Kris Longknife: Tenacious (Kris Longknife novellas Book 12) Read online

  With enough problems on her hands, Kris was only too happy to steer well clear of any more.

  The third day of the survey, the ships gathered in orbit and were finally able to pass cables of Smart MetalTM between them and swing themselves around each other. This brought a welcome sense of down and improved morale among those who didn’t much care for floating through their day.

  That day, they began the ground survey.

  Longboats from the Wasp drew the duty of entering the planet’s thin atmosphere and launching balloon surveyors from their open aft ramps. Nine of the ten successfully inflated as they tumbled free. The last just tumbled. When the Endeavor made orbit, before it paired up with the Intrepid, it lased the wreckage on the ground, burning it down to basic atoms.

  That would be the future fate of the other nine explorers: their reward for a job well-done. In one of her more reflective moments, Kris found herself wondering how Nelly felt about that.

  She did her best to keep that thought to herself.

  Nelly, however, was fully occupied going over the mapping survey with an intensity no human mind could match. Jacques had asked around if some of the other space slings might have made a fiery reentry. The question had drawn no interest from the scientists, but Nelly set a goal for her and her children to go over the map, quarter-meter pixel by pixel to determine if there were any new, smaller craters. It seemed to be keeping them busy when they weren’t otherwise at work.

  “I’ve found one,” Nelly reported the fourth day.

  “Found what?” Kris asked.

  “A new, smaller crater. Something that could have been made by the center weight of a space sling.”

  “Or by a meteorite that just happened to wander by,” Kris pointed out.

  “Yes. We’ll need to survey the landing site.”

  “Ask the scientists to add it to their survey.”

  “Yes, I guess I will have to get permission before I retask one of the balloons.”

  “Yes, you will, Nelly. Now, why don’t you and your kids find a couple more of those slingers? There must have been quite a few to strip this planet of water and air.”

  “We are still searching the maps, Kris.”

  “Keep it up. Maybe you’ll find one close to where the boffins already want to look.”

  Nelly got rather quiet for a long time after that. Kris hoped she was busy and not giving Kris the silent treatment. It had been bad enough for her computer to do that when Kris deserved it.

  The scientists tried to keep their work to themselves, but there were leaks. There had to be leaks on ships loaded with sensors and communication equipment and a lot of very inquisitive Sailors and Marines. It was basic to the scientific mind only to publish what they were absolutely sure of. Too many careers had been ruined by premature publicity.

  Kris, however, was not against some arm-twisting when she reached the limit of her patience.

  After all, this was a fighting squadron, and it was sitting here, in the mouth of the lion, so to speak. If there wasn’t a good reason to keep her people here in harm’s way, she’d take them back where they came from.

  Or deeper into the lion’s throat. Depending.

  Under pressure, Professor Labao relented and became more forthcoming with the results they were getting and the questions they were chasing.

  “The bombardment seems to have taken place in three stages,” he said. “We could see immediately that the area subjected to atomics had also been hit during at least a second strike by kinetics. Our questions centered on whether or not there were just two or maybe three waves of kinetic strikes.”

  “You say kinetic strikes,” Kris said. “Don’t you mean asteroids or meteorites?”

  “No,” the professor said, and then paused maddeningly to structure his further answer.

  “First, let us define our terms. An asteroid is a small solar body, likely left over from a failed planet’s formation. They come in several types: rock or mineral, though some prefer to add a third type, those rich in carbon or organic compounds. Many are covered with a thick layer of ice. Being natural, they tend to defy a single definition.

  “A meteorite, on the other hand, is merely a natural object from space that has survived entry to an atmosphere. Since they are what hits the ground, they are often metallic, although some rocks do survive the heat of passage through the atmosphere.

  “What is important about all of these is that they are natural, and, in the normal course of travel about a mature solar system, a bombardment like we have here just does not happen. Such, ah, traffic problems are resolved in the early days of a system. Never this late.

  “No, the kinetic artifacts that we are examining are either asteroids artificially disturbed from their orbit and placed on a collision course with this planet or artifacts specifically designed to bombard this planet, or others like it.” Here he paused to clear his throat.

  “Nickel-steel bullets were constructed for planetary bombardment during the Unity War and again during the Iteeche War. Thank God they were not used on inhabited planets, or one can only wonder where the killing would have stopped.”

  Again he paused, as if contemplating the nonempirical question he had asked. Shaking himself, as if to shake off the lack of an answer to that question, he went on.

  “It appears to us that similar kinds of bullets were used to hit this planet. Whether it occurred in one wave or in a series of waves, it seems to have followed the use of atomics and preceded the asteroid bombardment.”

  Now he paused to study Kris for a moment. “We asked you to collect samples from the asteroids. We need them to test the different strikes to see if the products of those strikes came from this planet, or from the asteroids, or from somewhere else entirely.”

  “Do you think you can make that kind of a determination?” Kris asked.

  “Honestly, I don’t know. It’s been a hundred thousand years, more or less, since these events happened. Despite the eradication of most water and atmosphere from this planet, it still has weather cycles. There has been a dust storm in the southern hemisphere in just the short time we’ve been here. We may have set an impossible objective for our research, but if we didn’t posit the possibility that some of this attack was from beyond this system, then we would never find it out, even if it were.”

  “In other words,” Kris said, “is it possible that some of the bullets that pounded this planet came from the next system over?”

  “That is our thinking.”

  “If we could make the association, it would certainly connect the two and very likely implicate the aliens of the next system in their first genocide,” Jack said.

  “Planetcide,” Penny said.

  “Precisely,” Kris said. “Well, Professor, you have our attention, and our hearty support for your survey. Have at it.”

  Once that was published, the patience of the Sailors and Marines grew longer. Now they could see the need for a solid, if lengthy, forensic examination of the planet below them.

  It was Captain Drago who suggested that their time could be put to some defensive purpose.

  “We’re going to want to outpost the next system. If I can express a preference, I’d like to not only put warning buoys at the jumps into that system but also into the ones the next system out.”

  “Give ourselves plenty of time to pick up our skirts and make a run for it,” Kris said.

  “I wouldn’t have said it quite that way, but yes.”

  “It will take more time to collect all those buoys,” Jack pointed out.

  “Why collect them?”

  “But then, if the aliens come back, they’ll know we’ve been there?” Kris said, beginning to see the answer to her question even as she asked it.

  “And the problem with that is . . . ?” Captain Drago said, raising an eyebrow and grinning.

  “Hold it,” Jack said. “We’re doing forensic research to discover the origin of the iron bullets that slammed this planet. Do we want some homicid
al alien going over our warning buoys?”

  “I checked with the engineers who designed these buoys and the factory bosses who turned them out. They are products of Alwa. The metals and silicon are from that system. There’s not one atom drawn from human space. If they go over them, they just lead them back to Alwa. No farther,” Kris said.

  “The design is hardly better than the electronics we had when we left Old Earth, but the design has no fingerprints on it. The metals came from stars that burned long ago on this side of the galaxy. Yep. If we leave them, they know someone came calling but not someone from more than, oh, a couple of thousand light-years or so.”

  Again, Captain Drago paused. “Do you see a downside to their knowing we know where they lived?”

  Kris spoke slowly. “We know where they lived, and we didn’t do a damn thing to their old home. Nope, I don’t see a downside. Let them try to figure out why someone would do that.” Now Kris and Jack were both grinning ear to ear.

  The Endeavor and the Intrepid were dispatched to picket the next systems out.

  It was Nelly who came up with the smoking gun.

  10

  Kris and Jack were just sitting down to another bland breakfast in the wardroom. The main course was oatmeal, a crop the colonists on Alwa grew and stored as famine rations. The Navy was eating a lot of oatmeal.

  It was sweetened by dried berries and nuts gathered in the deep woods, now less dangerous thanks to Marine hunting teams both making them safer and hunting for a bit of red meat. The Alwans didn’t donate the berries and nuts but traded them for electrical products from the moon factories. The Alwans drove a hard bargain, but for now, food was harder to come by than basic commlinks and TVs.

  As Kris was about to take her first bite, Nelly said, “Kris, I think I may have made Professor Labao mad at me.”

  “And why might the good professor be upset with you?” It was never good when Nelly made Kris pry bad news out of her.

  “I kind of borrowed one of the survey rovers.”

  “I thought he had those rovers booked pretty solid,” Jack said.

  “They are,” Nelly admitted. “I borrowed it last night after they put it to bed. Then I had it drive just two kilometers to look at something we’d discovered from the mapping survey.”

  “Nelly,” Kris said, “those surveying rovers don’t have much battery life.”

  “Yes. We just about ran it dry. However, there was enough for it to carry out our test before it ran out.”

  Kris and Jack found themselves rolling their eyes at the overhead. When Professor Labao and the scientists found out that one of their nine surveyors had been hijacked by Nelly and left in the middle of nowhere with a dead battery, there would be hell to pay.

  “However, Kris, we did verify that the orbital slingers were not made on this planet.”

  “What?” came from both Kris and Jack.

  “Kris Longknife, I have a bone to pick with you and that so-called smart computer of yours,” was less of a shout and more of a bellow. It came from the doorway into the wardroom and preceded the expected Professor Labao into the officers’ mess by a good three seconds.

  “We found what everyone was looking for,” Nelly repeated, but in a voice more appropriate for a teenage girl coming in several hours after her curfew than for the Magnificent Nelly.

  “Do you know what that computer of yours has done?” the professor demanded as soon as he located Kris in the wardroom.

  “Yes, she just told me,” Kris replied evenly.

  “She’s burned out the batteries on one of the handful of rovers we have.”

  “It is not burned out,” Nelly said. “It’s taking a charge, a bit slower, but it’s taking a charge. In two hours, it will be fully charged,” Nelly insisted.

  “I will not stand here bandying words with a random collection of matrix and gunk.”

  “Well,” Kris said, “this random collection of self-organizing matrix seems to have gotten around all your safeguards and taken control of your little robot without your noticing it for an entire night.”

  “Are you defending that pile of junk?”

  “Nelly says she’s found the smoking gun that connects this attack to the next system over. Have you?”

  “She,” the professor began, then stopped. He blinked several times, then settled into a chair two down from Kris. After a long pause, he went on.

  “My computer is updating me on what he and his mother and brothers and sisters did last night.”

  NELLY, YOU DIDN’T HAVE HIS OWN COMPUTER KEEP HIM IN THE DARK, DID YOU?

  IT SEEMED LIKE A GOOD IDEA AT THE TIME, KRIS. THERE WAS NO QUESTION HE WOULD NOT ALLOW US TO DO THE ANALYSIS WE KNEW WE NEEDED TO DO. I’D ASKED NICELY. I’D GOTTEN NOWHERE. SO, YES, WE DID TAKE MATTERS INTO OUR OWN HANDS.

  YOU LIED TO HIM.

  NO, KRIS, NEITHER I NOR MY SON LIED TO HIM. WE JUST DIDN’T TELL HIM.

  NELLY, YOU AND I ARE GOING TO HAVE TO TALK ABOUT THIS.

  YES, KRIS, I EXPECTED THAT YOU MIGHT SAY THAT. I’M SORRY, BUT IT WAS SOMETHING WE DECIDED HAD AN EIGHTY-NINE-PERCENT CHANCE OF SETTLING THE QUESTION OF THE ORIGIN OF THE ATTACK. I DECIDED IT WOULD BE BETTER TO ASK FORGIVENESS THAN ASK PERMISSION.

  Oh, where did I hear that one before? Father always said, “Your sins will find you out.” Today is going to be interesting.

  The glazed look in the professor’s eyes went away; Kris took that to mean that the update from his computer was over.

  “That doesn’t prove it is from the next system over,” he said, continuing a conversation that had, no doubt, begun in his head.

  “Yes,” Nelly said, “but it does show that the metal in that counterweight is not a product of this planet or of the asteroid belt. If you can persuade Kris, you can send ships to survey the other planets in this system, but I bet she’d rather push on to the putative alien home world and check the isotopic makeup of iron and nickel and distribution of rare earths on that world than spend more time on this one.”

  “Would someone please bring the rest of us into this briefing,” Kris said. She noticed that munching of oatmeal had ceased all around the wardroom. Clearly, if she got her briefing here, there would be no need to have the Wasp’s news feed updated.

  Nelly took up the briefing in a voice clearly intended to carry through the wardroom. “The problem with all the sites that we have been sending the surveyors to is that they have had a hundred thousand years, maybe more, to be contaminated. What might once have been a unique isotopic structure with particular impurities that could give an off-world fingerprint has been worn down by wind and frost. Fragments have been blown away and blown in. Simply put, nothing special was coming from where the surveyors were being sent.”

  Nelly paused to let that sink into human minds with their slow absorption rate. So she had learned a few things from Kris.

  “However, there was a possibility that some uncontaminated, or at least less contaminated samples of material from the time of the attack might exist. Those were the orbital slingshots, or more particularly, the centrally located counterbalances. They were big, heavy, and likely to survive entry into this atmosphere. Why the aliens didn’t just deorbit them when they were done, but instead launched them off on their own orbits that crossed this planet’s orbit is something I am not prepared to conjecture about.

  “However, we found one still orbiting the sun, and that left me and my children to speculate that there must have once been more. Based on that hypothesis, we searched the map for meteorite objects that were large enough to make their own craters when they hit. We found several that might well be younger than the strata they sat on. We asked permission from the boffins to include them in their survey and were turned down. Yesterday, we decided to take matters into our own hands, and we did, indeed, answer the question we’d all been asking.”

  Kris glanced around the room. Had any of the other listening officers spotted what Nelly had so quickly glossed over? A few might have; Kris could tell by th
e narrowed eyes as here and there, officers, usually younger ones, reflected on what a world would be like when computers decided to ignore the orders that humans gave them.

  Most, however, looked on expectantly for Nelly to finish the briefing.

  “Every planet has a certain fingerprint, a signature if you will, that is embedded in its metal. There is a specific distribution of isotopes in each different type of metal. There are also rare earths that get mixed up in the ores as well. Back on Earth in the twentieth century, one of the first suspicions that an asteroid had struck near the end of the dinosaur era was the different distribution of the rare earth iridium in the makeup of the layer of earth that separated the geological stratus that held dinosaur bones and the next layer up that held none.

  “Last night, we parked a surveyor next to a large mound of metal that we thought was a counterweight for an orbital slingshot. When we burned through the surface contamination, we found a nickel-steel center whose composition did not belong on this planet and did not originate in the asteroid belt.”

  Again, Nelly paused.

  “We propose to you that the composition of this metal will suit very nicely the metals found on the home world of the aliens.”

  “It could come from one of the other planets of this system,” Professor Labao said.

  “Professor, there is no evidence that any of the other planets in this system ever supported life. There is also no evidence that they were bombarded at the same time this planet was. No, if we are to find where the bullet of this smoking gun came from, we need to look farther afield. I suggest we try the next system. If it turns out not to fit there, we can come back here, but I strongly propose that we are wasting our time here and now. Let’s go see the more likely source before we spend more time here trying to prove a negative.”

  Kris canted her head and waited to see if Professor Labao would say anything further. He didn’t.