Kris Longknife 13 - Unrelenting Read online

  “That’s the attitude, girl,” Pipra said, poking the air with her fist.

  “So, if it’s not too much of an invasion of privacy, how many unplanned pregnancies are there on the civilian side of things, and what are the chances of your joining me among the plural?”

  Pipra made as if to watch fast balls whizz by her head at light speed. “You slipped two by me real fast, didn’t you, mother?”

  “A gal can try.”

  “There’s no chance of my joining you. I was part of a five-person S group before I decided to seek my fortune all to hell and gone. They bought out my share, and I used it to buy shares in several of the fabricators we brought. Just as soon as your gorgeous genius Amanda can figure out how to make money here that you can take to a bank, I’ll be rolling in the dough, assuming we haven’t run the fabs down into wreck and ruin. That reminds me, we need a sinking fund to recapitalize our industrial assets. Admittedly, that’s hard to do when we can’t figure out how to capitalize anything. Which brings up that thing we’re not permitted to talk about?”

  “Hold it, Pipra, you danced right by the question I most wanted answered. How many unplanned pregnancies among the industrial workers?”

  “None.”

  “None?”

  “Yep, no planned pregnancies. No unplanned ones, either. And to answer your next question, we brought our own medical facilities and supplies and, so it appears, the problem is totally Navy.”

  “That’s interesting,” Kris said. NELLY, PASS THAT ALONG TO DOC MEADE.

  DID IT BEFORE YOU ASKED. SHE SAYS IF YOU DON’T DROP BY HER PLACE BEFORE THREE, SHE MAY HAVE SOMEONE FOR YOU TO TALK TO.

  TELL HER I’LL BE THERE.

  “Yes. Isn’t it,” Pipra said. “Now about the unmentionable.”

  The unmentionable was a weird plant found in a couple of rivers on the South Continent. It traveled. Sometimes at an amazing speed in water. It did photosynthesis, so biologists agreed it qualified as a plant, but it could identify predators and make tracks for the other side of the pond. And if the pond dried up, the things had been seen inching their way toward the nearest water.

  Its power source was mitochondrial DNA that made human adrenaline seem tame.

  What the boffins were excited about was hitching these organelles to nanos as fuel sources. Kris had lost nanos during strong winds. She would have killed for what this little bugger could do to turbocharge the microcosmic world.

  “We should be getting our first shipment off to human space soon,” Kris said. “The new Endeavor is out of the yard. I’ll need to check on the new Hornet.”

  Kris had been hard on ships named Hornet, much like she’d been on Wasp. On her third in the last three years. The Endeavors had gotten off easier—or harder, depending on your perspective. Only one busted, but that in less than a year.

  “As soon as they’re ready to go, I’ll send them on their way with a full load of plants and plenty of seeds.”

  “You going to send anyone home that wants to go?”

  “No,” Kris said, bluntly.

  “A good idea,” Pipra agreed, “although I must tell you, the word is getting around that there are ships going back. If you don’t do it quickly, you may have a problem on your hands.”

  “And I don’t have problems already?” Kris said, dryly.

  “More tomorrow than you had today,” Pipra offered.

  “No doubt. Now, talk to me about boring production statistics.”

  The meeting went two hours as they weighed the different demands for production. The Alwans like human tech: TVs, computers, now, even electric cars. Oh, and electric egg warmers. The more of them, the better.

  Egg warmers, under the eyes of old birds, left the younger Alwans free to participate in the growing high-tech economy. While the old birds complained and grumbled about changes they didn’t like, more of the younger ones were galloping off into the future with both feet.

  Or, better said, plowing ground with new farm gear.

  Kris had discovered, as more ships arrived with hungry crews to feed, that both the native Alwans and the humans were on the edge of starvation. If the crop next month was as good as promised, Kris might not have to worry so much about where her fleet’s next meal came from.

  However, until the harvest was in safe storage, Kris worried.

  For two hours, they juggled production of Smart MetalTM for warships, properly balanced with electronics and weapons. But the electronics had to be taken out of the stream of gizmos the Alwans wanted. Maybe Kris needed less of the Smart MetalTM?

  Besides, she didn’t have a lot of spare Navy to crew more ships. In this war, when ships blew up, raw plasma left few people alive to find their way into survival pods.

  However, some Alwans were taking to space, and fighting, with a passion. Especially the Ostriches. Unlike the Roosters, they liked nothing better than a good fight.

  How many trainee Ostriches could Kris risk among her crews in order to spread her human Sailors out over more ships? Assuming the yards could turn out more ships.

  Kris knew that logistics was a brutal science. How did you get the right stuff to the right place in the right amount at just the right time so that the want of a nail didn’t cost you a ship or a battle? Kris now played this game with wild abandon.

  Her hand went unbidden to her tummy. There was a tiny life growing there. If she blew it, that life might never get a chance to laugh at her mommy’s silly face or feel Jack’s warm hug.

  Kris suppressed a shiver and went back to listening to Pipra. The CEO of Nuu Enterprises in the Alwa system forced herself to listen closely to every word from her executive officer. It sounded like Pipra had a good plan. A well-balanced plan.

  But would it be the right plan?

  Kris struggled with this new demon and refused to blurt out her new fear. There was a lot more to being a mother than just growing a child.

  Kris was exhausted by the time Pipra closed down her computer, and said, “Gal, you look tired.”

  “Doc Meade tells me I won’t be my usual peppy self for a while.”

  “Well, it makes me glad I don’t have to worry about your problem.”

  “Oh, I’ve had one person tell me she was safe. You have a girlfriend?”

  “Not at the moment. I keep hinting to your Abby that she and her Marine could join my new S family. There are only three of us, and we gals would like another boy to avoid monotony. However, your friend is a head case. I don’t know of a woman more averse to jumping the broom or doing anything else to tie a knot, but she sure is doing a good imitation of monogamy with that big fellow.”

  “To each their own,” Kris said. Nothing Abby did surprised Kris.

  Kris let Pipra let herself out, finding it amazingly hard to get to her feet.

  She did manage to walk herself into her quarters. The bed looked so good.

  I can lie down for just a few minutes.

  In a moment, Kris was out like a light.

  18

  Kris, ARE YOU AWAKE? brought Kris back to a wakefulness that was not her friend.

  WHO WANTS TO KNOW? had a strong hint they would pay for the question with their life.

  JACK. HE SAYS PHIL TAUSSIG WANTS TO CHECK IN WITH YOU, BUT I TOLD HIM YOU WERE TAKING A NAP.

  “I’m not anymore,” Kris said, and rolled herself off her bunk. She managed to stumble to the sink and get a drink of water. It tasted delicious.

  Holding on to the sink for support, she glanced around her quarters. They looked about the same, even to the door leading to her maid’s quarters. “I wonder if Abby will even have space aboard,” she muttered groggily.

  “Why shouldn’t I?” Abby said from the door to Kris’s day quarters. “Just ’cause you got a brat in the oven, am I suddenly unwelcome?”

  “Never,” Kris said, actually managing to crack a smile at the woman her mother had hired to wash her hair and see that she made it to balls on time. “I just figured you were having too much fun being a woman of
business to have any time for little old me.”

  “Old, I might agree with,” Abby grumped in her usual merry way, “but you’ve been six feet of trouble since I first saw you. You planning on having your next meeting in those rumpled whites?”

  Kris glanced down at her uniform. Clearly, whites were not meant to be the uniform of the nap. At least not and be worn to the next meeting.

  “Could you get me a new set of undress whites?” Kris said. “No need to have all that fruit salad to see Phil and Doc Meade.”

  “Can I tell Phil that you’re accepting gentleman callers?” Nelly asked.

  Kris wondered what obsolete fiction Nelly was studying now, but answered, “Yes,” as Abby dug out a new pair of white slacks and a short-sleeve white shirt. “Tell him to give me five minutes to recover from a little nap, and I’ll be human.”

  “They’re on their way,” Nelly reported.

  Abby, in her own inimitable way, got Kris presentable and even human in time to meet her husband at the door between their day and night quarters. He gave her a kiss.

  “Can an old friend give his pregnant friend a hug, even if she is the boss?” Phil asked.

  “So long as you do it where I can see it,” Jack growled, but through a delightfully possessive smile.

  Kris opened her arms, and Phil engulfed her in a hug. “Hey, if pregnant women get hugs like these, I could get to like this,” Kris said.

  “Can I ask when baby’s due?”

  “Not for a long time. With luck, you can get gone and back and still have time to hold my hand while shouting ‘breathe,’ or ‘push,’ or whatever I’m supposed to do.”

  “Don’t they have machines that can take over the hard part?” Phil asked. “My wife used one the one time I hung around a bit to do the service required.”

  “That’s something she needs to talk over with Doc Meade,” Jack said.

  “I will. I will,” Kris insisted. “It’s just we’ve been a bit busy in our meetings trying to figure out why seventy-two of us are in this state without getting proper Navy authorization.”

  “God forbid that anyone do anything without proper Navy authorization,” Phil drawled.

  They shared the laugh at that.

  “So, you’re ready to run the alien gauntlet back to human space?” Kris asked. Unspoken was her requirement that if the aliens caught this tiny force, and somehow managed to overpower them before they could run away, Phil would see that his reactor lost containment and that his ship, and all in it, were burned to atoms.

  “I want to run the Hornet and Endeavor out to the asteroid belt for a shoot tomorrow to see if those old 18-inch lasers on the Endeavor and the banged-up 20-inchers on the Hornet are still good.”

  “I hear you’re going to take a few potshots at the Wasp while you’re at it.”

  “No way to prove the armor works but by hitting it.”

  “I seem to remember there used to be proving grounds where they’d do that without putting a ship at the end of the gun,” Kris said.

  “There were,” Nelly put in.

  “But here we do things fast and cheap,” Phil said, “and don’t worry. We’ll be gentle on Captain Drago. First sign of any shortcomings with the crystal stuff, and it’s back to the yard for him.”

  “Well, I’d like to get you on your way before I have too much trouble. You’re supposed to be a secret, but news of just about anything leaks out around here like a sieve,” Kris said, resting a hand on her midriff, which was still quite flat, thank you very much.

  “A day trip out, another day to load supplies. We’ve already taken on board some of that stuff we don’t talk about. Hard to believe that could change everything.”

  “I’m also sending you as many of the alien tribe as want to see our world,” Kris said. “They and the rabid old hag that just screams that we’re all going to die ought to be an overnight sensation back home.”

  “Can I keep her asleep for most of the trip?” Phil asked. “She is one angry old biddy, and she really gets her jollies telling us what they’re going to do to us vermin for having the gall to fight back and kill them instead of dying quietly.”

  “Sorry, Phil, but Doc Meade says it’s not good for the old woman’s heart to spend it all drugged and off her feet. She needs to exercise.”

  “So she gets it screaming at her guards. Okay, I’ll arrange the guard shift so they only have to put up with her awake once. It will make for a fast trip.”

  “Fast out and fast back. Is that what you and O’dell want?”

  “I’ve got a few of the crew who are talking of staying, but I’m thinking of asking Bahati to come out here. Alwa’s a good place, plenty of open space. Some Ostrich folks say we can homestead there. I think Bahati would love some land around her and the family. Her folks have settled a half dozen planets in the last twenty generations.”

  “If you can talk her into it,” Kris agreed, wondering why anyone would take the risk. But then, now that we knew about the aliens, humanity had been at risk for a hundred thousand years and not known it.

  “Now, I’ve got to see what Dr. Meade is up to,” Kris said. “I’ll be there to wish you and your crew Godspeed when you shove off,” Kris assured her old friend. He and his crew had saved her life. But then, she’d come back to save them.

  That was the Navy way. You stood by your friends and didn’t keep count of who was up or down in the saving of each other’s neck business.

  With an informal salute, Phil was on his way.

  “Do you think Doc Meade has her hands on who took this little choice out of our hands?” Jack asked when they were alone. “I’d love to know what he thought he was doing. I might even get it out of him if he is reluctant to talk. Please, dear God, make him reluctant to talk.”

  “Down, Marine. I get first go at the bastard although it’s kind of hard to be too angry. I’m starting to like this little hitchhiker.”

  “Who said I don’t love the little one?” Jack said. “I just have to wonder who thought it would be a great idea to take the consent out of childbearing.”

  “Okay, Marine, if you promise to be nice, and hand me the brass knuckles when I ask for them first, you can accompany me to the good doctor.”

  Together, they set out to see what they could see.

  19

  A young junior officer was just leaving as they arrived, a firm and resolute look on her face. She saluted Kris without showing any signs of recognizing her.

  Clearly, her gaze had gone someplace else.

  As Kris settled into Doc Meade’s office, she asked, “That young officer. Is she okay?”

  The good doctor shrugged. “As good as any young person is who has just made one of their first grown-up calls.”

  “Oh.”

  “She’s the first of you seventy-two to choose to end her pregnancy.”

  “Is there anything I should know?” Kris said.

  “No. No, there was no command influence involved. I would have had your Nelly drag you out of any meeting if I thought there was. It’s the usual story. A relationship went sour. She asked to be reassigned off the Fury and arranged the exchange herself. She’s a very capable young woman. She’s just learning a lot of lessons harder than she should have had to.”

  Kris nodded. Jack made her decision easy. This could have been a whole lot worse.

  “Oh, I have a question,” Kris said, remembering. “I was talking to a friend, and he mentioned that his wife used a mechanical womb, what do you call them?”

  “Uterine replicators,” the doctor provided. “I take it Admiral Yi’s bad-mouthing his wife hit too close to a mark.”

  “I’m not sure. It would be nice, if it is not too late, to move baby into one of them. I imagine Granny Rita would love to babysit one.”

  “It was too late a year ago,” the doctor said flatly.

  “Huh?”

  “When the fleet sailed from human space, we didn’t carry any of them. You young women were all on implants, remember
?”

  “Right, and I don’t know that I would have authorized it if someone had asked to have her implants removed.”

  “None have. These women know where their duty lies.”

  “Yes,” Kris agreed. “Have you found anything out about that?”

  “Yes, but in a minute. Let’s finish this thought. Nelly, could you make a uterine replicator out of Smart Metal?”

  “I have the specifications,” Nelly said. “It shouldn’t be too hard to spin one out,” came across far too vague for Kris’s likes.

  “Nelly, you don’t sound too sure of yourself,” Kris said.

  “It’s not the machine itself. Making one is duck soup. It’s the supplies.”

  “The consumables,” Doc Meade put in. “Proteins, enzymes, specially manufactured hormones. Things that you’re knocking together in that miracle of a body you were issued at birth, Kris, and that you’ve spent the last fifteen years since puberty practicing how to make.”

  Kris nodded, suspecting she knew what would come next, but still she said, “Nelly, if I made your number one priority making them, how long would it take you to produce these ‘consumables’?”

  “Kris,” came out actually sounding pained. “I’d have to make stuff to make stuff to make stuff, and that assumes I could find the basic feedstock on Alwa. There’s no bet that I could. If I got lucky, I’d say we could have some ready in six to eight months.”

  “Just in time for me to pat your little darling on her rump and see how big a yelp she’d give me,” Doc Meade said.

  “Is it going to be a girl?” Jack asked.

  “Don’t know yet,” Doc Meade said, “but I figure a gal has a right to hope for a cute little girl until science proves otherwise. You got a problem with that, General?”

  “Not at all. A cute little miniature of my wife would be a great end to this journey we’re on.”

  Kris smiled at Jack. She’d figured him to want a boy. It was great to be on this journey with him. And in the end, this little one had likely already made up his or her mind. What would be would be.