Kris Longknife: Daring Read online

  “You’ve been getting lazy, what with no one trying to kill me,” Kris said, reaching for her maid’s elbow. “Looks like someone just did. Or maybe they were aiming for Vicky. Or someone else. You’re the spy. You tell me what the game is this time and who’s calling the shots.”

  “Aye, aye, bossy princess,” Abby said.

  Which left Kris with nothing better to do than provide an unnecessary guide for Ron back to his quarters.

  She paused at the hatch that led into Iteeche country.

  “You want to come inside?” Ron asked her.

  Kris shook her head, then she added, “No.” In crossevolutionary-track discussions, body language was more open to mistakes than a simple word.

  “I’ve got some tough decisions to make, tomorrow. And they just keep getting harder.”

  “I do not think that bomb will help,” Ron said.

  “Not likely,” Kris agreed. “I need to do some thinking inside my own skull.”

  “Then I will tell you here what I would have told you inside. I was in much trouble after my last visit to human space.”

  “What kind of trouble?” Kris asked.

  “Many different kinds. My Emperor was not happy that I brought back no promises of help from your people.”

  “I’m sorry about that,” Kris said. “I tried.”

  “I know that you did. What is written is written. However, my chooser was also very unhappy with me.”

  That took Kris aback. “How come?”

  “He was not happy to learn what you and I had concluded about how the war was fought.”

  “Oh,” Kris said. “Neither was my grampa Ray. I don’t think any of the people who made the tough decisions were happy about us figuring out what they really did during the war.”

  “No. He was most unhappy. Before he let me join you on this voyage of search and discovery, he made me swear on my hope of being a chooser myself that I would not spend much time with you.”

  “It was that bad, huh,” Kris said.

  “Yes. I have sworn to go with you. To see what you see and to report back to my Emperor and chooser what you find. I am afraid that our quiet times of conversation will not be a part of this trip.”

  Kris nodded, risking a tight smile. Just when she thought she might be getting to know a guy, wouldn’t you know his mom would tell him she wasn’t the kind of girl a nice guy like him brought home.

  “I understand,” she said.

  Ron stood aside for his Army officer to open the hatch and peer inside. Once he concluded the humans had no deviltry waiting for them, he waved the Imperial Representative into his rooms. In a moment, the hatch closed and was dogged down solidly.

  Jack came up beside her as the door closed. “You want to talk?”

  “About what?” Kris said with a sigh. “That another boy has been told he can’t play with me or that all human existence might depend on what I do tomorrow? And at the moment, I have no idea which side I should be on when I start playing one hell of a game of Ping-Pong tomorrow.”

  Jack nodded, then went on. “For what it’s worth, this mess is way too complicated for me to figure out. Whatever you decide, I’ll support you.”

  “Thank you, Jack. That’s about the nicest thing I’ve heard since we set out on this cockamamie trip.”

  “I wouldn’t call it cockamamie,” Jack said. He gave the matter a serious moment of consideration. “Crazy. Yes. Wild. Maybe. Possibly even unusual. But not cockamamie.”

  His lopsided smile came out to play as he finished giving her his opinion.

  “Thank you for your unconditional vote of support,” Kris said, with a chuckle, and headed for her quarters.

  16

  Kris ordered a light breakfast brought to her Tac Center and told Nelly to invite all her key staff to report there by 0730. From the way they dragged in, it didn’t look like any of them had had a good night’s sleep . . . even the ones she hadn’t ordered to pull all-nighters.

  “Okay, folks,” Kris said, as they gathered around the breakfast tray or filled cups of steaming coffee from the urn, “I need answers to a few simple questions. Who, what, why, how, and, most important, was that bomb last night aimed at me or at someone else?”

  “It looks like our little girl just might be growing up,” Abby drawled as she sipped her coffee. “Finally, it’s got through her pretty little head that it isn’t always about her.”

  “That last bomb hit me up beside the head pretty hard,” Kris said dryly. “It would be kind of hard not to be open to the idea that the world isn’t just one big gun aimed at my own little head.”

  “I noticed that our little princess was kind enough to leave out ‘when,’ ” Penny said, warming up the cup of coffee she’d carried into the meeting. “That leaves all of the rest of them in my lap, thank you oh so much.”

  The Navy officer took a seat at the table, yawned, then began crisply. “The what was a bomb. It was in a glass similar to those used in the Forward Lounge but not one of ours. We’ve recovered a lot of tiny glass globules. Most came from the Forward Lounge’s stock. Some didn’t. We expect those are from the bomb. The glass was not manufactured on Wardhaven. At the moment, we are not able to identify just where it did come from.”

  “That would be nice to know,” Jack said.

  “Of that I am most aware,” Penny said. “Forensics is chasing that down, but don’t hold your breath. There are a lot of glassmakers in human space, and this particular glass got remade but good in the explosion.”

  “The glass was disguised to look like an empty and planted in the middle of a whole slew of other empties. The detonator was hidden in something that looked like an olive. Everything was perfectly machined to fit unobserved into a bar.”

  “Do we have that on camera?” Kris asked.

  “Nope,” Jack said. “Forward Lounge does not have any security cameras. The operator doesn’t want them. ‘Folks are there to relax. If there’s a problem, we’ll handle it the old-fashioned way.’ Besides, we liked that there were no cameras in there, remember. The king met the Iteeche Rep in there. No record. We also did all that history review with the Iteeche in there. Again, nothing we wanted on the record.”

  “Right,” Kris said. “Remind me to review our security system.”

  “I already am, Kris,” Jack said. “We’d always considered the Wasp above the fray where attacks on you were concerned. It looks like we’re getting a whole new grade of visitors these days. We’re rigging the boat to meet level-one security standards.”

  “Do I need to smile when I take a shower?” Abby asked, giving Jack a most unhappy kind of smile.

  “I’d never tell you when to smile, Abby,” Jack said right back.

  “Are we locking the barn door after it’s burned to the ground?” Colonel Cortez asked.

  “She’s still alive,” Jack said. “The barn ain’t burned all that far down, as I see it.”

  “Enough, boys,” Kris cut in. “Penny, do we have any idea who or why or what the target was?”

  “Sorry, Kris, all I’ve got is how and when,” Penny said. “The really fun stuff is still more guesswork than hard evidence.”

  “Try some of your guesses on me,” Kris said.

  “The bomb glass was on a table in the Peterwald area of the lounge. That hints at this being a Peterwald problem.”

  “But if it had gone off while the lounge was full . . .” Jack started.

  “There’d be a whole lot of us breathing space,” Kris finished.

  “No way we could have evacuated the lounge,” Penny said. “And with a lot of people in the way, the sealants would have had a lot more problems closing the holes than they did.”

  Kris had a sudden picture of bodies and sealant halfblocking the holes in the hull. The lucky people had their legs out in space. The unlucky ones had their heads out there. It was not pretty.

  With a shiver, Kris turned to Abby. “Okay, my favorite spy, what kind of threat picture were you able to put together
?”

  “Me, I turned it over to Mata Hari and went to sleep.”

  “Mata Hari?” Jack said.

  “Yes. Nelly’s been after me to use her computer more. To name her kid.”

  “And not turn her off,” Nelly put in.

  “So I named her Mata Hari and gave her the data dump I’d been ignoring. What’d you find, girl?”

  “It was very interesting,” a dusky alto voice said from Abby’s neckline. Apparently, the name change from Trixi to Mata Hari had included a number of changes in attitude.

  “Mata Hari,” the colonel said. “Didn’t she get shot?”

  “Yes,” Abby agreed. “But they issued the firing squad the blindfolds, not her.”

  “I’ve heard that story,” Kris said.

  “It isn’t true,” Mata Hari said.

  “So, what have you got for us?” Kris asked.

  “I am sorry to say it, but I think Abby was right to save her important time for other things,” her computer said. “There are a lot of interesting things going on in human space, but most of it is just dishing the dirt on this or that person.”

  Abby grinned widely.

  “Tell me some of it,” Kris said. “It’s not like I’m pushed for time here.”

  “There is the matter of the recent remarriage of his Imperial Highness Henry I of Greenfeld. His bride was announcing her pregnancy almost immediately, and her insistence on carrying the baby in her own body. ‘No tin can for our baby,’ as she put it. The court gossip has him eating out of her hand . . . and checking in on her every five minutes.”

  “So much for big bad Harry, uh,” Penny said.

  “Tell her, Mattie,” Abby said, dryly.

  “What I find interesting,” the computer said as she went on, “is that she is from the Hollenzoller family, and major players in N.S. Holdings.”

  “And we took down their little slave empire at Port Royal,” Kris said.

  “Yes, there is that,” Mattie said. “And that the lovely Imperial Empress has already had the baby tested. It’s a boy!”

  “Oh, and it’s definitely Harry’s,” Mattie added.

  “I wonder how Vicky feels about this,” Kris said.

  “Do you think there are several reasons why she’s taking this little vacation from court?” Penny said.

  “And as far away from court as she could get?” the colonel offered.

  “Not far enough, apparently,” Jack concluded.

  “So, one empty glass bomb,” Kris said, “takes care of one of those damn Longknife troublemakers and clears the path to the throne for a poor kid that ain’t even taken a suck of his mother’s milk.”

  “If I was that kid, I’d have that milk tested for poison,” Abby put in.

  “I doubt if the milk has to be poisoned,” the colonel said. “It’s likely poisoned direct from the source.”

  “That may not be all the answer as to who and why,” Penny said, when the chuckles died down.

  “Don’t you just hate it when a good answer to our problem gets wet water thrown on it,” Abby said dryly.

  “Is there any other kind of water but wet?” Mattie asked.

  “It’s a figure of human speech, child,” Nelly said. “You’ll have to get used to such things. And you will if a certain human doesn’t keep turning you off.”

  Kris cleared her throat. “I believe Penny has the floor. You were suggesting there was more to our problem than just what Abby and Mata Hari had turned up, I think.”

  “Yes. My forensic folks are puzzling over a bit of a problem. That olive detonator or what is left of it. We lost a lot of it to space, but the damage-control system kept enough of the detonator inside for us to discover a problem. It went off five minutes late.”

  “For which I am very happy,” Kris said.

  “No. I didn’t say that right,” Penny said. “It wasn’t that it was set for five minutes later. It was set to explode while the room was overflowing with officers and good cheer. It counted down to just that moment. Then, instead of going boom, it waited for five minutes.”

  “Where’d that extra five minutes come from?” Jack asked.

  “We have no idea,” Penny said.

  “Could there have been a second detonator? One that responded to a remote detonation order?” the colonel asked.

  “We’ve found no evidence of a second one,” Penny said. “It’s not like we have a lot of bomb residue, but we found enough of the olive to know what it was and what it wasn’t doing. We should have found enough of a remote detonator to know that it was there.”

  That left the room in a puzzled silence.

  Kris spoke her thoughts as they came to her. “What are the chances that the Hollenzoller family has its own set of opposition? Someone who bought a five-minute delay for their kaboom machine.” Kris shook her head, that was just guesswork.

  Then she went on. “Is there any idea who might have done this?” Kris asked. “Has anyone up and suddenly vanished?

  “The Wasp has no one missing,” Penny said, “except for the poor fellow who went out the hole in the hull. He’s been recovered. None of the other ships report anyone missing. It’s not like we can do a lot of questioning aboard the other fleets’ ships.”

  “So we are once again at a dead end,” Kris said.

  “There seems to be no lack of them in supply,” Abby said.

  “Kris, do you want to take a call from Phil Taussig?” Nelly asked.

  “Of course. How’s it going, Phil?”

  “Likely better for me than it is for you,” came from a smiling face now featured on one of the Tac Center’s wall screens.

  “To what do I owe this early call?”

  “I’m ready to get out of here, Princess, before anything more interesting happens around you.”

  “So soon?” Kris said, and really meant it.

  “I didn’t have anything better to do with my night,” he said, with a chuckle. “ And opening more space between you and my vulnerable body seemed like a good idea. I’ve got the Constant Star ready to move out. Lieutenant Song has the Hermes equally ready to get under way.”

  “What about your heavy escorts?”

  “The Terror and Triumph took some encouragement, but I think that bomb got a lot of people interested in being anywhere else but at your side, dear lovely princess, so they’re moving. Oh, I did kind of bribe them. I’ve shipped five of the bodies from the Constant to each of them.”

  “Any of the other wreckage?” Kris asked, not sure how she was going to like his next answer.

  “No, ma’am. No other pieces of the puzzle. As I see it, we’re missing enough of that dang ship. No need to encourage chunks of it to go missing.”

  Kris breathed a sigh of relief. Phil was good. Give him an order, and you didn’t have to ask twice to see if it was well done.

  “Very well, Commander. You are authorized to depart. When do you expect to be back?”

  The young officer shrugged. “Look for me when you see me coming.”

  “Most of the fleet will be here, waiting for you.”

  “Most of it?” Taussig asked, though Kris could see the question in every eye around her Tac Center.

  “I think it’s time for the scouts to start scouting,” Kris said.

  “Have fun,” Phil said, and the screen went blank.

  There was a brief pause while everyone around Kris caught their breath, then Jack asked, “Just what do you have in mind?”

  Kris had Nelly open a map of the local star systems on-screen.

  “The alien ship, of such shattered memory, might have come from somewhere around here,” Kris said, pointing at the star map on the screen. “We ought to do a recon of local space to see if there is anything to see.”

  She let that sink in for a few seconds. “The nice part about this is that we don’t have to go blasting off into the jumps at high speed, spins, and accelerations. We can take the jumps at a slow pace. We can even use the boffins’ latest toy to take a look before we
leap. While the scouts do their snooping, we can leave the battleships swinging around themselves here. Who knows, maybe they’ll find the mad bomber. Or decide it’s too boring and go home.”

  “That sounds like a plan,” Jack agreed.

  A second thought crossed Kris’s mind. “Nelly, send to PatRon 10. While we’re doing this walk-around, have all ships set their reactors to produce as much antimatter as they can safely make.” Antimatter powered the launches and auxiliary power units on the ships. It also could be used in some of the weapons on the corvettes. The Wasp had acquired eight high-acceleration, 12-inch torpedoes since her last yard period. Usually they were loaded with high-explosives warheads. However, if you really wanted to make things go boom, an alternate antimatter warhead could replace the standard issue.

  That idea had come to several different people after the Battle of Wardhaven. Humanity had enjoyed a long peace. Some of her children were just starting to study war again. The 12-inch high-acceleration torpedoes were the first fruit of that attitude.

  Kris doubted they would be the last.

  “You really want to go loaded for bear,” Jack said.

  “Maybe it will be unnecessary. Then again, it’s nice to have a few extra aces up your sleeve if life doesn’t come at you like you planned.”

  Jack nodded, and Kris had Nelly call the admirals. She had a plan. Hopefully, they didn’t have ones of their own.

  17

  Eight star systems in seven days.

  Eight times the Wasp tiptoed up to a roiling tear in space and cautiously slipped a diminutive periscope through the jump point.

  It was all very careful. All very safe. And somehow, Kris found it all very boring.

  The boffins were depressed and delighted. Depressed because, try as they might, they could not broaden the instrumentation on the video view of the system before they jumped into it. All you got was a black-and-white picture. No color.

  To their delight, they had developed a second instrument. This tiny sensor gave them a full report on the electromagnetic spectrum. If there was radio or TV in use somewhere around the next sun, the Wasp would know it before it jumped.

  Each sensor had to be sent through the jump one at a time. That was fine by Kris and Captain Drago. To the boffins, it was abject failure.