Kris Longknife - Admiral Page 8

  “I am now,” Megan said.

  He helped her back into her chair, careful to touch no more of her than he had to. Meg liked a guy who wasn’t afraid to use his hands to help a girl . . . and didn’t take advantage of her problem.

  She settled into her chair with a “Wow.”

  “What happened?”

  “What’d you see?” Megan had never seen anyone do an insertion, at least not one that ended like that had.

  Red’s eyebrows came down into that V thing they did. “You rested your palms against the concrete plug. You know you did that.”

  “I was there for that,” Meg agreed.

  “Then you rested your forehead against it. That went on for a good long couple of minutes, maybe five, then suddenly you were a damp rag headed for the deck. You don’t mind that I caught you, do you?”

  “You can catch me anytime,” Meg answered, and gave him a smile she hoped was encouraging.

  “What were you doing?”

  “I’m afraid I can’t tell you,” Meg said.

  “Cause if you did, you’d have to kill me. Really?”

  “Really, the worst death possible. Tickling to death. No man could stand that torture.”

  He laughed. “I don’t know. I might be willing to give it a try, assuming you were the one tickling me.”

  “Don’t tempt a Longknife where killing is concerned.”

  “Right, you’re another Longknife. From the Santa Maria wing, aren’t you?”

  “Yes. You been researching me?” Megan asked, alarms bells ringing.

  “You were against that concrete plug a couple of long minutes. You have your sources. I have mine.” He held up his wrist unit. Sure enough, the screen showed the Longknife family tree. There she was, complete with a commissioning photo. Was she ever that young?

  “Then you have the advantage on me. You know my name, what’s yours?”

  “Walt Vilmus, at your service, ma’am,” he said, offering her his hand. She took it and stood. There was a bit of dizziness but she stayed steady on her feet.

  “Ray Longknife,” Walt said slowly, “didn’t he do something with the planetary computer out there on Santa Maria when they rediscovered you? I read something about it back in school.”

  “I really don’t want to go there,” Megan said.

  “Now I remember,” and he was taping his wrist unit. A moment later he was showing Megan a history of the recovery of the lost Santa Maria colony. “My teacher said it was just a made-up story. A legend about him talking to the computer through a rock, or something, but what you were doing there. You were talking to the computer, weren’t you?”

  “Can we just say I was trying?”

  The guy eyed her hard. “It knocked you out of your chair, didn’t it?”

  “Almost on my ass.”

  “Learn anything?”

  “To get a better chair next time.”

  He snorted at that. “Need a cup of coffee? There’s a little place I know that serves up a decent brew. It’s just a little nook of a place, but I see quite a future for it when the big wigs give up some of their luxury accommodations.”

  “I’d love a cup of coffee. Do they have scones? Buy me a scone and I may let you live.”

  “And I was so looking forward to you tickling me to death.”

  “The day is yet young,” Meg said, and flashed him one of her patented dazzling smiles.

  10

  Grand Admiral Kris Longknife rode the elevator up the outside skeleton of her castle in silence. Jack remarked about how great a job Nelly had done, keeping the clear-sided elevator level as it first ran up the sweep of the leg supporting the entire castle, then changed to keep it level again as they were swept out onto the bulging underside of the castle, then changed again to stay upright as they crossed the wide middle of the castle and it began to narrow down toward the top.

  “I reserved space in the center of the castle,” Nelly said. “If things get violent, the elevators can shoot up the inside, but I thought you’d like the view while we can still enjoy it.”

  “Strange the assumption you built into your statement, Nelly. ‘While we can still enjoy it.’ Do you know something we don’t?” Jack asked.

  “Just that I’m with one of those Longknifes, General.”

  That Longknife listened to the banter while her own mind cycled through the problems she faced.

  “Nelly, can you get Jacques and Amanda together for a meeting, please?”

  “They’re settling themselves and their kids into the castle as we speak, Kris. They’ll be in your staff conference room by the time we get you there.”

  “Good,” Kris said.

  The nice thing about having Nelly build an elevator system and control it, was that when Kris was in it, it went where she wanted it to go without any interminable stops along the way.

  “I got the Forward Lounge as high as I could put it, Kris. They wanted the penthouse, but I wasn’t about to have anyone have access to space above you. I reserved the three floors above the Forward Lounge for your immediate staff. That should be safer for you.”

  “Thank you, Nelly,” Jack agreed.

  “I’ve also given the Lounge a ring of balconies covered with clear Smart Metal so they can still seat people under the stars,” Nelly added. “And we can make sure no one gets the idea of climbing up from there to slip into the kids’ rooms.”

  “Good, Nelly,” Kris said.

  “And I also upped the encryption for the Smart Metal on the outside of the entire castle. Nobody gets to step outside, and nobody gets to make a hatch in the deck above. Anyone even tries, and I get an alarm.”

  “Good,” Jack said.

  Kris took a deep breath as the elevator swept onto the wide waist of the castle, then adjusted itself so that instead of hanging level from a track, it now stood level on the track that took them up the rapidly narrowing mock-up of Kris’s new home. As promised, the level below Kris’s own quarters looked like a flower had blossomed out with long, broad petals circling around a bulging head.

  Kris took all this in, but kept her mind elsewhere, spinning through a mound of conflicts, problems, and ideas. So far, few had raised their head enough to be thoroughly examined.

  Ruth and Johnny scrambled to meet them as they came out of the elevator. A tutor was only one step behind them. No more nannies, the kids insisted they were tutors and “fun.”

  Jacques and Amanda were hurrying toward them, their own two in tow. For a delightful moment, life was a total uproar of excited, high-pitched voices competing to display their latest successes. Kris pulled her mind from where it was to focus her total attention on the shining faces looking up at her. She stooped to get hugs, even though Johnnie clearly hadn’t washed his hands after his latest and most beloved peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

  But short attention spans quickly rushed the kids off together for something that was very important to them. Kris watched them gallop off, shouting happily, and knew she’d miss the days when these hit and run hug attacks were a thing of the past.

  Assuming I don’t get us all killed.

  “Amanda, Jacques, Abby, I need to talk to you about our hosts and the crazy way they do business.”

  “We’re at your service, but I don’t know that we can help you all that much,” Jacques said.

  “Nelly, where’s that conference room you promised?”

  A door opened off the elevator foyer. Kris entered to find a room with a spectacular view of the Imperial capital as it spread out before her. Place of honor was the Imperial Palace with its vast expanse of forests and ponds. Most of the buildings were low slung and well away from the stone wall and moat that surrounded the Imperial Precinct. Center place, however, was held by a spire of glass, steel, and stone that gleamed golden in the sun. It shot up several hundred meters before topping it off with a ball that had a spike atop it.

  Amanda came up beside Kris and joined her enjoying the panorama of alien. “No one has ever been up the
spire,” she said. “Totally forbidden, except for the Imperial household, and they rarely go out and never talk.”

  “Even when the Emperor travels?” Kris asked.

  Jacques shook his head. “As best we can tell, and there’s not a lot we can talk about with any certainty, the Emperor only leaves the Imperial precincts for a visit to his Summer Palace. For all practical purposes, he’s born there. He lives there. He’s cremated there when he dies and his ashes are spread among the ponds and woods.”

  “He never goes anywhere but this palace and the summer one?” Kris asked, incredulous.

  “Never. If one didn’t know he was an all-powerful, god-like figure, one might consider him a prisoner,” Amanda added.

  “Nothing adds up here,” Kris observed.

  “We’re starting to get that idea, too,” Jacques agreed.

  Kris allowed herself a deep sigh; she’d been doing a lot of that lately. “I have an Empire that’s going full speed ahead for a huge waterfall, and I don’t know how to grab a good hold on and steer it to safety.”

  No one added anything to that observation, so Kris turned around and found that Nelly had arranged the room with five comfortable chairs. For now, the place was pretty bare, not even a table, but with Nelly anything they needed could quickly be made to appear.

  The other four sat down and got comfortable.

  Kris sat, then leaned forward, as if into a great wind.

  “I’d like to know what you’ve learned about the Iteeche, if it won’t take too long.”

  Amanda exchanged a glance with Jacques. “Painfully little,” she admitted. “We have no access to their land-line net. All we can look at is the entertainment on their airwaves. Radio and TV net. Boy, do they like their music. They’ll go to huge concerts and watch the musicians and join in the singing at the drop of a hat. Their media entertainment consists of what we’d call soap operas. Most of that consists of talking a lot about interpersonal matters and going out to eat where they sing a lot. Think beer garden sing-a-longs.”

  “About these soap operas,” Kris asked. “Do they tell us anything helpful about the Iteeche?”

  “They’re concerned about mating with someone proper, a lot revolves around being invited into a better level of mating ponds,” Jacques said. “Earning the right to choose an offspring is unbelievably important. I’ve seen Iteeche soap operas where they fight duels to the death over that.”

  “What were they fighting for?” Jack asked.

  “The fights weren’t so much for anything as they were fighting to keep someone else from getting something,” Jacques said. “To choose an offspring. To scatter their eggs or sperm in a clan, sept, or family mating ponds are all a zero-sum game. If he gets to choose, I don’t. If she gets to spew her eggs in that pond, I don’t. These duels are not just fought by males. Females also get in on the fun. Stopping someone else seems more important than getting your own and it is almost always to the death. We wondered on approach to the planet how they could have so many people. If I could get a hold of the vital statistics for this place, I suspect a lot of their morbidity comes from those duels.”

  “That sound rather alien?” Jack asked, eyeing Kris.

  “Preventing someone from doing anything seems to be a national pastime,” Kris said, only too aware of the walls that had been constructed around her. Walls that restricted her movement. Kept her ignorant. Tried to kill her. She didn’t care what the Iteeche did or didn’t do, but she had committed to stop a rebellion and desperately needed at least a few Iteeche to join her in that effort.

  Nelly cleared her nonexistent throat. “Kris, Megan is heading up the elevator. I think she has something to tell you about your problems.”

  “You can’t tell us?” Jack asked.

  “I find that you humans prefer to have a fellow human convey a message. Besides, it was her unique gift that allowed her to gain this information and she may still know more than I do. Lily and I were just riding in the back seat, as you humans put it.”

  Megan came in, and a chair just as comfortable as the other five rose from the floor. Still, the young lieutenant sat on the edge of it.

  “You’ve taken a dive into the Iteeche data net?” Kris asked.

  “And I can’t say I’ve come up smelling like roses, although there was a really nice guy and I’ve made a date with him for coffee.”

  “Maybe we humans aren’t so different from the Iteeche,” Amanda said, with a sly grin.

  “Huh?” said the young woman.

  “Go on,” Kris said, then by way of explanation, added, “the young lieutenant here has inherited something from my great-grandfather. She has an affinity for computers. Given half a chance, she can tell you the questions that will be on next Friday’s math test.”

  “That must have made you popular in school,” Amanda said, with a soft smile.

  “It was more likely to get me in trouble with the administration, and not all my class mates were impressed. You know, the one-eyed man can get hung in the valley of the blind.”

  “I’ve heard that quote go another way,” Jack said.

  “You haven’t lived there, sir. If you had, you would not have bought the t-shirt.”

  That got a chuckle.

  “I’m sad to report,” the young woman said, “that my effort to apply my particular gift to the Iteeche net was a total failure. With Nelly’s help, we managed to penetrate into their data stream, but I’m afraid that what I found there was unintelligible. We talk of a data highway, with data packets traveling rational paths. What I met was more like a jungle, with weird things wandering aimlessly. I cut the gullet of one of them open and all sorts of unassociated alphas and numerics spewed out. Nelly, have you and your children managed to make any sense of them?”

  “No,” Nelly answered. “Any metadata about the unassociated letters or numbers that might have allowed us to reconnect them was lost. We’re still examining the data scraps, trying to find something helpful, but it very much looks like a fool’s errand.”

  Kris leaned back in her seat. “So, if we are to get any information about how the Iteeche battles have gone to date, the Iteeche either give it to us, or we are whistling in the dark.”

  “I’m afraid so, Admiral. I’m sorry. I failed.”

  “It’s not your fault, Megan. We evolved our way. They evolved their way. Your grandmother has been trying to crack what the Three Alien Races left behind on Santa Maria for what, seventy years? She hasn’t gotten all that far. The Iteeche can’t be any easier to comprehend.”

  Since no one else had anything more to add to her level of ignorance, Kris took over the meeting.

  “As I see it, I’m faced with three principal issues. The Iteeche don’t fight worth beans. I need to recruit some Iteeche battlecruisers and then I need to train them to fight my way.”

  Jack nodded agreement with her.

  “I also need to get this embassy set up and running so my Royal merchant princes can arrange meetings with the dust mites of the Iteeche Empire.”

  “Dust mites?” Jack asked.

  “That was what Ron called the guys who lost their heads for trying to talk to our two idiots.”

  “Actually, Kris,” Nelly put in, “I think his words were more like dung beetle.”

  “You passed it through to me as dust mites.”

  “I may have softened matters in translation. After all, you humans don’t like to speak ill of the dead and you get bored if I take too long to nuance a translation.”

  “Thanks, Nelly, but, to get back on track, we need to get our embassy in order so Abby can set up shop down here.”

  “That would sure be nice,” Abby drawled. “Right now, the Royal dung beetles are rolling their shit all over the Pink Coral Palace and my folks got nada.”

  “Wait until you see what Nelly’s got for you,” Kris said.

  “This castle is pretty slim pickings,” the former maid said. “It’s more like an empty balloon.”

  “It will fi
ll out when I have more Smart Metal to work with,” Nelly said, promptly.

  “And when will that be?”

  “When Kris gets the Pride of Free Enterprise down here and I use it and its reactors to fill out this design.”

  Nelly paused. “Kris, I’ve got a call coming in from Ron.”

  “Yes, Ron?” Kris said.

  “I am talking to the Imperial Admiral of Second Order of Iron who defends the airspace over the capital. He says you may not glide 75,000 tons of spaceship and reactors down in the middle of the capital only four lu from the Imperial Precincts.”

  Kris wasn’t really surprised at that. She had a counter proposal already in mind. “Have you told him that I am the Imperial Admiral of the First Order of Steel? I command the Imperial Battle Fleet. I am also the emissary from His Royal Majesty, King Raymond to his Imperial Majesty. I am sworn to defend his Imperial Master.”

  “Yes, Kris. I have told him that. He, however, is charged with assuring that no harm comes to His Imperial and Worshipful Majesty from the air. There is no way that he can accept 75,000 tons of unpowered metal attempting to land in the courtyard of the Rose Coral Palace as anything but an insanely dangerous stunt and threat to the entire city, as well as the Imperial Person.”

  “Please tell him that I and my husband will be aboard those 75,000 tons of powered air vehicle. I and my computer, Nelly, with help from my husband and his computer, Sal, will pilot the craft down to a perfect landing in the target courtyard.”

  The call went silent, as if it had been put on hold.

  Jack looked at Kris. “We’re landing it?”

  “Yep. Megan, you and Lily are involved, too.”

  “Of course, ma’am.”

  “Nelly, you want me and Mata to come along, too?” Abby asked.

  “I don’t think you will be necessary. Kris, you said a powered landing?”

  “Yes, Nelly. I was thinking we’d convert the glider to a rotary winged vehicle for the final approach. You might also arrange to have engines if you need them, to assure the final approach is perfect.”

  “It will be perfect and the rotary wings really aren’t necessary,” Nelly said, definitely sounding like her pride had been hurt.