Kris Longknife: Furious Page 5

  Nelly, of course, wouldn’t let that happen. The pantry doors did open for Penny, but the stove had to be managed personally by Mimzy, or Penny’s bacon and eggs would have been left cold or burned to a crisp.

  “There is such a thing as programming a computer to be too helpful,” Nelly observed. “Maybe I should adjust this one’s parameters a bit.”

  “Let’s don’t and say we did,” Kris said. “Remember, Nelly, this boat belongs to someone else. They’ve gotten everything the way they want it. We need to leave it the way we found it.”

  “There is that,” Nelly agreed, then couldn’t avoid another try. “I could back up the old code and reload it before we leave.”

  “No!” came from both Kris and Penny.

  Kris chose to drink her breakfast; a healthy shake that assured her of all the vitamins, minerals, protein, and fiber she would need for an active morning.

  And Kris’s morning was active. Penny saw to it that Kris subjected herself to another session with the infamous trainer.

  “Can’t we talk about something?” Kris asked, as Penny settled her into the box.

  “Nope. I didn’t understand half of what Juan said about what your Grampa Al pulled on New Eden. What’s there can wait until we get there to be dumped into your lap. What I would like to know is, what is it with your Grandfather Al? What’s he think he’s doing?”

  Kris shrugged as the machine began to beat up on her. No gentle massage to start with today. “I don’t remember a lot about Grampa Al. I was only ten when he and father had their blowup after poor Eddy was kidnapped. Father thought the proper response was to get aggressively involved in making Wardhaven safe for everybody. Grampa Al didn’t.”

  Kris paused, to catch her breath and to remember. “I’d never seen grown-ups shout at each other like my father and his father did that evening over supper. I never saw Grampa Al again until I was a boot ensign and discovered how dangerous it was to be one of those damn Longknifes. I think I went to see my grampa with some idea that I could help him. Foolish me.”

  “How’d the visit go?” Penny asked, sweating in the throes of her own contraption.

  “Short,” Kris said. “You have no idea how hard it was to make it through all his checkpoints; and then he had nothing to say to me. He did offer me a job, deep inside his secure web. He’s offered me jobs several times. Always with the same requirement. Let myself be bricked up inside his fortress.”

  “But he’s coming out of his web, or at least sending agents out to mess with the rest of us,” Penny said.

  “That’s what bothers me. When Grampa Al and my father were arguing about Father’s going into politics, Al was dead set against it. ‘Get out of the public eye,’ he shouted. ‘Make money and let it build a wall around us.’ But here he is trying to take over Eden. That doesn’t sound like the Grampa Al I remember. Yes, I know he’s gotten more crazy about his personal safety. Still, you and I know any walls he’s built won’t stand a second if a monstrous mother ship makes orbit over Wardhaven.”

  Kris paused for a moment. “But why didn’t Al go talk to his own father? King Ray wants folks ready for the aliens. Why doesn’t Al work with him?”

  Penny shook her head. “And what is our beloved king doing?” she scowled. “First, he locks you up on Madigan’s Rainbow, then he starts some sort of PR campaign to test the waters to see if people are willing to do something about maybe defending themselves.”

  Kris felt like spitting but had neither the air nor the spare liquid.

  “Both your grandpa and great-grandpa are alike in one thing,” Penny said.

  “What’s that?”

  “Neither one trusts the rest of humanity with the problem it faces. Both are doing what they think is right, but both are all too willing to keep the rest of us in the dark.”

  Kris leaned back to think, while the machine did its thing, sweating the poisons that she’d swallowed so easily in the last months out of her body and soul.

  Penny had a point. Longknifes were all too ready to apply their own solution to humanity’s problems. Of course, if Kris was honest, humanity’s problem was there because of what a certain Kris Longknife had done.

  NOT FAIR, KRIS, Nelly said, interrupting Kris’s thoughts with some of her own. THOSE ALIENS HAVE BEEN OUT AMONG THE STARS FOR A HUNDRED THOUSAND YEARS OR MORE. HUMANITY HAS BEEN OUT HERE LESS THAN FOUR HUNDRED. WE WERE LUCKY THAT WE NEVER RAN INTO ONE OF THEM BEFORE. THEY WERE UNLUCKY ENOUGH TO RUN INTO YOU AND THOSE THREE HELLBURNER TORPEDOES. THE FIRST MOVES IN THIS WAR HAVE BEEN MADE. THE ONLY RATIONAL QUESTION IS WHAT MOVES DO WE MAKE NEXT? YOUR GRAMPA RAY THINKS WE NEED TO THINK ABOUT IT A WHILE. I DON’T KNOW WHAT YOUR GRAMPA AL THINKS HE CAN DO, BUT I DON’T TRUST EITHER OF THEM. DO YOU?

  Mentally, Kris shook her head. I AGREE WITH YOU, NELLY. GRAMPA RAY WANTS TO TAKE TIME HE MAY NOT HAVE. I DON’T KNOW WHAT GRAMPA AL THINKS HE’S DOING, BUT IF IT’S ANYTHING LIKE WHAT HE’S DONE FOR THE LAST FIFTEEN YEARS, IT WILL INVOLVE TRYING TO BUY HIMSELF SECURITY. I KNOW I DON’T LIKE RAY’S SOLUTION, AND I DOUBT I’LL LIKE AL’S SOLUTION ONE WHIT MORE.

  Kris concentrated on the work at hand while trying to decide whether she’d burned off enough of her dissolute ways to reward herself with some real food for lunch.

  9

  Kris and Penny were just sitting down to filet mignon, baked potatoes, and mixed vegetables served by a joyfully appreciated kitchen, when Captain Luna came on the room’s speaker.

  “I don’t want to worry you two, but we’ve been hailed and ordered to return to High Madigan station.”

  “Why forever for?” Kris said, putting a little of Cara’s drama into a question she could not raise any surprise for.

  “They ain’t telling, and I ain’t asking. I told ’em my CEO intends to use this scow for a jaunt with his board of directors. I named a few, and they said they’d get back.”

  “You think you put the fear of the Almighty in them, or at least of the almighty dollar?” Penny asked.

  “I would think so, but one of Kris’s mosquito boats has broken away from the incoming freighter it was escorting. It’s gone to one-and-a-half-gee deceleration and looks like as soon as it bleeds off all its velocity inward, it’s gonna start blasting for us out here. ’Course, if it don’t pump its engines any more than one and a half gees, we’ll be long gone through the jump before it gets within range of us.”

  “Nelly, do you know anything about this?” Kris asked.

  “Yes, but I didn’t want to disturb you and Penny at your lunch.”

  “Disturb us,” Kris said, dryly.

  “About thirty minutes ago, five muscle types showed up at your quarters, Kris, demanding admittance inside the house and inside your room. Abby did her best to come down with a bad case of the slows, but they busted down your door about ten minutes ago, if I’ve got my time lag right for speed-of-light communications.”

  “Can’t a girl take a day of sick leave without everyone having kittens?” Kris asked the ceiling.

  “Is there any chance that the skippers of those boats of yours will develop hair on their chest and take off after me seriously?” Captain Luna asked. “I dearly don’t want to have to pull up my skirts and make a run for it. Aside from flashing my well-shaped ankles for the boys, it tends to make you look guilty of something.”

  “I really can’t claim any credit for the training of that splinter fleet,” Kris said. “They made it clear to me they wanted me pushing paper, not pushing gees. Unless I missed something in one of my drunken stupors, those boats have never cranked themselves up past one and a half gees, and none of them have high-gee stations. For what it’s worth, I’m not sure my XO ever read what those boats can do if you put the hammer down.”

  “Or studied what you did around Wardhaven orbit?” Captain Luna added.

  “Dada reports the home wreckers have departed,” Nelly reported. “They stared daggers at Cara and Abby, but didn’t say a word. Abby says they’ll likely be okay.”

  “I hope so,�
�� Kris said. Penny had shared that if things went bad, her folks would not have a body to bury. Abby had said she was threatened with death if she didn’t do exactly what was expected. Kris wondered what she would be doing now if those five toughs had put a gun to Cara’s head and told Abby to use her computer to get Kris back there, or they’d kill the kid.

  Apparently, these government-sponsored terrorists hadn’t thought things through. Or they were too new at plumbing the depths of degradation to do it all that well.

  Which left Kris feeling guilty that she hadn’t taken a full minute to identify just what torture would make her rethink her flight.

  Rethink?

  Would she have turned Luna around if they had made Cara and Abby’s life the price for her freedom?

  Kris was glad she didn’t have to answer that question.

  “Keep me filled in on what happens, Captain. Nelly, I want to know immediately if you receive a new message from Abby. No delay. You understand?”

  “You will know the second I do, Kris,” Nelly said.

  “Captain, could I have a look at your tactical plot?” Kris asked.

  Across from the breakfast table, a painting in a heavy golden frame suddenly changed from a vision of a lovely riverbank where several formally dressed men were having a picnic with a handful of voluptuous nude women into a tactical display of the system, then narrowed down to the space between Madigan’s Rainbow and the jump Captain Luna had the Archimedes headed for.

  “Tighten in, Nelly, on just the patrol boat and the Archie.” The screen did.

  “Show me times to intercept and time to jump, assuming no changes in accelerations or decelerations.”

  “We jump in an hour. That boat never gets to within two hundred thousand klicks. The 18-inch pulse lasers on those tinker toys can’t boil water much past thirty thousand klicks. They aren’t really accurate much past twenty thousand.”

  Kris had bitter memories of trying to get her boats well within three thousand klicks if she wanted to do any real damage to a battleship.

  “Let me know, Captain, if they call you back,” Kris said.

  “I’ll let you listen in on the call,” Luna promised, and rang off.

  Kris found her steak had cooled while they’d talked. The kitchen warmed it right there on the plate at the table. Kris ate with one eye on the screen.

  Through the meal, the boat held to its sedate one and a half gee.

  Kris found herself gnashing her teeth. “What kind of skippers did they hire for my squadron?” she grumbled.

  Penny had survived plenty of radical maneuvering under Kris’s command. Hard jinxing at high gees and worse. “Just be glad they did crew those boats with those grandmothers in long skirts and bustles. Would you really want to be pursued by the likes of a Kris Longknife?”

  Kris chuckled. “Good point.”

  Kris and Penny did not bus their own table; the kitchen assured them it would clean up. It seemed to think it a joke that anyone in this suite would even think of it. Which left Kris wondering who had programmed that in and why.

  Penny was pushing Kris back into the box for another hour’s workout when the Archie announced to all hands. “Prepare for zero gee as we approach the jump point.”

  The box was giving Kris a workout, doing something like cross-country skiing, moving her arms and legs in a rhythm against resistance, when Captain Luna nudged the yacht through the jump.

  “All hands, prepare for one-point-five gees. This old girl has places to go and sights to see. Let’s get a move on.”

  “Nelly, did you hear anything from Abby and Cara, Mata Hari, or Dada?”

  “No message traffic from them, Kris. And yes, I’m worried for them, too.”

  10

  Captain Luna kept the spurs to Archie. Her words, not Kris’s. Never slowing to below 1.5 gees, they came through the Gamma Jump at New Eden late on the fourth day after leaving Madigan’s Rainbow.

  They were immediately informed by High Eden that they had orders to search the Archimedes for a fugitive as soon as she tied up at the station.

  Penny suggested they look for a place to hide.

  Kris seriously doubted that hiding was what a Longknife did. Of course, she had no desire to handle things Captain Luna’s way . . . walking out the air lock. It took Kris all of five seconds to settle on her own way.

  “I didn’t come here to look for a place to hide. I want to find out what Grampa Al is up to. I’ll meet the inspection party on the quarterdeck.”

  Penny seemed a bit nonplussed. “I don’t think a gussied-up hussy of a boat like this has a quarterdeck.”

  “I’ll meet them at the front door,” Kris growled.

  “In what you got on?” Penny asked.

  She had a point. Kris had come aboard in her usual nightwear. A Wardhaven U shirt and a pair of Marine Corps red-and-gold gym shorts. Sometimes she wore Navy blue gym shorts. Red and gold was just the luck of the draw that night.

  Penny and Kris had not found any clothes in the palatial quarters they shared, but on the second day, a collection of dungarees and blue denim shirts had been passed through the door after a knock. That, and panties and bras, which, to Kris’s great surprise, actually fit. That apparel was what Penny made reference to.

  These were work clothes that the engineering division might wear. Solid working clothes for working people who didn’t make contact with the well-heeled passengers who roamed the fancy-dress parts of the ship.

  “You thinking we should go aft and mix in with the black gang in Engineering?” Kris asked.

  “I’m wondering if that was what Captain Luna had in mind when she got us decked out like this,” Kris’s intelligence chief said. “After all, I doubt Luna really wants to face a charge of harboring a fugitive.”

  Kris made a face. Skulking did not fit into any part of the Longknife legend she’d read growing up. Slinking in to blow something up . . . yes. Skulking around to hide your face . . . not so much.

  “Let’s wait and see what Captain Luna says,” Kris decided.

  Which meant Kris went another round with the coach in the box. Great fun.

  Kris was recovering from an hour in the box and enjoying a delicious dinner when Captain Luna trotted in, followed by the steamer trunk Kris had arrived in. She settled herself at the table. It promptly added a place for her, and an equally scrumptious meal appeared before her.

  She dug in hungrily.

  With her mouth full, she asked. “So, how you going to handle this inspection?”

  “I’m not going out the air lock,” Kris said, putting a solid marker down.

  The captain made a face as she shoveled in another mouthful. “I didn’t expect you would. What’s your Plan B?”

  “Penny, here, thinks we ought to drop down to Engineering and pass ourselves off as part of your black gang. Or just me. You say Penny’s papers are in order.”

  “Yep, Penny’s no problem. As usual, it’s you, Princess.”

  “And you don’t have an expert forger on board that could knock me out some papers before we tie up?”

  Captain Luna laughed. Then she had to cough something up that went down the wrong way. When she settled back down, she scowled at Kris.

  “Me, not have the best forger in fifty light-years? Don’t make me laugh. Really, don’t. This is good chow. Be a shame to die from it.”

  Kris folded her arms in front of her. “Okay, then we’ll cut to the chase. I prefer Plan C. I meet the inspection party on your quarterdeck or whatever you call that space where folks come aboard.”

  Captain Luna eyed Kris sideways. “You sure of that?”

  “I admit that I’d like to get a good look at the boarding party before I settle on Plan B or C.”

  “I kind of like the way you handled the last boarding party,” Captain Luna said through a grin.

  “Which last boarding party?” Kris asked carefully. Her sins were many, and it would be a shame to confuse one with another.

  “Those pirate
s at Port Royal. That was some panic party.”

  “How do you know about them?” Kris asked with a sigh.

  “Everyone knows about them. The video of you running and them chasing and you finishing ’em up with a mop in the face. It’s the funniest viral video in human space.”

  “How’d that get out?” Kris said, eyeing Penny.

  “Don’t look at me. I’m right along with you in a truly frumpy dress, running for all I’m worth.”

  “Abby!” Kris breathed. “I thought I’d kept that woman too busy to sell anything to her sources.”

  Clearly, Kris hadn’t.

  “Hmm,” Penny said, eyeing the overhead. “Cara was bragging to me that she was getting real good at video mashups.”

  “No good deed goes unpunished,” Captain Luna chortled, then sobered quickly. “So which of your plans is B and C? You’re dressed to hide out in my engineering spaces. Not so good for greeting and impressing a boarding party. Steamer trunk, open.”

  Behind her, the trunk’s two sides slid apart. The yacht skipper left the table, chewing on a big bite, and rummaged through the contents of what had accompanied Kris aboard. Among the air cylinders and minimum life-support food rations was a carefully hung suit: beige, in Berber wool, complete with blouse and two-inch matching heels.

  “Princess enough for you, Your Highness,” Captain Luna read from a note in Abby’s perfect handwriting.

  “It will do,” Kris said. “When do we match air locks?”

  “In half an hour. I really should be getting back to my bridge. Between the knuckleheads in my bridge watch and the illiterate computers the owner dumped on me for the ship, this scow could probably steer itself for a couple of dozen jumps and dockings. Still, a good captain doesn’t let her crew know just how superfluous she is.”

  “I’ll remember that when . . . or if . . . I ever get a ship of my own,” Kris said.