Kris Longknife: Tenacious (Kris Longknife novellas Book 12) (13 page)

Kris
watched on the screens in her day quarters as Jacques led the youngest man away from the group. Ostensibly, he was going to show the fellow how to set traps to capture a bunch of the foxlike things for a feast.

The fellow went eagerly.

Until he spotted Jack and his Marines.

Jacques had led the alien quite a bit away from the others, downstream and out of the woods along the edge of a grassy meadow. They’d set three string traps and were working on the fourth when the Marines stepped out of the woods ahead of them.

The young fellow took one look at the humans in military gear and bolted.

Jacques got a handful of his ratty uniform, but that was all he got. The man pulled away, leaving Jacques with nothing but fabric.

The naked anthropologist took off after his erstwhile friend with the Marines hot on his heels, but it was a short chase.

The young fellow raced straight for the stream—and threw himself headlong from the bank into a rocky stretch of water.

Jacques got to the bank and came to a halt. Jack wasn’t much behind him. Kris got the feed off Jack’s helmet camera.

“Oh my God,” Amanda prayed beside Kris.

All Kris could do was grit her teeth in frustration.

There, the bank was a good two meters high. The alien had thrown himself headfirst from it. Right at the rocks below.

Now he lay in the stream, his head smashed in, his blood and brains being laved by the water and carried downstream.

“I guess that didn’t go as well as we’d expected,” Jack said.

“Now what?” Jacques asked.

Kris let out a long sigh. She didn’t like what she was going to say next. She hated kidnappers. With Father and Mother, without a moment’s qualm, she’d stood there and watched as Eddy’s kidnappers swung at the end of their ropes. Hell, she’d killed kidnappers without so much as a second glance every time one of them made the mistake of crossing her path.

Kris gritted her teeth and said the words that made her a kidnapper.

“Jacques, go back to the group. Separate one of the mothers with a babe at her breast from them. Jack, set a trap. Sleepy dart the mother. Bring both of them up here.”

“Kris!” came from both men. Jack of all men would know how much of her soul this was costing Kris.

“You heard me. I am going to talk to one of these aliens. A mother with a babe at her breast is not going to kill herself. Bring one of them to me.”

“But sleepy dart her just in case,” Jack said.

“Yes.”

“And how do I do this?” Jacques said.

Kris did not need more talk. “We’ve watched the mothers go off into the bushes with you,” Kris snapped. “Do it again. Only this time, take her someplace where Jack’s got you covered. Then distract her. If you think you can get her to fall asleep after your fun and save Jack the fuss of having to sleepy dart her, all the better, but I want her up here tonight.”

“Kris Longknife,” Amanda said at Kris’s elbow. “You are a bastard.”

“I second the notion,” Jacques growled.

“I come from a long line of folks that only entered the church to bark and bite at the preacher’s heels. Tell me something about myself I don’t know,” Kris snapped. “Now, you’ve got your orders. Make it happen.”

“Aye, aye, Admiral,” Jack said.

Amanda said nothing as she stormed out of Kris’s day quarters and slammed the door behind her.

Kris
bounced the baby on her hip. The little girl had been cleaned up, had a diaper on for probably the first time in her life, and looked rather cute in an outfit taken off a teddy bear.

Kris hadn’t asked who had a teddy bear this big, but she’d suspected from the hushed conversation she’d partially overheard that it had been offered up by one of the guys who worked the reactor.

Kris was under the impression that the reactor crew had to pass the highest psychological tests. When things settled down, she might have to look into that.

The woman had also been cleaned up and dressed in civilian clothes donated by one of the contract cooks. She was still asleep.

Jack had had to sleepy dart her. Her capture had not gone well.

It hadn’t been allowed to go as bad as the young man’s attempted capture, but still she’d spotted the Marines moving in even though Jacques had been doing his manful best to distract her.

Now she slept on the couch in Kris’s day cabin. Kris had Gunny go over her day quarters to childproof them. He’d called in the help of several young women Marines who removed a lot of objects that Kris would never had considered a hazard to a baby.

That just went to show what Kris knew about babies.

Now childproofed, Kris hoped her quarters were also alien-suicide-proof.

Jack, Amanda, Jacques, Penny, and Masao rounded out the group eyeing the sleeping woman. The military were in uniform, khakis all. Jacques suggested that the earth tones might soften their impression. Jacques and Amanda were in tan shipsuits.

“When do you think she’ll wake up?” Kris asked. The baby was getting fretful. “I think she’s hungry.”

“Check her diaper,” Penny suggested. “Is it wet or dirty?”

“You check it,” Kris said, and passed the cranky child off to her intel officer.

She made the required checks.

“She’s wet. Do we have any spare diapers?”

Jack pointed to a pile of baby gear on Kris’s conference table. “When Musashi fitted out the
Wasp
, they equipped us for humanitarian missions, per their law. We have all we need to take aboard and care for hundreds of civilians for a month. I don’t even think they charged us for the package. All their ships come equipped for kids.”

Penny went to do her duty by the little one, with Masao right behind her. From the looks in both their eyes, Kris suspected that procreation was contagious. Whatever Penny’s fears might be of bringing death and destruction in her matrimonial wake, this baby was pulling the two caregivers closer together.

The woman on the couch started at the sound of her baby’s fussing. Still, she did not rouse. Kris settled into the armchair across from the woman’s head and waited.

At the conference table, with the baby dry again, Penny put formula powder into a bottle of water and offered it to the little one. It took the nipple hungrily, sucked heartily for a moment, then spat out the bottle and began to cry. It was a full-throated wail, not at all tentative.

“I don’t think their kids like our kind of milk,” Penny said.

On the couch, the woman stirred. This time, she fully surfaced. She glanced around, eyes wide, then spotted her child and was off the couch and racing toward the baby before anyone could stop her.

Not that anyone did. Penny handed the baby off to its mother without a bobble.

Baby in hand, the alien woman quickly opened the top of her borrowed dress and offered a breast to her child. The little one greedily began to pull down lunch.

Only when the child was settled did the woman look around, eyes going wider still.

~You are on a ship,~ Nelly said in the language Jacques had used among the dirtside. Those on Nelly Net heard it in Standard in their minds. Masao and Amanda heard it from their own computers.

~This is not
the
ship,~ the woman said, eyes narrowing as she took the room in.

~No,~ Kris agreed. ~This is our ship.~

~Vermin do not have ships,~ was spat more than said.

Jack edged around to cover the door, one hand behind his back where he carried his automatic. Masao put himself between the woman and Penny.

Jacques slowly approached the woman. ~You have shared food with me. I speak your words. I gave you food to eat. You know what all of me looks like,~ he said, running his hands down his side.

~No. No! NO!~ she screamed and began to sidle away, eyes searching the room like a trapped animal desperate for any way out. She paused for a moment, then charged Jack, her hands out, fingers reaching with their long nails for his eyes.

With one hand he used his automatic to put a sleepy dart in the terrified woman’s belly, then used the other to reach out and catch the child as she collapsed like a pricked balloon.

“That didn’t go as well as I had hoped,” Kris said.

“We’re vermin to her,” Jacques said. “And their idea of vermin is a lot uglier than ours, considering the way she said that.” The anthropologist shook his head.

“Kris, I suspect that did not meet your definition of a talk with the aliens,” Jack said.

“Not even close,” Kris agreed.

“So, what do we do next?” Amanda asked.

Kris rubbed her scalp. The tension was getting unbearable. “I’m open to suggestions.”

Penny took the child from Jack. It continued to voice its hunger for all to take note of. “Jack, does the equipment we’ve got include a breast pump?” Penny asked.

That got her a lot of blank stares.

“Okay, folks. The baby is hungry, and you just decked her meal ticket. I also suspect that her breasts are full. Jacques, do you remember the last time she nursed the child?”

The anthropologists gave her the manly shrug of one whose interests in that portion of the female anatomy did not extend to sustenance.

“If she goes too long without emptying her milk, we risk her breasts drying up. And then what will we do about food for the child?” Penny said, exasperated. “Nelly, do you have the schematics for a breast pump?”

“Yes, I do,” the Magnificent Nelly said. “You’ll find one on the table next to the diapers now.”

And there was one.

Amanda went for it. “I watched my mom express milk for my youngest brother,” she said. “I don’t know how it will work with her knocked out and having sleepy dart in her blood, but let’s see how this works. Would you strapping men mind lift her back onto the couch?”

Masao and Jacques did. Jack stayed close, automatic in hand. The alien mom was an easy lift. As soon as they had her back on the couch, the men hastily withdrew to behind Kris’s desk, about as far from the women as possible.

“Note how our strong men get skittish at the sight of a woman’s working breast,” Amanda said, attaching the breast pump and activating it. “They just love to get their mitts on our boobs,” she said, aiming a scathing glance at the men, “but let a woman put her mammary glands to the business God intended, and they run.”

“I thought you women might want your privacy,” Jack offered, lamely.

“Thank you,” Kris said. Her brain failed to suppress a sudden question. Might she actually develop some mammary glands, as Amanda so professionally put it, if she was nursing a child of her own? Their own.

How would Jack take to that?

Damn, this reproductive thing is contagious.

The breast pump worked. The bottle attached to it slowly filled. Kris left the woman and child in Penny’s and Amanda’s capable hands and turned to the men.

“Okay, guys, I’m open to suggestions. How do we get this woman to talk to us?”

They stared at her. She stared at them. There was a lot of staring and not a lot of ideas being verbalized.

Penny joined them, jostling the baby on her hip. It sucked at one of her fingers.

Kris eyed the quieted child.

“I swiped one of those sugar packets from the mess,” Penny said. “I put a bit of it on my finger. The kid may not like our milk, but it sure likes our sugar. Maybe we should try putting some sugar in our formula. Or chocolate.”

“But would it actually get any benefit from the food?” Jacques asked.

“You ate their food. Did you starve?”

“I don’t think so.”

“We need another bottle, or two,” Amanda said. The first one looked full.

Two bottles appeared on the conference table, and Penny took them to Amanda.

“Nelly, spin out a small sample bottle. Amanda, if you’ll fill the small one, we’ll get the boffins to do their thing. We’ll know exactly what’s in mother bug-eyed-monster milk in no time.”

“Doing it,” Amanda answered, as Penny retrieved the small bottle, and Amanda switched it onto the pump. After that one was full, they switched breasts and began draining the other one.

Kris turned back to the guys. “I have a problem. You guys are not helping.”

“We’ve tried everything that I can think of,” Jacques said.

“How do we get her to sit still and talk to me?” Kris repeated, with more than a tinge of irritation.

Again, the men came up with only silence.

Kris turned to Penny, now feeding a very hungry child from the first bottle. It seemed happy enough now.

The mother wants the baby,
Kris thought.
We have the baby.

“If we show her that the baby is fine,” Kris said slowly, and half to herself, “and tell her that she can’t have the baby until she talks to me . . .”

“You’re a hard woman, Kris Longknife,” Penny said.

“A determined woman,” Kris answered. “Penny, can you raise a wall in here? One of those clear walls.”

“So she can see her baby and that we’re taking care of her,” Penny said, catching Kris’s drift.

“But not get near the child. Not until she’s talked to me and answers all my questions.”

“You’re assuming that she can tell you what you want to know,” Jacques said. “I was down there for way too long. I listened to them talk to each other. I still don’t know much more about them and their ship and their Enlightened One than I did when you dropped me off buck naked to be eaten by whatever passes for mosquitoes in that godforsaken place.”

“I can ask direct questions,” Kris snapped. “Questions you couldn’t do without risking your head being bashed in with the nearest rock.”

Jacques glanced around the room.

“No nearest rock,” Kris said.

“She has a point,” Masao said.

Penny
finished feeding the first bottle to the baby. The tiny one now seemed sleepy. Without being told, Nelly produced a bassinet out of the deck. Its side toward the alien mother was clear. Penny settled the now-sleeping child down. Masao brought her a baby blanket from the supplies Musashi provided.

The two of them stared long and lovingly at the sleeping infant. Kris noticed how time and time again one or the other’s hands would half reach out for the other. Reach, but never touch.

She sighed for her friend’s pain.

But when Penny turned back to Kris, she was all mission. “Mimzy, we’ll need a clear wall between the bassinet and the alien.”

“Jack, do you intend to stay on the side with Kris?” Mimzy asked.

“You bet I do,” he said, and moved quickly to stand at his bride’s side.

“Jacques?” Nelly’s daughter asked.

“I think she’s seen enough of me. I’ll stay on this side.”

“Amanda?”

“I’m with Kris.”

“Penny?”

“Masao and I will stay with the baby. You can take the wall down in a second, can’t you Mimzy?”

“Less time. I can also open a passageway if one of you changes your mind.”

The coffee table, with its computer-screen insert, vanished into the deck. The conference table and most of its chairs did the same. A moment later, a thin, clear barrier rose from the deck to divide the room in half.

Kris settled into the armchair at the woman’s head. Jack took the one at her feet. Amanda finished up gathering the last bottles of milk, then passed them through a suddenly open window, to Jacques. He handed the large ones off to Penny and left with the smaller sample bottle.

The woman slept peacefully while Amanda adjusted her dress to meet the modesty standards of the human civilization that had brought her here, but, so far, could do nothing with her. Finished, Amanda settled into a chair between Kris and Jack, facing the captive. She folded her hands in her lap and joined them, waiting for the alien woman to waken.

Time passed with leaden boots. Jacques returned, mission no doubt accomplished, and took a chair from the conference table to sit quietly, watching his wife. The glass wall, and maybe other things, separated them.

Penny and Masao stayed where they were, standing and gazing at the sleeping child. In a secret moment, either his or her hand snuck into the other’s. Kris wasn’t sure who reached out first, and did not task Nelly to find out.

They waited.

Since Kris first met the aliens—and had to blast their ship out of space to keep it from ramming the old
Wasp
—she’d wanted to talk to one of them. Now, with that talk only moments away, she found herself wondering what to say. She ran several opening lines through her thoughts and found them all lame.

Well, I’m a Longknife. I’ll come up with something when it matters. We always do.

The woman awoke with a start, glanced around, and spotted the bassinet. She leapt from the couch and charged across the room.

She smashed into the clear wall and bounced off it. She let out a scream and slammed her fist into the wall. Then she shook her hand in pain.

~Your baby cannot hear you,~ Kris said. ~You can see she is safe. Unharmed. She cannot hear you.~

~Give Minna to me,~ the woman demanded.

~When we have talked,~ Kris said, firmly.

So the woman charged Kris.

Jack was out of his chair and blocking the woman in a flash. She tried slugging him, but the big Marine grabbed her wrist and swung her around, pinning an arm behind her back. She went for him with her other fist, so he grabbed that hand, too.

Both arms pinned, the woman bent over and screamed her frustration.

~We are going to talk,~ Kris said. ~It can be easy on you, or it can be hard. Your choice, but you will answer my questions.~

The woman quit struggling, stood up, and looked Kris straight in the eye. Then she eyed her sleeping child, and snarled, ~I will talk with you, vermin, though you will not understand a word I say.~

~I understand what you say quite well,~ Kris said.

~
Your
kind can understand nothing,~ the woman said. She looked like she might spit at Kris, thought better of it, and just stood in place.

Kris motioned for Jack to let her go. The look he gave her was one big question mark, but he did, quickly coming to stand beside Kris’s chair.

The woman slunk into her place on the couch, as far from Kris as possible. Her eyes stayed focused on her child.

~What is the ship?~ Kris asked.

The woman gave Kris a look of utter disdain. ~The ship is the ship. We live in the ship. The ship has always been and always will be.~

T
HAT SOUNDS LIKE SOMETHING
SHE LEARNED BY ROTE,
Jack said on Nelly Net.

Y
ES, IT’S A CATECHIS
M ANSWER,
Jacques agreed. T
RY SOMETH
ING ELSE.

~Who are the people?~ Kris tried.

~We are the obedient ones. We follow the Enlightened One, who leads us safely through the stars.~

C
ATECHISM,
AGAIN,
Jacques said.

H
OW ABOUT
I
S
HOW HER THE TWO MOTH
ER SHIPS WE BLEW UP?
Kris asked.

I
’D SAVE THAT FOR THE
FINAL BLOW IF WE STI
LL CAN’T GET THROUGH
HER FACADE,
Jacques said.

O
F COUR
SE, HER FACADE MAY BE
ALL SHE’S GOT,
Penny put in. A
LL
THEY’VE GIVEN HER AN
D ALLOWED HER TO MAK
E OF HERSELF.

T
HAT’S
A HORRIBLE THOUGHT,
Kris admitted, and tried again. ~Why are you not on the ship? Why are you on that planet with the pyramid?~

~The what?~

~The big stone thing you walked away from,~ Kris tried. Apparently, words like “pyramid” didn’t enter into a ship-raised vocabulary.

The woman tossed the question off with a wave of her hand. ~I do not know. The Black Hats came. They said I was a poison to the ship. They said I had tried to turn away from the enlightenment. They dropped me and the others off by the Place for Making Amends for All Errors. They gave us water and some food and told us to walk away in that direction and we would live to make more amends for our errors.~

She shrugged. ~So we walked until we came to the dark green place and now we live to wash away our errors.~

~And your errors were?~ Kris asked.

Again, the alien woman shrugged, eyes still locked on her child. ~You sound like Zinton. He said that the Black Hats and The Enlightened One were crazy. That we hadn’t done anything that other people hadn’t done. We hadn’t done anything wrong.~

~Was Zinton the man we found dead on the flat land of glass?~

~So you know of Zinton. Did the demons take him?~

~His body is still lying where he fell. Who killed him?~

She shrugged again. ~The men tried to silence his wild talk. It was bad enough we’d been expelled for our errors. Talk like that could only make our penance worse. We were there to make amends for our errors, not commit more.~

K
RIS,
I
KNOW YOU AREN
’T GOING TO LIKE THI
S,
Jack said on Nelly Net,
BUT
I
DON’T THINK
THIS POOR KID HAS A
NY IDEA WHAT’S GOING
ON WITH THOSE MOTHE
R SHIPS.
S
HE’S JUST A
COG IN A VERY BIG A
ND NASTY WHEEL.
A
T FO
URTEEN,
C
ARA KNOWS MO
RE ABOUT WHAT’S GOIN
G ON IN HUMAN SPACE
THAN THIS YOUNG MOTH
ER DOES ABOUT THE SH
IP SHE WAS RAISED IN
.

I
’M STARTING TO FEA
R THAT YOU’RE RIGHT,
Kris admitted.

~What do the ships do as they travel between the stars?~ Kris tried.

~The
ship
does the will of the Enlightened One,~ came back without a moment’s reflection.

~And that will is?~

~To destroy vermin like yourself,~ came casually, with no personal animus at all.

~Why must vermin be destroyed?~

Now the woman did look at Kris. ~Vermin must be destroyed because vermin are vermin. Only those who follow after the light can be allowed to breathe, to eat, to do the holy act of breeding. For all else, that is profanity and must be stomped out. That is the right way.~

She eyed Kris, the way a human might examine a wondering ant, then shrugged. This shrug started at her toes and went all the way to the top of her head. ~But you are vermin, what is life to you?~

~It is very important to me,~ Kris said.

~May I have my baby back, now, vermin?~

Kris reviewed what she’d discovered and found it not much to her liking.
A
NY IDEAS, GANG?

Y
OU WANTED TO TALK TO ONE OF THEM
,
K
RIS.
T
HEY DIDN’T WA
NT TO TALK TO YOU.
N
O
W YOU’VE TALKED TO O
NE, AND SHE HAS NOTHI
NG MUCH TO TELL YOU.
A
RE YOU ALL THAT SUR
PRISED?
Jack said.

I
CAN’T SAY
THAT
I
AM,
Kris admitted, then tried a new twist. ~Look at me. I am no vermin.~

~You are vermin,~ the woman said back, not even bothering to look at Kris. ~I can smell the dirt and fear on you. You are vermin, and I would kill you if you were not surrounded by men who do your bidding. Is there any greater proof than that that you are indeed vermin? You, a woman, telling men what to do. That is not enlightened.~

S
O THEY A
RE A MALE-DOMINATED
SOCIETY,
Jacques said. A
MALE-DOMI
NATED SOCIETY WHERE
I
SAW THE OLDEST WOMAN BOSSING THE M
EN AROUND A LOT.
N
O B
IG SURPRISE THERE.

Kris frowned at Jacques’s thought, then went back to her own. She wanted to tell the woman that she did not want to be at war with the ships. N
ELLY, IS THERE A WORD
FOR “WAR”?

N
O,
K
RIS.
T
HE
RE ARE A DOZEN WORDS
FOR “SUBMISSION” BUT
NONE FOR “VIOLENT CON
FLICT RESOLUTION.”

A
GA
IN, NO SURPRISE,
the anthropologist said.

Kris had to resort to the only words she had. ~We do not want to be hunted.~

~Prey do not understand death, but you will die. When the ship comes, you will die in numbers too great to count, and we will take our trophies.~

Kris had had enough.

“Nelly, run the videos of the mother ships dying.”

“Do you think that is wise?” Nelly, Amanda, and Jacques said at once.

“I don’t think you better do that,” Penny said.

“This conversation is going nowhere. Let’s see if we can crack her out of all these rote answers and get some real talk from her.”

The woman glanced at the vermin as they babbled in their vermin tongue. She showed no interest in what they said and turned back to her child.

Then the screen on the wall behind the bassinet came to life.

~The ship!~ she cried in recognition.

~Yes, that is
one
of your ships,~ Kris said.

~There is only
the
ship,~ the woman insisted.

~Your ship is one of many. Now watch what we humans did to this ship when it tried to kill my people.~

Quickly lasers, rockets, then Hellburners smashed into the giant mother ship. Quickly, it began to blow apart. The screen cut from the last vision of the exploding ship before Kris fled to a view of the wrecked and broken hulk tumbling dead in space. Nelly filled the screen with pictures from her nanos as they cruised through the empty voids of the hulk. The final view was of the great hall, lifeless and empty. The view rose to take in the ceiling and its stars.

Now the screen changed to show Navy ships giving battle to the vast horde of alien warships. Cameras caught them as they fought, were caught, burned and died. They had launched a camera on some of the junk that covered for the rockets that lofted the Hellburner. It recorded the fight, the mother ship being slammed twice and beginning to burn itself out. The vision of destruction changed again.

~This is from
my
ship as we approached
your
great ship,~ Kris said.

The mother ship withered and burned. Great balls of explosions blew out into space. Then the ship, starting from the bow, blew itself to bits from the inside.

~Every woman, child, and man died on that ship. Every Black Hat. And most definitely the Enlightened One. Did he lead them right? Was that where the ship was meant to end its days? I blew it up,~ Kris snapped. ~I and the ships I lead hammered it until the Enlightened One blew up all of those who followed him.~

~You lie. Vermin die. Vermin wither up and die. They cannot stop the ship!~ the woman screamed.

~Your ship cannot stop me. It cannot stop my people. We are not vermin,~ Kris snapped.

~Yes you are. You are all prey,~ she said, head whipping around, eyes going wide with near madness. ~You will all die. You are vermin! I can smell the fear on you. I can smell the dirt. Your way is only death, and we, the people of the ship will kill you.~

~Like those ships, huh,~ Kris said.

Nelly began to rerun the video.

The woman turned her face to the far wall, her back to the scenes of dying ships.

Nelly created a projector and flashed the video on the wall in front of the woman.

The alien turned, but Nelly turned the projector faster.

The woman closed her eyes and screamed at the top of her voice. ~Lies. It is all lies!~