Redoubtable (16 page)

20

So
it was that two days later, Kris found herself squeezed into the front seat of a beat-up pickup between Jack and Chief Beni. They’d bought the truck from a farmer lock, stock, and barrel, fully loaded for market. It had taken gold marks to get him interested in any kind of business, but when the deal was done, he’d sworn no further interest in the truck . . . or the folks who bought it.

Just in case, the chief had tapped into the vehicle registration database. “Just a light tap,” he insisted. He found a similar truck and quickly modified the rear and front license plates to match it.

“If we’re stopped, this won’t be the truck they’re looking for,” the chief said.

“Oh, good,” Kris said. “Can I say, ‘This is not the truck you are looking for’? I loved that classic movie, and I’ve always wanted to say that line.”

“You may get a chance,” the chief said, studying his black box, then making it disappear into what once again looked like a serious beer belly. “There’s a traffic checkpoint up ahead.”

“Keep your trap shut,” Jack snapped at Kris, then shouted out the window to where Abby and Gunny sat on the truck bed with three Marines. “Get ready to look hangdog and out of work.”

“Ooo-Rah,” came back softly.

Vicky had been right; Greenfeld’s military was way too white. Not a single Greenfeld Marine was dark enough to pass for any of the locals Kris had seen so far around Sevastopol. What was it about Greenfeld that caused it to draw its dominant power people from Earth’s old northern European stock? Before she was introduced to this mess on St. Pete, Kris would have guessed that the Peterwalds had only allowed immigration from certain sections of Earth. Now it was clear to Kris. Greenfeld only limited access to power to people whose great-grandparents came from those sections.

Now the devil was playing his own tune and demanding payment for years of bad choices.

As forecast, they rounded a corner and found themselves joining a small line of similarly dilapidated trucks, waiting their turn to be checked over and passed into a city that was just starting to emerge from the morning fog.

When they pulled up to the checkpoint, Kris confronted four men in civilian clothes, their only badges of office red armbands with LA GUARDIA embroidered in green. Oh, and the inevitable machine pistols slung over their shoulders and held at the ready.

Kris gave them the most empty-headed smile she could manage and kept her mouth shut.

Two of the men came around to Jack’s window to question him. He gave short answers in a language only half-English that seemed to satisfy them.

The other two guards stayed in front of the truck and spent a lot of time eyeing Kris and laughing among themselves at their private jokes.

Kris couldn’t translate a word of it. That didn’t mean she didn’t know what was going on.

She allowed herself a worried smile as she considered the men’s reactions if they found out the woman they were ogling had a Navy-issue automatic and could have plugged them both between the eyes before they got a shot off. Or could break all four of their arms and legs in anything close to a fair fight.

Kris held the thought of what she could do . . . and shyly edged closer to Jack and half hid behind his arm. He glowered back at their leers, but they ignored him and kept cracking jokes Kris did her best not to hear.

Abby was having her own problems in back. One of the guards supposedly checking the bags of corn they were carrying to market somehow managed to flip up her dress. She jumped to her feet and launched into a tirade that smoothly blended English Kris didn’t normally hear from her maid, Spanish Kris didn’t understand, and violent hand waving that left nothing to doubt.

The guards backed off, laughing, and waved them through.

“What are they saying about us?” Jack demanded as soon as he had the truck in gear and the checkpoint in his rearview mirror.

Chief Beni’s black box was out again. Gunny’s hat included an antenna he kept aimed, along with his smile, at the roadblock.

“They’re wondering why you’re taking so many pretty girls to market. You hear that, Abby? Girls! And they’re already complaining about the load of pigs behind us. I don’t think they’ve been alerted to look for anything in particular.”

“That would be nice,” Jack muttered. “This is another fine mess you’ve gotten us into, kid.”

Jack had banned the use of ranks, titles, and any other honors until they got back upside. He seemed to be getting a kick out of calling Kris kid and girl. He’d called her other things in that language she didn’t speak.

KRIS, YOU WANT ME TO TRANSLATE HIS SPANISH?

NO, NELLY. I THINK IT’S BETTER IF I DON’T KNOW.

YOU’RE PROBABLY RIGHT, almost got Kris to change her mind.

Kris answered Jack’s put-down with a sniff while she regretted her decision in high school to take a computer language rather than Spanish.

“You will never use a computer language,” Nelly had told Kris, even then. “You humans are way too slow. Just tell me what you want, and I will make it happen.”

Nelly had been right; Kris never wrote a line of code during the whole course . . . not even in class. Nelly made a habit of answering any question before Kris could even get a start. It had been an easy A.

Now Kris was paying for it in so many ways.

“Vicky couldn’t come down here. Not one of her officers could pass for Hispanic. None of her Marines either. Who else could do this?” Kris said.

“Me. The chief here. Abby. Gunny. We. Don’t. Need. You.”

Jack had a point. The only response Kris had was stubborn denial. “I will come in handy when we find Maggie.”

“If we find that woman,” Jack snapped.

“We will find her,” Kris insisted.

They drove on in silence.

Cara
was getting way too tired of the silent treatment. The grown-ups were just busy, busy, busy. Since they’d arrived at the station, they never had any time for her.

It was so boring!

Dada was nice; the computer made learning fun. But you could only take so much healthy learning before you wanted to choke on something.

The crew was pretty cool. They’d let Cara look over their shoulders and learn all kinds of things. Cara was pretty sure she could run the
Wasp
all by herself. The engineering watch had even let her stand a watch with them. She’d checked all the readings and made sure everything was in the green.

Course, it had been an in-port watch and the teakettles . . . that was what real ship engineers called the reactors . . . had been just maintaining minimum power.

Still, Cara had stood the watch.

She’d also followed the deck watch around as they did their duties. When the
Wasp
made port, the pier’s automatic tie-downs were activated by the bridge. If you just listened to the bridge crew, you’d think that was all there was to it.

The deck watch showed Cara just how wrong those prima donnas were. Each of the tie-downs had to be fully locked down by good old Swedish steam. That meant real sailors applying their backs to these huge cast-iron wrenches to lock down the ties. Once they finished, there was no chance that someone might accidentally sit on the wrong place on some bridge console and break the ship loose.

Before they undocked, the deck crew would have to “single up the line,” and use the same iron wrenches to take off the safeties. Cara was learning a lot about the ship that she would bet that even Princess Kris didn’t know. Probably even Aunt Abby.

Take, for example, the amidships tie-down. It wasn’t like all the others. Air, net, water, and sewage lines came over with that tie-down. That made it a whole lot bigger than the rest. “You could almost use this puppy as a gangway,” the chief told his new sailors. “If you don’t put the rat catcher up, those filthy beasties will.”

One of the younger sailors eyed the passageway, taking its measurements. “Cara wouldn’t even have to bend over to walk through there to the station,” he said.

“Now don’t you go giving the little girl any ideas,” the chief said. “Anyone going ashore from the
Wasp
goes by the quarterdeck and does it right smartly. Besides, this space is locked down, and none of you know its combination,” the chief said, and gave Cara a knowing smile.

She smiled right back.

She’d learned early to smile when people smiled. She’d also learned on the streets of Eden how to spot an access number without letting anyone catch on that she had made the code.

You could say a lot against Gamma Ganna, but that she raised dumb kids or grandkids wasn’t one of them.

And Cara did indeed have a beef with the grown-ups around here. Not only did they ignore her, but they kept her cooped up on this little boat just forever.

They were nice to her. Nice the way they wanted to be. There was cake for her saint’s day and gifts. Gifts for Christmas, too.

But all the gifts were money! Her credit chit now had more money on it than she’d believed possible when she was a skinny runt running the streets of Five Corners. Yet she couldn’t spend a dime!

Nowhere would they let her go shopping. Even her new computer, Dada, was just handed to her. Auntie Abby never went to a store; she just ordered stuff off the net. Where was the fun in that?

Everybody knew shopping was the experience: the smells, the feel, the joy of the hunt. Why would anyone want a dress she hadn’t tried on!

Cara needed some serious window-shopping, some down-and-dirty store time, and everyone on the ship was just so not going anywhere.

It was time for a girl to take matters into her own hands. Especially now that Auntie Abby and Kris had gone down to the planet. They’d gone down and not even asked Cara if she’d like to go along with them!

First, Cara casually turned off Dada. She didn’t like doing that. Dada would probably be nearly as much fun to go shopping with as a real live girl. Still, there was no doubt in Cara’s mind that if Nelly asked where Cara was, Dada would be a snitch.

So Dada got turned off and left in the bottom of her lingerie drawer.

Then, with her credit chit in the pocket of her jeans, Cara casually headed for the amidships section. This whole idea would vanish like a genie in one of the stories she was reading if they’d changed the access code to that hatch.

To Cara’s delight, they hadn’t. Quick like a ferret, she was in the room, and the door slid shut behind her.

Leaving her in like total darkness.

She should have brought a light.

Next time she would. This time she managed to find a switch and turn it on. The rat catcher came off easily, and went back on quickly once she was on the other side. The sailor was right; she didn’t even have to bend over as she passed down the tie-down to the pier.

Of course, the pier didn’t look at all like the pier people walked on when they left the
Wasp
. But then, none of those people from the quarterdeck could see her. If Cara popped out in sight of the quarterdeck, she’d have three Marines, maybe more, chasing her down.

Nope, Cara would stay in the walls until she was well out of view from anyone on the
Wasp
.

That took a bit of climbing on a ladder with rungs spaced apart for people a bit taller than Cara. She made it, but she was feeling kind of tired by the time she reached the top.

The space she found herself in was painted gray with ducts and pipes painted in bright colors of red, blue, green, and the likes. She spotted a door and made for it.

Cara had to undog the hatch, it was an airtight hatch, but when she opened it, it was the main deck of the station that she saw! It was like a fairyland. A huge carpeted walk led to stores and stores and more stores.

Quick as a bunny, Cara was through the hatch. She dogged it back down and was on her way to do some serious shopping!

Or not.

As she skipped up to the first store, she found it shuttered and locked. So was the second one. There was still stuff in the windows to look at, but they were dusty and not a lot of fun. Who wanted to drool over things you couldn’t buy.

By the fifth or sixth store, she was starting to think this whole idea was just one big bust.

Then she spotted two Greenfeld sailors. Seeing them made Cara realize just how empty the station was. There had been a bunch of Greenfeld sailors marching in the distance, but there was nobody anywhere close to her. She’d kind of liked that. Now it was sort of creeping her out.

But now there were these two sailors. Well, a couple. One of the sailors was a girl, and the other a boy. They were looking around like they were afraid someone might see them, but they walked like they knew where they were going. Cara decided going somewhere was better than going nowhere and started to follow them.

At a distance, where they wouldn’t notice her.

They slipped off the main walkway and disappeared down a small hallway. Cara got to the passageway just in time to see them turn right. By the time she got to the end of the hallway, they were turning into a small store.

An open store!

It was a jewelry store, but it was an open store! Whether Cara needed a new bobble or not, at least it was a place she could look . . . and maybe the couple knew another store that was open.

The moment Cara entered the store, she noticed three things.

There was no sign of the couple she’d followed in. No evidence they’d ever been there.

The three men in the store turned toward her with wide smiles that didn’t look all that nice.

And then the door behind her clicked in a most decisive way. Cara turned back to the door to try the knob.

It didn’t turn at all.

“Who would have thought, three in one afternoon,” she heard from behind her.

Cara opened her mouth to scream. Before she got a sound out, a strange-smelling cloth was suddenly clamped over her nose and mouth.

A moment later, Cara’s world went dark.

21

Sevastopol
was built around a series of bays. The minor bay that served as the fishing port was the closest, so that was where Kris aimed her team first. If Doc Maggie had caught a fishing boat to Sevastopol, and if she’d left behind some sort of record, and if that helped them find her . . . then maybe she could help them with the tougher part of the mission.

Even Kris had to admit there were a lot of “ifs” in that plan. The small wooden boats and nets looked like a picture that could have been taken anytime in the last three thousand years on old Earth. Birds mewed, and old men mended nets as others sailed out past the rocky breakwater into the rising sun.

“We got a problem, folks,” Chief Beni announced. “There’s no network up and running in this area.”

“Don’t the boats have computers?” Kris asked.

“Look at them,” Jack said, pointing with his chin. “Those boats are lucky to have bottoms.”

“There’s got to be a tax computer here. They catch fish. They have to record taxes,” Kris insisted.

“Maggie’s a doctor, not a fish,” Jack pointed out.

“But I’ll bet you she paid for her passage,” the chief said in support of Kris, “and someone’s bound to have taxed that.”

“I’ve spun off several net scouts,” Nelly said. “One of those overhead lines has to be carrying a net.”

They waited for a long five minutes while Jack drove as slow as he could around the bay.

“I got it,” Chief Beni yelped. “I’ve got a net. Now to get in. Oh, that was easy. I guess they don’t think the customs office down by the fisherman’s bay needs all that secure a net.”

“Or no one wants to mess with that fine old tradition of smuggling,” Abby put in through the gaping hole that might once have been a back window to the cab. “I think I could like these people.”

“What, you think they’re as nefarious as you?” Jack asked.

“Let’s hope so. If they’re all good little patriots for whoever is in power, we’re in trouble.”

“Okay,” the chief went on, “they do tax every fish that comes in, and there’s a new section in the database for recording everyone shipped in by these little boats, how much they paid, and where they went.”

“You got to love bureaucrats,” Kris said.

“Assuming they didn’t take a cut and forget to enter anyone,” Jack said. “Talk to me about Margarita Rodriguez, Chief.”

“She ain’t in here.”

“What?” Now it was Kris’s turn to yelp. “No, see if they misspelled her name.”

“We got a lot of Rodriguezes here, boss. Doing it by eyeball may take a while.”

“Do they have their profession? Jobs?” Kris and Jack said at the same time.

“Let me see. Spelling isn’t too good here, either. I could understand it from fishermen, but this guy’s supposed to be a bureaucrat.”

“A bureaucrat who weighs fish and knows what tax to demand for each kind,” Kris pointed out.

“Does ‘
medico
’ mean what I think it means,” the chief said.

“It probably does.”

“Well, M. Rodriguez was landed here four weeks ago. She was sent to the Central Employment Agency on Liberty Street.”

“That’s a big help,” Nelly carped. “The map doesn’t show a Liberty Street.”

“Peterwald types wouldn’t be all that hot for such a street. We probably need an updated map,” Kris said, “and we don’t need to go to Liberty Street; we just need to tap gently into its database. Chief.”

“I’m already there. Let’s see how they spell her name this time. Oh, they got it right. Want to bet she had to type it in herself.”

“That seems logical. Sal,” Jack said to his computer, one that usually stayed out of conversations unless specifically asked, “where’s that possible heavy-industry plant?”

“It’s farther up the coast. It’s got a heavy-lifting shuttle port right next door to it. That’s how it drew our attention.”

“You can hide the black cat in a deep dark hole,” Kris said, “but I love it when a twitching tail gets left out.”

“Let’s wait and see,” Jack said, and slowly headed the truck up the coastal road. Soon the road split into two streets. One was a lovely promenade along the shore, just the place for an evening stroll. The other, a block or so inland, was wider, badly worn, with potholes and had a heavy-duty railroad track down the middle to serve rows of warehouses.

“Let’s keep a working truck on a working road,” Jack said.

“We’ll draw less attention that way.”

“I’m in the employment database,” Nelly announced proudly. “Four weeks ago, our Doc Maggie was sent on a job referral to Bay View Medical Center.”

“And where is Bay View Medical Center?” Jack asked.

“On Bay View Boulevard, fourth road in from the bay,” Chief Beni announced.

Kris pointed to a blue sign with a white H. “Hospital,” she said.

“Yes, but that doesn’t much matter if she’s not there, people,” Jack said stubbornly.

“She’s working the night shift,” Nelly said. “She’ll be there until eight according to her work schedule.”

“Why didn’t you say that in the first place?” Jack snapped. “People in back, hold on,” he shouted as he made a hard left turn and headed up a hill.

There were a flood of complaints from the back, but they quickly died as the truck engine did its own imitation of death’s onset.

“It was doing great a second ago,” Jack said as he tried to cajole the truck up the steepening hill. It responded in chokes and fits.

“Folks, my old man had a truck like this,” Gunny Brown said. “I suggest we all get out.”

“I think the man’s right,” Abby said. It wasn’t long before everyone, even Chief Beni, was afoot.

Jack got the rheumatoid truck to the next street and turned down it before letting the truck coast to a halt and turning off the engine. “Where’s this hospital?” he asked.

“I think it’s the tall building at the top of the hill, next street up.”

“It is,” Nelly and the chief both agreed.

“This truck ain’t gonna make it,” Jack said.

“I can walk the rest of the way,” Kris said.

“Not alone,” Jack, Gunny, and Abby said in harmony.

“I’ll stay with the truck,” Chief Beni offered, eyeing the climb.

One Marine was left with him, a farm boy who offered to take a look under the hood. “My old man and his pappy didn’t believe that a truck ever had to die. Let me see what I learned from them.”

Kris wished him well and started hiking.

“Tell me, Nelly, where does Doc Maggie work?”

“She’s assigned to the Emergency Room. She often does a shift and a half. Things are pretty busy.”

“So we didn’t have to drop everything and catch her before eight?” Jack said.

“Quit grouching, Jack. She’s here. We were going by. Why not get her when we can?”

“Because, my dearest little princess, things tend to get harder as time goes by, and I’d rather save the easy part for last.”

“Assuming picking up Vicky’s BFF is the easy part,” Abby said with measurable doubt.

The Emergency Room was located on the east end of the building, readily available to traffic coming both from the harbor and from inland. At least in that respect, finding the Emergency Room was easy.

Then it got hard.

“You can’t come in here,” a young man in something close to a blue uniform told them as they approached where an ambulance was just pulling in.

“Why can’t we?” Kris asked with her best princess smile.

“Can’t you read the sign,” he said, waving a thumb over his shoulder at one that announced AMBULANCES ONLY. “Walkers have to go in the front door and see a nurse. She decides if you really need to see a doctor.”

“Don’t you just love bureaucrats,” Jack whispered out of the side of his mouth.

“None of us are sick,” Kris said.

“Then don’t come here,” the young guard said, cutting Kris off. “There is no loitering. I will call the police if you cause any trouble.”

“What do you say I break his arm,” Jack whispered, “then we take him in to see a doctor.”

The kid heard that and went for the pistol at his waist.

Big mistake.

In a blink, Gunny had him in a choke hold. Abby put a sleepy dart into his butt.

The boy went limp, and Gunny gently tossed him over his shoulder.

“Oh dear.” Abby sighed. “I think the poor thing done come down with the galloping punies. I do hope he doesn’t develop a terrible case of the falling-down plague from standing around out here in the cold night air. We must get him inside.”

Since everyone agreed, Kris led the way, following the last gurney through the double doors.

As Kris expected from experience, inside she found bedlam, only moderately controlled by the cool professionalism of the medical teams of doctors and nurses.

Still, it only took a moment before a person in green scrubs was asking. “What seems to be the problem with this young man?”

“I don’t know,” Kris said. “He suddenly passed out.” Kris hated the thought of lying to a doctor, so she told her a large part of the truth.

But, as so often was the case, Kris didn’t share anywhere close to the whole truth.

They laid the young man out on a table, and the woman began an initial examination. Kris took the opportunity to head for the central station. Jack was close on her heels.

“Could you point me toward Dr. Margarita Rodriguez?” Kris said to any of the five men and women working the station.

A tall, solid woman said, “Why do you need to know?” without looking up from the med board she was studying.

“I have a message for her,” Kris said.

“Give it to me. I’ll pass it along to her when she’s not busy,” the woman said, still not giving Kris so much as a glance.

“Hey! What’s this?” came from behind Kris.

“I think that’s called a sleepy dart,” Gunny told the woman. “Haven’t you ever seen one before?”

“No, I haven’t,” the medic said, eyeing the offending dart as she held it up to the light.

“It does strange things to a man,” Gunny told her.

“And how would you know?” was a question Kris really didn’t want Gunny to answer.

“I don’t have a written letter for Doc Maggie,” Kris said, reaching out to tap the woman who insisted on ignoring her.

At the touch, the woman almost jumped. She finally did look at Kris though it was a look usually reserved for something vile that had been left behind by a sick cat.

“Who are all of you? What are you doing here?” the chart-scanning woman demanded. “You all have to leave.”

“And you said this would be the easy part,” Jack whispered to Kris.

She threw him a nasty look of her own. Then, only too aware that this was not going well, she drew in a long breath and played the card that usually worked.

“Listen. I’m Princess Kris Longknife of Wardhaven, and I really need to see Dr. Rodriguez.”

It would be inaccurate to say that with that announcement the Emergency Room went silent enough that you could hear a pin drop. Around the room, patients continued to moan and whimper. One child even continued to scream, the results of an earache that needed treatment. However, with the exception of a nurse’s aide who chose that moment to drop a tray of syringes and needles, creating quite a clatter, most of the medical professionals in the room did indeed go quiet.

“Yeah, and I’m the Queen of Sheba,” the solid woman said, and made a show of turning her attention back to the med board.

“You know, Gail, she does look a bit like that woman who was on all the vids when she saved Henry Peterwald’s life.”

“And what would a Longknife be doing on St. Pete, Rosy, deep in the bosom of Greenfeld?”

“I don’t know. You tell me. But she does look like that Longknife dame.”

“You are so blind I don’t know how you keep your license,” Gail said. “She looks nothing like that trollop.” But Gail did take a long moment to eye Kris.

Kris ran a hand through what little hair she had at the moment. “You are catching me at a bad time.”

“She’s been sick,” Jack put in. “Came down with a bad case of bombs.”

At one of the workstations, a male in blue scrubs brought up a picture of Kris. “It kind of does look like her,” he opined.

“What do you want with old Doc Maggie?” a woman said as she closed a set of curtains behind her. “Get this woman up for a CAT scan stat. She’s just had a stroke. I won’t know how to treat her until we know what’s going on inside her head.”

“Maggie, the CAT’s booked solid,” the guy in blue scrubs said.

“Make a hole for this woman in the next thirty minutes or tell them they’ll have Maggie the Terrible to deal with.”

“Be it upon you, Doc,” the tech said, and got busy making a call.

“Now, what was this I heard about you having a message for me,” the doc said, eyeing Kris.

“Is there someplace we can talk in private?” Kris asked.

“Somewhere there must be such a place on this blighted planet, but I don’t have time to go there, not if I’m going to save my quota for the night,” the doc said, pulling off her gloves.

“My message is from a friend of yours. I’m not sure you’d want everyone to know about it.”

“This is Kris Longknife, Maggie,” said the gal who had first tried to get Gail to consider that Kris might be who she said she was. “You know, the Wardhaven Princess.”

“Did she bring me a new CAT scanner?” Maggie asked.

Kris shook her head.

“Sorry, I really don’t have time for you and any message from my past. Okay?”

Kris took a deep breath and dived in. “Vicky said she was never better than when she had you to share her ideas with.”

“She did, did she? And when did she tell you that.”

“After dinner on a battleship up at the space station. She asked me to come find you.”

“And why didn’t she come herself?”

“You know why,” Kris said.

“She never calls. She never writes. But you say she suddenly has this overwhelming need to talk about old times. Why didn’t she just call me?”

“She couldn’t find your number down here. She couldn’t do much of a search for you. You know that people she gets too close to get suddenly dead. She didn’t want that to happen to you.”

Maggie eyed Kris like, maybe, she was starting to believe her. “Vicky’s a part of my life that’s past and gone. Why should I reopen that can of worms?”