Kris Longknife Read online

  Kris began to plan a campaign to reduce those systems – then caught herself before she made that mistake.

  “Coth, tell me, how would an Iteeche go about attacking this situation?”

  “I am not really sure,” Coth answered, scrubbing at his skull with his two of his four hands. “Our histories don’t tell us of a rebellion that was this large that did not succeed. That is one of the reasons you were called for.”

  “Oh,” was all Kris could say.

  “However, the usual way for attacking a rebellious satrap is to start at the nearest planet along the edge of the rebellion and eat them one planet at a time.”

  “You don’t go for the industrial core of the rebellion first?” Kris asked.

  “The wages of rebellion are death. Every rebel is deserving of death. Why should we jump past rebels? Aren’t you taught to never leave an enemy in your rear?”

  That was not at all the way Kris had been taught. She pursed her lips in thought. “So, how does that work for you?”

  “I have, myself, campaigned against five rebellions. All have been put down, though none were more than fifty strong and most were smaller.”

  “Excuse me,” Kris said, “but how could a rebellion of fifty planets threaten an Empire this big?”

  “If a rebellion is allowed to fester and grow, it can explode quickly.”

  “Tell me about those rebellions,” Kris said.

  Coth leaned back and used his two outer eyes to stare at the overhead. His other two fixed on Kris. “The two largest ones I fought involved squabbles among junior clan chiefs who sought to take over a satrap from its pasha. It is not unusual for a pasha to die suddenly and a younger clan lord to step in. Sometimes there is much palace intrigue involved with the transfer of power.”

  Now all four eyes were on Kris. “Once the political machinations are done, the new pasha offers his worship to the Emperor and all is well.”

  “But then . . .?” Kris left the question hanging.

  “Then there are the industrial satraps that have their own Navy. They are the ones that have much of the power in the Empire. If there is a struggle for such a throne of that satrap, it may spill out into open warfare. Often, the satrap’s battle fleet is split down the middle, or more of the fleet follows one or the other. When they start fighting, things get messy.”

  Now, all four of Coth’s eyes settled on the overhead. When he spoke, his words were soft.

  “Sometimes one or both of them will appeal to the Emporium. Sometimes the Emperor will bless the present pasha. Sometimes they will bless the upstart. From where I stand, it is as if they draw straws to decide who the Emperor will bless. However it goes down, some of the fleet will be dispatched.”

  Coth barked a harsh laugh.

  “Not the toy fleet that stands ready to display its power to intimidate with its colorful uniforms. No, they send us, the ships with the last chosen. The sailors and officers that no one will mourn. It is up to us to impose the Blessing of the Emperor.”

  He shook his head. His beak seemed to form something like a scowl.

  “It is often strange how long it takes the Fleet of Retribution to sail. How long it takes us to acquire food for our storerooms or sailors to fill up our crew. And all the time we are twiddling our thumbs, the rebel or the pasha are fighting it out. More than once, I have arrived in a rebellious system only to be told the pasha is dead and the rebel has occupied his throne and sent his most urgent worship to the Emperor.

  Coth leaned forward, all four hands on the table. “One might almost think that we of the Navy were just the bottom lake along a river that has many, many lakes upstream for the water to collect and be swam in.”

  “We have a saying, ‘War is the continuation of diplomacy by other means.’ It seems like here war is the continuation of political machinations, only a bit deadlier,” Kris said.

  “I think you have the right of that. The few times when the rebel had not won or been defeated by his lawful lord. It is our doctrine to begin with the first planet we come to. First, we destroy all the planet’s warships and defenses. Then we round up all the leaders that are in rebellion. This often involves destroying those who defend them. It’s not unusual for much of a city to be flattened as the two sides fight it out. After the first few assaults, we often have a lot of help collaring the rest. Once we have control of the planet, everyone is eager to denounce all the traitors.”

  “Likely,” Kris interjected, “even some of the innocent, assuming they have a lot of money to confiscate, they being traitors and all.”

  “So, you know the way of it,” Coth said.

  “Our history has black chapters like that,” she admitted.

  “After we have reduced a few planets,” Coth said, going on, “the rebels are much more willing to surrender when they are given the chance. A few will be executed. Often, they are killed by their own people if they won’t open the gates and walk up to the axe on their own. If they surrender quickly, they may escape a meeting with the red-clad man and his snake, and just face the axe.”

  Having just seen the horrors of the death that snake’s bite brought, Kris could understand a certain willingness to get it over with as quickly and easily as possible.

  “There was one rebellion that succeeded even after the Imperial fleet arrived. One of the women in the pasha’s harem managed to slip poison into the mating pond. While he was absorbed by the pleasure of expelling sperm packets, he was soaking up poison. He never got out of the pond. I had reduced two planets and taken the surrender of three more, when suddenly, I was being told the rebellion was over and His Most Worshipful Majesty had condescended to smile upon the younger brother.”

  “I take it that this rebellion, though, is nothing like the others you’ve fought against,” Kris said.

  “Usually, it's a feud between two sons, or an uncle and a son. A few thousand Imperial ships. A few hundred rebel ships. Yes, a battle like we just fought was new to me entirely. My biggest command was hardly more than half the size of one wing in the recent battle, and you had five under your command.”

  “Do I hear you telling me that when as many Iteeche as this rise up in rebellion, it usually means a new Imperial dynasty?” Kris asked.

  “There are certain books on the Empire’s history that are only allowed to senior admirals. I have been reading a lot of them since the rebellion passed a hundred planets. Yes, if the Empire is this badly split, it usually bodes very ill for the one on the throne.”

  “Admiral Coth, it is hard for me to become excited about the poor lad that sits on the throne,” Kris said. “From where I sit, it looks like too many counselors are feathering their own nest. (Nelly’s translation involved stone, sand, and seaweed, but it likely carried well.) I find myself fighting for the likes of you and your men. For the simple people on this planet and maybe a few others that will be wiped out if we fail. It will be for them that I fight. Can you understand and accept that?”

  The looks Kris drew from the other side of the table were nearly impossible for her to comprehend. Each one was a bit different, most involved looking at the admiral on either side and left all the Iteeche with their mouths hanging open.

  The silence began to worry Kris and she wondered if she should have Nelly call in the Marines. She and her humans could hardly stand off an attack by the bigger, stronger, and more numerous Iteeche.

  Finally, Admiral Coth broke the silence. “You will fight for the likes of us?”

  “Yes,” Kris said, pouring absolute and finality into that one word. It stood like a rock between them.

  “We are told from when we were younglings, just adapting to staying on land, that we exist only to die for the pasha of our satrap. No one dies for us. We are only one step above the nothings that clean the streets and the sewers. Most of our sailors can’t even call upon a clan for their defense. Our clan is the Navy. It is all we have. I cannot wrap my brain around this thought you bring.”

  “I fight,” Kris said
, “for every sailor that sails with me. I fight for every citizen in the United Society. Yes, from the richest and most powerful to the poorest and least of them all. But first, I fight for the man on my right and the woman on my left. We fight for each other and each of us matter to each other.”

  Kris paused to catch her breath before going on.

  “I have stood up to the powerful and told them that they were wrong. I have told leaders that what they wanted was not the right way to go. I am an officer in my Navy, but that does not mean that I am any less a citizen. My uniform does not mean that I cannot confront my superior with what I think is right. Indeed, there are times when my duty is more demanding than the average citizen.”

  “Oh, and she has,” Jack said from beside her.

  “I noticed,” Kris said, “that the Iteeche I call Ron commanded a wing in the battle, but when we stood before the Emperor, he stood among the Imperial counselors. I wondered at that.”

  “The counselors put words in the mouth of the Emperor. We Navy obey those words. There is a world of difference between us. It is for them to say and for us to die.”

  Kris mulled over what she’d just learned. She wasn’t surprised, but she was disappointed. She was being asked to defend a badly flawed system of government. Was she prepared to do that?

  She was used to telling her father or grandfather or great-grandfather to take a long walk off a short pier. They always listened, even if they didn’t always change. Still, she felt loyalty from them and knew that they were loyal to her and her crews.

  How did she fight to defend the likes of the Imperial Counselors?

  The urge to pack it in and go home was the strongest it had been since she arrived. Yet, the wide eyes from across the table held her. These Iteeche had fought with her, and many had died. How could she walk away from them? If the present dynasty fell, they would likely all lose their heads. She owed them.

  But the political system should owe them as well.

  Kris took a deep breath and let it out. She took another and another. Then she eyed the Iteeche admirals across the table.

  “Okay, then how do we fight for each of us?”

  5

  “Tell me, Admiral Coth, if you were to organize a standard Navy expeditionary force to fight this rebellion, where would you attack first?” Grand Admiral Kris Longknife asked her senior Iteeche subordinate.

  He eyed the star map that Kris stood in for a long moment, then pointed with one of his left hands. “Zargoth. That is the planet where the fleet that tried to force its way into the sky over the Imperial Capital Planet came from.”

  “Zargoth belongs to one of the rebel clans?” Kris asked.

  “Yes. A minor one. I think everyone agrees they raised the flag of rebellion only because the Quid’sum’Coroth clan did first. They rely on them for all their fine foods and goods. I think you would call that a donation from the strong to the weak to keep them in their corner.”

  “Yes,” Kris said. “And this planet Zargoth, of what value is it?”

  “Worthless. They can hardly feed themselves. Their planetary lord’s palace is little more than a hovel. However, he lords it over fifty billion peasants and craftsmen. That is not a number to be sneezed at.”

  SNEEZED AT, NELLY?

  WOULD YOU PREFER I TRANSLATE IT USING A BODILY NOISE FROM A MUCH LOWER ORIFICE?

  NO. SNEEZE IS GOOD.

  Clearly, these Navy officers were quite earthy. I wonder if that’s just them and their low place on the totem pole, or if this is what Ron and Roth sound like when they let their hair down.

  “How much trouble would you have subduing this planet?” Kris asked.

  “That would depend on how much trouble the clan lords want to give me,” Coth said. “They might or might not have a fleet standing by to resist us. Those two battles where both the rebels and the loyalists sent a thousand battlecruisers were over planets that jutted toward the Imperial Capital? In one we were taking the offensive. In the other case, they were.”

  “So, we just have to worry about warships?” Kris asked.

  “No, there are also armies on the ground. How many of the peasants have the clan lords formed into an army? Most of them will have been press-ganged into some sort of an army only with the start of the war, some maybe later. You can’t take too many people out of farming without risking crop failure or a poor harvest.”

  “Should I assume that most of these peasants have no idea how to fight?” Kris asked.

  “Maybe one quarter of them will even have a gun,” Coth said. “The others are supposed to pick up guns from those fallen and start shooting.”

  “You’re kidding me,” Jack said.

  “No, but they could be ready to bury you under their bodies and blood.”

  “Hmm,” Jack said. “I wonder how one of these horde attacks would take to being sticky-foamed.”

  “What?” was Coth’s reaction.

  “It’s a nifty little device we have,” Jack answered. “You spray it out over a mischievous civilian population. It sticks to their skin, and then sticks to anything. Say the concrete of a floor or wall. Each other. Their arm to their leg or to the body next to them. It sticks and won’t let go for several hours.”

  The blank stares coming from the Iteeche side of the table would have been comical if the issues weren’t so serious.

  “Why would you do that?” Coth asked.

  “When you don’t kill a lot of people, they get over losing a lot easier,” Kris said. “They hold fewer grudges.”

  “Why would clan masters care what grudges peasants hold?”

  “What if,” Jack said, “after we sticky-bombed all the drafted fighters, we captured the clan lords? What if we turned the stuck fighters loose and let them say or do anything they wanted with the clan lords?”

  “They would tear them limb from limb,” Coth said.

  “Hmm. What do you think clan lords would think about that?”

  Coth stared wide-eyed at Kris. It took him a while before he started to talk, low, and slow. “Clan lords live their life knowing they could be expected to make a sincere apology to the Emperor. The death you watched was horrible, but they earned the right to it by their rank and status. To be torn to death by peasants . . .”

  Words failed Coth. It took him three tries before he could finish his sentence. “It would be the most horrible death a clan lord could suffer. It would be humiliating.”

  Kris just looked at Coth, hardly blinking.

  “I told you that we Iteeche take thousands of years to change,” Coth said in a soft whisper, as if saying words no one would ever hear. “I said that it would take a thousand years for you to change anything here.”

  He paused to look up and down the admirals seated at the other side of the table. “I was wrong. You do this, and you will begin change, changes like we have not seen in ten thousand years. I do not know where such changes will take us, and, honestly, I fear that.”

  “I understand your concern,” Kris said, firmly, but softly. “However, Admiral, I must ask you. Is this system in need of a change? Is it deserving of change?”

  Again, the Iteeche admiral who had befriended Kris looked to his right and his left. Most of the admirals beside him had skippered battlecruisers in the two horrible battles that both sides fought to a tie and in which very few survived. They had barely avoided making sincere apologies for not dying. For the sin of living, they had been turned out to jobs that were beneath them. Humiliated.

  Kris had pulled them together into an effective force and given them a chance to fight again. To fight and win. They owed their very existence to the strange ways of this human woman. Their Empire and its culture had hurled them down. Kris Longknife had raised them back up. Let them do what they’d been born to do.

  That fire burned in every set of four eyes across the table from Kris.

  These Iteeche did not believe in a heaven or a hell, but looking across the table at them, there was no doubt in Kris’s mind t
hat they would follow her into hell and then fight their way back out again.

  6

  To Grand Admiral Kris Longknife, this meeting had achieved its goals. Now she needed to close it down.

  “Admiral Coth, I need for you to collect as many volunteer ships and crews as we can lay our hands on. Once you have them, modify the ships and train them up to our standards. I will assign Admiral Kitano and her fleet and General Bruce to work with you to make those changes.”

  “That may be a problem, My Admiral,” Coth said. “A lot of ships were destroyed in the fighting around the defensive space stations in both the Guard System and the Imperial Capital System. We won the battle, but the casualties were brutal. The Emperor has already announced a draft on all the satrap navies to replenish the forces here. The word we hear around the fleet is that few pashas want to give up a ship, much less a large chunk of their fleet when the rebels could launch an attack at any time.”

  “Well, the rebels are minus eight thousand of their ships at the moment,” Kris said, dryly. “It will be a while before they can do much of anything. In the meantime, we have ships, and we are ready to take the initiative. Pass that word to the fleet and see if that changes a few minds.”

  “Some fleet admirals do have some say in the counsel of the pasha,” Coth agreed, “although I’ve never been one. I’ll pass that word around and see what we get.”

  Kris nodded at Admiral Coth from where she stood behind her chair. “Good. While you’re recruiting and training a fleet, have your staff work up a plan for an offensive that will start with the planet Zargoth and end at a double-ringed planet.”

  “It will be done, My Admiral,” Coth said as he stood and the other Iteeche admirals came to their feet. There were sharp snaps of the hips as the Iteeche made a shallow bow in Kris’s direction and the Iteeche began to file out.

  Admiral Kitano made to follow them, but Kris held her back with a quick, “A word, Admiral.”