Kris Longknife: Daring Read online

  The Wasp had already been moved into space dock before Kris got back from her little confab with her great-grandfathers. With dockworkers crawling all over the ship, Kris moved herself and her staff down to Wardhaven. Nuu House was waiting for her.

  It was also empty except for the old family retainers. Harvey, her driver since first grade, and his wife, Loddy, the cook, made Kris and her staff feel right at home.

  For a change, Kris did the dutiful-daughter things. She called to see if she could have supper with Father . . . the Prime Minister . . . and Mother.

  Unfortunately, both of their schedules were too full to make room for the prodigal daughter.

  No surprise there.

  She did call her brother, Honovi. She was dutifully invited over to hold the new baby. Brenda, named for Kris’s mother, allowed her newly minted aunt to hold her, then promptly spit up on Kris’s blues and was removed by a nanny for cleaning.

  Honovi was on a slow burn; he had not forgiven Kris for being included in the meeting with the Iteeche while he was given the bum’s rush by Grampa Ray. What with a small fleet of ships headed for Wardhaven, he and the prime minister had finally been brought fully up to speed. Still, he was not happy to be so late to the party.

  Kris left after barely fifteen minutes.

  “Oh, sis, I hear you’re leaving to explore the very heart of the galaxy,” Kris muttered to herself in her brother’s voice as Harvey drove her back to Nuu House. “I hope it won’t be too dangerous. Do take care of yourself, little sister,” she finished with a sigh.

  Brother had mentioned that Father had been forced to call for new elections. The opposition insisted the present Parliament could not ratify the constitution the old Parliament had negotiated.

  To Kris, that seemed quite reasonable, but somehow Brother made it all sound like it was Kris’s fault.

  Given a choice between helping Brother and Father run for reelection and hunting the galaxy for bug-eyed monsters, Kris found BEMs winning by a nose.

  Chasing pirates was a runaway favorite.

  Family duties fulfilled, Kris looked for other fun. Taking a now-thirteen-year-old shopping sounded like just the ticket. Besides, Kris had been promising Cara a trip to the malls. Kris remembered what it was like to be young and have a credit chit burning a hole in your pocket.

  Somehow it didn’t come up in conversation until Cara was attacking several rows of very-cool-looking dresses that her credit chit was now zero. Nada. Empty.

  “Auntie Teresa took me shopping while you were meeting with those old guys,” Cara admitted. “We got the most gad dress. It flashes lights, and you can have it send out messages. Dada can make them flash real fast.”

  Kris raised an eyebrow to her maid, Cara’s only flesh-andblood aunt.

  Abby shrugged. “Which of those unspoken questions do you want me to answer first. Nelly, it’s your kid that has my niece flashing ‘those’ words.”

  “And I am not happy at all. At all at all,” Nelly said, sounding more like a granny than a proud mother. “I am trying to explain to Dada that humans have ‘things’ that are not at all logical. She is learning.”

  “Mighty slowly for a supercomputer,” Abby said, dryly.

  Kris wanted the other half of her questioning eyebrow answered. “About her zero credit balance? For a spy, you’re letting your boss get strangely surprised.”

  “Oh, that,” Abby said. “Doctors shouldn’t operate on their own families, and you can’t expect me to be all that good of a spy where my own flesh and blood is concerned. Besides, that girl is learning from the best of us.”

  “Worst of you,” Nelly put in.

  “Whatever. She got in her shopping run with Teresa de Alva while I was biting my tongue and sitting on my hands listening to you and your family not communicate. Then we had to move down here, and when we got things all settled, somehow it didn’t come up. She didn’t lie to me. It just never came up.”

  “Until we walked in here,” Kris said with a half smile teasing at her lips.

  Cara was back with a surprisingly colorful and traditional peasant dress. The bustline highlighted that the twirling sprite wearing it was not a little girl anymore, but Cara didn’t seem to notice.

  What Kris was delighted to notice was that Cara’s smile had come out to play once more.

  After Kris and her Marines had liberated Cara and flattened Port Royal, Cara had been painfully quiet. Now she walked where before she skipped or ran. Worst, that infectious smile that played on her lips had gone away.

  Kids have to grow up. Inevitably, they learn that the world is not as safe as the adults around them try to make it. Somewhere in the process, that childish laugh, the innocent smile, get lost.

  Kris could only imagine what Cara had gone through as a slave on a drug plantation. Kris had feared Cara’s smile was gone forever.

  Today, for this bangle or that glam, it came back out.

  So Kris paid for the dress. And the skirt and blouse. And both pairs of shoes.

  “Shopping therapy,” Nelly said, as they waited for Cara to try on “One, last dress. No more.”

  “Where’d you hear that?” Abby asked the computer.

  “I read it somewhere. Mind you, with this princess lady, I’ve never actually seen it in operation, but, hey, I can recognize it when I see it.”

  The three of them fell silent. Somewhere back in the dressing room, Cara was singing. Kris tried to remember when she’d ever been so happy she just had to sing.

  She couldn’t.

  “Are you going to send us away now?” Abby asked.

  “Send you away?” Kris started at the abrupt change of topic.

  “There are not going to be many dress balls where you’re heading. And not a lot of snooping that a maid can do.” Abby swallowed something hard. “I figure you’ll want to leave me and Cara behind.”

  Kris shook her head. “I don’t think I could afford to break your contract. You had a good lawyer draw it up, and my mom never did have a head for legalese.”

  Abby snorted. “What paperwork have you been reading?”

  “Maybe it wasn’t paper I was reading. Maybe it had something to do with a human heart. If you want to come, you’ll always have a berth by my side.”

  “And Cara?”

  “Do you really want to take her out on the limb I’ll no doubt be sawing off?” Kris asked.

  Abby didn’t answer for a long minute. Her eyes were on the door to the dressing room, but Kris suspected, from the distant look, that she was seeing something else.

  “Cara told me that when she was captured she kept going because she remembered Bruce saying ‘Marines never leave anyone behind.’ Poor kid, Cara was none too sure she qualified for that promise, but she kept holding to it, no matter what happened.”

  Kris nodded. She’d found Cara a major pain in the neck . . . but there had been no question that the Wasp was going after the kid. Cara was one of their own.

  “You should have seen the look on her face when Sergeant Steve and his team came charging into that drug field where they had her. She’d done her best to keep her head down and be good, but she’d just done something I would have done, and her luck was all run out. Then a Marine stomps in, and all bets are canceled.”

  “I was kind of busy elsewhere,” Kris pointed out.

  “You’ve got to change your scheduling priorities, Kris. You miss too much of the fun stuff.”

  “Tell me about it,” Kris said with a sigh.

  “Anyway, for the last two, three weeks, Cara has been kind of sinking into this idea that she does have a home. She does have people who won’t leave her behind. You know what I mean.”

  “Sort of,” Kris said. “But Abby, this is not my usual kind of mess. If it’s a choice of leading monsters back to human space and not coming back at all, well . . .”

  Abby snorted. “You done gone and changed on me, kid?”

  “Changed?”

  “Yeah. I’ve followed your sorry ass thr
ough all kinds of smelly hell. I’ve seen people do their absolute best to put an end to your breathing. And you refuse their kind offers and just keep right on taking in air and letting it out.”

  “A habit of mine,” Kris admitted.

  “Well,” said Abby. “You’re mighty good at it, and I don’t expect you to fail to keep on keeping on.”

  “That’s very definitely my plan.” Kris admitted.

  “So, there are billions of kids Cara’s age. Billions more that ain’t been born yet. I don’t see that we’ll be any less careful of their futures if we have one of them edging around the door, looking in on us while we decide if she and they will ever have a chance to grow up.”

  “Now that you put it that way,” Kris said, “I don’t see any problem with you sharing your room with Cara.

  Cara bounced out of the dressing room, wearing an ankle-length skirt that chimed like a mad carillon when she spun in it.

  “I’ll have it put on our tab,” Nelly said without being told.

  5

  “I brought along three replenishment ships and a repair ship to accompany the four battlewagons,” Vicky said proudly, as Kris greeted her on the USS Wasp’s quarterdeck.

  “I watched that parade the Fury led in,” Kris said. “Between the big guns and the big cargo capacity, you look ready for anything.”

  “Her father, my Emperor, requires it,” said Vice Admiral Georg Krätz, commander of BatRon 12, all its supporting elements, and one Victoria Smythe-Peterwald, now a lieutenant in her father, the emperor’s, Navy.

  “I think Dad was afraid I’d starve to death or run out of oxygen or maybe break a nail and not have a file,” Vicky said, dismissively.

  “I think he’s more worried about why Iteeche scouts are not coming back at the end of their voyages,” the admiral said darkly, “and very much wants his daughter back after this voyage.”

  Vicky gave him a sideways glance. “I wish I really believed that. I’m not at all sure his new wife wants me back. And her already preggers with a boy, not that she doesn’t mention that every five minutes.

  “And it’s going to be a body birth. No auto-jug for my new brother. Dad is just always checking in on her. He has Brother’s heart monitor forwarded to his personal computer. Old men should not be fathers!” Vicky said in exasperation.

  Kris had been delighted to have a younger brother. But then she’d been four and already being bossed around by a big brother. To her, Eddy looked like a chance for Kris to even up the bossing. Vicky’s experience of her big brother, now deceased thanks to Kris, had not been a topic for much conversation.

  At fifteen, Kris had made the discovery that her family met most of the requirements for dysfunctional. Poor Vicky had only recently come to that conclusion.

  From the sound of things, the Peterwalds were about to plumb new depths on the dysfunctional scale. In the back of Kris’s head, a small alarm went off. People died in the games Peterwalds played.

  So how could Kris keep her distance?

  Funny thing, people died around those damn Longknifes. Now it was Kris’s turn to watch her back around someone else.

  “How’d your father take to us digging the dirt on the economic wool that’s being pulled over his eyes?”

  Vicky snorted. “He didn’t. He didn’t believe me. Didn’t want to do anything about it. Didn’t want to hear another word about it. If you ask me, between my stepmom’s not liking the sight of me and Dad’s not wanting to hear about the way he’s being snookered on the economy, he’s glad to be rid of me.”

  Kris shook her head. As much as she wanted to hear more about this, she said, “You’ll have to bring me up to date on all the gossip later.”

  “You girls do that on your own time,” Admiral Krätz said, “but I have some official business to perform.” He pulled a flat box from his pocket.

  The form of the box was familiar. They usually held a military decoration of some level, but Kris was more than surprised when he flipped the lid up.

  A blue Maltese cross was surrounded by golden eagles. Kris would have mistaken it for finely crafted jewelry except for the words written on the decoration.

  Pour le Mérite

  “Dad, being emperor and all, decided he should start doing emperor stuff, like having a greatest and highest award. The Order of Merit. Or Mé-rite as he insists it be pronounced. Anyway, you’re the first to get it. That oak leaf at the top, that’s for valor. Only people who earn it in combat get the oak-leaf version.”

  “What am I getting this for?” Kris asked. “Is there a citation to go with that?”

  “Everyone else got a citation on parchment suitable for framing,” Vicky said. “Somehow you got skipped. You can decide whether it’s for surviving the admiral here lasing you from orbit on Port Royal, or liberating Kaskatos from our rogue state-security nut, or for saving Dad’s neck on Birridas. Your call.”

  “Ah, no citation to read at my award ceremony, huh?”

  “Award ceremony? What award ceremony?” the admiral said, looking around blandly. “You’ve got the medal. You can explain it the same way you do that Order of the Wounded Lion.”

  “I don’t explain it,” Kris said sourly.

  “Just so.”

  Kris pocketed the award; one more thing to add to her growing collection of stuff she rarely wore because of the problem of explaining it all. It was time to get down to business.

  “Admirals Channing and Kōta are already waiting in the Forward Lounge with their command teams. I see you brought yours.” Kris eyed the large collection of Greenfeld Navy and Marine officers who followed behind Vicky and the admiral as they went through the ceremony of crossing the Wasp’s quarterdeck.

  Most looked familiar.

  “You bringing everyone who was with you at Port Royal?” Kris asked.

  “In truth, we have orders to make ourselves scarce,” the admiral said. “After the slaughter at Port Royal, there was never any doubt my battle squadron was to be exiled with you. While the Greenfeld Navy, er, I mean Imperial Navy is happy to have Port Royal as a Navy colony, no one wants me running into any stockholders of N. S. Holding Group. The only question was whether or not the young grand duchess here got to come along for the ride.”

  “Dad took some persuading.”

  “I can imagine. Grampa Ray is making noises like he doesn’t want me doing this either.”

  “I thought your gramps considered you so totally expendable,” Vicky said.

  “I sure did,” Kris agreed.

  “One would think so after perusing your file,” the admiral said.

  “Grampa Ray had me to dinner last night,” Kris said. “He spent half the meal trying to convince me that my different assignments had been intended for my development.”

  “Development!” Vicky said. “Did he read the same file I did?”

  “Selfsame,” Kris said. “The other half of the meal he tried to talk me out of leading this scouting mission.”

  “Did he?” the admiral asked.

  “Not bleeding likely,” Kris said.

  They reached the Forward Lounge. A Marine guard held the door open for them, then closed it behind them.

  “You’re keeping this meeting quite secure,” the admiral observed.

  “Yes,” Kris said. “I didn’t invite Crossie. There will be no leaks from my meeting.”

  “Did King Raymond’s Chief of Intelligence admit to being the source of the leaks?” the admiral asked.

  “Yes, and no, and maybe. The man is pathologically incapable of telling the truth. At least Grampa Ray is no longer holding me responsible for the leaks.”

  No one announced “Attention on Deck” when Admiral Krätz entered. The Forward Lounge already had two other admirals present. Adding complications to the etiquette challenge were the princess and grand duchess. A consensus had apparently formed that the Forward Lounge was a private restaurant, owned and operated by its own contractor, even if the containers were presently attached to the USS W
asp. When Kris introduced Krätz to Channing and Kōta, they all kept it informal although Kōta did give both Kris and Vicky a very stiff bow from the waist.

  NELLY, DOES MUSASHI HAVE AN EMPEROR? I FORGOT.

  YES AND NO, KRIS. MUSASHI PROFESSES TO OWE AFFECTION TO THE EMPEROR ON YAMATO. HOWEVER, FOR THE LAST TWO HUNDRED YEARS SINCE ITS FOUNDING, THEY HAVE KIND OF GROWN THEIR OWN EMPEROR. A PRINCE OF THE IMPERIAL BLOOD, THE EMPEROR’S KID BROTHER, STARTED OUT BEING A KIND OF VICEROY BUT AFTER TWO OR THREE GENERATIONS, THE BIRD IN THE HAND WAS A LOT MORE REVERED THAN THE BIRD FIFTY LIGHT-YEARS AWAY.

  ISN’T THAT CONFUSING?

  ONLY TO OUR WAY OF THINKING, KRIS. I UNDERSTAND THAT THE JAPANESE ARE MUCH BETTER THAN YOU AT HOLDING TWO CONTRADICTORY OPINIONS AT THE SAME TIME AND NOT BEING BOTHERED BY IT.

  Kris did her best to not let her internal discussion with Nelly reach her face as she returned a half bow to the admiral. The highest introductions done, Kris glanced around the room. The captain, XO, and Marine detachment skipper for her ships held down the left-hand side of the room, closest to the bar, though that watering hole seemed decidedly unbusy tonight. The representatives from Musashi and Helvetica occupied the middle, while the Imperial Greenfeld contingent took up nearly half the room on the right.

  “Let’s get started,” Kris said, and went to stand with her back to the forward viewing screen. In space, that usually showed a lovely view of stars. At the moment, all it showed was the ugly underside of a working space station.

  “Admirals, ladies, and gentlemen, good afternoon,” Kris said. The room fell silent as all heads turned to her. Captain Jack Montoya, the skipper of the Wasp’s Marine detachment and chief of Kris’s security detail, came to stand a bit behind her and off to one side. Even here, on her ship, he didn’t relax the alertness he’d acquired as her Secret Service agent. Some might say his devotion was excessive.

  Kris had survived enough assassination attempts to appreciate it.

  In the silence, Kris continued, “I suspect we all know why we’re here. In order to make sure we all understand it the same way, I’d like to lead you through a short review.”