Deserter (8 page)

“Bags?” Kris echoed.

“Yep. I knew sooner or later you’d rush off planet for something, and I’d get dragged along. I packed one bag for a cold planet, one for a hot. Which is Turantic?”

“Who said you’re going? This is just me taking a vacation.”

“Yeah, right,” Jack said, turning away and starting to talk to either himself or his communications center. At the moment, Kris would not have bet an Earth dollar which.

“It would be easier to maneuver through stations and customs,” Abby offered, “if all our luggage, his two bags and mine, were in trunks bearing your diplomatic immunity.”

“Didn’t know I had any, but that sounds reasonable. Nelly, tell Harvey we’ll need two more trunks,” Kris said, feeling very much in command of a very muddy situation.

Abby busied herself around the dressing room until Harvey returned, leading a parade of self-propelled steamer trunks, each big enough to carry Kris comfortably. Abby crammed them full of every kind of dress, gown, suit, and accessory Kris’d ever heard of or even heard intimated. Kris had never worn foundation garments, but Abby packed several. She held up two Kris took for girdles. “These are fully armored with the latest Super Spider Silk. You can bow, bend, stoop, even breathe in them . . . and they’ll stop a four-millimeter slug.”

“Get them at an estate sale from your last employer?” Kris asked, then realized the question could be taken wrong.

“No.” Abby seemed unfazed. “She was six sizes up from you.”

“Oh, you could protect us both in one.”

“Sorry, Princess, but I won’t be that close when someone starts shooting. That’s what that good-looking guy is for.”

Kris took the conversation away from that good-looking guy. “Pack the Order of the Wounded Lion. It’ll impress the locals.”

“Don’t count on the hicks recognizing it, but it’s big and shiny and ought to dazzle a few,” Abby said, folding it into a trunk bin. Kris checked Grampa Al’s package. It did hold ten kilos of virgin Uni-plex. Kris hefted it.
What could I use this for?
She had no idea, but the fact that she asked the question seemed a solid argument for taking it. Abby said nothing when Kris handed it to her, just tied it to the bottom of one trunk.

An hour later they were packed; Abby had even produced one fur bikini, without explanation. Harvey handed over the wands controlling the trunks. “I’ll get a car.”

Jack reappeared to escort them downstairs. Normally light on his feet, he seemed a bit heavy. He’d probably visited the house armory and was packing enough to demolish a small army. “Abby, how did you get your little friend through security?” he asked. “We thought we had Nuu House as tight as a brick.”

“Santa Maria has a flourishing business in ceramic air rifles, guns, and similar protective devices,” Abby said without looking back. “Most shoot a metal dart. However, for a bit more, you can buy very effective ceramic ammunition.”

“Thought so. Kris, you might want to put this in your pocket.” Jack handed her a small automatic, either the same or a twin of the one Abby had produced. Kris held it up to examine.

“That’s the safety,” Abby pointed out. “Well protected so you won’t accidentally knock it off. I have a spare holster.”

“Where were you carrying yours?” Jack asked.

“No man’s business,” Abby shot back and produced a new copy of the weapon Jack had confiscated. While the two glared at each other, Kris slipped the weapon in her pocket; Abby would show her a better hiding place later.

They got to the elevator seventy-five minutes before the
Turantic Pride
was due to lock up. Seemed like plenty of time to spare . . . until Kris spotted two men in brown raincoats hustling toward her. “Your people?” she asked Jack.

“My boss’s boss,” Jack answered, “and Grant,
his
boss.”

Way too much officialdom for this to be good. Kris kept her pace up and course steady for the boarding gate. Behind her, the luggage’s electric motors complained.

“Ma’am. Ma’am,” came breathless from behind Kris. At the gate, she paused to let them catch up while Abby took the trunks through. There seemed to be more trunks behind the maid than when they left Nuu House, but Kris was too busy to do a recount.

“Princess Kristine, you can’t do this,” the more out-of-breath Senior Agent Grant insisted.

Kris glanced around the elevator station wide-eyed. “It looks like I am. Why, yes, I think I am. Abby, any problems?”

“None at all.”

“Yes there is,” the not-Grant agent insisted. “Security, that bag needs rechecking.”

The woman behind the check station took in the agent and the badge he waved at her, glanced at the trunk, then at Kris, then smiled. “I got the picture of its contents in storage, sir. The computer says it’s safe. My eyeball says it’s safe. It is safe, mister. Right, Lieutenant Longknife?”

Kris smiled at the woman who’d cleared her through security every morning for the last three months. “You bet it is, Betty,” and followed her trunks through security.

“Ms. Longknife, you must reconsider,” the Senior Agent said, following Kris through the checkpoint.

Alarms went off.

More uniformed people with automatic weapons than Kris thought the terminal could hold converged on their security station. Now both agents waved credentials, but that didn’t slow down the fast-approaching, heavily armed horde.

Kris flashed a smile at Betty. “The young one’s with me. He’s carrying and has all the permits you could dream of.”

Betty took a close look at Jack’s papers, pushed a button, and motioned him to walk slowly through the detector. She whistled as she took in her monitor. “Man, is he carrying. Lieutenant, if I was you, I’d stay on the nice side of that one.”

“Sometimes she actually does,” Jack said.

The other agents finished resolving their failure to announce their armed status beforehand. As the small army backpedaled toward their stations, the Senior Agent turned again to Kris. “Ms. Longknife, you must not do this.”

Kris kept walking. “You might consider getting to know me better before you start giving me orders,” Kris said, twisting the conversation in a misdirection. “You may call me Lieutenant. You may address me as Princess. I am not a
ms.
”

“I’m sorry,” one said. “Yes, Lieutenant,” the other agreed. “We aren’t ready.” “We don’t have a security team for you,” they said, stumbling over each other verbally. “We need more time!” they both got out together.

“There isn’t more time,” Kris said, stopping at the door of the ferry to let Abby and the trunks precede her on board. Kris suppressed a frown as she again came up high in her trunk count, but the pause put Jack at her elbow as her noisy problems once more approached.

“Then we won’t let Jack go without backup,” the Senior Agent said, playing his ace.

“Fine. I’m twenty-two years old and a serving naval officer. I am of age to decline your protection. Nelly, register my declination.”

“You wouldn’t dare,” Grant gasped.

“She’d dare, Grant,” Jack said. “She dares a lot.”

“Because you’ve never built the proper relationship of authority,” Grant snapped back.

“I suspect no one in authority has ever developed a proper relationship with me.” Kris smiled through teeth.

“You could send along a team on the next ship, or whenever you have it together,” Jack suggested.

“That’s not a good idea,” Grant said.

“It looks like the best available,” Kris said. Departure was announced in thirty seconds. All people were advised to stand clear of the white line. Kris glanced down; the white line was a meter thick; she and Jack stood in the middle of it. She side-stepped to the edge of the line inside the ferry. The Junior Supervisor gently elbowed Grant to safety on the outside.

“We’ll have a backup team on the next ship. With a Senior Supervisor,” Grant shouted.

“Not anyone senior to Jack, I hope.” Kris smiled as the doors began to close. “Otherwise I’ll have to have my personal computer register that declination of services we talked about, and then you can explain to my father, the Prime Minister, just why I don’t want you around. Or maybe to King Raymond.”

“You’re a brat, you know,” Jack said through unmoving lips.

“No. I don’t recall anyone telling me that . . . to my face.”

“And you, being naturally hard of hearing, never heard it whispered behind your back,” Jack said, shaking his head.

“I am not hard of hearing.”

“And you’re not properly belted in, Lieutenant.”

“Are you going to hound me this entire trip?”

“Only every minute.”

If it wasn’t for poor Tommy out there in trouble, this had the makings of a fun trip.

5

“Nelly, I told you to rent space, not the whole bloody galaxy.” Kris growled, doing a quick turn around the palatial splendor the purser of the
Turantic Pride
had personally escorted her to. A crystal chandelier in the sitting room cast light to softly burnish the gold trim of the ceiling and finely carved wall moldings. The brocade-covered sofa and chairs looked like something out of a museum or vid.

“I did what you told me to,” Nelly said plaintively.

“Nelly, we could park the
Firebolt
in here and have room to spare,” Kris said, checking out the doors that opened onto the sitting room. There was a study, with three walls lined with paper books; the fourth was a wall-wide screen. That screen was at least smaller than the one the Purser showed Jack how to operate in the living room. Each of the three bedrooms had a similar entertainment wall.

NELLY, COULDN’T YOU HAVE GOTTEN US SOMETHING SMALLER? Kris thought, taking the argument with her personal computer private.

NO, MA’AM. THE SHIP IS ALMOST FULL. I COULD NOT GET THREE ROOMS TOGETHER, SO I RENTED THE IMPERIAL SUITE.

“Imperial Suite! I’m a Princess, not an empire.”

“Empress, I think you mean,” Abby corrected. “Empire is the political structure. Emperor and Empress are the titles of the rulers, as defined by gender in those days.”

“Now you’re an expert on forms of government?” Jack drawled from where he was examining the door, having shown the Purser out. “And it is the Imperial Suite. Says so here.”

“Governments I leave to people who have the illusion they run them,” Abby said dryly. “Protocol comes in handy when you have to keep such deluded people happy.”

Kris turned to her body servant. “That’s a side of you I haven’t seen.”

“And not one I like,” Jack added, “coming from someone standing armed and close to my primary. Who did you say you worked for before?”

Abby raised her wrist unit, aimed it at Jack, and tapped it. “Now you have my résumé. Read it when you have a moment. If I wanted someone dead, they’d be dead already.”

Kris left the two bickering while she took in her bedroom. If possible, it was fancier than the living room. The bed was big enough for four and soft as down. The
Firebolt
’s bridge, the big, comfortable-sized one, was not half as big. “And I forgot my tennis racket.”

“There are tennis courts on the third deck, as well as an Olympic-size pool and workout facilities,” Nelly said. “The pro shop has all the amenities for a passenger who forgot something.”

“Or outgrows their swimsuit. Have you seen the list of mealtimes available?” Jack called from the other room. The thought of kicking back and enjoying the pampering had a surprising allure. As a Longknife, she’d never wanted for anything, but Father had no use for ostentation. “It costs votes.” Early in her teens Kris made it a matter of pride to make do with half of what Mother needed. What would it be like to really soak in this Princess thing? Kris returned to the living room, putting the seductive bedroom behind her. Jack had Abby’s résumé on-screen.

Abby shrugged as she eyed the simple page that held her life story. “Looks impressive up there all big and the likes.”

“You got your degree, in what, marketing?” Jack said. Kris was busy doing basic math. Abby was thirty-six. That made her a good eight years older than Jack, who would stay six years older than Kris until next month’s birthday.
Hmm, even if Jack likes older women, Abby is way too old! Isn’t she?

“I worked my way through college baby-sitting elderly folks, wiping their noses, and their butts if necessary. I thought the height of job elegance was standing at a counter all day, helping women find their true colors and accessorizing.” Abby made a face. “My first client hired me after her grandmother died.”

“Your last client died,” Jack said. Kris ducked back into her bedroom, realizing this had become a private conversation.

“I believe the police decided it was a shareholder’s revolt that got personal.” Abby undid one of her long sleeves and pulled it up to display entry and exit wound scars. “Way too personal. This was verified by your service when I was hired.”

Jack turned to Abby, fixed her with an unblinking gaze. “Earth flatfoots did the full field. All we got was their report. My bosses accepted it. I’m still thinking about it.”

“Think about it all you want, but I’ve got a job to do, and I’m going to earn my pay.”

“The pay’s good around Longknifes, but it can present you fascinating challenges way beyond what they told you when you took the job. Where will you be when the rockets fly?”

“Where any smart person would be, going in the opposite direction. I’m a body servant. If it gets to that, I intend to be around to identify the body. That what you wanted to know?”

“No problem, ma’am. I’ll call for backup elsewhere.”

“You got that right.”

Kris cleared her throat as she entered the room. “Nelly says I have dinner with the Captain tonight. Abby, you have any suggestions for what to wear?”

“How about that outfit you skipped last night? You won’t have mother issues this time. Why not dazzle the ship with a real Princess.”