Kris Longknife: Tenacious (Kris Longknife novellas Book 12) (3 page)

Kris
used the drive back to rehash Penny’s report. Nothing new, either exciting or terrifying, was added to her set of challenges. Penny and the
Endeavor
had played mouse at a cat’s convention that never got called to order, thank heaven.

The star-studded ceiling of one huge auditorium in the first alien base ship they blasted had shown what looked like a particular night sky. It had been repeated in the largest room of the monster warship that Kris had captured intact while rescuing the crew of the
Hornet
. In that fight, Kris had disabled their reactors. She’d hoped to get prisoners. Instead, the aliens opened every hatch to space, killing themselves.

Kris’s scientists were still trying to make sense of the alien machinery and gear. Someone had actually forwarded a report to Kris suggesting that maybe we shouldn’t worry so much about the aliens digging information out of our computers. Their technology looked nothing like ours, assuming we were guessing right about what they used for navigation and fire control.

That’s what the word meant. Aliens were,
ipso facto
, alien to our way of thinking.

However, based on Nelly’s assessment of the ceiling and projection of where and when that night sky might have sparkled down on a planet, Penny had been dispatched to look at six star systems.

The first three of which had showed nothing of interest. The next looked thoroughly beat-up. The fifth was full of questions. Penny had not gotten around to the sixth but raced for home. She arrived only to find home in the final desperate moments of a battle for survival that had cost the life of tens of billions of aliens and left the human colony on Alwa, as well as the Alwans themselves, with precious little time to prepare for the next attack.

Did Kris dare haul off a quarter or more of her defense so she could answer questions she didn’t yet know how to ask? And if she didn’t find out something about her enemy, would they and humanity find a way to stop the killing before one or the other was annihilated?

Once again, Kris found herself with few answers and a whole lot of questions.

She contacted the people who made up the next level in her way-too-small chain of command and began scheduling meetings.

The first meeting was already waiting for her at the end of the drive. Ada stood on the shady veranda of Government House, Granny Rita at her elbow. Officially, Granny Rita was Kris’s great-grandmother and retired. Any position she might hold was purely emeritus. Officially, Ada was the chief executive of a human colony of nearly two hundred thousand. However, Kris had made the mistake of giving Granny Rita a decent computer. Once the old gal got on net, she never missed out on anything interesting.

And to her, everything was interesting.

Ada was also not one to beat around the bush. “You think you’ve found the nest of these varmints that want to kill us?”

“We think so, but it doesn’t look anything like Earth,” Kris said, and let Penny repeat her brief.

“That is so far past strange, I don’t know what to say about it,” Granny Rita said, and left Ada with nothing else to do but shake her head.

“So, you’re going to go exploring,” the colonial chief added.

“It seems like a good idea, and I think we have time for it right now,” Kris admitted.

“Your absence won’t stop work on getting us farming, fishing, and other gear . . . or defensive preparations, will it?” Ada asked.

“You’ll keep doing what you’re doing,” Kris said. “Our fabricators on the moon and mines on the asteroids will keep producing the things you want. You’ll hardly miss me,” Kris said dryly.

Ada smiled at the lie. “I’ll touch base with that Pipra Strongarm woman and see what she can do to speed up our own efforts to get more land irrigated and under seed, more fish hauled out of the ocean, and more hunting parties into the deep woods for some real red meat. Good Lord, but what I’d give for a nice rare steak.”

“Wouldn’t we all,” Kris agreed.

Kris had thought that fighting aliens was her worst problem. Then she discovered that Alwa and the human colony had been living on the raw edge of starvation, surviving from one crop to the next and enduring empty bellies if the rains didn’t come on time. If Kris wanted to fight her fleet, she’d first have to find enough food to feed it. Initial steps had already been made. Matters were improving.

It would, however, take a whole lot more before Kris could take her food supply for granted. And she was hoping, preferably soon, to get more reinforcements.

How would she feed
them
?

“You talk to Pipra,” Kris said. “You have first call on boats, trucks, and anything you need to complete the new viaduct. Then we’ll try to manufacture some tractors to help with the planting.”

“When do we get the fourth reactor off the old
Furious
?” Granny Rita asked.

The
Furious
was Granny Rita’s old ship from the Iteeche Wars, the last survivor of her BatCruRon 16. It had languished in orbit for eighty years. Now one reactor was powering both colonial and Alwan electronic equipment and changing how they all lived. Two were powering moon fabricators so that their own reactors could be switched to ore carriers, and might have included some of the reactors blown to bits with the
Proud Unicorn
and
Lucky Leprechaun
, who hadn’t been all that lucky.

“We’re working on that reactor,” was all Kris could say. “It was cannibalized to get the other three going. We’ve ordered parts from our fabricators on the moon, but they don’t have specs for those items in their databases. It might be easier to just build a new thermonuclear reactor for you than get that one back up and running.”

“And what about spare parts for our working one,” Ada said. “And the two you stole for your moon bases? If you don’t have spare parts for the fourth one, you don’t have spare parts for them either.”

“I could be wrong,” Granny Rita said, “but I don’t think she wanted you asking that question. They can damn near make anything they got the specs for, but if they don’t have the specs, making something is well-nigh impossible, ain’t it great-granddaughter of mine?”

“Nothing’s changed in eighty years, Granny. The time it would take to haul the part out of one of the working reactors and get its specs, replace it, make it, and install it might just make it easier, in a few months, to replace what you got here.”

“If we’re a priority,” Ada said with a nasty look on her face.

“Ada, eating is just about the highest priority we’ve got,” Kris said. “Trust us, you’re a high priority.”

“Just so long as it stays that way.”

Glad to have that meeting over with no blood on the floor, Kris and her team headed for the dock and a captain’s gig that had lately been promoted to admiral’s barge for a ride up to Canopus Station.

Admiral Benson, retired once and reactivated recently to a commodore’s job, was waiting for Kris as her honorary barge pulled into the landing bay.

“I’ve got good news and bad news for you. Which do you want first?” the old sailorman said.

“The good news,” Kris said with a shrug.

“We’ve got twenty-three of the big frigates ready to answer bells if you need to fight.”

“Twenty-three!” Kris said. “But we had thirty-three left after you spun four of the emergency war wagons back into merchant ships? Where are the other ten?”

“That’s the bad news. Even the ships that survived took hits, hits that burned off their Smart Metal. We had some ships come in with nothing but a thin hull membrane keeping space out. If the fight had gone on for a few more broadsides, we would have lost them.”

“That wasn’t in your report a week ago,” Kris pointed out.

“I was busy spooling out what was left of the four frigates we spun together from eight merchant ships. You notice we only got seven back.”

“I was wondering about that,” Kris admitted. She’d wondered about it but asked no questions. “What about the new Smart Metal coming out of the foundries on the moon?”

“Ah, yes,
that
metal,” the yard manager said. Kris did not like the sound of the way he said it.

“Is there a problem with it that no one told me?”

“No. No problem. Not actually, but some of us are worrying a bit about problems down the road. Right now we’re kind of pushing the safety margins to get that metal out of the mills. It’s not the same stuff that came from the foundries back in human space that was originally spun into the ships. Simply put, it doesn’t meet the standards that Mitsubishi Heavy Space Industry sets for the stuff.”

“It’s better,” came from Nelly at Kris’s neck.

“That’s what some folks think,” Benson said, with a hint of a shrug, “but it’s different. That may be good. It
could
be bad.”

“So when you finish beating around the bush, what are you going to tell me?” Kris said, tiring rapidly of this conversation. She had not given up her honeymoon to dance around the barn with anyone.

“No skipper wants to have a ship that’s half Mitsubishi standard and half local stuff,” the yard boss said. “Some are willing to fight a ship with the new stuff. Many of them won’t have a ship at all without this metal. The Smart Metal we had did pretty well in the fight. There were no apparent failures. Anyway, ten of the ships that were skinned the worst have been drained to refill the ships that suffered the least damage. That means we’ve got ten ships tied up to the pier with hulls and internal walls that are eggshell-thin.

“Once we get metal from the moon, we’ll spin it into them and pull out the original stuff. With the basic structure and matrix already in place, the new metal should flow in quickly. It won’t take nearly the time to refill the ship that it took to spin it out. We’ll recover the original Smart Metal from the first nine and likely refill the tenth with it.”

“How long will this take?” Kris asked.

“That depends on how long it takes the mills to cough out the Smart Metal, which depends on how long it takes the raw materials to get back from the asteroid belt, which depends on when the miners get the mines producing.”

“So you’re telling me that you haven’t the foggiest idea,” Kris said.

“Not even a guess,” the now re-retired admiral admitted.

“And if I was to take eight of the good ships off to visit the ancient home of the aliens?”

“There wouldn’t be enough left here to spit at an alien scouting force.”

“Thank you, Admiral. I find myself wondering why I’m here and not back lying on a beach enjoying the sun,” Kris said.

“I ask myself that on a regular basis,” the old ship driver said with a smile and a nod as he went his own way.

“Where’s Pipra Strongarm?” Kris asked Nelly.

“Waiting for you in your day quarters on the
Wasp
. Captain Drago wants to see you, and so does Abby.”

Officially, Abby was Kris’s maid who did her hair and made her look lovely for balls and other social events. In fact, Abby could shoot as well as any Marine and had saved Kris’s life too many times to count.

Trying to school her face from an I’m-going-to-bite-your-head-off scowl to I’m-the-boss, tell-me-the-truth bland, Kris headed for her next set of meetings.

Abby
was in the passageway outside Kris’s quarters.

“You want to see me?” Kris said, as she and Jack came to a halt in front of Kris’s erstwhile domestic.

“It don’t seem to me that you’re going to need your hair done for any balls on this alien home planet. Anybody after your skin is going to be doing it with monster warships, not assassins. I could be wrong, but it looks to me like your latest promotion has kind of done me outta my job.”

“I’ll never fire you,” Kris said, none too sure where this conversation was going. That was not an unusual state of affairs whenever Abby finally condescended to a serious talk with Kris.

“I’ve been working with Pipra Strongarm for the last month when you didn’t have nothin’ for me to do, you know.”

“Idle hands are the devil’s workshop.”

“I don’t need no idle hands to be working for him,” Abby said.

“So, you want to stay here with Pipra and try your hand at business. Tell me, is it you or that brat of Nelly’s around your neck that she wants?”

Abby had inherited one of Nelly’s kids. The maid’s relationship with Mata Hari had been off and on. Apparently it was on at the moment and didn’t involve any sneaky stuff.

Then again, Kris would never bet against sneaky where Abby and her computer were concerned.

“She likes us both,” Abby spat. “The degree I earned back on Earth was in business management, and Pipra is finding it hard to put together a staff that understands the mess we’re in.”

“And you have survived around one of those damn Longknifes long enough to know just how bad the messes can be,” Kris agreed.

Abby cast Kris a look. “You have to admit that this mess kind of outdoes your usual.”

“It does,” Kris agreed. “Who else will be wanting to stay behind?”

Kris would bet Wardhaven dollars to donuts she knew the answer to her question, but she wanted to hear it from Abby.

“Sergeant Bruce has gotten his next stripe. He’s a Gunny now, working dirtside as much as up here. Whoever Jack leaves in charge here will need the help of at least one of Nelly’s kids. Cara will also stay with me. Her fourteenth birthday is coming up, and while she still thinks of herself as the first member of the Marine Corps Auxiliary to the
Wasp
’s Marine detachment, Pipra and the boffins are seeing that she gets a good education. And we are using Dada for stuff on the business side.”

“Nelly, do you have any problem with this?” Kris asked.

Nelly had had definite problems with the idea of one of her kids being handed off to a business tycoon, either the head of Mitsubishi Heavy Space Industry or Kris’s Grampa Al. Especially Grampa Al. Survival, however, made for different decisions.

“I have no problems with Mata working with Ms. Strongarm. She shows a refreshingly creative and ethical approach to our situation. I’m glad to see Dada doing more than playing computer games with Cara and being an educational device. I’m also glad to see her being brought up to speed with more complex challenges. Kris, we’ve already discussed this, and I agree these three should stay behind and help where they can.”

“I figured you had, Nelly,” Kris said. “Otherwise, Abby would not have known how and when to just happen to run into me and present me this proposal. Okay, Abby, you’re still my employee, and don’t forget that, but for now, you’re on loan to Pipra. Have fun and charge her all the market will bear in consulting fees.”

“I wouldn’t charge a penny less,” Abby said, and stepped aside.

Kris and Jack were finally able to enter their quarters.

Some people might find it hard to think of a ship’s stateroom as home, but for Kris, her quarters on the
Wasp
was the closest she’d come to a home since joining the Navy and doing her level best to get ship duty. Her day quarters were quite spacious. Clearly, with her ashore, someone had shrunk her night cabin down to next to nothing. Wasn’t it nice having Smart Metal
TM
that you could push around with an app?

An app that had caused a near revolution in what the crew could do with their quarters.

Kris and Jack had been neither the first nor the last to merge their quarters and set up housekeeping together, official or otherwise.

With no shore stations to ship anyone to for punishment, and no one to replace them with anyway, discipline among the Sailors and Marines on the far side of the galaxy from the nearest human space was . . . delicate. When contract personnel and the scientists aboard began using an app to open doors between quarters, it had brought on a Navy leadership challenge way past epic proportions.

Kris had followed the Navy Way of handling it. She’d convened a committee of senior chiefs and ships’ executive officers and told them to fix it. After a sleepless night of gnawing at the problem of commanding a lot of young, healthy, and unattached troops who might die at any moment and would have to depend on each other for their own survival, the Alwa Defense Sector had written its own fraternization policy.

It had survived the test of its first battle. Kris could only hope her innovative approach to human relations in the crucible of war would continue to hold together.

Pipra was already seated at the conference table that dominated Kris’s day quarters. As usual, Kris’s desk was clean though she suspected her in-box had reports and messages stacked up past the virtual overhead.

Before Kris could settle into her chair at the table, Pipra was reeling off problems at the mines, fabricators, mills, and everywhere in between. Jack gave Kris a smile and a shrug before he took their small travel bags and disappeared into their quarters. Quickly back, he gave Kris a jaunty wave and allowed that he would check in on the Marines while Kris attended to business.

As he left, Captain Drago sauntered in. Had he planned for moments like this when he arranged for Kris’s admiral’s cabin to be just off his own bridge? The first time Pipra paused for a breath, he asked Kris, “You enjoy your vacation?”

“Too short. When can you get the
Wasp
underway for a month-long voyage of exploration?”

Pipra glanced at what she was about to read from and put it aside. “So you
are
going to do this crazy visit to the alien home world I’ve been hearing about.”

“Since I didn’t know I was going to do this crazy thing until six hours ago, I’m intrigued that you knew about it before I did,” Kris said.

“Well, everyone knew that your scout ship was back and that it found the alien home world. You being one of those damn Longknifes, I figured you’d be chasing off after it.”

“First, I’m your CEO, not a damn Longknife,” Kris said, but softened it with a smile. “And second, from what our scout found, the home world has been abandoned by the alien space raiders for some time.”

“Then why are you going?” her senior vice president shot back.

“A good question. So you don’t think I should go?”

“No, I didn’t say that. Information is power. Knowing where these crazy, bloodthirsty whatevers came from might tell us something. I’m just wondering if now is the time to do it?”

“And a better time would be?” Kris asked.

“There won’t be a better time or a worse one,” Captain Drago put in. “You pay your money, and you take your chances. Me, I figure sooner is better. My best guess is those alien observers will need time to report back. Then more time while they think about what they saw. With three huge clans thinking on that, it may take them quite a while to decide on anything.”

“There may be only one person who matters on each of those base ships,” Kris said.

Captain Drago dismissed that thought with a wave of his hand. “Even in a dictatorship, there are currents of opinion that have to be considered. I never heard of a system that didn’t have competing power blocks that had to be weaseled and browbeaten into doing something.”

“I hope you’re right, Captain, because I’m betting that that’s the way it is. Please ask Commodore Kitano to drop in at her earliest convenience. I’m going to steal her squadron, what’s left of it, and leave her with the hot potato of Acting Commander, Alwa Defense Sector.”

“I don’t think she’ll be too bothered by being left behind. Her
Princess Royal
is one of the ships that took so much damage that it’s tied up to the pier awaiting more Smart Metal.”

“It is?”

“Yep.”

“Skipper, we’ve got action at one of our close-in systems,” came from the bridge. Drago trotted out of Kris’s quarters. She followed him, with Pipra at her elbow.

“How could the aliens jump into one of the systems so close?” Pipra asked.

“They couldn’t, not the last time we saw them,” Kris said grimly, wondering just how much of a fight she could put up against whatever was headed her way.

“Talk to me,” Drago ordered his bridge crew.

Old Chief Beni was on sensors. “The reporting buoy is in the next system. It jumped immediately into ours to holler a warning. The receiving buoy ducked back into the other system to gather more information.”

“The next system? Didn’t we make a long jump into that system on our own voyage out here and use it to slow down in before jumping into this system?” Kris said, trying to keep Pipra from panicking. Maybe keep herself from panicking, too.

“Did the reporting buoy say anything about the arriving ships?” the captain asked.

“No, sir, it just reported ships in the system,” the chief answered. “It didn’t say which jump they used or how many of them there were. A reactor shows up, and it jumps in and reports. We’re lucky it was the next system out, or we’d be having all kinds of delays for the information to travel across the system by speed of light. If it’s the sixth system out, it might take us a couple of days to even know it happened.”

“The good news and the bad,” Pipra said with a nervous laugh. “It’s close enough to not make us bite our nails while waiting. And, if it’s bad news, we won’t have to worry too much before it kills us.”

The skipper scowled at the businesswoman, but said, “Chief, when will we get an update?”

“The second buoy is supposed to jump back into our system and give us a report in five to fifteen minutes, depending on how much it’s learning. Sir, it’s already happened. We’re just waiting to hear what the automatics did hours ago.”

“Yes, Chief, I know,” Captain Drago said, not enjoying the reminder.

“Report coming in,” Chief Beni announced. “Fifty-nine groups of reactors have been identified. They match human production models.”

Kris turned to Pipra. “It appears that our reinforcements are arriving early.”

Pipra, with no need to appear fearless in the face of the Sailors on the bridge, leaned back against the bulkhead and let out a long sigh of relief. “Give me a minute. I’m not sure my legs will support me.”

“When you feel up to it, we have further problems to juggle. Food, general production, and rearmoring ten of my plucked chickens.”

“Yes,” Pipra said, a bit breathless, “and it looks like we’ll have the time to do something about all of those.”

“Food,” Kris said, remembering that her salvation also meant more mouths to feed. “More ships mean we need more food. I hope they brought along their own supplies. Chief, can you tell me how many of those reactors are warship types and how many are freighters?”

“No, ma’am. Sorry, but I can only tell you what I’m told, and they’re busy telling me what we ordered them to get fast and easy. If you want a specific question answered, I can send it off. It will likely take twenty, thirty hours to get an answer. More than likely, if you just wait, you’ll get the answer in a couple of hours, anyway.”

The retired chief had one of those looks on his face that senior NCOs used for particularly dumb questions from officers.

“No, Chief. No rush. Just tell me what you know when you know it.”

“Will do, Admiral.”

Back in Kris’s day cabin, Pipra was on her phone, telling her chief associates that help was coming. If information was power, it was a power whose Sell By date could be very short.

Kris settled at her conference table and drummed her nails for only a few seconds before her business subordinate rang off and got down to work.