the LAC’s narrow keel, checked again to make sure none of her gear was out of place, then pulled the canopy down and felt it click into place. Like so much of the LAC, the canopy was paper thin; it added nothing more than stealth to the craft. Only their drop suits would protect Kris and her troops from the vacuum of space or the heat of reentry.

  The control stick began to rotate between Kris’s legs.

  That would be Tommy running tests. Still, the sight of it moving brought back good memories of some damn fine stick time of her own. She wiggled in her seat and felt the light craft respond to her movements. Bigger than a racing skiff but just as sweet.

  Kris banished those distractions by replaying the drop plan in her mind as she waited. These kidnapping sons-a-bitches had a simple plan. They’d snapped up the Sequim General Manager’s sole child during a school outing, then dragged the poor kid
off to the northern wilderness before anyone knew what had happened. Ignore the child’s name… much too familiar. Only pain there. Quickly Kris returned to tonight’s problem. The approaches to the kidnappers’ hideout were long, difficult, dangerous—and booby-trapped! So far, the bad guys had outsmarted—and killed—too many good people.

  Kris ground her teeth; how had cruds like these gotten their hands on some of the most sophisticated traps and countermeasures in human space? She could understand the traps; humans now frequented planets with very nasty critters. And while she had never hunted big game herself, she was looking forward to this hunt for the most dangerous game. What frosted her was the legal bunk used by specialty stores to excuse their sale of measures and countermeasures that were only going to make her job damn dangerous tonight. Normal people didn’t need electrocardiogram jammers. Why would any good citizen need a decoy device to simulate a human heat signature? Blast it, her suit was warm; sweat was already running down her back.

  The day was so hot, the ice cream melted even as Kris trotted toward the duck pond. Kris paused just long enough to give both ice cream cones a quick lick, then felt guilty. “Eddy, I’ve got your ice cream,” she called as she hurried on. She hurried so much that she was well out of the trees and halfway across the vale to the pond before the wrongness of it got through to her. Kris came to a slow halt.

  Eddy wasn’t there!

  The man with the com had fallen, half in the water. The ducks gathered around him to pluck at the fallen grain.

  Two lumps of clothes doted the vale. In her nightmares that night, Kris would recognize them for agents who had been with her for years. But right then, her eyes were riveted on Nanna. She had fallen down. Her arms and legs splayed around like a rag doll. Even at ten, Kris knew that was all wrong for a real person.

  Kris began to scream. She dropped her ice cream cones as she tried to cram her hands in her mouth, bite down hard on knuckles hoping the pain would wake her from this bad dream. Somewhere behind her, a voice shouted into a commlink. “Agents down. Agents down. Dandelion is nowhere in sight. I repeat, Dandelion is missing.”