Kris Longknife's Bloodhound

“And she’s on the beach,” Taylor said.

“And a certain Alex Longknife is more interested in her driving a ship whether or not she drives her crew to drink.”

“He’s likely paying top dollar,” Mahomet pointed out. “They can put up with a bit of Captain Bligh.”

“So, where is she?” Taylor’s boss asked.

“The computer is tracking the two of them. Their town car passed through several areas not under surveillance. When we next see it, it’s taking on a new fare,” Leslie reported. “I’ve got it working, ma’am.”

“You keep it working. Taylor, you go home. This was supposed to be your vacation time, remember?”

“My wife won’t let me forget.”

It was two days later that they finally tracked them to a small villa down the coast.

Chapter 15

Despite the massive array of force that followed them to the villa, Taylor persuaded his boss into letting him just walk up and knock on the door. She did assure that two vanloads of select SWAT teams were just a short run away.

Taylor’s knocked but no one answered.

“Mr. Kittikon, Commander Zloben, I know you’re in there,” Taylor shouted.

No one still answered.

“I’m not going away. You may open the door, or I will open it, but either way, it is time we meet.”

The security specialist opened the door a crack. He was bare chested and in his undershorts. Maybe gym shorts.

“I’m here alone.”

“Then you won’t mind me coming in to talk to you.”

“As a matter of fact, I do mind, and you may not come in.”

“Then I will share with you the search warrant I have to go over these premises.”

“You have no reason to get a search warrant.”

“Yes. Your file shows you have a law degree. However, I know a judge who lost her youngest daughter on the Furious under Kris Longknife’s command. She has a most intense interest in seeing that her daughter did not die in vain.”

The door opened. Taylor was led into a wide sitting room. Commander Zloben was reclined on a leather couch in a most revealing tank top and even more revealing bikini underwear.

“Good morning, Commander,” Taylor said, taking a seat in a matching leather chair across from her.

“And you are?” she said, raising an eyebrow, but not coming to her feet.

“I am Senior Chief Agent in Charge Taylor Foile. I have been on your trail for some time. I am glad to make your acquaintance.”

“I don’t know why.” she said, waving Kittikon over. He settled beside her and she proceeded to stroke him in a most salacious manner.

Taylor addressed himself to the security specialist. “The ships are fitting out. When is Commander Zloben taking command of the tender?”

“You seem to know a lot more about this than I do. Why don’t you tell me?” he said, responding to her stoking by brushing aside the wisp of her top to begin stroking her erect nipple.

So Taylor told the two of them the story he had pieced together. Several furtive and alarmed glances interrupted their affectation of foreplay to confirm Taylor’s suspicions.

He had guessed right.

“So, why don’t you tell me where the fleet is going?” Taylor concluded. “I suppose we could hold the two Longknife freighters and the tender in port, but I suspect that those three ships are not the entirety of the foolishness.”

The commander pulled down the security man’s shorts and began fondling him in full view of the agent.

“Why should I tell you anything?” she said.

“Because, if these aliens run true to form, you and your crew will be dead in a couple of weeks if you don’t cooperate with us.”

The commander actually interrupted her sex play to eye Taylor. “What makes you think that? You haven’t told me anything I don’t already know. I did watch the reports that came back with that Kris Longknife girl. But as for these aliens killing me, you have not thought this through. No, not at all,” she said, and returned her attention to her sex partner.

“What do you think I’ve missed?” Taylor said.

She didn’t even look back at him, but toyed like a cat with what was in front of her.

“I command a fast tender. I refuel the ships when they need it, but that also means I can refuel myself any time I want to. I’ve got almost unlimited range,” she said, and demonstrated it by roving her fingernails, claw like, over Kittikon’s thighs and chest and all in between.

“As I see it, when they meet up with the aliens, I hang well back. If things go well, I’m in on the ground floor of a huge profit maker. If it goes sour, well, I run,” she said, and ran her fingers up Kittikon’s chest, and back down.

“After all, someone has to bring the word back, and I figure I can run just as fast as that Longknife brat.”

“And the aliens will follow you back.”

“Did they follow her back?” the commander asked, and applied herself to her toy, who responded with a delighted moan. “Let’s say, you’re right. The aliens find out where we are from the freighter’s nav gear. I still have a ship. I’ve got several cute boys and girls in its crew. I know some really wonderful desert planets that aren’t on anyone’s charts. I set myself up fine. Maybe I make a few trips out to get what we need. Maybe I sell passenger slots on my ship to folks that want to run too. I really don’t see a down side, mister-whoever-you-are. Now,” she said, slithering out of her bottom, “you interrupted a nice roll in the hay. If you want, you can stay and watch, but, please, be quiet.”

Taylor had interrogated a lot of criminals in his time. He’d learned to use silence as a scalpel to cut through resistance and get to the cancerous tumor of crime. Never had he been at a loss for words.

The total self-absorption and self-interest of this former Navy commander lolling in front of him left him speechless.

He let himself out. Behind him, someone groaned. Someone else laughed.

“Did what we think just happened actually happen?” came from Leslie in his earbud.

“It most certainly did,” Taylor whispered, as he made his way toward the Bureau’s surveillance van. “You can send the SWAT folks home, unless they want to make it an orgy.”

“They’re taking a vote on that,” Leslie said.

Taylor adjusted himself before he entered the van. Yes, he was intent on the mission, but he had eyes, and they were connected to a male brain.

“So, what do we do?” his boss asked.

“Rick, Leslie, monitor all communications from that house,” Taylor ordered.

“I would think they’d be otherwise involved,” Rick said.”

“We got a message coming out,” Leslie said.

“As I expected, the display was to discomfort me,” Taylor said. “No doubt, it ended the moment I left the building.”

“Damn,” Leslie said.”

“Damn for what?” Taylor said.

“For something interruptus,” Leslie said, “and for the message. It was just a squirt of something in code. And it was addressed to a number that isn’t in our database.”

“The Bureau has every net number on the planet,” the boss said.

“Not this one,” Leslie countered.

“It must be nice to have produced and sold our planet’s communications security system,” Taylor said, dryly. “No doubt there are several numbers not in our database.”

“I’m tracking that number,” Leslie said. “It just made a call to another one. It shot the same message out. Oh, and that number also isn’t one we know about. It’s going to another number. This may take a while.”

“And, no doubt, the message is flashing faster than we are tracking it. It will get somewhere well before we follow it,” Taylor said.

“No doubt,” his boss said. “Any idea what it says?”

“If it says anything other than, ‘we’ve been found out,’ you may have my pension,” Taylor said.

“I think you’re pension is safe,” she said. “So, what happens now?”

“I suspect that a well laid plan will get sped up,” Taylor said. “Rick, check out the orders that were placed for cargo. How much has been delivered?”

“About half so far,” he reported. “Oh, what don’t you know. They’ve just begun to speed up the scheduled deliveries. They’re also canceling anything that can’t be delivered by noon tomorrow.”

“That was fast,” his boss said.

“I suspect that our attention has not gone unnoticed,” Taylor said. “I would bet that when we accessed Prometheus, a flag went up in Longknife Tower. No doubt, this need for speed was not totally unexpected.”

“They’re moving,” came from the driver of the van. Taylor stuck his head out of the back and got a view of the commander and Kittikon, now dressed in shirts and slacks, jumping into the car in the driveway. In a moment, it gunned into the street and took off.

“Shall we follow them?”

His boss tossed the question to Taylor with a raised eyebrow.

“I suspect they’re headed for the beanstalk and from there to the Nuu Yards. Leslie, check all those merchant marine officers you identified. How many of them are on the move?”

“About two dozen. No, twenty-seven.”

“That’s an odd number,” Mahomet said.

Taylor frowned in thought, but his boss gave voice to the problem first. “A lot of them moving, but none of them compromised. How do we get someone to talk to us?”

“Usually, something comes up,” Taylor said. “They are the bad guys.”

“But these bad guys are really good,” Leslie said with a frown on her usually optimistic young face.

Taylor’s commlink buzzed. He tapped it.

“Agent Foile,” Member of Parliament Longknife said.

“Here, sir.”

“I just got a call from Annie Smedenhoff. It seems her boyfriend has just been ordered up the beanstalk to join the crew of the Pride of the Free Market. He was told something about the intended navigator being on a ship coming in but they want to sail now. Annie’s in a panic. She told him what she thinks the Prides are up to, and he’s not at all interested in going, but it seems to me that we need someone on one of those ships.”

“We most certainly do, sir,” Taylor said, smiling at Leslie. She grinned back, made a fist and punched air. “When does he have to be headed up?” the special agent asked.

“He’s been told he has four hours to pack.”

“Tell him, and Annie, to take all of the four hours. I’ll see what I can do about arranging something.”

“You do that. I’ve got to get going on something else. The whole damn fleet’s out on maneuvers and there aren’t many available to tail those ships.”

“We don’t really want to be obvious on their tail, sir.”

“I’ve watched enough TV to know that, Agent. You do what you can do. I’ll do what I have to,” and he rang off.

Taylor found himself staring at the roof of the surveillance van. The others stayed silent as he thought.

Then he tapped his commlink. He called a number he had only used twice.

A woman’s voice answered him. “You have problems, I see.”

“If you are following me, then you know I need to have someone get a message off a starship before it jumps out of the system, but no one must know it has been sent.”

“I think I have something at hand. Meet me at the Galleria. I’ll be waiting for you outside.

Things must be critical. The woman blew her cover by being there, pacing back and forth, as they rolled up. She jumped in the van and ordered. “Head for the space elevator station.”

The van moved quickly through traffic.

“I have a ring,” the tech magician said without preamble. “It will remember what it types. It can burst transmit that memory with a simple command. Three twists around the finger causes it to send.”

“So, how do we get it to the navigator?” Taylor’s boss mused.

“Rick and I could be a couple,” Leslie said, “with me headed up the beanstalk. We could do a brush-by of the guy.”

Taylor shook his head. “Both of you are Bureau. They’d spot you and suspect anything you did.”

“We don’t have time to pull in an undercover team,” the boss said. “And there’s no way to know which of our assets have been turned.”

“We could play it straight up,” Taylor said slowly.”

“Huh,” came from both the tech savvy woman and his boss.

Taylor eyed the technical magician. “Can you get instructions on how to use that ring to the navigator without Alex’s gang knowing it?”

“Do bears connect to the net in the woods?” she said with a confident smile. “But you still have to get him the ring.”

Now it was Taylor’s turn to smile. He keyed his commlink to a very familiar number. “Love, I need to ask a favor of you. Could you meet me at the space elevator station? I’ll be going up, and you may dump on me all of the anger that you have been kind enough to keep to yourself.”

“Are you asking for me to argue with you in public?” came back in a dangerously even voice.

“Yes, love.”

“That . . . will be a joy,” she said, and rang off.

“Is this a good idea?” his boss asked.

“I’ll tell you in a week,” Taylor said.

They returned to the bureau headquarters. Shortly thereafter, Taylor took public transit to the beanstalk station.

His wife accosted him as he got out at the station.

“Where do you think you’re going?” was loaded with all sorts of prickle.

“I have a job up on the station,” he said evenly.

“You’re on vacation.”

“Right after I finish this.”

“That’s what you told me yesterday, and the day before that and . . .” the argument went on from there, getting louder and more explosive. People took it in . . . and turned away, embarrassed for them. No doubt certain security cameras were also taking it in and conveying it to interested parties.

Taylor did manage to get a few quiet words in. His wife did not pause in her full harridan act, but acknowledged him with a slight widening of her eyes.

Taylor spotted Annie and a very nice looking young man. They easily filled the all too familiar role in the station of lovers about be to parted, and very reluctant to do so.

Taylor slipped the ring into his wife’s hands during an attempt to hold her hand and calm her. She slapped him with one hand as she slid the ring onto the small finger of the other.

Taylor waited until the flow of the crowd forced the two couple closer together. He stayed on the far side of his wife from Annie and her boyfriend. His wife chose that moment to turn away from him in full huff.

And ran right into the other couple.

The collision brought on a cascade of falling luggage and a flood of apologies, with several accusatory words and glowers aimed at Taylor for driving her into this personal accident.

Taylor did attempt to say a few words to the couple, but his wife talked over him. When the two younger folks moved on, there was no ring on Taylor’s wife’s finger.

It was easy to tell, she was wagging one finger of that hand under his nose. “You take your lame ass up that beanstalk and you better bring a lock pick home tonight, ‘cause I’ll have changed the lock. And I’ll have a chain on the door anyway.”

“I have to go,” Taylor said softly. Firmly. Sadly.

They argued, standing there, impeding traffic, with her holding on tight to his arm and him saying he had to go until the very last warning of the ferry’s departure forced him to yank his arm away from her and flee at top speed for the boarding dock, leaving a very angry woman crying in his wake.

I wonder if she had any idea she’d be doing something like that on that long ago spring day when she said “I do”! Taylor thought as he just barely caught the departing ferry.

Taylor continued playing the senior agent for the trip up. He encountered a full six of the Star Line merchant officers and tried desperately to suborn them. In each case, he failed.

He followed the flow of merchant officers and sailors right up to the gate to the Nuu Yards where a grinning pair was waiting for him.

“You can’t go in,” Security Agent Cob said, putting a hand on Taylor’s chest and shoving him back with a will.

“Yep,” Security Specialist Kittikon said. “You ruined my morning. Now I get to ruin your day, month and year.”

“I’ll see that the Port Captain withdraws their authorization to sail,” Taylor snapped.

“You try,” both said with confident grins.

So Taylor tried. It was amazing how much bureaucracy there was in a space stations port office. So he pulled strings. And found that for every string he was pulling on, there were a pair of six inch cables pulling the other way.

Taylor even resorted to trying to have the Navy defense batteries ordered to fire on the ships if they moved. It turned out that the captain with the authority to do that was away from his desk and no one knew when he’d be back.

Clearly, a lot of Alex Longknife’s money had gone into getting those ships away from their piers.

At 12:30 local they sealed locks. By 1:00 they were away and by 2:00 they were out of range of the defense batteries.

It was a well-played charade. For those actually involved in it, Taylor hoped they’d live long enough to spend their bribes. For himself, he hoped the ring and instructions worked as well as advertised.

He was back down the elevator and at his desk when Leslie jumped out of her seat at her desk. “M-688,” she whispered. “They’re going to M-688.”

Taylor called Member of Parliament Honovi Longknife with that information.

“That’s a long way away from here,” the Longknife scion said. “I’ve got a squadron of heavy cruisers getting ready to take off after them, but I’m none too sure I can catch them.”

“What about calling Kris Longknife?” Leslie put in. “The court is deliberating her fate. If they don’t chop off her head, she might be able to do something.”

“How?” Mahomet put in. “Even a Longknife needs a spaceship to chase starships.”

“Maybe she has one,” Leslie shot back. “The school kids on Musashi have been raising money to buy her a ship and go see what the situation is on the planet she tried to save. They’re having car washes and bake sales and all sorts of stuff.”

“Yeah,” Rick said. “That ought to buy her a row boat.”

“Actually,” her brother said, “it might get her a bit more than that. Mitsubishi is trying something new with Smart Metal. Let me see if Admiral Crossenshield can do something there,” the Member of Parliament and the politician who stayed home muttered, half to himself.

Taylor found himself eyeing Leslie. The charter member of the Princess Kris Longknife fan club was grinning from ear to ear.

Taylor set about finishing up loose ends, but his boss came in, took his hat and coat from the stand and handed them to him. “You go home to your wife. She did a superb job today. I hope it was acting, but I have a bad feeling about it.”

Taylor took his offered coat, put his hat on his head and took the trolley home.

The lock had not been changed. His wife met him before he had a chance to close the door with a warm hug and an even warmer kiss.

“That was most cathartic. You must involve me in your work more often,” she said slyly. “How’d the rest of your day go?”

“Better than some. Worse than others,” he answered in his usual, noncommittal way.

And they might have made a good start on making it a very good day, but the kids chose that moment to storm in from school and the best part of the day had to be put off until later.

Much later, as Taylor held his slumbering wife, he mused on the fortune he had in his family. He found his thoughts roving over what he had discovered of the ups and mostly downs of the Longknife family. He shook his head and wished Kris Longknife better luck with family in the future than she seemed to have had so far in her young life.

Preview: Kris Longknife – Defender, by Mike Shepherd,

coming from Ace in October, 2013

Life is full of decisions. It’s time for Kris to make some hard ones.

Chapter One

“That was what was about to attack Alwa?” Granny Rita said. Once commodore of BatCruRon 16, she’d fought hopeless battles. Still, her voice held dismay as she surveyed the wreckage of the alien base ship.

“It was about twice this size before we took some bites out of it,” Lieutenant Commander, Her Royal Highness, Kris Longknife said. Herself no stranger to hopeless battles, she added. “And we’re still quite a ways off. It will get bigger.”

Rita Nuu Longknife Ponce, former commodore and captain of the battlecruiser Furious, was the recognized leader of the humans, and uniformly called Granny Rita by both the heavy ones, us humans, and the indigenous inhabitants of Alwa, who were either the People, or the Light People.

Granny Rita turned to translate to the delegation of six Alwans who had come out to see and verify for all the unbelievable story Kris had told their Associations of Associations.

Privately, Granny Rita called them the assembly the flock of flocks, but she’d warned Kris never to say that where any Alwan might overhear.

Kris listened as Granny Rita and the Alwans clicked and cooed with maybe one word in five sounding familiar to Kris. It was a pigeon that they’d worked out over eighty years.

However, Nelly, Kris’s not-very-personable computer, was working on a translator for the two people. Kris wondered if some of the peace that had been maintained for the last eighty years between the Alwans and the humans might have been helped by both sides’ not fully understanding what the other side said.

When Nelly finished this effort, Kris would have to have a talk with her.

The six Alwans’ movements were quick, almost jerky, as they moved around the forward lounge. Their arms and hands waved. Kris had a feeling that a couple of million years earlier, the flock would have taken flight at this news. Now, having given up most of their feathers as well as flight, they formed and re-formed groups of two or three, talking among themselves and rarely glancing at the view screen that showed the battered alien-invasion base.

This meeting was not being held on the USS Wasp’s bridge. The Alwans had taken in the intensity of the bridge crew at their work and immediately expressed distress to Granny Rita. Kris had offered the Forward Lounge with it four huge screens. Since Kris’s staff were all equipped with Nelly or one of her children, Kris was confident they could do anything that needed doing while letting the Alwans take in the familiar activities of humans eating, drinking and, in general, enjoying themselves in the familiar surroundings of a restaurant.

And now, thanks to the magic of Katsu’s wizardry with Smart MetalTM, Kris was able to separate the restaurant from her transferred Tac Center with a transparent wall. Yep, Katsu-san could make Smart MetalTM clear as glass!

Kris missed him already, but Katsu said he had trained the Wasp’s ship maintainers as well as he could. He wanted to get back to Musashi and his job at Mitsubishi Heavy Space Industry; his head was already full of ideas for making the next class of ships even better. Thus, buzzing with new ideas, he joined the IMS Sakura for the long voyage back to human space.

Kris hated the idea that the Wasp was all by itself clear on the other side of the galaxy. Still, there was no question folks back home needed to know that the sacrifice of their Fleet of Discovery had saved the world they fought for. Even more, the strange planet they laid down their lives for had provided a home to a desperate group of humans. Now, eighty years later, it sheltered a growing human colony.

That colony was led by the former wife of King Raymond of United Society (or United Societies depending on how you thought the new constitution should be interpreted). Problem was, she had buried two husbands in the last eighty years on Alwa and was now mother to seven, grandmother to thirty-four and great-grandmother to 123. That number was subject to change . . . often.

Kris herself was included among the great-grandchildren and had spent a full week meeting a big chunk of her half uncles, aunts, and cousins. Still to one and all of the humans on Alwa, related or not, the former commodore was Granny Rita.

Surprises on top of surprises. Kris could only wonder how the news the IMS Sakura carried would be received.

But for now, she had no time for Longknife family matters; a huge alien mother ship loomed larger and larger on their screens. Now the Alwans seemed mesmerized by its promise of death. They huddled before the screen, eyes locked on it, only occasionally whispering something low.

“This isn’t good,” Granny Rita whispered to Kris. “Once or twice, I’ve seen one group of them resort to confrontation to settle differences. When one side is fully intimidated by the others’show of force, the weaker side would just hunkers down and surrender. These folks don’t fight. If you can strut yourself a good enough show, you win.”

“Can you get across to them that a couple of human ships smaller than this one chewed that monster up pretty good and only spit out this much?” Kris asked.

Granny shrugged. “They’ve walked this ship. They know its measure. That . . .?”

“Maybe we should have shown them the two Hellburners we have amidships?” Jack said. He was her chief of security, skipper of a rump battalion of Marines composed of a reinforced Wardhaven Marine company and a borrowed, and equally reinforced Musashi Marine company.

For all too brief time, they’d managed to be lovers.

At the time, they were a fugitives and Jack not in Kris’s chain of command.

Now Kris was back on the new Wasp and Jack was keeping her safe and both of them were keeping doors open whenever it was just the two of them alone.

Simply put, Navy regs on fraternization sucked bilge water, through a straw. But Kris and Jack wore the uniform and followed the regulations.

Kris shook her head. “The Hellfire missiles look pretty tiny.” Though the few cubic millimeters of Neutron Star material weighed fifteen thousand tons, it was hard for anyone who hadn’t seen them in action to believe how destructive they were.

Again Granny was shaking her head. “These folks have theater. They really enjoy attending a show. But their media is just for what is happening now. They do not record their history. Yes, some plays are historically based, but they really don’t have any concept of either battle, like you showed us, or of recording it for later review.”

“This isn’t going over all that well, is it?” said Penny. Chief of Kris’s intelligence, she also stood double duty on the bridge as Defensive Systems. On a ship that could convert your spacious stateroom into a footlocker and send the extra Smart MetalTM to armor the ship’s hide, it was a critical battle station.

Kris’s usual battle station was next to Penny’s, Weapons, putting the enemy in the crosshairs of the Wasp’s destructive lasers. For the new Wasp, those included four long 18-inch laser rifles, usually reserved for a battleship. The Weapons Division was still looking for a chance to show what they could do.

Everyone else on the Wasp was fervently hoping the Weapons Division would continue polishing their guns and wondering what they could do. The Wasp was as far from human space as a ship could get.

She was also very alone now that the Sakura was gone.

Being far from any repair facilities and any help was no time to go looking for a fight.

On this Kris and her entire staff agreed.

But they did want to know what kind of damage they’d actually done to the alien raider’s base ship? Just how good were the Hellburners at doing bad?

Inquiring minds wanted to know.

But carefully. Very carefully.

“Nelly, how far has the hulk drifted from the jump point it was just out of when we hit it?” Kris asked her personal computer. Nelly was much upgraded from the day she’d been given to Kris before she started school. She was now worth at least half the value of the USS Wasp. Nelly had condescended to give the Mitsubishi Heavy Space Industries Chief Engineer, Katsu, one of Nelly’s. This had made up for the other half of the frigate’s cost not covered by bake sales and the donations of the schoolchildren of Musashi.

“She was accelerating away from the jump point,” Nelly said, “at about half a gee. Then we hit her hard in the rump and that must have accelerated her more.”

“I agree with that,” said Captain Drago, from the bridge. Hired by the Wardhaven Intelligence Service to captain the Wasp under a contract that had more to do with King Ray wanting to somehow save Kris from making all of the worst mistakes he’d made as a junior officer, Drago hadn’t kept Kris from taking on the giant planet murderer that tumbled and rolled in front of them.

Old men’s plans for young people don’t always work as they wished.

“Captain,” Kris said, “you can call me paranoid, but I’d like to approach the hulk so as to keep it between us and anything that might suddenly pop out of that jump.”

“Paranoia had kept a lot of Longknifes alive,” Granny Rita said.

“Adjusting course,” Captain Drago said.

“Nelly, how much of the Wasp’s Smart Metal TM do you want to use for explorer nanos?”

“As much as Penny will let me, Kris. I’ll be controlling them with all the self-organizing matrix that I haven’t yet used for my next child.” In half payment on the Wasp, Nelly had swapped one kid to Katsu, with solid overrides if he, or his father, should ever try to duplicate her child. Having lived with Kris for twenty years, Nelly came by her paranoia honestly. Nelly’s price for that one had been enough matrix to birth three more children to replace those lost on the long, dangerous flight from this battle.

She’d only granted two of the new personnel on the Wasp the honor of working with one of her children. That left one yet unborn. Nelly was willing to divide that matrix up and share it out among the exploration drones to give them top-notch guidance for their study of the hulk.

That still left the basic question. How much Smart MetalTM would there be for her matrix to fly?

Penny took a while to talk to Mimzy, her own computer and one of Nelly’s offspring. “Kris, I’d like to shrink the Wasp down to Condition Baker.”

Under Baker, the “love boat” proportions of Condition Able became a bit constrained. Unused spaces shrunk or vanished. The reaction mass tanks that had given up a part of their contents on the way out here would be resized. All that spare metal would be moved to the outer hull of the Wasp to form a reflective surface and a honeycomb through which cool reaction mass flowed. This sandwich of armor should protect the Wasp from laser hits as good, if not better than the six-meter-thick ice armor on heavy battleships.

“I concur,” Captain Drago said. This meeting with the Alwans might not be taking place on the bridge but clearly he was following it very closely.

He was, after all, the captain.

“Mimzy,” Penny said, “announce to all hands that we will be going to Condition Baker in one minutes and that we may go to Condition Charlie without further notice.” Charlie was worse than Baker, but not as bad as Condition Zed. When Zed was ordered, people’s quarters were compressed down into a few lockers and the entire rest of the room vanished. The same went for the scientist’s research labs.

Boffins had complained loudly about Condition Zed. The scientists had been shown the fine print in their contracts and reminded that they were all subject to activation as reserve officers, and as such, would follow the proper orders of their duly appointed superiors.

The scientists still complained, but they knew it wouldn’t matter if ever Captain Drago, Kris or Penny ordered Condition Zed.

Around Kris, the Forward Lounge began to shrink. Empty tables melted into the deck. Folks in the middle of their dinner found their table and chairs moving closer together, as empty places vanished away.

All hands went through this drill once a week for Baker and once a month for Zed. Folks kept right on eating, drinking, and when a new couple came in, the lounge expanded to provide them a table.

The Alwans were still fixated on the wreck ahead; they failed to notice what was happening around them.

“Princess, my boffins have noticed something strange about the wreck,” came in the calm, aristocratic voice of Professor Joao Labao. He was on sabbatical from the University of Brasília and senior administrator of the 250 scientists aboard the Wasp and the reason the frigate could honestly claim to be a research ship. “Have your examinations identified anything different between the right and left sides of the aft end of the hulk?”

“That’s a negative,” came from Senior Chief Beni. He’d come out of retirement to have “a shot at them that killed my kid.” “I’m getting no radio readings from that hulk. The reactors are dead. Anywhere you look on the electromagnetic spectrum or radioactive scale, she’s as dead as Caesar’s ghost.”

“I would most certainly agree with you, Chief,” the professor said. “It’s our optics that are giving us cause for second thoughts.”

“Pass them through to me in the Forward Lounge,” Kris said.

“And me on the bridge,” the skipper spoke over Kris.

The rolling, tumbling hulk had been getting closer. Now, using the powerful optical instruments usually reserved for deep-space research, the aft end of the blasted wreck jumped into clear definition.

Bits of hull and I-beams were twisted like a child’s strand of candy. Other thick hull strength members were nearly broken through. Some hung by a thread and did their own dance as the ship waddled through space.

“We hit it hard,” Kris muttered.

The Alwans had broken from their fixation on the huge ship and now were once again moving quickly among themselves, talking rapidly.

“I think,” said Granny Rita, “that they are now impressed with what you can do.”

That was good, because the picture then changed.

The professor took up the narration. “What you were looking at was the left end of the aft quarter, portside aft to you Sailors. What you’re now seeing is the right side, starboard aft quarter. Notice the difference.”

There was still clear evidence of damage. But much of the beams that had looked knocked about like jackstraws on the other side were gone. The picture zoomed in further.

“We think someone has been cutting away at that wreckage with laser welding torches. We’ll need to get in closer. Have nanos take a good look at the cut, but that side of the ship does not look like we left it, of that I am sure.”

“All hands, battle stations,” Captain Drago’s voice announced on the 1MC. “All weapons, report when you are manned and ready.”

Chapter Two

Around them, all hands beat to quarters. The Forward Lounge became suddenly vacant.

And the Alwans looked ready to climb the walls.

Granny Rita did her best to calm them, but the idea that they were about to be in a fight to the death was having a very erratic impact on their behavior. Some ran around. Others froze in place. At any particular moment, with no particular rational, the runners would freeze and the statues would take off running.

They did a lot of clicking whether they were running or not.

Jack was suddenly at Kris’s elbow, just in case any of the crazy birds failed to notice she was in the way of their mad running.

“What do you do with them?” Kris ask Granny Rita

Still, without a word from Jack, she fell back to the wall well out of the way of traffic. Jack gave her a smile that said, “Thank you, love for not making me have to fight with you.”

Granny Rita gave the two of them a look that said . . . nothing to Kris. It did make her fidget.

Then Granny Rita shrugged. “I don’t know. I’ve never seen them like this. As I said, they don’t fight among themselves. They resolve conflicts by impressive displays.”

“How’d something like this ever rise to the top of the food chain?” Jack asked.

“You haven’t seen them feeding,” Rita said. “I’ve seen them bite strips of meat off a living, running beast. But fight among themselves. Never.”

“So how did you establish that the Heavy People were not prey?” Penny asked, watching the show with the native curiosity of a natural-born intelligence officer.

“Our Marine detachment put on a very impressive display. They also killed a few prey beasts, publicly butchered them, and held a BBQ. The Alwans discovered they liked cooked meat. We did what we had to make friends,” Granny Rita finished vaguely.

The battle-stations Klaxon went silent. That had a settling effect on the Alwans.

“Lieutenant Lien,” called Captain Drago. “Please set condition Charlie as quickly as you can.”

Drills had shown that having the ship changing shape while all hands were racing to be someplace else was not a good idea. Now, with all hands where they were needed, getting more armor to the ship’s hide became a priority.

Penny announced, “We are setting Condition Charlie. All hands stay put until I report the condition established.” After a pause, she added for just those close at hand, “Mimzy, set Condition Charlie.”

“Daughter,” Nelly added, “call on as many of your brothers and sisters as you need to make this go quick and clean.”

“Yes, mother,” Mimzy said in a voice Kris had practiced before a mirror when she was thirteen. “All right, crew, you heard mom, let’s make this happen shipshape and Bristol fashion.”

Behind them, bottles at the bar folded themselves up into cases as what was left of the lounge floor rolled itself up. The glass wall vanished as the small part of the lounge Kris was using suddenly was backed up to the non-airtight doors that had been fifty meters away a few seconds ago.

The Alwan’s watched wide eyed.

“Condition Charlie is set throughout the ship,” Penny announced moments later.

Captain Drago followed that announcement with one of his own. “The Blue Team is relieved from its battle stations and will don high gee stations. When they report back to their stations, the Gold Team will do the same.”

“Blue, Gold team?” Granny Rita asked.

“I’ve told you about how handy Smart Metal is,” Kris said. “This ship can handle gee forces way beyond what the Mark I Sailor can. So we’ve got a new high gee station, made of Smart Metal, to help us keep from splattering ourselves all over the deck as we honk the ship around to avoid getting hit. In combat, the Wasp never follows any course for more than three or four seconds.”

“Two,” Nelly put in.

“We dodge around a lot,” Kris went on, “and the gee stations let us do it. The armor is there, but it’s better not to get hit. The problem with the eggs as we call them is that they fit you like a second skin. Once, for political reasons, I had to go into an egg wearing undress whites. I was black-and-blue from the belt buckle, the clutch backs on my ribbons and my shoulders. Ugh. The standard uniform in an egg is buck naked.”

“Oh.” The old lady’s eyes lit up.

“Granny. We all look like a collection of Easter eggs from the outside, boys and girls alike.” There were certain aspects of Granny Rita’s outlook on life that Kris found a bit hard to understand.

Now Granny shrugged. “It sounds like a young person’s way of fighting.”

“Most of our crew members are under thirty,” Kris admitted.

“So, what are you going to do about us?”

The ship’s pharmacy had a small supply of antiaging pharmaceuticals. After all, Cookie, the cook, was well over a hundred as were several of the restauranteurs. Granny Rita had been glad to have her arthritis cured, her bones strengthened and her arteries cleaned.

Still, knocking her around at high gees was not what Kris wanted to do to her new found great-grandmother.

And the Alwans! Though their bones were more solid than they had been when they flew several million years ago, the odd were quite high that a battle might have Kris returning the six delegates looking more like boneless chicken than spokespersons for how much Alwa needed human aid.

“Nelly, do you have the specs for the water tanks the Iteeche used to survive the last battle?”

The Iteeche Empire, some eighty years ago, had almost made the human race extinct. Just ask any veteran. Just ask Granny Rita! It was Iteeche Death Balls that had got her into a running gun fight, them gunning, her running, that she hadn’t been able to slow down from until she was on the other side of the galaxy.

Only recently had Kris had a chance to talk to some Iteeche and discovered that their veterans were proud of how they’d saved their people from annihilation by the humans. During the Voyage of Discovery that had resulted in the shootout with the wrecked base ship they were coming up on, Kris had three Iteeche aboard.

“Of course I have the tank designs stored in my bursting innards,” Nelly snapped. “I can knock out seven of them, one for Granny and six for the Alwans. I suggest you use your normal Tac Center. That way, Granny Rita can follow the battle or we can show pleasant scenes from around human space to relax the Alwans.”

“Do that, Nelly.”

“You’ve had Iteeche aboard?” Granny Rita said.

“It’s a long story, but the only reason I came out here and found you and that,” Kris said, nodding toward the hulk, “was because they were losing scout ships and came asking for our help.”

“So we made peace. I kept telling Ray he should do more to find a way to stop all the killing.”

“We can talk about this later,” Kris said.

“Yes. Are you expecting a fight, now?”

“Yes, no and maybe.”

“You can ask a Longknife a question, but you better not expect an answer,” Granny Rita said with a sigh.

“I don’t expect a fight,” Kris said, expanding on her initial cryptic reply. “You notice that none of us here are rushing to our battle stations. However, we now have evidence that someone has been mining this wreck. Are they its former owners or someone we haven’t met yet? We’ve run into these raiders four times. Three times they started shooting. We managed to run away the other time. Tell me, Commodore, wouldn’t you be at battle stations?

“No question about it. Those water tanks you were talking about. You want me to get me and my friends into them now?”

“No, we’ll wait. All this drill may be for nothing.” Kris said, then switched topics.

“Nelly, I want to survey that hulk as fast as we can. I also want to make a change in your nano allotments. We’re going to tuck ourselves in just as close as we can to the wreck, with it between us and the jump. I want a belt of sensors around the hulk focused on the jump. Anything comes through that jump, I want to know.”

“I was already working on just such a sensor array, connected with tight-beam communications,” Nelly said. “However, how fast we can examine the hulk will depend on how much Smart Metal Penny lets me have. Penny?”

“The Sakura transferred a lot of supplies to us before she left,” Penny said. It had also donated an 18-inch laser rifle that the Wasp now had pointed aft. Smart Metal TM, used to its maximum, was a delightful and flexible material. “They also stripped out a thousand tons of Smart Metal and transferred it to us. I’ve been using most of it for armor. Nelly, if I gave you a hundred tons of the stuff, would that be enough?”

“Perfect,” the computer said. “Now, Mimzy, let’s get to work giving the boffins something to look at and making sure that jump point is under constant observation.”

Chapter Three

The four huge screens in the Forward Lounge were now showing sixteen different pictures as the nanos spread out through the wreck. Or, more correctly, fifteen pictures of the wreck and one picture of blank space.

The jump point was blessedly unemployed and Kris fervently hoped it would stay that way for a long time. A very long time.

“You don’t have to keep glancing at the jump point, Kris,” Nelly said. “I and every one of my kids have it under constant observation. If it burps out so much as a grain of sand, you will know.”

“I know, Nelly, it’s just a human thing.”

“A Longknife thing,” both Jack and Penny said at once.

Granny Rita just grunted.

The nanos were starting from the blasted aft section, and moving inward.

Of the engineering spaces, nothing remained. The two Hellburners that hit there along with the corvettes lasers and smaller antimatter torpedoes, had only started the damage. The hundred or more thermonuclear reactors that powered the huge rockets had lost their containment systems, freeing superheated plasma to add more destruction to what the humans started.

A third Hellburner had hit farther forward. There had been reactors there, too. Reactors that powered the ship and the uncounted lasers that dotted the ship’s surface.

Amidships, shock, whiplash and torque added to the destruction. They came across gaping holes in the middle of the ship that appeared to have been caused by reactors that lost their containment fields when their superconducting magnetic containment systems failed.

Kris revised her estimate of the bite they’d taken out of the monster. Her original guess was they’d blown away thirty to forty percent of the base ship. Now it looked like more than half of the ship was wrecked.

“It must have been pure hell aboard this ship,” Granny Rita said.

Kris nodded. “Still, even as it was blowing itself apart, it was shooting too many lasers to count at our battle line, blasting hundred-thousand-ton battleships with six meters of ice armor into hot gases in only seconds.”

Even Penny was shaking her head. “I wish I could feel some sort of sympathy for those who suffered through this. But Kris and every human ship around had done everything they could to open communications. And the aliens just came out shooting every single time we ran into them.”

Granny Rita did her best to translate all this to the Alwans. They now stood still, alone, not in any group, in stunned silence.

Kris wondered how much of this they were really getting and how much was being lost in translation.

Nelly, are you getting any of this?

Kris, as best I can tell, the Alwans don’t believe us. They can’t believe that these aliens did not talk to us. I think one of them said something about how can anyone put on a courtship dance without crowing. I could be way off on the translation.

That’s okay, Nelly.

Kris had yet to get around to telling Granny Rita about Nelly Net, the ability she and Nelly had to talk directly to each other and to talk to anyone who had on one of Nelly’s kids. There were a lot of things they just hadn’t had time for, Kris told herself.

“We’re getting some interesting stuff,” came from Professor Labao. “We’ve only done a small part of the search but we haven’t found a single body. Not even a skull. It’s too soon to tell for sure, but it looks like someone went over this entire ship and removed every dead body, body part or blood smear.”

“That’s what we found on the planet they murdered,” Kris told Granny. “No grave yard. If it wasn’t for three women murdered and their bodies hidden among all the native ones, we would have nothing on that bunch of murderers.”

Granny made a face. “Beasts that they are, they seem to revere their dead.”

“That, or they want to use them for reaction mass,” Jack growled.

“We think we’re finding hydroponic gardens as well as vats for growing proteins. The vegetation is very dead, the tanks and vats are drained,” the professor added.

“See if we can get any residue,” Kris ordered. “It would help to know if they recycle their dead in the hydroponic tanks and what kind of vat meat they ate.”

“We’re on it already,” the professor answered.

“We’ve just found something else interesting. It looks like someone dug a hole into the wreck so they could get out the reactors that hadn’t blown,” said Professor Labao.

One screen went from four windows to just one. Yes, there was a huge tunnel into the wreck. Nanos following it found evidence of undamaged portions of the ships, but some large chunks had been hastily removed with welders torches. There were a lot of thick power cabling leading out from those holes.

“Best bet,” the professor said, “is that reactors and their superconducting containment gear were hauled out through this hole. It’s about the most expensive gear aboard a ship. That and its weapons systems.”

“Is there evidence of the lasers being taken out?” Kris asked to anyone listening on net. “Also, have we found the bridge?”

“The forward section of the ship took a lot of damage. This monster and her baby monsters might have been slaughtering the battleships, but we humans were getting our licks in too,” came with a touch of pride from Captain Drago.

“This is a huge ship, Your Highness,” Professor Joao Labao said respectfully but firmly. “Rome was not built in a day and we will not plumb its secrets in an afternoon.”

“Well, so far you’ve got plenty to interest me,” Kris said. “Have your boffins get the nanos collecting as much data as they can, because I don’t intend to spend a day here waiting for whoever has the salvage contract on this mother to wander back through that jump point,” Kris said.

“I couldn’t have said it better myself,” Captain Drago said.

“Your Highness, we have something I think you will find very interesting,” the professor said, as if to placate an irascible princess.

Smart man.

“I have seen that video of a huge choir addressing an even larger audience, followed by a lone man giving quite a long harangue to his listeners.” The subject video, picked up while the USS Hornet was running for its life showed up in a small window.

“I think we have found the room.”

The screen that had been showing the huge tunnel now switched to show a massive auditorium. No, from the fine decorations it was more like an opera house. There was statuary, usually of the same man in an heroic pose and white columns along the walls separating box seats that looked quite plush. The common people, however, were packed in row upon row, balcony atop balcony. The aisles were narrow to allow room for more seats.

“To fill as many seats as those with only aisles that size, I’d have to march them in, like Marines,” Jack said. “I’m not even sure my line troops would put up with that kind of regimentation.”

“Lots and lots of people, marching in lockstep,” Kris said.

“You told me,” Granny Rita said, “about one ship you blew up after it attacked you being filled to the gills with people. It looks like they filled a monster ship like this just as tightly.”

“We are looking into what we think are the crew quarters,” the professor said. “I’ve heard of places on Earth that pack the unemployed into cramped public housing, but this is something entirely different. There’s barely room to slip yourself into a bed from a narrow passageway. No privacy. Just stacks and stacks of beds.”

“Huge numbers of people who just want to kill us,” Penny said. She had argued the hardest against Kris launching her tiny command into a battle with so little intelligence on the target. Now the look on her face bore the sadness of the ages. “How are we going to kill all these people?” she finally said.

“They’ve got to talk to us before we have to do that,” Kris insisted.

“Kris Longknife, an optimist?” Jack said with a bit of a grin. Jack was the only man alive she’d let get away with something like that.

Still she elbowed him in the ribs.

He put both hands up in surrender and retreated behind a wide grin.

Granny Rita gave the two of them the eye, and they sobered quickly and returned to the problem at hand.

“Kris, could we get a better look at the ceiling of the place?” Nelly asked.

One of the nanos dutifully began scanning the overhead. It took several seconds before the immense ceiling was resolved into a single picture.

“Dots, lots of dots,” Penny said.

“In a random pattern,” Kris added, stroking her chin.

“If that thick belt of dots isn’t the Milky Way then I’ve never looked at a star chart in my life,” Granny Rita said.

“Professor,” Nelly said. “I need to combine several of the nanos in the room and close by to it. I want to get a full coverage and very exact copy of that picture.”

“What are you thinking, Nelly?” Kris asked.

“I think someone went to a lot of trouble to put a very exact sky on the ceiling of this very large room that they regularly filled with people. Kris, have you heard of the Sistine Chapel?’

“We did take art history in college, Nelly.” Kris said sarcastically.

“Yes, but I could never tell how much you were paying attention and how much you were just using me for an easy A.”

“Nelly, what happened to you being polite?” Kris asked.

“Auntie Tru is on the other side of the galaxy and there’s no way you can threaten to take me in for her to look under my nonexistent hood.”

Kris was beginning to wonder who else might be taking advantage of their being so far from home that the threat of sending them dirtside was very much out of the question.

“Tell me, Nelly,” Jack said, “I didn’t take art history in college. Why is the Sistine Chapel so important to our present conversation?”

“You did too take art history,” Nelly snapped. “I have access to all your records, I will have you know, Jack.”

“Nelly, get back on topic,” Kris snapped.

“The Sistine Chapel was a place of worship. It was decorated with some magnificent art work for the instruction and edification of those attending services there. The pope in charge at the time spent a lot of money to have that ceiling painted, although he had a war on and paying the painter was regularly a second priority to paying his army. Anyway, I wonder if this is not such a special artifact. I am merging several nanos so that I can get a high-definition recording of not only the precise relations of the stars to each other, but also any color texturing the stars have.”

“You think this might represent the night sky over a unique planet?” Penny said.

“I think it’s possible.

“Let me know as soon as you finish that, Nelly,” Kris said.

“Yes, your not so smart Highness,” Nelly said, her voice more smug than any computer had a right to be.

“Alert, Alert,” Nelly’s voice came in a totally different tenor, and it came over the entire 1MC. “A ship has just exited the nearest jump point. Ship matches the profile of one of the smaller hostile ships. Just four or five hundred thousand tons of crazy kill you.”

The bong-bong of the battle-station Klaxon went off.

“This is no drill. Man your battle stations. All hands, man your battle stations. This is no drill,” resounded through the ship.

Chapter Four

“Bath time,” Kris yelled as she yanked the door open and led the way out of the truncated Forward Lounge. Jack was at her elbow. Granny Rita led the Alwans, who once again looked like they wanted to take flight. Penny followed up the rear, doing her best to shoo along any who tarried without actually touching them.

Alwans did not like to be touched. At least not by Heavy People.

That was something Kris hoped Nelly’s translator would explain.

Assume they survived the next few minutes.

Behind them, the last vestige of the Forward Lounge melted away, as did the passageway they trotted down just as fast as they left it.

The Wasp was moving to protect herself.

“The jump has spit out a second ship. Same type,” Nelly announced.

The distance from the Forward Lounge to Kris’s Tac Center just off the bridge was a surprisingly short gallop. The water tanks were there, already filled and lids hanging open like waiting coffins.

The Alwan’s balked.

“They’re claustrophobic,” Granny Rita said. “I’d better show them how. Is it better not to go into the tank clothed?”

“The Iteeche never wore clothes.”

In a moment, the old girl was down to the buff and climbing into the tank. She was clicking and cooing at the others.”

She’s telling them that if she can do it, so can they, Nelly told Kris. I’m pretty sure of that translation.

Five removed what little they wore and went, reluctantly, into the tanks. The sixth balked.

He says we’re all going to die, Nelly reported.

“Granny, you tell him that these are the prey we hunt. Yes, they are bigger than us, but don’t the Alwans hunt prey bigger than any one of them?

Granny just told him that and that if he didn’t go into the tank, he will be dead meat and disgrace his tribe.

The Alwan went.

Kris, Jack and Penny gave the tank residents breathing masks and waited as they verified that they worked, then they sealed them in, locked them down and let the tanks top themselves off with water.

There was a lot of chatter; the air masks had mikes in them. Granny Rita’s last words to Kris were “You better get your bare ass into your egg, honey.”

Kris raced for her quarters. Again, they were much closer. Abby was waiting her, already stripped. She helped Kris skinny out of her uniform and into her egg, then, as Kris rolled out for the bridge, Abby settled into hers.

“A third ship just joined the other two,” Nelly reported. “They are starting a slow, quarter-gee approach to the wreck.”

Kris rolled onto the new Wasp’s bridge. It was just like old times. Captain Drago held the command chair. Penny was at Defenses. An older Chief Beni was at sensors, assisted now by a shy female chief from Musashi. The woman on Navigation was also Musashi Navy; Kris had not had a chance to get to know her like Sulwan Kann.

“Warning to all hands. We are taking the ship to Condition Zed. We are going to Condition Zed on my mark.” Penny waited a few seconds in case anyone had a strong objection, then announced. “We are setting Condition Zed. Don’t expect anything you’re holding on to to be there in a second.

Since everyone was already in their egg, they shouldn’t be holding on to anything.

The bridge shrank. The skipper, Kris and Penny were almost rubbing elbows. The overhead was a good half meter closer.

The only thing that didn’t change was the main screen.

It was still there, showing death coming for them in living color.

“Sensors, anything new?” Captain Drago asked.

“Nothing sir. They match both the visual and electromagnetic signature of the hostile raiders. Their reactors match to the third decimal. They’re radar is active and they are pinging the hulk.

“Oh, that was rude,” the senior chief added. “They just lased a small meteorite.”

“So much for just drifting up on them again,” Captain Drago said.

That ambush had worked once. They couldn’t expect it to work forever.

“Any suggestions, Your Highness,” the skipper asked.

“They’re out of range of even our 18-inch laser rifles. But they’ll have to flip ship to start deceleration if they intend to match orbit with this hulk giving us some up-the-kilt shots at their reactors. Let’s see what happens then.”

They waited. Waited for something to happen. Waited for the enemy to make a move . . . to make a mistake.

While doing their best not to make one themselves.

“Edge us in closer to the wreck,” Captain Drago ordered.

The helmsman obeyed, but it was no easy job. Even half-destroyed, the hulk was huge, with a gravity well of its own. If Kris and the skipper hadn’t decided to keep the Wasp on the side of the hulk away from the jump point, the natural thing would have been to go into orbit around the wreck.

The helmsman had been working against the nature of things and the laws of physics. Now he worked against them even more. The navigation jets, never intended for this, got a work out.

Maybe those gases showed up as a corona around the hulk. Maybe someone on the other side noticed that there was a lot more hot gases in the general vicinity of the dead wreck. For whatever reason, the three alien ships began to spread out, widening their field of view around the dead base ship.

Hiding behind the hulk got harder.

“That’s not good,” Captain Drago muttered.

Kris grinned. “But we get a crack at them one at a time.”

The skipper frowned at Kris’s optimistic assessment of the situation. “That just might work. Helms, hold steady, but get ready to move us right or left fast, on my order.”

“Aye, aye, sir.”

The long wait continued. A hundred thousand kilometers out, the alien ships did what they had to do if they didn’t want to fly right by the hulk. All three flipped ship and began to decelerate at a quarter gee. If all went well, they would arrive at the hulk with no headway, ready to go into its weak orbit.

Of course, it was Kris’s job to see that things did not go well.

“The right ship has eight reactors,” the senior chief reported. “The other ships have only six.”

“I suppose that makes the rightmost ship our target,” Captain Drago said.

“Main battery is locked and loaded.” The new frigate packed four of these huge battleship guns into her bow. They had great range, but a problem.

They could be fired only fifteen degrees to the left or right, up or down, of the direction the ship was pointed. Somehow, Captain Drago would have to get his ship over to the right of the wreck fast enough to surprise the enemy, but arrive with the bow aimed dead on his target.

The brilliant engineer who had designed the class hadn’t come up with any suggestions as to how you fought his marvelous new toy.

Then it got more complicated.

“The Alwans want to know if you are going to talk to the aliens,” came over the net from Granny Rita.

“We’d kind of planned on killing them, Granny. We are outnumbered three to one and every other time we try talking, they just shoot.”

“The idea of not making any demonstration upsets the Alwans.”

“The idea of our all getting suddenly dead kinds of upsets us, Granny.”

The nods from around the bridge supported Kris’s position. They were in the eggs but the eggs weren’t the all-encompassing containers they would be at four or five gee.

“Kris, honey, I understand where you’re coming from, believe me. I’ve been where you are. But I have to live with these people. I beg you to accommodate them.”

Kris had already offered Granny Rita a ride home, if only for full rejuvenation. The strong willed old woman had turned her down. The Alwans were in danger and she was not leaving them in their time of need.

Kris expected that position would cause a lot of trouble. She’d expected that trouble at some indefinite time in the future. Strange how it popped up sooner.

Well, what do you expect from a Longknife, even one that called herself Granny Rita Ponsa at the moment.

“There was the approach you tried on that scout ship in the Iteeche system,” Penny said.

“There’s not time to launch a communication’s buoy,” Kris muttered. “Nelly, can you put together some nanos. Make them give off enough noise to seem like a ship, as well as send a ‘we come in peace for all humanity’ message.”

“It will mean that I lose some of my next child’s matrix,” Nelly complained.

“I’ll buy you more.”

“From the other side of the galaxy?”

“Nelly, we don’t have time for this argument.”

“I know, Kris. I’m already collecting the nanos and forming them into the craft you require. There is a hole in the wreck we can launch it out of. I’m using the collection of messages we sent the last time. I hope the Alwans won’t mind us sending in Iteeche as well as human.”

“The hostiles are a hundred thousand klicks out and flipping ship,” Captain Drago said. “I’d like to knock out one or two of them before they’re close enough to ram us,” he added dryly.

“Nelly, launch the diversion,” Kris ordered. “Lasers 1 and 2, prepare to fire: 3 and 4 stand by. Laser 5, maybe we can come up with a target for you.” Laser 5 pointed aft.

“Helmsman, prepare to rotate ship ninety degrees to starboard, lay on three gees acceleration for five seconds, then rotate ship ninety degrees to port, lay on one gee but begin Evasion Pattern 6. Understand,” Drago ordered.

The helmsman was a chief boatswain’s mate, but he still blanched at the order. “Sir, I’ll try.”

“Try ain’t good enough, Chief,” the skipper said. “Nelly, can you lay in the course?”

“It is done, Captain.” For once there was none of Nelly’s backtalk. Even if this was the first time Captain Drago had trusted his ship to her.

“Make it so, Nelly.”

On the 1MC the message being broadcast from the diversion demanding to know what ship had entered the system, to whom they offered their oath and . . ..

It didn’t get any farther than that as all three ships fired on it.

While they shot, the Wasp rotated hard, kicked its crew in the rear with three gees acceleration. Then she gave them whiplash with a second ninety-degree rotation while coasting for maybe half a second.

Immediately, she then put on a single-gee acceleration and launched herself into a jinxing pattern that would have slammed heads hard if the eggs hadn’t locked down every inch of their bodies and cushioned them.

Kris had the larger of the three ships in her crosshair. Twelve huge rocket motors were putting out plasma from three or four reactors. Kris gave it her best guess, targeted where she’d expect to find two reactors and fired Laser 1 and 2.

Apparently engineering solutions galaxywide tend to yield the same answers. Two 18-inch lasers smashed into the engineering spaces of two reactors. Magnetic containment equipment suffered lethal disruption. Twenty-thousand-degree demons that were never meant to know the face of man were unleashed, ripping and tearing, feeding on construction that was not meant for the likes of them.

Two untouched reactors joined the dance of destruction, then their hunger spread the entire length of the ship.

In a blink, where a ship had been were only gases.

Kris would watch this on the recordings after the battle. Once she’d seen the destruction begin, she had already turned her attention to the second ship.

It had not yet reacted to the disaster overtaking her leader. Her slow response was her doom. This ship had only nine rocket engines. Kris targeted two reactors and hit one.

One was enough to begin the chain of catastrophic failures that would eat the ship

The third ship had a faster captain, he’d already began to swing his vulnerable engines away from this sudden attack. Kris had had Nelly launch four of her limited supply of high acceleration 12-inch antimatter torpedoes at him even as she concentrated her lasers on the other two. The six 5-inch secondaries added what they could.

The third hostile, though smaller, was still equipped with way too many lasers and was bringing them to bear on the Wasp.

“Flip ship,” Drago ordered. “Get that wreck back between us and them.

Nelly was already doing it as the helmsman reached to obey.

Kris had her eye on the alien. She still had her rear stinger. If the stern came within fifteen degrees of that puppy, she’d knock a big hole in its bow.

Nelly, can you give me a shot?

I can adjust our jinking to show them our rear, but only for one second. And I’ll be changing course even as I’m doing that. I could fire the laser and adjust its aim to my jinks.

Do it, gal.

A short breath later, Laser 5 fired. A few seconds more and the wreck was once again between them and their enemy. The entire sally had taken less than ten seconds.

As the Wasp returned to the safe shadow of the hulk, and to a more sedate smooth quarter gee, the bridge, and the entire ship exploded in cheers.

Captain Drago let the crew rejoice for a few moments, then punched his commlink. “All hands, good shooting, good ship handling all hands. Two down, but anyone want to bet the third ship heads home with its tail between its legs to let its betters know that the old wreck has a new owner?”

No one offered to take the bet.

Even as he finished speaking, sensors was already reporting. “Sir, the ship has continued on a course that will bring it around the hulk after us.”

“Then we better play ring around the rosie,” the captain said, and the helmsmen tucked the Wasp in close to the wreck. With one eye on the sensors on the hulk, he began edging them to port, keeping the still very hostile exactly opposite to them.

“Well, Your Royal Highness, have you got any more ideas, cause I’m plum out,” said Captain Drago.

Kris sighed. She’d been about to ask Captain Drago the same question.

But she was the Longknife. Admitting she’d scraped the bottom of her barrel of ideas for how to keep alive while killing what was after you was just not part of the legend.

Chapter Five

For the next quarter hour, they circled the wreck.

Then the alien got sneaky and reversed course.

The Wasp also quickly flipped ship and took off in the opposite direction.

Unfortunately, that gave away that they had better situational awareness than the hostile. He noticed that quickly enough and started shooting up the hulk with all those lasers the aliens seemed to oversupply their ships with.

In fifteen minutes they’d lost so many that they could no longer communicate with them by tight beam. Rather than lose more of Nelly’s next child’s brainpower, they closed their net down.

“He’s going to switch his direction real soon,” Drago muttered.

“So let’s change the game. How about hide-and-seek.”

“Explain yourself, Princess.”

“There’s a big hole in the wreck. I’d hate to take the love-boat-size Wasp in there, but at Condition Zed, we’re pretty small.”

“Nelly, have you mapped that hole?” the captain asked.

“No, but Professor Labao’s computer has.”

“Lay in a course to back us into said hole next time we pass it. Be careful with my ship, Nelly. I like it just the way it is.”

A few seconds later, Nelly flipped the Wasp, slammed on the breaks with a three gees deceleration and brought the ship to a dead halt in space. In a human blink, she swung the ship around, aft end to the hole in the hulk, and then did a little twisting dance as she backed it into a hole that was doing its own bit of rock and roll.

There was no crunch of metal.

They were hardly in the shade of the hole before the alien ship slid by a good thirty thousand klicks out. Not only was he changing his direction, he was also edging out to get a longer horizon.

“Now what do we do?” Drago asked.

“Nelly, deploy visual sensors to the right and left, above and below our hide-out. Whatever direction he comes from next time, I want to get enough warning to accelerate out after he passes and get a shot at his engines.”

“Doing it, Kris. By the way, Kris, we got the full coverage of that ceiling I wanted and one of the nanos discovered a boot with the leg still in it. We should be able to get DNA off it.”

“Good Nelly, now where are my visuals?”

“Coming on line,” and the forward screen divided to show what was ahead of them as well as a large cross in all four major points of the compass.

“Kris, dear,” came Granny Rita’s voice over the net, “I do hate to joggle your elbow again at a time like this, but the Alwans would like you to make a new try at contacting the alien. They feel that the demonstration you have given should persuaded it to surrender to your will.”

“Sorry, Granny, it ain’t gonna happen. This is the fifth time we’ve run into these bastards. The only one that didn’t end with one side annihilated was the one where our ship managed to run away. Fights with these people are to the death. Tell your friends to get used to it. Either they die or we die, and I am busy doing everything I can right now to make sure they’re the ones dead.

“Thank you, love, I had to try.”

Nelly, what are those crazy birds talking about?

Sorry, Kris, I can’t follow them. They are using too many social references to things that happened in the past. Language is more than each word.

Enough, Nelly.

The alien was getting smarter. He’d adjusted his orbit by 55 degrees. Kris barely caught a glimpse of him as he headed for an orbital crossing that wasn’t too far from their hideout. He was also blasting away at the wreck, using his firepower to swat at anything or nothing.

“There’s a chance that one of his wild shots may blast our hole,” Nelly said. “Should I back us deeper?”

“No,” Kris and Captain Drago said at the same time.

“Get ready to boot us out of here on my order,” Kris said. “Jink the way you think you have to, Nelly, but get the forward end of the Wasp aimed at that bastard.”

“Jinking pattern standing by,” Nelly said.

Kris forgot to breathe as the alien slid close to their hole, but he didn’t pass directly over them. The cave did take a near hit. A girder collapsed across the exit.

“Kris,” Nelly started.

“Ram it,” Kris ordered. “The skipper can complain to me about the dint. Now go!”

The Wasp leapt into a three-gee acceleration, then warped its bow around to chase the alien across the sky.

The crosshairs on the lasers settled on the now-targetable aft engineering space. Kris fired three, holding just Laser 4 in reserve.

Two of the lasers slammed into the ship but seemed to do nothing. The other one did critical damage to one of the reactors. The ship began to slew around as a couple of the rocket engines lost plasma. Its lasers were suddenly aimed at empty space, but they kept right on firing even as the rear of the ship began to vaporize.

Kris put her last 18-inch laser into where she would have put one of the two forward reactors, the ones that powered the life support and the lasers. Her instincts were good. The hit loosed the plasma demons that gobbled up the forward end of the ship.

The laser fire only died as the entire ship converted itself to a ball of expanding gas.

Nelly cut acceleration to a single comfortable gee, as the bridge crew silently took in that they would live. The aliens were dead, paying the full price for starting this fight. The humans would live to see another sunset. They would taste dinner. They still had the chance of finding someone who might love them back as strongly as they loved them.

“Is it over?” Granny asked over the net.

“It looks that way,” Kris answered. “Nelly, do you have a visual on the jump point?

“Yes, Kris, and it’s quiet. I’m launching two standard low-tech buoys to take up station on either side of that jump. They will tell us anything we need to know while we drop back to the wreck and pick up the nanos we left behind.”

“Do we have to?” the new navigator asked.

“Those probes are Smart Metal we can use for armor and matrix that Nelly intends to use for her next child,” Kris said. “Yes, we will return quickly enough to pick them up. Who knows? Some of the nanos may have data we didn’t get a chance to download while we were fighting for our lives. Battles can be so distracting,” Kris said through a grin.

“I am so glad that Your Highness understands the hunger of her scientists for discovery,” Professor Joao Labao added on net.

That drew boos from several of the bridge hands, but they were careful to keep their comments low and to see that their mikes were off.

Thirty minutes later, Nelly reported that all her probes that were still able to move were back aboard.

“Navigator, set course for Alwa,” Captain Drago ordered. “One point five gees if you please. All hands we will maintain battle stations until we exit this system. Defense, we will maintain Condition Zed until the same. Commodore Rita Nuu Ponsa, if you feel that the one and a half gees is too much for your delegation, you may invite them to stay in their gee tanks. Since we won’t be jinking, I believe that we can pop the lid off the tanks and let them breath on their own.”

“Thank you, Captain. Please have someone get us out of these coffins.”

Kris rolled her egg for what would have been her Tac Center. Jack made to follow.

“You can park that egg wherever you want, Jack, but not where I’m going. Granny is not presentable and, if I have to pop this egg to help her and her Alwans’ out, I won’t be either.”

Jack eyed Kris as if to say ‘and I’d be seeing what that I haven’t?” but kept his language a gentlemanly, “Aye, aye, ma’am.”

Penny rolled her egg after Kris. “I can lend a hand.”

How come the Alwans get to see you naked and I can’t? Jack said over Nelly net.

Because I say so, and let’s shut this down, I don’t want to scandalize the computers.

Kris, I find human sexuality very interesting, but hardly scandalous.

Nelly, shut up. Jack, shut up. Penny, let’s get this over with.

And they did. Kris found it interesting the way the Alwans looked anywhere else but at the naked humans who helped make their lives less claustrophobic.

To no apparent question from Kris, Granny whispered, “I’ll explain later.”

The sigh as the Wasp edged through the next jump could be measured on the Richter scale.

Preview: To Do or Die, by Mike Shepherd, coming from Ace in February, 2014

Sometimes peace needs a helping hand. Ray Longknife and Captain and Mrs. Trouble are just the folks to give it that hand. Or fist, as need be.

ONE

It was a port dive like any other humanity had built since some lucky bastard brought the first log back to shore. And the topic today was no different from when the Phoenicians sailed the middle sea – pirates and slavers.

Only this dive stood in the shadow of the New Birmingham bean pole. The shops and heavy-fabrication barns that gave a thirst to this bar’s customers sent their goods and gear up the elevator to starships in the orbital yards of High Birmingham.

Today was different for Captain Terrence Tordon. Trouble to his enemies, Trouble to his friends, and more often than not, just plain Trouble, he’d come to accept the label for all it meant. Born, raised and commissioned in the Society of Humanity Marine Corps, he had passed many a happy hour dives such as this.

Today, however, was the first time he followed his wife into one.

Commander Uxbridge led them through the bar’s door with its flashing beer ads. It was he who suggested the sun was below the yard arm and their business might better be completed in informal surroundings with a drink at hand. Uxbridge was finishing up his forty years with the Navy at the disappointing rank of commander, so no one would be surprised if he put in less than a full day.

Trouble and his wife Ruth followed because she had questions about the source of funds now flowing into Uxbridge’s numbered Swiss accounts on Old Earth.

Officially, Uxbridge was the czar of Navy scrap on New Birmingham. He sold off surplus gear, battle-shattered hulks – and defeated Unity ships from the recent unpleasantness. They weren’t supposed to be in working condition.

So why were said ships showing up in the hands of pirates and slavers. Trouble had had the unfortunate experience of accepting said slavers’ hospitality not once but twice a few months ago.

It was a major source of embarrassment for a combat Marine.

Trouble glanced around the bar as he settled into a chair next to his wife. This early, the booths lining the walls and the tables scattered around the floor were empty except for two men in one booth. They seemed lost in haggling. Given the time and place, it likely had something to do with recreational pharmaceuticals.

The front entrance was balanced by a rear exit. The lights were up, throwing in harsh relief dilapidation that went unnoticed in the smoky shadows at night. Behind the bar, a mirror ran the length of the room. It exhibited dents and dings that proved it metal, not glass.

Trouble fingered the table. Painted to look like wood, it was heavy metal.

That’s one way to avoid replacing the furniture every time the customers get rambunctious, he thought with a smile.

Then he went back to splitting his time between Ruth’s conversation with Uxbridge and the rest of the bar. He was, after all, the guard dog here.

Ruth, a farmer born and bred, even looked the stereotype today. Her long black hair was braided into two pigtails and she wore a calico dress with full skirt.

How much she looked the part of the contract farmer for a light cruiser, providing fresh fruit and vegetables from hydroponic gardens between the ship’s ice armor and main hull, had been a hot topic between husband and wife that morning. However, since the Navy Department only just started this crazy farm program, no one was too sure what the proper appearance of a ship-based farmer was.

Ruth had dressed as she wanted.

Trouble, who’d never lost a firefight, was getting used to losing to his bride.

Whatever her appearance, Ruth could talk farming. And she was talking Uxbridge’s ears off about hydroponic agribusiness and her need for additional tubing, tubs and pumps. She was laying it on thick. So thick, no one would mistake her for an Alcohol, Drug and Explosives Enforcement Agent.

Even a part-time one.

At least that was what Trouble and Ruth fervently hoped.

A waitress showed up. Ruth interrupted her monologue long enough to order a beer; both men followed her lead.

Trouble noted that the conversation between the two men in the booth seemed to be getting more heated, but they kept their words too low for him to make them out over Ruth’s voice. He rested a hand on her knee under the table, hoping she’d take it for a request for a pause.

She brushed his hand off.

Did she really think he’d make a pass at her right now? Still, this was her show. Captain Umboto had made that clear as they left the Patton this morning.

Ruth leads; Trouble follows.

But Ruth, love, do you have any idea where we’re going?

The drinks arrived. As Trouble reached for his, he noted the booth’s conversation was on pause as one of them answered a phone. Was there a twitch of a nod in their direction?

Uxbridge was seated with his back to the booth. Was he looking at Ruth, or beyond her to something in the mirror? Trouble started to turn, to check the mirror out, but Uxbridge was lifting his glass in some kind of informal toast.

Trouble raised his mug, glancing at Ruth, who was smiling as if she had good sense. The commander was smiling, too, kind of smugly.

Movement at the corner of his eye drew Trouble’s attention.

“Honey, I think we got a problem,” he muttered.

His bride ignored him . . . a habit developed since saying “I do.”

She missed the pistols coming out across the room.

“Down,” Trouble growled – and upended the table.

Their drinks went flying, adding little to the heavy aroma of yesterday’s brew, smoke, sweat and more exotic odors.

“What are you doing?” Ruth screeched, and made to follow Commander Uxbridge as he headed for the back door.

Trouble kicked the chair out from under Ruth, unbalancing her enough that he could pull her down beside him – just as two rounds from across the room filled the air where her head had been.

“Huh?” Ruth came out of her fixation on Uxbridge to glance around. “What’s going on?”

“A friendly exchange of joy dust for cash seems to have gone wrong,” Trouble offered as he edged his head above the upended table, and ducked fast as the two people across the room squeezed off more incoming in his general direction.

“Assuming it was what it looked like, and not cover for your friend’s withdrawal.”

Ruth’s automatic was out of hiding from its rather nice place that Trouble enjoyed roaming in quieter times. Set for sleepy darts, she squeezed off two rounds at Uxbridge as he disappeared out the back door.

“Darn,” she muttered as she only added more chips to the bar’s battered motif.

Trouble edged his own service automatic around the table top and sent a few of Colt-Phizer’s best toward the erstwhile entrepreneur and client. He glanced around for the bartender, but she had made herself scarce.

To call the local constabulary?

Not likely. Trouble had noted a distinct lack of New Birmingham’s uniformed finest as he and Ruth approached the “friendly watering hole,” the commander had suggested.

Trouble ducked as another couple of rounds shoved the table against his shoulder and showered plaster from the wall above him. He tapped his commlink.

“Gunny, I could use some help here. Where are you?”

The pause that followed was decidedly longer than Trouble expected.

“Stuck in traffic, sir,” finally came back.

Marine NCO’s are people of few words – but they pack a lot of meaning into what syllables they do speak, just as the Corps packed a lot of power into its chosen few. What Trouble heard was straight information underlain with rock-solid determination, overlain with more embarrassment than he believed possible to a Gunnery Sergeant.

“You wouldn’t believe the traffic here, sir.”

Trouble would. Raised by the Corps at bases around the rim of human space, this was his first venture deep into the overpopulated heart of humanity. From orbit, New Birmingham was one glowing orb, whether in daylight or darkness.

“We’re fifteen blocks from you, sir. Should I get the crew moving on foot?”

The image of four combat-loaded marines double-timing through this industrial area, even in the camouflage they’d dummied up for today, made Trouble cringe worse than the next burst from across the room.

He glanced around the lower corner of the table.

The two were running -- one for the front door, the other for the back.

“They’re bugging out,” he shouted to Ruth. He snapped off a three-round burst at the back of the one headed for the front door. Ruth tried for the other.

Both got solid hits.

And the rounds just stuck there like darts on a dartboard.

“Body armor,” Trouble spat as he stood, dusting plaster from his one set of civilian clothes. But he was talking to himself.

Ruth was up and headed for the back door.

Trouble caught her elbow and swung her back around. “You’re not sticking your pretty head out that door until all concerned have had a few minutes to reflect upon their evil ways.”

“But Uxbridge is getting away.”

“He’s got away, Ruth. Diamonds to donuts, there was a car waiting for him out there. And his driver knows how to get around this damnable local traffic. All that’s out there now is a buddy of our gun-toting trader from across the room.”

Trouble waved at the now-vacant table.

“Oh! Yeah, I guess that’s how I’d do it.” Ruth looked around, probably taking in the pub’s decor for the first time.

Imitation wood paneled the walls in dark swirls. Blinking signs for local brews and sports teams paled in the full light of day. Now the bartender wandered out from the bathroom.

She noted the situation with an unconcerned eye and asked if they wanted fresh drinks. Trouble declined, righted the table and chairs, settled their tab and led Ruth cautiously out the front door.

A half dozen people in working overalls passed them going in. It was as if an Open for Business sign had been turned on. A dozen more in pairs and trios followed.

A moment later a cab drove up.

Gunny piled out to report as the other three marines took point, covering 360 degrees around them.

The idea was for them to be inconspicuous today, since New Birmingham had its own police force . . . however invisible . . . and strong gun-controls laws . . . that seemed less than perfect in their application.

The Marines’ body armor was covered by their new, multicolored sweat suits, making them look for all the world like a child’s crew-cut, hard-eyed, teddy bear. Their guns were hidden in bags, making them only slightly less conspicuous.

“Sorry about the delay, sir. Next time I do this, we use one of our own drivers.”

“I agree, Gunny. Let’s get out of here.”

The cabby had no trouble delivering them quickly to the space elevator. An hour later they were up the bean pole and reporting to Captain Umboto in her day cabin on the Patton.

“He got away, Izzy” Ruth blurted out.

Trouble gritted his teeth at his wife’s familiarity. He’d spent much of his two months of married bliss trying to introduce Ruth to the Navy Way.

He hadn’t been all that successful.

She had finally acquired the ability to identify rates and rank. The wardroom still chuckled at Ruth’s initial effort.

Standing in line at the Navy exchange at High Woolamurra, Ruth had proudly told Trouble, “That one’s a captain, ‘cause he has four stripes. But what’s five stripes?”

“Five stripes?” Trouble asked, puzzled as he followed Ruth’s gaze . . . to two chiefs. One, with over sixteen years in the navy, sported four gold hash marks. The other, with twenty plus years, had five.

Trouble spent the rest of the wait in line trying to stop laughing as he explained the difference between officer rank stripes, that encircled the sleeve, and enlisted service hash marks that angled up to cover part of the sleeve. Undaunted, Ruth shared with the entire wardroom over supper that night how she’d made her latest discovery.

Half of the officers had almost laughed up their chow.

The skipper surprised him; she’d nodded understandingly at Ruth. “Learning all the secret handshakes of this bunch is a bitch,” she muttered encouragingly.

The skipper surprised Trouble again today. She just nodded at the announcement that the bird had flown the nest and changed the subject. “Better get the farm ready for fluctuating gravity, Ruth. We’re clearing the pier in two hours.”

“Orders, Skipper?” Trouble asked.

“The yard at Wardhaven finally thinks they’ve figured out the spaghetti that passes for wiring in our main system. We’ve got a week’s reduced availability there.”

Trouble and Ruth both knew the truth behind those words. The Patton was one of many hasty war conversions from merchant vessel to light cruiser. The yards had rushed the ships into commission paying attention to only what would make them fit to fight . . . and wasting little time on minor things like system standardization.

Thanks to that haste, the Patton had damn near ended up a permanent fixture at the end of a pier. Trouble wouldn’t have minded that, except he and Ruth about then were in slavers’ hands, growing drugs on a stinking, hot planet named Riddle.

The work was bad; the supervision was worse.

Slave drivers stalked around with whips in their hands and rape on their minds.

Ruth and he had risked their necks to help an invasion fleet show up.

But those were yesterday’s problems. Today, the Patton was in the best shape she’d ever been and the skipper had a tiger grin on her face.

The call to Wardhaven came from the people who made planets shake.

When they talked, people died.

Hopefully, it wouldn’t be anyone Trouble knew personally. With a salute and a shrug, the Marine officer went to prepare his detachment to get underway.

TWO

A week later, Ruth galloped up to the captain’s gig. Trouble was waiting for her, his face the mask it became when he was busy being Marine. Catching her breath, Ruth glanced around. Good, Izzy wasn’t there yet.

She flashed her husband a proud grin, which he ignored as he always did when he was in Marine mode. Still, she had a right to be proud.

She’d heard Trouble grouse, and other naval officers, too, that every civilian considered themselves a brevet admiral . . . and acted accordingly. Ruth was doing her darnedest to be their obedient servant . . . and act accordingly. Although it was none too easy to meet their expectations. Take this situation, for example.

All Ruth’s life, she’d been taught to defer to her betters, to let her elders enter a room first and take their preferred seat before she and the other kids started squabbling over who got what was left.

Always, age before beauty.

But not now, not the Navy Way, as her husband had done his best to make clear. Here, the junior entered a vehicle like the captain’s gig first and God help her if she didn’t guess what seat the senior wanted and avoid taking it.

“It’s madness,” she insisted.

“No,” her new husband would remind her, “it is neither the right way nor the wrong way. It is the Navy Way.”

Movement caught Ruth’s eye. Izzy and the new exec were entering the docking bay. She flashed Trouble a quick grin and entered the captain’s gig first. Taking the measure of the eight seats available to her, she picked a middle one on the right. That left seven free for the three officers to squabble over.

Her husband entered right behind her, took the seat across from her and began belting himself in. The XO entered, took a quick side step and let Izzy pick her seat.

Smart man, he’d go far in any Navy Ruth ran. She shrugged internally, doubting any Navy operated that way.

Izzy settled down in the seat ahead of Ruth. “How’s it going, Ruth?” the captain asked as her hands automatically belted herself in.

Ruth was still trying to figure out the five-point harness the Navy used and didn’t look up until she heard her name. “Oh fine, Izzy,” Ruth said and watched both Trouble and the exec blink at the familiarity.

Well, darn it, I’m a civilian. There have to be a few advantages to that disability Ruth did not say.

“How are the farmhands working out?” Izzy asked, settling back in her seat, all harnessed in.

Ruth was still struggling. Trouble popped his one point release and reached over to help. Another time, his hands’ feathery touch on her breasts and inner thighs would have been a turn-on. Today, it just added to her frustration as he inserted tab A into slot B with an ease that eluded her.

Then again, he was always good at getting his tab A into her slot B. Trying not to blush, Ruth concentrated on Izzy and let her husband strap her in.

“They’re catching on fine,” Ruth assured Izzy. “Chief Yellin and Petty Officer Dora grew up on farms. They’re fast learners, and they pass it along to the rest very quickly.”

Actually, retired chief and petty officer, but you don’t tell captains what they already knew. At least that was what Trouble insisted.

“You’ve been eating our produce for the last week,” Ruth pointed out.

“I know. I signed the pay chit before we docked. I mean the other hands.”

Trouble flashed Ruth just a hair of a raised eyebrow. He’d warned her that nothing happened aboard ship without the captain knowing.

“We were expanding the tanks,” Ruth began as methodically as she could while the gig went zero gee and pulled away from the Patton. “We were back at High Woolamurra station, and where I grew up, a farm wasn’t a farm without the farmer’s wife.”

“So you hired on Chief Yellin’s wife,” Izzy finished.

Ruth nodded.

“And kids?” the XO asked.

“No, sir,” Ruth shot back. “They’re all grown and on their own.”

“Although if this experiment of yours works out,” Izzy went on quoting almost verbatim from what Ruth was thinking, “the youngsters on your farm will want to bring along their wives and they will want to have kids.”

“I’m housing them in the farm area, between the ice armor and the main hull, and I’m paying for their rations, same as any other of my contract labor force.”

“And if we have to fight?” the XO led on.

“The ex-crewmembers will report to their battle stations. Chief Yellin has identified a very safe area near the ship’s core for me and the wives to report to.”

The Exec turned to Izzy for The Word. If Ruth’s eyes weren’t deceiving her, the skipper was sporting a sliver of a grin.

“Someone with too much time and too little brains back at the Navy Department decided it was cheaper to lose a ship or two rather than keep full crews aboard in peace time,” Izzy said. “Some other dunderhead decided the planet-bound farmers were charging too much to provide certified bug- and fungus-free fresh fruits and vegetables for the ships. I figured I could combine both directives and give the Patton a farmful of willing hands only too ready to down tools and race back to battle stations.”

Izzy stroked her chin as entry gee’s built up. “Should have realized I wasn’t the only one with an imagination. Whose idea was it, yours or Chief Yellin’s?”

“Mine,” Ruth said.

One thing she’d learned fast from Trouble . . . and his troubles . . . was that when higher ups asked who was responsible, the only answer was the senior officer present.

At the farm, that was Ruth.

Izzy’s grin was pulled down at the ends. Ruth hoped it was by the extra gee’s they were under. “Hope you’re just as creative for what we’re getting into.”

After that, the captain lapsed into thoughtful silence. The others followed suit.

Ruth raised an eyebrow to Trouble. What are we getting into?

His almost imperceptible nod added nothing to her growing sense of apprehension. What kind of nut farm have I signed on with?

Until a few months ago, Ruth had never been off Hurtford Corner, the planet of her birth. Since being drugged and dragged into the filthy hole of a slave ship, she was up to five planets now . . . four in the last month alone.

It was nice seeing new places with Trouble’s arm comfortably around her. How pleasant Wardhaven could be would have to wait for a time when Trouble wasn’t being so darn Marine.

Once the gig landed, a government limo was waiting for them. Ruth quickly entered and took a jump seat, Trouble right beside her. A civilian had attached himself to their group sometime during the walk from gig to limo. Izzy actually broke into a wide smile at the sight of him and made a point of entering ahead of him.

“Woman, I’m a civilian now.”

“And a deputy minister, if I’m not mistaken.” Izzy shot back. “This is your get about, isn’t it?”

“Rita refuses to have anyone assigned a limo. Good woman. Trying to be as tight a skinflint on the nonessentials as her husband would want.”

“How is she?”

“More pregnant every day. And the happiest woman on ten planets since her husband made it back.” The civilian reached a hand across to Ruth’s husband. “Trouble, isn’t it? I see you’ve got your captain’s bars back.”

“Yes, Captain Anderson.” Trouble answered quickly.

And Ruth did a quick reassessment. The old guy was retired Navy. That raised his stature in the strange game these folks played. If this was the Captain Andy, skipper of the 97th Defense Brigade in the recent war, he was darn near a god to Izzy and Trouble.

“And this must be your bride,” the old fellow beamed.

Ruth beamed back, unsure if she should nod her head, offer her hand, try to curtsy where she was seated, or salute. Flustered, she just sat there and blushed.

“I read the report on what you and your husband did on Riddle.” Captain Anderson continued. “A fine bit of action. Well done. Very well done.”

Ruth might be new to the Navy, but she knew that to be the highest praise available to these tight-lipped, unexpressive people. Now she was blushing red-hot, but, for a civilian, in the presence of a god of war, it seemed like the best response.

“What are we headed for this time out?” Izzy asked.

“I have no idea. The spy has been keeping busy and offering no tidbits for the rest of us to gnaw on. I, myself, have been fully occupied trying to restore one lost bridegroom to the side of his lady-in-waiting. Shall we just go along, my feline friend, and enjoy the ride?”

“This tiger says why bloody not,” Izzy said.

The rest of the drive was quiet enough to give Ruth plenty of time to wonder what a farm girl was doing among the likes of these hardheaded fighters. When she’d signed herself up to be Izzy’s part-time ADEE Agent, she’d figured it for a minor thing.

Apparently, there was a lot more to saying “Yes” to the likes of Trouble and Izzy than she’d ever dreamed of.

Their destination was an imposing building of gray stone pierced by row upon row of windows. The limo drove into a basement garage and dropped them off next to an elevator, which disgorged them onto a thickly carpeted, high-ceilinged hallway, lined at long intervals by dark, wooden doors.

This is definitely not the poor side of town.

The empty conference room that Captain Anderson led them to smelled of wax and wood. A thick slab off a huge tree dominated the center of the room. Trouble took Ruth’s elbow and edged her toward one of the high-backed wooden chairs lining the wall. Izzy and Andy seated themselves at the table. Ruth tried not to look like she was gawking as she surveyed the room.

Two chandeliers provided a gentle light. The walls were a rouge-and-cream paper, marred by empty hangers. Ruth would have bet paintings once hung there. Why keep the empty hangers?

She doubted it was an accident.

Nothing in the room spoke of carelessness to detail. Except the hangers . . . and the two large screens at the front and back of the room. They must be recent additions; their cables were neat but showed in stark, modern contrast to the carefully contrived ancient elegance of the rest of the room.

Interesting, very interesting. Turning to Trouble, she opened her mouth . . . and was immediately shushed by a curt shake of his head.

She followed his gaze to an opening door. Quickly, the room filled with purposeful people, talking quietly among themselves, juggling armfuls of readers, looking for seats. Several seemed to know her husband.

One gorgeous blonde flashed him a brilliant smile. “How’s it going?” she gushed.

“Great,” Ruth answered Trudy Seyd.

They’d met on Riddle. Tru had not only been Ruth’s bridesmaid, but had gotten the planet’s records center back up so that it could issue Trouble and Ruth a marriage license.

“What are we up to?” she shot back.

Tru’s grin got even bigger. “Can’t spoil the boss’s announcement, but I think Trouble here is gonna love it.”

The Marine beside Ruth groaned. “They don’t pay me enough for what you get me into.”

“Hey, you never would have met Ruth except for the last mess I got you into.” Tru protested, which wasn’t exactly correct, but was close enough not to argue over.

“Oops, here comes the boss.” Tru turned to take a place near the head of the table.

The announcement was ambiguous since three entered the room.

A rotund man in a rumpled white suit easily could have deserved the title; clearly he was used to dominating any room he entered.

Then Ruth caught a hint of the steel in the other man’s eyes. Back ramrod straight, the taller man took the room in with a commanding glance, nodded at whatever the other was saying, then turned a loving smile to the woman that seemed surgically joined to him at the elbow.

The woman was clearly pregnant. The smile she shared with the man was warm enough to make comfortable any long winter night.

Ruth remembered such glances between Ma and Pa, and sighed in hope that she and Trouble might one day share the same.

Then the woman spared a quick, appraising glance for the room, and Ruth ditched her first impression. The steely eyes and the assessing look were a startling contrast to the loving wife.

“Everyone is here,” the woman announced, taking the chair at the head of the table. The men moved smoothly to fill the empty seats at either side of her.

“Hopefully, this is the last ministerial meeting I’ll be chairing, now that my long, lost husband has wandered back from whereever it was he strayed off to.”

That drew a chuckle from the room.

“Captain Umboto, I’m glad you could make it. I see you’ve brought your key staff.” Which came as another shock to Ruth, piled so quickly upon the last one.

Since when was I promoted to key staff?

Then the woman turned to the big man. “Well, Mr. Spy, what have you and yours been up to?”

THREE

Captain Izzy Umboto leaned forward in her seat, hungry for action, for anything to sink her teeth into. As far as she was concerned, most meetings were a waste of time. Not with this bunch.

While the minions around the walls would have readers overstuffed with the raw feed, the discussion at the head of the table would be lean, mean, and with a bit of luck, something worth fighting for.

Andy patted her hand gently. “Down, tiger. Overeager people in our trade get the wrong people killed.” Under the Buddha-like gaze of her old master, the captain of the cruiser Patton leaned back in her chair, took a deep breath, and waited.

Fortunately, the spy did not make her wait long. “My technicians have been sifting through the scraps you enthusiastic field folks left us on Riddle. Fortunately, it was enough. Although I suspect it does not take a genius for intelligence analysis to glean the essentials from the debris.” The spy fixed Izzy with wide, inviting eyes, tempting her into his realm.

“The station above Riddle was too small and its capacity too limited to maintain a fleet of pirate cruisers,” Izzy said quickly. “It lacked the yards to refurbish the pirated ships or to file the serial numbers off them so that they could appear again on regular shipping lanes.” Izzy continued with growing confidence and a touch of disappointment.

It had felt good to grab a space station, capture three pirate raiders and bring down a planetary government of drug lords and slavers. Still, in the back of her mind, even then she’d known the fish was too small for the damage it did.

She needed to look further for the bastards that gave her niece Franny the drugs that killed her.

Okay, spy, point me at something I can blow up.

“A very accurate assessment,” the spy said, rewarding her with a smile, a most strange rearrangement of his face. “We winged the buggers, but we missed the heart.”

“So where is the bankroll for those bastards?” said the other man. Izzy liked the sound of the question. She studied the man for a moment, then blinked in surprise.

This was Colonel Ray Longknife, the man who killed Unity’s President Urm and ended the war. But in all the videos he hobbled around with a cane or two, the results of a chunk of iron her brigade had put up his backside.

Izzy frowned her own question at Andy.

“A long story,” he whispered back. “Later.”

“A good question,” the spy answered. “And one that gets straight to the heart of matters like these. In military operations, you follow the flow of energy and munitions. In matters like these, you follow the money and it leads you to the source.”

“And?” the woman cut in.

“We lost the trail,” the spy said bluntly. “Which says something in and of itself. Only old money can hide that well. Old money from Earth. Fortunately, while money can hide, what it does often leaves telltales behind. For example, Colonel Longknife, we have taken apart the little present left behind in the Second Chance’s main network. A delightful bit of code, created by a sterling programming boutique back on Old Earth.”

The colonel looked very interested in the spy’s work.

“They serve a very select clientele, very discreet. Only recently has their conscience been pricked about the use certain of their customers have put their code to in the recent war. But they have come forward and made a clean confession of it.”

Why did Izzy doubt that guilt and absolution had anything to do with this sudden turn of affairs? She grinned, for once enjoying the chase.

“There is also the recent bit of luck that Mrs. Tordon gave us, putting the fear of God in her Commander Uxbridge and allowing him to take flight.”

Izzy swiveled in her chair to observe the spy’s high praise turn Ruth beet red. Still, she did a decent imitation of the Marine seated next to her, saying not a word to deflect the kudos or correct the spy’s misconception . . . if indeed he did not already know she had meant to bag the commander that day.

“Uxbridge’s sudden withdrawal of all funds in certain numbered Swiss bank accounts allowed us to trace not only where he went, but also where the funds came from.”

“Where does the trail lead?” The woman leading the meeting rushed the spy; a glance her husband’s way made it clear she had better uses for her time.

“Forward, to a certain planet misnamed Savannah. While we on Wardhaven were successful sending our Unity thugs and politicos packing, their President Milassi managed to hang on, pointing to an election he won before Unity took over five years back. He has to face elections in a few months. Interest in the outcome of those elections goes far beyond Savannah.”

“Savannah was settled before Wardhaven,” Colonel Ray Longknife mused. “Industrialized from the get-go. I never had to fight them. Glad of that. Anything else we need to know about Savannah?”

“The Humanity ambassador to Savannah has requested additional Marines to bolster his small guard. Milassi seems to be having trouble maintaining order. The Senate also has a fact-finding committee due there in ten days. They want a cruiser in orbit for their stay.”

The spy turned to Izzy. “You will shortly receive orders to the Savannah system.”

“Nice of you to tell me about them. Did that trail your sniffing after lead anywhere else?”

“Yes. Forward the trail led to Savannah. Backward, and not as a total surprise, it lead to this gentleman.”

The screen behind the spy came alive as Tru Seyd tapped her reader right on cue. A face smiled out at them blandly, the kind of pictures that the business section of papers featured under the headers of “promoted” or “heading the megamergered stellar corporation.”

Izzy found such pictures lacking in conviction.

This one was no exception. If the years had lined that face, given it any wisdom or character, computer processing of the negative or surgery on the original had removed any evidence.

The face was bland, blank, uninformative.

Still, Izzy memorized it, as she might the electromagnetic fingerprint of a new enemy’s flagship. This was the target. This empty face had retailed the drugs that killed Franny and too many others.

Deep within Izzy a question formed. Why would anyone as outwardly clean and straight as this man mess with poison?

Izzy waved off the question; the odds of her getting an answer were not worth betting on. Then again, the odds of her getting such a man in her gun sights were pretty slim, too.

If it came, Izzy didn’t want to miss.

“Mr. Henry Smythe-Peterwald’s money was mature when old money was just being minted. His family has been buying and selling politicians since before graft had a bad name.” The spy examined his notes. “I believe one or two popes are in his direct lineage, though that was before the pope gave up his army.

“The family’s money went from obscene to merely plentiful until a few generations back. Henry’s grandfather got in on the ground floor of the interstellar net. He got a lock on the hardware and managed to buy up all the software. He also invested quite heavily in several planets just opening up.”

“Was Savannah one of them?” Izzy asked.

“Yes.”

Izzy made a gun with her finger. “Bang,” she said to the picture.

“Were it only that easy,” the spy fairly moaned. “Money and power build walls that keep investigators out more thoroughly than prisons keep ordinary people in. The trap that captures Mr. Peterwald must be carefully baited and cautiously sprung.”

“He wouldn’t be going to Savannah any time soon?” Izzy asked.

“He has never set foot off Earth in his life. No one in his family has.”

Izzy had never even seen Old Earth.

She sighed. Sailors didn’t get to pick their battles. They fought where and when they were told. She did have orders to take the Patton to Savannah and offer all assistance. She might just have a chance to bring some well-deserved pain and discomfort into Mr. Peterwald’s life.

Others, way above her pay grade, would be the ones to bring down such a gold-encrusted scumbag as little Henry there.

FOUR

Henry Smythe-Peterwald XI paced his father’s room. Twenty paces took him to the windows that looked out over a thousand pristine acres of woodlands.

The old man had nurtured the waste just to impress lesser beings. Henry never knew his father to actually walk among those trees. In his youth, Henry had tried to hide there, to find some special place that was his alone.

Father’s guards always found him.

Today, Henry ignored the view and whirled to cover the twenty paces back to the white wall, bare except for the myriad of medical gear that kept the old man alive.

His father had bragged, “I will live forever. I’m buying the rejuvenation treatments other people are dying for.”

The old man would laugh at his joke, enjoying it immensely.

“You stupid, old bastard,” Henry snarled. “You warned me never to trust a beta version. ‘Wait until the second or third upgrade to risk your own system to the new damn code.’ But you had to have the first rejuv the labs came up with. Now your brain has turned to snot?”

Remembering what his father could not, Henry laughed. He laughed in the old man’s face.

It was safe to laugh now.

The old man couldn’t call his guards.

The eyes that had made Henry cringe now stared blankly at the ceiling, blinking rarely. Breath flowed in and out as the ventilator pushed and pulled. The body could easily pass for a healthy thirty-year-old’s, a good twenty years younger than Henry.

“Now live with what it’s got you, old fool,” the son snarled at the blank face.

The beeps and weaving patterns on the monitors quickened. Henry stepped away from the bed, put several paces between him and his father before the nurse passed through the self-opening door.

“Mr. Peterwald, your father seems to be having a distress episode,” the woman said as she hurried to the bed.

“I’ll leave him to you,” Henry said, avoiding even a glance at the nurse. Ms. Upton was probably the ugliest woman to pass the Nursing Boards in the last fifty years. Several others on his father’s support team rivaled her for that accolade, but Upton brought a second factor to her credit.

Her voice made stripping gears sound melodic.

His father had always kept the beautiful and graceful at his beck and call. Now, if the old man actually could hear, could understand what was going on around him, he’d be hating every moment of his immortality.

Served the bastard right.

Henry smiled as he left the room.

An elevator took him down to his office area. The wide space it disgorged him into presented a view of plants, trees, and a waterfall.

Hidden behind the facade, dozens of people in this room labored to fulfill his slightest whim.

More waited patiently, hopefully, for him to permit them a moment of his time.

He was distracted by none of them as he walked to his office. A word from him and the waterfall would have disappeared, giving him a view to his primary secretary.

Henry walked, breathing the aroma of the woods, listening to the chirp of birds. Almost, he was in his hiding place, his special place.

Only now, no guards would dare disturb him. Today, no father could yank him in to put on a senseless display for lesser petitioners.

Someday, he might go back to the woods, the real woods, to see what his secret place had become. Not today.

Not now. There were things to do. Grandfather had remade the family fortune. Father had added to it, reaching new heights until presidents and prime ministers sweated as waiting petitioners in this very room.

Now that Henry had finished paying off the courts and been formally appointed the old man’s guardian and master of the family fortune, Henry would show the old man who was the better.

But he’d have to do it quickly, before the old man’s brain was totally mush.

The drug money had offered him a quick way to the heart of Unity. Grandma Smythe may have razored out the bootleggers from the family tree but that didn’t mean Henry was ignorant of the many ways the family made its fortune.

The Unity propagandists were right. Henry and other powerful men were jacking up the price for finished goods, and offering cutthroat prices for the raw materials the outer rim could offer for payment.

Why shouldn’t the rim send Earth the drugs its teaming masses demanded for their distraction.

It had been an easy alliance for Henry. He had the ships; he knew which of his captains weren’t obsessive about following every little law. The profits hadn’t been all that great. Unity middlemen and the skippers had robbed Henry blind.

But he’d gotten the connections he needed with President Urm.

And Urm had happily promised Henry a war, with all its chances for war profiteering. And when it was done, he’d be in the prefect position to buy up losers for pennies on the dollar.

Yes, the war could have doubled or even tripled the family’s fortune. If there was a brain cell left in the old man, he’d have had to admit that his son had beat both him and granddad.

But the war ended too soon.

“Is Whitebred waiting?”

“Yes, Mr. Peterwald.” his secretary immediately answered.

“How long has he been waiting?”

“Two days, Mr. Peterwald.”

“Good. Send him in. And, Milly, change my office to one most intimidating for his personality profile.”

“Yes, Mr. Peterwald.” There was a brief pause. “Done, Mr. Peterwald.”

Around Henry, the room wavered, then solidified. Patterned after the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles, this was one routine you couldn’t download from every site on the Web. Just keeping the mirrors synchronized took more computing power than a large city.

Henry loved it. He relished what happened to others when he surrounded himself with these ancient trappings of power.

Yes, it would be fun working Whitebred over in the Hall of Mirrors.

A short, dark-haired man entered.

He wore the buttonless gray suit that was de rigueur this month for high-powered business executives. Molded into the shoulders and arms were probably enough computing power to work a small starship.

In Henry’s view, numbers appeared beside Whitebred showing his respiration, heartbeat and blood pressure, probably stripped right off his own coat’s confidential medical monitors. When Whitebred opened his mouth, Henry would get an immediate stress analysis, matched against Whitebred’s nominal stress in his last couple of corporate meetings.

Henry kept such data on file for all his people. Good information on your subject made meetings like this easy.

He checked the make and model of Whitebred’s own office software and suppressed a snort. Henry would know everything about Whitebred. He, in turn, would know nothing about Henry, or be in worse shape still if the poor man actually trusted the readouts that his own system fed him about Henry.

Yes, Henry would enjoy this meeting.

“Thank you for seeing me, Mr. Peterwald,” the supplicant said.

“Hope I didn’t keep you waiting too long,” Henry lied.

“No, no sir. No wait at all,” the man lied in return.

“Are you enjoying your work with us?”

“Yes, very much,” he lied again. “I think I have a lot to offer the corporation.” That was not a lie, at least as Whitebred saw it.

“Well, we have to look out for our returning war heroes.”

The man winced visibly.

“I liked your idea. The way you were running that fleet, you could have ended the war in a day.”

The man preened.

Henry abstained from pointing out that his bottom line was predicated on the war going for another six months. Whitebred did not have permission to end the war so suddenly. Then again, his actions hadn’t mattered one whit.

“I really could have if those mutineers hadn’t ruined everything.”

“Apparently, yours weren’t the only mutinous hands around. It was one of his own men that killed Urm.” And ruined all my profitable plans.

“Yes,” Whitebred hissed.

“I understand that you were able to leave a bit of a present behind for your mutineers.”

“Yes, Mr. Peterwald.”

“Well, I have a surprise for you. That Colonel Longknife who killed Urm also bought your cruiser off the scrap heap. Even hired what was left of its crew, most of your mutineers, I understand.”

“Have they attempted a jump?” The man was hardly breathing.

“As I understand it, Longknife, Abeeb, and the Marine captain went tooling off to a meeting several jumps from Wardhaven. Never got there,” Henry announced dolefully.

Whitebred beamed from ear to ear.

“Yes, I think you have taken care of all our problem people.” Henry chuckled.

The other man laughed out loud.

This was going rather pleasantly. The man was Henry’s kind of fellow.

“How would you like to be an admiral again?”

“I don’t think the Navy would have me, Mr. Peterwald. But, if you can arrange it, sir, and that’s where you want me, I’m your man,” he quickly corrected what another man might mistake for a rejection.

Henry smiled his understanding.

“No. There’s nothing in the Humanity Navy that interests me. However, Savannah is in need of a new fleet commander. The station there is doing double duty for me. The Navy shores up a government I find very convenient, and its yards will work on ships other places are squeamish about handling, if you know what I mean,” Henry said with a raised eyebrow.

“Definitely, sir,” Whitebred said, no question even hinted at.

“Good. I want a man there in charge of all that. President Milassi of Savannah owes me several favors already. What with an election coming up, Milassi will want to owe me many more.”

Henry snickered at the malleability of politicians.

Whitebred joined him in the laugh.

“Having my own man on the scene is just what I need. You’ll command not only the ships and yards but several battalions of marines. Think you can handle that?”

Whitebred had the good sense to say nothing at this reference to his recent inability to command his own fleet.

“I might add, that unlike the fools you had to put up with in the war, most of these officers know where their money comes from. The real money, not that pittance they draw from Savannah.”

With it clear that all the important officers were in Henry’s pocket, Whitebred leaned back in his chair. “When do you want me to start?”

“Right now would be good. I want to update you on the history of Savannah. Not the crap the media would feed you.”

Henry stood, walked around his desk and put an arm around Whitebred’s shoulders as the man scrambled to his feet. “My grandfather started that colony. I think of it like a plantation that’s been in the family for generations. Can’t let it be tossed around like a ball among strangers, can we?”

“No, Mr. Peterwald, we can’t let that happen.”

“Good, how would you like to do dinner?”

Henry beamed happily as the man nodded.

“We can talk more over food. Milly, have security scrounge up my son from wherever he’s hiding. It will be an education for him to hear how the family runs things.”

FIVE

Where Ruth grew up, they had words for how she felt; useless as tits on a boar hog. Worthless as a fifth wheel.

None of those were as useless as an officer’s wife while he was busy moving his detachment. Trouble was prowling around his green-clad troops, talking with his Gunny, busy as a man could be . . . and impervious to Ruth’s presence.

Older Marine officer wives had warned Ruth about this. She understood it . . . in her head. But living through it . . . that was another thing entirely.

Maybe she should have stayed on the Patton, or come down on another shuttle.

But she had work of her own to do.

And it would help if she was introduced to the embassy staff by Trouble so that they would connect her with him.

After all, if she got in trouble and had to run for the safety of the legation, it would help if the Marine at the embassy gate knew to let the captain’s woman in.

And Ruth was busy getting herself in trouble.

Or at least not doing what a simple space-based farmer or officer’s wife should do.

Izzy and Trouble covered this during the week the Patton was in transit.

Those idiots back on Riddle had hardly known how to grow the drug plants. Surely, they hadn’t done the bioengineering that turned common Earth-based plants into forget-the-world dust. No, someone else had created the stuff.

Ruth’s job was to find that someone and do something about them.

Right! Easy! Just land on a strange planet and wander around asking any stranger, “You know where the illegal-drug research station is?”

I wouldn’t survive a day.

Izzy and Trouble had looked at her dumbly, and said “That sounds like a plan.” and left her to stew over a real one.

As Trouble got his Marines and their duffle bags loaded aboard a bus sent by the embassy for his company, Ruth rented a car from a counter in the spaceport.

Now she understood why Izzy had been so insistent that Ruth get a credit card with her corporate name on it.

Pa never borrowed anything. If he and Ma couldn’t pay for it, they went without.

Here, Ruth needed borrowed wheels, and no one rented without a credit card for collateral. The Navy wasn’t the only place that took some getting used to.

Ruth completed her rental agreement and pulled her tiny car up behind the bus to wait. The fellow who rented her the car had assured her that its map screen would show her how to get anywhere in town.

Yeah, right. Ruth would follow the bus.

While she waited for Trouble to get moving, she asked the computer to show her the best way to the Society of Humanity Embassy.

The computer told her there was no embassy, “Glorious Unity forces being at war with Earth’s running dogs.”

Someone hadn’t updated their database.

Trouble seemed in no hurry, so Ruth expanded her research. “Where’s the illegal drug research center?”

“I know of no such business,” came back at her.

“Chemical research center?” she tried.

“I know of no. . .”

“Farm or plant research center?”

“I know of . . .”

“What do you know?” Ruth snapped in exasperation.

That was a mistake. The computer began an unstoppable exposition on all the bars and bordellos in town, some with quite graphic descriptions of the services offered.

And it wouldn’t shut off. Ruth tried punching buttons. If anything, it got louder.

“Hey, woman, want your windows washed?” a young voice piped.

“What?” Ruth asked, glancing around for the voice’s source.

“Want your windows washed? They’re dirty.”

“What? Where are you? I can’t hear you very well. This thing won’t cut off.”

In answer to her first question, a squeegee started waving outside the passenger side of the car.

Ruth rolled the window down.

The squeegee reached in and rapped the dashboard, “Shut up, you machine mouth,” the young voice snapped.

The silence was delicious.

“That’s better. Woman, you want your windows washed? I do a good job. Only one dinar.”

Ruth checked her purse. “I don’t have any Savannah money yet.”

A face, very dirty and horribly thin rose on tiptoes to smile at her from the passenger window. “That’s fine. I can do your windows for one Earth dollar.”

Ruth wasn’t sure what the exchange rate was, but she was pretty positive it wasn’t one for one. She glanced at her windows. They were clean.

She studied the kid; his hopeful smile was hard to deny. Ruth held up an Earth quarter.

“You drive a hard bargain, woman, but you win,” and the kid quickly went to work smearing her front windows.

“Where you want to go?” the kid asked as he came around to her side of the car, giving Ruth her first good look at him.

The rest of the boy was as thin as the face had promised. He looked maybe six or eight, but allowing for a tough street life, he might be twelve. His clothes were dirty, torn and way too big for him. What passed for shoes were held together by string with used newspaper for soles.

Following behind him was a girl, maybe a year or two younger.

“Are you his sister?”

“No, he’s my brother,” the girl piped back.

“Tiny gets confused easy,” the boy explained, not slowing down his work. “Where you going?” he asked again.

“To the Society of Humanity Embassy,” Ruth answered this time.

“The old one or the new one?”

“The one with the ambassador, I hope.”

“Oh. The traffic’s bad through town. You could get lost real easy, ma’am. I’ll show you a shortcut. Get you there real fast. Only cost a dollar.”

“I’m planning on following that bus.”

The boy studied the big vehicle ahead of them. “You could lose it at a stoplight. I can make sure you get there. Only a dollar.”

Ruth looked down into the pleading eyes of the girl . . . and weighed the chances that these two kids could hit her over the head and leave her body in a ditch somewhere.

Concluding that neither or both could hurt her, Ruth nodded. “You make sure I get to the embassy, and I’ll pay you two quarters.”

“You drive a hard bargain, lady,” the boy answered.

But his sister was nodding yes.

“Okay, we do it. Just for you.”

Sis let out a squeak of joy and clapped her hands. A moment later, big brother opened the passenger door and helped sis into the backseat. She ignored the seat belt and stood, leaning on the front seat. Brother then settled himself down beside Ruth.

“I can take you there now. Why you want to follow stinky bus?”

“Because my husband’s on it.”

“He one of the jarheads?”

“Marines,” Ruth automatically corrected the epitaph she now knew to smile when she said, and better yet, not say. “And since he may have to loan me an extra quarter for your tip, it’s Mr. Marine to you.”

“Yes, ma’am, boss lady. Whatever you say.”

The bus rumbled into life, and Ruth discovered why the kid called it stinky. The engine let off a blue cloud of poorly burned hydrocarbons that made Ruth want to cough.

Sis held her nose and made a “Pee Euw” sound.

Brother gave Ruth his “Whatever you say, woman, you’re paying for this,” shrug. Thankfully, the bus quickly got in gear.

Ruth followed it out of the port.

“It’s gonna turn left at this light,” brother told her. It was a good thing Ruth had been warned; the bus did a quick left at the light without even slowing and nary a signal.

Ruth hit her turn light and followed.

“I told you so,” the boy grinned.

“That’s worth an extra quarter,” Ruth assured him, keeping her eyes on the road, the traffic, and the bus.

“It’ll take this on-ramp to the expressway,” the boy offered.

“Expressway?” Ruth cringed inside. On Hurtford Corner, she’d never driven over forty, fifty kilometers an hour.

She’d since learned that speeds on expressways . . . unless clogged with rush hour traffic . . . could be a hundred or more. Swallowing her fear, Ruth followed the bus up the ramp. Again, no turn signal.

She listened for her own turn signal; it made happy clicks. Yes, turn signals weren’t outlawed on this planet.

But they did seem distressingly optional.

At least for large buses.

And trucks and anyone else that wanted in her lane.

Everyone behind the wheel on this planet seemed possessed by some urgent death wish. Cars and trucks rocketed along at speeds that must have exceeded the Patton’s best, changing lanes with only inches to spare.

The bus, not to be outdone, aimed itself for the far left lane as soon as it entered the highway and dared anything smaller to get in its way.

Ruth started to follow.

“I know the way to the embassy,” the kid assured her, “if you want to go slower.”

The boy huddled on the seat beside her. Sis was no longer hanging over the front seat; a quick glance behind Ruth didn’t show sis on the backseat.

She must be cowering on the floor.

Ruth started to ask if the two of them had ever been on an expressway before. Then swallowed the question, unwilling to strip the boy of his man-of-the-world airs.

Ruth stayed in the slower right lane and let the bus disappear in traffic ahead.

“Where is the embassy?” she asked her guide.

“Near the river, a couple of blocks from Government Center,” he said through clinched teeth.

“Computer, show me the way to Government Center,” Ruth ordered. A map appeared on the dash in front of her, showing the expressway in red. The fifth or six exit ahead showed as yellow and a trail led off it to the right.

“Thank you, young man.” Ruth said as cheerfully as she could manage with a huge truck riding her bumper, eager to push her along.

“Ah, you are welcome,” the boy said, the words seemingly strangers to his mouth.

How often was the poor kid thanked for what he did?

As Ruth motored along at a stately speed . . . and cars whizzed by her on the left . . . the children regained their confidence. Apparently, they’d never experienced the view the expressway offered. As they came over a rise and began the descent into the river valley, their excitement returned.

“Oh, there’s the river,” the girl squealed.”

“Those tall buildings near the river are Government Center,” the boy offered.

Ruth risked a glance. Several skyscrapers shot up in the center of town. Whether all of them were Government Center or just a few, Ruth didn’t know or ask.

No doubt, she would find out soon enough.

Don’t miss, Vicky Peterwald – Assassin, an e-novella, by Mike Shepherd, summer 2014

Kris Longknife killed my brother. Kris Longknife must die!

Or Vicky Peterwald – Target, by Mike Shepherd, coming from Ace summer 2014

Vicky Peterwald has it all. She’s a grand duchess. She’ll inherit an empire. Oh, and she has a stepmother three years old than she is, pregnant, and wants Vicky dead. Can a girl survive having too much?