Kris Longknife: Tenacious (Kris Longknife novellas Book 12) (7 page)

Kris
and Jack were just sitting down to another bland breakfast in the wardroom. The main course was oatmeal, a crop the colonists on Alwa grew and stored as famine rations. The Navy was eating a lot of oatmeal.

It was sweetened by dried berries and nuts gathered in the deep woods, now less dangerous thanks to Marine hunting teams both making them safer and hunting for a bit of red meat. The Alwans didn’t donate the berries and nuts but traded them for electrical products from the moon factories. The Alwans drove a hard bargain, but for now, food was harder to come by than basic commlinks and TVs.

As Kris was about to take her first bite, Nelly said, “Kris, I think I may have made Professor Labao mad at me.”

“And why might the good professor be upset with you?” It was never good when Nelly made Kris pry bad news out of her.

“I kind of borrowed one of the survey rovers.”

“I thought he had those rovers booked pretty solid,” Jack said.

“They are,” Nelly admitted. “I borrowed it last night after they put it to bed. Then I had it drive just two kilometers to look at something we’d discovered from the mapping survey.”

“Nelly,” Kris said, “those surveying rovers don’t have much battery life.”

“Yes. We just about ran it dry. However, there was enough for it to carry out our test before it ran out.”

Kris and Jack found themselves rolling their eyes at the overhead. When Professor Labao and the scientists found out that one of their nine surveyors had been hijacked by Nelly and left in the middle of nowhere with a dead battery, there would be hell to pay.

“However, Kris, we did verify that the orbital slingers were not made on this planet.”

“What?” came from both Kris and Jack.

“Kris Longknife, I have a bone to pick with you and that so-called smart computer of yours,” was less of a shout and more of a bellow. It came from the doorway into the wardroom and preceded the expected Professor Labao into the officers’ mess by a good three seconds.

“We found what everyone was looking for,” Nelly repeated, but in a voice more appropriate for a teenage girl coming in several hours after her curfew than for the Magnificent Nelly.

“Do you know what that computer of yours has done?” the professor demanded as soon as he located Kris in the wardroom.

“Yes, she just told me,” Kris replied evenly.

“She’s burned out the batteries on one of the handful of rovers we have.”

“It is not burned out,” Nelly said. “It’s taking a charge, a bit slower, but it’s taking a charge. In two hours, it will be fully charged,” Nelly insisted.

“I will not stand here bandying words with a random collection of matrix and gunk.”

“Well,” Kris said, “this random collection of self-organizing matrix seems to have gotten around all your safeguards and taken control of your little robot without your noticing it for an entire night.”

“Are you defending that pile of junk?”

“Nelly says she’s found the smoking gun that connects this attack to the next system over. Have you?”

“She,” the professor began, then stopped. He blinked several times, then settled into a chair two down from Kris. After a long pause, he went on.

“My computer is updating me on what he and his mother and brothers and sisters did last night.”

N
ELLY, YOU DIDN’T HAV
E HIS OWN COMPUTER K
EEP HIM IN THE DARK,
DID YOU?

I
T SEEMED LI
KE A GOOD IDEA AT TH
E TIME,
K
RIS.
T
HERE WA
S NO QUESTION HE WOU
LD NOT ALLOW US TO D
O THE ANALYSIS WE KN
EW WE NEEDED TO DO.
I
’D ASKED NICELY.
I
’D
GOTTEN NOWHERE.
S
O, YE
S, WE DID TAKE MATTER
S INTO OUR OWN HANDS
.

Y
OU LIED TO HIM.

N
O,
K
RIS, NEITHER
I
NOR MY SON LIED TO H
IM.
W
E JUST DIDN’T TE
LL HIM.

N
ELLY, YOU AND
I
ARE GOING TO HAVE
TO TALK ABOUT THIS.

Y
ES,
K
RIS,
I
EXPECTED
THAT YOU MIGHT SAY T
HAT.
I
’M SORRY, BUT IT
WAS SOMETHING WE DE
CIDED HAD AN EIGHTY-
NINE-PERCENT CHANCE
OF SETTLING THE QUES
TION OF THE ORIGIN O
F THE ATTACK.
I
DECID
ED IT WOULD BE BETTE
R TO ASK FORGIVENESS
THAN ASK PERMISSION.

Oh, where did I hear that one before? Father always said, “Your sins will find you out.” Today is going to be interesting.

The glazed look in the professor’s eyes went away; Kris took that to mean that the update from his computer was over.

“That doesn’t prove it is from the next system over,” he said, continuing a conversation that had, no doubt, begun in his head.

“Yes,” Nelly said, “but it does show that the metal in that counterweight is not a product of this planet or of the asteroid belt. If you can persuade Kris, you can send ships to survey the other planets in this system, but I bet she’d rather push on to the putative alien home world and check the isotopic makeup of iron and nickel and distribution of rare earths on that world than spend more time on this one.”

“Would someone
please
bring the rest of us into this briefing,” Kris said. She noticed that munching of oatmeal had ceased all around the wardroom. Clearly, if she got her briefing here, there would be no need to have the
Wasp
’s news feed updated.

Nelly took up the briefing in a voice clearly intended to carry through the wardroom. “The problem with all the sites that we have been sending the surveyors to is that they have had a hundred thousand years, maybe more, to be contaminated. What might once have been a unique isotopic structure with particular impurities that could give an off-world fingerprint has been worn down by wind and frost. Fragments have been blown away and blown in. Simply put, nothing special was coming from where the surveyors were being sent.”

Nelly paused to let that sink into human minds with their slow absorption rate. So she
had
learned a
few
things from Kris.

“However, there was a possibility that some uncontaminated, or at least less contaminated samples of material from the time of the attack might exist. Those were the orbital slingshots, or more particularly, the centrally located counterbalances. They were big, heavy, and likely to survive entry into this atmosphere. Why the aliens didn’t just deorbit them when they were done, but instead launched them off on their own orbits that crossed this planet’s orbit is something I am not prepared to conjecture about.

“However, we found one still orbiting the sun, and that left me and my children to speculate that there must have once been more. Based on that hypothesis, we searched the map for meteorite objects that were large enough to make their own craters when they hit. We found several that might well be younger than the strata they sat on. We asked permission from the boffins to include them in their survey and were turned down. Yesterday, we decided to take matters into our own hands, and we did, indeed, answer the question we’d all been asking.”

Kris glanced around the room. Had any of the other listening officers spotted what Nelly had so quickly glossed over? A few might have; Kris could tell by the narrowed eyes as here and there, officers, usually younger ones, reflected on what a world would be like when computers decided to ignore the orders that humans gave them.

Most, however, looked on expectantly for Nelly to finish the briefing.

“Every planet has a certain fingerprint, a signature if you will, that is embedded in its metal. There is a specific distribution of isotopes in each different type of metal. There are also rare earths that get mixed up in the ores as well. Back on Earth in the twentieth century, one of the first suspicions that an asteroid had struck near the end of the dinosaur era was the different distribution of the rare earth iridium in the makeup of the layer of earth that separated the geological stratus that held dinosaur bones and the next layer up that held none.

“Last night, we parked a surveyor next to a large mound of metal that we thought was a counterweight for an orbital slingshot. When we burned through the surface contamination, we found a nickel-steel center whose composition did not belong on this planet and did not originate in the asteroid belt.”

Again, Nelly paused.

“We propose to you that the composition of this metal will suit very nicely the metals found on the home world of the aliens.”

“It could come from one of the other planets of this system,” Professor Labao said.

“Professor, there is no evidence that any of the other planets in this system ever supported life. There is also no evidence that they were bombarded at the same time this planet was. No, if we are to find where the bullet of this smoking gun came from, we need to look farther afield. I suggest we try the next system. If it turns out not to fit there, we can come back here, but I strongly propose that we are wasting our time here and now. Let’s go see the more likely source before we spend more time here trying to prove a negative.”

Kris canted her head and waited to see if Professor Labao would say anything further. He didn’t.

Captain Drago had been looking on like the rest. He was also likely the oldest one to narrow his eyes as Nelly admitted her newfound ability and freedom to ignore her human instructions. Kris caught his eye.

“How soon can we get underway?”

“Give me four hours to make sure we’re shipshape and ready.”

“Then send to the fleet. In four hours we will detach from our shared moorings and prepare to break orbit. Have gunnery lay in a shoot to destroy all evidence that there were ever rovers on this planet. If that means an extra orbit, so be it.

“Aye, aye, Admiral,” came the reply, and it quickly became so.

A
shiver went down Kris’s back as she watched the planet rotating below the
Wasp
. One of the screens in Kris’s flag bridge stayed fixed on the terrain flowing below them. It showed a warm and welcoming world.

Had
it spawned horrific monsters?

If it had, why and how?

The land below was green and brown and tan. When they crossed oceans, there were waves with white capes and reef-surrounded islands. On their approach, they had quickly spotted two continents. One was larger and divided into three smaller segments. The second spanned the northern and southern hemisphere with a narrow isthmus in between.

Kris remembered a short course she’d taken about Old Earth. This planet was different, but quite similar. There were even ice-covered poles. Here, the northern one showed land beneath it.

They look like us. They come from a planet that even could pass for our home world. Why do they just want to kill us and every other living thing?

There was no answer to Kris’s questions scrawled across the planet below.

On another screen, Captain Drago was mooring the
Wasp
nose to nose with the
Royal
. Since the
Royal
outweighed the
Wasp
, the pole between them was longer for the
Wasp
than the heavier ship. Moored, they swung around their center of gravity, but it was a messy swing. Kris could hear pumps moving reaction mass and water around the ship. Out on the bridge, Penny was even moving the armor to help balance the ship.

No doubt, across the mooring line, the
Royal
was doing the same.

Until they finished, Kris sat with her safety belt tight as she eyed her screens. Her inner ear screamed as “down” did a jig around her.

Another screen showed the pickets posted around the system. There were three jumps into the system, one to the planet they’d already looked over and two more to different systems. Those three had a total of seven jumps out from them. The
Endeavor
and the
Intrepid
were out, deploying low-tech warning buoys on both sides of those systems’ jumps.

The buoys inside this system reported all was well. That data could be obsolete for as much as a day before Kris knew it.

With a shrug, Kris put that bit of data away in a pigeonhole marked
WORRY ABOUT NEVER
. Until someone came up with a way to move or communicate faster than light, it was just a fact of life.

Kris turned back to her boards; they were coming up on the most remarkable thing about this planet. Slowly, it revolved into Kris’s view.

Below her was a plain of glass. Huge, it spread for hundreds of kilometers in all directions. It wasn’t a circle or a square but a blob, splashing out more here, less there onto the great plain that had been scorched and left to glaze over.

There might once have been a great river flowing down one side of it, but the watercourse had been directed back to the south and now flowed into a series of great lakes.

Circular lakes.

Kris wondered what was at the bottom of those hollows.

She wondered more about the pyramid rising in what could pass for the exact center of the glass plain.

Also sharing the table with Kris was Commander Penny Pasley, Kris’s intelligence officer. Beside her was her erstwhile boyfriend, Lieutenant Iizuka Masao, an intelligence officer of the Musashi Navy. The
Wasp
had fitted out under unusual conditions for a U.S. warship and still had quite a few officers drawn from the Musashi Navy.

On occasions Kris dreamed of having a plain old, standard Navy command. But then, she hadn’t bothered to have a plain old Navy career or come from a plain old anything family.

She’d have to make do with what she could get.

“That pyramid is made of solid granite,” Penny said. “That’s about all we could determine for sure.”

Kris turned to Professor Labao. “How long before your boffins can determine if it’s safe to go down there?”

“You can go down there now. I’m just not sure it would ever be safe for you to come back up,” he said. His nose was still out of joint after Nelly had pulled off what his scientists had failed to do.

“I would prefer to not homestead the aliens’ home world,” Kris said. “Please check it out most thoroughly. Report back to me in two days as to what the biological risks are down there.”

“We should be able to do that by then,” he admitted, and seemed to lose himself in communication with his computer. It was one of Nelly’s kids. If Kris wanted to know what was going on with her science lead, she could just ask Nelly.

She didn’t.

The
Wasp
’s orbit now carried it over the coast of the great continent and out over the narrower of the two great seas. Here and there were islands, but Kris wasn’t looking at them. Her thoughts were back on the glass plain.

“Nelly, put the area around the pyramid on screen four.”

Her computer did.

“Identify likely impact craters around the glass plain.”

Circles began to appear on the vast expanse of land. The screen zoomed out to show the entire continent covered with circles. Some overlapped. Some, in the lowlands, were filled with water. Others, in the mountainous areas, were ragged and imperfect. Even in the land covered with forest or jungle, the map identified impacts.

“Someone really pounded this place,” Jack said.

“And went in for overkill around that plain. Nelly, go back to it. Are there any impact craters?”

“No, Kris. As best I can tell, there are craters from atomic explosions, but that’s not enough to cover this entire plain with glass.”

“What did, then?” Penny asked.

“As best I can tell, the areas between the atomic hits were lased to the melting point.”

“Someone really wanted whatever was down there to go away,” Jack said.

“It’s all overkill,” Jacques put in. “A waste.”

“With these aliens, all I’m seeing is a lot of that overkill thing,” Kris said.

A thought was nagging at the edge of her mind. Kris let her eyes rest on the overhead for a long moment. Around her, her team seemed also lost in thought.

Then it came to Kris.

“Two planets slammed by someone or something that goes in not just for winning but for making sure that there is nothing left. Or, in the case of this planet, anyone left alive knows they’ve been defeated, and defeated totally.”

Around her, her team nodded agreement.

“Penny, you were sent to examine six systems that might have had the night sky we think we found imprinted on a ceiling in each alien ship.”

“Yes, boss,” Penny said.

“You came home after you found this one, the fifth you looked at.”

“Right, boss.”

“Is there any chance that the sixth system holds the civilization that hit both of these planets?”

“No boss,” Penny said, grinning.

“And why not?” Kris said. She might be wrong, but she wanted something better than a bald “No” to her line of thought.

“The
Endeavor
just finished picketing the next system out. It’s the sixth system, the one I didn’t get a chance to search. There is no planet in the ‘Goldilocks’ zone. All its planets are too close or too far out for there to be any liquid water on them. Sorry, Kris, there’s no easy answer for our puzzle. There are two planets in the right orbits to have life and that night sky. One’s been blasted clean of life and the other one is the one below us.”

“Darn,” Jack said with a grin. “Don’t you hate it when the easy answer isn’t?”

“Yes,” Kris admitted.

Below them, the
Wasp
was coming up on the large landmass in the northern hemisphere. Dark was approaching, but you could still see the west coast.

Now, in real time, impact circles appeared.

“Nelly, transfer the view of that coast to the fifth screen. Jacques, what do you make of the impact craters? Do there seem to be fewer on this continent, or is that just me?”

“It is not you, Kris,” Nelly said. “While the craters cover twenty-two percent of the other landmass, this continent has only twelve-percent coverage.”

“And they’re more strategic,” Jacques said. “Look. There’s a river flowing into the ocean.” His own computer generated a red dot on Kris’s screen.

“I’d bet money that a city grew up there. It must have been a big one, it looks like three overlapping craters there. Here you can see another likely port city.” Another dot appeared. “Only one crater for that one. I wonder if we might find evidence of outlying suburbs there. Though, if this did happen a hundred thousand years ago, there wouldn’t be much left.”

Jacques made more red dots appear on the screen. “Look, two rivers flowing into this circular lake. Only one flowing out. A river confluence is always a good city site. In early-civilization development, you’d have water trade flowing through it. Later, a city grows where the village and town was.”

“But why the hits on the mountains?” Kris said, spotting a range of mountains that looked to have been hammered.

“I can think of several reasons,” the anthropologist said. “A buried command and control center in a modern age. A mountain retreat, either for royalty or the wealthy of an earlier era. You make the call. What level of civilization do you think was here when they got hammered from space?”

Kris thought over what she’d heard. When she spoke, she did so slowly, letting each word come out carefully polished. “So. Did this planet attack the other one? Or did the other one attack this planet? And if this planet was the last one standing, why are we looking at a primitive world? What level of technology did you spot among the people here, Penny?”

“Stone Age. Yes, a sophisticated set of Stone Age tools, but stone. No metalworking. I think we also spotted some pottery at one site. Maybe others. We need to do a whole lot more before we draw solid conclusions about the people down there.”

“Nelly, can you spot any group of hunter-gatherers?” Kris asked.

“Yes, Kris. I’ve spotted several villages,” Nelly reported.

A window opened on the screen. Here was a collection of bark and wood-shingle huts spread along a riverbank. Three watercraft, apparently hollowed-out tree trunks, were pulled up on the shore.

A second window opened. Here a stream flowed through a grassy plain. The dwellings here were made of poles covered with something. “That looks like a wigwam,” Jacques provided. “They use poles covered with animal hides sewn together for shelter. It’s very portable. Nelly, are there any domesticated animals?”

The screen’s view expanded as the village shrank. There were no herds of any sort.

“Hmm . . .” Jacques muttered. “The life of a plains hunter-gatherer is rough without something like a horse for transportation. But it’s also a lot less warlike.”

The picture changed again. Now it showed a collection of stone huts built together with shared walls. They were close to the cliffs that provided the stone. Down close to a small, tree-lined creek were fields covered with a grasslike plant. People were harvesting it with bone or wooden implements.

“From the looks of it,” Jacques said, “they’re using small flint edges to cut the grain off the tops of the plant stems. Interesting. They’re not harvesting the whole plant.”

Kris remembered her stay on Pandemonium. “I’ve seen farmers growing a crop that gives them a grain harvest two or three times a year without them having to replant.”

“I’m aware of that crop,” Amanda, the economist, put in. “It was genetically engineered to provide ground cover to protect the soil as well as food.”

“Genetically engineered, huh?” Jack said.

“I think we need to look at the DNA of that crop as well as some of the wild stuff growing around it,” Kris said.

Professor Labao got that faraway look in his eyes again. No doubt, the ruminations of Kris’s staff were going into some furious planning among the experts elsewhere on the ship.

“And if we find evidence of genetic engineering?” Jack asked.

“I’ve been wondering why it is that the aliens have five nucleonic acids in their DNA while we have only three,” Kris said. “This may be none of my business, but if three hold together very well, why would evolution keep going and end up with two more?”

“You need to make allowances for the additional background radiation of this planet,” Professor Labao put in. “Our rough estimate at this time is that the heavy atomic attack occurred some hundred-thousand-plus years ago. That would have encouraged a lot of mutation among both plant and animal life here.”

“Have you got a definite date for the attack here?” Jack asked.

“No, not yet,” the professor said.

“Because,” Kris said, speaking carefully as she tossed the verbal hand grenade, “if the attack occurred first here, then there, we might have an interesting time line.”

“Are you thinking that the other planet attacked here, and they later counterattacked?” Jack asked.

“It’s possible.”

“It’s also possible,” Jacques said, “that these people fouled their own nest themselves, then attacked the other planet with vicious intent.”

Kris nodded. “The data allows for both interpretations. Let’s see what new data we can find that supports either of those hypotheses or gives us another.”

“I know that Your Highness likes to exercise,” the professor said, “but I do wish you would avoid jumping to conclusions for a while so we professional researchers can do our jobs.”

“Yes, Professor. Jumping to conclusions is off my workout schedule for at least a week,” Kris said, and gave the professor a small grin.

“All hands, this is the captain speaking. The
Wasp
is now in a steady mooring with the
Royal
. Resume all normal duties under one gee. Cookie, I expect a decent lunch now that I’ve given you and your cooks two hours to work on it. Captain out.”

Kris released her seat belt. Jack did the same and stood. The belts vanished into the chairs, no doubt to reappear as hull armor.

“My Marines are looking forward to some serious dirt-time scouting out that place. We’ve scheduled a ten-mile hike around the ship in thirty minutes. Admiral, my wife, would you care to join us?”