Kris Longknife's Assassin Read online

  There was no elevator. Vicky lugged her burden up four flights of stairs and was out of breath by the time the chief led her to a door with Commanding Officer painted in gold letters.

  The chief led Vicky through the door. “I’m to hand off Ensign Victoria Peterwald to you,” she announced.

  “Paperwork is already done,” a clerk behind a gray metal desk said, and handed a copy to the chief while passing a large manila envelope to Vicky. She took it carefully, fearful that it might just be the straw that broke the camel’s back.

  A moment later, both Captain Krätz and Commander Murkoff joined them.

  “You sure you don’t have a job on the Surprise for me? Hell, I’d trade places with this boot ensign to get some decent ship plates under my feet,” the commander said, half in jest, but Vicky could see half his longing was serious.

  “Sorry, Klaus, but you really don’t want to be in this ensign’s shoes. Trust me,” he said, throwing Vicky a sour look. Apparently, the smiles in the dining room had not been intended for her.

  “Well, a good voyage to you, and not too long.”

  “It will be as long as it takes to reach its end,” Captain Krätz said.

  Vicky expected them to salute, but no one did. Clearly, she had a lot to learn. The chief had said read, and she suspected she better.

  Vicky lugged her seabag down four flights of stairs and again was struggling to catch her breath as the captain strode down the hall. At the door sat four sailors in fresh uniforms that fit them as poorly as Vicky’s did but showed no rank insignias. The captain pointed at the biggest of the four.

  “You, Sailor, assist this ensign with her baggage.”

  “Yes, sir,” the man said, and in a blink had hefted Vicky’s bag over his shoulder and was following them out the door.

  The captain put his hat on and eyed Vicky until she did the same. Only then did the saluting thing began. Everyone saluted the captain, and Vicky had to return every one of them. She was tempted to keep her hand up at her eyebrow except it was more complicated than that. Those without gold braid saluted the captain first. Even chiefs.

  Vicky was expected to return their salutes just as the captain did.

  Those with gold braid were more complicated. Anyone with more braid than Vicky, and that was everyone, had to be saluted. And Vicky better get her hand moving up into a salute before they started to salute the captain.

  Her right shoulder had been exhausted from lugging the seabag. Now it looked ready to fall off from all the saluting.

  Fortunately, the captain had a car waiting. The sailor doffed the seabag into the boot, saluted the two of them, got a grateful smile from Vicky, and a real one from the captain and double-timed back to his station. Vicky wondered if that was his job, or just a chance for a trainee to get some rest. Lord knew, if she racked up more days like the last few, she’d be glad to sit and wait for some petty job to do.

  Assuming she could manage such a job.

  The driver had opened the door for the captain. The captain stood there eyeing Vicky.

  “Sir?”

  “Junior officers enter a car first.”

  “Oh. Yes, sir,” Vicky said. Actually, she usually entered a car first. Her security team required it. She’d just been wool gathering, or maybe in shock as she tried to fit herself into the weird Navy Way of doing things.

  She got in and slid all the way over. The captain joined her.

  “Back to the space elevator, please.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Vicky found her first Navy home disappearing behind her.

  Chapter 16

  “Ah, Captain, may I ask a question?” Vicky said.

  “I am told that you were sent to the Navy for an education. Any questions you have should be answered, if possible and at the right time, of course.”

  Vicky tried to measure the tone of his answer. It was not one she was familiar with. She chose to go on with her question. “Sir, it appears to me that the other four girls in the training unit were pulled in to provide a training experience with me. Then suddenly, you pull me out of training and I’m rushed off to a ship. I don’t understand.”

  Captain Krätz nodded. “A reasonable question. Yes. When the Navy received a request to provide an experience to you, we did collect the four most available young woman and handed you over to an equally available chief’s tender mercies. It was assumed you’d get six weeks of officer training.

  “Unfortunately, the Ambush suffered an engineering casualty. She replaced us on pirate patrol and we were intended to replace her at the end of her three month cruise. Now we are replacing her early. No doubt, if the reactor problem requires major yard time, she may replace us late. Things like that happen.”

  Vicky didn’t understand half of what he’d just said. Engineering casualty? Yard time? She’d spent time at a resort on New Eden where some workers still spoke Spanish rather than Standard. She couldn’t understand them.

  It looked like the Navy spoke its own language as well.

  “What will happen to the other ensigns now that I am gone?”

  “What? A Peterwald asking questions about the little people?” the captain asked, sarcasm heavy.

  “I just wondered,” Vicky said, defensively. “I liked a few of the girls. I think one liked me.”

  “The chief will give them expedited training until they can be merged into the class ahead of them. Does that satisfy your curiosity?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Any more questions?”

  “The Surprise? Wasn’t that one of the ships that fought with my brother against Kris Longknife? I remember the name. It surprised me,” Vicky added with a wry smile.

  The captain became distant. “Yes, I was with him at the Chance system.”

  “Why did you survive and my brother didn’t?”

  “That is always a hard question after a battle,” the captain said vaguely.

  “Could you have saved my brother?” Vicky demanded.

  The captain took a long moment before answering that question. “I don’t think anyone could have saved your brother except your brother.”

  “What do you mean, sir?” Vicky spat.

  “He was vain. Headstrong. Rarely did he take advice. He had a temper, and Kris Longknife had gotten the better of him. He wanted to get back at her. A battle is a chancy thing, Ensign. It is no place to solve your problems.”

  “That makes no sense,” Vicky snapped. “Isn’t the Navy here to do battle for Greenfeld?”

  “What the Navy does is something I hope we can teach you, Ensign Peterwald, before you hold the power that your brother did.”

  Vicky did not like that answer. Next thing, he would be telling her that Kris Longknife was right to kill her brother. She looked out the car window. The drive to the space elevator and the ride up was silent.

  The captain took out his reader. Vicky did the same. The chief had been right, she did need to know more about this strange place she’d been tossed into. She called up a book, The Sailor’s Manual. She realized a woman’s uniform shirt should be outside her skirt and inside slacks she had not been issued. Her hat was never worn inside and she only saluted when wearing it.

  Oh, and her hat was a cover. New word.

  She found the list of ranks and discovered enlisted, even chiefs, had rates, not ranks. She reviewed the list of ranks and rates against the people she’d run into in the Navy and some of it finally began to make sense.

  Flipping through the reader, she found a diagram of a warship with directions on how to find your way from one place to the next. She spent a good five minutes memorizing it before she realized her computer had captured it and would help her.

  Then she came to damage control and realized that on a warship, things could get broken bad and even her computer might not be of much help.

  Vicky went back and spent more time memorizing the diagram. There were even Braille identification markers in the ships to help her find her way around if all light
ing was lost. She memorized the Braille alphabet and numbers.

  The trip passed in silence: not so much as a cold shoulder between the captain and her, but in time well spent learning.

  Chapter 17

  The captain was met at the High Anhalt station by a 3/c boson’s mate with an electric cart showing the Surprise’s name and shield. He immediately relieved Vicky of her seabag.

  Apparently boot ensigns in training were beasts of burden. Ensigns in the fleet were not.

  “Show her to the female junior officers’ berthing quarters, Hans,” the captain said as they reached the pier.

  The petty officer made to lead off.

  “Wait, excuse me, Captain, but Hank had his own suite of rooms. Am I not to have the same?”

  “Your brother was a bloated ego with a fool attached, Ensign. I do not suffer fools aboard my ship. Follow the petty officer to where you will find a bunk among the junior officers or leave my ship.”

  For a moment, Vicky was ready to turn around and storm off. For a moment she considered it. Mashed together in her mind’s eye were Ms. Rotterdame’s shock stick and her brother’s slick smile as he pranced into breakfast in his commodore’s uniform.

  Did she really want to end up like Hank? Did she really want to see if Ms. Rotterdame was waiting in some corner of the palace? More importantly, did she want to amount to something? Be someone?

  She remembered the Marines that had brought Grant’s plan to nothing: dirty, bloody, but standing proud. Could she be someone like them?

  She eyed the captain. He returned her, stare for stare. Few men had ever done that.

  Vicky turned and followed the petty officer with her bag.

  She followed him down stairs that the Navy called ladders, and around corridors that she’d learned now were passageways. The ship was crowded. Many passageways took her through bunks where sailors slept behind curtains.

  “Do sailors get to sleep the day away?” Vicky asked Hans.

  “Even in port, we stand watches twenty-four hours a day,” the Sailor said. “If you have the midnight watch, you’re gonna sleep when you can.”

  Again, Vicky found her new world taking on twists. “Thank you,” she said before realizing that the palace ran through the night. Even the cooks had something new out of the oven when Vicky wanted it at midnight.

  “You’re welcome, ma’am,” the petty officer said.

  Vicky blinked. She’d said “thank you”, he’d said “you’re welcome”. How many servants in the palace had drawn similar responses from her? The cooks, yes, when she was raiding the cookie jar and got caught. Maggie, when she was listening to her. Oh, and a boy she had slipped into her bed.

  They were real to her, but most of those who passed like shadows through her life had been nothing.

  Vicky remembered the section on damage control. She might be expect to lead a team of Sailors with torches and crowbars to pry any Sailor on this ship out of steel clutches.

  Or one of them might pry her out.

  This ship was nothing like the palace. These people were nothing like the people she had ignored there.

  Vicky felt overwhelmed by everything coming at her.

  The petty officer shouted, “Man coming on deck?”

  “It’s clear in here.”

  And Vicky was ushered into her new world.

  The junior female officers’ quarters on the Surprise was about the size of her sitting room back at the palace. The bulkheads were steel covered by gray paint, a gray and gritty paint on the deck and a gray overhead with many colored pipes running through the space. There were eight bunk beds jetting out from the bulkhead with sixteen lockers lining it.

  A young woman with towels wrapped around her head and body stepped out from a hatch to the left. Apparently there was a shared bathroom and shower in there. What had the chief called it? The head.

  “Oops,” Vicky’s petty officer said, and turned his back on the newly showered woman. “If you’re done with me,” he said, settling Vicky’s seabag to the deck, “I’ll get back to work.”

  In a blink, he was gone.

  “You the new meat,” one woman said. She was seated at a table, studying her reader. The collar of her khaki uniform showed a single silver bar. Lieutenant j.g. Vicky remembered. The same as one and a half stripes.

  “I guess I am,” Vicky said, not offering her name. She looked around. Of the sixteen bunks, two were closed up and one had soft snoring issuing from it. Apparently, junior officers worked the midnight watch. Only two bunks had their thin matrices rolled up double on them. Both were upper bunks.

  “I take it I have a choice between on upper bunk or an upper bunk?” Vicky said.

  “You might want to take the one furthest from the head,” the gal who was now vigorously toweling her hair said. “Lieutenant Schnoor likes to stay close to the head and she can snore up a storm. I hope she passes her engineering qualification tests and gets promoted to lieutenant commander finally.”

  “Lieutenant commanders have their own dorm?” Vicky asked as she pulled her seabag toward the far bunk.

  “Lieutenant commanders get their own stateroom. They only have to share it with one other person,” the J.G. finally looked up from her reader. “Hi, I’m Nadya Ruhl, and I will pass my engineering qualification test the first time I try it. You are . . .?”

  There was no way to avoid that question forever. “Vicky Peterwald,” Vicky said, eyeing the locker. “How do I find the combination to this thing?” With luck they’d pass by the name and go straight to her problem.

  “Oh, it’s defaulted to one, two, three, four.” the fresh clean girl said, working her own combination. “Then you take it back to zero and you can reset it to your own code. Do you need a hand?”

  Did Vicky want a near-naked woman leaning over her? Back home, it would have led to fun, but here, with some book-cracker watching and anyone free to walk in, maybe not.

  “Let me try this myself,” Vicky said. A moment later, she had the door open. She then changed it to something more secure, closed it, then reopened it. “I’m fine.”

  “Peterwald,” Lieutenant Ruhl said. “We had a commodore by the name of Peterwald a while back. A real asshole who almost got us all killed and did get himself killed. He related to you?”

  Vicky took a deep breath, lowered her eyes and turned to face the woman. “He was my brother.”

  “Sorry about that,” said the other gal who was now naked but getting into underwear that fit her better than what Vicky had been issued. “I lost my father. Family is hard to get over. By the way, I’m Zenzi Ungar. If you’re Peterwald’s sister, then you’re . . .”

  “Yes, my father kind of runs Greenfeld.”

  “Not kind of. He owns most of it,” Zenzi said. “My dad worked for a company that he pretty much owned.”

  “I think mine does too,” Nadya added. “What brings you into a junior officer’s dormitory?”

  Vicky shrugged. “I don’t know. I may have screwed up on New Eden. I really don’t know. When I got back, I couldn’t talk to Daddy and the next thing I know, this lieutenant commander says I’ve been commissioned an ensign in the Navy.”

  Vicky raised her eyes to the two girls and found them looking at her.

  “You need a shoulder to cry on?” Zenzi offered.

  “How about a wall to hit?” Vicky answered.

  “There’s a punching bag in the gym,” Nadya offered. “I knock it around after a bad day.”

  “Considering you work for Schnoor, there’s a lot of them.”

  At that, the other young women want back to what they were doing and Vicky took to unloading her seabag. The chief had packed everything in tight, but that didn’t mean it didn’t end up wrinkled.

  It had been ugly to begin with and had only gotten worse.

  Vicky turned back to the room where Zenzi was putting on a J.G. uniform that actually looked good on her. Of course, she was pretty much a midsized woman. Not too tall, not to buxom and nice at
the hip. She spotted Vicky looking at her and turned.

  “How did you get your uniform to fit like that?” Vicky pleaded.

  “They ship you here straight from training?” Zenzi asked.

  “I got one day of training,” Vicky said and heard herself sound almost desperate.

  “Honey, somebody’s really got it in for you,” Nadya said, looking up from her studies. “I think we need to give you a helping hand before you drown in space.”

  For the first time in her life, Vicky said “Please,” and really meant it.

  Five minutes later, the ship’s seamstress was bustling around Vicky, making marks to take this in and let that out. When Vicky was switching between uniforms, the 2/c petty officer got a good look at Vicky’s underwear.

  “That will not do. That bra will not hold and look what it is doing to your shoulders. Those panties will rub in all the wrong places,” was her final observation.

  “I’ve noticed that,” Vicky admitted.

  The seamstress sighed. “You are a hard person to fit. I can order you properly fitting under-things. With luck, they’ll make it aboard before we sail, assuming we sail when the grape vine says we will. I know a guy in engineering who says the Ambush isn’t the only cruiser with a sick reactor. They’re working night and day to get ours back on line after our yard period. Anyway, with luck, we’ll have you comfortable. Can I have your IDent to charge?”

  Vicky offered her Ensign Victoria Peterwald’s fresh Navy ID. The seamstress ran it past her wrist unit. “You haven’t been paid yet, but we can run a debit until you are,” the helpful petty officer said, and went on her way with most of Vicky’s khaki and white uniforms. The blues would have to wait.

  “I can’t pay for underwear,” Vicky half laughed.

  “When was the last time a Peterwald was broke?” Zenzi chortled.

  “Then we’ll just have to take you out for ice cream on us,” Nadya said, closing down her reader.

  Chapter 18

  That afternoon and evening, Vicky met the other sixteen who made up the junior women officers of the Surprise. About half chose to ignore her. It wasn’t her or her name so much as the stench left in the air from brother Hank. He really had muddied the water for her.