Kris Longknife: Defender (11 page)

Of course, the man going to meet Rita was nothing like the one she’d sailed off from on a near-suicide mission eighty years ago.

“What are you thinking?” Jack asked as he glided up to take a handhold on Kris’s station.

“I’m remembering all the reasons I joined the Navy. How much I wanted to get out of family things,” she said, seriously, then half snorted. “Not even shipping out to the other side of the galaxy is far enough to get away from my family.”

Jack managed to surreptitiously squeeze her hand while officially getting a better handhold on her station. “Our family doesn’t have to be anything like the families we’re from,” he whispered.

Kris allowed him a smile, but with the entire bridge watching, she had to direct it at the forward screen and hope he saw it reflected back at him.

Her seated, him standing, they waited out the time lapse.

The
Canopus
continued its metamorphism from huge freighter to space station. At one time, she took on a spin, but only briefly. With the ship decelerating at one and a half gees, there was a clear down aboard. The spin would have made it rough for all hands.

“She spun smoothly,” Captain Drago said. “I’ve been aboard a ship that wasn’t balanced when the skipper put on battle revolutions. She damaged some delicate equipment, and we had a new skipper not ten minutes after we docked.
Canopus
did that test well.”

The screen came alive.

The king himself was scowling down at Kris, bigger than life.

“My, aren’t you being formal, ‘respects and fealty.’ Not a bad thing to amend to a message where you’re trying to teach your old grampa how to suck eggs. We’ve been planning this for several weeks, kiddo. Trust us to get it right. Longknife out.”

Kris blinked several times.

“Well, that answers where the king is hanging out,” Jack said. “If that wasn’t the bridge of the
Monarch
, I’m a boot learning how to box the square.”

“Well, I feel put in my place,” Kris said. “I guess they did pay more attention to my reports than I thought.”

“Don’t bet on it,” Senior Chief Beni said from Sensors. “There’s suddenly a whale of a lot of communications going on between the
Monarch
and those two overweight slugs. It’s not in standard code, but my Nelson is having no problem cracking it. Thank you, Nelly, for the loan of one of your kids.”

“What’s the message?” Kris asked.

“The first message was from the
Monarch
and contained your instructions for spinning out a pole from each bow to spin around on. The later messages are between the two slugs. Between their cargo and the amount of reaction mass they have left aboard, they are quite a few tons different and the distribution is all balled up. Their skippers are debating how to redesign the swing system to account for that, if it’s even possible.”

“And they wanted to dock those two disasters on the
Canopus
!” Captain Drago said.

“So Raymond doesn’t want you to teach him to suck eggs, but he’s only too happy to learn how, huh,” came from Granny Rita.

“Apparently,” Kris agreed. “How are things going on your end?”

“It turns out that five years ago, our Minister of Mining and Industry signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the Representative of the Association of Associations for Maintaining Harmony with the Heavy People for Gifts and Arcane Knowledge. You know, our mining guy and their tax man.”

“If you say so,” Kris said.

“Anyway, their G and AK guy is young and has taken on more of our ways, so the idea of committing to paper something as important as them getting a forty-percent take of everything didn’t sound nearly as strange to him as it did to a lot of the other elders.”

“Did the memo only deal with Alwa?” Jack asked.

“Funny you should ask,” Granny Rita said, “You know, we were trying to get them to help us get back up to the
Furious
and bring down the reactors.”

“Yes,” Kris said, hoping she knew where this was going.

“This Alwan knew they’d want part of the energy from the reactor, so he pushed to have the memo cover everything in the Alwa system. Since most elders don’t recognize the existence of anything over the horizon, this bird was quite far-looking.”

“Well, thank you, Granny. Would you please send up a copy. Your new computer should show you how to do that.”

“Already asked it. It should be showing up any second.”

“I have it,” Nelly said.

“How are your other preparations going?” Kris asked.

“Fine. Fine. We’ll have a party fit for a king,” Rita assured her.

Kris rang off. Nelly projected the memo in front of Kris.

“You think the ink is dry on those signatures?” Abby asked.

“You would question the honor and integrity of my Granny Rita?” Kris said in shock. Shock with a large cup of skepticism in it.

“In a second,” Penny said.

“We’ll let the lawyers argue over it,” Kris said, dismissively. “Skipper, are we ready for the king?

“As ready as we’ll ever be.”

“Your Highness,” came in a carefully cultivated voice.

“Yes, Professor Joao Labao,” Kris said.

“We have several preliminary reports back from our survey and analysis of the alien base ship. Is there any chance you will have the time or desire to hear them before meeting your king?”

“Meet me in my Tac Center,” Kris ordered, “just as fast as you can glide down here.”

“On my way, with full graphics and graphs.”

“Nelly, get my entire team to the Tac Center. Skipper, would you care to attend?”

Captain Drago actually looked just a bit distressed. “I’d love to attend, but I think it better I keep an eye on the
Wasp
’s developments for a royal visit. Nelly, would you be so kind as to record the discussion and provide me with a copy?”

“I would gladly do that, Captain,” Nelly said, most ladylike.

K
RIS, THE CAPTAIN IS STARTING TO WARM TO ME.

T
HEN DON’T DO ANYTHING TO SCREW UP,
Kris said as she drifted from the bridge to her Tac Center.

Kris
had expected to be ordered to the
Monarch
, it being the Royal Ship. However, King Raymond hadn’t forgotten that the
Wasp
had a Forward Lounge with a full bar, so the elephant herd came to her.

Thus, an hour after Captain Drago docked with Canopus Station, Kris was waiting on the quarterdeck of the
Wasp
for the arrival of the king. And arrive he did.

Decked out in the blue dress uniform of a fleet admiral, with all his ribbons from not just the Unity War and Iteeche War, but a few even before that, he was resplendent.

And so gold-encrusted, Kris wondered how he could walk. That newfound skill of hers, giggling, almost got the better of her, but she held her breath, waited as he saluted the flag on the aft bulkhead, saluted her, and asked, “Permission to come aboard.”

“Permission granted, Your Royal Majesty.”

“Which way to that bar of yours?”

“Follow me, sir.” And Kris led him forward.

The
Wasp
’s new navigator stepped forward to take Kris’s place and prepared to receive Admiral Crossenshield. The king glanced over his shoulder, then eyed Kris.

“Your navigator is Imperial Musashi Navy.”

“The
Wasp
did commission there, and we were a bit shorthanded. His Imperial Majesty, the Emperor of Musashi, was kind enough to grant us the use of some of his personnel when it became necessary for us to get underway in great haste.” Kris tried not to smile at all she was leaving unsaid.

“Right. You’ve got a whole company of Imperial Marines. How’s your Secret Service Agent, Jack what’s-his-name taking to that?”

“The Emperor graciously put the Marine company under Captain Montoya’s command. It was only later that our own Royal U.S. Marine company arrived. The rump battalion is exercising well together.”

“Have you done any field exercises on Alwa? That’s what they call it, right.”

“Yes, sir. And no, sir, it has not seemed wise to land a landing force. The Alwans are having a hard enough time coming to terms with the basic concept of intelligent species using force against each other without us practicing in their own backyard.”

“They better get the concept real fast,” the king muttered.

“We couldn’t agree more on that,” Kris said, and ushered the king into the Forward Lounge.

Mother MacCreedy had outdone herself. The place looked like an Officers’ Club like you might have found in old England or better yet, Raj India. Captured Unity flags hung next to Imperial Iteeche banners and gold tridents. There were several huge oil paintings. One showed a bunch of horsemen on gray mounts charging, sabers waving, seemingly hell-bent on charging out of the picture.

There were photos, too, some of old, bewhiskered officers, but Kris spotted one of General Ray’s staff from the Iteeche War, and another of his officers from the old Second Guard Brigade.

The man in the gold-encrusted fleet admiral’s blues took it all in, and grumbled, “A bit overdone, isn’t it?”

Kris shrugged. “You know how contractors
will
go overboard trying to please.” When he didn’t react to her gibe, she led him toward the screens.

One thing Mother MacCreedy had done was to set aside an area behind a glass wall. For an old lady, Mother MacCreedy was either taking to manipulating Smart Metal
TM
herself or had someone who owed her favors. Whoever it was did indeed know the magic of making Smart Metal
TM
not only stand up and paint pictures, but also turn a wall clear as glass, and, like tonight, expand the floor area and the length of the bar.

The Forward Lounge might be crowded, but it would not leave anyone out. It was big at the moment and likely to get bigger as the need arose.

The king settled himself at the table with the best view of the screens. The planet rolled by below them as a pretty Marine corporal in dress blue and reds arrived. “Can I get you something to drink, Your Royal Majesty?” she asked with a barmaid’s smile.

The king frowned. “Were you ordered to this assignment?”

“No, sir,” the girl answered indignantly. “I get extra pay for this, and while the tips aren’t likely to be as good tonight since the princess here ordered me out of my usual short skirt and into uniform, it’s still a good way to supplement my college fund, if you must know, sir. Now, are you drinking or just asking personal questions?”

The king chuckled. “Marines haven’t gotten any less sharp even if I have gotten too old to match wits with them. A Scotch, Corporal, double, and on the rocks.”

“I’ll be right back. Your Highness, your usual?”

“Yes, Kathy, thank you.”

The king watched the attractive young woman’s rear sashay away from them. “In a short dress, she
definitely
would be getting great tips.”

Then he turned to Kris. “You’re out of uniform.”

“Sir, no one told me the fleet was in blues. It’s summer below, and we’ve been in whites. Until you showed up with
Canopus
for a station and source of down, we’ve been granting about a quarter of the crew shore leave in three-day passes.”

She saw no need to add that she and Jack had tried to get in a two-week vacation.

He reached into his blouse pocket and pulled out two shoulder boards and slid them across the table to Kris. “You’ve been drawing commander’s pay since the first of this month.”

Last Kris had heard, she was AWOL and not drawing any pay. It was nice to know she now had some income, but the shoulder boards didn’t have the three stripes of a commander. They showed the one extrawide strip of a commodore.

“Sir,” Kris said, eyebrow raised.

“If you’re going to command a squadron all the way on the other side of the galaxy, it seemed like we ought to frock you up to commodore officially. No more of this calling you one thing while you wear the stripes of something a whole lot more junior. Frocking, or fleeting up, is an ancient custom going back to the times of wooden ships and iron men. Think sailing ships all the way on the other side of the world with no damn wire strung up anyone’s butt to get orders from people who didn’t know what was going on but thought they had enough rank to tell everyone what to do.”

Kris eyed her great-grandfather as the drinks arrived. No one, not even Admiral Crossenshield, had crossed into the space reserved by the glass divider. Even Jack was standing at the bar, an untouched beer in his hand, never taking his eyes off her, or maybe the king.

“I ducked up to look around on the Canopus Station once we docked,” Kris said. “There’s a full Navy yard here. That rates at least a captain. Maybe this far out, an admiral.”

“Yeah, Benson has the job. Rear Admiral Benson, now retired, and just Mr. Benson to you. His whole staff are the best volunteers we could lay our hands on. Most retired, a few took early out to come here.”

Kris knew she should say thank you, but the words didn’t make it past a stampede of other thoughts bubbling up her throat. “You’ve gone to a great effort to see that I command here, Grandfather. Why?”

The king gave her a smile that was part proud grandparent . . . and part deadly battle commander. How a man could blend those two feelings was one question Kris would not ask.

“What do you think of that big frigate I popped last on you?
Princess Royal.
Ten 20-inch lasers. What a war wagon. I thought you might want to transfer your flag to her.” He gave Kris no time to answer that but rushed on. “She’s not named that because you fill out a ball gown real nice, Kris. I gave her that name because you are the fightingest captain I’ve got in my fleet. The fightingest woman commander I’ve seen since your great-grandmother Rita took the 16th Battlecruiser Squadron on its last ride. Yes, I’ve bent the rules to keep you in command. You’re triple-deep selected for commander, and it took an act of Congress from a Congress I can hardly get to act at all, to allow us to start frocking up combat-experienced officers.”

He glanced around. “I don’t think you’ve failed to notice. We desperately need battle commanders, and experienced ones are in short supply.”

It was tempting to remind him that she’d been just as battle experienced when he shipped her off to East Siberia to command a mosquito boat flotilla for Madigan’s Rainbow, but she bit her lip and went to what she knew had to be her next question.

“You know, sir, this is a suicide mission. I don’t see any way we can survive another attack like we faced last time. Recently, we encountered hostiles. They were shooting at anything that drifted into their space. Anything!”

“You’ve encountered more hostiles?”

“Yes, sir. Are you ready for my report?”

The king downed the rest of his Scotch in a single gulp and slammed it down on the table. “Damn, that’s good stuff. Okay, you bring in your team, and I’ll bring in mine, and the other frigate skippers,” he said, waving at Admiral Crossenshield. “You show me what you’ve got, and I’ll show you what I’ve brought. Yes, you’re a forlorn hope, all the way hell and gone across the galaxy, but I’ll be damned if you won’t have a fighting chance.

“Yes, we want you to put up a fight. A fight that will leave these bastards licking their wounds and, if they beat you, celebrating that they wiped out a nest of the worst sons a bitches the galaxy ever spawned. We need you to buy us time—win, lose, or draw—to build the fleet back home that will take them apart piece by piece until they either holler uncle or, to quote an old sea dog, ‘their language is only spoken in hell.’

“But no, Princess Royal of my blood, you and your crew are not expendable. What you’re looking at is just the first of several squadrons that were fitting out for the long jumps here when I departed human space. Those huge, bloated transports can spin out four big frigates between them to double your strength. And, as you may have heard”—this last came with a raised eyebrow—“there are factories and mining ships in them, too.

“And all of what’s coming isn’t just from the U.S. Musashi tells me that they’ll send their 3rd Frigate Squadron just as soon as they have three others to defend themselves. Other planets are kicking in squadrons, too.”

He almost smiled. “You showed with the Fleet of Discovery that you could lead a mismatched, divided bunch of commanders and ships. I’m glad you had the practice. You’ve only just begun to fight, my dear. You’ve only just begun.”

“Then I better let you know the extent of the threat, Your Royal Majesty. This planet is beleaguered, and it looks to only get worse.”