Kris Longknife 13 - Unrelenting (24 page)

“And the Roosters would much rather have the jobs and earnings than let the Ostriches take them,” Jack added.

“You got it in one. Ada had a team of Roosters and colonials meet with the associations in that area and they’ve given us a real, honest-to-goodness land grant. We’ve marked off the land, and we’ll own it, under the colonial traditions, not the Rooster way of doing things.”

“You going to have someone mention this to the folks I just promised a few rifles and ammunition to?” Kris asked.

“You bet.”

“Does this smell as bad to you as it does to me?” Jack asked.

“You offering them whiskey as well?” Kris asked, fixing Pipra with a thunderous scowl.

“No. I’m not that dumb, working with a Longknife.”

“Good, because I am the Viceroy of this place, and I will cancel any contract that crosses my desk that takes advantage of the Alwans.”

“Can you define ‘takes advantage’?” Pipra asked.

“I’ll know it when I see it,” Kris growled.

“I think I’ve brought my boss up to date. I better get to work, so I’ll have something to brief her on tomorrow,” Pipra said, collecting her papers.

“You do that.”

“When will the
Intrepid
be back?” Pipra asked Amber as she was leaving.

“When it’s back,” Kris’s senior subordinate admiral growled.

Kris eyed Amber. “The
Intrepid
is bringing in a load of ammonia,” she said. “Carbon composites need feedstock.”

“But using the Navy?” Jack said.

“You don’t think the Sailors and officers are doing their own land-office business?” Amber said. “Kris, you’ve sent Sailors and Marines down to help the fisheries and farmers. They’ve gone hunting and done just about anything to keep their minds off the lack of beer. But when the day is done, they haven’t got a lot to show for their efforts but some blisters and maybe sunburns. Admiral, your command is very much looking forward to putting down roots on this planet. Of having something to fight for next time they have to fight.”

“Be it ever so endangered, there’s no place like home,” Kris muttered.

“Yes. Phil Taussig tells me he’s bringing his wife and kid out here. You think they’re going to set up housekeeping in some corner of the station?”

“He talked to you about that?”

“Yep,” Kitano said. “He had already looked for some land around the colony. There wasn’t any. He’s tickled about this Big River thing. They want to name it the Mississippi. It means Father of Waters in some Earth language.”

“We may have to ask the Alwans,” Kris said.

“Their word for it is just ‘big wet’ and we can’t pronounce it. So, yes, I loaned out a frigate that was already out and passed up a load of reaction mass that I can get next trip.” Kitano eyed the economist. “Amanda, you better figure out how to compare Navy pay with industrial pay and who gets to buy what. If my folks can’t have an even run at production, I’ll demand either a lottery or rationing.”

Kris found herself rubbing her eyes, tired already this morning. “I’m thinking lottery, with one ticket for each one in the farming group.”

“A ten-person farm get ten tickets. Six people get six?”

“That sounds about right. Each ticket gets one set of farm gear.”

“This is going to be a real pain,” Jack said.

“And I foresee all kinds of social stress,” Jacques tossed in. “There’s a reason why we prefer a market-driven economy.”

“Don’t I know it,” Kris said. “My father hammered that into me at his knee, but how do you start a market economy when there’s not enough to meet demand?”

“Well, no doubt the fab workers have got a lot more of this thing called money in the bank than my Sailors do,” Amber growled.

“We’ll work it out,” Kris said. “So, Admiral, have you heard anything from that system that seemed to hold the raiders in its thrall?”

“Bethea’s headed back. She’s done a full survey of the place and dropped off pickets three jumps farther out. So far, nothing to report.”

“So we wait,” Kris said.

“Hopefully, for the longest time,” Jack said.

“Yes,” came from everyone around them.

36

So
they waited.

Nelly turned part of the wall across from Kris’s side of the bed into a calendar, counting down the days until baby’s big day. Kris didn’t need to be told when her first trimester ended. She woke up one morning with a happy tummy and eager lady bits.

Jack’s bones got jumped before he had a chance to make a move for the milk and cookies.

“I take it that morning sickness isn’t a problem today?” he said later, looking up at Kris.

“Not today. Hopefully not again, knock on wood,” and she tapped his head with her knuckles.

Kris’s stomach wasn’t the only thing a lot happier. The Local Roots Initiative got off to a good start. As it turned out, it was a good thing they came up with the idea of sending Kris’s new arrivals dirtside for some work. A lot of colonials were looking for jobs in orbit.

The farm equipment King Ray had shipped out with the first wave of reinforcements proved sufficient to feed all the immigrants from human space. It was a close run thing, but the crops came in before the food they brought ran out.

The second harvest that year would provide a surplus.

If they kept planting at the rate they were going, they’d be buried under a mound of food.

Three out of four colonials had been working their arms off, trying to raise enough food for all of them. Now, one in ten was enough.

There was a major labor surplus.

So they, as well as Roosters and Ostriches, were hitchhiking rides up to the station looking for work. This might have
caused trouble, but a lot of the farm co-ops realized they needed help if they were to make a serious go of it.

“You teach me how to farm, and I’ll show you how to keep this dang machine from screwing up,” became the contract among a lot of work groups.

It also worked aboard ship.

So things changed faster than Kris had expected. No doubt, there would be pinching and pulling, but for now, there was plenty of goodwill to go around.

Furthermore, no one wanted a ride home. No one except the two that had finally gone back to shoveling bird guano in order to eat.

Kris was ready to send Phil Taussig’s
Hornet
and the
Endeavor
on their way. She was walking to the
Hornet
’s berth, when Admiral Kitano buzzed her.

“You about to send Phil back home?” the admiral said.

“Yes.”

“How about you and him come to my flag plot instead.”

“We got problems?”

“You look at the report and tell me, Admiral Longknife.”

Oops.
When Kris was Admiral Longknife, there was trouble in the wind.

“Nelly, have Phil meet me at the
Hornet
’s brow.”

“He’s on his way, Kris.”

“You want to tell me what’s got Amber’s panties in a twist?” Kris asked her computer.

“She got a message from the Beta Jump Buoy in a code I can’t easily decipher. You want me to crack it?”

“If you think you can in the next five minutes,” Kris said. “Otherwise, we’ll know soon enough.”

“It’s a single-use cipher, and only a few number groupings. I can control my curiosity,” Nelly said.

Phil saluted Kris at the bottom of his own gangplank. “I thought you were coming to see me.”

“That was the plan. Admiral Kitano thinks you and I need to see something before you shove off.”

“Hmm,” was all he said. Kitano had been his XO a long two years ago. A lot of water had gone under the bridge since then. Good for her, not so good for him. Still, he was alive and kicking, so it wasn’t all bad.

Together, they boarded the
Princess Royal
. In her flag plot, Kris found Amber staring at a screen. It was centered on the system the aliens seemed to find so interesting.

“Trouble?” Kris asked.

“Most likely not immediately,” Amber said. “We’ve lost two buoys, three out from the system. Two of the alien clans look to be headed for that system. If we’re reading the reactors right, it’s the same two clans headed for the same jumps they used last time.”

“Are they bringing the fleet?” Phil asked.

“Not that I can tell. It’s one fast scout each. Of course, once it shoots up the next jump buoy, I won’t know what’s behind him.”

Kris gnawed her lower lip. “So we wait, just like we’ve been waiting.”

“We wait,” Amber agreed

“You had this in a single-use code,” Kris said.

“I don’t want every comm watch in the fleet decoding stuff from that system. We’ve got colonials and even Roosters standing watches. I don’t want anyone going all flighty on me.”

“Good,” Kris said.

“I better be on my way,” Phil said. “Nothing’s changed. The settlers need reinforcements because the bad guys might be just around the corner.”

“True,” Kris said, and followed him back to his ship. She wished him and his crew Godspeed before dropping over to the
Endeavor
to wish the same to Captain O’dell and her crew. Since her crew again included both Roosters and Ostriches, human space was in for an experience. O’dell’s passengers included six of the older aliens Kris had recruited on the aliens’ home world.

With any luck, these aliens might allow humans to dig into their DNA and see how it had been bent to make them better slaves as well as how that might be untwisted. Whether that would make them friendlier was an unanswered question.

Meanwhile, the aliens would keep trying to kill every living thing in the galaxy not of their seed.

And Kris would keep killing them.

What a mess,
Kris thought as she went ashore. Even as
she left the docking bay,
Endeavor
was sliding down the pier, on her way to human space or self-destruction.

The aliens would not capture them. All they’d know was that they killed us as we killed them.

Kris patted her still-mostly-flat belly. “Somehow, my darling inconvenience, I will make all this better for you.”

37

Months
passed. Kris found herself wearing a tent, or feeling like she should be wearing one.
Can’t anyone design a comfortable maternity uniform?

NO, KRIS, BECAUSE NO WOMAN IS COMFORTABLE PREGNANT.

The amateur farmers put in their first crops, and returned sunburned, blistered, but smiling to their ships, fabs, mines and mills. To Kris’s surprise, the number of accidents went down, and production went up.

In the fleet, new hands shared the burden with old hands as half the crew went below and a mix of colonials, Roosters, and Ostriches tried their hands at keeping a frigate battle-ready.

Task force commanders exercised their ships with these mixed crews and found them at least minimally acceptable.

“With more practice, they’ll do better,” Admiral Kitano assured Kris. “We didn’t do all that well the first time out.”

“We were under the gun then as we are now,” Kris reminded herself.

“Look on the bright side. The yards have finished putting the crystal cladding on most of our ships and are now spinning out eight new frigates. That means promotion for our officers and a chance for some of these colonials and birds to try their hands as crew for these new warships.”

Kris nodded. On her desk were a hundred suggested names for those eight ships. Popular among them were the whimsical names the yard hands had fought the last time they defended this system:
Proud Unicorn
and
Lucky Leprechaun
had been lost with all hands;
Temptress
,
Fairy Princess
, and
Mischievous Pixie
had likely been snide references to Kris.
Kikukei
, or
Lucky Chrysanthemum
, had been the name the Kure Docks gave their ship.

Somebody kept sending in
King Raymond
I
and
Princess Kris
. Kris kept erasing them. Now
Trouble
was one name she was willing to fight beside, but who would want to fight in a ship with that name?

It was not that Kris was adverse to naming things. She and Jack had gone through a whole bag of baby names. Kris wanted her daughter to be Ruth, after Gramma Ruth, aka Gramma Trouble. Jack’s mother’s name was Maria, so Ruth Maria it was. Or Mary Ruth if Jack was talking. Kris was willing to make a peace offering to her own mother, so the poor baby’s name had grown to Ruth Maria Brenda and Jack always added Anne for Kris and also for Sara Anne, Trouble and Ruth’s daughter who had married Grampa Al . . . and paid for that mistake with her life far too soon.

So a girl would be Ruth Maria Brenda Anne.

Any boy would be John Junior for starters. Kris added William for her father. Jack wanted Raymond for obvious reasons. Kris was not about to make the poor child suffer through Terrence, though any son of hers would more than likely be Trouble at every chance.

John William Raymond was it for the boy so far.

Now that Kris was out of the first trimester and her stomach was back with the program, Kris had joined the
Wasp
’s pregnant women’s PT program. Every morning, without respite, the twenty-four of them were in the Forward Lounge doing their exercises. The girls were nice, though the first day or two had been a bit quiet. Once they realized the admiral was a woman just like them, with a baby on board, they’d gone back to their chatter and included Kris as well.

It was the first time Kris could remember being “just one of the girls.” It was fun. Dr. Meade had arranged for the first birthing class, which gave Kris and Jack a chance to meet the whole bunch together. Most of the future mothers had shown up with a man at their elbow. A few had girlfriends to help them through.

All of them seemed to have no limit to their joy.

Kris remembered one woman and took Doc Meade aside. “The young officer I saw leaving our office once. I haven’t seen her aboard.”

“No, she exchanged with one of the preggers who needed a billet on
Wasp
.”