Kris Longknife: Defender Read online

  Kris had yet to get around to telling Granny Rita about Nelly Net, the ability she and Nelly had to talk directly to each other and to talk to anyone who had on one of Nelly’s kids. There were a lot of things they just hadn’t had time for, Kris told herself.

  “We’re getting some interesting stuff,” came from Professor Labao. “We’ve only done a small part of the search, but we haven’t found a single body. Not even a skull. It’s too soon to tell for sure, but it looks like someone went over this entire ship and removed every dead body, body part, or blood smear.”

  “That’s what we found on the planet they murdered,” Kris told Granny. “No graveyard. If it wasn’t for three women murdered and their bodies hidden among all the native ones, we would have nothing on that bunch of murderers.”

  Granny made a face. “Beasts that they are, they seem to revere their dead.”

  “That, or they want to use them for reaction mass,” Jack growled.

  “We think we’re finding hydroponic gardens as well as vats for growing proteins. The vegetation is very dead. The tanks and vats are drained,” the professor added.

  “See if we can get any residue,” Kris ordered. “It would help to know if they recycle their dead in the hydroponic tanks and what kind of vat meat they ate.”

  “We’re on it already,” the professor answered.

  “We’ve just found something else interesting. It looks like someone dug a hole in the wreck so they could get out the reactors that hadn’t blown,” said Professor Labao.

  One screen went from four windows to just one. Yes, there was a huge tunnel into the wreck. Nanos following it found relatively undamaged portions of the ship, but some large chunks had been hastily removed with welding torches. There were a lot of thick power cables leading into those holes.

  “Best bet,” the professor said, “is that reactors and their superconducting containment gear were hauled out through this hole. It’s about the most expensive gear aboard a ship. That, and its weapons systems.”

  “Is there evidence of the lasers being taken out?” Kris asked to anyone listening on net. “Also, have we found the bridge?”

  “The forward section of the ship took a lot of damage. This monster and her baby monsters might have been slaughtering the battleships, but we humans were getting our licks in, too,” came with a touch of pride from Captain Drago.

  “This is a huge ship, Your Highness,” Professor Joao Labao said respectfully but firmly. “Rome was not built in a day, and we will not plumb its secrets in an afternoon.”

  “Well, so far you’ve got plenty to interest me,” Kris said. “Have your boffins get the nanos collecting as much data as they can because I don’t intend to spend a day here waiting for whoever has the salvage contract on this mother to wander back through that jump point,” Kris said.

  “I couldn’t have said it better myself,” Captain Drago said.

  “Your Highness, we have something I think you will find very interesting,” the professor said, as if to placate an irascible princess.

  Smart man.

  “I have seen that video of a very large choir addressing a huge audience, followed by a lone man giving quite a long harangue to his listeners.” The subject video, picked up while the USS Hornet was running for its life, showed up in a small window.

  “I think we have found that room.”

  The screen that had been showing the huge tunnel now switched to show a massive auditorium. No, from the fine decorations, it was more like an opera house. There was statuary, usually of the same man in an heroic pose and white columns along the walls separating box seats that looked quite plush. The common people, however, were packed in row upon row, balcony atop balcony. The aisles were narrow to allow room for more seats.

  “To fill as many seats as those with only aisles that size, I’d have to march them in, like Marines,” Jack said. “I’m not sure my line troops would put up with that kind of regimentation.”

  “Lots and lots of people, marching in lockstep,” Kris said.

  “You told me,” Granny Rita said, “about one ship you blew up after it attacked you being filled to the gills with people. It looks like they filled a monster ship like this just as tightly.”

  “We are looking into what we think are the crew quarters,” the professor said. “I’ve heard of places on Earth that pack the unemployed into cramped public housing, but this is something entirely different. There’s barely room to slip yourself into a bed from a narrow passageway. No privacy. Just stacks and stacks of beds.”

  “Huge numbers of people who just want to kill us,” Penny said. She had argued the hardest against Kris launching her tiny command into a battle with so little intelligence on the target. Now the look on her face bore the sadness of the ages. “How are we going to kill all these people?” she finally said.

  “They’ve got to talk to us before we have to do that,” Kris insisted.

  “Kris Longknife, an optimist?” Jack said with a bit of a smile. Jack was the only man alive she’d let get away with something like that.

  Still, she elbowed him in the ribs.

  He put both hands up in surrender and retreated behind a wide grin.

  Granny Rita gave the two of them the eye. They sobered quickly and returned to the problem at hand.

  “Kris, could we get a better look at the ceiling of the place?” Nelly asked.

  One of the nanos dutifully began scanning the overhead. It took several seconds before the immense ceiling was resolved into a single picture.

  “Dots. Lots of dots,” Penny said.

  “In a random pattern,” Kris added, stroking her chin.

  “If that thick belt of dots isn’t the Milky Way, then I’ve never looked at a star chart in my life,” Granny Rita said.

  “Professor,” Nelly said. “I need to combine several of the nanos in this room and close by. I want to get a full coverage and very exact copy of that picture.”

  “What are you thinking, Nelly?” Kris asked.

  “I think someone went to a lot of trouble to put a very exact sky on the ceiling of this very large room that they regularly filled with people. Kris, have you heard of the Sistine Chapel?”

  “We did take art history in college, Nelly,” Kris said sarcastically.

  “Yes, but I could never tell how much you were paying attention and how much you were just using me for an easy A.”

  “Nelly, what happened to you being polite?” Kris asked.

  “Auntie Tru is on the other side of the galaxy and there’s no way you can threaten to take me in for her to look under my nonexistent hood.”

  Kris was beginning to wonder who else might be taking advantage of their being so far from home that the threat of sending them dirtside was very much out of the question.

  “Tell me, Nelly,” Jack said. “I didn’t take art history in college. Why is the Sistine Chapel so important to our present conversation?”

  “You did so take art history,” Nelly snapped. “I have access to all your records, Jack, I will have you know.”

  “Nelly, get back on topic,” Kris snapped.

  “The Sistine Chapel was a place of worship. It was decorated with some magnificent artwork for the instruction and edification of those attending services there. The pope in charge at the time spent a lot of money to have that ceiling painted although he had a war on and paying the painter was regularly a second priority to paying his army. Anyway, I wonder if this is not such a special artifact. I am merging several nanos so that I can get a high-definition recording of not only the precise relations of the stars to each other but also any color texturing the stars might have.”

  “You think this might represent the night sky over a unique planet?” Penny said.

  “I think it’s possible.”

  “Let me know as soon as you finish that, Nelly,” Kris
said.

  “Yes, your not so smart Highness,” Nelly said, her voice more smug than any computer had a right to be.

  “Alert, Alert,” Nelly’s voice came in a totally different tenor, and it came over the entire 1MC. “A ship has just exited the nearest jump point. Ship matches the profile of one of the smaller hostile ships. Just four or five hundred thousand tons of crazy kill you.”

  The bong-bong of the battle-station Klaxon went off.

  “This is no drill. Man your battle stations. All hands, man your battle stations. This is no drill,” resounded through the ship.

  4

  “Bath time,” Kris yelled as she led the way from the truncated Forward Lounge. Jack was at her elbow. Granny Rita led the Alwans, who once again looked like they wanted to take flight. Penny followed up the rear, doing her best to shoo along any who tarried without actually touching them.

  Alwans did not like to be touched by Heavy People.

  That was something Kris hoped Nelly’s translator would explain.

  Assuming they survived the next few minutes.

  Behind them, the last vestige of the Forward Lounge melted away, as did the passageway they trotted down, just as fast as they left it.

  The Wasp was moving to protect herself.

  “The jump has spit out a second ship. Same type,” Nelly announced.

  The distance from the Forward Lounge to Kris’s Tac Center just off the bridge was a surprisingly short gallop. The water tanks were there, already filled, with lids hanging open like waiting coffins.

  The Alwans balked.

  “They’re claustrophobic,” Granny Rita said. “I’d better show them how. Is it better not to go into the tank clothed?”

  “The Iteeche never wore clothes.”

  In a moment, the old girl was down to the buff and climbing into the tank. She was clicking and cooing at the others.

  SHE’S TELLING THEM THAT IF SHE CAN DO IT, SO CAN THEY, Nelly told Kris. I’M PRETTY SURE OF THAT TRANSLATION.

  Five removed what little they wore and went, reluctantly, into the tanks. The sixth balked.

  HE SAYS WE’RE ALL GOING TO DIE, Nelly reported.

  “Granny, you tell him that these are the prey we hunt. Yes, they are bigger than us, but don’t the Alwans hunt prey bigger than them?

  GRANNY JUST TOLD HIM THAT AND THAT IF HE DIDN’T GO INTO THE TANK, HE WILL BE DEAD MEAT AND DISGRACE HIS TRIBE.

  The Alwan went.

  Kris, Jack, and Penny gave the tank residents breathing masks and waited as they verified that they worked. Then they sealed them in, locked them down, and let the tanks top themselves off with water.

  There was a lot of chatter; the air masks had mikes in them. Granny Rita’s last words to Kris were, “You better get your bare ass into your egg, honey.”

  Kris raced for her quarters. Again, they were much closer. Abby was waiting, already stripped. She helped Kris skinny out of her uniform and into her egg, then, as Kris rolled out for the bridge, Abby settled into hers.

  “A third ship just joined the others,” Nelly reported. “They are starting a slow, quarter-gee approach to the wreck.”

  Kris rolled onto the new Wasp’s bridge. It was just like old times. Captain Drago held the command chair. Penny was at Defenses. An older Chief Beni was at Sensors, assisted now by a shy female chief from Musashi. The woman on Navigation was also Musashi Navy; Kris had not had a chance to get to know her like Sulwan Kann.

  “Warning to all hands. We are taking the ship to Condition Zed. We are going to Condition Zed on my mark.” Penny waited a few seconds in case anyone had a strong objection, then announced, “We are setting Condition Zed. Don’t expect anything you’re holding on to to be there in a second.”

  Since everyone was already in their egg, they shouldn’t be holding on to anything.

  The bridge shrank. The skipper, Kris, and Penny were almost rubbing elbows. The overhead was a good half meter closer.

  The only thing that didn’t change was the main screen.

  It was still there, showing death coming for them in living color.

  “Sensors, anything new?” Captain Drago asked.

  “Nothing, sir. They match both the visual and electromagnetic signature of the hostile raiders. Their reactors match to the third decimal. Their radar is active, and they are pinging the hulk.

  “Oh, that was rude!” the senior chief added. “They just lased a small rock.”

  “So much for drifting up behind them again,” Captain Drago said.

  That ambush had worked once. They couldn’t expect it to work forever.

  “Any suggestions, Your Highness?” the skipper asked.

  “They’re out of range of our 18-inch lasers, but they’ll have to flip ship and decelerate to match orbit with this hulk, giving us some up-the-kilt shots at their reactors. Let’s see what happens then.”

  They waited. Waited for something to happen. Waited for the enemy to make a move . . . to make a mistake.

  While doing their best not to make one themselves.

  “Edge us in closer to the wreck,” Captain Drago ordered.

  The helmsman obeyed, but it was no easy job. Even half-destroyed, the hulk was huge, with a gravity well of its own. If Kris and the skipper hadn’t decided to keep the Wasp on the side of the hulk away from the jump point, the natural thing would have been to go into orbit around the wreck.

  The helmsman had been working against the nature of things and the laws of physics. Now he worked against them even more. The navigation jets, never intended for this, got a workout.

  Maybe those gases showed up as a corona around the hulk. Maybe someone on the other side noticed that there were a lot more hot gases in the general vicinity of the dead wreck. For whatever reason, the three alien ships began to spread out, widening their field of view around the dead base ship.

  Hiding behind the hulk got harder.

  “That’s not good,” Captain Drago muttered.

  Kris grinned. “But we get a crack at them one at a time.”

  The skipper frowned at Kris’s optimistic assessment of the situation. “That just might work. Helms, hold steady, but get ready to move us right or left on my order.”

  “Aye, aye, sir.”

  The long wait continued. A hundred thousand kilometers out, the alien ships did what they had to do if they didn’t want to fly right by the hulk. All three flipped ship and began to decelerate at a quarter gee. If all went well, they would arrive at the hulk with no headway, ready to go into its weak orbit.

  Of course, it was Kris’s job to see that things did not go well.

  “The right ship has eight reactors,” the senior chief reported. “The other ships have only six.”

  “I suppose that makes the rightmost ship our target,” Captain Drago said.

  “Main battery is locked and loaded.” The new frigate packed four of those huge battleship guns into her bow. They had great range, but a problem.

  They could be fired only fifteen degrees to the left or right, up or down, of the direction the ship was pointed. Somehow, Captain Drago would have to get his ship over to the right of the wreck fast enough to surprise the enemy but arrive with the bow aimed dead on his target.

  The brilliant engineer who designed the class hadn’t come up with any suggestions as to how you fought his marvelous new toy.

  Then it got more complicated.

  “The Alwans want to know if you are going talk to the aliens,” came over the net from Granny Rita.

  “We’d kind of planned on killing them, Granny. We are outnumbered, and every time we try talking, they just shoot.”

  “The idea of not making any demonstration upsets the Alwans.”

  “The idea of our all getting suddenly dead kind of upsets us, Granny.”

  The nods from around the bridge
supported Kris’s position. They were in the eggs, but the eggs weren’t the all-encompassing containers they would be at four or five gee.

  “Kris, honey, I understand where you’re coming from, believe me. I’ve been where you are. But I have to live with these people. I beg you to accommodate them.”

  Kris had already offered Granny Rita a ride home, if only for full rejuvenation. The strong-willed old woman had turned her down. The Alwans were in danger, and she was not leaving them in their time of need.

  Kris expected that position would cause a lot of trouble. She’d expected that trouble at some indefinite time in the future. Strange how it popped up sooner.

  Well, what do you expect from a Longknife, even one that calls herself Granny Rita Ponsa at the moment.

  “There was the approach you tried on that scout ship in the Iteeche system,” Penny said.

  “There’s not time to launch a communication buoy,” Kris muttered. “Nelly, can you put together some nanos? Make them give off enough noise to seem like a ship, as well as send a ‘we come in peace for all humanity’ message.”

  “It will mean that I lose some of my next child’s matrix,” Nelly complained.

  “I’ll buy you more.”

  “From the other side of the galaxy?”

  “Nelly, we don’t have time for this argument.”

  “I know, Kris. I’m already collecting the nanos and forming them into the craft you require. There is a hole in the wreck we can launch it out of. I’m using the collection of messages we sent the last time. I hope the Alwans won’t mind us sending in Iteeche as well as human.”

  “The hostiles are a hundred thousand klicks out and flipping ship,” Captain Drago said. “I’d like to knock out one or two of them before they’re close enough to ram,” he added dryly.

  “Nelly, launch the diversion,” Kris ordered. “Lasers 1 and 2, prepare to fire; 3 and 4 stand by. Laser 5, maybe we can come up with a target for you.” Laser 5 pointed aft.

  “Helmsman, prepare to rotate ship ninety degrees to starboard, lay on three gees acceleration for five seconds, then rotate ship ninety degrees to port. Lay on one gee but begin Evasion Pattern 6. Understand?” Drago ordered.