Kris Longknife: Tenacious (Kris Longknife novellas Book 12) (18 page)

~Where you go, we will follow. All of us.~

~Good.~ The fight was worth the blood.

Kris
woke up the next morning, hurting in a lot more places than her shoulder.

Jack put an arm over her.

“Ouch. Be careful.”

“I avoided your cut.”

“That little woman was packing a lot of wallop in her hits. I don’t think the spider silk is quite calibrated to handle blunt-force trauma.”

“It serves you right for trying to be the hero. Single combat to resolve all our differences? I thought that was just a guy thing.”

“You enjoy watching two cute chicks going at it?” Kris shot back. With a grin.

“That mean old biddy is not a cute chick. And you, my love, are never cute. And never, ever, a chick.”

“I’m not?” Kris’s grin was long gone.

“No. You are lovely, drop-dead gorgeous, a stunning beauty, but cute is for our little daughter. And as for a chick. You are an admiral, viceroy, and most fighting captain in the king’s Navy. Chicks are for young things that don’t have any experience under their belts.”

Kris made a face at him. “I’ll give you a 3.9 out of 4 for recovery on that one.”

“Would you like to do something before we shower?” Jack asked.

“Love, I’d love to do something before we shower but I have a bad feeling that if I try, I’ll have a whole lot of bad feelings.”

“Where are the painkillers?” Jack asked.

Sal told him, and Jack headed for the bathroom to return with two white tablets.

“You don’t mind a rain check, do you?”

“I’ve got the shower changing into a nice warm tub of water for us to soak your aches and pains in,” Jack said. “Ain’t the Smart Metal app wonderful?”

They arrived for breakfast late, just as the wardroom was emptying of Navy and filling with scientists. Captain Drago was filling a cup of coffee to take with him, but he dropped into the chair across from Kris. Once again, Jack was getting her chow.

“That was quite a fight you put up,” the skipper said with a broad grin.

“You watched?”

“The drop bay is on the surveillance-camera system. I think the whole crew watched.”

“All of it?” Kris asked with a raised eyebrow.

“Right up to the where you started your striptease. Then I killed the feed. How did it turn out?”

“I’ve got a cut on my shoulder that bled very freely and very red. We now have twenty new recruits.”

“Hmm,” he said, and sipped his coffee thoughtfully. “How do you think they’ll take it when they find out that we’re at war with their Sky Gods or whatever they call the star walkers?”

“A good question. I guess we’ll find out soon enough.”

“Before we break orbit?”

“No. We need to educate these folks a lot more before we take them that far.”

“And after we’ve educated them, what if they want to switch sides?”

“I’ll blow up that bridge when I come to it.”

“Spoken like a true Longknife. By the way, how is that kid coming along? The sick one that started all this?”

“I’m waiting to hear from Doc Meade,” Kris said.

“Speak of a walking miracle and who walks in,” Drago said. “Good Morning, Doctor.”

“Yes, it is. I’m finally going to get some sleep.”

Kris turned to see a very exhausted woman stumbling toward the coffee urn.

“How is the young boy?”

“On the mend,” she said. “Otherwise, I would not see any prospects for sleep. His fever broke two hours ago. His other vitals are back in what is the normal range for these folks. I had him on double the dosage we tested on human kids of his weight, and that’s what it took to beat this. Those extra proteins must be doing something for them, but what it is, I have no idea.”

“So they’re a mystery to us,” Kris said.

“But becoming less of a mystery by the minute. I think you’ll find very interesting some news I was just told.”

The skipper made to leave.

“Hang around a bit. I think you’ll enjoy this bit of rumor.”

Captain Drago sat back down.

“One of my associates finished an autopsy on the woman who killed herself yesterday. No, day before yesterday. My hours are all messed up. Anyway, they are maddening. Very like us, but not, you know.”

“No I don’t, but I’m listening,” Kris said. Her body hurt, and she was hungry. Maybe she was a bit cranky.

“Their brain is so much like ours, but different,” the doc said. “So very different in some major ways and a lot of minor ways. I’ll keep this simple. There’s this part of the human brain where we think resides the ability to see yourself as part of something larger. Some people call it the ‘God Part’ of the brain.”

“I’ve heard of it,” Captain Drago said.

“Well, we found a portion of that woman’s brain that’s atrophied. Not used at all, and if I’m guessing right, I think it’s the part of their brain that does that.”

Kris puzzled that over for a few moments. “Could that be why what we see down dirtside is a lot of small groups?”

“With a strange lack of any concept of something bigger than themselves,” Doc Meade said. “Yes, they talk of the Sky Gods, but I don’t think they think of them the way traditional humans think of their God.”

“Their creation story even had their Sky ‘Gods’ as just like them until they chose to walk the stars,” Captain Drago said.

“You listened to the song?” Kris asked.

“No, I found it long and boring, but I did get Dr. la Duke’s executive summary. Did our researchers find any hint of a divine something down there?”

“It was conspicuous by its absence,” Kris said. “Even when looking at the potential death of her grandson, the woman with the stick could only talk about a ‘will’ that meant he must go down into the ground.”

“Nothing but fatalism, huh,” the skipper said. “What does that mean for us and the spacefaring raiders?”

Kris frowned and turned to the doctor.

“Ever hear,” Doc Meade said, “of a line that went, ‘All people are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights: the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness’?”

“Father says it regularly,” Kris said, “although I think the original was ‘all men were created equal.’”

“I got it from my mom,” the doctor said, “whichever way it went, it says basically the same thing. People have the right to throw off a tyrant. It’s our God-given right. Now subtract God from that equation. Where do your basic human rights come from?”

“I know plenty of atheists who would take offense at that,” Captain Drago said.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to start a fight, but where do you get the right to freedom if the powerful have their boot on your neck, like that woman who killed herself? If there is no sense of something greater, beyond just us, some higher moral good, what have you got?”

“Ten thousand years of slavery before the folks from that planet below rose up in a killing rage,” Captain Drago said.

“And a hundred thousand years of zooming around the galaxy,” Kris said, “flattening anything that might become a threat to you, while everyone follows the ‘Enlightened One’ because he’s the enlightened one and has the Black Hats to throw you out on your ass if you don’t follow orders.”

“A horrible thought,” Doc Meade said.

“Any suggestion as to how we reactivate the ‘God Part’ of the aliens’ brains?” Kris asked.

“I’d like to convert this hypothesis to something closer to a theory, Admiral. I plan to run the little boy through a battery of tests today. Among the ones he needs, I’m going to slip in a full brain scan. After that, I intend to ask for volunteers for more tests. I’ve got legitimate reasons to build up a medical database for them. If they get injured or sick, I’ll need it to know what to do for them.”

“Do it, Doctor,” Kris said. “I never thought I’d be contemplating biological warfare through genetic manipulation, but it sure beats the idea of having to slaughter every last one of them.”

“And how do you propose to get close enough to them to apply this biological warfare?” Captain Drago asked.

“First, she confirms her theory, then I’ll drop the problem in the lap of my flag captain,” Kris said with a wicked grin.

Drago stood up. “Jack, you better feed this woman. She’s evil when she’s hungry.”

“She’s evil when she’s fed,” Jack said.

“She’s a Longknife,” the doctor said. “They are born evil.”

“Thank you, thank you, thank you,” Kris said, reaching for a bran muffin. “You say the nicest things to me.”

Kris
was careful what she did that day. Despite the painkillers, she hurt. She checked on the retrieval of the scientific teams. More sensor pods had been knocked together and Sailors trained on them.

There were no more surprises.

Indeed, no one tried to surprise them.

The testing of the young boy, now well on the mend, caused no problems with his parents. Indeed, they wanted to be tested just like him. When Kris asked how the testing was going, the doctor who had replaced Doc Meade while she got some well-earned rest suggested the admiral look over someone else’s shoulder.

“You tend to your knitting, Admiral, and we’ll tend to knitting bones and muscles.”

Kris asked Nelly’s help to locate Jacques, and found him and Amanda combing through a huge list of research results, hunting for any reference to something like a divine being. So far, all it yielded was null data.

“You think Doc Meade is onto something?” Kris asked.

“We’ll know when we have more data,” the anthropologist said, giving Kris an answer she very definitely did not want to hear.

Kris headed back for the drop bay. She avoided the people standing around the med center, waiting to be tested, and edged over to the hatch that led out into darkness.

There she found the bald woman, sitting cross-legged, staring at the moon.

“Nelly, could you make us a bench?”

One rose from the deck.

~You only say a word, and even the ground does your will.~

~It is a craft,~ Kris said. ~We have the craft to make all that you see. We can change it.~

~You do not make all that I see. Not the moon. Not . . .~ Here she paused, and glanced at the planet below. ~Is that what was beneath my feet all the days of my life?~

~We are very far away. That makes it small.~

~As when my husband walks to me from out on the great prairie. Far off, he is no bigger than the ant at my feet. He gets closer and grows.~

~But he is always the same.~

~Is he?~

Kris measured all the potential questions in those two words and didn’t try to answer any of them.

A longboat dropped away from the
Royal
above the
Wasp
. The old woman watched it intently. Another was on approach for the
Wasp
.

~Men, in them, like a cave that flies like a bird.~

Kris nodded.

~But not.~

~Yes, but not,~ Kris agreed.

~What heart beats in your chest?~

~One like yours,~ Kris said, bringing her hand up to her chest, then pointing to the woman’s. ~My blood is red.~

~Your blood is red,~ the woman agreed. ~The men, down there. What do they hunt?~

Unfortunately, in their tongue, “what” was not a word, but an inflection of hunt. Kris could find no way to answer that. N
ELLY?

I
’M STUMPED, TOO,
K
RIS.

H
OW A
BOUT THAT, THESE PRIM
ITIVES STUMPED A COM
PUTER.

K
RIS, THAT’S NO
T FAIR.

S
ORRY,
N
ELLY, N
O IT ISN’T.
I
T’S JUST
FRUSTRATING ME.

~We hunt to see what we see. Why do men walk over a mountain?~ Kris tried.

~Men do not walk over a mountain. Other men live over the mountain. Men with clubs.~

~So we hide and look from between the leaves.~

The woman sniffed. ~You hide like little baby. We saw you. If you had taken one fish, one animal, we would have hit your head so hard.~

~So we ate our own food. You like our own food?~

~It taste strange. My stomach.~ She rubbed it. ~No tree to go behind. Your ground strange.~

Kris bet the
Wasp
’s deck, and, no doubt, its Sailors were none too happy if these natives were using it for a latrine.

N
ELLY, HAS ANYONE SHOWN ONE O
F THEM HOW TO USE TH
E HEAD?

G
UNNY TRIED T
O GET IT ACROSS TO T
HE OLD MAN.
H
E THOUGH
T IT WAS A JOKE.
G
UNN
Y IS STILL WORKING O
N IT.

Another point for failure and potential conflict. What had Kris gotten herself into?

Be careful what you wish for. You may get it.

Kris tried another track. ~Your son’s son will hunt again.~

~Yes,~ the woman said, shaking her head. ~What will he hunt?~

~There is much to see among the stars,~ Kris offered.

~Our mothers of old chose our path long ago. We chose not to walk the stars.~ Now she was nodding up and down. ~The stars were not meant for our feet.~

~I hope your heart will be gladdened by what you see among the stars,~ Kris said.

She left the woman nodding at the stars.

N
ELLY, COULD
YOU GET A CAMERA SET
UP TO FOLLOW WHEREV
ER THAT WOMAN GOES?
I
THINK WE MAY NEED A
BETTER SUICIDE WATC
H THAN THE LAST ONE
WE HAD.

I
’LL SET UP T
HE CAMERA AND WATCH
IT MYSELF,
K
RIS.

G
OOD.

Kris found that she had done just about all that she could for the moment. Maybe it was true that officers were superfluous to a Navy run well by its chiefs. She’d given all the orders she needed. She’d read just about all the reports she could stand, and everything was humming along smoothly.

She had Nelly check with Sal on what Jack was doing.

And found out that Jack did, indeed have a job. He was checking out each landing team to make sure it had the right equipment. Neither he nor Gunny intended to have another team ambushed. He was also making sure that there were always Marines in the drop bay. The natives might be little and have only stone knives, but he wasn’t about to lose the
Wasp
to them running amuck.

Indeed, everyone was busy except their boss. Kris considered sticking her nose in where it wasn’t wanted or needed. However, she’d read about bosses who were like that and sworn she’d never be like them. She had expected to have some more fun as a junior officer before being locked away in Admiral Country. However, Longknifes never did it the right way.

“Nelly, draw me a warm bath. I could use another soak.”

“That sounds like a very good idea, Kris.”