Tenacious

24

At 1200 hours sharp, Kris was seated in the Forward Lounge. A young woman Marine who had been a croupier before joining the Corps shuffled two borrowed decks for a fifth time and dealt a dozen cards out in front of Kris.

Professor Labao stood at her right elbow. Mother MacCreedy stood at Kris’s other elbow. The barkeep would stand surety to the proceedings.

What kind of world is it that takes a barkeep’s word over a princess’s?

One that makes a Longknife a princess.

The professor called out the name of the lead researcher on one of the eighty-seven teams dirtside.

Kris drew a card.

“Four of diamonds,” Mother MacCreedy said. “Tough luck, Manuel. Your first drink is on me.”

That was the way it went. Anything below a five got a free drink, and a ride up later that afternoon. Several of those with low cards tried to argue that they needed just a few more hours to complete their work. Only one of them managed to persuade someone to trade with him.

He was lucky. His friend had drawn one of the aces of spades and was not having any luck with his project. “I’m glad to come up early and drink your whiskey. But you owe me. Big-time.”

Kris left the professor to coordinate with Captain Drago on the use of his longboats and Sailors, and Jack to add his Marines in as needed. She retired to her desk. She was actually happy to spend the afternoon reading reports. She got no deeper than the executive summary, but they seemed to support her impressions about this place and the next system over.

“Nelly, am I letting me bamboozle myself? Is there anything hidden deep in one of these things that blows all of our notions to pieces?”

“No, Kris. I’ve dug deep into them, and the data and analysis all support pretty much what you and Jack talked about in bed this morning.”

Kris shrugged off her lack of privacy and went on reading. As she was closing up to go to supper with Jack, she made one observation to Nelly. “We don’t have a lot about the aliens that are still here. Yes, we’ve got a pretty good handle on the ones around the glass plain, but our coverage of the entire West Continent is pretty thin.”

“That was where the kind researcher was that gave up his late return to his friend. Are humans always that nice?”

“Some of them, sometimes,” Kris allowed.

She anticipated a nice quiet supper with Jack. Most of it was.

Kris was about to take her first bite of a rather delicious-looking slice of double chocolate cake liberally seeded with pecans, a product of raiding the larders of the newly arrived reinforcements, when Jack got a faraway look in his eyes.

“Nelly?” Kris said.

“We seem to have a problem with Longboat 1,” her computer answered before Jack could.

“What kind of problem?” Kris said, sadly putting down the loaded fork.

“The head of the scientific team it was supposed to pick up has had an unfortunate encounter with some of the natives.”

“What kind of unfortunate encounter?” Kris asked.

Jack beat Nelly to the punch line. “There’s a stone knife being held to his neck by a very attentive man.”

“That kind of problem, huh?” Kris said. “Well, don’t they have a Marine detachment?”

“They’re in trouble, too,” Jack admitted through clenched teeth.

Kris raised an eyebrow, but Jack just scowled.

“Send more Marines,” Kris said.

“The locals want to talk to you.”

“Me! They don’t even know I exist.”

“Not you, Kris Longknife,” Jack said. “You, Chief of the Sky Gods.”

“Oh, that me, huh?” Kris said, wadding up her napkin and tossing it on the table beside her plate.

“You, yes, you, J. G.,” she said picking out a very young and clearly until recently very boot ensign. “You see these two pieces of cake?”

She nodded, then managed to get out a “Yes, ma’am. Admiral. Sir.”

“Good enough for me,” Kris said. “I want you to take both plates to my quarters and see that they are firmly placed on my desk. Untouched. Understood.”

“Yes, Your Highness,” came with a bob of the head.

“General, you’re with me.”

“You are not going down there.”

“Yes, I am.”

The argument continued in that vein, but Kris kept it moving toward the drop bay, where her battle armor was stored. She knew she was winning when Jack changed from “You’re not going there” to “You’ll keep your helmet on.”

“No, I am not going to negotiate with anyone holding nothing better than a stone knife while hiding behind a helmet’s mirrored plate. If I’m looking him in the eye, he needs to look me in the eye.”

“You are the Sky God. Or Goddess. Christ, do these people even give gender to their sky things?”

“Nelly?”

“We do not have that information.”

“They’ve been down there a couple of weeks, and they don’t even know that?” Jack exploded.

“They were returning early because it was so boring,” Kris reminded her security chief.

Kris pulled on her spider-silk underwear, the new kind that could spread a hit over more territory. It also had a high neck. “Happy?” she said.

“Can you pull it over your head?”

“Yes, but I’m not covering my head.”

“If things go bad, you pull it up.”

“Yes, nanny.”

“Amanda said you might need me,” Jacques said, arriving just in time. Kris had Jack toss him his spare set of spider-silk underwear. It didn’t have the extra protection, but then the guy had survived buck naked for a couple of days down there.

But not at Kris Longknife’s elbow.

The admiral’s barge dropped away from the Wasp within fifteen minutes of the alarm’s being raised.