Kris Longknife 13.5: Among the Kicking Birds Read online

  “My eggborn has showed me the path your rifles follow. If they are not fed, they do not hunt.”

  “That is the way of it,” Kris said.

  “What do you want so that I and my followers can feed our rifles?”

  “I wish to use some of your land. For that, each full moon, I will give you four of my hands of bullets for each rifle.” Alwa’s single moon took twenty-four days to circle and did fourteen in a year.

  “You broke one of the rifles.”

  “One of you shot at me. Do not make me break more rifles,” was as bare as it was cold.

  The elder ducked his long neck. “We must have no more rifles broken,” he muttered softly.

  Behind him, the other elders ducked their heads.

  Then he went on. “What land do you wish to walk?”

  “Come with me and we will mark it.”

  Kris had eight Marine rigs now. She put two or three senior birds in each one of them and drove back to the breaks. She intentionally drove by the transport planes.

  “That swallows them up and then they fly higher than any bird,” the youngster said.

  The elders in Kris’s rig held their necks long, tall and rigid as they eyed it.

  “Have you seen it?” the father asked the son.

  “It carried me back to you. It was a moon walk to get to the human camp. It was less than a morning to come back.”

  Now heads did duck low.

  Kris marked out the land that she and Jacques had identified on the map. There would be three large blocks of human cultivation, with two large pathways between them and plenty of room to go around them. The Ostriches would have no trouble going from the river in the dry time to the highlands in the wet time when the river flooded.

  Kris drove from one end of the range to the other, leaving large metal markers with green flags that whipped in the wind at the farthest reaches of the human lands. Kris gave the Ostrich elders their first payment as she returned to the airplane. The second Marine detachment would take the elders home while the plane flew Kris to her next meeting.

  The elders spotted the other Ostriches lounging around the plane and would have attacked them if they could have gotten out of the rigs fast enough. Kris could not tell the difference between one Ostrich and the other.

  Clearly, they had no trouble doing it.

  “I will have none of my rifles used to hunt another of your kind. And I include them as your kind.”

  “We have hunted them from before the sun rose the first time, and they have hunted us,” the senior elder said.

  “You did that before the rifles,” Kris said firmly. “Do you want the rifles or do you want to hunt them? You chose the path to walk.”

  The yard worker stepped forward. “My egg warmer, I have run with these people among the sky walkers’ hunting parties. They hunt good and we hunt good. The sky walkers are happy with my hunting and their hunting. If you make them chose between us and them, they will choose those who run along fast with them and do not squawk like hatchlings when the prey is in sight.”

  The elder’s neck jerked in several quick ducks at he turned to glance at his fellow elders. “I will have to talk with many hunters to see if there will be no more hunting of the others,” he said.

  “Just know this,” Kris said. “I will be giving them the same rifles and the same bullets if they give us land to use. Hunting them will not be easy. Know that I will see the hunting and I will not turn away from this foolishness.”

  “Warmer of my egg,” the young worker said, stepping between Kris and his father, “we see hatchlings peck at each other. They even bite each other, but do little harm. Then we grow to kicking high and can chomp hard and bleed each other much. Elders tell us how to walk with others and we walk that way. I have seen with my own eyes how hard these sky walkers can kick. They have rifles that make our rifles no better than a chick throwing its first pebble. You do not want to anger these people.”

  If Kris was any judge of Ostrich body language, the senior was none too happy to be lectured by the junior.

  He turned his long neck away from his son as he said, “I will have to see some of what you have seen with my own eyes, my eggborn.”

  Kris left the elders to stew in all the new she’d dropped on them. While the second Marine detachment took the elders back to their camp, Kris boarded the transport with the first.

  “Let’s see how much trouble we can cause across the river,” she muttered to Jack.

  The five yard workers, their rifles in hand, joined Kris’s flight out. To her surprise, they approached the other five, sat next to them, and were soon in deep conversation.

  “I wonder what that’s all about?” Jack said.

  “Birds,” Admiral Furzah muttered as she took a seat near Kris and Jack. “You can say as much as you want that those things have brains, but all I see is feather brains.”

  “Please don’t eat any of them,” Jacques said. “We have enough trouble as it is.”

  “There’s not enough meat on any of them to make a decent meal,” the admiral pointed out, and seemed to settle the matter on that point.

  Kris’s visit to this second collection of tribes went quite different; the conversation among the young Ostriches may have had something to do with it.

  As she had before, Kris and her Marines helped the returning workers to provide plenty of meat for a feast. They did their hunting under the surprised gaze of the tribes’ best hunters.

  The young Alwans arranged for Kris’s introduction to the elders. This time the elders knew that the tribes across the river already had made a deal with the star walkers. In return for land, they had been given the gift of forty rifles and ammunition. With the general outline of a deal already on the table to be passed along to the elders by their young workers, the overall conversation was more in explaining matters than haggling. Jacque made sure that no loose ends were overlooked in the rush by the tribal elders to get their hands on the rifles. They even got around to the electric carts and solar chargers.

  Where the tribes on the other side of the river had been so fixated on the rifles, these elders wanted to know more about the carts and what they might do for their own hunters. Kris credited her station workers for helping their elders to look this gift horse over more carefully.

  When it was time, Kris provided the rifles. This time only a few were handed out by the elders to chosen hunters. Most, six or seven per tribe, were awarded as prizes for winning games of strength and skill. That night, Kris got a good night’s sleep, uninterrupted by either fights or assassination attempts.

  The next morning, the elders traveled with Kris to mark out the land. Some rode in her rigs, others followed in their own electric carts. As her plane lifted off late the next day, it was easy to spot a long stream of small groups of Ostriches already making their way to the guano mine, apparently ready to seek work with the people who offered such nice rewards.

  Kris arranged for a doctor to see Jack at the mine. He was cleared for a shuttle flight and Kris was ready to lift out, but the mining supervisor presented her with a minor request.

  “Sampson and Mugeridge are still not eating. We rouse them out of bed and march them off to the digs, but they refuse to work. They just sit there, demanding to talk to you.”

  “And you’d like me to talk to them.”

  “No, ma’am, I just wanted you to know what’s happening,” the former ship skipper said, his lips tight and grim. “I am kind of worried that they’ll die on us, Admiral. I just felt like you might want a heads up beforehand. My job here is to dig bird shit, not be an executioner.”

  Kris just shook her head. “Thanks, Commander, for the heads up. If they’re going to do this, be it upon their heads. You can tell them for me that I don’t care what they do. They can work and eat or they can sit on a pile of shit and die. Their choice. But whatever they do, they are going to do it here. No place else.”

  “I’ll pass that along,” the ex-skipper said.
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br />   Kris was back up to the Wasp, had gotten in a long bath with Jack and was halfway through a nice dinner in the wardroom before a long line of people caught up with her with business pies she just had to get her fingers into.

  Coming Attractions

  In 2016 I amicably ended my twenty-year publishing relationship with Ace, part of Penguin Random House. In 2017, I will begin publishing through my own independent press, KL & MM Books.

  I have high hopes of bringing a lot of fun stories to you in 2017 and then again in 2018 and 2019.

  We have already started the year with Kris Longknife’s Replacement. It was published as an e-book January 5, 2017 at Amazon, (with a bit of a learning experience for me) B&N, D2D, Kobo and the iStore. Audible has agreed to produce an audio book. The exact date is to be announced. Later in the summer, I hope to produce a trade paperback.

  Kris Longknife’s Replacement tells the story of Grand Admiral Sandy Santiago as she discovers whether a mere mortal can fill a Longknife’s shoes. Especially Kris Longknife’s shoes. Sandy has problems galore: birds, cats, vicious alien raiders. Oh, and she’s got Rita Longknife as well!

  February has this novelette coming at you. Kris Longknife: Among the Kicking Birds was part of KL Unrelenting. However, it went long and these four chapters had to be cut. I hope you enjoy them now.

  Rita Longknife - Enemy Unknown is the first book of the long awaited Iteeche War series. It will be out in e-book March 1, 2017 from your favorite source. Audible and trade paperback to follow.

  Rita has had enough of Ray Longknife gallivanting around the universe. No sooner is little Al born, then ships start disappearing. Is it pirates or something more sinister? Rita gets herself command of a heavy cruiser, some nannies and heads out see what there is to see.

  April will have another short offering. Kris Longknife’s Bad Day. You just knew when Kris asked for a desk job that she’d have days like you have at the office. Well, here’s one that will bring you up to date on the technical developments in the Royal US Navy, as well as silly bureaucratic goings on. In the first draft of Emissary, these were the opening chapters, but I found a better opening and this got cut. Enjoy!

  Kris Longknife - Emissary begins an entirely new story arc for Kris. It will be out in e-book May 1, 2017 from all your favorite sources.

  Here is the story of what it takes to get Kris out from behind a desk. And for those of you betting in the pool, you’ll get your answer. More I cannot say.

  June will have Abby Nightingale’s view of things around Alwa as Kris Longknife’s Maid Goes on Strike. You knew sooner or later this was going to happen.

  July 2, 2017 will see another book set in Alwa as Kris Longknife’s Relief, Sandy Santiago, continues to battle aliens of various persuasions and not a few humans.

  September 3, 2017, Rita Longknife - Enemy in Sight will resolve the unknowns left by Enemy Unknown as humanity slips backwards into a war it does not want and may not be able to win.

  November 5, 2017, Kris Longknife - Admiral will see Kris up to her ears in warships, enemies and friendlies maybe not as friendly as she’d like as battlecruisers square off against battlecruisers. A fight where both sides are equal is a bloody fight that often no one wins. In Admiral, that is exactly what Kris faces.

  Each month that a book isn’t published, a short story or something from the cutting room floor, a scene that had to be cut from an overly long book will be published. Some will be for free, like Ruthie’s wonderful story.

  I have secured the services of Scott Grimando who did the wonderful Kris Longknife covers for Ace to provide the new covers for all the books going forward. It truly will be art to enjoy.

  Stay in touch to follow developments by following Mike Moscoe or Kris Longknife on Facebook or checking in at my website www.mikeshepherd.org.

  I hope to soon have a mailing list you can sign up for, but it’s not there yet.

  Table of Contents

  Kris Longknife: Among the Kicking Birds

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4