Kris Longknife: Tenacious (Kris Longknife novellas Book 12) (20 page)

Kris
dismissed her team to their duties.

“Do you want me to stay, love?” Jack asked.

“Nope. I think you better start looking into ways to board a ship at high vectors. Maybe even with high-gee acceleration still on the ship.”

“You think Sampson will be that stupid?”

“There is no limit I place on Sampson’s folly,” Kris said. “I won’t make that mistake again.”

“Can you loan my Marines the pinnace?”

“Hmm, you have an idea there. That might work. Touch base with Captain Drago. Now, General, I need some time to think.”

“Let me know when you want me around. I’ll come running, Admiral.”

Jack left. Kris reclined her egg. What she really wanted to do was get out and pace the deck. That was what admirals did when they needed to think, wasn’t it? Nelson paced the deck, didn’t he?

Not at 3.5 gees, he didn’t.

Kris reclined, stared at the overhead, and thought.

Hard.

She thought of the hall beneath the pyramids. She’d sworn that not one more head would be added to that gory collection. In her mind’s eye, she saw a Rooster in a glass cube. Would she have to take one of them back there and rub their noses on the glass?

Dare I go back after the calling cards I left?

She hadn’t planned to go back at all, not sooner, not later. But she hadn’t expected to come back and find her rear area in an uproar.

Why won’t someone just let me fight my battles in a nice clean way?

Kris almost laughed. How many statesmen or generals had asked the same question? No doubt, she wasn’t the first. Hopefully, she wouldn’t be the last.

“Nelly, send to Admiral Kitano at your earliest convince. ‘Resignation rejected. I doubt I could have done a better job myself. We will talk more when I get back with Sampson’s guts for garters. Longknife sends.’”

“I’ve already sent it, Kris. Passing along communications is something I could do in my sleep if I ever did sleep. I didn’t bother you before, but now that you asked, we are on course to the jump. We will not intercept Sampson there, but will be about ten hours behind her.”

“Thank you, Nelly. If something big shows up, break in on me, but I do want to think.”

“Do you want to talk about it?”

“Aren’t you busy?”

“I’ve learned to delegate, Kris. My kids complain that I spell delegate D.U.M.P.”

Kris enjoyed a chuckle. “A good joke.”

“Captain Drago liked it. Mimzy and Sal are working on the course corrections. Kris, I took the opportunity to brief Professor Labao on our problem. He has his boffins breaking out the best sensors they have to help us track Sampson and see what final adjustments she makes at the jump.”

“That was good initiative, Nelly,” Kris said.

“So, what is worrying you, Kris?”

“We’ve learned a lot about the aliens.”

“We have.”

“Do I need to report all this back to human space?”

“Didn’t the king say you shouldn’t report back?”

“Yes, we want to leave as few trails as possible. But could any of the stuff that we learned help out back home?”

“Why is this suddenly bothering you?”

“The problem they had on Alwa while I was gone, Nelly. Will what we found help motivate the Alwans to stand with us?”

“I don’t know, Kris. What do you think?”

“Nelly, I’m sorry, but I don’t want to be asked what I think; I want more input.”

“I’m sorry Kris, I can extrapolate trend curves, but jumping from one possible fact to another possible fact is just not what I do.”

“Nelly, is Penny busy?”

“No. Would you like me to invite her and Masao into this conversation?”

“Please do.”

A few minutes later, Penny’s and Masao’s eggs rolled into Kris’s day quarters.

“What’s up?” Penny asked. “Nelly said you were thinking dark thoughts and needed a blank wall to bounce them off of.”

“I said I needed input, not an echo chamber,” Kris said.

“Maybe she said something like that,” Kris’s best friend said. “Some of it could have gotten lost in translation.”

Nelly did not leap to defend her honor but remained quiet.

T
HANK YOU, GIRL.

I
KNEW WHAT
THE TWO OF YOU WERE
DOING,
K
RIS.
I
’M NOT F
LESH AND BLOOD, BUT
I
’M BEGINNING TO UNDE
RSTAND IT BETTER.

“I’m trying to decide whether or not to ignore my king’s instructions.”

“If they’re Ray’s, no doubt you’ll ignore him,” Penny said.

It was hard to tell, with Masao in an egg, but he might have looked shocked at such familiarity with the throne.

“The king said I should not send a lot of reports home. We don’t want to blaze a trail from here to there.”

“Right,” Penny said. “You don’t want to lay too much yarn out for the cats to play with, as my grandmother used to say. Sooner or later, they’re bound to make a mess.”

“But there’s all this new stuff we’ve found out about the aliens,” Kris said.

“Yes, it is a lot of new information,” Masao said, “but does it really change anything? They want to kill us. They don’t consider us worth talking to. Now that we know they consider us vermin in their eyes, I don’t see that it has changed anything.”

Kris told them about Dr. Meade’s discovery of the atrophied portion of the aliens’ brains and her theory of what that might be causing.

“Is that certain?” Masao asked.

“Nelly, do you have her latest work?” Kris asked.

“I have access to her notes, Kris. She hasn’t been able to add to her research while we’ve all been in the eggs. She is working on a new series of tests to further examine her hypotheses. Her main problem is the aliens’ lack of vocabulary. She can’t ask them to think of God, pray, or play a national anthem. Trying to create a response when her subjects don’t seem to have any handles to hang it on is very difficult.”

“So, even if this is so, what would you do with it?” Masao asked.

“What if we could figure out a way to reactivate it?” Kris said, posing the option that tasked her. “What if we could seed them with, I don’t know, a revival?”

“What if you did, and the Enlightened One grabbed hold of it and we ended up facing billions of crazy fanatics?” Penny asked back

“We are facing billions of crazy fanatics,” Kris said. “What’s the difference?”

“It could get worse. Right now we’re facing billions of obedient slaves,” Penny said. “We came up with 20-inch lasers, and now 22-inch lasers. They came up with the idea of putting rocks on their noses for armor. It seems to me that free men and woman are ahead to date. Do you really want to risk a change to that?”

“I’d really like to not have to kill another thirty or forty billion. No, next time we’ll get hit by three times as many, make that ninety to a hundred and fifty billion, maybe.”

“The blood does get deep,” Masao said, with a cough.

Kris stared at the overhead for a long minute.

“Why did this come up now?” Penny asked.

“We’re likely going to have to chase Sampson across a quarter of the galaxy before we catch her. I was thinking of sending a report home. Maybe with you on the
Endeavor
. What do you think?”

Now there was another long pause.

“I’d really rather not go home yet,” Penny said.

“Can I ask why?” Kris said, wondering what she’d stumbled into.

“I like my job here. I like my life here, Kris, believe it or not. If you send me home . . .”

“Masao could go with you.”

“And if he did, where would that put us? Maybe I could talk the king into letting me take the
Endeavor
back to Alwa. Maybe Masao could talk the Musashi Navy into letting him stay attached to the Alwa mission. Maybe we’d get a no to all that.”

“All of us on Alwa could be blasted away tomorrow,” Kris pointed out.

“But we’re two for oh, aren’t we? Call me crazy, Kris, but this is my home, and I kind of like it here.”

“You’re crazy,” Kris said.

“Coming from a Longknife, I’ll consider that a compliment.”

“Okay, then we agree, Sampson doesn’t get to go back to human space. If I have to drag her and her people home in chains, she comes back with me.”

“You’ll get no argument from me there,” Penny said.

“But do you need to report?” Masao said. “That is the question. Do you think that knowing what is happening here on the other side of the galaxy would make it easier for your king to raise a fleet?”

“That is one of many questions,” Kris said.

“I have no idea, Kris,” Penny said. “If we were at a decent acceleration, I’d say flip a coin.”

“I’d probably argue with the results,” Kris said, dryly.

“If you don’t like the coin toss,” Masao said, “you
should
argue with it.”

“There is one thing,” Penny said.

“Yes.”

“Phil Taussig and his survivors from the old
Hornet
. I know they’re on the new
Hornet
now, but if you are still thinking of sending someone back, you might make him the offer.”

“And if he turns me down like you just did?” Kris asked.

“Then you might have more reason not to send anyone.”

Kris let them go back to whatever they’d been doing.

“Did they help you more than I could?” Nelly asked.

“No, they didn’t.”

“But you feel better talking to them?”

“I can’t say that I feel better after talking to them face-to-face. We spent most of the time flat on our back, staring at the ceiling.”

“Overhead,” Nelly corrected.

“Whatever,” Kris said.

“But the human talk meant something to you.”

“They refused to take the free ride home, Nelly. That said a lot to me.”

“Irrational.”

“Human.”

“Yes, human,” Nelly agreed.

“I’d better go tell the aliens that they’re going to be in their eggs a bit longer than expected,” Kris said.

“I could have Gunny or Doc Meade do that for you.”

“No, I’m the chief or the wisewoman, or the wild woman, whatever. I got them into this mess. I better explain it face-to-face.”

“In your egg, reclining at 3.5 gees.”

“Not rational,” Kris said.

“But very human.”

Kris
found the tame aliens in their eggs, huddled together. The Marines had backed off as much as Condition Charlie let them. The drop bay was a lot smaller.

Come Condition Zed, the unique equipment on the longboats would be boxed up like Mother MacCreedy’s best whiskey and that Smart Metal
TM
would be shipped off to reinforce the hull’s armor. Of the drop bay, there wouldn’t be enough left for a broom closet.

Kris would have to come up with another place to park her charges if it came to a fight.

She rolled up to the graybeard. He was reclining in his egg, but he spotted her and brought it up a bit. ~When can I hunt again?~

~It will be many sunsets.~ Kris had learned that if it was good news you brought, you used “sunrise,” while bad news got the “sunset” treatment.

~Why can I not hunt again?~

Now a lot of the tribe had raised their eggs up to get a better look at Kris. A Marine sergeant edged away from the wall and rolled up behind her.

N
ELLY, TELL THE
M
ARINE
S, THANK YOU, BUT STAY
COOL.

D
ONE,
K
RIS.

The Marine sergeant didn’t back away, but he came no closer.

~What do you do when someone grabs your knife and runs away with it?~ Kris asked.

~I run after him and take it back,~ the old man said. ~If he is a child, I show him the right path for his feet. If he is a man, I knock the right path into him.~

~A woman has grabbed one of my ships for walking among the stars and ran away with it. I am running after her. I will knock the right path into her.~

~Hmm,~ was the graybeard’s only response.

The wisewoman turned her head in her egg to better look at Kris with deep black eyes. Kris returned the gaze, unblinking. Had she given away that she was not all-powerful? Or was the woman more interested in how one might run away with a ship to walk among the stars?

Maybe you should have let the boy die, girl.

That wasn’t going to happen,
Kris answered her own doubts.

Kris returned to her quarters. They would hit the jump in the middle of their night. For now, she’d better catch a nap.

“By the way, Nelly, does that freighter we’re chasing, the
Sisu
, have any lasers?”

“Yes, Kris, it has a pair of short-range 18-inch pulse lasers.”

“But if she’s waiting for us on the other side of the jump, range won’t be all that important, will it?”

“No, Kris, but Sampson has a lot of energy on her boat. Turning it around and getting back to the jump to hit us as we come through would not be a likely prospect. With seven ships following you, it certainly would not be a winning proposition.”

Kris considered that and chose the nap.

Jack woke her an hour before they were to hit the jump.

“Did they get a good look at our renegade when it made its jump?” Kris asked.

“The
Sisu
, out of the Scanda Confederation planet of the same name,” Nelly reported, “jacked its acceleration up to 2.5 gees fifteen seconds before it jumped. It went through the jump at forty revolutions, counterclockwise.”

“It appears our girl did her homework,” Jack said.

“Do you know where she jumped to?” Kris asked Nelly.

“There are three systems I think she might have ended up in. Two have fuzzy jumps. I don’t know if the
Sisu
has the gear to spot them, Kris.”

“We’ll just have to wait and see if we end up in the same system with her and where she’s headed, now won’t we?”

“Patience is a virtue. You should develop it sometime, Your High-handedness,” Nelly said.

“Nelly, I have to put up with that lip from Abby. Just because she’s not here doesn’t mean you have to give it to me.”

“I know. But now that I have had the chance, I enjoy giving it to you all on my own.”

“Kris, may I suggest you stop while you’re behind?” Jack said.

Since they were alone, Kris stuck her tongue out at Jack.

“Do that again when we aren’t parboiled in these damn eggs and see what it gets you.”

Kris grinned. “I’m thinking of it.”

“Well, quit. It’s all going to waste.”

On that note, they motored out onto the bridge.

Captain Drago, looking somewhat better for having napped as well, motored out of his in-space cabin and took his place at the center of his hive. “Anything change while I was catching a few z’s?”

“Nothing has happened at the jump since the
Sisu
used it,” the navigator reported.

“Did sensors give us their feed on the
Sisu
’s status as it jumped?”

“Yes, Captain. We have the exact velocity within ten centimeters a second. Their RPMs were a ragged 39.64 per minute. They were accelerating at 2.47 gees for 14.71 seconds before the jump. All this is loaded in every ship in the fleet. Phil Taussig of the
Hornet
asks if we should all attempt the same jump or would it be better to have ships vary a bit around it for ‘Kentucky windage,’ whatever that is.”

“Nelly?” Kris said.

“I have looked up ‘Kentucky windage,’ and no, I don’t think there is enough of a chance of our numbers being off for us to split the fleet. My estimate of us following Sampson’s course approach unity.”

“Send to
Hornet
. ‘Good idea, Phil, but our Nelly windage beats Kentucky windage every time, Longknife sends.’”

“Kris,” Nelly asked, “would you like to hear what Sampson had to say just before she jumped?”

“Will her deathless prose surprise me?”

“Not likely.”

“Well, let’s see what was on her mind, anyway. It might prove useful.”

“Longknife, you’ll never catch me. You’ll never follow me. I’m on my way back to Wardhaven, and when I get there, it will be you up on charges. You’ll never get your privileged ass out of jail for the rest of your life.”

“And here I thought her ass was just as privileged as mine.”

“Except she is an ass,” Jack said.

“Who is running headlong into who knows what,” Captain Drago added.

“Yes. So, Nelly, you say she’s wrong about our not being able to follow her.”

“Definitely.”

“And she’s wrong about our not being able to catch her.”

“My Marines are waiting to make the catch,” Jack said.

“Well then, let’s go get her,” Kris said.

The squadron leveled off from its dive back down to the system plane a solid half hour out from the jump. It finished its braking five minutes out. Two minutes out, Nelly was satisfied that they were duplicating the
Sisu
’s velocity and acceleration to the thirteenth decimal place.

Kris hardly breathed as they made the final approach to the jump, put on a matching spin, and jacked up their acceleration to duplicate exactly how Sampson had done her jump.