Deserter Page 6

  Right! Santa Maria, halfway across the galaxy, hadn’t joined anyone, either. “He’s a serving officer on a Wardhaven warship,” Kris pointed out. “That has to count for something.”

  “Some folks have been arguing that we ought to give dual citizenship in cases like that. This could get very mixed up.”

  Kris nodded with understanding but kept Grampa hostage with her eyes. For the first time in her life, Grampa was the first to flinch away. “I’ll make some phone calls. There’s bound to be somebody who knows somebody who owes them a favor.”

  “Thanks, Grampa.”

  “Stay close, Kris. I’ll get back,” and Ray ended the call.

  Stay close, Kris reflected. If she did, would that help Tom? She weighed Tom’s prospects, hanging on the razor’s edge of what Grampa Ray maybe could do. She was in motion before she actually decided to act. There was no alternative.

  NELLY, GET ME CAPTAIN HAYWORTH. The skipper of the Firebolt was at his desk aboard ship; he glanced up. “Lieutenant. You going to be late today? That ball go long last night?”

  “Sir, a personal matter has come up. I would like to take that leave you offered yesterday.” Behind Kris, Jack was back off the couch. Harvey cleared his throat noisily. Kris had long ago learned that from an NCO, it was as close to a scream of disapproval as you got. She ignored them.

  “Don’t see any problem; you’ve got the time coming. I was hoping you might use your backdoor access to get some Uni-plex for Dale to mess with, but we can survive a week without it.”

  Kris glanced at the box from Grampa Al on her desk. She could drop it off when she went through the station. Then again, Uni-plex had almost killed her once. She was headed, unarmed and unaided, into someone else’s plan for her life. Might a wild card come in handy? “I’ll get you some next week, sir,” she promised. “See you then, and thanks for being so understanding.”

  The Captain smiled. “You’re doing a tough job juggling a lot of stuff, Lieutenant, and doing it well. See you in a week.”

  “And why are you taking leave?” Jack demanded as Harvey roared, “Just what do you think you’re doing, woman?”

  Kris took a deep breath, full of familiar smells. This was the house she’d grown up in. Nuu House. The home of the Longknifes. They did what had to be done when there were no alternatives. Of course, she was headed off to a corner of space where Longknife just might be the word for target. Kris expelled the familiar air and took a step toward Jack, a first step down a dark, unknown path. She chose her words with care, no need to whip up a worse storm than her decision spawned. “I’m going to apply some personal oversight to make sure Tom doesn’t get lost in the shuffle.” NELLY, WHEN’S THE NEXT SHIP LEAVING WARDHAVEN FOR TURANTIC?

  “Damn it, woman, are you blind?” Harvey shouted.

  “You are walking into a trap,” Jack said softly.

  I HAVE BEEN CHECKING CONSTANTLY SINCE LAST EVENING, Nelly said. THE FREIGHTER BRISBANE’S BUSTARDS LEAVES IN AN HOUR. THE LUXURY LINER TURANTIC PRIDE SEALS LOCKS IN THREE HOURS.

  THANKS, NELLY. SEE ABOUT SPACE ON THE TURANTIC PRIDE. “Yes, Jack, I know I’m walking into a trap.”

  Harvey threw up his hands. Jack stood his ground. “Then why go?”

  “They caught Tommy in a trap he wasn’t looking for and, for crying out loud, had no reason to expect. He wasn’t walking, he was running away from those damn Longknifes. Still, he got caught in a net meant for me. Don’t you see? Tommy’s been turned into bait in a game he wasn’t prepared for and can’t survive. And yes, I pray to every god available that this bunch is smart enough not to leave him under a ton of manure with a busted air pipe like they left Eddy.

  “Their damn trap was good enough to catch a poor kid from Santa Maria on holiday. I don’t think they’ve made a trap yet that can catch a major Nuu Enterprises stockholder, a Prime Minister’s daughter, and yes, damn it, a Princess of the eighty planets of United Sentients.

  “They caught themselves a mouse. Let’s see how their little trap handles a madder-than-hell lioness.”

  “Great sound bite,” Jack drawled. “Don’t you think they’ve thought of that, too?”

  Kris shrugged, not amused by how easily he deflated her dramatics. “They haven’t got me yet. I doubt they’ll do it this time. There’s a ship leaving for Turantic in three hours. I’ll be on it.”

  “You can’t do that,” Jack said.

  “I’ll start packing,” Abby said, standing. “Harvey, I’ll need four self-propelled steamer trunks. I assume there are a few of them around this place.”

  “I’ll get them, but I still say this is a bad idea.”

  “You’re not coming,” Kris told Abby. “It’ll be dangerous.”

  The woman turned to Kris, and a small needle gun appeared in her hand, aimed right at Kris’s heart.

  “Where’d that weapon come from?” Jack demanded, stepping in front of Kris.

  “I’ve carried a weapon since I was twelve,” Abby said, making said weapon vanish as smoothly as it had appeared. “Have you forgotten? I hail from Earth. You’ve heard of our quaint native customs, the drive-by shooting or gunning down every customer at your friendly, neighborhood fast-food outlet?”

  Jack was no longer reaching for his gun as he edged closer to this surprise package. “Jack, please don’t come any closer. You look like a nice guy, and you’re probably well trained in hand-to-hand. I don’t have any of those fancy colored belts, but the kids I grew up with taught me how to survive on bad streets and to hurt you fast.”

  Jack backed off a step, but his hand was out. “I’ll bother you for that weapon. No stranger goes armed around my primary.” Jack’s words were soft, but nothing hid the steel in them.

  Abby eyed him; the moment stretched. Then Abby blinked, and the tiny weapon was again in her hand. She handed it to Jack and turned to Kris. “If my last employer had listened more to me than her overpaid security, she’d still be alive, and I wouldn’t be employed so far from home. You really should read my résumé.”

  “My mother hired you.”

  “That shouldn’t keep you from reading up on the woman standing next to you.” Abby tapped her wrist unit. “There, now your computer has it. Enjoy the read.”

  “No time now. I’ll catch up aboard ship.”

  “Fine. Now then, young woman, if you plan to come the enraged Princess . . . in something more than a fur bikini . . . you will need me. I will take care of your needs, and, trust me, I can take care of myself.”

  “How good are you at dodging short-range rockets?” Jack drawled. Abby frowned at that.

  “I didn’t know you’d learned of that attack,” Kris said, heading for her dressing room, Abby right behind her.

  “I may be slow, but I’m not inept. Harvey,” Jack called after the retreating chauffeur, “bring up both of my bags.”

  “Bags?” Kris echoed.

  “Yep. I knew sooner or later you’d rush off planet for something, and I’d get dragged along. I packed one bag for a cold planet, one for a hot. Which is Turantic?”

  “Who said you’re going? This is just me taking a vacation.”

  “Yeah, right,” Jack said, turning away and starting to talk to either himself or his communications center. At the moment, Kris would not have bet an Earth dollar which.

  “It would be easier to maneuver through stations and customs,” Abby offered, “if all our luggage, his two bags and mine, were in trunks bearing your diplomatic immunity.”

  “Didn’t know I had any, but that sounds reasonable. Nelly, tell Harvey we’ll need two more trunks,” Kris said, feeling very much in command of a very muddy situation.

  Abby busied herself around the dressing room until Harvey returned, leading a parade of self-propelled steamer trunks, each big enough to carry Kris comfortably. Abby crammed them full of every kind of dress, gown, suit, and accessory Kris’d ever heard of or even heard intimated. Kris had never worn foundation garments, but Abby packed several. She held up two Kris took for
girdles. “These are fully armored with the latest Super Spider Silk. You can bow, bend, stoop, even breathe in them . . . and they’ll stop a four-millimeter slug.”

  “Get them at an estate sale from your last employer?” Kris asked, then realized the question could be taken wrong.

  “No.” Abby seemed unfazed. “She was six sizes up from you.”

  “Oh, you could protect us both in one.”

  “Sorry, Princess, but I won’t be that close when someone starts shooting. That’s what that good-looking guy is for.”

  Kris took the conversation away from that good-looking guy. “Pack the Order of the Wounded Lion. It’ll impress the locals.”

  “Don’t count on the hicks recognizing it, but it’s big and shiny and ought to dazzle a few,” Abby said, folding it into a trunk bin. Kris checked Grampa Al’s package. It did hold ten kilos of virgin Uni-plex. Kris hefted it. What could I use this for? She had no idea, but the fact that she asked the question seemed a solid argument for taking it. Abby said nothing when Kris handed it to her, just tied it to the bottom of one trunk.

  An hour later they were packed; Abby had even produced one fur bikini, without explanation. Harvey handed over the wands controlling the trunks. “I’ll get a car.”

  Jack reappeared to escort them downstairs. Normally light on his feet, he seemed a bit heavy. He’d probably visited the house armory and was packing enough to demolish a small army. “Abby, how did you get your little friend through security?” he asked. “We thought we had Nuu House as tight as a brick.”

  “Santa Maria has a flourishing business in ceramic air rifles, guns, and similar protective devices,” Abby said without looking back. “Most shoot a metal dart. However, for a bit more, you can buy very effective ceramic ammunition.”

  “Thought so. Kris, you might want to put this in your pocket.” Jack handed her a small automatic, either the same or a twin of the one Abby had produced. Kris held it up to examine.

  “That’s the safety,” Abby pointed out. “Well protected so you won’t accidentally knock it off. I have a spare holster.”

  “Where were you carrying yours?” Jack asked.

  “No man’s business,” Abby shot back and produced a new copy of the weapon Jack had confiscated. While the two glared at each other, Kris slipped the weapon in her pocket; Abby would show her a better hiding place later.

  They got to the elevator seventy-five minutes before the Turantic Pride was due to lock up. Seemed like plenty of time to spare . . . until Kris spotted two men in brown raincoats hustling toward her. “Your people?” she asked Jack.

  “My boss’s boss,” Jack answered, “and Grant, his boss.”

  Way too much officialdom for this to be good. Kris kept her pace up and course steady for the boarding gate. Behind her, the luggage’s electric motors complained.

  “Ma’am. Ma’am,” came breathless from behind Kris. At the gate, she paused to let them catch up while Abby took the trunks through. There seemed to be more trunks behind the maid than when they left Nuu House, but Kris was too busy to do a recount.

  “Princess Kristine, you can’t do this,” the more out-of-breath Senior Agent Grant insisted.

  Kris glanced around the elevator station wide-eyed. “It looks like I am. Why, yes, I think I am. Abby, any problems?”

  “None at all.”

  “Yes there is,” the not-Grant agent insisted. “Security, that bag needs rechecking.”

  The woman behind the check station took in the agent and the badge he waved at her, glanced at the trunk, then at Kris, then smiled. “I got the picture of its contents in storage, sir. The computer says it’s safe. My eyeball says it’s safe. It is safe, mister. Right, Lieutenant Longknife?”

  Kris smiled at the woman who’d cleared her through security every morning for the last three months. “You bet it is, Betty,” and followed her trunks through security.

  “Ms. Longknife, you must reconsider,” the Senior Agent said, following Kris through the checkpoint.

  Alarms went off.

  More uniformed people with automatic weapons than Kris thought the terminal could hold converged on their security station. Now both agents waved credentials, but that didn’t slow down the fast-approaching, heavily armed horde.

  Kris flashed a smile at Betty. “The young one’s with me. He’s carrying and has all the permits you could dream of.”

  Betty took a close look at Jack’s papers, pushed a button, and motioned him to walk slowly through the detector. She whistled as she took in her monitor. “Man, is he carrying. Lieutenant, if I was you, I’d stay on the nice side of that one.”

  “Sometimes she actually does,” Jack said.

  The other agents finished resolving their failure to announce their armed status beforehand. As the small army backpedaled toward their stations, the Senior Agent turned again to Kris. “Ms. Longknife, you must not do this.”

  Kris kept walking. “You might consider getting to know me better before you start giving me orders,” Kris said, twisting the conversation in a misdirection. “You may call me Lieutenant. You may address me as Princess. I am not a ms.”

  “I’m sorry,” one said. “Yes, Lieutenant,” the other agreed. “We aren’t ready.” “We don’t have a security team for you,” they said, stumbling over each other verbally. “We need more time!” they both got out together.

  “There isn’t more time,” Kris said, stopping at the door of the ferry to let Abby and the trunks precede her on board. Kris suppressed a frown as she again came up high in her trunk count, but the pause put Jack at her elbow as her noisy problems once more approached.

  “Then we won’t let Jack go without backup,” the Senior Agent said, playing his ace.

  “Fine. I’m twenty-two years old and a serving naval officer. I am of age to decline your protection. Nelly, register my declination.”

  “You wouldn’t dare,” Grant gasped.

  “She’d dare, Grant,” Jack said. “She dares a lot.”

  “Because you’ve never built the proper relationship of authority,” Grant snapped back.

  “I suspect no one in authority has ever developed a proper relationship with me.” Kris smiled through teeth.

  “You could send along a team on the next ship, or whenever you have it together,” Jack suggested.

  “That’s not a good idea,” Grant said.

  “It looks like the best available,” Kris said. Departure was announced in thirty seconds. All people were advised to stand clear of the white line. Kris glanced down; the white line was a meter thick; she and Jack stood in the middle of it. She side-stepped to the edge of the line inside the ferry. The Junior Supervisor gently elbowed Grant to safety on the outside.

  “We’ll have a backup team on the next ship. With a Senior Supervisor,” Grant shouted.

  “Not anyone senior to Jack, I hope.” Kris smiled as the doors began to close. “Otherwise I’ll have to have my personal computer register that declination of services we talked about, and then you can explain to my father, the Prime Minister, just why I don’t want you around. Or maybe to King Raymond.”

  “You’re a brat, you know,” Jack said through unmoving lips.

  “No. I don’t recall anyone telling me that . . . to my face.”

  “And you, being naturally hard of hearing, never heard it whispered behind your back,” Jack said, shaking his head.

  “I am not hard of hearing.”

  “And you’re not properly belted in, Lieutenant.”

  “Are you going to hound me this entire trip?”

  “Only every minute.”

  If it wasn’t for poor Tommy out there in trouble, this had the makings of a fun trip.

  5

  “Nelly, I told you to rent space, not the whole bloody galaxy.” Kris growled, doing a quick turn around the palatial splendor the purser of the Turantic Pride had personally escorted her to. A crystal chandelier in the sitting room cast light to softly burnish the gold trim of the ceiling and fi
nely carved wall moldings. The brocade-covered sofa and chairs looked like something out of a museum or vid.

  “I did what you told me to,” Nelly said plaintively.

  “Nelly, we could park the Firebolt in here and have room to spare,” Kris said, checking out the doors that opened onto the sitting room. There was a study, with three walls lined with paper books; the fourth was a wall-wide screen. That screen was at least smaller than the one the Purser showed Jack how to operate in the living room. Each of the three bedrooms had a similar entertainment wall.

  NELLY, COULDN’T YOU HAVE GOTTEN US SOMETHING SMALLER? Kris thought, taking the argument with her personal computer private.

  NO, MA’AM. THE SHIP IS ALMOST FULL. I COULD NOT GET THREE ROOMS TOGETHER, SO I RENTED THE IMPERIAL SUITE.

  “Imperial Suite! I’m a Princess, not an empire.”

  “Empress, I think you mean,” Abby corrected. “Empire is the political structure. Emperor and Empress are the titles of the rulers, as defined by gender in those days.”

  “Now you’re an expert on forms of government?” Jack drawled from where he was examining the door, having shown the Purser out. “And it is the Imperial Suite. Says so here.”

  “Governments I leave to people who have the illusion they run them,” Abby said dryly. “Protocol comes in handy when you have to keep such deluded people happy.”

  Kris turned to her body servant. “That’s a side of you I haven’t seen.”

  “And not one I like,” Jack added, “coming from someone standing armed and close to my primary. Who did you say you worked for before?”

  Abby raised her wrist unit, aimed it at Jack, and tapped it. “Now you have my résumé. Read it when you have a moment. If I wanted someone dead, they’d be dead already.”

  Kris left the two bickering while she took in her bedroom. If possible, it was fancier than the living room. The bed was big enough for four and soft as down. The Firebolt’s bridge, the big, comfortable-sized one, was not half as big. “And I forgot my tennis racket.”

  “There are tennis courts on the third deck, as well as an Olympic-size pool and workout facilities,” Nelly said. “The pro shop has all the amenities for a passenger who forgot something.”