Kris Longknife Stalwart Read online

"Aye, aye, sir," answered him and about a fifth of the screens in the battle station turned to something else. They still looked like they were reporting something important, but it wasn't what they'd been showing a moment before.

  Doubtlessly, they'd been tracking comm traffic. The Humans now had full access to the entire Iteeche net, including the private and encoded personal message traffic. Likely, the general had his suspicions that the Humans had gone past just using the Imperial net and had penetrated it for their own purposes.

  It was obvious to any astute observer that Kris had come from Human space with some aces up her sleeves. Otherwise, how could she have pulled off the force deployment that had stopped two major clans in their tracks when they made a grab for the young Emperor?

  Still, there was no need to confirm the suspicion.

  The elevator dinged its arrival.

  Kris and her team turned toward the doors as they slid open. There stood an Iteeche, General Konga of the Imperial Guard. Beside him was a Marine captain, calm as if every day he escorted generals with way too many eyes, elbows, and knees around the Human embassy.

  General Konga raised both his top hands to shade his eyes, the Iteeche salute. Kris and her team raised their right hand, returning the honor.

  "Oh," Kris said, "you're not in formal dress."

  The Iteeche raised all four of his eyebrows. "Did I miss something? Is there a parade today?"

  Kris chuckled. "No, General, no parade. I should have checked in with your escort to learn what your uniform of the day was. I take what you're wearing is an undress uniform?"

  "My everyday uniform. Yes."

  "Nelly, change Abby and I to undress whites and Jack to undress khaki."

  In a moment, the spare Smart Metal™ was flowing off Kris and her team to merge back into the deck. In the place of full dress uniforms, the three Humans now stood in undress uniform shirts and trousers.

  The Imperial Guard general shook his head. Because the Iteeche had a backbone that was just two long bones, a head shake had to start at the hips, so his entire body ended up twisting slowly back and forth.

  "I wish you Humans would stop doing things like that with your magic metal." He seemed to frown, something not easy with the hard beak for a nose and mouth that evolution had given the Iteeche as well as a few facial muscles. However, Kris was getting better at reading Iteeche faces.

  He was definitely frowning.

  "You do so many things with your magic metal. Did your computer just weave cloth out of it and duplicate all your medals?"

  "I'm afraid that you found us relaxing on the observation deck in very informal clothes, General," Kris admitted. "Rather than delay our meeting until we could return to our quarters and dress properly, yes, I asked Nelly to program us up some uniforms of Smart Metal."

  "I could understand you using the magic metal to create armor for you Humans, but simple cloth? How is that possible?"

  "Actually, General," Nelly said from Kris's neck, "it's no harder to spin cloth out of Smart Metal than it is to create ceramic armor. It all depends on the way I program it. The bed I sleep on, the pillow I lay my head on, and the fluffy towel that I dry myself on after I take a shower are all made of the exact same stuff as these instruments are made from, or the thick armor that protects this battle station."

  "Magic," the Iteeche spat. "Magic. And the Nelly computer around your neck is just more of the magic. How did we people ever think we could defeat you aliens?"

  "Neither of our people intended or wanted to fight each other," Kris pointed out, referring to the Iteeche-Human War of ninety years past. "Your masterless men and our pirates stumbled into each other and started the fight. I'm just glad my Chooser of many generations, Grampa to me and King Raymond I to everyone else, could resolve the war before it became too bitter to end."

  "I as well. Speaking of now," the general said, his eyes roving over the battle station, "is one of these devices your people attend to the one that lets you keep track of all the messages we commit to our net?"

  Kris hadn't expected a question that blunt. She'd have to dance around it carefully. She didn't want to actually lie to someone she needed to work with.

  "What makes you think we can do that?" she asked.

  The Iteeche's four eyes continued to rove the battle station. "I have talked with the battle leaders of both the We and Quo Clans. They told me how aware you were of the treacherous plans of the Wo and Domm Clans. You knew down to almost the exact moment when they would move to capture the Emperor. How, but with access to our comm lines, could you have known that?"

  "Actually, it was easy. There was way too much easy talk among the middle grade officers in the armories. After you hear the forty-eleventh say how excited he is and that his men are ready to move out at o-dark-early, you know something's afoot. The JOs called it pretty close to when they got their move-out orders. Meanwhile, I had deployed my troops in innocent-looking trucks of Smart Metal based on the loose talk among those junior clan lordlings."

  "Oh yes," the Imperial Guard General mused. "you do have those tiny dust motes with eyes and ears. Still, how did you come to be right there, ready to block the attacks on the entrances to the Imperial Precincts by what looked like just random civilians?"

  "General, that was just using our head," Kris said. "Anyone who wanted to seize the Emperor would have to breach the Imperial grounds. I didn't know how or when they would do that, but I positioned myself and some of my forces to be there, waiting for them to make their move. When the so called ‘rabble’ began to tramp toward your gate guards, I moved to block their way."

  "With armored gun trucks," the general pointed out. "Armored gun trucks that close to the Imperial Palace." He gave Kris the sternest look she'd ever seen from an Iteeche. "That is forbidden."

  Kris had to squelch a grin as she said, "Yes, I parked armored trucks nearby where they could slide in between your guards and the rabble. Only when your guards asked for our active help did the armored trucks become armored gun trucks."

  "There you go, using that magic metal again," the general growled as he filled in for himself how armored trucks suddenly became armored gun trucks.

  "Yes. When we needed guns, we spun them out of our Smart Metal. We had propellent for the autocannons, but until your officer asked for our help in defending the Emperor, there were no guns."

  "You Humans are sly creatures."

  "Say, rather, that we have technology that allows us to meet our duty to your Emperor without violating the laws of your Empire."

  The Guard General shook his head. "You think of so many ways to use that magic metal. We make the battlecruisers or tanks or wheeled gun trucks that you have shown us how to make, but we can't seem to think of ways to program new uses like you do."

  "If you will permit me to speak truth as it is known to me," Kris said slowly, "the Iteeche Empire puts a lot of effort into doing things the way it has always been done. Your clan leaders send runners to carry messages from one clan to another. That must slow the business of the day down very much."

  "You get on the commlink and talk all the time," the general said. "There are those who do not wish to live at the end of a red-hot wire stuck up their butts."

  Kris and the humans around her chuckled. "Yes. There are a lot of Humans who would agree with you on that. Still, we have bureaucracies where different people are responsible for different things, much like you Iteeche. Minor problems are solved by minor officials. Only the most difficult problems should show up on the senior people's desks."

  "Does it work out well that way?" General Konga asked.

  Kris looked at her team.

  "Not even close," Abby drawled ruefully. "Still, you bop someone on the head, and he knows not to send the easy stuff up to his boss the next time. You bop him enough, and he learns . . . or you get someone else who will."

  The general slowly shook his head. "I wonder if we could learn things like that."

  "That's what kids are for," Kris s
aid. "Each generation starts the struggle all over again."

  "And the older generation complains about them all the time," Abby said, with a chuckle.

  "You Humans and your affection for those you spawn. . . is it wrong to say you Chose them?" General Konga said.

  "We women produce them from our own bodies, or vessels we call uterine replicators," Kris said. "Yes, we know they are flesh of our flesh and we raise them up to be as full of piss and virtue as we can."

  "Hmm, we should talk more about that another time. Now, could we go up to your observation deck? I have some concerns that we must resolve."

  Kris raised an inquiring eyebrow, but the Iteeche likely didn't understand the gesture . . . or ignored it.

  Since he said no more, Kris led the way to the secure hatch and up to the observation deck.

  She allowed herself a sigh of relief. The general hadn't asked again about where the 24-inch lasers that had armed the battlecruisers were aimed. She hadn't let him see that they covered a 360 degree circle around the embassy. A circle that included aiming huge battle lasers in the direction of the Imperial Palace.

  Kris didn't expect an attack from the Palace. She did expect that an attack could be mounted from the mountains 50 kilometers in the distance. Yes, her embassy was ready to apply heavy laser power in every direction.

  3

  At the top of the stairs, the four of them paused to take in the rare view of the Iteeche Capital from 450 meters up.

  "You can see everything from up here," Imperial Guard General Konga said after doing a slow walk around the perimeter of the observation deck.

  "Yes, we can," Kris answered.

  He paused facing the tree-covered precincts of the Imperial Palace. It was surrounded by a flooded moat of gray stone etched in the green of what the Iteeche no doubt called moss.

  Looking hard at over 60 square kilometers of trees, lakes, and buildings, the general asked, "Which one of those devices above our head is the spy glass you use to watch on Imperial Precincts?"

  "I have no optics focused on the Imperial Palace grounds," Kris answered, careful to be honest.

  "No, nothing so prosaic. I imagine you use those dust motes with eyes and ears. Tell me, do they drift around the palace or do they stick to the trees and flowers?"

  "Likely a little of both," Kris admitted.

  "Well, that's honest of you."

  "Would you rather we be taken by surprise when the next treachery occurs?"

  The Imperial Guard General, charged with protecting the physical person of the young Emperor, turned from the view. "No. The times are strange when my most trusted ally in the protection of the Emperor's life is a hated Human."

  "I hope that if I earn your trust, I will no longer be hated," Kris said.

  "But most of the Iteeche in this city were taught to hate you Humans from the moment we were Chosen and passed into the Palace of Learning."

  "Can hate be unlearned?" Kris asked.

  "Let us hope so," the general said, turning from the view of the Imperial Palace. He glanced down at the Embassy Palace beneath him. "I see that you have not repeated your cold and threatening image of a dagger in the heart of our capital."

  "Dagger?" Kris asked.

  "That gleaming monstrosity you hung in the sky over your last palace."

  "I'd intended it to look like a starship," Kris said.

  "That's not what it looked like to us."

  "Hmm. Nelly, why did you choose this architectural form for my new embassy?"

  "The embassy is in the shape of a U with the open end pointed out from the palace toward the rest of the city. This reflects the structures regularly repeated in the Iteeche apartments. Some are U's. Others are in the form of E's. All use the space between wings for greenery or pools of water," Nelly replied.

  "So, you are trying to do something like we Iteeche do," the general said.

  "Yes, only much bigger. We need more space, so I built a much taller version of the standard U.

  "But you aimed the U toward the city," the general pointed out.

  "Yes. I thought it would be better if the average Iteeche saw us as more like them," Nelly said,

  "You've also softened the surface of your building. It's not so much dazzling chrome and glass."

  "I made it to look more like stone," Nelly answered. "I also broke up the hard lines of the building with balconies of different sizes."

  "And bought up about all the available greenery within a thousand lu of the palace," the general said.

  "Some of those will be gardens for growing Human produce," Nelly answered. "We hope to grow many fruit trees, our own grapes, and some of the heartier perennial grains."

  "We Humans," Kris said, stepping back into the conversation, "have an ancient story about the hanging gardens of Babylon. We are hoping that we can present a green and fresh face to the Iteeche, both those in the palace and those who work for them."

  The general nodded. "And that place down there that looks like an entire floor or more?"

  At about the fiftieth floor, far below them, the entire U was filled with a large open-air space.

  Kris chuckled. "That, good general, is a playground. It has a huge swimming pool, a water park, exercise space, and room for our children to run and scream and grow their small muscles into larger ones."

  "A playground for children? That large?"

  "We have a lot of children in the embassy, General. But it's not just the children's play area. A lot of their parents love to play with them. My own children were complaining about not getting out into the open air. Now they and their friends can. We're also shipping air from up here to down there. Along with the scent of growing things, it should make for a very good experience."

  "You Humans never cease to amaze me," General Konga said as he turned back to face the Imperial Palace grounds. However, it wasn't the green space he focused on but something closer.

  "Do you know how many interesting things your taking possession of the Domm Clan's district is making possible?"

  Kris shook her head.

  "Your gift of the apartments next to the palace in your borough is giving my officers and men chances to express themselves as never before."

  Kris listened intently, waiting for the general to go on.

  "Privacy is something rare for an Iteeche, but much sought after. For want of space, my Guardsmen and even officers live in barracks. The females we associate with live in harems. They aren't restricted to them, but still. Men sleep in one part of the barracks, women in another. They may spend time with each other over meals or at entertaining sing-alongs, but still, they go their separate ways."

  "I had heard that," Kris said.

  "Now, we have space to spread out. We have six apartment buildings that are ours. Can you imagine what that is like?"

  "No, I can't," Kris admitted. "Even our warships can expand to give people space. Then, come a battle, we shrink them down into fighting ships."

  "Well, you have done something to my Guardsmen and their women. To the sailors and their women. Taking this space away from the Domm Clan and giving it to us, the lowest of the low, is changing things. For us. For them. Maybe for the Iteeche Empire."

  "My father warned me that we rarely do just one thing," Kris said. "I wanted to take the space away from the Domm Clan. They'd lost and I wanted them to appear to all as having lost. I also thought that your Guardsmen and the sailors deserved more respect."

  "Oh, we are getting respect," General Konga said. "Respect that we are feeling. Space like we never would have expected. You have to understand, we soldiers, sailors, and Marines are the leftovers. We weren't good enough to be selected by the Choosers. Still, we were good enough not to be flushed through the grinder and turned into fish food for the next pool full of fingerlings. We were plucked out to namelessly serve the Empire. Members of the clans have long names that identify their pedigree. We have a name that they can use to holler at us."

  Kris had never detected this
taste of bitterness from an Iteeche officer. Was it universal or just something that was stuck in this general's craw? It was hard to tell. She'd need to have this talk with Admiral Tong when she found time.

  "Yesterday," the general went on, "I was inspecting living spaces. In the apartment of one of my junior officers, I found a woman. I asked him if he had chosen her for a concubine. He said that she had chosen him. He had the silliest grin on his face, but he made it worse. The two of them had a . . . I guess you Humans would call it an aquarium. He had been granted permission to be a Chooser after his gallantry in the defense of the Emperor. The two of them had mated and brought the fruit of their mating home to watch them grow. They know they can choose only one, but they are watching them all."

  The general turned to glare at Kris with all four of his eyes. "The two of them looked at those tadpoles just as smitten as I see you Humans with your children."

  "Hmm," Kris said. "That is . . . interesting."

  "Is that what you call it? Interesting? I call it shocking."

  "I call it change," Kris said.

  "Yes. Change. Change such as this old Empire has not seen in several eons."

  "Maybe the young Iteeche they raise will be the seeds that flower with the sort of change we were talking about earlier," Kris pointed out.

  "It is still frightening to an old man like me."

  "Do you have a woman friend?" Kris asked.

  "Yes," he snarled. "And she says she is tired of living in a harem with the other women and would very much like to share my quarters."

  Kris said nothing. Not a word.

  The silence between them stretched out and began to bend in the middle. Before long, it would be a pretzel if someone didn't talk.

  Kris kept her silence.

  "Worse, several of the woman are asking their men for arms training. Just yesterday, I came across a class in the exercise room. An old Marine sergeant was teaching twenty women how to fight, hand-to-hand. I am scheduled to visit our firing range. I must requalify on my sidearms every half year. I have been warned that I may see many Guardsmen there, training their women how to shoot. It seems that some of the women shoot better than the men."