Kris Longknife Read online

  Kris had been warned that none of the rebels was getting out of here alive. She had to wonder if an easier death might lay ahead for any who voiced regret.

  She need not have wasted the thought. Not one of the rebels said a word.

  Kris eyed them as carefully as she could without moving her head. None of them had said anything as they’d been dragged in. Had their tongues been cut out?

  That wouldn’t surprise Kris. Not really. The Iteeche liked their ceremonies to go down exactly according to plan. Having rebels screaming defiance would not fit very well in the quiet space between the broad streamers that somehow managed to wave in a wind of their own creation.

  “So be it,” Roth said, “Let your deaths be upon your head. Let no clan seek blood for blood. Let no blood price be paid.”

  Kris had previously been introduced to this quaint tradition. Every head had a price on it. Kill an Iteeche, and you owed his clan a price or a life. This practice was crimping Kris’s usual style since even dead assassins created a blood price.

  Now Roth turned, and once more went down on his elbows and knees. Behind him, among the rebels, the snake wranglers in red knelt and lifted the top from their crystal bowls. They placed them at the feet of the prisoners and tilted them forward. Quick as any snake in the galaxy, the many-colored serpents struck, sinking their fangs deep into the soles of the feet of the condemned prisoners.

  Almost every snake wrangler tipped the bowl back and the snake tumbled back into its cage.

  A few snakes still had their fangs sunk deep into a foot. They held on. The snake wranglers brought down the lid, trapping the snake. Then they stood, tipped the bowl back, and let the snake fall back into its crystal prison.

  One, however, failed to contain his snake.

  When that one stood up, the snake twisted under the lid and threw itself at the Iteeche in red.

  The snake wrangler did not cry out as he was bit. It was more like a soft sigh that escaped his lips, as if the air was being slowly let out of a balloon.

  He did, however, drop the crystal bowl; it shattered into a thousand shards. The snake wiggled free even as the Iteeche in red fell to his knees.

  Kris expected a mad run for safety, but nothing of the sort happened. The blade man, who had stood beside the man in red, took one step back then swung his blade down.

  It rang off the marble in a clear, crystal note and suddenly there were two shorter snakes wiggling where one long one had been.

  While all this had been holding Kris’s attention, the prisoners had begun to writhe in pain. Muscles knotted up into huge lumps, then knotted up some more. Now, under the screams, was the horrible sound of muscles ripping bones from their joints . . . and the Iteeche had a lot of joints.

  Soon, the Iteeche rebels were convulsing on the blue marble floor as their muscles continued to knot up or release, wracking them with pain.

  Now, they did scream.

  As ever, death was no respecter of dignity. As the rebel leaders squirmed on the blue marble, they lost all muscle control. The Iteeche showed no genitals, be they male or female. They had a cloaca that served all purposes. Now the air stank as urine and feces spilled out of them, mixing with the packets of sperm that was the usual male contribution to procreation.

  At the tiniest hint of movement, Kris shifted her eyes from the horrendous scene to the young lad on the throne. He had actually recoiled, retreating farther back into his oversized throne. He had the pale skin of an Iteeche, but it was now tinged with green. Even from her place, Kris could hear the hard gulps the fellow was making as he desperately struggled to keep the contents of his stomach in place.

  What a scene for such a young boy! Yet, as Emperor, it could not take place without him.

  More movement drew Kris’s attention to Admiral Coth and the contingent of Navy officers standing behind him. They still stood at rigid attention. Now, however, they turned their faces to the rebels, and grinned at their agony.

  Of course, the rebels had intended each of those officers to die, either in battle or on some executioner’s block if they failed to achieve that honorable death in battle. Possibly, the admirals would have suffered just as horribly as these rebels now did.

  As much as Kris abhorred torture, she could understand the Iteeche demand for this retribution.

  The Iteeche rebels and the one unlucky snake wrangler continued to writhe in pain. However, slowly the cries died down to moans. The muscles began to knot less quickly. Kris didn’t need to be told that death was rapidly approaching.

  Now the Iteeche in black stepped forward. They began to twirl their pole weapons over their heads. Since the weapons were longer than the space between them, this was done to perfect timing. Every other man twirled his glaive a quarter of a turn behind the man to his right. Some twirled higher, some lower.

  For a full minute, the welder of these razor-sharp blades did this deadly dance without a single misstep. Then, as one they stepped forward and brought their axes down on the necks of nearly dead rebels.

  Every head flew off, blood spraying from their severed necks.

  Only then did one axe man step back and bring his blade down on the snake wrangler who had bungled his job and earned his tortured death while risking the same for all those around him.

  The Emperor stood. His legs were barely able to hold him. Still, he stood.

  Kris alone bowed from the waist to the young boy.

  The poor young Iteeche paused as his servant-masters hustled him from his throne to an exit behind it. His eyes met Kris’s.

  Did the young man understand that Roth lay out, obeisant for all those Iteeche standing? Kris, however, bowed to him as a representative of her king, and thus, equal to equal.

  The young emperor bowed his head to Kris. It might only be a nod, but it was there and it was not lost on the court.

  Then his servants rushed him behind a curtain and he was gone.

  Kris did a smart about face. She eyed her admirals. “Relax crew. You have all survived your first audience with the Emperor of All the Iteeche.”

  She glanced at the still-twitching bodies of the Iteeche rebels. “That’s more than those damn fools can claim. Now, I suggest we wait a bit until the traffic jam is over.”

  “Or you can march off with my officers,” Admiral Coth said. “No one will dare gainsay you if you are in the company of victorious Iteeche admirals.”

  “Aren’t we victorious human admirals?” Kris asked.

  “Shush. We can’t let the peasants hear victorious in the same sentence with ‘human.’ Black water and chaos, I doubt half of our overlords are all that happy to hear it, and we just saved all of them from being gassed to free up their palace.”

  “Well then, you lead and we will follow.” Kris said.

  “No way,” Nelly’s translation said. “You march beside me. If your admirals will form a file down one side of our column, we will all march out together, assuming you two-legged types can keep in step with us.”

  “Or you could keep in step with us?” Kris pointed out.

  “Oh, right. Sometimes I forget. I’ve got a human for a commanding officer. What is your wish, oh victorious admiral?”

  “You get your guys in step. I’ll get my crew in step. And I’ll pay for the first round of beer.”

  And with that, the victorious admirals marched from the Imperial Throne Room and no one dared get in their way.

  2

  Kris did buy the first round of beer. Before those tankards were drained, she’d declared the bar open for all the admirals and they, both human and Iteeche, began to get seriously drunk.

  The Forward Lounge, the site of this drunken debriefing, was atop the Smart MetalTM castle that Kris had caused to be constructed in the sky above the courtyard of the Pink Coral Palace that the Iteeche had provided to her for a human embassy.

  It had been abandoned by a rebel clan and confiscated by the Imperium. Kris, however, was doing her best to establish that this was human soil an
d not subject to Iteeche search.

  Thus, the human admirals marched through the outer gate guarded by Iteeche Marines, and the inner gate guarded by US Marines before taking elevators up to the Forward Lounge. The Iteeche admirals took a more roundabout route.

  From the outer gate, they marched up the special entrance to the Iteeche Navy Annex that Kris had spun out of Smart MetalTM above the human entrance to the Pink Coral Palace. From there, they took elevators to the topmost floor where a long corridor, put there to allow Kris access to their spaces, now whisked them to the towering castle. From there, they rode elevators high up to the Forward Lounge.

  Kris was already there, a tankard of non-alcoholic beer in hand. She greeted every one of them and personally thanked each Iteeche admiral for his valor in battle. The Iteeche under her command had suffered the heaviest in the fight. There had been just over 2,100 Iteeche battlecruisers and only 32 human warships.

  Kris had minted a medal in honor of this fight, and she told them there would be a formal ceremony in a week to award them. Unusual for the Iteeche, Kris intended every sailor to get one. A bronze medal for the other ranks, a silver one for the officers, and a gold one for the admirals.

  The Iteeche admirals were quite taken aback by this, but seemed very happy to learn of it.

  Admiral Coth joined Kris, arriving last behind all his junior commanders.

  “So, you’re going to go through with this idea of giving every man who fought in the Imperial Guard System, a what do you humans call it? A decoration to wear on their uniform,” Admiral Coth said.

  “It seems only right that those who fought there and survived should be able to show everyone they meet that they risked their lives to save the Emperor,” Kris answered.

  “I cannot disagree with you, being a sailor myself. Still, I have fought many, many campaigns against rebels and you see no ribbons or medals on my chest like you wear. Great blue sky above, I can hardly see your uniform for all the gee-gaws on it.”

  “And human warriors who know what all this means, know to get out of my way when they see me coming. That, or have a nice cup of tea waiting for me.”

  The two of them shared a laugh.

  “Well, you are right,” Coth agreed. “This medal of yours will give our sailors bragging rights in every bar in the Empire.”

  “And, even better,” Kris added, “those that have bare chests will be eager to join us for the next campaign. I assume that our single victory has not ended the rebellion.”

  “Sadly, it has not,” Coth said. “Our spies report that the rebels have many more ships and sailors to fight in them. While many of the rebel clans lost leaders in this Most Sincere and Very Complete Apology, all of the clans have ambitious junior lords only too quick to step into the vacant shoes of their clan overlords. Now they are eager to lead their followers to victory over the hated Imperials.”

  “Then we must teach them the proper wisdom of Worshiping the Emperor.”

  “Shall we not teach them the proper wisdom of fighting these magnificent battlecruisers you humans have developed? We could not have won that battle if we fought our ships the same way the rebels fought theirs.”

  Kris nodded. For thousands of years, Iteeche warriors had gone into battle standing up. She had had a nearly impossible time persuading Iteeche sailors that they could better withstand the high gees of acceleration if they reclined in high gee stations. Her battle fleet had gone into the fight jinking and dodging. She’d also improved the fire control on her ships.

  Consequently, fewer of her ships died and more of the enemy were blown to gas and shards of metal.

  The ships might be identical when they came from the builders, but the tweaks the humans applied to them had been the difference between life or death, victory or defeat

  Now, the humans and Iteeche drank together, refought the battle together, and got to understand each other better.

  Having shaken the hands of every admiral she was buying drinks for, Kris settled down at a table with Lieutenant General Jack Montoya, USMC. As Kris’s husband, he’d long ago gotten used to be addressed as a Longknife. Since he’d been sucked into the Longknife legend, with all its advantages and penalties, he had no problem with people who addressed him as Jack Longknife. In honest moments, he’d even admit to himself that he half-thought of himself that way. It took a very good sense of humor as well as the fine art of dodging incoming fire to survive when you were married to a force of nature like Kris.

  Also at the table was Lieutenant Megan Longknife, Kris’s cousin, aide de camp, dog robber, and computer sensitive. She might have missed the battle, but she’d kept the home fires burning. Megan, plus some of the wait staff, were the only ones present who wouldn’t be receiving Kris’s battle medal.

  Still, Kris would hate to have done this job without Megan to sort out the snakes that came her way.

  Admiral Kitano settled down at the table.

  “Damn it, woman,” she said with no preamble, “once again, you leave the late arrivals with nothing to do.”

  “Still, I can’t tell you how happy I was to see you,” Kris said. Her fleet of 32 battlecruisers was smaller than the average Iteeche flotilla. Each of the five wings Kris had commanded included some 440 Iteeche battlecruisers.

  Here in the Iteeche Empire, fleets numbered ships in the thousands.

  Still, Kris would be very happy to add another 96 human battlecruisers to her fleet. They came with hidden virtues.

  Kitano took a sip from the glass of scotch in her hand. “I’m sure you’ll find a few odds and ends for us to tie up.”

  “You’re staying?” Kris asked. This was a burning question she had not had time to ask.

  “We’ve made a great team, what with you leading and me following. There are plenty of dead aliens to prove it. Besides, when you sent home that incompetent vice admiral you busted from command of your escorting task fleet, I figured you’d need someone to fill in and keep you from making a mess of the details.”

  The two chuckled. Kris had promoted Kitano from skipper of a single ship to command of almost all of the battlecruisers of her fleet, back during the battle for System X to defend the planet Alwa on the other side of the galaxy. Together, they’d destroyed 4 alien mother ships and the wolf packs they led. Thousands of alien battleships and cruisers had been blown out of space and hundreds of billions of the aliens had died.

  Death was the only option. If the vicious alien raiders had won, they would have murdered every living soul on the lovely planet Alwa, sanitizing it down to the bedrock. If Kris won, they refused to negotiate and refused to surrender. They’d blow up their ships or open them to space’s vacuum rather than accept mercy.

  Kris had spent four years fighting those barbaric bastards on the other side of the galaxy. She’d thought her fighting days were done. When the job of first emissary to the Imperial Iteeche Court was offered, Kris jumped at it.

  At the time, she’d expected to negotiate trade deals, cultural exchanges, and tourist visas. What she discovered was the supposed monolithic Iteeche Empire was riven with bitter enmity and rebellion. The Imperials needed a fighting admiral.

  So, they invited in the most fighting admiral in the galaxy and gave her command of their Combined Battle Fleet. Well, sort of.

  Command is a delicate fiction, made up of authority and obedience. Still, it requires loyalty both ways. Being commanded by a hated human did not sit well with far too many Iteeche.

  Kris had had to earn the loyalty of the Iteeche under her command. She’d had to persuade them that obeying her orders would give them victory and keep them alive to fight again.

  The victory in the Imperial Guard System had disproven a lot of the old stories from the war. Sailors on leave were already talking the fight up in the bars of the space stations. Hopefully, their delight in victory and approval of their human commander would draw more ships to Kris’s command.

  Unfortunately, it was also likely that rebel spies would be listening. May
be even buying the drinks. No doubt, a lot of informative coded messages would be speeding their way into rebel space.

  If Kris was going to fight, she’d have to do it soon before the rebels knew and imitated all of her best moves.

  Kris eyed Kitano across the table. “I’d like you to absorb my 6th Battlecruiser Task Fleet into your First Battlecruiser Fleet. That assumes that you aren’t just on loan. Who’s minding the store back at Main Navy?”

  “Admiral Phil Taussig should be arriving from Alwa on the next transport,” Amber said. “I’ve recommended he take over as Battlecruiser Type Commander on Wardhaven. He’s old Navy. His father and grandfather were Navy, and I’m sure they’ve told him where all the best skeletons are buried. He learned to be a good fighting admiral at our knees and bureaucratic infighting at his pappy’s. That guy is the perfect choice for that job.”

  “Can he take over without you there to show him the ropes?” was Kris’s main concern. The battlecruisers were her babies. She’d been there at the birth of the first and had been midwife to every class that had come down the way ever since.

  “I left him my chief of staff to serve as his, as well as the two fine aide de camps you got us. I miss my wife, and I hope she can cut loose soon, but she’ll get Phil up to speed.”

  Kris was glad to see Phil had gotten his fourth star. He’d been a skipper under her in the old Tenth Patrol Squadron. He’d gone with her to circumnavigate the galaxy. When they ran into the vicious alien raiders, he’d taken the Hornet in one direction to lead the aliens hounding their wake, so Kris and the Wasp could go in the other direction and bring news back to human space that we were now at war with a bunch of aliens that wanted us dead.

  Dead to the last man, woman, and child.

  Kris had managed to later rescue Phil and the rest of the crew of the Hornet, but he’d been in pretty bad shape and had missed several of the earlier battles. That took him out of the meteoric rise of some great fighting admirals that followed close in Kris’s wake.