Furious

24

The cottage did have a beach. It took a walk through the trees to find it, and it was only one or two meters wide, but it was sandy.

It was also cold and rainy.

Fortunately, the folks who owned the cottage had several cheap rain slickers hanging on pegs by the door. So Jack and Kris went for an early-morning walk to clear their heads and see if the gray morning light offered them anything better than they had mulled over in the false light of the fake fire.

It didn’t.

They had been dealt out of the game, and some serious squeeze was being applied to keep them out of what was afoot. Both agreed that was beyond stupid since they were two of the few survivors of humanity’s first contact with the alien menace. Then again, both of them could point out historical precedents for stupidity being the frequent, even routine, response of humanity in crisis.

“And this time we’ve got a Longknife, wealthy as Crassus, leading the charge into stupid,” Kris said with a sigh.

They settled on a log and looked out over the lake. Clouds or morning fog limited their view to little past a swimming platform that was in easy reach of kids during the summer months. Literally and metaphorically, Kris was in a fog.

She’d been there before. This time was different; she had Jack’s arm around her.

“How did you know it was me last night?” Kris asked, suddenly changing the topic in her head from a rabbit run to something much less important for the salvation of worlds but quite important to her at the moment.

“You were ugly,” Jack said. “Will that be you when you’re old?”

“Not if I follow Gramma Ruth,” Kris said, and elbowed Jack in the ribs. “Answer my question or face further torture.”

Jack laughed, and locked one arm around the offending elbow and used the other hand to stroke the soft flesh of Kris’s lower arm.

“Ooh, I’ll give you a year to quit that,” Kris murmured.

“It was the steel spring inside you,” Jack murmured back.

“Steel spring?”

“Yes. You were puttering along beside Penny who was putting on an excellent display of limited mobility, and your pretty little nose was buried under a ton of misdirection, but I could still see, maybe ‘feel’ is a better word, the tightly wound steel spring in you, ready to uncoil with a snap at any moment. You were doing your best to hide the power in you, but you couldn’t hide it from me.”

Kris found she was purring like a kitten. “That’s probably the best compliment I’ve ever gotten, even if you did lie.”

“About what?”

“My nose. It’s never going to be a little one.”

“For a young woman six feet tall, it’s a very nice nose, in my opinion. Tell me, Your Highness Kris Longknife, if we both decide to do something about making this present state of bliss permanent, will you always disagree with my best advice on how lovely you are and what you should do to save me from widowerhood?”

Kris did her best to look indecisively coy before allowing an answer of, “Yes, very likely. No, almost certainly.”

“I was afraid of that.” Jack sighed a sigh of resignation to an inevitable he’d already come to accept. But he kissed Kris, so it was clear he bore her no grudge.

The kiss was interrupted by two growling stomachs. Kris found she could actually giggle around Jack. “Sorry, I haven’t eaten since lunch yesterday on the Yellow Comet. Do you think there’s any food in the cottage?”

“I would very much like to find out.”

The fog lifted as they walked back. A clearer view showed them an isolated cove with only two other houses visible through the trees. Neither showed activity.

As they came through the trees, Colonel Hancock drove up in his borrowed car and asked their help unloading groceries. They turned to with eager hands.

But Kris’s paranoia was already activated. “Can that car be traced?”

“I’m pretty sure it can’t,” the colonel said. “Besides having a broken heater, its GPS is also on the fritz, as well as its central computer. It’s not only an old car, but a teenagers’ learnin’-to-drive car. My buddy has four kids and this is the car they get to learn in. You may notice it’s got a few knocks and dents.” In the light of day, the state of the car left Kris wondering how it worked at all. She said so.

“Three of the four kids are boys, and they know it’s up to them to keep it running. As for his daughter, she’s the one who took automotives in high school and is going on to be an engineer. She makes sure the boys take good care of the car.”

Kris laughed, but thought NELLY, CAN YOU GET ANY SIGNAL OFF THAT CAR?

NOT A PEEP, KRIS. THERE’S A LOW ELECTRONIC HUM, JUST WHAT YOU NEED TO HANDLE THE SPEEDOMETER AND FUEL INJECTION, BUT IT’S NOT SENDING ANYTHING.

They carried their supplies inside. There, Grandpa Trouble proved to be a competent cook, at least when it came to bacon and eggs. Kris managed to warm up some cinnamon rolls without burning them, and Jack reconstituted frozen orange juice. Feeling accomplished, they all settled down to breakfast.

And Penny started talking like a cop.

“We’ll probably need another safe house tonight,” was the first bombshell she tossed in with the eggs.

“You think so?” Grampa Trouble said.

“By now, they know we are on planet. If they got anything from asking around the bar last night, they know that Jack and Colonel Hancock are with us. That there are five of us and you three were not in any real disguise. Right?”

“I didn’t use my credit chit,” Grampa pointed out.

“Which immediately raises a red flag. Good citizens with nothing to hide always leave a nice trail behind them. Only crooks or other lowlifes,” she softened that with a flash of smile, “use cash.”

“So you think they’ll be trying to trace us three,” the colonel said.

“That’s what I learned at my father’s knee,” Penny said, “and the first day of internal-security training. Identify the subject of the investigation, then identify all their contacts. Have all of them talked to, that’s what the beat cops are for, asking questions of the people you want questioned. Spread the dragnet wide, then tighten it up and pull it in.”

“So what would you be doing right now?” Kris asked.

“I’d have a computer grinding through all the credit chits purchased with cash and what they’ve been used for. Every last one of them. There’ll be plenty of chaff. Lots of people don’t want their spouses to know they’re renting a motel room or taking someone to dinner. There are a lot of cash chits out there. It will take time to chase them down, but they’re onto us, and they won’t quit.”

Penny paused to think. “It’s true they won’t quit, right? Any chance your dad or the king will relent?”

“Not this side of hell,” Kris said.

“Then we need a new car and should be making tracks out of here. Any suggestions for where we might safely stay tonight?”

Whereas all the other faces around the table had gotten more dire as Penny laid out standard police procedures, Grampa Trouble was beaming when she finished.

“So, that’s all we have to worry about?” he said.

“Pretty much,” Penny said, nonplus.

“Good, good, good,” Trouble said. “When you’re done, you can leave your plates on the table. Someone else will be doing our dishes. Kris and Penny, you should be getting back into your disguises. Our next ride will be here in about an hour. We’ll want to meet him at the road. No need for us to leave any tire tracks in the mud outside, right Penny?”

“Correct, sir,” and the girls took over the back bedroom.

A half hour later, they were daintily making tracks over the pine-needle-strewn ground under the trees, careful to avoid any soft spots. They waited under the trees through another downpour until a blue four-door sedan halted on the road, then all made a rush for it.

“I’ll take the front seat,” Penny said.

She slipped herself between Grampa Trouble and the driver, who turned with a grin, and said, “My, Krissy. The Navy life is not agreeing with you.”

It was Harvey! He’d been the chauffeur at Nuu House since before Kris was born. It was he who took her to games when she was too hungover to care, much less play decently. He was also the one who likely turned Kris in to Grampa Trouble and turned her life around.

“It’s so good to see you,” Kris said as she settled into the middle of the backseat, between Jack and Colonel Hancock. She snuggled next to Jack, letting the colonel have half the backseat of the big sedan.

“It’s good to see you too, little one,” Harvey said, the only one who still called a six-foot-tall Kris “little one.” “You had me and the missus worried there for a while, but I kept telling her, ‘That’s a Longknife they’ll find hard to kill,’ and you proved me right.”

“It was way too close, Harvey. Too many good troopers didn’t make it back.”

“They were soldiers, child. They knew the risks when they signed on to follow one of them damn Longknifes. Their words. Not mine.”

“Where are we going?” Grampa Trouble asked.

“An old war buddy of mine has a place in the mountains. We haven’t much kept in touch, just at the odd reunion or two, but his boy was on the Mercury, one of your courier boats, Kris, one that came back with the transports. The boy was furious to miss out on the fight, but his da told me he could hardly put in words how glad he was to get the kid back in one piece. Anyway, they are both fans of yours, youngster, and he was glad to give me the keys to the lodge; no questions asked and none answered. It will be a cold day in hell that anyone connects the two of us old farts.”

“What about this car?” Penny asked. “Can they trace it to the hills?

“Not bloody likely. Its GPS is back on the workbench in the garage. It needs adjusting. I’ve got one in the car that my grandkid got ahold of at a swap rally. This squawker has nothing to do with a Longknife.”

“If I didn’t know better, I’d say this car was full of people who weren’t very law-abiding,” Colonel Hancock said primly.

“That coming from you, sir.” Harvey growled, as only a disapproving noncom can to an officer. Still, he headed down the road.

“I will say now, and I will say it to the day I die,” Colonel Hancock said, “we were taking fire from the crowd. I saw one of my Marines fall. I don’t care what the record says about the farmers having no weapons and none of my Marines being hit. My eyes saw a different picture from what the court heard.”

“I believe you,” Grampa Trouble said.

“You do, sir?” Colonel Hancock clearly hadn’t expected that.

“We should have sent a regiment to cover the trouble on Darkunder,” General Trouble said. “The decision to cut the force down to a single battalion was made somewhere in Earth high command. Ask who did it, and you’ll get a vague runaround. That riot hit you at the height of the devolution debate in the Society of Humanity Senate. If your situation wasn’t politically manipulated, then no soldier has ever been hung out to dry for the benefit of a political agenda.”

“Hearing that from you, sir, a lot of stuff suddenly makes sense.”

Kris was glad to hear the relief in her old CO’s voice. She was gladder still to have time on her hands. She burrowed into Jack’s arms and found herself relaxing as she listened to his heartbeat. Just listened.

Very relaxing.

Except when a police patrol car passed them going the other way or overtook them. But the cops were going somewhere else and not interested in a shiny blue sedan with what looked to all appearances like a family out for a drive.

They skirted Wardhaven City on the beltway before heading out into the countryside. Kris remembered campaigning for her father among the farm communities. Usually they went for him and were delighted to see the young Kris out husking for her father. Then there had been the time someone poured a pail of milk over her.

Politics wasn’t always a gentle sport.

The drive stretched as the road climbed past foothills toward the snowcapped mountains, which first could only be glimpsed, then began to dominate the view when they crested one of the ever-higher ridges. The air took on the crisp taste of pines and open sky. Most of the trees were Earth transplants, but now and again, there would be a hearty stand of blue native hardwood, waving their now winter-bare limbs against the gray sky.

Kris had spent a summer hiking mountains like these. She told Jack. He shared that he’d been a counselor at a youth camp high up in these mountains. To her delight, she found they shared a love of high places and crisp, free air.

It surprised Kris that after serving beside Jack for so many years, she was only now discovering that about him. But, she told herself, she shouldn’t be. They’d spent their time plotting how to stay alive, or how to foil this or that attack. There had never been time to talk of less urgent matters.

Inside, Kris winced. This was only an interlude before both of them did some damn fool and deadly thing, like invading Grampa Al’s supersecure fortress past security he bragged was the best in the worlds. Considering how blocked Nelly was at the moment, he likely had a point.

The stray thought flitted across Kris’s mind. If she turned herself in on the condition that she and Jack be sent back to Madigan’s Rainbow, would they do it? Would she do it? If she had Jack with her, she certainly wouldn’t be tempted to crawl back into a bottle. Not with Jack handy and available for crawling into bed with.

But they’d had the chance to send the two of them into exile together, and they’d chosen to separate them as too dangerous a pair. Having escaped once, what were the odds they might reconsider their options?

Very likely they’d lock the both of them in the deepest dungeon they could find on planets as far away from each other as human space allowed. Kris found herself shaking her head.

“What are you thinking, honey? You look so serious,” Jack asked.

“I was wishing this drive would never end, but I know it must,” she said in half truth. Her dark and muddled thoughts could wait for some quiet walk through the woods and hills once they got where they were going.

They turned off the main road onto a gravel road that rapidly lost its gravel and gained potholes. Lots and lots of ruts and potholes. Harvey slowed the car down, but it still bounced from one rut to the next.

Kris didn’t mind. It gave her an excuse to hold on tighter to Jack.

Finally, they pulled into a small clearing. The lodge turned out to be a small A-frame structure with an attached garage. A huge stack of wood against the garage, three logs deep, promised that tonight’s fire would be real and likely critical to their not waking up tomorrow as icicles.

Harvey popped the trunk. “You’ll all need to lend a hand to get everything inside. I brought you a week’s worth of chow and some clothes for you, Princess. They should fit Penny as well.”

“Are we going to be left afoot?” the colonel asked.

“Nope,” Harvey said. “There’s a car in the garage. It belongs to the sergeant’s kid. He usually stores it here when he’s out spacing. They had the schooners that the princess used for courier ships going around to all the solar systems in human space, the ones we never use, dropping off minibuoys. Something drops into those systems, we’ll know real quick about them. Now the schooners are doing the same to the systems surrounding our space. If something comes visiting, we’ll know.”

“It sounds like Grampa Ray is at least paying a little attention to what we found out there,” Kris said with a scowl.

“Kris, Ray hasn’t spent a day since you got back without thinking about what you found,” Grampa Trouble said. “I know he’s not doing what you or I think he should. I’ve told him that enough times now that he heads somewhere else whenever he sees me coming. He is, in his own way, trying to get us ready for what we all suspect is headed our way.”

“Well, it would have been nice for him to tell me that rather than ship me off to Siberia and lock me out of even a minimal news feed.”

“You can forget the general media,” Jack put in. “You’d never know we’d gone out from listening to them. We’ve fallen into a black media hole.”

Kris grabbed two of her suitcases that predated Abby’s steamer trunks and headed for the lodge before she risked another word. “It would sure be nice if all the people working in secret, including my great-grandfather, my grandfather, and my father, would let the rest of humanity in on what they’re doing to save us all before one of those humongous mother ships drops by to strip one of our planets bare.”

“Frustrating, isn’t it?” Jack said.

“Hey, we’re soldiers,” Colonel Hancock said. “‘Ours not to reason why,’ and all that.”

“Yeah,” Penny cut in. “But we’re also citizens and voters, and they’re treating all of us, in or out of uniform, the exact same way. Like mushrooms. Keeping us in the dark and feeding us pure cow manure. I, for one, am sick of the chow.”

That brought chuckles all around, even from Grampa Trouble.