Redoubtable (29 page)

SO, TO WHAT DO I OWE THE HONOR OF THIS CALL? AS IF I DON’T SUSPECT.

I UNDERSTAND THAT YOUR EVIDENCE IS BEING USED BY THE GREENFELD NAVY FOR COURT-MARTIALS.

YOU COULD SAY THAT, KRIS. I TEND TO SPELL THEM KANGAROO COURT.

IS IT THAT BAD?

IT’S NOT AS BAD AS IT WAS WITH THE PIRATES ON THE STATION. THEY AREN’T JUST LINING PEOPLE UP AGAINST THE WALL AND SHOOTING THEM. NOT QUITE. THE SLAVE OVERSEERS AND DRUG-PLANTATION MANAGERS ARE GETTING THEIR DAY IN COURT. WELL, FIFTEEN MINUTES. THEY CAN FACE THEIR ACCUSERS. LOOK AT THE EVIDENCE I’VE GATHERED. I GUESS THEY ARE PRETTY OPEN-AND-SHUT CASES, KRIS.

IT IS AGAINST GREENFELD LAW TO TRAFFIC IN SLAVES, PENNY.

I KNOW, I KNOW, KRIS. IF WE WERE BRINGING THEM UP ON CHARGES, WE’D PROBABLY GET TO THE SAME BOTTOM LINE. IT’S JUST THAT THE TIME FROM THE READING OF THE CHARGES TO THE VERDICT TO BEING TAKEN OUT AND SHOT IS LESS THAN AN HOUR. IN SOME CASES A WHOLE LOT LESS THAN AN HOUR.

KRIS, BACK HOME, WHEN I WAS GROWING UP, WE HAD THIS MINISTER WHO LOVED, EVERY YEAR, TO PREACH ON HOW WE SHOULD PRAY NOT FOR JUSTICE, BUT FOR MERCY. WELL, IT LOOKS LIKE WE’VE GOT JUSTICE HERE, BUT NOT AN OUNCE OF MERCY.

PENNY, IT DIDN’T LOOK LIKE THEY WERE SHOWING THOSE SLAVES MUCH MERCY, Jack offered.

I KNOW. I HEAR YOU. GIVE ME A BIT OF TIME TO PROCESS IT ALL, OKAY?

WHERE ARE YOU NOW?

I’M HEADED BACK TO THE
WASP
, KRIS. THEY’VE GOT MY EVIDENCE. THEY DON’T NEED ME. ONE OF MY MARINES CAN HANDLE PRESENTING IT TO THE COURT.

WE’RE ALL CELEBRATING IN THE FORWARD LOUNGE. IF YOU WANT A CHANCE TO SLUG THE ADMIRAL IN THE JAW, THIS IS WHERE YOU WANT TO GO.

DON’T TEMPT ME, KRIS.

WHO’S TEMPTING? I’M OFFERING.

Kris found herself coming back to the conversation. There was more noise at the front door. Campbell and his XO, Kitano were arriving, along with the Marine detachment commander for the
Dauntless
. Taussig of
Hornet
was also there along with the command staff of the
Fearless
and
Intrepid
. There was much shouting of someone hogging all the fun and not getting their fair share of the exercise.

All in good humor.

Several tables were found to be empty and were slid together to join with Kris’s. Kris would have sworn that all the tables were full when she came in, but as arrangements were made to seat the others, she spotted how and why the Forward Lounge was gradually emptying out.

Command Master Chief Mong and Gunny Sergeant Brown had taken a commanding table in the middle of the lounge. From there, they had a good view of everything. As Kris watched, a Marine finished his second beer and raised his hand for a third.

As he expected, the barmaid headed his way. However, Gunny also had seen the order and noted the two beer mugs, with suds still foaming in front of him. A nod from Gunny to the Chief Master-at-arms, and two petty officers were at the kid’s elbow before the barmaid.

The trooper was long gone before the barmaid, herself a petty officer during working hours, got to his table. She removed the mugs and wiped down the table.

Marine or sailor, they got two beers today. Tomorrow’s duties would come soon enough, and no doubt the young men and women, away from home for the first time in their lives, would be ready to do their duty.

Kris also didn’t doubt that Gunny and Master Chief Mong were coordinating their efforts with the other pubs in Boffin Country. With nearly half the
Wasp
given over to civilians and their requirements, the Navy was making fine adjustments.

Which left Kris to wonder what should change, and what should stay the same if she did what she was planning to do.

She was lost in thought when she realized the admiral was talking to her. He’d ordered several bottles of vodka for his officers and had appropriated one of them for himself. No chief or Gunny was limiting his drinks tonight. From the looks of things, he’d need help back to his ship later.

“Excuse me,” she said.

“I was wondering what you are planning to do with those pirate ships you captured.”

“You were?” Kris said. As she understood matters, the schooners and the one merchant ship at the station had been captured by the
Wasp
and
Dauntless
. She planned to dispose of them under prize rules.

There’d been some grumbling from the Greenfeld Marines when they weren’t allowed to get in on the fun of their capture . . . or the money. Was the admiral trying to renegotiate the terms of their agreement.

“They’re yours to do with as you please,” he said, and seemed to realize that he needed to get that reassurance out front. “It’s just that they are tying up the three best piers on the station. The piers my battleships are at can’t give them nearly enough air and water or comm circuits. Your five corvettes and the
Blood
plus those three mean I don’t even have enough docks to tie up all my battleships much less the cruisers. Where are you planning on sending them for a prize court?”

“Not Cuzco,” Kris said, not needing a second to think on that.

Around the table, that got laughs. Apparently, Kris’s legal problems with the last ship she’d captured from pirates were well-known.

“Have you seen a dime from that?” Taussig asked.

“Not so much as a penny,” Kris said. She thought for a moment. “I guess we could send them to Pandemonium. I think their courts would take the right view of pirate ships.”

That seemed to get agreement.

“Course, there’s not much market for pirate schooners around the Rim,” Admiral Krätz pointed out. “At least not a market we want to feed.”

“I don’t know,” Jack Campbell said. “Capture them. Sell them back. Capture them again and sell them again. The right guy could make a career of it.”

That got a laugh.

“There is the possibility of my setting up an Admiralties Court right here on Port Royal,” the admiral said, sounding downright conspiratorial. “I might arrange for the Greenfeld Navy to buy two of the ships. Do you have any idea what we might do with the others?”

“I could be interested in one or two of the schooners,” Kris allowed. “If they are fast enough, the Royal Navy might have a need for schooners as messenger boats out beyond the Rim. Question is, do they have legs? Can they stay out for months at a time? What kind of shape are the schooners in?” she asked the admiral.

The admiral took time to share a victory toast before he answered. “I had a couple of officers take a look at them, all four of them. If the price was right, and we could get permission from Navy Headquarters, I’d like to buy one of the sloops and the freighter. We do need to get something out here to show the flag. Anyway, they all look pretty good. If I didn’t know any better, I’d say they came from one of our premier yards.”

“But you know better,” Kris said.

“Why, my dear young lady, of course they couldn’t have come from one of our best yards. Our fine, upstanding businessmen would never do business with pirates, now would they?” he said, giving the table a sly wink as he downed another shot of vodka.

Vicky shook her head in disgust. “We know very well where they came from. Just because they did a good job of filing off the serial numbers and burning their papers . . .”

“But, Lieutenant, they did just that. Your father, our emperor, would never take action against such important financial interests with no evidence.”

“You took action this afternoon.”

“They fired on my delegated spokesman. I merely returned fire.”

Around the table, the newly arrived Royal U.S. Navy officers risked blank looks. Jack whispered, “Eighteen-inch battleship lasers within a thousand meters of my Marine company.”

“They’re on our side, right?” Campbell whispered.

“I wasn’t so sure at the moment,” Jack answered.

“Yes, yes, I know,” the admiral said. “There was some personal risk to you. But we have put an end to the slavers running this show and destroyed all the evidence. Now we can take over this colony and run it the way decent people do. Right?” he said, raising another toast at that thought.

“Right,” the Royal Navy said, for once in agreement with their Imperial opposites.

Vicky didn’t look any more sure of the toast than Kris did. Instead of lifting her mug, she reached inside her purse and pulled out a flimsy.

“What do you think of this article, Kris? ‘My friend the Iteeche.’ ”

Kris choked on her soft drink.

42

Kris
struggled for air. When had she ever told anyone about Ron? Certainly, she’d never called him her friend. Then Kris spotted the byline. Even through watering eyes she could read Winston Spencer.

She had never told him that she was friends with an Iteeche! Never. Not once!

Through coughing fits and tear-filled eyes, Kris read the first couple of paragraphs of the news story. Oh, he didn’t mention her name. No, these were other people who were willing to say that they’d been friends with Iteeche.

Kris allowed herself a couple of more coughs to clear her throat, then risked a small sip of her drink. It went down the right way. Then she caught her breath.

Once she had full control of her faculties . . . and had offered a quick prayer of thanks that someone coughing to death could not say something that would forever embarrass her . . . she tackled a response.

“What do you mean, ‘My Friend the Iteeche’?” she said to Vicky.

“Well, it was written by a friend of yours, that newsie you have sending you reports on what’s happening in Longknife space.”

“I told you, I hired him so I wouldn’t be caught flat-footed in polite conversation with my big brother next time we run into each other. Out here on the Rim, a girl can get totally out of touch.”

“Yes, I know you said that. But isn’t it strange that a big chunk of the stuff he sends you has to do with the Iteeche, far more than would be statistically significant, considering how little is said about those horrible creatures. And then he writes an article like this.”

“Who’s talking about my friend the Iteeche?” Campbell asked.

“Just some news guy,” Kris said, making sure to avoid admitting any familiarity with him. “Nelly, can you put the article up where people can read it?”

“Oh, I have it here,” Vicky said, and the article suddenly appeared in big, bold letters on the view screen of the Forward Lounge, emblazoned against a backdrop of pipes and ducts. Beside Kris, others started reading.

They didn’t read in silence for long.

“That’s unbelievable,” Taussig said. “Her father had Iteeche POWs working on his farm while she was growing up.”

“She thought they were pets,” Lieutenant Kitano put in. “To a ten-year-old girl, I guess a rock can be a pet.”

“A rock I can buy,” Campbell said. “An Iteeche?”

“It says here, one of the Iteeche farmhands saved her brother when he built a raft, and it came apart.”

“I built a raft when I was a kid, and I needed saving,” Taussig admitted.

“We couldn’t have captured that many Iteeche,” someone said incredulously.

“Not during the first part of the war,” Kris said, “when it was mostly their wandering men against our pirates. As you may have noticed recently, pirates don’t take very good care of their prisoners. When we recaptured territory from their wandering men, what we found wasn’t pretty. I bet it was the same for them.” Kris knew quite well from her recent talks with Ron, the Iteeche Imperial Representative, that they’d found some pretty ugly scenes, too.

“However,” Kris went on, “once Society of Humanity forces found ourselves fighting Imperial troops, such atrocities ended. If you can believe this article.”

Kris did, but others would have to make up their own mind. This article was certainly going against the commonly held perception of a great generation.

“You know, this is interesting,” Campbell said, rubbing his chin. “My dad said he had a friend who was captured by the Iteeche and lived to tell the story. Now, I wish I’d looked the fellow up and asked him. Then, well, everyone knew the Iteeche didn’t take prisoners. And neither did we.”

“I am fifty years old,” the admiral said, “and never would I have expected to read such a story. But now, come to think of it. Back when I was in the Academy, there was a whispered story that the head of the Department of Escape and Survival had survived an Iteeche POW camp. Like you, I did not believe the story. Now, I, too, wish I had asked more questions.”

“Interesting that your friend wrote the story,” Vicky said, grinning at Kris.

“I told you, he’s no friend of mine. I’m a Longknife. He’s a newsie. They say nasty things about us, and we think nasty thoughts about them. Even on Wardhaven, that is no basis for a relationship.”

“But you did talk with him,” Vicky said. You could almost hear the steel teeth of the bear trap closing on Kris’s leg.

The bad leg.

Kris stalled. “What makes you say that?”

“I have a copy of the trip tick from the cab that took him and Admiral Santiago to Nuu House. And a copy of the return ticket.”

“Maybe I wasn’t there,” Kris tried.

“You were there. You had the insert for Nelly directly into your head reinstalled that morning. You were there.”

“My, aren’t you the little sleuth.”

“No, I’m not, but I’ve learned how to buy their services when I need them. One of Greenfeld’s best spent two weeks as guest of our Wardhaven embassy, checking up on what he could check up on.”

Kris couldn’t decide whether she should congratulate herself that her student was actually learning . . . or throttle the kid before she got too smart. For the moment, Kris settled on waffling. “Okay, maybe I was there, and maybe he came along when I set up some quality time with a good family friend. What does it mean?”

“You and your great-grandfather met with an Iteeche,” Vicky said with all the drama and accusing power of the best vid prosecutor.

43

Around
Kris, the Forward Lounge went silent.

Well, not totally quiet. Gunny Brown was on his feet, pointing at first one, then another group of Marines. Pointing at them, then pointing at the exit.

Marines stood, took a last pull from their beers, and headed for the door.

Beside Gunny, the Command Master Chief went through the same exercise. Under his stern visage, sailors moved out. Behind the bar, the guys and gals stopped fixing the next round, put their glasses down, and made for the door, too.

In less than a minute, the Lounge was clear of everyone below the rank of Marine captain or Navy lieutenant.

For a moment, Kris marveled at what she had just witnessed. Then she remembered. King Ray had asked Gunny Brown to protect the security and privacy of his meeting with the Iteeche.

When officers like Ray Longknife extract such promises from the likes of Gunny, they become the pledges by which folks live or for which good men and women die.

Kris took a moment to bathe in the warmth of that kind of loyalty . . . but only a moment. It cut both ways. Now she owed Gunny and his Marines something in return.

She glanced around the near-empty room. On the couch by the wall, Abby sat with a very subdued Cara. Kris should ask Cara to leave. However, to do that would mean that Abby would go with her. There was no way that a certain aunt would leave her niece alone at this time.

Kris was none too sure that Abby would not be running for the exit in a few minutes, but the erstwhile maid had earned her place at Kris’s side time and time again.

They could stay.

Penny had walked in while the others were leaving. A lone salmon breasting a river in flood to swim upstream would have had an easier time of it. She’d come without a shower or a change of clothes. Her underarmor padding was grimy and sweat stained from the day’s work. The Navy lieutenant had also earned her place in what was coming . . . even if Kris did pray that she’d head for the exit before they got too deep.

Colonel Cortez sat comfortably in his chair. The beer in front of him was untouched. His eyes roved the room, taking in everything, but his body was as unmoved as a carved Buddha. He was the newest to her band. He was the one who most surprised her by keeping to his chair. He’d often joked about leaving after sitting through one of Kris’s friendly family talks.

He joked about leaving . . . but today he stayed.

Kris took in the ship’s officers from her squadron. They were innocent of this matter . . . and totally in the dark. She ought to give them a choice.

“In a few minutes, I may be asking for volunteers,” she told them. “Whole ships of volunteers for something that may end in all our deaths. If you walk out that door now, you won’t be in line to volunteer. If you stay, you may find that you’ve already volunteered yourself. This may be your last chance to make a call for yourself and your crew.”

That got them looking at each other and scratching not a few heads. It was Phil Taussig who finally broke the silence. “I figured when I saw the Longknife name on my orders that I’d been volunteered for something, Your Highness. The last few weeks haven’t been nearly horrible enough to qualify for Longknife duty. I guess I’ll hang around for the rest.”

That seemed to settle it for PatRon 10.

Jack. Well, Jack alone knew what was behind all this. Jack alone had sat through the meeting with her. He eyed her now with easy confidence and open expectation.
What rabbit you gonna pull out of your hat this time?

Kris only wished she knew.

“All right,” Kris said, turning face on to Vicky, “you said my great-grandfather Ray Longknife, King Raymond I to some, met with an Iteeche. That’s quite a claim to make. You want to back it up?”

For a second, Vicky just sat in her seat, as if she was still trying to absorb the results of her claim. Was it a claim or just a gambit? Kris wouldn’t have to wait long to find out.

Vicky got to her feet and slowly walked to the Forward Lounge door. She opened it and stuck her head out. She smiled. Kris imagined there were a lot of Marines out there to smile at. No doubt some of them now carried locked and loaded weapons.

Vicky walked back to the table but did not sit down.

“I have it from one of the boffins who used to be on the
Wasp
that your King Ray met with an Iteeche Imperial spokesman about a problem facing the Iteeche Empire.”

“You do, do you?” Kris said.

“I do. Are you going to deny it?”

Kris shook her head. “Not at the moment, but I am going to ask you a question.”

“What?”

“Do you think any boffin could get by the guard you saw outside?”

“What do you mean?”

“Let’s say my grampa, King Ray, was on this ship. He’d be protected by the likes of those loyal Marines. How do you think a boffin would get by them?”

Vicky already had her mouth open, ready to shoot back a reply, but she stopped, no words spoken. For a moment, she actually mulled over the question.

Good. The girl’s learning to think.

Well, maybe not so good. The girl is a Peterwald.

“Maybe he got a nano spy into the room,” she finally said.

“Past Nelly? How much you want to bet me?”

Now Vicky did frown. “That’s not a bet I’d take.”

“Smart girl,” Nelly said.

“But I’ve got a recording of the meeting,” Vicky said. “Our analysis says it’s Ray and Trouble’s voices. Yours, too.”

That added an ugly twist. Could Admiral Sandy or her news scribe have sold a copy of the meeting that Kris had given them? Such disloyalty as that was unthinkable.

Kris chose to go with what she found very thinkable.

“Let’s just say for a moment that the voices on your tape aren’t a concoction in someone’s sound lab. Who was there?”

“King Ray,” Vicky said. “General Trouble. You. I think your captain was there, but he didn’t say anything during the meeting.”

“That all?”

“Yeah.”

So the leaker had taken himself out of the meeting before distributing it. Why was Kris not surprised?

“That’s interesting,” Kris said. “Do you honestly think King Ray would have a meeting that important and not include Admiral Crossenshield?”

Crossie, as Kris called him to his face, was the head of Wardhaven Intelligence. He ran black ops and always knew where the bodies were buried because he had dug the graves.

“You think,” Vicky said slowly, as if doing the thinking as the words came out of her mouth, “that your own head of intelligence intentionally leaked that meeting to us.”

“Crossie’s always trying to play me. I’m always trying not to get played. Sometimes, I think you have the right idea, shooting the head of your State Security every once in a while.”

Kris really wouldn’t shoot Crossie. Blood was so messy. No, but retiring him to some planet with no heavy industry to raise chickens or goats or pomegranates?

Now that was appealing.

“But why would your security chief intentionally leak this meeting to us?” Vicky asked, still more puzzled than enlightened.

“What was the meeting about,” Kris asked, “according to your leaked recording?” Kris wasn’t willing to officially break the seal of security her king and grampa had put on that meeting. Not so publicly. Not with so many guns at hand.

“The Iteeche have run into a problem. Or something. Their scout ships are going missing when they visited certain places.”

“Hmm,” Kris said, a thought dawning on her that might actually cause her to respect Crossie’s twisted mind. “And what did King Ray do about that?”

“I don’t know,” Vicky said.

“What has he done in public since this supposed meeting took place?” Kris asked.

“Nothing, I think.”

“Nothing in public, but his chief of intelligence is leaking the meeting’s contents to who knows whom. Do you find that as interesting as I do?” Kris asked, trying not to grin.

Vicky gnawed on that for a while. “What’s going on?” she finally asked.

“I don’t know,” Kris said. “Remember, I’ve been on pirate patrol since, oh, I don’t know.”

“Since not too long after this meeting,” Vicky said.

“Which, of course,” Kris pointed out, “I have not said took place.”

“What do you think is going on? He’s your grampa,” sounded more like an accusation than a statement of fact.

“I’m beginning to more and more understand why Gramma Trouble, Gramma Ruth if you prefer, warned me to be careful around Ray. And I thought he was so cuddly when I was small.”

“And I thought General Boyng was such a dear because he always brought me a new dress. By the way, Kris, I had those dresses checked after we took him out and shot him. They had bugs on them. When I was wearing those dresses, he always knew where I was and could listen in on anything I said or that was said to me.”

“We live and learn,” Kris said. “We get older, or we get dead.”

“So, what are you going to do about all this?” Vicky asked, taking a seat next to Kris.

“Hmm, let’s see. I was ordered to take care of the pirate problem outside Peterwald space without getting your old man too mad at my king. How’d I do on that, Admiral?”

“Not too shabby,” Admiral Krätz said, carefully emptying the last few drops from his bottle. “Four pirate ships captured. One pirate base taken down. Port Royal. One potential pirate base secured. Kaskatos. We won’t hold it against you that it’s more likely to ask for membership in the United Sentients than to give old Greenfeld a call.”

The admiral suddenly got a grin on his face. “Excuse me, I misspoke. There were several late votes before your Constitutional Convention closed down at Pitts Hope. One of them changed the name of who you work for, princess.”

“Changed the name of United Sentients?” Kris’s stomach had been through too much lately to react to this. She waited for Admiral Krätz to get to the point he seemed so happy to avoid.

“Yes, it seems that rumors of meetings with Iteeche are not limited to this public house. They were flying fast and loose on Pitts Hope. So certain factions proposed a name change.”

“To what?” Kris and Jack demanded together.

“United Societies,” Vicky said, letting the cat out of the bag.

That got her a scowl from her admiral.

“It seems that not only was sentients too inviting to aliens like the Iteeche, but United Societies had the right flavor for what they wanted.”

“And what was that?” Kris asked.

“Something not so united,” Jack said. “I think your grandpa has more trouble than he’s let on.”

“Quite likely, but his problems are far away, and our problems are right here underfoot,” Kris said, trying not to snarl. “What do we do with ours, Admiral?”

“I don’t think I will have any trouble registering Port Royal as a Navy colony,” Admiral Krätz said. “All the records of its previous existence seem to have been destroyed. I can’t picture N.S. Holdings making a bid to take back control of it, what with all the witnesses to piracy, drug production, and slavery around to raise questions about its former management, should they be identified.” The admiral fairly beamed at the outcome.

“We also have a strong lead to a certain shipyard concerning products from its space docks going missing and turning up flying the black flag. There are already Navy inspectors at that yard. They may get reinforced with Marines and do more no-notice inspections of this or that corner of the place. Yes, Your Highness, I think you can claim this job is done. What do you plan to do next?”

“Not go on vacation,” Kris said.

“Why am I not surprised?” Jack sighed.

“What do you think about most of PatRon 10 trailing me back to Wardhaven?” Kris asked no one in general.

“Most?” Jack Campbell said.

“You had the best luck on convoy duty, Jack. What do you think of you and the
Dauntless
coordinating your patrols and convoy duty with the admiral’s two new ships, assuming he gets to buy them?”

“I could do that. But what’s this about something that has even the Iteeche scared to death. That really sounds like fun.”

“Somebody has to see that trade flows, Jack.”

“And the rest of us?” Phil Taussig asked.

“You get to follow me back home, where I will have a little talk with my grampa about things that go thump in the night and the need for us to know more about it before it thumps us some night.”

“Volunteers, huh?” Phil said.

“Of the Longknife flavor,” Jack Montoya said.

“Oh hell, count me in,” the skipper of the
Hornet
said, followed by those of the
Fearless
and
Intrepid
.

“What about me?” Vicky asked.

“What about you?” Kris asked right back.

“Can I go with you?”

“I don’t think your father, my Emperor, would be very happy if I let you follow a Longknife home. Bad precedent.”

“So I have to go ask him,” Vicky said.

Kris could almost hear a little finger getting back in the practice of wrapping someone around it.

Kris sighed. She’d never wrapped anyone around her little finger. Or big finger. Or thumb, for that matter.

Some girls had it easy. Other girls learned to tough it out. Kris really didn’t mind being one of the tough ones.

“Captains, crew, tomorrow we sail for Wardhaven. After that, the gods of space only know where we’ll end up,” Kris said.

“You’re assuming your grampa don’t put a shorter leash on you next time he sees you,” Abby put in.

Kris laughed. “I’ve had enough experience with leashes. From now on, this girl is going to go for the free-and-wild ranging life.”