Furious

28

“Are you two decent?” Penny called well after sunset.

“Of course we’re decent,” Kris shouted back. “We’re cooking spaghetti.”

“Good, I’m starved. I missed the turnoff once and had to double back to find it,” Penny said, coming in and cuddling up to the woodstove. “I had to cut off the heater for fear I’d run out of juice.”

“Isn’t there a backup gas generator in that car?” Jack called from where he was watching the pasta boil.

“Yes, but the tank was only half-full, and I didn’t want to stop for gas. Yes, I’ve got cash, but they’d get my picture, and if they’re checking out all cash purchases, they’d have a hot datum on us in no time at all.”

“You could have gassed up in town,” Jack said. “That wouldn’t have told them anything they don’t already know.”

“I wasn’t willing to risk that, either. If they’ve got a serious dragnet out for us, paying cash would have raised a red flag. Before I got out of the station, there’d be a cop cruiser or nine charging in to block me.”

“Did you miss the turnoff for real or use it to check your six?” Kris asked.

Penny just grinned, and said, “I was not followed back. You two do anything serious while I was gone?” she asked, eyeing Kris.

Kris had the good sense to blush before saying, “Yes, we put the time to good use. We also started going over Grampa Al’s compound. Do you know he has a shuttle on five-minute standby within easy reach of his suite?”

“Got to have a quick getaway,” Jack offered as he threw a strand of pasta against the wall. It stayed there. “One day, when the angry peasants come calling with torches and pitchforks, you’re gonna need to vamoose fast.”

“Nelly, show Penny what we’re talking about.”

Kris stayed facing the kitchen table and a map of the compound appeared. Quickly, it tracked in to the central tower, then up it. At one level, where the tower narrowed toward the top, a shuttle sat behind screens.

“If he actually takes off in that thing, the whole top of the building’s gonna get scorched,” Jack observed as he drained steaming-hot water into the sink.

Penny cocked her head to get a different perspective, then shrugged. “That will teach all those revolting peasants to take pitchforks to their betters.”

“Could we use that for a getaway?” Jack asked, transferring the pasta to a plate.

“I doubt it. Remember the time I tried to steal Hank Peterwald’s yacht? I was locked out until he gave me the codes.”

“I wasn’t as good as I am now, Kris,” Nelly pointed out.

Rather than argue with her pet computer, Kris took discretion as the better part of valor. “We’ll see how things go. I’d much rather we talked Grampa Al into being our ally rather than having to run for it. Besides, where could we run? A shuttle won’t take us anywhere.”

“Do I smell something burning?” Penny asked.

“Oh, the sauce,” Kris said, jumping for the stove. The vision of Longknife Towers followed her and ended up sketched across the stove as she grabbed for the pot of sauce and scorched her hands. Then grabbed again, using the dish towel Jack handed her, and moved the pot to a cold burner.

“How appropriate,” Penny said through a grin. “Everyone knows a blushing bride worships her beloved by serving him burnt offerings. Too bad I’m going to be struck with them, too.”

“I am no blushing bride,” Kris snapped, “and I would have been a decent cook if you hadn’t distracted me with work.”

“The story of our life together,” Jack said. “Don’t stir up the burned stuff on the bottom. We’ll take our sauce from the top. That’s what I did in college when I burned the spaghetti.”

“Glad someone’s lived on their own,” Penny said. “I doubt spaghetti was ever burned at Nuu House.”

“We didn’t have spaghetti at Nuu House, and yes, Lotty never burned anything. Okay, you happy? You two happy, I’m incompetent to heat water.”

“But she sure does blow up ships good,” Jack pointed out. “Given the choice of a little burned sauce and being blown to bits several times in the last four or five years, I’ll take our present situation.”

Kris laughed, and swatted Jack with his own dish towel. He gave her a quick hug and kiss as he went to find plates. He quickly overfilled them with pasta and began ladling on way too much sauce.

“Hey, champ,” Penny put in. “You’re not feeding a bunch of frat boys. Us dainty gals have to remember our figures. Unless Kris is already eating for two.”

That got Penny a swat with the towel. But Kris dredged a bowl out of a cabinet on the third try, and she and Penny dumped half their plates’ contents into it.

As they settled down to eat, Nelly again projected the map of the Longknife compound onto the table. “They usually put new hires on this post with an experienced guard.” Nelly highlighted a loading dock in red. “It’s the checkpoint for food deliveries and taking the trash and laundry out. Apparently, it smells.”

“If we put the other guard to sleep, how long before a delivery?” Jack asked.

“It usually slows down between eleven and one. Day deliveries are done, and the morning ones haven’t started.”

“Are we on the night shift?” Penny asked.

“You’ve been hired for the 10 P.M. to 6 A.M. shift,” Nelly informed them. “On the first day, you have to show up at eight for a new employee briefing. They’ll issue you a uniform and radio. No weapons for fresh hires.”

Kris frowned at Penny. “So we’ll be changing into our new uniforms and transferring all our sneaky gear right in front of their security cameras.”

“Unless, of course, they respect our privacy in the ladies’ room.”

All three laughed at the joke.

“This is getting tougher and tougher by the second,” Penny said.

“Nelly, do you have any pictures of female guards from this company?”

A parade of women, short, tall, thin, or fat paraded across the dinner table.

“You notice anything about them, Penny?” Kris asked.

“None of them were carrying a purse,” the intelligence officer said.

“What’s that mean?” Jack asked.

The two girls exchanged smiles. “We’ll show you tomorrow night.”

The three of them plotted path after path from their probable station to the private suite at the top of the towers. There were plenty of private access and working areas in a building that huge, almost as many as there were on a space station. Kris and Jack knew their way around stations, both for offense and defense. They got to feeling right at home with the tower.

Approaching midnight, with yawns all around, they called it quits. Penny dismissed herself with, “I’ll take the back bedroom and close the door.”

She did, for about five seconds.

“It’s freezing in there,” she announced as she busted back in on them.

“I had the door open to warm the place up,” Jack said, in defense of his effort to keep all the women who presently occupied his life warm.

“You may have, but that place was freezing to start with, and it’s not much better now,” Penny said.

“Heat rises,” Kris said. “I wonder what the loft is like.”

“I’ll try it,” Penny said, heading up the ladder and disappearing for a minute. Then her head popped over the railing. “It’s quite nice up here, and I can rob the blankets from the other bed. You just ignore me. I’ll be asleep in no time.”

“We’ll never ignore you,” Kris said. But one thing led to another on the floor before the roaring woodstove. Kris found she didn’t really care whether Penny was awake or asleep, just so long as Jack was close, and Kris managed to keep quiet.

And Jack was very close.