Kris Longknife's Assassin Read online

  Break over, Kris and her Nelly went back to testing different options to use if the Tourin changed course or the Wasp was slower on the approach.

  Vicky watched, but understood little. It was one thing to stand a communication’s watch, quite another to plan a tactical shoot out.

  They were about half an hour out from intercept when a boffin called up to the bridge. “Are you aware the target is rotating?”

  “No, we weren’t,” Kris said.

  “Kind of hard to tell, but there’s a dull part on the ship. We clock it as coming by about every 56 seconds. That dude is making 3.2457 gees acceleration and rotating about every minute. God help the passenger that tries to get up and walk.”

  “Send me your data,” Kris said. “That may have an impact on my targeting.”

  “It’s on its way, Miss Longknife.”

  Vicky gave Kris a look. “Miss Longknife?”

  “With the mad scientists, I can never tell what they’re going to call me. My father cut the long-term research budget this year and half of them aren’t talking to me.”

  “So it’s not all crumpets and cream on Wardhaven.”

  “I never told you it was.”

  “I don’t know if the Tourin is having trouble keeping up its acceleration,” Nelly said, “or if your boffins are giving me better data, but it appears the acceleration is falling a bit.”

  “What about the rotation?” Kris asked.

  “If I was a bunch of hayseeds,” Captain Drago said, “flying a ship into a planet, I’d put a rotation on. Right Captain Krätz.”

  “Yes, we should have expected it. By rotating the ship, they don’t have to correct for any rocket engine that can’t quite keep up the demanded thrust. Just like an arrow spins to balance any wobble in its flight.”

  “But we don’t know exactly which way is down when we hit it,” Vicky said.

  “I should have mentioned that,” Kris said. “No battle plan survives contact with the enemy. That’s what makes sure that all our planning doesn’t make life easy for us.”

  Even for you, Kris Longknife.

  The clock at the top of Kris’s station was now counting down the last half hour. The target ship was now one of the brightest stars on the screen. Their encounter would be very soon.

  Chapter 30

  “Four minutes to close encounter,” the quartermaster announced.

  “Cut acceleration,” the captain ordered.

  Vicky went from near three hundred kilos to nothing. Her stomach did not like the change. She grabbed for the burp bag, held it clamped to her mouth for a while, then put it aside, still feeling queasy.

  The State Security colonel filled his bag then added to another.

  “All hands,” the captain announced, “where you are is where you stay. Don’t even think of moving.”

  Vicky watched as Kris Longknife focused on her instrument board. “Rotate Battery 3 and 4 to minus 30,” she said. “Rotate ship up thirty.”

  Vicky could understand none of this.

  The distance to the Tourin now counted down at a mad pace. The millions of klicks passed in reasonable time. When the count reached hundreds of thousands, the numbers raced. The last five hundred thousand klicks passed in a breath.

  Beside Vicky, Kris quit breathing as the count passed a hundred thousand.

  The lights dimmed as lasers fired, then the ship began to flip like a mad dervish.

  Vicky fought dizziness.

  The Wasp steadied for less than a heartbeat. Lasers 1 and 2 fired.

  The Tourin raced on, seemingly untouched by their efforts, unmarred by the lasers’ caress.

  Vicky’s eyes widened as nothing happened.

  A spark shot out from the liner. A split second later, the ship seemed to twist in its mad course.

  Then, in the blink of an eye there was nothing left of the liner and five thousand human beings but glowing dust cooling through red and yellow into violets and blue.

  “Holy God,” someone whispered on the bridge.

  Kris sat there staring.

  “Well, I’m glad that’s over with,” came from the State Security colonel.

  From around Kris’s neck a suddenly little girl’s voice asked. “Kris, did I just kill five thousand people?”

  What could Kris tell her own computer?

  “I’m sorry, Kris,” Vicky said, reaching out to stroke Kris’s elbow. “But it’s not your fault. You did everything you could not to have this happen.”

  “Did I?” Kris said, then mashed her commlink. “Everyone who’s been following this last evolution, save all your data. There will be an inquire into it.”

  “Whose?” Vicky asked.

  “Mine,” Kris snapped. “Captain Drago, if you will, put one gee on the boat to help with the saving of data.”

  “Sulwan, one gee if you please.”

  Kris stood. “Captain Drago. Captain Krätz, Jack.” She tapped her commlink. “Colonel Cortez, Penny and Abby, please report to my ready room. Professor mFumbo, you better come too.”

  “Yes” and “As you wish” answered her commlink. “Why?” came on the bridge from Captain Drago.

  “Because I am sick and tired of hearing that a Longknife did this or that or the other, all during the same supposed whatever. I’m tired of not knowing who did what to whom. This time, so help me God, I’m going to know just exactly what happened, and if Peterwald state security wants to say one thing and Wardhaven intelligence patches together another story, at least I will know the truth. You understand me?”

  Now it was Captain Krätz’s turn to step forward and face the fire in Kris’s eyes. “That assumes that, using the date we have, that we can actually tell you what happened.”

  That seemed to take a bit of the firestorm out of Kris’s sails. But not much. “We have the best instrumentation of any ship in space, between what Captain Drago has pirated from whoever is his employer and whatever the boffins have ripped off from their universities. Maybe you can’t tell me what I did and how it happened that five thousand lives were put to the torch. But I want you to face me, with your hands on the best information that these instruments can yield, and tell me that. You hear me?”

  “Yes, we hear you,” Kris’s Marine said, coming forward. So he was Jack. “You’ve got a lot of people on this board you’ve set up. I understand the two captains. Maybe even the colonel. But me, Penny, and Abby?”

  “You and Penny are trained criminal investigators. Abby’s the board’s secretary. That ought to make her job easier.”

  Jack didn’t look like he liked what he’d heard. But he looked even less eager to argue with Kris.

  “Now, if you will excuse me,” Kris said, “I have to talk to a father who pleaded for me to save his son’s life. Somewhere I’ve got to find the words to explain why I killed his boy.”

  “Kris, that’s cruel,” Jack cut in. “Don’t do it.”

  “When somebody makes you prince, you can gainsay me,” Kris shot back. “Until then, shut up.”

  The bridge stood aside as Kris marched out.

  Chapter 30

  Vicky sat in the back of Kris’s conference room as the young Wardhaven princess gave herself a court martial. For Vicky, it was simple. What was done, was done to save her father, and likely a whole lot of other people on South Continent. A few had to die to save the many.

  That didn’t seem to make any sense to Kris Longknife

  Slowly, it became clear to Vicky that a lot of the senior officers on Kris’s “court martial” were just as concerned as Vicky was, kind of, to see that Kris came to understand that there really was no way things could have turned out different.

  Vicky watched as picture after picture, pictures that neither Kris nor the wondrous Nelly had access to during the shoot showed matters coming apart. Even Nelly was almost stumped by a calculation of the possible strength of the reaction mass verses the standard strength merchant hull girders. While Nelly was busy calculating a problem that had been turned down
by all the other computers on the ship, Kris’s gaze fell on Vicky.

  She gave her a wan smile. Vicky gave her a thumbs up.

  Was this how Kris Longknife handled failure, even failure against impossible odds?

  There are some things about Kris Longknife I don’t want to take on.

  In the end, Kris Longknife said, “Either way, the ship blows up,” her voice dead with exhaustion.

  “I should have recalculated my assumptions,” Nelly said, “once the scientists told us the ship was under spin.”

  “I didn’t tell you to and I didn’t think of it,” Kris said.

  “None of us did,” Captain Drago said.

  “None of us wanted to admit what that meant,” Vicky said.

  “That any way it went, five thousand people were doomed,” Kris said.

  “It was either them or my dad,” Vicky pointed out.

  “Your dad’s death and a horrible, horrible war,” Kris said.

  Vicky walked over to stand beside Kris. “Once State Security let those hijackers board the ship, take it over, every solution involved deaths. Lots and lots of them.”

  “Don’t let General Boyng hear you say that,” Captain Krätz said. Vicky said nothing.

  Chapter 31

  The Wasp returned to High Birridas at a gentle one gee. That allowed plenty of time for matters to develop on South Continent. The hurricane blew itself out. Several plots to kill Henry Smythe-Peterwald were uncovered. Some people sang under interrogation, leading to further arrests. Others died.

  Vicky wondered what leads died with them. She sent several coded messages to her dad. She got several replies.

  No sooner had the last pier tie down locked onto the Wasp than the State Security colonel demanded to see Kris on the bridge. He marched his entire detail onto the bridge and arrested Kris Longknife for the murder of five thousand loyal citizens of the Greenfeld Alliance and the destruction of a million ton liner.

  When Captain Krätz tried to put an end to that, it turned out his commlink was jammed. Rather than start a shootout on her own ship’s bridge, Kris went with them.

  Vicky found herself loaded aboard a ship’s longboat and she and Captain Krätz were zipped back to the Surprise. There, Vicky double timed it for the comm shack. The messages she would send would be in her own personal codes, codes her Daddy would receive immediately.

  Maybe he might actually react to them.

  Chapter 32

  Daddy’s first reply conveyed shock that he’d been subject to such an attack and been saved by Kris Longknife. It took a second message from Vicky to persuade him. She laid it on pretty thick about how the hijackers had gained control of the ship despite State Security and the very same people had left the Navy tied up to the pier unable to interfere with the assassination attempt.

  Maybe she laid it on too thick.

  Daddy didn’t message the next time, he called. He was livid. He insisted Captain Krätz patch him through to the senior Navy admiral present. He demanded that the Navy collect all the State Security officers on the station and herd them into cells for interrogation.

  “General Bayng himself?” a vice admiral stuttered.

  “That black-hearted bastard himself. He’s been aiming for me for too many years. This time he missed again. He won’t get another chance.”

  “Daddy, Kris Longknife was marched off, I think to General Bayng,” Vicky said. “Could you give him a call and have him turn her loose?”

  “Right after we finish this.”

  It took a long while before he rang off. Vicky hoped it wasn’t too long for Kris Longknife.

  While Captain Krätz and those around him prepared for what was to come, Vicky arranged with some of the Sailors and Marines she knew to carefully stake out the General’s office and catch Kris before she caught something that might be the death of her.

  So it was that a JOOD led Kris into the wardroom.

  A very busy wardroom.

  Schematics of the station covered two walls. Maps of the planet below filled in the other two. Captain Krätz and Vicky were studying them with several other officers when Kris entered.

  Without a word, the walls went blank.

  “Keeping secrets?” Kris asked.

  “What is Greenfeld internal matters are ours,” Vicky said coming to take Kris down to where they might get some ice cream. “Let them stay that way for now. I’m sure your Admiral Crossenshield will give you a badly garbled and totally wrong assessment of this situation. It may take him a few days to jump to the wrong conclusions, but, no doubt, he will find his pole vault somewhere. How do we stay alive with such bunglers?”

  “I think I’ve given you a pretty up-front and honest sample of how I do it over the last few days,” Kris said evenly.

  “So you have,” Vicky said. “But you can’t tell me that dad getting you out of old Eddies maw wasn’t a big help.”

  “You’ve talked to your dad?”

  “Yeah, the Navy has a landline down the beanstalk State Security doesn’t know about. Dad says thank you. He says he’ll rethinking his attitude toward you Longknifes.”

  “Can I take that to the bank?” Kris asked.

  “Probably not,” Vicky said. The ship’s store sold only vanilla. No doubt the Wasp had more variety. “We best get you out of here fast.”

  “Am I going to do more catwalk dancing?” Kris asked, taking a spoonful.

  Vicky allowed a very small smile at Kris’s joke. “You can return to the Wasp the way we got to the Surprise. Your longboat is in our Number 2 lander’s bay.”

  Vicky waited until they’d finished their small scoop, then walked Kris down to the docking bay. It was a quiet walk. At least until they got to the longboat’s hatch.

  “I’m glad I didn’t kill you on Eden,” Vicky said.

  “So am I,” Kris agreed.

  “I’m really sorry I brought your great-grandmother into the thing. I’ve never known my grandmothers. Didn’t know my mother; she died when I was born.”

  “It hasn’t been an easy life for either one of us.”

  “Ever have a real friend?” Vicky asked. “A bosom buddy?”

  “Oh, you would have to bring those two up, wouldn’t you?”

  “These?” Vicky said, glancing down at what, with the effort of a fast walk behind them, could only be described as heaving bosoms. “They get in the way when I’m running. They’re two big pains in the back. You don’t know how lucky you are to have gotten off lightly.”

  “And, of course, the boys just never notice your problems,” Kris jabbed.

  “You have no idea,” Vicky began,

  “The troubles I’ve got,” Kris finished.

  Vicky laughed for a moment, then swallowed hard and glanced off into the unmeasured distance. “You don’t, do you?”

  “Mine are different,” Kris agreed.

  Vicky suddenly felt the need to hug Kris Longknife. She opened her arms and, after a moment’s hesitation, Kris stepped into it.

  “I hope someday we can get together when no one’s life is on the line. Someday when we can just talk girl talk,” Vicky said.

  “It would be nice,” Kris agreed. “I’m not sure I’ve ever done that.”

  “Me neither. But all the books make it sound so nice.”

  Vicky hated to break from the hug, but Kris needed to get somewhere safe before all hell broke loose. No doubt, I’ll be making it break out.

  “I will see you,” Kris said.

  “Looking forward to it.”

  And they went their separate ways, Kris into the launch, and Vicky to whomever the internal affairs of Greenfeld was killing at the moment.

  Vicky Peterwald – Target

  By

  Mike Shepherd

  Vicky Peterwald has it all. She’s daddy’s little girl, a Grand Duchess, a future Empress, and she’s gallivanted all over the galaxy with Kris Longknife.

  Oh, and she has a new stepmom who wants her dead.

  She might have wor
ked it all out, but now she’s expected to come home and live in the Palace; just one happy, murderous family ruling an empire.

  Unfortunately, that empire is falling apart.

  Once upon a time, Vicky might have been content to just sit on her throne and watch,

  but she was apprenticed to the Navy.

  They’ve taught her a few things about Duty, Honor and Empire.

  The question is, can the Navy keep her alive if she steps off her throne

  and starts doing something about all the things that need doing?

  Chapter One

  Her Imperial Highness, the Grand Duchess, Lieutenant Victoria Maria Teresa Inez Smythe-Peterwald watched the romantic vision on the screen. Slowly, Kris Longknife broke from her embrace and first kiss with her Chief of Security, Captain Jack Montoya.

  It sure took you two long enough.

  The flashing red icon at the bottom of the screen told Vicky that she was the only one watching the touching scene. Captain Drago had pulled the quarterdeck video from the public net.

  Who would have taken the hard-nosed skipper for such a softy, letting the star-crossed lovers have their privacy?

  Vicky saw no reason for anyone to have any privacy. Not if it cost her her life. She’d paid a pretty penny, with a few extra benefits on the side, to make sure anything that happened on the Wasp was no secret to her.

  It was very unlikely that the small personal tragedy playing out pier-side would impact Vicky’s safety. Still, she watched. How would the ineffable Kris Longknife handle this situation? Though Vicky doubted she’d ever have to leave her one true love, still, it would be well to study how a Longknife did it.

  Who knew what might come in handy someday?

  Kris certainly had the ‘sincere’ down solid. Vicky would have bet money that she and that big loving lunkhead of a man were seriously thinking of taking the chance, trying their luck at out-running or out-fighting the dozen battle-armored Marines the local admiral had brought to make sure her orders were obeyed.