Kris Longknife: Tenacious (Kris Longknife novellas Book 12) (8 page)

“Are you suggesting I need the exercise, General, my husband?”

“I’m suggesting that you think better when you’re on your feet, Admiral.”

“I think you just like to see me in gym shorts.”

“This isn’t a run, my dear. The uniform for the hike is battle rattle and fifty-pound rucksack.”

“Well, then, I definitely have to join you. Ladies and gentlemen, I believe this meeting is adjourned.”

As the others left, Kris and Jack headed for the drop bay. She might be an admiral now, but the
Wasp
still had full battle gear stored in her locker.

Kris
found herself doing a lot more than thinking during her ten-mile hike. Professor Labao dropped a hot potato in Kris’s lap before she’d gotten her first mile in.

“I should have brought this up during our earlier meeting,” he said on Kris’s commlink as she lugged her armor and fifty-pound load up a ship ladder, “but how much noise are we willing to make for the natives to hear?”

“Noise?” Kris asked.

“To drop probes that hunt for plagues, viruses, and allergens, we need to send the shuttles down. Shuttles make sonic booms. Do you think the natives will notice loud noises coming from a clear sky and give us attention we don’t want?”

Jack eyed Kris. Since Labao was using his computer to talk, all of this was going to Nelly’s kids. Jack was following the new question along with his own computer, Sal.

“Do you think longboat pilots would mind doing their entry and shoving off back for space around a thunderstorm?” the scientist asked.

“Not too close to one. How about we do it at night, when it’s harder to notice,” Kris said.

“Of course,” he agreed.

“Once we have a better idea of what biological hazards we’re up against, we can decide where to set up bases for our extended surveys.”

Kris managed to finish the rest of her hike in peace. What she didn’t get was a better perspective on the puzzling planet below.

It didn’t get easier.

“Kris, we’ve identified an anomaly,” Nelly said over breakfast the second day. “We know that some sections of the great glass plain were lased enough to get the glazing effect.”

“As well as the atomics,” Kris said.

“And we have the impact craters, all apparently timed to the same event.”

“Yes, Nelly.”

“Well, we’ve found what looks like another site that was lased. However, it doesn’t match the other event, and there may be some structures outside the immediate attack zone still standing.”

“A hundred thousand years later!” Kris said.

“We’re not sure it dates from that attack, but we can’t be sure until we gather samples.”

“And we are not gathering samples from the ground yet. Right, Nelly?”

“Yes, Kris, the ground survey is waiting for the biological-hazard survey to finish.”

“And you want me to ask Professor Labao to make a sample-retrieval mission to your anomaly a priority,” Kris said, starting to grin as she gained understanding of the real problem.

“Yes, Kris. I do seem to need some diplomatic intervention. Or maybe your playing what you call your Princess Card.”

“I’m glad you’re beginning to understand the need for coordinating your activities with the rest of us,” Kris said.

“I do seem to have overplayed my hand concerning hijacking that surveyor, but you must admit, Kris, without its discovery, we’d still be in the dark.”

“Yes, Nelly, you got that one right, so you get the medal. However, you have to understand if you take chances like that and don’t get the right answer, you get court-martialed.”

“I have gained a better understanding of that old military saying.”

“Good, Nelly. Now, what do you make of this anomaly?”

“Kris, it’s too soon to attempt a guess. The professor is quite right about our not jumping to conclusions. It’s an anomaly that may prove important. Then again, the present data do not support any real conclusions.”

“But if it’s more recent . . .” Kris started, and failed to stop herself short of a long jump. “If this planet has been attacked more recently, but with more specific targeting, it will be interesting. We will also need to see if we can identify more about the target. For that, we need a ground survey.”

Time passed at a frustratingly slow pace. Kris knew she had outposted the system effectively, but she couldn’t shake the fear that an alien base ship, complete with escorts, might pop into the system at any time. It wasn’t rational, but it was a real worm, gnawing at her gut.

Jack seemed to sense it, too. He went about his job, preparing the Marines for a landing party, but he was there every evening, listening to her share her day, what little there was, then filling her in on what the Marines were up to.

On day four, Professor Labao informed Kris that the planet was as safe as any for human visitation. “We’ll keep the science teams in sealed capsules for now, and we’d suggest that any Marines who go down stay in fully armored suits and breathe our oxygen. We can breathe what’s down there, we just don’t know yet what might have slipped past our monitors.”

The longboats cut loose from the ships and dropped into the atmosphere. The scientific teams dropped in their own mobile labs, which were rolled out of the shuttles and paraglided into some flat area. They then drove to where they intended to hide and set up shop.

This provided Nelly with another interesting datum. Out on the plains, a tribe was moving from one water hole to the next. When they heard the sonic booms and spotted the contrails of the arriving shuttle, they changed course and took off in the opposite direction to where the shuttle was headed.

Nelly dropped this bit of information as an interruption to a meeting Kris was having with Amanda Kutter and Jacques la Duke. She replayed the reaction of the local tribe as Jacques watched thoughtfully.

“It seems our locals have some experience with noise from the sky and something that can scratch the sky as well. Let us wonder what that could mean.”

“They’re on the same continent as the glass plain,” Kris said. “I wonder how those on the other continent might react.”

“Sorry, Kris, we don’t have any good telemetry from there right this moment,” Nelly said.

Kris had kept the ships of the fleet moored within a few thousand kilometers of each other. If she had to fight, she wanted a battle force, not a bunch of pairs scattered around in low orbit. So what the
Wasp
saw was pretty much what everyone saw.

“We’ll have to see how the other folks take to the follow-up longboat passes,” Kris said. “Nelly, make a note of this question and tell Professor Labao I want to arrange the next drop to take place when the squadron is over the western landmasses.”

“I will tell him,” Nelly said.

Kris shook her head. “More questions. No answers. When will we get some answers?”

No one filled in the blank space. Kris turned back to her two friends.

“Ah, Kris, can I add another item to your question list?” Nelly asked.

“And if I said no?” Kris said. She was really tired of her long list of questions with no answers.

“I’ll wait until you’re in a better mood,” Nelly said.

“That is likely never to happen,” Amanda Kutter said, a big grin on her face.

“Talk to me, Nelly,” Kris said with a sigh of resignation.

“We have been putting off an exhaustive examination of the glass plain. It’s there, it’s glass. Nothing grows there. Nothing goes there.”

“I agree you should ignore it for now,” Kris said.

“Well, I had some spare time, and the kids and I decided to look it over very carefully. It is an interesting landscape, Kris. It’s not flat but has waves and some interesting ramparts where one splash of glass meets another.”

“Are you taking up glassblowing?” Kris asked, knowing there was too much bite in the question.

“No, Kris. We found a body.”

“A body?” Jacques said. “But no one would go out there. There’s no food. No water.”

“Yes, that was why we didn’t look before,” Nelly said.

“Can you show us the body?” Kris asked.

One of the screens came on. Yep, there was what looked like the body of a man. He lay on his back, arms and legs splayed out.

“Did he fall from somewhere?” Jacques asked, then shook his head and answered his own question. “No, the glass around there is pretty flat.”

“Look at the clothes,” Amanda said.

“The body is clothed,” Nelly said, “though the shoes have been removed.”

“The body is wearing clothes,” Kris said. “The best-dressed tribes we’ve seen wear rough weaving or sewn hides. Those looks like normal clothes to me.”

“I’ve pulled up the clothes of the aliens we have pictures of and those that we found on the ships you destroyed, Kris. These clothes don’t match their uniforms.”

“But they’re closer to that kind of clothing than anything we’ve seen locally,” Jacques said. “That high-collar jacket. Those britches. They are closer to a raider’s uniform than anything I’ve seen.”

“Yes,” said Nelly.

“So what killed him?” Kris asked.

“And took his shoes?” Amanda added.

“Nelly, can you draw a line from the body back to the pyramid, then extrapolate it to the edge of the glass plain?” Jacques asked.

Nelly did, then added a measurement of distance. “This is on the most direct route from the pyramid to water.”

“Can you estimate time of death?” Kris asked.

“Not without a closer examination of the body,” Nelly said. “However, assuming there are no scavengers, and the body has only been subjected to the elements, my best estimate is that it’s been drying out for over a year. Maybe more.”

“Penny reported that the clans closest to the glass plain are pretty primitive,” Kris said. “So why is this guy in woven cloth?”

“We’ve been following those close-in clans, Kris,” Nelly said. “They are as Penny found, the most primitive of the local people. None have clothes. Some don’t even have fire. Penny wondered how they got along with the rest, but all we’ve seen is that when the naked clans come across each other, they keep their distance and do not make any effort at an exchange. When they come across some of the more skilled locals at the border of each’s range, they don’t try to make contact.”

“I want DNA samples from all of them,” Kris said. “Oh, and Nelly, follow the direct course from the pyramid to the prairies and see what clan is roaming that territory.”

“What are you thinking?” Amanda asked.

“I’m wondering if we might find someone still wearing the remnants of a raider’s uniform,” Kris snapped.

“I was thinking the same thing,” Jacques said.

“Nelly, advise Professor Labao of this find and inform him that Her Highness, Kris Longknife would appreciate if he could get a drone to cover this area with close and more persistent aerial coverage than we can manage from orbit, as well as drop some nanos to get a DNA test.”

“I will use those exact words, Kris,” Nelly said.

“Tact, Nelly. Diplomacy. Oh, and using whom you know as well as what you know,” Kris said.

“You humans. Your logic is so strange.”

“Yes, we are strange, Nelly. But we
are
polite.”

“I will strive to be polite.”

And Kris and her team eyed the new data that only raised more questions while Nelly tried her hand at politeness.

Two
days later, they found the half-clothed clan. They were five men, six women, and four babes in arms. They were also thin, dirty, and ragged, but their rags were clearly related to those of the dead body back on the glass plain.

It was Professor Labao who made the report, formally, and in Kris’s day cabin to a full staff meeting. He had a lot more to report.

“We have also conducted a full, though remote, examination of the body. While the glass plain seems most devastated, it is not, however, totally absent of life. Dust has been blown in. Seeds as well, along with bugs and other microlife. In the immediate area around the body, a veritable metropolis of tiny creatures has sprung up.”

“That’s mighty nice of them to keep him company, seeing that he’s dead,” Kris observed.

“Most of the life is indigenous to our subject planet. There is, however, one exception.”

“Something not from here?” Kris said.

“Definitely. It’s a fungus. We traced it to one of his toes. It has DNA, a three-base version, I might add. It’s interesting that fungus collected from this planet is also base three, but this fungus’s DNA doesn’t match anything here. Not even close.”

“Hold it,” Jacques said. “This body has evidence of alien pathogens.”

“That’s what I said.” Professor Labao did not take questioning well.

“No, excuse me, Professor, what I mean is that this body arrived at its death location carrying something that is alien to this planet. In this case, it was fungus, and the local biota seems to be handling it well. But in other cases, it might be much more deadly. Your Highness, I may have an explanation as to why the tribes local to the glass plain are not very friendly to each other. It may also explain why the other tribes don’t want to have anything to do with any of them, either.”

“They come from different disease pools,” Kris said, drawing her own conclusion. “It must be like the encounter by the natives of the Americas with the European disease pool. They had nothing to match it and lost in the trade. These folks here fear each other because the occasional encounter in the past has led to pandemic.”

“Exactly,” the professor said. “None of them appears equipped with anything close to modern medical treatments. Once a new bacteria or virus gets free here, it could wreak havoc.”

“Okay, now what about the clothes on the dead body?” Kris said.

“Machine woven, of that we are sure. The fiber has been heavily processed, it’s more a synthetic than a natural cloth. It doesn’t match anything in our database.”

“I wouldn’t expect it to,” Kris said, but she was losing herself in thought.

“We look like them,” she said softly.

“Yes,” the professor answered. “We have filmed them bathing, and, ah, procreating. We are very similar. This verifies the initial reports from your first encounter as well as the bodies we were able to examine from your captured ship.”

“So, if we were to slip out from all our different technology, we might pass ourselves off as one of them.”

“I don’t like where this is going,” Jack said, clearly not willing to let his husbandly role suppress his security-chief duties. Or maybe the husband gig was reinforcing the job.

“If we could make contact with one of these groups,” Kris said. “Get them talking to us . . .”

“Yes,” Jack said, “but as soon as we started talking, they’d know we weren’t from here and they’d be trying to claw our eyes out with their fingernails.”

“Are you sure, Jack?” Kris asked. “These people were marooned here by some sort of high-tech society for some reason. Have we found the dissenters from the highly regimented crews of those ships? If we could talk to them, would they tell us what is going on here?”

“A great idea, Admiral,” the Marine colonel said, “but it seems to me that you’ve jumped from A to L to Z. Shouldn’t we look at some of the stuff in between to make sure it fits your conclusion?”

“Yes, oh wise Security Chief,” Kris said, keeping it formal in a formal setting. In another time and place, he might have rated a stuck-out tongue. “Let’s see what more we can find. Do you have anything else, Professor?”

He did.

“As Nelly had suspected, at least three areas of the planet have been subjected to heavy laser attack in recent times and likely from space. One of them may have been as recent as ten thousand years ago. We found evidence of cobbled roads and the rusted remains of ironwork in the areas around that most recent site. We did not find evidence of recent occupation. Indeed, the locals steered clear of that bay and the upland valley.”

“You develop technology and you get zapped by Zeus’s lightning,” Jack observed.

“No wonder that tribe didn’t want to be anywhere close to where our shuttle was making noise and leaving contrails,” Kris said.

“If this is the home world of the aliens,” Penny said, “it appears they have not abandoned it.”

“They’re protecting it,” Jacques said, “from modern technology, or so it seems.”

“And will very likely protect them from us, if they find us here,” Kris added. “Okay, crew. Is it safe down there?”

“We’ve done our best to avoid contact,” the professor said. “However, there have been no attacks on our survey base camps. We have, of course, located them in remote locations in the hope of not encouraging any such attacks.”

“Then I want to see what’s in that pyramid,” Kris said. “Jack, you figure out a way for me to get down there safely in some manner that won’t get your panties in a twist.”

“Aye, aye, my Lord and Iron Mistressness,” he said.