Kris Longknife - Admiral Read online

  Leaving Kris to wonder how much physical torture would be involved in those “talks.” It was time to change the topic.

  “Ron, when we circumnavigated the galaxy, you saw us in high gee stations. I saw you suspended in a water tank. I don’t imagine you can fight a ship from a water tank. How do your crews manage high gees and radical maneuvering on a warship?”

  “The way warriors always have,” Ron said, his eyes blinking surprisingly rapidly. “You stand and you fight.”

  “You do know that it’s easier to survive high gees if you lay down, don’t you?” Jack pointed out.

  “Maybe it is for you weak humans, but we Iteeche are strong enough to stand and fight.” did not leave much room for discussion.

  “Ron, I took my fleet to 3.5 gees to escape the fire from those two, what do you call them, flotillas?”

  “Yes,” Ron said.

  “I also went to Evasion Plan 6. None of your ships were able to manage anything close to Evasion Plan 1. Ron, do you see the problem?”

  “What I see is that your battlecruisers survived a surprise attack because your crystal armor bought you the few moments you needed to react. Moments my ships would not have had if we had been attacked.”

  “Ron, you know I can’t give you crystal armor. You also know that high gee acceleration and hard evasion is at least two-thirds of the reason I win battles.”

  Ron did not fire back a response at Kris, but paused to take three slow breaths. “Yes, I know how you have won battles. If I look only at the human part of my training, I see your point. However, I am an Iteeche. We have a long and proud heritage. You can not ask us to throw that all away.”

  “If you don’t throw that away, you will lose this civil war, Ron,” Kris said, softly.

  “You may be right. I may also be right that there are a lot officers in the Imperial Navy that would rather lose a war than lose their souls.”

  Kris had nothing more she could say at the moment. Apparently, neither did Ron. After a long moment of silence, the Iteeche rang off and Kris looked around her staff meeting.

  “We have a problem,” she said.

  They sat down to concentrate on that problem.

  “How do you solve a problem that doesn’t want to be solved?” Jack asked no one in particular.

  “It appears,” Jacques said slowly, “that our tactical problems are deeply rooted in culture. They would rather lose a war than lose their self-image as mighty, up standing warriors.”

  “Don’t that beat all hell,” Titania muttered.

  “So, our little fleet exercise taught us several things,” Kris said, and raised one finger. “Their lasers are loose in their cradles. If they weren’t, the Princess Royal would be a thin ball of hot gasses. Thank God for that. Secondary question, do we want to let the Iteeche know that they can get a lot more accuracy out of their lasers by tightening them down?”

  “Right now, no,” Jack said.

  “I agree,” Kris said, then raised a second finger. “Second, they can’t or won’t go to high gees and strong evasion because it isn’t manly enough for them. If great-grampa stood his watch, I am dang well going to stand my watch.”

  “That’s a much tougher one to handle,” Jacques said. “Culture runs deep into flesh and bone. To change that is going to be hard.”

  “I thought victory ran deep in the flesh and blood of war fighters?” Titania asked.

  “Military organizations throughout history have struggled with their purpose,” Jacques said, attempting an answer. “A good war tends to remind people that if you fight smart, you get to live. You fight dumb, you end up dead. However, in peacetime, the focus can wobble off the target. Do we need to fight, or pass the next readiness inspection? Do I do what will save my life in a fight, or advance my career in peace time? They’re supposed to be one and the same, but the farther you get away from a real, hot shoot out, the vaguer and unhinged the purpose of the uniform is.”

  The sound of the landing lines hauling the Princess Royal into her pier on the station told everyone at the table that their time alone was coming to an end. If there was any doubt, Nelly spoke before anyone else could.

  “Kris, there is a problem on the station. You are wanted ashore.”

  “Who wants me?”

  “Ron, he says if you don’t come quickly, two of your merchants are going to be short their heads in a few minutes.”

  Kris grabbed her cover and headed for the quarterdeck, Jack, and Megan right behind her.

  “We need a Marine detachment, squad to start with, platoon ASAP,” Jack snapped into his commlink.

  4

  A young, grim-faced Marine sergeant greeted Kris at the foot of the brow. He held open the door to the Princess Royal’s station car. On the back steps of the car, a Marine with rifle ready studied the surroundings.

  Nelly said, “Admiral, your presence is required at the head of the pier.”

  As soon as Jack was beside her, and Megan beside the driver, Kris ordered, “Driver, let's see how fast this scooter can go.”

  The sergeant tapped the top of the rig, then swung himself up on the back step and joined the guard on high alert. The station car zipped silently away from the gangplank of Kris’s flag only to drive itself into one of the elevators that had been used by Ron’s chooser earlier. This elevator was not a freight one. It lifted the car and its occupants smoothly and quickly up to the main dock. The door opened, and they took off down the pier.

  At the guard post that restricted all traffic to her ships, there now was a crowd. The car slowed to a stop on the edge of it, and the sergeant dismounted to open Kris’s door even before it came to rest.

  Kris knew there was trouble the moment she spotted Abby and a large US Marine guard. They formed one of three groups that had formed up. The second had several armed guards in what Kris was coming to recognize as Imperial red and gold. Buried in the midst of them were two disheveled humans and three Iteeche civilians who looked like they’d been beat up pretty bad.

  The third group centered around a formal looking Iteeche in shimmering robes much like Ron wore. He was likely an Imperial court officer. Behind him were six Iteeche in black with long poles with very big axe blades on the end. Off to the side were two scary looking Iteeche with snake jars.

  This does not look good.

  Kris dismounted the station car and marched for the mandarin. She stopped a comfortable distance from him and said, “I am Her Royal Highness, Kris Longknife, Grand Admiral of the US Navy and Imperial Admiral of the First Order of Steel of the Imperial Navy. NELLY, ADD ALL THE OTHER STUFF.

  DONE KRIS.

  “What is the meaning of this?” she demanded.

  The Iteeche bureaucrat bowed low to Kris. Without rising, he said, “I have the honor of being . . .”

  Nelly paused for a moment for him to go on, then just said, “He’s some sort of honcho for this port. I think he’s pretty high up from what he’s saying and all the executioners he’s traveling with.”

  When the honcho paused in his introduction, Kris answered his deep bow with a bow of her own . . . from the neck. Only then did he rise.

  “And the matter at hand?” Kris asked.

  “Involves these three Imperial subjects and two of your people who arranged to meet together to plot treason against the Imperium.”

  “We weren’t doing any such thing,” one of the humans snapped out. He was the better dressed of the two.

  An Iteeche guard put an end to the interruption with a butt stroke to the businessman’s gut. He keeled over, but even breathless and rolling on the deck, he managed to get out, “You going to let them treat a human like that?”

  “You damn Longknife,” might have been lost as his breath ran out.

  “If it pleases you,” Kris said to the mandarin, “I will have my Marines take possession of the human miscreants for proper punishment.”

  She was answered with another low bow. A Gunny from Abby’s detail peeled off four Marines to infilt
rate the Iteeche ranks and extract Kris’s problem children. Gunny helped the slow learner off the deck and whispered loud enough for Kris to hear, “Keep your damn trap shut, you hear, or one of my Marines won’t be so gentle.”

  “You may see to yours, and we will see to ours,” the Iteeche bureaucrat said, and with the barest twitch of his hand, the three Iteeche were dragged forward and shoved to their knees, heads out.

  They were well apart from each other, and Kris quickly found out why.

  Three of the axe men stepped forward, whirling their heavy pole axes as if they were baton twirlers at some county fair. Then, in one perfectly synchronized move, they brought their blades down.

  Three Iteeche heads hit the deck as one, and bounced.

  Both of the humans under Marine guard lost their lunches.

  “Until we meet again,” the Iteeche mandarin said, with a quick but low bow.

  “Until we meet again,” Kris said with a nod.

  With as much Imperial and Royal gravitas as she could manage, Kris returned to her station car. They drove back to the Princess Royal’s pier at a slow pace. Abby’s Marine detail with its woebegone civilians fell into place behind her.

  One glance back at the gate showed that three pikes had appeared beside it, one for each head that stared blank-eyed into the human pier.

  Message sent and received.

  ABBY, TELL THE BUSINESS COMMUNITY THAT THERE WILL BE AN ALL HANDS MEETING IN THE FORWARD LOUNGE IN THIRTY MINUTES. TELL THEM THEY WILL BE THERE EVEN IF THEY HAVE TO HAVE SOMEONE PUSH THEIR DEATH BEDS INTO THE BAR.

  GOT YOU KRIS. WHAT DO I DO WITH YOUR TWO NEW BEST FRIENDS?

  KEEP THEM CLOSE AND DON’T LET THEM CLEAN THEMSELVES UP. THEY ARE MY EXHIBIT A FOR WHAT HAPPENS TO YOU WHEN YOU VIOLATE MY RULES.

  YOU BET, GIRL.

  5

  There was a lot of noise as Kris entered the Forward Lounge. Some of it was, no doubt, because Kris had closed the bar.

  More of it was likely concerned with the two forlorn civilians who stood handcuffed with a Marine at each elbow. Abby held down the front table, now with Megan at her side. It was almost like old times.

  “Atten ’hut, Admiral on deck,” a Gunny called. Those in uniform immediately came to attention. The civilians stood around, gawking.

  “As you were,” Kris said, and marched for the front table, Jack one step behind her.

  Kris didn’t join Abby at the table. Before she reached her and the prisoners, she whirled on the room full of idiot fortune seekers.

  “What about ‘Do Not Go There’ don’t you understand?” Kris demanded.

  No one risked their neck by daring to offer her an answer.

  “I told you that here, the Iteeche make the rules. Could I have been any clearer?”

  As one, the room kind of shuffled its feet.

  “Has anyone not seen the video of the Iteeche honcho executing their three tradesmen?”

  In general, all in the lounge nodded they had.

  “Good. Watch it again tonight before you go to bed. Watch it twice tomorrow before breakfast. Watch it. Memorize it. Because if I hadn’t stepped in and taken these prisoners into my custody, their heads would have been bouncing on the deck with those three Iteeche.

  “Traitors. That’s what the Iteeche mandarin named them. Traitors. I don’t know if you’ve heard, what with us only getting here after fighting our way through a rebel fleet, but there’s a civil war on hereabouts. Civil war. You break the rules here, them that walk around with executions and axes following them, kind of assume that you’re one of the rebels, not a nice one of us.”

  Kris paused to let that sink home. Before her was living proof that you could make a billion without learning the basic survival skills of life. She gave them all a long minute for this to maybe penetrate their thick skulls.

  “I may not be close enough to save the neck of the next one to screw up. Hell, I may not bother to save the next one of you that screws up.”

  She gave the room a slow sweep with hard eyes. “There will be several ships going home in a few weeks. Any of you too dumb to live under Iteeche rules might want to book passage now. Dirtside, there’s a palace that I understand I’ve inherited from an Iteeche lord who’s gone rebel. If you want to try your hand at doing business the Iteeche way, I can book you a suite down there. Nelly can give you some pictures of your new home. You will note, there’s only one way in and one way out. There will be Marines at the gate. US Marines will keep you safe inside and Imperial Marines will keep you from going outside.”

  Another pause. The room met her silence with a deathly hush.

  “Any questions?” Kris hardly paused before snapping, “Good. Have a nice day, stay out of trouble, and stay out of my sight.”

  With that she stomped out. She’d gotten about half-way to the door when the Earth ambassador stood up.

  “Excuse me, Your Highness, but what do you intend to do with your, ah, prisoners? One is an honored citizen of the Society of Humanity.”

  Kris turned to face him. “Despite the Iteeche’s clear desire that I should mount their heads on pikes at the foot of the Princess Royal’s gangplank, I have decided to award them the pleasure of the Princess Royal’s brig for now and a ticket on the next slow boat home. Is that sufficient for your representation?”

  “I imagine that your brig’s amenities might be quite luxurious, but would you be so kind as to release him into my custody?”

  Kris had no idea where this was going. NELLY?

  IT WOULD SEEM THAT OUR PRISONER IS THE SON OF A MAJOR INDUSTRIAL MAGNATE ON COLUMBIA. I BELIEVE HE AND THE EARTH AMBASSADOR ARE RELATED BY MARRIAGE.

  SO IT’S A GOOD THING I DIDN’T LET THE ITEECHE TAKE HIS HEAD.

  LIKELY, YES, KRIS.

  “Sorry, Mr. Ambassador, but I think I’ll keep this one close. No telling what he might get into next time or what his chances would be if I didn’t happen to come by when I did it. Better for both our careers and his neck that he stays put. I assure you, my Marines will see that he does just that.”

  The Earth ambassador allowed Kris a slight bow, from the neck. “No doubt, we will have opportunities to revisit this in the future.”

  “No doubt you will,” Kris said, holding on to her temper with her fingernails. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have the details of removing our embassy from here to a palace.”

  And I’ve had a bad day that can’t get any worse, Kris did not add.

  Which was good, because the Earth ambassador proceeded to do just that.

  “Ah, yes, about the space in the palace. You will, no doubt, seek input from all the sub-embassies and major business magnates in arranging our space?”

  6

  Thus, the rest of Kris’s no good, very bad day was gobbled up by squabbling over square centimeters and windows.

  The meeting in the Forward Lounge immediately changed gears as soon as the two prisoners were marched out by the Marines. Kris quickly found herself facing four different factions: one centered around the Earth Ambassador, one from the US with one of her grampa Al’s hatchet men, in this case a woman, ramrodding it. The Helvetican Confederacy had formed a block with several other major economic and industrial planets. Last, but not least, many of the minor planets and small groups had formed an association with Musashi. Kris suspected her good friend Ambassador Kawaguchi may have taken the lead on this.

  Strange that Musashi hadn’t moved to join the Helvetican Confederacy. Despite the large power base Yamato and Musashi represented in and of themselves, many of the smaller planets seemed content to let Musashi break the ice for them.

  Kris wondered how this would work out in the long run, but she’d leave that problem to Kawaguchi.

  At the moment, all four of the groups were clamoring for one half of the palace space and all of the top floors.

  “How did this horse get out of the barn?” Kris asked Abby.

  “Ask your computer,” the former maid now CEO of Kris’s support effort drawled.


  “Nelly?” Kris said, walking away from the blare of demands, and doing her best to ignore them. She didn’t quite order the Marines to keep the animals in order, but it was a close call.

  “When Ron pointed out the Rose Coral Palace on our way back to the beanstalk, I passed that information along to Mata Hari, my daughter, and she put it out on the net, so as to give the interested parties something of interest. I may not have had as good a grasp on the human condition as I thought I did.”

  Kris was careful to keep her thoughts very much to herself. Nelly didn’t foul up very often, but when she did . . .

  Mata Hari, being a computer, had quickly estimated the volume of the Rose Coral Palace from the orbital imagery, then, based on the per capita of each delegation, she’d advised each of their approximate space. It was only after she had finished that the four factions announced themselves and demanded those in them be in adjacent space. Only moments after Mata had reported her estimate, the four were hollering for more space.

  Kris shook her head. All of this yapping was coming because of a rough estimate.

  “Let’s find out how much space we actually have in the palace,” Kris said. “Nelly, get me Ron.”

  “Yes, Your Highness,” came only a moment later.

  “Ron, how do I get my hands on the building specs and floor layout of the Rose Coral Palace?”

  “You want the floor layout of the palace?” Ron asked, sounding rather incredulous for an Iteeche.

  “Yes,” was Kris’s quick answer.

  “Kris, this is a palace. A palace of a great clan. You are treating it as if it was some merchant’s warehouse.”

  “Excuse me?” Kris said.

  “Kris, the Rose Coral Palace was the sovereign and private possession of a great clan. I would no more ask them about the floor plan of their palace any more than I would ask them about the size of their spawning pools. Why would you even ask such a thing?”

  “The people who came with me desire that information,” Kris began.