Kris Longknife: Redoubtable Read online

  Abby, of course, was right about their being far off the beaten path, and the Surprise was rapidly developing a bad reputation for it being a surprise if she had what you wanted. Of course, the last time she made a trip back to Wardhaven, she’d returned overloaded with famine rations. It was hard to complain about that kind of load after mornings like today.

  If it wouldn’t mean losing Abby, Kris was getting more and more tempted to activate her maid’s reserve first lieutenant commission and order her to set up her own supply service.

  On the second hand, that would mean losing Abby’s services as a superb intelligence gatherer.

  And on the third hand, this close to the Peterwald Empire, turning Abby loose with a checkbook might result in some really strange financial deals. Wars had been started over less.

  “Kris,” Penny said, coming to her feet, “if I could get a breath in edgewise, I’ve been talking to folks on the Wasp. They’ve been interrogating our pirate prisoners.”

  “Who’s doing the interrogations?” Kris asked.

  On its last trip to Wardhaven, the Wasp had acquired more Marines and sailors, and, though Kris wasn’t sure, there seemed to be a lot of new faces among the civilians on board. Professor mFumbo told her that half of the boffins found the present situation too bland for their tastes. They’d been run through the National Secrets Act, solidly scared about breathing a word about what they witnessed while touring the galaxy with one Kris Longknife . . . sometime princess and inevitable troublemaker . . . and sent on their way.

  Which didn’t explain who was paying the new civilians on board and what they were there for. Was Admiral Crossenshield slipping his kind of black-ops folks into Kris’s crew?

  NELLY, CAN YOU TELL ME ANYTHING ABOUT THE NEW CIVILIAN MEMBERS OF OUR CREW? Kris had asked early in the voyage.

  NO, KRIS. NOW THAT CAPTAIN DRAGO KNOWS I’VE GOT THE SHIP’S COMPUTER EATING OUT OF MY HAND, HE’S TAKEN TO WITHHOLDING CERTAIN INFORMATION FROM THAT COMPUTER. I KNOW HOW MANY PEOPLE WE HAVE ON RATIONS, NAVY, MARINE, AND CIVILIANS; BUT I DON’T KNOW ANYTHING ABOUT WHO THESE NEW PEOPLE ARE. YOU KNOW, KRIS, I DON’T THINK THE CAPTAIN TRUSTS ME ANYMORE.

  I DON’T THINK HE EVER TRUSTED ME. HE AND I ARE GOING TO HAVE TO TALK.

  GOOD LUCK AT THAT, KRIS. I MIGHT ALSO ADD THAT ABBY STILL USES HER OLD COMPUTER AND TURNS MY KID OFF REGULARLY. THAT WOMAN DOES NOT TRUST ANYONE.

  So it was with some trepidation that Kris asked Penny, “Who’s been doing the interrogations, and just what are they doing?”

  “Don’t worry, Kris. We just sat them down in one of the civilian bistros and ordered hamburgers, fries, and beer.”

  “Hamburgers?”

  “Yeah. Most of them haven’t had a decent meal in three, four months. Put some decent food in front of them. Throw in a couple of beers, and our intel staff are their new best friends.”

  Hmm, that’s an interesting approach. “So what are they saying?”

  “Nothing,” Penny said with a shrug. “But that nothing tells us a lot.”

  Confused, Kris frowned. “Such as?”

  “You may have noticed that they rammed us.”

  “Captain Drago made sure I did indeed notice that. And he reminds me of it every chance he gets,” Kris said dryly.

  “Well, none of those intrepid buccaneers had ever been on a spaceship as anything but passengers. The sum total of experience for the gal at the helm was two summers steering a boat loaded with tourists around a lake.”

  Kris winced. “And if they’d captured the Wasp . . . ?”

  “They’d all get jobs as deckhands or something on the pirate ship, but Jackson, the guy running the show down here, has a merchant officer and some crew that would be running the ship.”

  Kris put two and two together and didn’t like what it told her. “So none of our prisoners know where they’d be taking the Wasp to outfit it with guns or to sell its cargo.”

  “Ignorant as the day they were born,” Penny said.

  “I’m not following you,” Jack said. He’d been issuing orders to his Marines to do what they could to help the survivors of the slaughter while half-listening to Kris and Penny. “Are you talking about some kind of pirate base?”

  “Exactly,” Kris said. “You don’t operate spaceships without a dock to handle repairs. You need facilities to overhaul reactors and engines. Why steal stuff if you don’t have a marketplace that will take anything you bring in, file the serial numbers off it, and ship it back out to the trade lanes? You’ve seen the size of the fleet-support bases that Wardhaven has.”

  Jack nodded.

  “Somewhere, these pirates have a support system. Probably smaller, but it’s there. We can keep chasing after this or that pirate ship, or we can find the base and squash the cockroaches in their nest. Which would you rather do?”

  “Taking down a nest sounds like my kind of job,” Jack said with a grin.

  “So who is this Jackson guy?” Kris asked, turning to the Annams.

  They shook their heads. “I have not been to town in over six months,” he said. “It is worth your life to ask questions when the gunmen come to collect food.”

  “No surprise,” Penny said. “The crew of the ketch didn’t know much, either. I doubt any survivors of this shoot-out know a whole lot, but whoever is running this show would have our klepto captain close at hand. I suggest we talk to the survivors here and see if anyone wants to talk to us about what’s going on here. Anything they tell us is more than we know right now.”

  The three of them split up. Kris ordered Chief Beni to look over the trucks. One of them might have a computer, map system. Something. With a Marine guard at her elbow, Kris started her own walk through the dead and dying.

  Workers from the local plantation were trying to separate the pile of bodies around the food carts. These poor souls had been between the gunslingers from the three middle trucks and Sergeant Bruce’s Marines. The thugs had opened fire on these starving people and mowed them down in droves. The bodies were piled four or five deep.

  Apparently, just getting between the shooters and their Marine targets was enough to sign your death warrant. The milk of human kindness seemed to run mighty thin in this neighborhood.

  Or just limped.

  A few quick orders from their officers had adjusted the Marines’ fire lanes. The troopers to the right and left had concentrated their fire on the hostiles in the center. The Marines in the center had divided their aim between the shooters on the right and left.

  That was the difference between being a trained fighting man and being a member of an armed mob.

  Kris shook her head slowly. How could fools with guns hope to stand against a trained fighting team?

  Now, out along the former gun line, Marines moved quickly to help those still breathing. One was getting yelled at for her effort.

  “You’re all gonna die,” the gunslinger tried to yell. It came out little more than a croak. “Once Jackie gets her hands on you, you’re gonna die long and slow, and I’m gonna laugh and laugh at you.”

  The last was unlikely as the voice sputtered down and ended with a hacking cough.

  Kris turned her back on that scene and concentrated on the people who had been slaughtered while just trying to get a bit to eat.

  Most were already beyond help, but one guy gasped for water as he was laid out. Kris took the canteen her Marine guard offered and knelt beside the man. Blood pulsed from a wound in his chest.

  Kris offered the canteen, and the man drank from it. He coughed up water, blood and froth, then sipped a few more drops. The Marine produced a bandage and knelt beside Kris to apply it, but the man waved it away.

  “Let me die in peace,” he gasped.

  The Marine turned away. He looked around for someone more interested in living but didn’t seem to find anyone. He folded up the bandage and stepped back, returning to alert guard.

  The dying man lifted his chin. “You’re that Longknife woman? The one that saved Peterwald? I saw y
our picture on the news.”

  “Yes,” Kris admitted.

  “I wish you hadn’t. All hell broke out after you did.”

  Kris didn’t have an answer to that, so she kept her peace.

  “I thought I could get my family away from St. Pete. Find a hole to hide in.” His cackle of bitter laughter turned into choking, and more blood came up.

  Kris offered another sip of water. He took a swig, then spat it out. After a while, he started talking again.

  “Jackson said if we didn’t come out here . . . bring back the food . . . she’d kill our families. She’s got all of them in the local football stadium.” He shook his head. “Now she’ll likely kill them all and put their heads on pikes. She’s gonna run out of pikes if she keeps this up.”

  He didn’t laugh at his joke. Or maybe there was no joke in his words. Kris found them horrifying.

  “Where is this Jackson?” Kris asked. “How much heat do her gunslingers have? Help me save your family.”

  “Could you save them like you saved Peterwald? How many will die this time?”

  The guy had a legitimate question. Saving Peterwald had cost five thousand innocent lives immediately. How many had died and were going to die in this reign of terror as he and others did their power dance?

  “If I have to kill some of Jackson’s hired thugs, how many of them will be innocent bystanders?”

  “Not a one,” the man said. “You gonna save my wife? My kids?”

  “I’m going to give it a Longknife try,” Kris said, as the man died in her arms.

  Kris stood, her dusty whites now caked with the rust of drying blood. She looked around the field. Marines moved with armored and armed purpose. Locals moved with bare legs and skinny arms, helping where they could. Kris spotted Chief Beni, unhooking his computer from a truck.

  “Chief, you find anything?” she asked on net.

  “This planet doesn’t have a GPS system, but this truck has a cheap inertial platform that tracks where it’s been and helps generate maps. I know where it came from.”

  “And that would be?”

  “Tranquility Road. That’s a small street, near the center of Lander’s Rest. When I overlay a photo from the Wasp, Tranquility Road seems to be the home of some mighty wealthy people. At least their homes are large, and there is a lot of green around them.”

  Nelly pulled a picture from Da Vinci, the chief ’s computer, and hung it in the air ahead of Kris.

  “Is that a nice place to live?” Kris asked Mr. Annam.

  He nodded. “My father thought of building a town house there. He decided that we had always been farmers, and the money should go into our farm. Now, I am glad he did.”

  “Nelly, zoom in the picture. I’m looking for an iron fence with spikes. Is there one?”

  “These three houses in the middle of the block have such fences. One of our nanoscouts is in that area. Let me zoom in.”

  “You might want to look away from this,” Kris said in warning to the locals.

  “What are those things?” the wife asked.

  “Severed heads,” Kris said. “Severed heads and the crows that feed on them. I think we’ve found where the powers that be on Kaskatos hang out.”

  The plantation owner and his wife managed to turn away before they were explosively sick.

  8

  Kris gave the Annams a minute to recover before she continued questioning them. She took the moment to squeeze down all feelings in herself. Gentleness, concern, anything that nurtured human warmth was something she could not afford today. Despite the sweat running down her face, the day would be a cold, cold one.

  Done locking down her gut, Kris asked the first of many questions that would lead to rack and ruin. “Is there a football stadium in Lander’s Rest?”

  Nelly had identified two large stadiums. Mr. Annam pointed out the larger one. “The smaller is for school contests.”

  “Jack, Penny, to me, please. I think I’ve got enough information to plan an attack. Abby, Colonel, are you on net?

  Both of them were.

  “You heard about Jackie Jackson,” Penny said as she trotted up to Kris. “He’s one bad hombre.”

  “One bad girl,” Kris corrected. “I think she’s Jacqueline, not Johnny.”

  “Jacqueline; I thought we girls were supposed to be nice and gentle and good,” Penny insisted.

  “Penny, you’re hanging out with a Longknife gal,” Jack said on net, still jogging toward Kris. “How could you possibly be that ill informed?”

  “Okay, so I believe in that sugar and spice and everything nice stuff. A girl’s got a right to her illusions.”

  “Sorry, folks, no illusions today,” Kris said. “We got ourselves some iron-hard facts. Ugly iron spikes with heads on them.”

  “Ah, Princess, this is Shuttle 1. We finally got the weeds out of our intakes. We’ve taken on a full tank of reaction mass. Do you need a lift off planet?”

  Jack joined Kris, hardly out of breath, but with the usual quizzical eyebrow raised. “That was the plan, as I recall,” Jack said.

  “That plan didn’t work out. Change of plan. New plan,” Kris said.

  Behind Kris, there was a gasp. She turned to see the Annams, mouth wide open. “But you are a Longknife. For Longknifes, things always go according to plan.”

  “Yeah,” Kris agreed. “I read that in the history books, too. Trust me. It may have worked that way for my great-grandparents, but it doesn’t seem to ever work that way for me.”

  Kris left the two locals to marvel at that revelation and turned back to her crew.

  “You’re not leaving?” Jack said.

  “No. Send the shuttles up to the Wasp. Abby, see that the shuttle loads are changed. Marines only the next trip down. No food. Ask Drago if he can put together a Navy landing party to back up the Marines. Shooters, docs, food, anything the squid can do to support the trigger pullers.”

  “Got that, Kris,” Abby replied on net. “We go loaded for bear. All that talk about us not wanting to upset Vicky and her daddy is canceled. We’re back in the kick ass and take names business. Goody Two-shoes stuff will have to wait in line.”

  Jack eyed Kris. He wasn’t actually questioning her decision. No, it was more like he wanted to make sure she’d weighed all her options and knew what she was doing.

  “The situation here is a lot worse than I expected,” Kris said crisply. “The local warlord is a vicious killer. If we maintain a presence here, and are kind enough to let her live, she will repay us by sniping at us on every corner. No, folks. We’d better cut the head off this snake today. I’ll apologize profusely to Vicky next time I see her.”

  “What is the target?” the colonel asked without skipping a beat.

  “That’s my problem, Colonel, and I’d like your advice on it. I see two, no three, maybe four targets, and I got a bad feeling in my gut that if I go for all of them, I’ll spread myself too thin and fail to get any of them.”

  “It’s been known to happen,” he said, noncommittal-like. “Talk to me.”

  “Somewhere, down in this haystack, is a needle of a pirate captain. He may or may not have a whole crew. I want to catch that joker and find out what he or she knows.”

  “After seeing the comedy routine that the Wasp encountered this morning, I think Captain Drago would heartily agree,” the colonel said.

  “The nasty type running this setup is Jackie Jackson. She appears to have taken over the best houses in town for her minions and is here, on the totally misnamed Tranquility Road.”

  “Yes. I earlier observed her taste in lawn decorations. She definitely has been breathing air much longer than I, for one, would care to share it with her,” the colonel said dryly.

  “I figure the best place to nail her is at her headquarters, but I think there’s at least a fifty-fifty chance she’ll choose to beat it out of town. She’s sent her machete swingers and gunslingers up against us twice and lost both times. She could try us a third time, or she coul
d take advantage of either of these two roads to beat it out of town fast.”

  Here, Kris had Nelly back off from the map of Lander’s Rest enough to show the roads headed out of town. One led south to the Annam plantation, among others. “This southern road is the one first and second platoons will be taking into town. She might come out to meet us.”

  “Not likely,” the colonel said. “She did that once, and it didn’t work all that well.”

  “Yes,” Kris said, trying not to look around at the bloody results. “The other roads offer her two different options. This eastern one takes her to the hills. We could likely track her, but digging out her and her muscle could be a major bit of work.”

  “Nothing my Marines couldn’t handle,” Jack said.

  “Maybe, Captain,” the colonel said. “Do we have any count as to how many people this Jackie has working for her?”

  “No estimate at all. In the past, it’s been fluid. If she wanted more heat, she’d recruit them by threatening their families. I’ll get to that in a moment.”

  When no one said anything, Kris went on. “The western road out of town follows the river and leads us to a whole lot of large ranches and plantations. I’m afraid that if she gets in among them, she could terrorize the folks into giving her cover.

  “ ‘Cooperate with me, and I’ll give you food. Help that Longknife woman, and your kids get their brains blown out.’ Who wins in that situation?”

  “It does get messy,” the colonel agreed.

  “And with her up the east road, she can strike back into Lander’s Rest. We’d have to garrison the place.”

  “And she bleeds us,” the colonel said with a sigh. “No, we want to annihilate her and her ruffians in town or while they are out in the open fleeing. Now, what is this about her recruiting methods?”

  “Nelly, show them the football field.”

  The map of human-occupied Kaskatos was replaced by a close overhead of the larger stadium. The playing field was covered with humanity. Some huddled together under makeshift tents; others sat in the open. A few lucky ones were allowed in the first few rows of the bleachers.