Audacious Read online

  “I can’t look all that bad,” Jack insisted feebly. “You sound like I’m dying or something.”

  “More like the something,” Abby put in. “I don’t think the doc here would let you out of his care that easily.”

  “He ain’t nearly tortured enough,” the corpsman put in through a smile.

  “So much for your performance rating,” the doc grumbled, but with too much smile to make the threat real. Then he turned to Kris and took her still-stockinged leg in hand and turned it gingerly. The creases around his eyes failed to soften.

  “Corpsman, you keep an eye on what that jarhead claims is his brain,” Doc said without looking back at Jack. “If that meatloaf starts to swell any little bit, I want to know about it before it happens. You hear.”

  “Loud and clear, Your Godhood,” said the unconcerned medic.

  “Now, Your Highness, let’s see what you’ve done to your perfectly usable collection of flesh and bones.”

  “It’s been in better shape,” Kris agreed.

  The doc struggled to pull one dart from where it had buried its point in the spider silk. “Nasty little thing. And it does like where it’s at. Captain, quit holding up the wall and bring your strong right arm over here. Nobody’s going to commit assault and mayhem in my clinic. I won’t allow it. Already writ the prescription agin’ it.”

  Captain DeVar came over from where he’d established himself, able to observe both casualties and keep a weather eye on the entrance to both the emergency room and, through the window in the door, the clinic’s front door.

  “Grab a pair of pliers and see how much work it is for you to pry one of those darts loose. Pull it straight out.”

  Even the Marine ended up grunting from the effort as the first dart came out.

  “That’s just the way it is. My second wife always complained that I had those strong surgeon hands for cutting someone open, but hand me a jar of pickles and forget it. Officially, young lady, I’m declaring you a jar of pickles.”

  “Or olives,” Abby added dryly.

  “With very nice stuffing,” the doc said, not letting a mere maid get in the last word.

  “Would you two quit it,” Jack said. “I’m in enough pain without you trying to get me laughing.”

  “Ain’t you heard, laughter’s great medicine,” Doc insisted.

  “Not just now it isn’t,” Jack and Kris said in harmony.

  “Patients,” the doc spat. “Don’t know why we let them in the door.” But for someone who didn’t seem to have much use for patients, the doc was very reluctant to let them out of his sight. “Commander Malhoney will just have to find someone else to drink with tonight,” he said when he was done with Kris.

  “You two look fine, but then, I’ve buried a few patents who were, or claimed they were when they walked out on this old sawbone. So settle in, get comfortable, and get ready to pay attention to my whole collection of horrific patient stories.”

  Kris had better things to do with her time. She’d had about enough of playing target in somebody’s shooting gallery. It was time for a Longknife to take charge of her own life. Start kicking butt and taking names.

  Maybe it was the lame stories. Or maybe it was something she got poked with. But Kris was asleep before Doc finished his third one.

  Interlude 2

  Grant von Schrader smashed the Close button. The latest report on the afternoon’s happenings vanished. “Is that little idiot back yet?” he demanded of his supervisory computer.

  “If by ‘little idiot’ you mean Ms. Victoria Smythe-Peterwald,” his computer answered dutifully, “she has just returned. Should I ask her to come to your office?”

  “For the duration of her stay you may assume that ‘little idiot’ means only Ms. Victoria, and yes, you may tell her that I want her here right now.”

  Grant returned to his overview of the situation while he waited. He did not like what he was watching. Unlike most news stories that were reported once and stayed the same, this evening’s events were changing. Growing. Couldn’t anyone shut up those two old biddies!

  No, that was not the problem. Why were those two still getting face time? Why hadn’t those two’s ramblings been buried?

  Ms. Victoria entered, looking very smug. He would have to stomp on that…hard.

  “I see you missed that Longknife bitch again.” That should cut Vicky off at the knees.

  Instead of penitent, the little twit shrugged diffidently. “She may still be alive, but it was close. Very close. She has to know that next time it will be closer. And sooner or later, she dies. Kris Longknife will die. Let her think of that in her hospital bed tonight”

  “There will not be another time. Not on my planet.”

  Victoria plopped herself into one of the padded guest chairs around his discussion table. “Oh, Uncle Grantie, you sound upset. Is something bothering you?”

  Grant detested being reduced to “Uncle Grantie.” He took an extra moment to get a firm handle on his temper, then another second to examine exactly how he should approach this offspring of his boss’s loins. He was supposed to be teaching her. So he called up his best educational tone.

  “The initial news reports blamed the incident at the Spring Charity Art Extravaganza on a gas-line explosion.”

  “Good. Some newsie used his imagination,” Victoria purred.

  “Unfortunately, whoever you hired for this hit didn’t use his imagination,” Grant shot back. “A nice bomb would have left little enough to challenge that bit of creative reporting.”

  All that got from Victoria were raised eyebrows.

  “Your man used an auto-gun that left plenty of bullets in victims, and pieces of the gun in the wreckage.”

  “And your police can’t handle a little problem like that,” Vicky said, shaking her head. Suddenly, the discovery of her poor planning was his fault.

  He made a mental grab for his temper, caught it barely by his fingernails, and stuffed it back in his hip pocket.

  “Reporters can get the scoops we lay out for them. Police reports can be ‘corrected.’ Unfortunately, Ms. Broadmore and Mrs. Whitebread say they saw the gun and all the shooting and they’re talking a lot and it’s all off story.”

  “Can’t you have them popped?”

  “They are major players on Eden. They die later,” Grant snapped, cutting that line of thought off at the root.

  “Heart attacks?” Vicky said, arching an eyebrow.

  “Not fast enough today. And all of your solutions involve risk for minor gains when fifteen years of work is our main concern. Hasn’t your father mentioned the benefit of staying focused on the prize and not being distracted by mere glitter.”

  “Longknife’s death is not mere glitter.”

  “It is right now.”

  “Well, if you hadn’t sent poor Vennie packing, he might have done a better job for me.”

  Grant got out from behind his desk and walked over to personally confront his boss’s daughter. He stood there, towering over her, hands on hips.

  “Longknife is not an objective of the Peterwald Empire on Eden. We have more important work to concentrate on. You will make no further attacks on Kris Longknife.”

  Victoria shrugged. “If you say so, Uncle Grant.”

  Uncle Grant. He was now “Uncle Grant.” Maybe he had gotten something through that thick, red head of hers.

  He better have. They couldn’t afford any more blundering around.

  24

  “Hey, you alive” was deadly cheerful, coming from Abby way too early the next morning.

  “Not sure,” Kris mumbled. “I feel like I’m being tormented by little devils like Tommy’s grandmum warned him about. Come close and let me see if I can move my arm enough to throttle you. Tommy said you can’t kill the real demons.”

  With a thoroughly ugly grin, Abby approached Kris’s bed.

  After further thought…and an effort to move that sent her whole body screaming in pain…Kris decided to let Abby li
ve.

  “You two hungry?” Abby asked. “Cause the President of the Officer’s Mess has declared dirty rules. You can show up in sweats.” Abby tossed a Navy blue-and-gold set in Kris’s lap.

  “Hey, that hurt.”

  “Can’t this clinic arrange for hospital chow?” Jack asked as Marine red and gold dropped on his blanket-draped belly.

  “Hate to tell you” came in Doc’s happy tones. “But this is just an embassy clinic. We aren’t staffed to handle really hard cases.”

  “So what are we doing here?” Kris asked.

  “Well, we didn’t want to send you to any old hospital where you could be strangled overnight, or doped and rolled out with the dirty laundry. I hate it when that happens to my patients. Besides, your armor did its job,” he said glancing at Jack’s readouts. “Both of you are in great shape.”

  “I’ve been doped. I’m hungover, and I hurt in every muscle in my body. And you’re telling me I’m okay?” Kris said.

  The doc smiled, and tapped her left arm. That was one of the few parts of her that didn’t hurt.

  “You’re stiff. You hurt,” Abby lectured like somebody’s mother, “and if you don’t get moving, you’ll stay stiff. Now, let’s get you dressed and some food in you before we ply you with morning meds. No more drugs on an empty stomach. Don’t want an addicted princess showing up to wave at little kids.”

  Two hulking Marines showed up to dress Jack, with two women Marines right behind them. Kris found herself dressed and marched down to the wardroom.

  If the President of the Mess had suspended the uniform rules, no one else had the Word. But Kris ate the oatmeal and the stewed prunes that Abby set before her. After all, Jack ate the same, with Captain DeVar and two large Marines looking over his shoulder and offering encouragement…or else.

  “I’ve come to accept that no good deed goes unpunished, but you’d think that saving that poor college girl’s life would be worth some slack,” Jack didn’t quite whine.

  “Oh, I’m sure she’ll find a way to pay you back,” the captain snickered.

  Kris caught the doc’s ear. “Abby wasn’t kidding about overdrugging me. I haven’t been this stoned since I was twelve, thirteen. I don’t want to go there again.”

  Doc frowned. “Your file has nothing about addiction risk.”

  “If you’re the prime minister’s brat, there’s a lot of stuff that doesn’t make it into your permanent record.”

  Doc nodded thoughtfully, then looked at the pile of pills he’d laid next to Kris…and took a few of them back.

  “Let me know how the pain is. And if you start taking heads off, you will take the pills I tell you to if I have to have the Marines shoot them down your gullet.”

  “Yes, Doc, your Godhoodness,” Kris said with a grin.

  “I got to have the Marines shoot that corpsman. I got to,” Doc said as he went off to fill his own plate with pancakes.

  But he’d left orders for Kris with Abby. No sooner than she finished a very light breakfast than Abby was herding her back to her room. “Doc wants you to get some heat therapy for those bruises. This time we’re going to use that bath of yours for something other than a pleasure dip.”

  Then she handed Kris a little bit of something. “And since the only other whirlpool in this embassy is in the ambassador’s quarters, you’re going to have to share your bath with Jack.”

  “What’s this,” Kris said, holding up two bits of…

  “That’s a string bikini. It don’t cover all that much of you, so if I need to, I can see about all of you.”

  “And Jack?” Kris said, her eyes measuring the tub. She’d always thought of it as big enough for two…or four.

  “Jack won’t peek, and besides, once you’re in the tub, he won’t be able to see much more than your pretty smile anyhow.”

  Kris’s doubts must have still showed.

  “If you don’t complain, you’ll stay in the tub and no one will get a look. And you’ll get to check Jack out. Unless, of course, you want him to get warmed up after you. We can do it that way. We got all day,” Abby said as if she hadn’t a care.

  “I want a staff meeting as soon as we’re done here,” Kris snapped. “Where’s Nelly?”

  “On your desk,” Abby said as she helped Kris out of the sweat suit and into what little she offered Kris.

  “Nelly, tell my usual suspects I want to see them in here in a half hour. Oh, and add Doc and Captain DeVar to the collection.”

  “Will do,” came from the next room.

  Kris was deep in the water when Jack came in, wearing a blue hospital robe. When he dropped it, Kris got quite a view. There wasn’t any back to Jack’s suit, at least not much. Which gave her a good look at the ugly black-and-blue circles that covered his back and butt, circles that in several places merged into several huge blobs. Around the edges, they were healing already, swapping black and blue for sickening green and yellow.

  “You look quite colorful,” Kris said, trying to sound chipper.

  “You don’t look half bad yourself,” Jack said. Causing Kris to look down. Abby had the jets going on gentle. Still, there wasn’t all that much of her to see.

  “Made you look,” Jack said, with only a small chip of his lopsided grin.

  After that, they lapsed into quiet contemplation, or serious concentration on their bodies and how they were taking to the warm and gentle workings of the water. Nothing broke loose to spur an embolism.

  Jack left first, now having added a warm pink to the few square inches of his skin that hadn’t been battered.

  “We really ought to get you better protection. How about a ceramic girdle?” Kris offered.

  “I never have figured out how you run in one of those damn things,” Jack said. “No, thank you. But I will tell the manufacturer that they need to thicken up their blues. There’s nasty stuff out on the street.”

  “You tell’em, Jack,” Kris said.

  She’d had enough of sweats. “Undress whites,” she ordered from Abby. She dressed herself…mostly. Abby saved her from bending over by tying her shoes. At 1000 sharp, Kris walked into her sitting room.

  Around the large table that occupied its center sat Penny and Chief Beni, Doc, and Captain DeVar. Jack was just arriving, having switched into undress khakis. Abby started to settle onto the couch, but Kris silently pointed her to a chair at the table. If Doc or the captain thought it strange to have a maid in their counsel, they kept it to themselves. But then, the Corps had seen Abby’s shooting skill more than once and probably had spread the word to beat clear of her.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, I am tired of being a target. I will not walk into any more shooting galleries that anyone hereabouts sets up,” Kris said, opening the meeting as soon as Abby and Jack declared the room free of bugs.

  “Here, here,” “I’ll say,” and “About time” greeted that.

  “How do you propose to avoid said galleries?” Jack asked.

  “That’s why we’re having this meeting. I’m open to suggestions,” Kris said, throwing it open to the floor.

  The floor just lay there, saying nothing.

  Kris shook her head after a moment. “Thank you for your sage advice. Okay, lets do this by the numbers. Nelly, Beni, Captain DeVar, what do we know about yesterday’s auto-gun?”

  The two flesh-and-blood types eyed each other. Even Nelly stayed quiet, leaving Kris with a mental image of her pet computer joining the very human ritual.

  “Nelly, what do we know?” Kris snapped.

  “The auto-gun is a standard make readily available on this planet,” the computer started slowly.

  Doc snorted. “So much for our vaunted gun-control laws.”

  “Actually,” Nelly answered, “estates with security systems often enforce their perimeters with auto-guns like these. Usually monitored by the security agents.”

  “Was this one under human monitoring?” Kris asked.

  “There was no net connection in the wreckage,” Beni put in.
“I would have caught the gun earlier if it was sending on a net. It was jury-rigged with a sound and movement-control system.”

  “Any identifiers on the gun. Unique aspects of the chips?” Kris shot back.

  “Serial number on the gun was filed off, if it ever was there,” Captain DeVar put in. “The fire-control system had a incendiary device that burned the system when we tried to take it apart. Not a lot left,” he finished with a scowl.

  Kris let that bounce around her brain for a long moment. “First time out, someone managed to jam Nelly’s network. This time out, they’ve put together dual-use parts to make a unique—for this planet—targeting system. Anyone see a pattern?”

  “Electronics,” Beni said, sitting up from his eternal slouch. “Whoever is after you has one large pot full of electronics capability.”

  “And here on Eden where most of the computer stuff is about the most complicated in human space,” Penny added.

  “Nelly, start a search on new computer chips and software companies in town.”

  “I will try, Kris, but it will not be easy.”

  “Why?”

  “Kris, advertising seems to be mostly by word of mouth or through select industry-type journals. I don’t know which ones to subscribe to. The records and reports of the Federal Bureau of Financial Statistics are not a publicly available database. Even using the access you have as a Nuu Enterprises stockholder, what I get back is little more than the addresses of home offices and the dividends they paid out last year.”

  “And with that they keep the business’s around here legal?” Kris muttered.

  “I’m not sure they really do,” Penny said. “Until a scandal gets huge, it doesn’t even make the news.”

  “Father tries to keep the government from getting too much in business’s face. If he gets too heavy into regulations, Grampa Al comes screaming into his office. But you have to keep the playing field level. Who’s doing that?” Kris eyed Doc. “How long have you been here?”