Kris Longknife: Defender (9 page)

Sated
and exhausted and pleased, Jack lay beside Kris. She turned into his arms, kissed him once more, yawned, and fell asleep.

Apparently they both did, because Kris came awake much later when the cold water of the ocean started tickling her toes.

She nudged Jack. “Hey, security chief, your primary is in danger of drowning.”

Jack came awake with a yawn, glanced down, and raised an eyebrow. “Why yes, I do believe you are in danger of drowning. Tell me, Commander Longknife, how are you going to get yourself out of this mess?”

“A mess you got me into.”

“I thought I was the one that got into you.”

Kris had no answer for that, so she stood, collected all the strings that had wandered off, threw the towel over her shoulder, and headed up the beach. The shade from a stand of trees past the high water mark looked inviting.

Jack collected his towel and bit of nothing and followed.

Once in the shade, Kris spread her towel and sprawled out faceup. Jack spread his towel beside her and settled, faceup, hands behind his head, a very satisfied look on his face.

“Now it’s my turn,” Kris said.

“We’re not in the sun. I don’t need more sunscreen.”

“I’m a Longknife. I don’t need an excuse to do nasty things to people.”

“Oh, please, Commander, don’t do nasty things to me,” didn’t have any beg in it at all.

“As my wise and not at all prudish great-grandmother has pointed out, you are not in my chain of command, so you are fair game for anything I want to do to you.”

“Well, in that case, please do.”

Kris took exactly as long to cover Jack with kisses and stroke every inch of his skin as he had taken with her. It turned out that Jack had resorted to Sal to keep time, so, of course, Nelly knew all the delightful details and was only too glad to help Kris match minute for minute.

Nelly was also wise enough to keep her computer mouth shut about what she thought of human mating rituals.

In the end, Kris showed Jack that she could be just as good at shading him as he had been to her. Even if they were already in the shade.

Once again, they fell asleep in each other’s arms.

It was the dinner bell that woke them.

The sun was low in the sky. “Did we sleep through lunch?” Kris asked.

“My tummy says so.”

“Was I really that exhausted?”

“When did you last have a good night’s sleep?” Jack countered.

“I don’t remember,” Kris admitted. “Certainly not since before that which we will not mention.”

“You need a vacation. A nice, quiet, relaxing vacation. I’m only too glad to be providing the relaxing part of it.”

Kris leaned over and kissed him. “You are very relaxing.”

“How late do you want to be for supper? Ready to join the bikini brigade?”

“Give me a hand up. I’d prefer to wear shorts.”

They found they could walk right into the shower from the outside and enjoyed helping each other get clean. Kris found herself carefully weighing just how attractive the bed was and how late she was willing to be for supper.

Naked, she stood in front of her closet as Jack, just as bare, studied his. He pulled out a pair of very short shorts, high-cut and low-hung. Kris grinned and pulled out the smallest pair of shorts in her closet. She was pretty sure that if she’d gotten her butt sunburned that morning, she’d be glowing red as she walked into the dining room.

Jack chose a net tank top that showed off his six-pack. Kris sighed and chose one that would show off her flat belly.

Hand in hand, they headed for dinner.

They were late. Most of the shorts contingent was already seated. The two women who had worn the muumuus last night were still covered with flowers. The owner led them to the same table they’d had the night before. “I saved it for you,” he said with a too-knowing smile.

The waitress showed up, also sporting a knowing smile. “Usually it takes first-timers a couple of days to quit hiding behind a muumuu,” she whispered to Kris.

“We’ve known each other a very long time,” Kris said.

“And fought battles together?” the waitress said, all starry-eyed.

“No,” Jack said. “Usually, we just fight with each other.”

That left the poor girl too puzzled to answer with anything but tonight’s specials. Again it was fish and fish. Each ordered a different one and prepared to share. The girl bounced off happily and soon returned with two ice teas.

Kris found herself staring at the ocean and thinking of how it went on forever. It never changed, but it didn’t feel anything, either. Slowly, she began to open up to Jack what it had been like to be “that Longknife girl,” the “Prime Minister’s brat,” the gal with the chest that belonged in the guys’ showers.

“Girls can be so cruel to each other. Any flaw, anything different, can get hammered at.”

“And you felt your chest gave them an opening to hurt you.”

“I felt the hurt. You know, it’s strange, we tiny titty kitties should have formed our own club, but we were so hurt or cowered that we just couldn’t flock together. Then, of course, when one of us suddenly popped a pair of boobs, she was only too happy to be welcomed into the sisterhood of ‘real’ women.” Kris snorted. “I got my first period before most of them, but that’s a lot harder to brag about.”

Jack listened. He did a good job of listening. He made sounds once in a while, just about the time she figured she was yammering on, that encouraged her to go on.

“Being a Longknife meant I had to deal with three kinds of guys,” Kris said, as their dinner arrived. It turned out, she really didn’t like her fish, but she refused to give it to Jack and they shared it, feeding each other. She relished what he fed her. He tolerated what she sent his way.

“There were the gold diggers. They came in two flavors, the poor who were trying to start from scratch and the ones close to as rich as I was. You know, the pains in your butt at camp. I kind of felt sorry for the poor ones. The rich ones I tried not to throw up all over.”

“Why not? I wish I could have tossed my cookies on some of them,” Jack said.

“Sorry I disappointed you, but remember, I was young, frightened, and thought I had a reputation to defend to the death. I’d done a lot of throwing up during my drunk years. I didn’t want to start that rumor again.”

“Oh! Good point,” Jack said, sending his fork her way. She held her mouth open for the bite.

After chewing and swallowing, she went on. “Then there were the boys who just wanted to put a notch on their whatever that they’d scored on a Longknife. I made that mistake once. After that, I could spot one a mile away. If he got close enough to dance with, I stepped on his toes enough for a three-footed girl. With my equipment, it was hard enough to find second base, much less score. I got real good at slapping anyone who even got close.”

“Okay, that covers the first two, who was the third?”

“Boys and girls who were interested in politics. Get close enough to a Longknife and get caught up in the wake. They were easy to like. I’d invite them on a first date that involved a political thing for Father. They’d be so glad to go.”

Kris took a deep breath, and Jack reached across to her plate and snagged most of the remaining fish. He popped it into his mouth too fast for her to protest.

“You know, there’s such a thing as being too much the gentleman.”

“There is? Nobody ever told me that.”

“Well, I’m telling you.”

“The third kind of guys. You left them at a political shindig.”

“They usually end up hitching a ride home with someone else.”

Jack gave Kris a puzzled look. “I can’t believe anyone would not take you home.”

“You could if you ever saw me in full political forward motion. I learned politicking at Father’s knee. I have pictures of me, cute as a button at five, doing the rope line, shaking hands. I kissed my first baby before I was seven. Wind me up and put me in political gear, and I will work the crowd, make a speech, smile, smile, smile, and do it all without using a single brain cell.

“I could spend a week of twenty-hour days on full automatic. Why do you think I joined the Navy? I had to get out of that rat race before the rats won.”

Jack shook his head at her self-depreciation. “And yet I’ve seen you come the politician and be a force of nature that nothing could stand against. What you did on St. Petersburg—the way you finagled Vicky Peterwald into signing a city charter. That was a magnificent bit of politicking.”

“But we were totally off the map. It had never been done before.”

“Nelly and Abby pulled up the Magna Carta, complete with parchment and silver seals when you asked.”

Kris started to shoot Jack down, then paused. “Yes, we did something pretty slick there. Not at all standard stump speech. We were borrowing from history and coming up with something that helped a whole lot of people.”

“What I’m hearing is you got tired of the same old same old and left for the Navy before you were old and experienced enough to sit at the grown-ups’ table. To sink your teeth into some real steak-type issues.”

Kris leaned back in her chair and looked at Jack. “You know, Captain, you’re a pretty savvy guy. You may have just shown me why dear Father is so mad at me.”

“Glad to be of service,” Jack said.

Then Kris shook her head. “But I’m glad I went Navy. It’s been a whole lot more fun than politics could ever have been.”

“And your brother admitted that you got all the courage in this generation, and the Navy’s putting it to a whole lot better use than any old campaign.”

“And I met you.”

“And I got to meet you. If you’d stayed the Prime Minister’s brat, I’d have just been following you around.”

“As I got more bratty and you got a whole lot less interested in me.”

“I don’t think that could ever happen.”

There was no applause as they left that evening. One of the couple in muumuu and shorts did cross paths with them at the door. He shook Jack’s hand. “Thank you.”

Kris got a huge hug from the young woman. “Now there’s hope that I can have a child, and he can grow up to be a man.”

Kris and Jack walked slowly back to their cottage.

“You notice how that young woman wants a boy?” she pointed out to Jack.

“Yeah. I’d call that our first hint that Alwa is a man’s world.”

“So very many of them are,” Kris said with a sigh.

That night, the bed turned out to be just as much fun as the beach blankets had been. And the feathers were much softer than the sand.

Another interesting bit of discovery.

The
days could have taken on a wonderful sameness, but Jack insisted they do something new every day. So one day they took out a sailboat. Kris showed Jack how to handle the sails while he struggled with the tiller. Then she took over the tiller and showed him how to catch the wind.

“Sailing is a dance between you, the tiller, the sails, and the waves.”

“I’ll take your word for that,” Jack said, looking rather pale. He wasn’t seasick. Not quite.

Kris chose to go with the waves, making the ride as smooth as possible, and he seemed to draw more joy from it.

As a teenager, Kris had fantasies of making it with a boy in a sailboat. She and Jack got some nice foreplay in, but the thought of lying down on the ribbed bottom or trying to do something on the thwart seats gave the mature Kris too many images of the boat taking off on its own, flipping over, or coming up with some other disaster her younger self hadn’t thought of.

They found a nice island and took advantage of its white beach.

The next day, they went snorkeling naked off their own private beach. Kris had a hard time dividing her attention between Jack and the beautiful undersea view. Jack seemed to be splitting his time pretty evenly between her and the scenery.

Was it lust or was it love?

Could love be served with a nice side dish of lust?

The more Kris learned about Jack, the more she shared about herself with Jack, the more sure Kris was that this was the man she wanted to share her life with. The man she wanted to have beside her as she grew old . . . assuming she dodged the bullets and the bombs that long.

She found herself wondering what their children might look like. What kind of adults would they grow up to be? A son like Jack couldn’t help but be as wonderful as his father. And a daughter . . . Jack wouldn’t drive his daughter to drink.

Kris let all these thoughts wash through her, mindful that her birth-control implant had about run its course and would need replacing soon. Yes, replacing.

Granny Rita may have had seven kids on the far side of the galaxy. Kris, however, had a couple of battles to fight.

Kids would have to wait.

They were dressing for dinner the fourth evening. Kris used that word loosely. Neither had worn a stitch all day, but it was the dinner meal and “Total Nudity Not Allowed” applied.

They were rather late, though.

Kris sidled over to lean her chin on Jack’s shoulder. “You’d look great in that lava-lava.”

“It’s so thin you can see right through it,” Jack said.

“Only if the light is right, and you know how dim the lights are by this time.” The lights were pretty bright when the muumuu teams arrived, dimmer for the shorts contingency and rather shady when the bikini-or-less brigade strutted in.

“What will you wear?” Jack asked with a raised eyebrow that wasn’t quite a leer.

“Not one of those string things. They ride up in all the wrong places and chafe me where only you should be.”

“Do girls wear lava-lavas?”

“Let’s find out.”

Jack chose her lava-lava, the most light colored one in the closet, not quite as thin as the one she’d picked for him. They spent a couple of minutes figuring out how you wore one, and that almost got dinner scratched for more bedtime, but Kris found that Abby had included a few pins, maybe earrings, in her “to go” bag, and they managed to get both of them arranged so they didn’t fall off at every opportunity.

“What are you wearing for a top?” Jack asked.

“What I got on. You seem to like it fine.”

He kissed her bare breasts, lovingly, and once again the bed started looking better than supper. Today, however, they’d again had nothing since their breakfast buns. Grumbling stomachs won out over libidos that were proving insatiable anyway.

They were late, very late. Most of the bikini brigade were already seated, but the owner had held their table for them. Kris walked through the dining room on the arm of the man that she loved.

Among this crowd, they hardly got a glance.

The waitress brought tea when she first came to their table. “Your usual, one of each type of fish?”

“What are you serving tonight?” Kris said.

The waitress named the two fish offerings.

N
ELLY, DO WE LIKE BOTH OF THEM?

N
O,
K
RIS, THE SECOND ONE BOTH OF YOU HATED.
Y
OU BOTH LOVED THE FIRST ONE.

Kris ordered two of the same dinners for them, much to the waitress’s surprise.

“I checked in with Sal, too,” Jack said. “If you hadn’t ordered, I would have.”

“I’m sorry. Did I violate male prerogative by ordering for us both?”

“Anytime you want to use Nelly to save our neck or get us a great dinner, you go right ahead. I’ve got more important things to do with my male ego than bend it out of shape.”

Kris put her hand out, palm up. He covered it, and began doing wonderful things to it.

“I like your male everything just the way it is,” she said.

“Your lady parts are mighty fine, too,” he answered.

“Kris, I have a message from Captain Drago.”

Kris found her back going ramrod straight. Damn near naked, she came to attention. “Hold the video, Nelly, but put him through.”

“Princess Longknife, Jump Point Beta, the one we used to jump in here, has started spitting out U.S. warships like a cat having kittens,” Captain Drago reported. “The first two through are squawking as USS
Fearless
and USS
Intrepid
. They’re a bit bigger than us, but the next one, the USS
Constitution
. It’s way bigger. We’re making out six loaded lasers forward, four aft. The chief says he doesn’t know what they are, but they’re bigger than our 18-inchers.”

He paused for a moment. “Here’s another big one, the USS
Monarch
. Oh oh, she’s squawking as the royal ship.”

“Aren’t we all Royal United Society Ships?” Kris asked.

“Yes, Kris, but this one is identifying herself as
The
Royal. It has the king himself on board.”

Dear Lord, Ray has come for his Rita.

The great Ray of legend was in for one hell of a surprise. The raised eyebrows from Jack beside her said he shared the same thought.

“Holy smoke on a stick,” the skipper burst out. “You got to see this next ship to believe it. You know those damn baby monster ships. Well we just had something come through the jump, claiming to be the USS
Prosperity
, with ten reactors and twenty charged lasers. It must weigh two or three hundred thousand tons if it weighs an ounce. Oh, and the chief tells me its all Smart Metal.”

Kris and Jack exchanged puzzled looks. The whole idea of the Smart Metal
TM
ships was to be fast, maneuverable, and not get hit. Something that huge defied any tactical application Kris could think of.

“We got a second one of those monsters, USS
Enterprise
. Nice name, and it’s got twenty huge lasers. And there’s a third, USS
Canopus
. I think the big show is over. Here comes another big frigate, USS
Constellation
, bringing up the rear. Oh, and another. USS
Princess Royal
. What are your orders, Your Highness?”

So, Granny Rita, tell me again exactly what is my place in the chain of command?

Kris gave Jack’s hand a sad squeeze. If the sorrow on his face was a reflection of hers, they were a pretty sorry lot. It looked like the clock had struck twelve, and Cinderella would have to turn back into a princess and the prince would have to turn back into a Marine captain.

There were several obscene things Kris would have liked to say; what she did say to Captain Drago was, “Get ready to receive the king. I’ll get back to the fleet landing as fast as I can. What acceleration is the fleet putting on?”

“One and a half gees. Somebody wants to get here quick. I’m told they’ll arrive in eighteen hours.”

“Issue a recall as gently as you can. Let’s not scare the natives, heavy or otherwise.”

“I understand. Prepare for a royal visit. Get the ship shipshape and Bristol fashion.”

“You know the drill. I’ll have to warn Granny Rita.”

“You forgot, Nelly put me on your net,” said Granny interrupting. “We’ll talk as soon as you get back into town.”

“We’ll see you soon, Granny,” Kris said.

“Damn,” said the old lady for Kris.

Kris looked at Jack. “The
Sakura
must have made a fast passage, and Grampa Ray must have left immediately.” She found herself shaking her head.

At that moment, their meal arrived. Kris gave the waitress a princess-caliber smile, and said, “I’m sorry, we’ll have to be leaving.”

“But why?” the young woman asked.

As Kris stood, a glance around told her that those at the table close by had heard an earful they didn’t know how to interpret. Never a good idea.

Kris cleared her throat and spoke in the voice that made crews snap to, even if it meant dying. “I appreciate the privacy that all of you have afforded Jack and me for the last several days. Many of you recognized me from the interview I gave the Alwan news media. I am Princess Kris Longknife, a lieutenant commander in the Royal United Society Navy and the senior Navy officer present on the research frigate
Wasp
, above your heads. The good news is that the U.S. has just reinforced its fleet presence in the defense of Alwa with over half a dozen ships. Humanity is not forgetting you, but coming to your defense.”

Kris paused while the dining room exploded with joyous shouts and applause.

“Please feel free to pass that information along to any of your friends. I’d appreciate if you could avoid mentioning that it came from a nearly naked princess.”

“And what’s wrong with being naked, nearly or totally?” a nearly naked woman asked.

“In some parts of human space, like wherever my mother is at the moment, anything close to naked is frowned upon.” Well, most balls Kris had attended had a few women in gowns that skimped on just about everything, but other than at formal occasions, Mother was quite sure of her dress code.

The woman who’d raised the question suggested that human space do something that, while Kris would love doing it with Jack, it was probably biologically impossible for a huge area of vacuum to manage.

When the general laughter died down, Kris held up her hands and got silence.

“The sad news is that with the fleet arriving, I have to cut my vacation short and go back to being a Navy officer. I’ve enjoyed your company, and I look forward to returning when my schedule allows, but I must leave immediately.”

Kris and Jack made their way to the door, slowly, shaking many a hand and getting lots of hugs. At the door, the owner waited. “You are welcome here at any time, and your money will never be good so long as I own this place, or my kids. Please come back when you can. We have a truck we use to make trips to town. My son will have it at your cottage in fifteen minutes.”

“We’ll be ready,” Kris said.

After another hug, Kris and Jack made their final good-bye and jogged toward their cottage, in step and by cadence.

Their vacation was vanishing by the second.

They hastily donned their uniforms. The spider silks were tossed in their bags; there was no time to pull themselves into that tight confinement. Besides, once topside, they’d need to shower and change into clean uniforms. Probably dress uniforms.

It
was
the king paying a visit.

And he very likely wouldn’t care for what he found.

“Do you think King Raymond expects to haul the entire human colony off this planet? Is that what the huge ships are? Transports?” Jack asked.

“Transports with a battleship’s broadside?” Kris pointed out.

“Nothing about this makes sense,” Jack concluded.

“In some weird way, it does to Ray Longknife,” Kris said.

They were dressed and packed in ten minutes. Kris glanced at the bed. Could they have taken a few moments for a fast one? Did she want her final memory of this to be something of sweaty haste? Better to go forward without looking back.

A teenager arrived early. They tossed their gear in the back of the truck and shared the narrow cab with a hero-worshipping young man who wanted to know everything about human space and repeatedly told them he planned to visit there. “But I’ll come back here. There’s no place better to live. Have you ever been to a better resort than Dad’s?”

Kris allowed that she hadn’t, and had to repeat it several times in the drive back.

Two hours later, they pulled up to Granny Rita’s home. It was a nice adobe two-story, built around an open garden court with a fountain and pond in the middle. Clearly, it had been meant to house a large family.

Three teenagers came out to carry their two bags. A mother provided supervision in case any should be needed.

Kris and Jack said their good-bye to the boy, who told them he wasn’t going anywhere until the truck’s batteries recharged. The mother gave him directions, needed or not, to the nearest recharging station.

An older couple, likely Granny’s own kid and spouse, hurried them inside and across the plaza. “You must do something,” the man said. “She’s insistent that she go up to the
Wasp
to meet Raymond. I think another shuttle launch could kill her.”

“I think she wants to go out that way,” the woman said. “Who can fault her for going? If it kills her, it saves her from having to confront him.”

The man did not dispute his wife’s opinion.

“Granny Rita is not getting on any shuttle I control,” Kris said flatly. “I will not have her death on my hands. God knows, I’ve got enough of them on my soul. Hers is not going to be added, and that is that.”

“You don’t know Granny Rita,” the man said.

Jack snorted. “You don’t know Kris Longknife.”

That settled the discussion until they got to Granny Rita’s suite of rooms.

The old woman was packing several bags. “I don’t know what Raymond will want to do. You say he’s a king. It’s been a long time since I’ve been to a ball. Somewhere around here, I have a ball gown.”