Kris Longknife's Assassin Read online

  Vicky noted that woman’s use of her assets and filed it away for future use.

  She also found hints of how her kidnaping of Kris Longknife’s great-grandmother had tipped the balance against Grant’s coup. There was no question that she’d screwed up.

  The public outcry rushing the mob headlong into elections was something Vicky ignored. Daddy had no use for governments or elections. He had good businessmen running everything that needed running on Greenfeld as well as the planets that joined his alliance.

  When New Eden’s media fell behind, Vicky began searching what was in the liner’s data files about Kris Longknife. She also found herself looking for stuff on Marines and Soldiers and Sailors. What made those people tick?

  Vicky found them a strange sort of weird alien. Duty, honor, country kept popping up. They had nothing to do with Daddy’s mantra of profit, profit, profit. It was as if Daddy breathed oxygen and they breathed sulfur.

  Vicky tried to turn her back on this alien bunch, but as she fell asleep, she kept hearing that melody coming in crisp and clear from a single bugle. What was it about men and women marching off together singing the same song?

  Vicky want back to the library that Daddy had provided before she sailed for New Eden. That reader was full of how business worked; how you made decisions to maximize profits.

  Vicky had been ignored it and been bored after visiting way too many offices, plants and fabs. She was just as bored scanned it now.

  Then drained the liner’s library of stories from the Iteeche War and how Marines and Soldiers and Sailors fought to save humanity. Yes, there was those damn Longknifes all over the place. She also found General Tordon. He was more often called Trouble and his men loved him.

  She also found Ruth Tordon and read the stories of how she earned her right to be called Mrs. Trouble.

  Vicky found herself thinking that it would be wonderful to be alive in those days when heroes were actually needed. Of course, people did get killed. A battlefield wasn’t like a calm and cool business meeting where you could make a killing and walk off with just money.

  One afternoon, Vicky found herself wondering if Kris Longknife had ever read any of the stories that Vicky had stumbled onto. Had Kris Longknife ever thought that she might be a hero just like her great-grandparents?

  Vicky did a quick check on what her great-grandfather had done during the war. The story was kind of vague. Vicky applied her new found skill and concluded that there was a lot of noise here, but not much truth. Great-grandfather had been a business man, involved in growing the family fortune. Just how he did it hadn’t made it into the book. Into several books Vicky checked, using not only Daddy’s library but also the ship’s files.

  Interesting.

  They changed ships; the Glory of Greenfeld was of the Glory line that Daddy owned. Strangely, searching through its library Vicky, found plenty of books about the Smythe-Peterwald family, but not a lot of actual facts about them. Now she knew all about the great aunt who had done her best to get the bootlegger cut out of the family tree. Oh, and her love for dogs: all tiny toy breeds. There were a lot of pictures of Peterwalds cutting this ribbon or opening that office, factory or production fab. Lots of pictures but not a lot of information.

  Suddenly, Vicky wanted one of those accountants with numbers in their veins. Could he get her an answer as to how the family wealth had grown? A book she’d found on the Nuu-Longknife family had tables in the back. One had shown how the family’s fortune had grown from both investments in new planets and growth of the economy on Wardhaven, Savannah, and other planets Wardhaven had helped get on their feet after the Unity War.

  The Unity War. Now that was a blank history in Vicky’s Greenfeld books. She easily found it when she searched the Queen of the Stars library. Once on the Glory of Greenfeld, the Unity war disappeared into a black hole.

  Vicky was a very puzzled child when her escort took her down the elevator to Anhalt City. Puzzled. Reflective. Curious for the first time in her life.

  Chapter 12

  She found herself back in the suite of rooms she’d lived in since moving out of the nursery. They had been redone several times. Right now the wallpaper showed flowers with on a soft pink background and a cream carpet her maids said among themselves when she wasn’t listening was to easy to get dirty.

  She’d shrugged; it was their job to keep it clean.

  Daddy said that the furniture was early empire. Maybe Vicky should look up which empire. For as long as she could remember, Peterwald House had been simply referred to as the palace.

  For the first time in her life, Vicky began to put some of the puzzle pieces together. There was a Longknife king now. Was Daddy thinking of topping the Longknifes for once with an emperor?

  What Daddy thought was lost on Vicky. He did not come to greet her. When she asked to see him, she was told he was unavailable or hunting or off-planet.

  When one question got three answers, Vicky wondered if any of them were right.

  She looked to see if any of her boyfriends were still in the palace. When Daddy found out about one toy boys, he usually got offered a job someplace else. Vicky had checked. Most of them got a pay raise.

  She didn’t think that was why they befriended her in the first place.

  At least she hoped not.

  Doctor Maggie Rodriguez was gone from the clinic. That was Vicky’s greatest disappointment. She would have loved to sit down with a bottle of fine wine and talk all this through with the one person she’d ever trusted.

  A quick trip down to the kitchen showed Vicky not everything had changed. Iris, Rena, and Hilda were still there, making delicious cookies, pies, tarts and just about anything a kid could ask for. Vicky’s real power over her young playmates had been her ability to lead them on a raid of the kitchen and Hilda’s confections.

  For Vicky, there was a warm hug like few she got growing up, as well as milk and cookies for her to eat while they chattered on about what they were doing for dinner today. Their world extended no further than the kitchen door.

  Vicky envied them their kitchen world now that she’d been introduced to a bigger one and left with all the questions she’d walked into.

  In the end, she took a basket of cookies and left them to their work.

  Seeing them. Leaving them, was more painful than Ms. Rotterdame’s shock cane.

  Vicky shed a tear as she realized they belonged to her childhood. What she was headed into was a lot more complicated than just slipping some boy into her bed for fun and games.

  For two more days, Vicky gnawed on that bone. Then she woke up one morning and Ms. Rotterdame was not waiting in the sitting room. Vicky padded across the carpet and checked outside her door.

  The guards were gone.

  Vicky was all alone.

  She took a bath, dressed and waited to see what the day might bring.

  For most of the morning, the day didn’t do a thing.

  Vicky began to consider a visit to the palace’s library. She’d spent only as much time in it as her tutors demanded. Now, Vicky wondered if the Peterwald section of that library was as devoid of real details as the others.

  There was a knock at her door.

  Chapter 13

  “Come in,” Vicky said. She was seated at her window, one leg tucked under her, the other dangling free. One thing Daddy had done around the palace was to add several gardens. Most were visible from Vicky’s window. She’d found it calming the last couple of days to spend time looking out her window.

  She turned as her door opened to admit a man in uniform. He strode to the center of the room, then stood there stiffly. Over the next few weeks, Vicky would come to recognize that as attention and to read his rank immediately.

  Today, Vicky knew nothing until the man said, “I’m Lieutenant Commander Murkoff, Ms. Peterwald, and you are to come with me.”

  “Why ever for?” Vicky said.

  The man looked taken back. “I am told that you have received a comm
ission in the Greenfeld Navy and that I should process you in and see to your equipage.”

  “I’ve joined the Navy?” Vicky said, standing to face the man. “Am I to be a commodore like my brother?” Vicky had loved Hank in uniform. Would she have a squadron of cruisers to command?

  The man coughed softly. “I understand that you have been commissioned as an ensign.”

  “An ensign?” Vicky said, batting her eyelashes. There was a touch of gray in his hair but he did look tall and handsome in his uniform. It had been a while since she’d taken Kiefer to her bed. “Does an ensign outrank a commodore?”

  If anything, the man became more stiff. “Miss, an ensign is the lowest officer rank. As such, you are three critical promotions below me and will obey my orders.”

  Vicky was in no mood for being ordered around. “Or what? You’ll use a shock cane on me?”

  “No, I’ll clap you in the brig on bread and water for a month. If that doesn’t work out, we’ll give you a dishonorable discharge. I hear your family is very proud of its heritage. Has a Smythe or Peterwald ever received a bad conduct discharge?”

  “I’m not sure we’ve ever been given any kind of discharge,” Vicky said, studying the man as well as her situation. “I don’t know what my brother got after Kris Longknife blew his ship to hell. Do the dead receive discharges?”

  “No,” he said softly, but with firmness. “They receive flag-draped coffins.”

  “We never got my brother’s body back. The ship carrying him made a bad jump.”

  “Bad luck, that. Now, Miss, we are wasting time. Have you, or have you not signed on for a commission?”

  “Do you have any paperwork? Can I see my signature?”

  That seemed to give the man pause. “Strange that. Your commissioning papers aren’t in the package I received. I’m to process you and move you along. That’s all that it says here.”

  “Move me along to where?”

  “Someone’s supposed to come get you. They’ll have the proper paperwork.”

  Vicky had thrown many a tantrum in this room. She could feel one coming on fast. Had Daddy signed her into the Navy and not even told her? She was ready to storm out of here and head straight to Daddy’s office, assuming he was in it.

  Vicky had thrown plenty of tantrums, but she’d also just got beaten with a shock cane. If she stood this nice man up, would they send Ms. Rotterdame to bring her into line with her cane?

  Then there was the memory of Marines standing to attention and saluting their fallen comrades. That bugle playing that soft, bittersweet melody.

  Hank had gotten everything, even being shipped off to the Navy as a commodore.

  Hank was dead.

  Vicky was getting shipped off too, but as a lowly ensign.

  Kris Longknife had started as a ensign; somewhere Vicky had read that.

  Maybe ensign wasn’t a bad place to start.

  “I’ll come with you, Mister, ah, what’s your name again.”

  “Ensigns call me Sir and stand at attention when they do.”

  For a moment, Vicky came to a halt. What have I gotten myself into?

  Then she squared her shoulders and moved off to follow the officer and call him Sir.

  Chapter 14

  The next four hours were the strangest in Vicky’s life.

  Once Commander Murkoff got her to Intake, Processing, and Training, she was passed off to medical.

  There she was made to strip, fold all her civilian clothes into the box provided, and wait in line behind several other girls, all naked as the day they were born. A doctor came by. At least he had on a white coat and a stethoscope.

  He listened to each girl’s heart, had them cough, then poked and prodded where Vicky would be glad to have a man’s touch, but this one seemed to look at her like a side of beef. Either he had seen too much human flesh on the hoof or liked boys.

  He finished up with the last girl who had turned beet red all the way down to her navel and faced back down the line. “What’s the Navy coming to? I guess you’ll have to do. Get along to the next station.”

  They were led back to where they’d left their clothes to discover the boxes gone and a bra and panties waiting for them. They were all too big or too small.

  The girls tried swapping among themselves but only the worse exchanges had been made before a woman in a Sailor’s uniform showed up shouting, “Quit your lolly gagging and get a move on! You’re late!”

  She chivied them to the next station, but had to wait for a batch of boys to finish getting their own uniforms issued. Some of them glanced back at the girls, but were told to quite gawking at the officers. The girl who had turned beet red looked to be ready to pop and shower them all with tomato juice.

  Vicky ignored that; she studied what was going on in the next room. The boys were being herded out. Still, most of them were shouting that their uniforms didn’t fit.

  That did not bode well for the girls.

  The good news was that thirty boys were leaving and only five girls arriving.

  Then Vicky discovered just how bad it was.

  “What’s your size, princess?” one sailor with two chevrons on his sleeve said to Vicky.

  “I don’t know. Can’t you just laser size me? That’s the way it’s always done,” Vicky said, not realizing her mistake.

  “Hey, we got ourselves a real princess here. She wants to be laser sized. I bet you she’ll want a uniform that fits her laser sizing, too.”

  Laughter came from just about everyone on the other side of the counter.

  One woman, two chevrons on her sleeve, didn’t join into the chortling. “I take you for a 38-28-36. You’re going to be a bitch to fit, honey.”

  The women disappeared into one row of shelves to return with a blue-black skirt, white shirt and a single breasted suit top of the same color. “Try these on, deary, and be quick about it. You don’t want these horny duds ogling you any longer than you have to.

  I have to put up with them every day, but you’re too young and pretty for the likes of them.”

  Vicky pulled on her skirt. It got past her hips but even when one of the girls helped do the zipper in back, it was wide open at the waist.

  “Put the shirt on,” the girl who’d helped her said, even as she got her own set of problems. She was about as much of a bean pole as Kris Longknife, if a bit shorter.

  Vicky got the shirt on, but still found nothing brushing her waist. She helped the other girl; her skirt fit her waist and ballooned out over her nonexistent hips. While she got on her shirt, Vicky tried on her suit top. She managed to get it closed over her pet mountains, but hung like a blanket everywhere else.

  “Do you have anything better?” Vicky found herself almost pleading.

  “Sorry, sweet cakes, what you got is what you’re getting. Okay, all of you, hurry up if you don’t want to be barefoot tonight. By tomorrow morning, you could be barefoot and pregnant,” the woman with the two chevrons said.

  “In our dreams,” the other guy of the same rank answered.

  The five girls hurried on to their next station. One of them apparently was Catholic. She told the rest that this felt like the Stations of the Cross, “Only with real thorns and crosses to bear.”

  “Then why’d you sign up?” the bean pole said.

  “It was either join the Navy or listen to my mother talk about all the boys I ought to be dating.” Two of the girls looked at her sidewise. “It’s not that I don’t like boys, it’s just, well, look at what we just went through. Do you want to spend your life with any of them?”

  The vote was five to nothing against that.

  The Shoe Store, as it claimed to be, had boots prominently displayed, but the girls were led to a different section with one shoe style to choose from.

  “My granny wears shoes like those,” a girl protested. She, at least, had seen a shoe like they were handed. It had a one inch heel, but it was a big block of a thing. Worse, the shoes were laced and tied, like somethi
ng Vicky had only seen on an athletic shoe.

  A dozen pairs, in different sizes were tossed at them along with footie socks. “Normally you little darlings would be wearing panty hose with your dress uniforms, but we’ll make allowances for today,” said an older woman with three chevrons and a rocker above them. “You’ll wear these shoes with all of your uniforms except your PT uniform, but you can get used to them tonight.”

  “What happens tonight?” the beet red girl said, now only blotchy.

  “Nothing happens tonight, honey. You just get used to wearing these uniforms and shoes. That ought to be enough before we sing you a lullaby and tuck you into bed.”

  Vicky and Bean Pole exchanged a look. Lullabies and tucking someone into bed did not fit at all into that woman’s style.

  Vicky was the last to settle on a pair of shoes. She was teased pretty badly by the Lullaby Lady for trying three shoes on and then going back to the middle pair.

  In uniforms and shod, they were ordered to form a single line. Then the Lullaby Lady introduced herself as “Chief Polidarus, don’t even think of calling me Polly.

  “For so long as we are together, I am god. Do you understand me?”

  The “yes, ma’am” from the five of them was a raged murmur.

  “Do. You. Understand. Me!”

  “Yes, Ma’am!” was shouted this time.

  “I don’t know why someone saw fit to have a tiny Officer Training Class for you five, but we got one now and we got each other for company. Any of you have any idea how to march?”

  Since Vicky knew nothing, she said nothing. Apparently, it was the same for the rest.”

  “Ccchhrist, didn’t any of you babies think ahead before you signed into my Navy? You,” she pointed to the blushing one. “What are you doing in my Navy?”

  “I’m a trained nurse, ma’am. I want to take care of Sailors.”

  “No doubt, some of them will want you to take care of them in ways they never taught you in nursing school.”