Redoubtable

1

Lieutenant Commander Kris Longknife paused just outside the bridge hatch. She steadied herself, one hand on the bulkhead, the other heavy on her cane, waiting for the wave of dizziness to pass. The docs said these episodes should be getting fewer and fewer.

So far, the docs were bloody optimists.

Kris measured her breathing and fixed her eye on a hatch farther down the passageway of the Wardhaven Scout Ship Wasp, and thought, TIME, NELLY?

YOU’RE STILL TWENTY-ONE MINUTES EARLY TO RELIEVE THE WATCH, KRIS. ARE YOU ALL RIGHT?

I’M FINE, Kris lied to her personal computer, acquired at a cost greater than several ships of the Wasp’s value.

YOUR BLOOD PRESSURE, PULSE, AND RESPIRATION DON’T LOOK FINE, Nelly pointed out.

AND TO THINK, THIS TIME THE BOMB WASN’T EVEN AIMED AT ME, Kris thought.

IT WAS, Nelly countered. IT WAS JUST THAT THEY WERE AFTER THE GUY WITH YOU FIRST, AND YOU SECOND.

ENOUGH OF THIS, Kris thought, let go of the bulkhead, steadied herself without the help of the cane . . . without much help from the cane . . . and marched onto the bridge of the Wasp.

A glance showed her that tonight’s watch was double the norm for a scout ship . . . and huge for the merchant ship Mary Ellen Carter that the Wasp claimed to be.

Sulwan Kann, the Wasp’s navigator, was Officer of the Deck. In her usual cutoffs and tank top, she, like most of the Wasp’s original contract crew, refused to let the added Marines and sailors now aboard make her drop her easygoing ways. Kris got a two-finger waggle toward Sulwan’s brow for a salute. Kris returned a regal nod . . . as befitting the princess she was.

Still, the relief process went straight Navy. “I stand ready to relieve you,” Kris said. “What is the Wasp’s condition?”

“Situation normal, decelerating at .85 gees toward Kaskatos.”

“And the unknown?”

“The bogey is steady on her course. She will make orbit around Kaskatos at the same time and in the same space we do. What a coincidence.” The OOD and ship’s navigator tapped her command board, and the forward screen showed the star system, then zoomed in to show the two ships, the Wasp approaching Kaskatos from the system’s Jump Point Alpha, the unknown from the nearest gas giant.

“It could be just a local entrepreneur, harvesting reaction mass to sell to any ship that comes by,” Kris said.

“That would explain why it’s aiming to make orbit right at our elbow,” Sulwan said, raising an eyebrow.

Kris shrugged; out here beyond the Rim of human space, the logical answer rarely was the right one.

“And if that ship is just a nice, hardworking merchant, why isn’t he on the horn, hawking his wares?” Sulwan added.

That was a definite strike against the business hypothesis. “It’s not like he’s got to worry about us buying from anyone else,” Kris said. Kaskatos was also silent as a tomb.

Sulwan snorted. “They promote you, Princess, and suddenly you go all soft on us? I thought you Longknifes were supposed to get more bloodthirsty as you went up the promotion ladder.”

Kris laughed. “I’m kind of enjoying nobody trying to kill me.”

“Then how come you got us out here fishing for pirates,” Chief Beni snapped from where he sat at Sensors. His uniform actually looked good on him. He’d lost weight and was wearing fresh khakis every day. Having an actual leading chief aboard the Wasp was definitely crimping his style. But even that couldn’t change his perpetual devotion to avoiding harm’s way.

“Cause those are our orders,” Kris said. “Signed by King Ray himself.”

“Couldn’t you have told your grandpapa you preferred a nice quiet corner of the universe?” the chief asked.

“You’ve been with her longer than I have, Chief,” Sulwan said. “It seems her granddad wants her far away from him first, last, and foremost . . . and usually in hot water up to her pretty ears.” The navigator sank into deep thought for a moment, her finger tapping pursed lips. “Or is it she wants far away from him?”

“The feelings are mutual,” Kris grumbled. “Now, if I relieve you, will you show me some respect?”

“Never, but I would like to be relieved.”

“Have there been any communications in the last four hours from either the unknown or Kaskatos?”

“Not a peep,” Sulwan reported. “Per captain’s orders, we hailed both of them every hour on the hour. Not even a nasty word in reply.”

“Any signs of life, Chief?” Kris asked.

“Kaskatos shows power lines in use. It has thermal plumes around cities and large structures, just like you’d expect. There is some but not a lot of activity on the roads and rivers. There are people there. They just ain’t talking to us or to each other.”

Kris would have cursed the inventor of the fiber-optic cable if she knew his or her name. Many start-up colonies were skipping radio and jumping direct to cable. That left little radio communications to eavesdrop on. That people were willing to put cable on their basic survival list said something about conditions out here beyond the Rim of human space.

Or what had been the Rim of human space.

Kris almost laughed out loud at the stale joke. The Society of Humanity had broken up for many reasons. Still, at the top of most lists was the difference between the staid . . . some might say decadent older planets, Earth and the like . . . and the more vibrant . . . some might say malcontents . . . out on the Rim. Earth said we’d found enough planets; colonies were a drain on money better spent closer to home. The younger worlds saw new colonies as places to make fortunes and get elbow room. The politicians haggled for years, couldn’t solve the problem, and finally settled on splitting the sheets.

Six hundred planets went different ways . . . without a shot fired. Thanks be to any god involved . . . and a little bit of mutiny by one Ensign Kris Longknife.

But when Kris took the Wasp out to find and map vacant planets in unexplored space, she got a big surprise. The Sooners. These folks hadn’t waited for any politician’s permission but struck out on their own. They picked up family, bag and baggage, and headed out to wherever they found a good place to “set” a while.

Just human nature doing what comes naturally. Simple solution . . . or so it seemed.

Unfortunately, the same human nature that cuts the Gordian knot also cuts throats. Where farmers and small business went, lawless people like pirates and slavers weren’t far behind. Those who go beyond the reach of law better either be a law unto themselves or prepared to fight for what they hold dear. If they didn’t or couldn’t, there was usually someone only too ready to show them the error of their ways.

That was where Kris and the Wasp and the two hundred Marines aboard her came in. And why she was covered with shipping containers and squawking the false transponder of the good ship Mary Ellen Carter, a week out from Brighton.

At exactly midnight, ship time, Kris announced “I relieve you,” and Sulwan replied, “I stand relieved,” and the formal transfer of godlike power took place. The Wasp was Kris’s to command through the quiet hours from midnight to 0400.

At least the Wasp was hers to command unless the one true god of the Wasp showed up. Captain Drago was lord of all he surveyed on the Wasp. Of that there could be no question.

He had the signed contract to prove it.

Exactly how the Wasp went from Kris’s bought-and-paid-for ship to a sovereign scout ship in the Wardhaven Navy was something Kris could track. How it happened that the crew continued to be private contractors paid out of black funds by Wardhaven’s Intelligence Chief was a bit harder to follow.

Probably, Kris’s great-grandfather, King Raymond I to most, had his little pinky finger somewhere in the mix.

So, Lieutenant Commander Kris Longknife commanded Patrol Squadron 10 and its half dozen corvettes. She could order Jack Campbell of the Dauntless and Phil Taussig of the Hornet to convoy duty, escorting honest merchant ships around the routes between the Sooner planets. She tasked the Fearless and the Intrepid to faking it as independent—and stupid—solo merchants like the Wasp, hunting for unregistered start-up planets like Kaskatos.

Still, aboard the Wasp herself, Kris was only a watch stander.

Or maybe the problem was that she was still a watch stander.

Like so much of Kris’s life as a Navy officer and a princess, there was no precedent. She could worry about it, do it, or not do it.

For the moment, Kris stood her watch.

“Chief, aren’t you due for relief?”

“I asked to put in my eight during the quiet of the night.”

“And the chief of the boat just let you do that?” If Kris knew anything of the Wasp’s new command master chief, Chief Beni was telling a boldface lie.

“He did, now that you mention it, have a problem with the idea. At first,” the chief admitted with a cough.

“At first,” Kris said.

“Then I explained to him that the unknown ought to be getting in range for us to find out some interesting things during your watch, and he decided to let me do things my way.”

Chief Beni had been following Kris around the hooligan Navy long enough to pick up some bad habits along with a now-disappearing beer gut.

Command Master Chief L. J. Mong had spent a day aboard the Wasp before taking Kris and Captain Drago aside.

“This is an interesting setup you have here. Civilian scientists, Marines, contractors, and some newly arrived sailors. I understand I am chief of the boat. I think many people assume that extends only to the uniform sailors on the Wasp.”

Neither Kris nor Captain Drago had affirmed or denied that observation.

The chief of the boat’s grin grew tight as the silence stretched. “My grandfather told me that a wise man, given a rock, may use water to form it to his will . . . or a diamond drill. I have both in my footlocker, sir.”

Captain Drago had studied the short, thin whip of a man for a moment longer. “I will enjoy watching a true artist.”

And they had broken for supper. Kris and Drago to the officers’ mess, L. J. to dinner with Gunnery Sergeant Brown.

SHALL I SEND A NANO TO RECORD THEIR CONVERSATION? Nelly had asked on the direct link into Kris’s skull. Nelly, Kris’s pet computer, was worth more than all the ships in Patrol Squadron 10, and smarter than all the computers aboard them, with the exception of the eight personal computers she called her kids. More often than not, Nelly was well ahead of Kris.

After a moment’s pause, Kris had shaken her head. NO, NELLY, LET’S PASS ON THAT. I’M LOOKING FORWARD TO THOSE TWO SURPRISING ME.

NORMALLY, YOU DON’T LIKE SURPRISES, KRIS.

Nelly’s recent spate of surprises had caused some hard words and harder feelings between user and computer. Kris recognized where Nelly was coming from and chose her words carefully.

NELLY, AT OFFICER CANDIDATE SCHOOL, I FIRST HEARD THAT MASTER CHIEFS AND GUNNY SERGEANTS ARE THE PEOPLE WHO REALLY RUN THE NAVY AND THE CORPS. I DIDN’T UNDERSTAND WHAT THEY MEANT AT OCS. I’VE COME TO UNDERSTAND IT BETTER NOW. I SUSPECT, IF WE LET THOSE TWO OLD GOATS HAVE THEIR HEAD, THEY WILL SHOW US EXACTLY WHY THE NAVY NEEDS MASTER CHIEFS TO RUN IT.

IF HE IS HALF AS GOOD AS GUNNY SERGEANT BROWN, HE IS VERY MUCH WORTH STUDYING, Nelly agreed.

For the moment, on the Wasp’s bridge, Kris had other things to study. And, to be honest, she was glad to have her electronic expert sharing the watch with her.

“Can you tell me anything more about our unknown, Chief?” Kris said, coming to study his board over his shoulder.

“It’s a system runabout, Commander. Its power source looks like a GE matter/antimatter annihilation reactor. Power plant is an Evinrude Z-20 or a good rip-off. A bit small for the job, but we are way out back.”

“Anything waving at you ‘Hi, I’m a bad guy’?”

“Nothing so easy,” the chief answered. “Unless . . .” he added slowly, tapping his board and frowning at it. “I’m starting to maybe see something strange with the balloot.”

“What kind of strange?” Kris said, holding tight to the blend of excitement at his words and frustration at their slowness.

“Balloots come in lots of different brands and sizes. We’ve got one loaded forward on the Wasp in case that crazy captain of yours decides he wants to go cloud dancing with this merchant ship. By the way, Princess, skimming gas giants for reaction mass is not recommended for ships loaded with containers and glued together with string and chewing gum like the Wasp is just now. You need a ship small, and tightly wound.”

“Chief, I need an answer to the question you raised about that balloot.”

“I know, I know, but I just thought you ought to know that the Wasp is rigged to do a gas-giant dive, but it’s not really meant to. Us having a nice quiet midwatch, I figured now would be a good time to mention it.”

“It’s mentioned! Now what’s strange about that balloot?”

“It’s veined, I think.”

“Veined?”

“Yeah, it’s got these lines running across it. I noticed them about an hour ago. They’re getting more and more pronounced.”

Kris stared at the visual image of the unidentified craft. Basically, it was a big bag with the bare hint of the runabout’s tail end sticking out from behind it. “I don’t see anything?”

The chief tapped his board. The image grew to take in the entire forward screen. Kris still didn’t see anything.

“I said it’s just a hint of something running up and down and across the balloot. They come and go.”

“Nelly, can you make anything out?” Kris asked.

“If you go to infrared,” Kris’s computer suggested, and the screen changed colors as the examination slipped from the visual spectrum to heat, “you can just make out lines running across the balloot that don’t have quite the same temperature as the fabric behind them. They are slightly colder than the balloot and the reaction mass in it.”

“I was about to show her that,” the chief said.

“I know you were,” Kris said. The chief and Nelly were both experts in sensors. And often in competition.

Sometimes that was good.

Sometimes.

“There’s also a hint of the lines on radar,” the chief added. “When you combine the hints on visual . . .”

“And infrared . . .” Nelly cut in.

“And radar,” the chief finished, hands flying over his board, “you get the same set of lines, and they come through better.”

Now the balloot was clearly crisscrossed.

“Are they reinforcements to the fabric?” Kris asked.

“None of the balloots from any company in human space have them,” Nelly said.

“On a close pass to a gas giant, anything like that would disrupt the flow of plasma. They’d burn off. Might even burn up the balloot,” the chief added.

“So they were put on after the pass. Why?”

“Commander, your guess is as good as mine,” the chief admitted. Nelly seconded the human opinion with her silence.

Which left Kris staring at one lonely bit of information, which, balanced against the huge silence from all other sources, did not make her happy.

At the end of her four-hour watch, Kris knew nothing more than she had when she started. As Princess Kris Longknife, commander of Patrol Squadron 10, that really bothered her.

However, as Officer of the Deck, a quiet watch was a good watch. As Kris was relieved at 0400, she tried to congratulate herself on having successfully stood a watch without starting a war or even firing a single shot.

It was getting to be a very pleasant habit.