Welcome Home / Go Away (kris longknife) Read online

  Welcome Home / Go Away

  ( Kris Longknife )

  Mike Shepherd

  Mike Shepherd

  Welcome Home / Go Away

  General Terrence Tordan reached across the table for the hands of his bride of eighty some years. Trouble to his enemies, Trouble to his superiors, Trouble to his friends, he had finally come to think of himself as just plain trouble.

  Tonight, he was worried; something he rarely allowed himself to be. So he made gentle circles in both his wife’s palms.

  “What’s worrying you, trooper?” Ruth, his wife, asked.

  “I told you, I never worry. Worry is for the other guys.”

  “Yeah. Some people believe that guff you spout off. Remember, I’m your wife, the mother of your kids, grandkids and great-grandkids, as hard as it is to believe. What’s eating you, Marine?”

  “One of our grandkids,” Trouble admitted.

  Ruth rolled her eyes at the ceiling for overly dramatic effect. “Lordy, which one now?”

  “Kris.”

  His wife sighed, then puffed out an “Oh.”

  Shrugging, she said, “You, me, and anyone paying attention to the future of the human race. Has anyone heard from her?”

  Trouble shook his head. “Not a peep.”

  “It’s been a while, hasn’t it?”

  “Too long.”

  “She was headed for the other side of the galaxy, you know, love.”

  “But she kept a courier ship with her. We should have heard something by now.”

  “Honey, she also kept eight battleships and her four corvettes had those… what-do-you-call-them?”

  “How’d you hear about them?” Trouble demanded.

  “Marine, I’m your wife. I know how to read between the lines, and I follow other sources than the crap that passes for mainstream media. You may have your secure net, but I go places that are just about as good as yours.”

  “Likely better,” he grumbled.

  “You said it, not me,” she said with that wonderful smile he had not gotten enough of in eighty years.

  The waiter was finally headed their way. In a Greek restaurant, Trouble always let Ruth do the ordering. The menu made sense to her; it was all Greek to him.

  His computer beeped at the same time Ruth’s did. Together, they both reached for their own trusted source of information on the world. Trouble took one glance at his report and raised an eyebrow.

  Ruth’s eyebrow was up, too.

  “You first,” he said.

  “Kris is back.”

  “Yeah. What else?”

  “That’s all I got,” she said, ignoring the waiter at her elbow. They’d been here often enough that he knew who did the talking for this couple.

  “What did you get?”

  “Order, for gosh sakes, lady, before he walks away.”

  She glanced again at the menu, and spoke in rapid fire, no doubt ordering what they’d had last month. When the waiter left, she put the menu down, and growled, “What else did you get?”

  “You know I wouldn’t tell you if I had. It’s the secure news net.”

  “Yes, but tell me you know more than just that Kris is back.”

  Trouble let out a long sigh. “You know everything that I know.”

  “She’s back,” Ruth exploded, but, after years of being a Marine’s wife, she kept her voice low. “No location! No information about the fleet! Just that Kris is back! You know that can’t be all. Even our darling Kris can’t make her way back from the other side of the galaxy without a ship. Is her Wasp back? Or is it just the courier ship and not even her?”

  “Love, don’t get carried away. You know what I know. The secure net says Kris is back, so she must be. That would likely mean the Wasp is back, too.”

  “But all those other ships, dear?”

  “Don’t borrow trouble,” he said, and knew she’d take it for all its double meaning. “When there’s more to say, they will say it.”

  “On your net, at least.”

  “Yes.”

  “And you won’t tell me a thing about what you get.”

  “No, I won’t.”

  “Eighty years a Marine’s wife, and I still can’t get used to this game of ‘I know something you don’t know.’”

  “How much you want to bet me that your net tells you what comes out next before mine does?”

  “General, you have a message of the highest priority,” a pleasing young woman’s voice announced.

  “I thought you agreed to change that voice on your computer,” Ruth snapped.

  “I don’t recall promising that,” the general lied.

  “You’re getting senile. I swear I’m going to put you in for rejuvie one Saturday. You’ll go to sleep Friday and wake up three months later all shiny and new. And remembering what you promised me.”

  “You wouldn’t dare,” he said as he glanced at his wrist unit. R EPORT TO THE R OYAL CHAMBERS SOONEST.

  He stood. “Sorry, Ruth, I got to go.”

  “Is Ray summoning you?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Nothing more on our wandering granddaughter?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Run along, good man. I’ll take the supper home to wait for you. I’ve had enough practice doing that the last eighty years or so.”

  “Thanks, love.” He stooped to plant a kiss on her forehead. She rose to meet him, lips to lips.

  “You come back, you hear? I got plenty of offers to replace you. You remember that.”

  Trouble laughed. “I am irrepressible and irreplaceable.”

  “And you know it, too, damn your loving eyes.”

  Trouble took a cab to the Grand Hotel de Wardhaven. Ray had taken over the top three floors for his growing retinue. The Marines at the two elevators that were express to the top saluted him. He was well known to them.

  The elevator was another thing.

  It refused to move before it completed a retina scan, as well as scanned his full palm print and took a drop of blood for good measure. It began to rise even as the DNA test was still processing.

  That it took him to the thirtieth floor was proof that his blood was still his own.

  On the thirtieth floor, humans repeated the eye scan and checked both his handprints as well as took the temperature of said hands. A medic eyed her own DNA database and verified for herself that the machine had chosen correctly.

  “You may go up, General,” a major finally said, and two armed men stepped aside.

  They weren’t the ones who would have killed Trouble if he’d tried to crash the line; they were just there to die. The ones behind the sights of the autocannons were not even on this floor.

  Trouble took the next elevator. This time it took him up to the thirty-third floor. He turned right, past Marines who saluted him, and headed for the door at the end of the hall.

  Behind it was either a very worried or very angry man. With Ray Longknife, it was always hard to tell.

  “How’s it going, Ray?” Trouble said, he being one of the few old enough to still address the king by his first name.

  “Kris is back,” the king snapped.

  “Yes, I heard. Have you heard anything else?”

  “Not a damn thing. Not one damn thing! I get this high-priority message from Sandy at High Chance Station. All it tells me is that Kris is back, not where, not when, not on what ship, just that Kris is back. And it breaks in the news not five minutes after I get the word. How’d that happen?”

  Trouble shrugged. The workings of the fourth estate had been a puzzle to him since before he was commissioned on that long-ago day.

  “I take it that you’ve sent a high-priority me
ssage out to Sandy for more info,” Trouble said.

  “Of course I have. But it will take a day, if not more, to get to her and back to me. What am I supposed to do, chew my nails?”

  “Well, you have to admit, your setup here is a whole lot more comfortable than a lot of places you and I have squatted a while to chew our nails,” Trouble said, glancing around at the king’s digs.

  The desk that separated the two of them was lovely, worked in wood and marble. The commlink was buried in the desk, out of sight. The walls were covered with red wallpaper with golden fleurs-de-lis. There were several bookcases and cabinets full of memorabilia from Ray’s days as general and president of the Society of Humanity. Place of pride was held by a signed original of the Treaty of the Orange Nebula, the paper that ended the Iteeche War before it ended the human race.

  Ray had led an eventful life. And Trouble had been right there, making a lot of the events survivable.

  There was a reason why the king had called for his old war buddy at a time like this.

  Of course, Trouble was not the only one who had gotten the recall. Field Marshal Mac McMorrison, Chief of the United Society’s General Staff, came hustling in, just a few moments before Admiral Crossenshield, the Chief of Intelligence.

  Trouble tried not to raise his eyebrows at the party forming up. He knew that Kris had taken to calling these three “the unholy trinity,” with good cause for the name.

  Of course, she’d also come to realize he was Trouble… after he’d given her good enough cause.

  Each new arrival was treated to the same greeting Trouble got. Each commiserated with the king as much as they were inclined to do. None of them, of course, knew anything more than the king.

  “Ray, we’ve been here before,” Trouble finally put in. “This is not one of those silly faux events the media stages where everything you need to know is spoon-fed to you. This is real life like we’ve lived through before. We’ll just have to sweat it out like we always have.”

  Ray did not take gracefully to being reminded that he was just as human as ever and subject to the limits of the human condition.

  Trouble found a good place to sit and watched as first Mac, then Crossie, did his best to settle their king down.

  They were no more successful than Trouble had been.

  Then the commlink chimed. “A new message has come in from Admiral Santiago, Commander Naval District 41.”

  “Well, give it to me,” the king demanded.

  “It’s in a very tight code, sir. It will take us a few minutes to decode. There is some video included in it.”

  “Get me the video as soon as you can.”

  “Yes, Your Majesty,” and the duty code officer got to ring off.

  Pity the poor kid, Trouble thought. Back in the old days, Ray had been a lot more concerned for the folks who worked for him. Not necessarily the ones he would get killed but those who worked close to him.

  How times have changed.

  They waited a good five minutes before the coding officer called back to say they still didn’t have the text decoded, but the attached video was ready.

  “Send it, send it. Now if not sooner!” Ray said, and the screen on the wall next to his desk changed from a lovely south-sea-island sunset to blank.

  Disembodied came the words, “Unknown ship in system, identify yourself,” then the screen split to show an earnest young lieutenant in a U.S. Navy blue shipsuit glaring from the command seat of a fast attack craft.

  On the other half of the screen, Captain Drago waved a hand at the high-gee station that Kris was slumped into, dumping the honor of first reply to her.

  Kris stood to stare from the screen. Her khakis were stained and rumpled as if she’d slept in them… for several days and nights.

  Still, she stood proud and tall, and announced that she was Princess Kris Longknife, a lieutenant commander in her grampa’s Royal U.S. Navy and the woman who’d led the great Fleet of Discovery.

  On the one screen, the junior officer hit his own commlink to call his superiors for advice.

  Smart man.

  After which, his screen went blank.

  On the other screen, Vicky Peterwald glided onto the bridge and grabbed a handhold next to Captain Jack Montoya.

  She giggled a bit as she asked Kris, “Do you often affect men like that?”

  Kris shrugged, before admitting, “I guess I should have brushed my teeth this morning.”

  “I don’t like the smell of this,” Jack said, “and I’m not talking about your body odor.”

  Kris shrugged. “I agree, Jack. I don’t think this is some kind of joke.”

  On the other screen, the young man apparently got his answer and tapped his camera to life. To Trouble, he looked like he was holding something smelly the cat dragged in.

  “You will exit this system immediately and report to Admiral Santiago, ComNavDist 41 on High Chance. If you deviate in any way from that direct course, I am authorized to use deadly force.”

  “Hold your fire,” Kris said. “We’ve been struggling for the last, I don’t know how long, to get back to human space. We’re just looking for a dock, some food, a bit of water and reaction mass.”

  “I am not to talk to you about anything other than getting you to High Chance. Can you identify the jump point out of here?”

  “Mister,” Kris drawled, “we discovered the jump point into here and did the first explorations below, remember?”

  Trouble found himself chuckling at Kris’s wry remark. Crossie gave him a nasty look.

  Screw yourself if you can’t take a joke, was the look Trouble gave back to the intel man.

  The young officer showed red at the collar as he apparently remembered this system’s recent history, but he went on doggedly. “Then you can point your ship at the jump point. My patrol craft will follow, and if you attempt to escape, I will disable your engines.”

  “Kid,” Captain Drago growled, “the Wasp ’s engines are damn near disabled. You throw even a hard word at them, and they’re likely to quit on us. You be careful. Relax. We will follow your directions to the letter.”

  Kris’s screen cut off. They were treated to an outside view of the Wasp. Trouble found himself shaking his head. “That boat is in dire need of a little loving care, Ray. You sure they should be risking their life jumping in that thing? It would be a shame to lose them now that they’re back.”

  “It’s too late to change things,” Field Marshal Mac put in. “With the time delay we’re dealing with, they’ve already arrived at High Chance.”

  “Or went bust trying,” Trouble said. “Look at that thing. Isn’t the nose of that ship bent off at an angle different from the engines? Computer,” Trouble told his own assistant, “can you run a line through the keel of that tub?”

  A line did appear. Aft, it was pretty much parallel to the ship. As you got closer to the bow, it diverged more and more.

  “What’s the angle on that?” Ray asked.

  Trouble’s computer projected a second line and ran a compass between the two. “Somewhere between three and four degrees,” Mac said.

  “And the bow looks like it’s got a bit of a twist on it,” Trouble noted. “That ship’s not only been bent, it’s been torqued.”

  “At least this one is back,” Crossie said. “Where’s the rest of the fleet?”

  That brought a round of scowls of biblical proportions.

  “Was that Vicky Peterwald?” Ray asked. “What she doing on the Wasp?”

  No one had an answer for that question.

  “Well, at least she’s back,” Ray muttered, half to himself. “I may be stuck explaining to that new Emperor bastard that my great-granddaughter misplaced one of his battle squadrons, but at least I won’t have to tell him my girl got his girl all dead.”

  “He might not be all that bothered if you had,” Crossie said.

  “Huh?” came from those who were dads, granddads, and more.

  “Harry’s new wife is pregnan
t with a boy,” Crossie said as if letting them in on a big secret. “There seem to have been several attempts to clear the Grand Duchess Victoria from the line of succession.”

  “Attempts?” Ray said slowly, once again needing time to get the drift of one of Crossie’s corkscrew conversations.

  “There are reports that assassins have been going after Vicky Peterwald. Likely paid for by her new and loving stepmother.”

  “It sounds like something out of an old fairy tale,” Trouble growled.

  “Why didn’t you tell me about this?” Ray snapped at his Chief of Intelligence.

  “I did, sir. Don’t you remember?”

  Ray said he didn’t, and Trouble was willing to bet good Wardhaven dollars that neither the king nor Trouble was being taken in by Crossie’s fib.

  The spy was so busy spinning and twisting his tales that Trouble frequently found him coming and going at the same time. Minor things like this were just annoying. But these minor dodges left the question hanging. Was Crossie up to some major shenanigans that he had yet to be caught in?

  Once again, Trouble was glad he’d lived the simple life of a fighting man in his day and didn’t have to rely on Crossie for much of anything but entertainment.

  “Well, if the Wasp is back, there could be more ships following in her wake,” Mac offered, hopefully. “This whole situation is taking time to get to us. Who knows what they’ve got out there now.”

  “Don’t you just hate the speed-of-light limit?” Trouble said, dryly. “Crossie, can’t some of your more slippery types come up with a way to break that law?”

  “We’re working on it,” the spy said, darkly.

  “We’ve been working on it for four hundred years and, other than the jump points the Three left behind for us, we aren’t any closer,” Mac growled softly.

  “Gentlemen, gentlemen,” Ray said, “enough of this philosophizing. I need to know what kind of hot potato Kris is dropping into our laps.”

  Trouble frowned at the other guy who shared the honor of having Kris for a great-granddaughter. “Aren’t you being a bit of a pessimist? Can’t we just be happy Kris is back from the other side of the galaxy, that she’s survived whatever battle she fought with those damn neutron torpedoes you gave her? She’s here, and from the looks of that boat, it must have been a hell of a fight. The likes of which I haven’t seen hereabouts since you and I were a lot younger and having fun doing things we could lie and laugh about much later.”