Redoubtable (20 page)

“If I get home, I’ll never do anything I’m not supposed to do ever again,” she promised, and opened her eyes.

Her right hand was cuffed. The chain from the cuff ran through a ring welded to the wall. The cuff at the other end of the chain was clamped onto a young woman’s left hand.

That woman, a sailor by her uniform, had taken most of the slack so that she could get close to a young man, another sailor, who was chained to the next ring over. He’d reached over so he could hold her with his one free hand. He stroked her hair, and whispered “It will be okay. Don’t worry, it will work out.”

Cara wished someone would hold her and tell her things would come out okay. It would be a lie, but just now, she sure would like the chance to believe it for a few minutes.

On the other side of Cara, two men who looked enough alike to be brothers were arguing in some language she didn’t understand. That didn’t mean she couldn’t follow them. Clearly, one of them blamed the other for the mess they were in. The other one just stared up at the overhead.

The room was round, probably the middle spindle of a starship. Around the bulkhead, pairs of people repeated similar reactions to their plight. In a few instances, couples had children cuffed to their ankles. One woman held a tiny baby close. It slept.

Reinforcing Cara’s guess that this was a starship was the central tube going from floor to ceiling. She was willing to bet that it was an elevator to allow movement from the bridge at the bow to the engineering space at the stern. Backing that up was a ladder welded to the tube. A hatch was dogged onto the deck by the ladder. On the overhead was its mate. Yep, it was the fore-aft passage for some ship.

Cara held her free hand out, then let it drop. It certainly was heavier than normal, about an extra twenty-five percent of normal gravity. That was what the
Wasp
put on when the princess was in a hurry. Or when the Marines needed the extra exercise, as Uncle Bruce would put it.

So, she was on a merchant ship, running fast. Even Cara knew that a merchie usually went at less than a full-gee acceleration. For some reason, this ship was in a hurry to get somewhere.

Or was it in a hurry to get away from somewhere?

Cara would dearly like to think that.

She did another look around the room. This time she was looking for what she’d missed the first time. Where was the food? Her stomach was grumbly. She was also thirsty, but she saw no water.

Then she really did a serious search. There was no bathroom!

She pulled her knees up to her chin and repeated, “Marines don’t leave anyone behind. Uncle Bruce will come for me.”

She hoped he came soon, or even that this ship got to where it was going to in such a hurry before she really, really needed to go to the bathroom.

27

Lieutenant
Victoria Peterwald arrived in the admiral’s barge, complete with admiral. Leading it down was a Greenfeld longboat that off-loaded one Wardhaven Marine for every Greenfeld one on it. Lieutenant Stubben had brought along dress red and blues for Jack, Gunny, and the rest of the initial detachment, so Kris actually ended up with a slightly larger honor guard than Admiral Krätz did, or more correctly, his communications lieutenant.

He didn’t seem to care. What he did check on was the half dozen civilians who met with Jack and examined the security perimeter with him. Only after they nodded approval did the admiral seem to relax a tad.

Kris was glad to leave security for other people to worry about so she could concentrate on what she did best. War by social means.

While Kris changed into dress whites, complete with full medals and all other gewgaws required of her, Mannie disappeared. When Kris exited the small office at city hall that she’d claim for a dressing room, Mannie was waiting in white tie and full tucker.

“You look most dashing,” Kris told him.

“You look like a birthday cake with too much icing,” he said, taking her in. “I hope none of those bobbles you’re wearing hurt a lot to acquire.”

Kris smiled at a civilian’s reactions to her military honors. “Most didn’t hurt me,” she said.
Not a lot.
“But you wouldn’t want to see the other guy.”

“No doubt,” he said, and hurried on. “I have someone I want you to meet, my grandmama.” The woman he introduced Kris to really was the same woman Jack had been seriously trying to run down that morning!

“You took your gray-haired grandmother on a black ops mission!” Kris said, incredulously.

“He most certainly did,” the woman replied before her grandson could. “Once he made it clear how he intended to box you in, it was clear to me that a woman with your good repute would never let harm come to a fine woman of culture. I couldn’t very well have Mannie cruising the old folks’ home for some poor woman barely able to stand on her own two feet. It needed doing, and I could very well do it
my
self.”

“Kind of hard to argue with Grandmama,” Mannie said.

“And besides,” the elderly woman continued, “it was not a black ops. The sun was coming up. It was more like a dawn ops.”

Kris eyed Mannie. He shook his head.

“She knows very well what we are talking about,” he said. “She just hates it when slang disfigures an otherwise perfect language.”

“Say what you mean, boy, and do what you say.”

“That’s what I hope we are doing today, Grandmama. Now, if you’ll let me have the princess, I think we’re about ready to start.”

“Are you married?” Grandmama asked, not letting go of Kris’s elbow.

“No, ma’am,” Kris admitted.

Mannie had one of Kris’s elbows and was pointing her toward the stage. Grandmama had the other elbow and showed no willingness to either let go or move with them.

“Do you need any help?” Jack asked, the pure professionalism of his perfect uniform marred only by the smirk on his face.

“I could use a hand,” Kris admitted.

Jack clapped his two white-gloved palms together.

“Do you have any granddaughters?” Kris asked.

Grandmama’s eyes lit up. “I’ve been blessed with three of the loveliest granddaughters an old woman could ever wish for,” she said proudly.

“Jack’s not married,” Kris said, managing to get the elderly woman’s hand off her elbow and into Jack’s hands.

Jack’s smirk vanished, to be replaced with a scowl of biblical proportions.

Free at last, Kris followed Mannie toward the stage. As Grandmama pulled pictures from her purse, Jack struggled manfully to free himself from the white-haired woman . . . and failed.

Kris found herself maneuvered up three steps onto a dais. In front of her was a table with three copies of the new charter laid out in all their medieval splendor. There were three chairs and three inkwells with quill pens beside them. Vicky had already taken the center seat.

From the way Mannie’s eyebrows flicked up, Kris suspected he’d intended that seat for himself. He recovered quickly enough, the perfect picture of what Kris’s father often muttered under his breath. “Nothing is impossible . . . if it doesn’t matter who gets the credit for it.”

Clearly, Mannie was willing to do anything, so long as he got the signatures he wanted on those pieces of parchment.

Mannie pulled out Kris’s chair and seated her to Vicky’s right, then went around to stand behind the chair on his overlord’s daughter’s left.

“Friends and people of Sevastopol, we are gathered together here to formalize a new day for all of us. Today, we will establish a new future for us and our children. A future of hope and prosperity.” Kris wondered how long he would go on, but he seemed aware that often, less was more, especially when he hadn’t really had a chance to find out from Vicky if there were any unresolved issues that in their haste to get on to the next crisis, the charter was merely papering over.

He sat. The audience clapped. There were fifty to a hundred here, mostly harried civil servants who had been hauled away from their desks for this momentous occasion . . . with a few businessmen and -women hurriedly added to the mix.

Vicky rose when the room fell silent. “For my father,” she began, “I come to wish you success in all your lawful endeavors. I look forward to the future of the Greenfeld Alliance as a new generation takes its place in building a prosperous tomorrow for all of us.”

The applause this time was more subdued. The eyes of many went around the room. Marines in Greenfeld green and black stood along the wall, alternating with Wardhaven red and blue. If anyone found the blend unusual, no one risked a remark on it.

Now it was Kris’s turn. She stood and smiled pleasantly at the audience. Jack now stood close to the steps, Abby at his elbow.
Keep it short and simple, stupid
was in their eyes. Kris broadened her smile for them.
Message received and understood.

“I would like to thank Lieutenant Victoria Smythe-Peterwald and Mayor Manuel Artamus for their mutual invitation to serve as witness to this momentous occasion. I hope that long after we have passed from this stage, our ancestors will point to the work that we do here today, and say, ‘That was well done. That was a gift for the ages.’ ”

That appeared to please everyone, both in the audience and up on the dais. The crowd’s applause for Kris’s speech was somewhere in the middle between Mannie’s reception and Vicky’s.

When the applause died down, Vicky reached for a quill, dipped it in the inkwell and applied it to the paper. She took the first available line.

Mannie signed in the same place on his copy of the charter.

Oops,
Kris thought. That will make for interesting historical comments. Kris signed her copy in last place.

She tried.

She’d never actually used a quill pen. It took her two tries to get enough ink up the quill for it to make any mark on the charter. Then it took her three refills to get enough ink to finish Princess Kristine Longknife. Well, it was a long name.

Apparently Vicky had no problem. She got all three of her formal names down with only one pass at the inkwell.

Jack stepped up to the dais. He rolled a blotter over Kris’s signature, then moved her parchment gingerly over to Vicky’s place. A Greenfeld commander did the same for Vicky, moving it to Mannie. A white-tie-and-tails young man did the same for Mannie, bringing his copy to Kris. If she wasn’t mistaken, it was Danny from this morning’s raid, the one who had taken Grandmama home.

Apparently, he was a young man of many skills.

They went through the drill again. Kris had better luck with the quill; her signature looked rather decent on this copy. She noticed that Vicky was quick to sign at the top of the available space. Two of the three copies would give her that place of precedence.

Hopefully, two out of three would please her dad. On second thought, with all the copies signed, there was no reason why Mannie’s copy ever had to leave Sevastopol. With luck, what other people never knew would not upset anyone’s applecart.

By the third document, Kris could actually sign her name with a flourish. Not only did she get better, but the quill seemed to adapt itself to her penmanship.

There was applause when they finished, which probably had nothing to do with Kris’s feeling of accomplishment at having mastered an obsolete form of writing. Everyone smiled, and Danny collected all the copies to roll them up and distribute one to Vicky and another to Kris. The third copy was quickly framed in a waiting bit of ornate woodwork and mounted for display for all present to ooh and aah over.

For a day that had begun in the dark in so very many ways, Kris felt like she’d accomplished rather a lot.

Then she frowned as she remembered all she had left to do.

And quickly swallowed her frown lest it be misunderstood on this momentous occasion.

A select few were allowed up on the dais to shake hands with the mayor and his collection of visiting celebrities. Kris shook several hands, acknowledged several names she would never remember, and was about to nudge Jack to get her out of there.

At that moment, Kris caught sight of something flashing, metal and sharp out of the corner of her eye.

Vicky was at Kris’s left elbow, somehow she’d become last in the receiving line. A middle-aged gray fox of a woman who had given Kris a weak handshake suddenly was very vigorously yanking a knife from her small purse and doing her best to plant it in Vicky’s throat.

Jack was making sure she had very little luck in her endeavor. He’d stepped forward in a flash, half-past Kris, reached for the arm with the offending blade, and just as quickly yanked the woman through the receiving line and into the waiting arms of Gunny Brown.

The Gunnery Sergeant clamped one arm around the woman, locking her knife-wielding arm to her side. His other arm covered her mouth so solidly that not so much as a whimper escaped. Holding her a good six inches off the ground, Gunny quickly walked the woman out of sight to the back of the dais.

This was all done so quickly and efficiently that if you weren’t to the right or left of the woman, you very likely didn’t know something untoward had happened.

Mannie did. With quick eye movements, he directed Danny toward the action. The young man went quickly.

“What was that about?” Vicky hissed under her breath to Kris.

“Nothing at all if you can manage to not notice it.”

“Should I?” Vicky asked.

“In a few moments, you and I will slip away from here, never to return. I don’t know what caused that poor woman to do what she just did, but I doubt that she will ever be a threat to you or anyone else again. The call is up to you.”

Vicky seemed to consider that as she shook two more hands. Two Greenfeld Marines and one of the civilians who looked even bigger and meaner moved toward the clump of people at the back of the dais. Vicky made eye contact with them and firmly shook her head.

“I think Maggie will be proud of you,” Kris said.

“My dad wouldn’t.”

“Do you want to be your dad?”

“You come up with the darnedest things to think about,” Vicky whispered back.

Admiral Krätz broke into the receiving line. “I hate to be a wet blanket on these celebrations, but there are matters in the fleet that must be taken care of,” was all he had to say to get people moving away from his lieutenant. Mannie offered one more round of thanks to them and announced a reception to be held in the rotunda.

Since Danny had been last seen slipping the knife-wielding woman out the back of the room, Mannie had to take charge of moving the framed copy of the charter out to the rotunda, where more people could see it.

Even with Kris and Vicky guarded by Marines two deep, Grandmama managed to slip in to thank Kris for coming. “You really should stay for the party. I and several of the girls have made homemade ice cream. It will be very nice.”

Kris expressed her regrets, but Jack made sure she never missed a step. For once, even Grandmama was outmaneuvered.

“How are things going topside?” Kris asked, once she, Vicky, and the admiral were in a limo headed for the admiral’s barge.

“Very thoroughly,” the admiral got in before Nelly could begin her own report. “Unfortunately, it is not producing what we want.”

“Sergeant Bruce, Chesty, and the Marine techs have turned the jewelry store upside down,” Nelly began. “The admiral was able to provide us with DNA samples for most of the sailors who recently went missing from his ships. Several of them had gone through the store. The rest had clearly been in a bar next door owned by the same businessman.”

“And the businessman?” Kris asked.

“Is nowhere to be found,” the admiral growled. “Neither he nor any of his four associates.”

“When did they leave the station?” Jack asked.

“According to all our travel logs, they never left it,” Nelly said.

“That’s not good,” Vicky said.

“No, and it doesn’t get any better,” Nelly went on. “By the time we got to the network-services office on the station, there was a small fire fast growing into a large one. We quickly doused it. The best tech boffins on the
Wasp
are going through the wreckage now, but it looks like all the storage devices were professionally wiped before they were given over to the flames.”

“And the people running the place?” Kris asked, as she stepped from the limo and headed for the gangplank to the shuttle bobbing beside the wharf.

“Ran,” the admiral snapped, moving quickly on his own to follow Kris. “Gone from the office. From the station. From heavens knows where all.”

“I hate it when the bad guys are so good at what they do,” Kris muttered.

“Good at bad, this crew is,” Nelly agreed.

“People don’t just vanish,” Jack said as he boarded the barge. Dave the businessman was already there, ahead of them. He was cuffed to the aft-most seat in the palatial surroundings one would expect on an admiral’s barge.

“Unless there’s a stack of bodies hidden somewhere on the station, these people have fled. Is a shuttle missing? Did one pull out that the harbormaster missed or was paid to look the other way for?” Jack asked.