text:
Kris Longknife's Assassin

Kris Longknife, Volume 204

Mike Shepherd

Published by KL&MM Books, 2017.

# Kris Longknife's Assassain

### A Novella

## Mike Shepherd

#### KL & MM Books

# Copyright Information

Kris Longknife's Assassin

A Novella

by

Mike Shepherd

Published by KL & MM Books

March 2017

Copyright © 2017 by Mike Moscoe

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All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including photocopying, recording or any other information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the publisher.

This book is a work of fiction set 400 years in humanity's future. Any similarity between present people, places or events would be spectacularly unlikely and is purely coincidental.

This book is written and published by the author. Please don't pirate it. I'm self-employed. The money I earn from the sales of these books allows me to produce more stories to entertain you. I'd hate to have to get a day job again. If this book comes into your hands free, please consider going to your favorite e-book provider and investing in a copy so I can continue to earn a living at this wonderful art.

I would like to thank my wonderful cover artist, Scott Grimando, who did all my Ace covers and will continue doing my own book covers. I also am grateful for the editing skill of Lisa Müller, David Vernon Houston, Edee Lemonier, and, as ever, Ellen Moscoe.

Cover art by Mark Ferrari at www.markferrari.com

* * *

Ver 2.0

* * *

Note to long time readers of Kris's saga: Due to the limitations that impact self-published books, the small caps that has highlighted talk on Nelly Net has been replaced with ALL CAPS BUT IN A SMALLER FONT.

### Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

About the Author

Also by Mike Shepherd

# 1

"Kris Longknife, you are so dead," Vicky Peterwald told the mirror. She liked the finality of the words rolling off her tongue . . . and the look on her face.

"You killed my brother, prepare to die," was a kick.

"No Longknife bitch kills a Peterwald and lives to brag of it," sounded even better.

Vicky realized she was scowling. That put lines on her carefully sculptured face. She hadn't gotten the genetic job her brother had; hers had come later.

She smoothed her face to beautiful. She had to work at it; Hank never did.

But Hank was dead.

Vicky sighed; the words were just words. She didn't know that Kris Longknife had ever bragged about killing her brother. Worse, she didn't know for sure that Kris Longknife would die this evening.

There was a knock at the door.

Vicky tightened her robe; it had come loose as she proclaimed death to Longknifes. Normally, she had maids to answer doors, but this evening she'd sent them away. She didn't know if she could trust them. After all, this was Grant von Schrader's house, and he hired them.

She sidled to the door, working her hips for practice. Whoever was out there was smart enough not to knock twice.

She opened the door . . . and grinned. Quickly, she let Kiefer in.

"Is it done?" she asked breathlessly. Boys liked breathless in a girl's voice.

"As good as," he said with a huge grin. "I got connections. The hit team got half their money when they took the contract, the rest tomorrow when she's dead. You do have the rest of the money?" he said, suddenly looking a bit petrified. He gulped hard.

Vicky grinned, letting him twist a bit. "Of course I have the money," she finally said, and watched the relief her words brought. Was the underground really that bad here on New Eden? True, they had a more or less elected government, and it wasn't under the thumb of anyone as smart as Daddy. Still, could a criminal underground really be a problem?

_Well, if they can kill Kris Longknife, I guess they aren't all fluffy bunnies_.

"And you'll get it right after I see a picture of Kris Longknife's riddled body under huge headlines tomorrow."

"The papers here don't show lurid pictures," Kiefer reminded her for about the twentieth time. "Most likely, the papers will report some sort of car accident. Maybe a heart attack."

"A 6-mm heart attack," Vicky grinned.

"So, now that that's done, we've got plenty of time, tonight," Kiefer said, and she could almost hear the young man panting.

Men were so easy to manipulate. Vicky let the dressing gown fall from her shoulder. It caught on her breast.

He stared.

She shrugged a bit and it fell lower.

He stooped to kiss her soft roundness. He wasn't so bad at it.

She felt a thrill run through her that was more than just his tongue making circles around her nipples.

_So this is power. I could really get used to this._

# 2

Vicky Peterwald padded down to the buttery for breakfast early next morning. Grant was already there, eating a plate of weisswurst with the local scrambled eggs. Vicky sniffed and selected a white roll with butter and marmalade.

She pulled out her reader and scanned the headlines.

Kris Longknife was not featured.

Vicky intensified her search on that despicable name.

Kris Longknife did not turn up. The article that had given Vicky the idea of hiring a hit squad had even been taken down.

"Interesting," Grant said, not looking up from his own reader. "Someone tried to kill Princess Kris Longknife last night."

"Tried," Vicky said. "There's nothing about that in the media."

"Those things never do make it into the popular press," Grant said. "I thought I'd explained that to you."

"Yes, I do recall that you have," Vicky admitted. He most definitely had told her at length not to trust the media's reporting of anything important.

_Still, the assassination of Kris Longknife!_

No, the attempted assassination.

"What happened?" she finally said, hating to have to beg.

"Some hired guns got themselves killed. That Kris Longknife is one lucky bitch," Grant said. He glanced up. "You wouldn't happen to know who hired them?"

"Of course not, Uncle Grant," she said, turning on sincerity like a high-powered beacon light. "You told me to stay out of local matters. I'm here to observe and learn."

_Butter could melt in my mouth_.

"Yes, please remember that," he said, and went back to his reader.

"I think I'll eat in my room."

"I'll have the maid take you up a plate."

"I'm not very hungry. This will do."

"Don't be late for your plant visit," he muttered, already lost in his news.

Vicky walked gracefully from the buttery. Did she hear "stupid bitch" as the doors swung close behind her?

# 3

Victoria Peterwald spent a long and boring morning visiting three plants, one was a computer fab, the others were pharmaceutical foundries. If she saw another computer controlled robo-fab she was going to scream.

_How did Hank put up with this?_

But then, Hank had been Daddy's heir. He'd been started on this stuff early. Very likely, he understood what he was looking at.

Vicky didn't understand thing one about what she was shown.

She did, however, understand lunch. At one they broke for a very nice dinner at one of the best restaurants New Eden had to offer. Called the Bank Vault, it was high atop one of the tallest buildings in the city.

However, it was a place for all the old men who worked for Daddy to parade their unmarried sons for Vicky's attention and approval. No doubt, Hank had gotten a similar parade of female pulchritude, and had tasted all he could slip away with.

Vicky, however, was not given the same chance. It was as if the preening fathers took her for some pristine virgin perched high atop a pedestal.

Given the slightest chance, Vicky would have been delighted to give them a naked eyeful with one or all of their young offspring. Sadly, von Schrader had sent along a prune faced duenna, so Vicky's dreams of an orgy would have to wait for some other business luncheon.

Some smiling god in a forgiving heaven must have found her forbearance worthy of reward. As lunch ended, Ms. Rotterdame announced that the afternoon's business would have to be postponed to another day.

"A last-minute invitation to Madame Broadmore's evening soiree just arrived and I fear that Miss Peterwald will be needing time to prepare herself properly for the evening."

Vicky suppressed a sigh. Being paraded around at social affairs ranked just one step up from trailing some technically astute automaton through his harem of robotic slaves. However, given a choice, she'd take something that allowed her a nice warm bath with maids seeing to the perfection of her fingers and toes.

So, back to von Schrader's it was, and a luxurious bath, as Vicky considered her assault on New Eden's social life.

"I wonder if Kris Longknife will be there," she muttered. "Have any of you managed to find the guest lists?"

Her maids, chosen by Grant for Grant's own purposes, stared blankly at Vicky.

She swallowed her frown before it got her slapped with a mud facial and said, "Computer, get me Kiefer."

His voice answered quickly, "How may I help you, Miss Peterwald?" He was all business today after last night's unearned rewards.

"I am told I am going to Madame Broadmore's soiree. Will you access the invitation list and tell me if," here Vicky paused to add a _that bitch_ , "Kris Longknife also has an invitation?"

"I'm sorry, Miss Peterwald, but I can't acquire that information," was not what Vicky wanted to hear.

She risked that mud facial to scowl, "What do you mean you can't get a guest list? On Greenfeld, I _always_ know who's coming to _anything_ I'm going to."

"I know, Miss Peterwald, but it doesn't work that way on New Eden." Kiefer sounded like he was actually groveling on the floor.

_No more night visits for you_.

"Explain yourself," Vicky said, smoothing her face out to satisfy a maid who might be getting that urge to sling mud at her.

"Here on New Eden, the laws are very strict about unauthorized access to private information. Very strict and with heavy penalties. They executed some hackers just last week. Anyway, you don't go peeking in private databases. Biddies like Ms. Broadmore like to keep their guest list a secret so they can pop a surprise on this or that person. That's just the way it works here."

Vicky kept her face smooth and placid while she chewed over that bit of information.

_So, you can't find out what's coming at you, and old maids like Broadmore like to play games with their guests._

Vicky smiled as she connected the dots. A late invitation just after Kris Longknife arrives in town. No access to the rest of the invitation list, per established local laws. Oh, and an old bitch who loves to entertain her guests by throwing this or that invitee at each other.

"I do believe this will be fun tonight," Vicky said as she rose from the tub and allowed her maids to pat her dry.

Vicky dressed carefully. Her best assets would have to be well contained. She chose her newest bra, one she'd bought during a shopping excursion this week. It was silk that was hardly there, but silk that was reinforced enough to hold her breasts in place by something new called spider silk. The bra supported rather than covered. Should a light breeze raise her rose buds, they'd be out there to distract every male in sight.

Her dress was also carefully chosen. The top would see that her breasts were there to heave, if she chose that route. Below her bust, the skirt came in tight to show all there was to see before sweeping wide at her knees to flutter around her ankles with a flurry of white ermine.

She'd had dresses like that on Greenfeld. Daddy insisted she shouldn't wear things like that in public, but what little attention she'd gotten from him before Hank was killed had been glances at her in such confections.

This dress was also a recent acquisition on New Eden. The dress could change colors, or, should she choose to if she got some hunk alone in the back of her limo, it could turn completely transparent. Vicky had tested it with her computer and it worked quite well. Any color or none; just speak a word and it was so.

"Isn't technology wonderful?" Vicky said, looking at herself in the mirror. She'd chosen red for the moment. It went perfect with her milk white skin and golden hair. Red was only starting to peek out at the roots.

For a moment, Vicky considered taking her blue eye lenses out and letting her green eyes add to tonight's fashion statement, but she kept them in place. She could still hear echoes of Hank's teasing, "Cat's eyes. I ought to take them out and use them for marbles."

She'd cried when he teased her and gotten the lenses as soon as she saw them in a girls' magazine. Blue lenses and hair dyed blond. Growing up in the shadow of blue-eyed, blond-haired Hank had become only slightly easier when she colored herself in his image.

"You are ready early, Miss Peterwald," her senior maid said.

"Yes. Have the car brought around front. I would not miss this evening.

# 4

Vicky waited while the four men of her security team established their perimeter around the limo. She spent the time glorying in what this night would hold.

_I'm going to see Kris Longknife. I may actually touch her. I can tell her myself that you don't kill Peterwalds and live to brag about it._

When the bodyguards were happy, the head of the team opened her door and offered her an arm. She let him hand her out, smoothed her dress and eyed where she would spend tonight. It looked like some sort of palace. Very fancy. Daddy often said that he should build a palace on Greenfeld to showcase the glory of the Peterwalds. She ought to take some pictures and send them to Daddy.

"Computer, record what this place looks like tonight."

"A picture will be archived every minute," her computer replied.

A man in white livery and knee britches relieved Vicky of her invitation and led her up a long flight of stairs which ended before tall doors filigreed with silver and gold. Once there, he tried to separate Vicky from her security team.

That did not go well . . . for him.

Since she could remember, Vicky had been shadowed by a security team. If the head bodyguard said go right, she went right. If he said to stand on her head, well, that had never happened. It was interesting to see that she wasn't the only one who did what she was told when a big, hulking guy with a bulging coat said hop.

Through glass doors was a marble hall that, apparently, served only as a foyer.

_I hope Daddy likes these pictures_.

Through that set of golden doors was a long staircase leading down into a ballroom that was vast compared to the one back at Daddy's mansion on Greenfeld. Marble pillars held up a domed ceiling streaked with gold and lit by chandeliers that actually burned candles. The aroma was striking. Daddy would turn green with envy, no doubt.

Standing at the head of the stairs was a man in a cloth of gold coat holding a huge staff.

"Miss Victoria Smythe-Peterwald of Smythe-Peterwald LLC," boomed out in a rich baritone.

Vicky wondered where he'd gotten all that information in an information starved society. Then she remembered; she was transmitting said information so any store she was shopping at could debit her account.

"Computer, turn off my data transmitting for tonight."

"Off," was her response as the announcer added, "And associates."

Vicky glanced around. The sparse crowd of early arrivals didn't come close to filling the ballroom at the foot of the stairs. No one below had shadows standing back but in easy reach. For a moment, Vicky considered sending her guards off to enjoy themselves. After all, this was an unarmed society.

Then she remembered how easy it had been to get a contract on Kris Longknife for last night, even if it had been an overpaid clown act.

Vicky stepped slowly down into what she could only hope would be a fit arena for her and Kris Longknife to come face to face.

Hardly had Vicky made her way down the steps than a small, plump woman was waddling toward her. "Victoria, I'm so glad to meet you."

Vicky didn't have to ask her computer for the name of her social assailant, she'd looked up Madame Broadmore's face on the way over.

"I'm so glad you invited me," Vicky said, as she got pecks planted on both her cheeks. The woman's hold on Vicky pulled her close.

_Did she actually rest her palms on my boobs?_ Vicky thought, but kept her face socially bland.

Without removing her palms, the madame pushed Vicky out to arm's length. "My, my, won't all the young men be looking at you."

_And apparently, all the old biddies_ , Vicky said only to herself.

The woman finally took her hands off Vicky. "Well, you go have fun for now. I have a surprise for you." She added in a low whisper, "Only she's not here yet."

Vicky tried, and maybe succeeded in keeping a feral grin off her face. There was only one surprise Vicky wanted to give and it was to Kris Longknife.

# 5

"Princess Kristine Anne Longknife of Wardhaven and Nuu Enterprises," boomed out in that rich baritone.

"And associates," was added a long second later.

Vicky raised her eyes from the handsome young man who had been bending her ear and watched as a woman in a formal gown that matched the red and blue of her escort stood at the top of the stairs for all to gaze upon.

Kris Longknife was tall; she had at least two inches on Vicky. Tall as one of these marble columns and with fewer curves; Vicky enjoyed a smile at that. While Vicky had been distracting boys since her curves came in, Kris Longknife could easily pass as one of them. Still, someone had put her in a nice gown that flowed from neck to floor.

The murderer stepped gracefully down the stairs, not falling and breaking her neck no matter how much Vicky wished. Behind her were two men and two women in formal black attire. They looked cut from the same cloth as Vicky's own security detail. Apparently, Kris Longknife's security had not been shunted off to drinks and hors d'oeuvres.

Vicky excused herself from the young man dancing attendance on her, and began to meander her way toward Madame Broadmore. It wouldn't do to keep the woman waiting. Vicky's four bodyguards followed at an alert but comfortable distance.

Halfway there, Vicky made a fashion decision. Everyone knew this was her first trip out from Greenfeld; why not put her supposed naivete to good use? "Computer, change my dress to white. Maybe with a few sparkles."

Her dress did.

There was a cluster of people around Madame Broadmore and Kris Longknife. Apparently, a lot of people wanted to be introduced to a real rim princess. Vicky found the Longknifes' pretensions disgusting and the people who fawned over them even worse.

Vicky made her way into the crowd carefully, turning now here, now there, keeping someone between her and the damn woman about half the time. Moving, she drew Kris Longknife's eye only to disappear behind someone.

With her social signal dead for the evening, Vicky was a woman of mystery.

Then, Madame Broadmore played her card. She took two quick steps toward Vicky and reached out to rest a hand on her elbow before running it down her arm to her hand. That hand she then placed in Kris's.

"And have you met my other special quest of the evening? You must know her. Your family and hers are a pair, are you not? But I understand that you have been a bit of a cosmopolitan and she's been given a sheltered upbringing. This is her first trip into civilized space."

Ms. Broadmore allowed for a pregnant pause there. Kris Longknife gritted her teeth. She clearly cared nothing for theatrics.

Only when their hostess had had her fun did she finish with smile that would have looked comfortable on a hyena.

"Kristine Longknife, have you met Victoria Smythe-Peterwald?"

# 6

Kris Longknife shook Vicky's hand as calmly as if she'd never murdered Vicky's brother. "I am glad to make your acquaintance."

Vicky tightened her grip on Kris's hand like a vice. Then she began to twist it. She'd learned growing up around Daddy that the truly superior men showed it by keeping their hands on top, the supplicants' hand beneath.

Kris Longknife refused the ploy; her hand stayed put, thumb up, little finger down. Her knuckles went white; Vicky's dainty, pale hand went pink.

Finally, Vicky broke from the grip only to spit at the murdering bitch, "You killed my brother."

The Longknife woman didn't even blink.

"I really don't think I did," came out as if she answered for murder daily. "His brand-new cruiser was blasting away at my ship. I admit, I returned the favor as well as my eighty-year-old command could. It was his choice to start shooting."

Vicky would have none of that. She knew the true story. She laid it out for everyone listening . . . and everyone in the ballroom was listening.

"What? And leave you with all that alien technology you'd stumbled upon? Let you Longknifes make a fortune and cut the rest of us out?"

"I told Hank before he started shooting that he was rattling off a pipe dream," the Longknife girl said, again with maddening calm. "No way could my family hog all that. Nor would we want to. Look at what's going on as we speak. Half the universities in human space have staff in those two systems. Almost every major corporation and a whole lot of minor ones are trying to figure out what they have. 'Trying,' being the operative word. Last I heard, they don't know swat. Have you heard differently?"

The damn Longknife bitch was actually winning people over. Around Vicky, people were nodding along. She heard one person say. "I've got a college professor friend out there and in her latest message she said just that."

But that wasn't what mattered. Not at all.

"That doesn't change the fact," Vicky spat. "You shot up a Greenfeld ship and my brother died."

Even before Vicky finished speaking, Kris Longknife was shaking her head. "He should have lived through that battle," then added. "I did."

"Count your days, Longknife," Vicky snapped, firm as a stone closing on a sepulcher. "Count your days."

And the bitch snapped back, "They'll be long and happy if you don't send anyone better than the ones you hired last night."

That knocked Vicky back a half step and she knew she was going red. That red hair might be dyed, but it didn't keep her from flushing at the worst times.

"That was none of my doing."

Kris Longknife took Vicky's lie in with a shrug.

"I suspect I'll be seeing you around," she said, off-handedly, and turned her back on Vicky.

Vicky wanted to follow her, but her senior security guard stepped in. Her own security team was matching scowls with that Longknife bitch's team and there was little room between them.

One of von Schrader's subordinates stepped in and edged Vicky toward a small clump of middle-aged men who had sons in tow. The seniors exchanged chat about the weather ... it was going to get hotter as spring turned into summer . . . or about business deals that were in the works. One by one, the young men offered their arms to Vicky and squired her out onto the dance floor.

They kept to one side of the floor and Kris Longknife kept to the other. Between them was a strange arrangement. Some women had shown up not so much in a gown as in an assembly of sparkling nanos swirling about her. As the orchestra played, she, and the men waiting to dance with her always seemed between Vicky and Kris Longknife.

Vicky wondered if the dutiful sons been briefed on this or if they figured it out themselves. Anyway, if Vicky had secreted a dagger or pistol about her person, she was given no second chance to use it on Kris Longknife.

When it became clear that Vicky would get no second chance to spit her venom at Kris Longknife, she chose to call it a night.

Unfortunately, that turned out to be harder to say than do.

# 7

Vicky's security team did not lead her to the same limo that brought her. This one was larger. Vicky knew even before the door opened that Grant von Schrader had come to pick her up.

So, she posed for a picture when one of the men lurking around the exit called, and then for several more. She could hear Grant drumming his fingers on the door across from hers, so she added a couple more to show him he could not boss around a Peterwald.

Finally, she had done enough and settled into the soft leather seat. The chief of the security detail firmly closed her door and the driver put the limo in motion. Still, Grant continued drumming his fingers. No doubt his personal computer was checking for any bugs that had come in on Vicky's dress.

When he spoke, he began softly. "Remind me again why your father sent you to Eden?" It didn't matter how soft his words, Vicky knew when a man was mad. Daddy had given her lots of examples.

"I believe he said something vague, like you were to show me the ropes," Vicky said, as innocently as possible as she arranged her dress so that it fell tightly across her breasts, allowing nipples to raise their distracting heads.

"I believe he also mentioned something about helping you develop enough common sense so that you'd survive a bit longer than your brother," were bitten out through tightly drawn lips.

Vicky raised an eyebrow at that, then tightly smoothed it down. Had Daddy passed along coverage of that meeting? Or was it possible his security was not as tight as he boasted?

Vicky said nothing, waiting for him to go on, but he didn't. She hated it when men hinted at what they might know and then left it hanging.

Instead, Grant changed the topic. "It was foolish to confront the Longknife brat."

"And why should it be?" Vicky shot back without a moment of reflection. "She murdered my brother. I can't let her live. She knows that as well as I do."

Grant said not a sound, but turned to stare out his side of the limo.

"Your brother is dead," he finally said . . . to the streetlights. "There is no doubt about that. However, just how he ended up dead is subject to some conjecture. What there is no doubt about is that he crossed swords with Miss Longknife – frequently. A neutral observer might consider that a bad habit that you might want to avoid."

"She killed my brother. She will pay," Victoria hissed.

Grant turned back to her. "Vennie will be spending no more time alone with you in your bedroom."

"Oh, but Vennie was such a pleasant companion," Vicky said, licking her lips. "I haven't seen him around recently. Where is the dear boy?"

"He has been called to a meeting with your father," was all Grant said.

Vicky smiled; Vennie had been Kiefer's stalking horse. It was he who made first contact with the gangs. He'd also spent time with Vicky where her maids could notice. So, Grant had plucked him up and missed her main man. There was a reason why Grant worked for the Peterwalds and not the other way around.

"You do not kill a Peterwald and live," she repeated.

"Then kill her someplace else," Grant snapped. "We have business here on Eden. Profitable business, and I do not care for you washing your dirty linens in my backyard. Your father sent you here to learn to make a profit. You can kill this Longknife troublemaker anywhere else you want. Just not here."

Vicky was growing tired of this conversation. She'd learned early how to get men to quit talking to her. Agree with them. "Yes, Uncle Grant," she said in her most agreeable voice. "I most certainly can."

# 8

Vicky allowed her maids to undress her and put her to bed like a nice girl. If her computer was to be believed, the senior maid waited outside her door for a good hour before tiptoeing away.

Vicky put some of the time to good use, having her own computer suborn all the listening and recording devices in the room. It recorded their take of Vicky sleeping innocently. They had plenty recorded before Kiefer slipped in around two o'clock.

Vicky invited him under her sheets and together they began to explore what pleased them. When they were done the first time, and Kiefer lying sated beside her, Vicky brought up the topic that interested her, even more than what Kiefer had between his legs.

"Have you gotten matters arranged for tomorrow?"

"It's laid on solid as a rock," he said, chuckling. "These guys are real artists, if you know what I mean."

"They better be better than that last bunch or you'll be on the next slow starship following after Vennie.

"Don't worry, they won't be chasing that Longknife dame. She'll be coming to them. She'll put herself right where it kills her."

"That's nice," Vicky said, liking what he'd said, and what she'd found that was ready for another go.

"One thing," Kiefer said before she distracted him. "You sure you want to go there too?"

"If it lets me see Kris Longknife bleeding out in a pool of blood, you bet I'll be there. Don't worry, I'll still be here tomorrow night when we celebrate her dead."

So, they celebrated a bit early.

# 9

Vicky arrived early for the Spring Charity Art Extravaganza or whatever these people called it. She'd gotten Grant's white whale for transport and a six man, two woman security team. Kiefer was the advance man at the show and greeted her when the limo stopped at the doors to the exhibition center.

"You're really going to enjoy this," he assured her. "You might want to buy some of these pieces of art and ship them home to your father. It would show him how you're spending your time."

Vicky raised an eyebrow. "All he wants to see me spending my time on is plants and fabrication centers. If I see another one, I swear I'll vomit."

"Then this will be a nice break."

"Is she here yet?" Vicky whispered to Kiefer when all her security people were spread out and growling at people or security teams getting out of their own limos.

"Not yet. She's traveling with Marines. If you see someone in red and blue or battle armor, she can't be far away."

"Just so long as _she's_ not in armor."

"This _is_ an art show," Kiefer pointed out.

Inside, there was the usual flock of had been socialites, clucking away. Vicky turned the other way and made her way into the exhibitions by a side entrance that Kiefer pointed out. Vicky was halfway through the show, and had spotted several really weird bits of art that might intrigue Daddy, when Kiefer nudged her.

"Is she here?" Vicky asked.

"Just blew in, surrounded by Marines."

"Where do I go?"

"The ladies' room is this way."

There, she primped and preened until her computer softly said "Now." Then Vicky headed for the stall farthest from the exhibition hall. Someone was in it.

Vicky took the next stall in and sat. When the automatic weapons fire started, she pulled up her feet and rested them on the door in front of her.

Outside, she could hear women exclaiming about the noise. Several empty heads raced out only to be shot before the door swung shut.

_Some people don't have the sense it takes to stay alive_.

Vicky, however, kept her feet up and waited until the firing stopped and her computer announced all was clear. She put her feet down, flushed the toilet and went to wash her hands.

There were several darts buried halfway through the wall between the hall and the lady's room. The wall had stopped most. However, a woman stood, arm bleeding into the sink, just watching the crimson trickle slowly into the running water.

"You might want to have that looked at," Vicky said as she tried to dry her hands and found that all the dryers had taken hits and were no longer working.

The one female bodyguard stood by while Vicky finished.

Vicky exited to find her security team waiting for her.

"Where is she?" Vicky demanded.

Kiefer nodded over to where a small cluster of Marines in green and gray armor stood. There, standing with them, was Kris Longknife.

"Let's get out of here," Vicky growled. They stalked through the wreckage and bleeding humanity to where the limo waited.

In the limo, on the drive back, Vicky starred daggers at Kiefer. He spent the drive staring out the window.

"I have an idea," he said as they drew up to the von Schrader mansion.

Vicky eyed the man; was he just fishing for an invitation to her bed tonight? Before she could even raise an encouraging eyebrow, the limo came to a halt. One of Grant's own security men opened the door and soon two of them were hustling her inside, up the stairs and into Grant's own office.

One look at the scowl on Grant's face and she knew he knew.

Vicky gave him a smug smile.

"I see you missed that Longknife bitch again," Grant said.

Vicky shrugged. "It was close. Very close. She has to know that next time it will be closer. And sooner or later, she dies. Kris Longknife will die. Let her think of that in her hospital bed tonight"

"There will _not_ be another time," Grant snarled. "Not on _my_ planet."

Victoria plopped herself into one of the overstuffed guest chairs around his discussion table. "Oh, Uncle Grantie, you sound upset. Is something bothering you?"

Vicky knew he detested her calling him Uncle Grantie. That took the wind out of his sails for a bit. That kept him quiet for almost a whole minute.

His voice had changed when he went on. It was low, almost soft.

"The initial news reports blamed the incident at the Spring Charity Art Extravaganza on a gas line explosion."

"Good. Some newsie used his imagination," Victoria purred.

"Unfortunately," he went on, "whoever you hired for this hit didn't use his imagination," Grant shot back. "A nice bomb would have left little to challenge that bit of creative reporting."

Vicky couldn't see where this was going. He did have her curiosity up. Maybe she might just learn something.

Grant went on. "Your man used an auto-gun that left plenty of bullets in victims and pieces of the gun in the wreckage."

"Your police can handle a little problem like that," Vicky said, shaking her head. He'd always told her that everything on New Eden was up for sale. This should hardly be a problem for him.

Maybe not. Grant had a twitch under his left eye when he was really mad. She'd only seen it jerk a few times. Right now, it was twitching with every breath he took.

"Reporters can get the scoops we lay out for them. Police reports can be 'corrected.' Unfortunately, Ms. Broadmore and Mrs. Whitebread say they saw the gun and all the shooting. They are talking a lot and it's all off-story."

Vicky shrugged. "Can't you have them popped?"

"They are major players on Eden. They die later," Grant snapped back at her.

"Heart attacks?" Vicky said, arching an eyebrow.

"Not fast enough today. And all of your solutions involve risk for minor gains when fifteen years of work is my main concern. Hasn't your father mentioned the benefit of staying focused on the prize and not being distracted by mere glitter?"

Vicky shook that off. "Longknife's death is not mere glitter."

"It is right now."

"Well, if you hadn't sent poor Vennie packing, he might have done a better job for me."

Grant got out from behind his desk and walked over to tower over Vicky. He rested his hands firmly on his hips as if to keep them away from her neck. That, more than anything made her pay attention.

"Longknife is _not_ an objective of the Peterwald Empire on Eden. We have more important work to concentrate on. You _will_ make no further attacks on Kris Longknife."

Victoria shrugged. "If you say so, Uncle Grant."

He glared at her. She did her best to look properly cowed. He had two of his guards trail her to her room. Her maids put her to bed then left her, but she could hear at least one of the guards talking to one of her maids. They talked for a long time.

Vicky's computer found more spies in her room that night. It suborned them and recorded nice pictures of her sleeping soundly.

# 10

Kiefer came through the window at his usual time. He was in her bed in a flash, but she batted his hand away from her breasts.

"You're not going to find a way to kill Kris Longknife on my boob. Come up with a good one or go home."

He backed off, but he cradled her head in the crook of his left arm as his right hand stroked her neck.

"Do you know that Kris Longknife has a great-grandmother?"

"So?" Vicky said. Grandparents were a vague idea with Vicky. She had Daddy. She knew her mother had died when she was born. Daddy's mother and father had died before she could have any memories of them. Older folks like grandparents or great-grandparents existed; just not so much for her.

"Well," Kiefer said, stroking her cheek bone, "Kris Longknife's great-grandmother is visiting here on New Eden. She's actually teaching at Eden U."

Vicky mulled that for a moment. "And?"

"And I know the people she rented her security guards from. She went cheap. I guess she wasn't expecting trouble. Anyway, I can buy up her contract and they'll deliver the old lady, tied up with a nice bow."

Vicky thought about that for only a second before ideas started sparking off even as Kiefer's hand started roving lower on her neck and onto her collar bone.

"If we kidnap the old lady and send Kris Longknife a ransom demand that has her bring the money herself and leave those hairy assed-Marines behind . . ." she said.

"Then we have her," both she and Kiefer finished together, even as he slid his hand down past her breast to the jackpot between her legs.

"Oh, yes," Vicky said, and gave herself over to the enjoyment that was hers alone.

The next day at breakfast, Vicky only scanned the news. The Spring Charity Art Extravaganza made the social page, with a comment about a gas main explosion and remarks that the local gas company really should be privatized and its union employees replaced with more competent people.

Vicky smiled. No doubt the new workers would be lower paid and even less competent. That was not her problem.

Grant looked up from his reader. "It seems that you did manage to hurt Kris Longknife. She's been admitted to the embassy clinic for observation. The same for her security guard. What did you say yesterday? A near miss? Well, this miss is likely to take that young lady out of reach of any further attacks. Now, ignore her and go about your business of learning the business."

"Yes," Vicky said. It was the most meek she'd ever been with anyone but Daddy.

Grant eyed her for a moment, but she kept meek on. He seemed satisfied.

Only when Vicky was done with her light breakfast and out of the sun-lit buttery did she smile.

_Kris Longknife, you can hide in your hospital bed, but I've got something that will bring you limping out to where I can put a bullet between your eyes._

Kiefer was absent that day. No doubt he'd gotten an early version of Vicky's schedule. She spent the entire day with accountants. Surely, there was no blood in the veins of this human subspecies. They talked numbers until Vicky's head swam. She fell back on smiling graciously, nodding, and offering vague comments . . . while all the while thinking of Kris Longknife in the crosshairs of a nice rifle.

There was nothing special for this evening, but Vicky found it going slowly. Kiefer had nothing to say to her when she passed him in the hall. Was he having problems getting the old lady's guards to haul her off?

He did not come that night.

Vicky insisted on sleeping in the next day. She was supposed to spend time with the network support staff. No doubt, they had code in their veins as bad as the numbers the accountants used for blood. She simply had to have a day off between those two.

Around ten, her computer beeped. "If you can get away from von Schrader, I've got a surprise for you," came from Kiefer.

Vicky called for her maids and was dressed in no time. She ordered the car brought around front and was in it fifteen minutes after the message from Kiefer.

She was just rolling away when her computer beeped again.

"Mr. von Schrader wishes to see you."

"I don't want to see him," Vicky snapped. "I have business of my own."

"It seems your business impacts mine and your father's," was Grant talking. "You come to my study, or my men will carry you."

"I will drop them before they lay a hand on me," Vicky said. She didn't actually have a pistol, but Grant didn't know that.

"Then the armored security guards will collect you and you can sample the hospitality of my lower basements until such time as your father asks about you. I expect that might be a very long time, all things considered."

While Grant talked, the limo had taken one turn and then another. Vicky found herself delivered back to the mansion's front door. Only now, guards, a few in armor, waited for her.

Victoria Smyth-Peterwald stormed into Grant's study. Four security guards trailed her warily, as if she actually had that pistol.

"You don't have the right to stop me," Vicky shouted as she crossing the threshold.

"I imagine your brother told his mentor that about the time he tried breathing vacuum," Grant said, sounding so maddening calm and collected.

"It was that damn Longknife," Vicky spat as she leaned on his desk, glowering down at where he sat.

"So you were going to get her," Grant said, actually sounding reasonable.

"Her and that old bag, both."

Grant sighed and shook his head. "That old bag, as you call her, was surviving Iteeche killer pods long before your father was born."

"And I caught her up like a blind cow at feeding time," Vicky said, adding to her story with a bit of a guess.

"No doubt. However, your father and I cannot afford another kidnaping bandied about human space at the moment. Her husband, General Trouble, is not a man who takes offense well."

"He'll never know what killed her. Her and that Longknife brat."

"Ah, but I know. And you just bragged about it in front of four security guards. That is not how your father or I arrived at our places in human space. If your right hand slits a throat, your left hand knows nothing about it. You should meditate on this."

Vicky stomped her foot in rage. "I don't have time to waste doing that meditating thing of yours."

"I'm afraid you do." Grant raised his voice slightly. "Ms. Rotterdame."

"Yes sir," Vicky's chief of maid's voice answered immediately on net.

"I am sending Miss Victoria up to her suites. She is to stay there, meditating on the meaning of security. I do not want her out of your sight for any reason. You understand me? Any. Reason."

"In understand perfectly, Mr. von Schrader. She will be under the personal observation of either me or an assistant at all times, no matter how personal or odoriferous her activity. I will bring out the shock cane if she proves too headstrong."

"We understand each other," he said, then frowned at Vicky and her rage. "I will also have guards at your door and on the grounds below your suite. You were quite good at slipping out of the nursery back on Greenfeld. Do not mistake my house for such a recreation area. You have created a problem that I must now solve. Go to your rooms while I do."

Vicky kicked an end table on her way out. It, however, proved heavier than it looked and hardly moved. She slapped the lamp on top of it. Somebody had bolted the damn thing to the table, all she did was knock the shade askew.

When Grant added, "I would have expected better from a Peterwald," it was too much for Vicky. She whirled around to face him and screamed as she had never screamed before.

She bent over as she screamed, putting every last breath she had into her primal rejection of Grant and his worthless opinion of her.

He just looked at her from where he sat, as unmoved as a stone statue.

Exhausted, Vicky stomped out.

Four guards followed her to her room. Ms. Rotterdame was waiting for her at the suite. Usually she stood placidly with her hands folded before her.

Now the old biddy stood, a shock cane in her right hand, slapping it purposely into her left.

Vicky halted.

A guard behind her made to push her through the door.

Vicky grabbed hold of the door jam.

Two guards shoved her. Vicky held on tight.

Only when the other guards pried her hands loose was she sent sprawling into her sitting room. The lush green carpet that had caressed her bare feet that morning, now made friction burns on her hands.

Ms. Rotterdame stalked forward to rest the tip of her shock cane on Vicky's stinging hand. "That will be enough, gentlemen," she said to the guards. "Leave Ms. Peterwald to me. Entirely to me."

The senior of the four guards got a tight grin on his face. The guards withdrew and the door slid closed with a firm click.

The shock cane bit Vicky's hand.

"That hurt," she yelped.

"I imagine it did. Now, will you stand up like the lady you are supposed to be and sit down on the sofa for a civilized conversation? Or will we have it in a more painful fashion?"

Later, Vicky would wonder at how cowed she was. Was it the shock cane or being shoved around by her guards? Maybe it was both. She'd never had to put up with anything like this except for Daddy.

Vicky Peterwald stood, smoothed her plum colored sun dress, and walked to the couch. Like a proper lady, she sat upon it.

"Good. Maybe you can learn," Ms. Rotterdame said, and went to sit in the armchair across from Vicky.

"Now, while you were stomping your way here, Mr. von Schrader arranged for me to be briefed on the kidnaping of Professor Tordon. You, no doubt, arranged it."

Vicky considered several replies, before swallowing them all and settling for silence.

"Good, at least you are learning not to blurt out confessions to the average bystander. The professor was successfully kidnaped yesterday."

Vicky blinked, but refused to nod or recognize her part in any of it.

"Unfortunately, for the last few days, Commander Tordon's security had been augmented by two very armed Marines." Ms. Rotterdame spoke of this as if it presented a serious problem.

Vicky allowed herself a hint of a frown, but again, kept her mouth shut.

"While the security guards were thoroughly suborned, you can't buy Marines with money. Admittedly, that is strange, considering how poorly they are paid. Still, the only way this kidnaping could be pulled off was to kill the Marines."

Vicky was getting tired of this lecture and its slow pace. "If they're dead, how can that be a problem?" she put in.

"Dead Marines bring live Marines, and you don't want a Marine for your enemy. Someone is, no doubt, in the process of learning that lesson."

Vicky had enough. She snapped, "But if Kris Longknife is told to bring the ransom money for her great-grandmother herself, and with no Marine guard, it will put her out where Kris Longknife will die."

The shock cane snapped across the space between Ms. Rotterdame and Vicky in a split second, biting at Vicky's exposed arm.

"Ouch, damn it! Don't do that!"

The cane shot out again.

"That is to teach you not to blurt out your guilt."

Now Ms. Rotterdame was standing above Vicky, slamming the cane down on her bare shoulders time and time again.

Vicky screamed. She screamed for the guards.

No guards came.

The cane kept coming. It stung Vicky's shoulders, arms, legs, and body.

Vicky curled up in a ball on the couch, trying to protect herself.

"Learn, young woman! Learn!" Ms. Rotterdame repeated over and over. "You do not mess with things you know nothing about. You do not make enemies of people that can do more to you than you ever dreamed in your young life that you can do to them. Ask questions! Learn, young woman! Learn!"

The pain increased. Vicky screamed. Then she cried.

Only then did the pain cease and the voice go away.

Vicky stayed curled up in her protective ball, still hurting even after the pain had ended. Somehow, she fell asleep.

Much later, Ms. Rotterdame awoke her. "You will now dress for travel. Mr. von Schrader has ordered you tickets for the next liner with connections to Greenfeld."

"Why?"

"He didn't tell me," Ms. Rotterdame said, tapping the floor with the shock cane.

Vicky moved slowly to wash her face and replace her makeup and dress. She seemed in a haze. The pain was gone, but the memory stayed loud and clear. Maids bustled about her, packing. Even guards were brought in to help, although the senior guard stood at the opposite end of the room from Ms. Rotterdame and kept his eye on Vicky.

She did what she was told. The shock cane continued to tap the floor.

As they herded her and her luggage toward the front door, Vicky glanced at the wing with Mr. von Schrader's office. "Can I say goodbye?" _Maybe find out why I'm being shuffled away so suddenly and what I'll find when I get home_.

"Mr. von Schrader is busy," was all Ms. Rotterdame said.

The ride to the space elevator and up was enveloped in painful silence that was a relief after the other pain. Only the occasional tapping of the shock cane interrupted it. Vicky was taken directly to her rooms on the liner _Queen of the Stars_. Mr. Rotterdame finally broke the silence when she handed Vicky a reader. "You might want to read that."

"Why? Nothing of worth is ever there."

"Apparently not today. There has been a coup d'etat on New Eden. A very bloody coup that appears to have failed miserably. The media is taken up with it full time."

"And why does that mean anything to me?"

"It seems that your Kris Longknife and her Marines were at the heart of the coup's failure."

Ms. Rotterdame spoke slowly, as if to a stupid child. Vicky wanted to spit something back. Instead, she took the words in, let them walk about in her brain. She gave a different response when she finally spoke.

"What did Kris Longknife and her Marines do to trip up the coup?"

"Among other things, they killed Mr. von Schader," was again spoken so calmly. So matter-of-factly. Vicky found herself wondering if Ms. Rotterdame was in shock.

Was Vicky?

Vicky sat back in her chair, let the supper her guards had brought get cold and watched the news scroll by on her reader. Occasionally, she let some video fill the screen.

There was a brief video of Kris Longknife and her Marines forming up before their fallen comrades. They saluted their dead. From somewhere, a single bugle began to fill the air with clear notes.

Vicky had never heard that tune before, still, it brought tears to her eyes. She watched as exhausted, battle-scarred Marine men and woman stood in their carefully spaced place in lines and ended their salute on a single word.

Again, under orders, they turned and marched off. Somewhere, a single voice began a song. Vicky couldn't understand the words, but the song was taken up by those marching. They must have been battle weary, but the song roused them.

They didn't march as the tired and dirty bunch they were. Rather, they swaggered off as victors.

_And I thought I could cross those people and kill Kris Longknife_.

Vicky found herself concentrating on the news feed. Daddy had little respect for the guttersnipes of the media. "They never get anything right," and more often than not, Vicky learned very little from the time she spent with the news.

Today, she learned a lot. She listened as people who actually knew something about the attack on Government House described what they'd done and seen. Each one had a tiny bit of the truth, mixed in with confusion and lies, but taken as a whole, Vicky began to see how Grant's attack had come apart as it collided with Kris Longknife and her Marines.

Vicky stared at the ceiling during a commercial.

_Kris Longknife. You aren't any older than I am. How did you manage to do this?_

_How can I manage to do things like that?_

Yes, Vicky liked that idea.

_Can I be like Kris Longknife? I want you dead, but I also want to be like you. Strange, that._

# 11

The trip to Greenfeld was different from any trip Vicky had ever taken in her life. The guards were always there, but never underfoot.

They said not a word to Vicky.

Ms. Rotterdame was always close. She didn't hang over Vicky, but she could well have been her shadow.

A silent shadow.

Any other time, a silenct treatment would have had Vicky throwing fits. She always wanted to be included in any games her playmates were up to. She was Victoria Peterwald; she _deserved_ to be at the center of anything she wanted to be a part of.

For three weeks, Vicky was a part of nothing that went on around her, but totally a part of herself. For as long as they got a news feed from New Eden, she took it all in. What was the phrase she'd heard but not really understood? Signal to noise ratio?

Most media she'd known was a lot of noise. Sometimes, a signal with information actually came through, but not very often. In the wake of the coup, the media on New Eden was sending a lot of signal. There was plenty of noise as well. One politician had spent the attack squirreled away in a corner with a lovely young woman that was not his wife. The young woman was milking her moment of fame for all it was worth and some media were serving it out to anyone interested.

Vicky noted that woman's use of her assets and filed it away for future use.

She also found hints of how her kidnaping of Kris Longknife's great-grandmother had tipped the balance against Grant's coup. There was no question that she'd screwed up.

The public outcry rushing the mob headlong into elections was something Vicky ignored. Daddy had no use for governments or elections. He had good businessmen running everything that needed running on Greenfeld, as well as the planets that joined his alliance.

When New Eden's media fell behind, Vicky began searching what was in the liner's data files about Kris Longknife. She also found herself looking for stuff on Marines and Soldiers and Sailors. What made those people tick?

Vicky found them a strange sort of weird alien. Duty, honor, country kept popping up. They had nothing to do with Daddy's mantra of profit, profit, profit. It was as if Daddy breathed oxygen and they breathed sulfur.

Vicky tried to turn her back on this alien bunch, but as she fell asleep, she kept hearing that melody coming in crisp and clear from a single bugle. What was it about men and women marching off together singing the same song?

Vicky want back to the library that Daddy had provided before she sailed for New Eden. That reader was full of how business worked; how you made decisions to maximize profits.

Vicky had been ignored it and been bored after visiting way too many offices, plants and fabs. She was just as bored as she scanned it now.

Then she drained the liner's library of stories from the Iteeche War and how Marines and Soldiers and Sailors fought to save humanity. Yes, there was those damn Longknifes all over the place. She also found General Tordon. He was more often called Trouble, and his men loved him.

She also found Ruth Tordon and read the stories of how she earned her right to be called Mrs. Trouble.

Vicky found herself thinking that it would be wonderful to be alive in those days when heroes were actually needed. Of course, people did get killed. A battlefield wasn't like a calm and cool business meeting where you could make a killing and walk off with just money.

One afternoon, Vicky found herself wondering if Kris Longknife had ever read any of the stories that Vicky had stumbled onto. Had Kris Longknife ever thought that she might be a hero just like her great-grandparents?

Vicky did a quick check on what her great-grandfather had done during the war. The story was kind of vague. Vicky applied her new found-skill and concluded that there was a lot of noise here, but not much truth. Great-grandfather had been a business man, involved in growing the family fortune. Just how he did it hadn't made it into the book. Into several books, Vicky checked, using not only Daddy's library but also the ship's files.

Interesting.

They changed ships; the _Glory of Greenfeld_ was of the Glory line that Daddy owned. Strangely, searching through its library, Vicky found plenty of books about the Smythe-Peterwald family, but not a lot of actual facts about them. Now she knew all about the great-aunt who had done her best to get the bootlegger cut out of the family tree. Oh, and her love for dogs: all tiny toy breeds. There were a lot of pictures of Peterwalds cutting this ribbon or opening that office, factory or production fab. Lots of pictures, but not a lot of information.

Suddenly, Vicky wanted one of those accountants with numbers in their veins. Could he get her an answer as to how the family wealth had grown? A book she'd found on the Nuu-Longknife family had tables in the back. One had shown how the family's fortune had grown from both investments in new planets and growth of the economy on Wardhaven, Savannah, and other planets Wardhaven had helped get on their feet after the Unity War.

The Unity War. Now that was a blank history in Vicky's Greenfeld books. She easily found it when she searched the _Queen of the Stars_ library. Once on the _Glory of Greenfeld_ , the Unity War disappeared into a black hole.

Vicky was a very puzzled child when her escort took her down the elevator to Anhalt City. Puzzled. Reflective. Curious for the first time in her life.

# 12

She found herself back in the suite of rooms she'd lived in since moving out of the nursery. They had been redone several times. Right now, the wallpaper showed flowers on a soft pink background and a cream carpet her maids said, among themselves when she wasn't listening, was too easy to get dirty.

She'd shrugged; it was their job to keep it clean.

Daddy said that the furniture was early empire. Maybe Vicky should look up which empire. For as long as she could remember, Peterwald House had been simply referred to as the palace.

For the first time in her life, Vicky began to put some of the puzzle pieces together. There was a Longknife king now. Was Daddy thinking of topping the Longknifes for once with an emperor?

What Daddy thought was lost on Vicky. He did not come to greet her. When she asked to see him, she was told he was unavailable or hunting or off-planet.

When one question got three answers, Vicky wondered if any of them were right.

She looked to see if any of her boyfriends were still in the palace. When Daddy found out about any of her boy toys, he usually offered a job someplace else. Vicky had checked. Most of them got a pay raise.

She didn't think that was why they befriended her in the first place.

At least she hoped not.

Doctor Maggie Rodriguez was gone from the clinic. That was Vicky's greatest disappointment. She would have loved to sit down with a bottle of fine wine and talk all this through with the one person she'd ever trusted.

A quick trip down to the kitchen showed Vicky not everything had changed. Iris, Rena, and Hilda were still there, making delicious cookies, pies, tarts and just about anything a kid could ask for. Vicky's real power over her young playmates had been her ability to lead them on a raid of the kitchen and Hilda's confections.

For Vicky, there was a warm hug like few she got growing up, as well as milk and cookies for her to eat while they chattered on about what they were doing for dinner today. Their world extended no further than the kitchen door.

Vicky envied them their kitchen world now that she'd been introduced to a bigger one and left with all the questions she'd walked into.

In the end, she took a basket of cookies and left them to their work.

Seeing them. Leaving them, was more painful than Ms. Rotterdame's shock cane.

Vicky shed a tear as she realized they belonged to her childhood. What she was headed into was a lot more complicated than just slipping some boy into her bed for fun and games.

For two more days, Vicky gnawed on that bone. Then she woke up one morning and Ms. Rotterdame was not waiting in the sitting room. Vicky padded across the carpet and checked outside her door.

The guards were gone.

Vicky was all alone.

She took a bath, dressed and waited to see what the day might bring.

For most of the morning, the day didn't do a thing.

Vicky began to consider a visit to the palace's library. She'd spent only as much time in it as her tutors demanded. Now, Vicky wondered if the Peterwald section of that library was as devoid of real details as the others.

There was a knock at her door.

# 13

"Come in," Vicky said. She was seated at her window, one leg tucked under her, the other dangling free. One thing Daddy had done around the palace was to add several gardens. Most were visible from Vicky's window. She'd found it calming the last couple of days to spend time looking out her window.

She turned as her door opened to admit a man in uniform. He strode to the center of the room, then stood there stiffly. Over the next few weeks, Vicky would come to recognize that as attention and to read his rank immediately.

Today, Vicky knew nothing until the man said, "I'm Lieutenant Commander Murkoff, Ms. Peterwald, and you are to come with me."

"Why ever for?" Vicky said.

The man looked taken back. "I am told that you have received a commission in the Greenfeld Navy and that I should process you in and see to your equipage."

"I've joined the Navy?" Vicky said, standing to face the man. "Am I to be a commodore like my brother?" Vicky had loved Hank in uniform. Would she have a squadron of cruisers to command?

The man coughed softly. "I understand that you have been commissioned as an ensign."

"An ensign?" Vicky said, batting her eyelashes. There was a touch of gray in his hair but he did look tall and handsome in his uniform. It had been a while since she'd taken Kiefer to her bed. "Does an ensign outrank a commodore?"

If anything, the man became more stiff. "Miss, an ensign is the lowest officer rank. As such, you are three critical promotions below me and will obey my orders."

Vicky was in no mood for being ordered around. "Or what? You'll use a shock cane on me?"

"No, I'll clap you in the brig on bread and water for a month. If that doesn't work out, we'll give you a dishonorable discharge. I hear your family is very proud of its heritage. Has a Smythe or Peterwald ever received a bad conduct discharge?"

"I'm not sure we've ever been given any kind of discharge," Vicky said, studying the man as well as her situation. "I don't know what my brother got after Kris Longknife blew his ship to hell. Do the dead receive discharges?"

"No," he said softly, but with firmness. "They receive flag-draped coffins."

"We never got my brother's body back. The ship carrying him made a bad jump."

"Bad luck, that. Now, Miss, we are wasting time. Have you, or have you not signed on for a commission?"

"Do you have any paperwork? Can I see my signature?"

That seemed to give the man pause. "Strange that. Your commissioning papers aren't in the package I received. I'm to process you and move you along. That's all that it says here."

"Move me along to where?"

"Someone's supposed to come get you. They'll have the proper paperwork."

Vicky had thrown many a tantrum in this room. She could feel one coming on fast. Had Daddy signed her into the Navy and not even told her? She was ready to storm out of here and head straight to Daddy's office, assuming he was in it.

Vicky had thrown plenty of tantrums, but she'd also just got beaten with a shock cane. If she stood this nice man up, would they send Ms. Rotterdame to bring her into line with her cane?

Then there was the memory of Marines standing to attention and saluting their fallen comrades. That bugle playing that soft, bittersweet melody.

Hank had gotten everything, even being shipped off to the Navy as a commodore.

Hank was dead.

Vicky was getting shipped off too, but as a lowly ensign.

Kris Longknife had started as an ensign; somewhere Vicky had read that.

Maybe ensign wasn't a bad place to start.

"I'll come with you, Mister, ah, what's your name again?"

"Ensigns call me Sir, and stand at attention when they do."

For a moment, Vicky came to a halt. _What have I gotten myself into?_

Then she squared her shoulders and moved off to follow the officer and call him Sir.

# 14

The next four hours were the strangest in Vicky's life.

Once Commander Murkoff got her to Intake, Processing, and Training, she was passed off to medical.

There she was made to strip, fold all her civilian clothes into the box provided, and wait in line behind several other girls, all naked as the day they were born. A doctor came by. At least he had on a white coat and a stethoscope.

He listened to each girl's heart, had them cough, then poked and prodded where Vicky would be glad to have a man's touch, but this one seemed to look at her like a side of beef. Either he had seen too much human flesh on the hoof or liked boys.

He finished up with the last girl who had turned beet red all the way down to her navel and faced back down the line. "What's the Navy coming to? I guess you'll have to do. Get along to the next station."

They were led back to where they'd left their clothes to discover the boxes gone and a bra and panties waiting for them. They were all too big or too small.

The girls tried swapping among themselves but only the worst exchanges had been made before a woman in a Sailor's uniform showed up shouting, "Quit your lollygagging and get a move on! You're late!"

She chivied them to the next station, but had to wait for a batch of boys to finish getting their own uniforms issued. Some of them glanced back at the girls, but were told to quit gawking at the officers. The girl who had turned beet red now looked ready to pop and shower them all with tomato juice.

Vicky ignored that; she studied what was going on in the next room. The boys were being herded out. Still, most of them were shouting that their uniforms didn't fit.

That did not bode well for the girls.

The good news was that thirty boys were leaving and only five girls were arriving.

Then Vicky discovered just how bad it was.

"What's your size, princess?" one sailor with two chevrons on his sleeve said to Vicky.

"I don't know. Can't you just laser size me? That's the way it's always done," Vicky said, not realizing her mistake.

"Hey, we got ourselves a real princess here. She wants to be laser sized. I bet you she'll want a uniform that fits her laser sizing, too."

Laughter came from just about everyone on the other side of the counter.

One woman, two chevrons on her sleeve, didn't join into the chortling. "I take you for a 38-28-36. You're going to be a bitch to fit, honey."

The women disappeared into one row of shelves to return with a blue-black skirt, white shirt and a single-breasted suit top of the same color. "Try these on, deary, and be quick about it. You don't want these horny duds ogling you any longer than you have to. I have to put up with them every day, but you're too young and pretty for the likes of them."

Vicky pulled on her skirt. It got past her hips but even when one of the girls helped do the zipper in back, it was wide open at the waist.

"Put the shirt on," the girl who'd helped her said, even as she got her own set of problems. She was about as much of a bean pole as Kris Longknife, if a bit shorter.

Vicky got the shirt on, but still found nothing brushing her waist. She helped the other girl; her skirt fit her waist and ballooned out over her nonexistent hips. While she got on her shirt, Vicky tried on her suit top. She managed to get it closed over her breasts, but it hung like a blanket everywhere else.

"Do you have anything better?" Vicky found herself almost pleading.

"Sorry, sweet cakes, what you got is what you're getting. Okay, all of you, hurry up if you don't want to be barefoot tonight. By tomorrow morning, you could be barefoot and pregnant," the woman with the two chevrons said.

"In our dreams," the other guy of the same rank answered.

The five girls hurried on to their next station. One of them apparently was Catholic. She told the rest that this felt like the Stations of the Cross, "Only with real thorns and crosses to bear."

"Then why'd you sign up?" the bean pole said.

"It was either join the Navy or listen to my mother talk about all the boys I ought to be dating." Two of the girls looked at her sidewise. "It's not that I don't like boys, it's just, well, look at what we just went through. Do you want to spend your life with any of _them_?"

The vote was five to nothing against that.

The Shoe Store, as it claimed to be, had boots prominently displayed, but the girls were led to a different section with one shoe style to choose from.

"My granny wears shoes like those," a girl protested. She, at least, had seen a shoe like they were handed. It had a one inch heel, but it was a big block of a thing. Worse, the shoes were laced and tied, like something Vicky had only seen on an athletic shoe.

A dozen pairs, in different sizes were tossed at them along with footie socks. "Normally you little darlings would be wearing panty hose with your dress uniforms, but we'll make allowances for today," said an older woman with three chevrons and a rocker above them. "You'll wear these shoes with all of your uniforms except your PT uniform, but you can get used to them tonight."

"What happens tonight?" the beet red girl said, now only blotchy.

"Nothing happens tonight, honey. You just get used to wearing these uniforms and shoes. That ought to be enough before we sing you a lullaby and tuck you into bed."

Vicky and Bean Pole exchanged a look. Lullabies and tucking someone into bed did not fit at all into that woman's style.

Vicky was the last to settle on a pair of shoes. She was teased pretty badly by the Lullaby Lady for trying three shoes on and then going back to the middle pair.

In uniforms and shod, they were ordered to form a single line. Then the Lullaby Lady introduced herself as "Chief Polidarus, don't even think of calling me Polly.

"For so long as we are together, I am god. Do you understand me?"

The "yes, ma'am" from the five of them was a raged murmur.

"Do. You. Understand. _Me!"_

"Yes, Ma'am!" was shouted this time.

"I don't know why someone saw fit to have a tiny Officer Training Class for you five, but we got one now and we got each other for company. Any of you have any idea how to march?"

Since Vicky knew nothing, she said nothing. Apparently, it was the same for the rest."

"Christ, didn't any of you babies think ahead before you signed into my Navy? You," she pointed to the blushing one. "What are you doing in my Navy?"

"I'm a trained nurse, ma'am. I want to take care of Sailors."

"No doubt, some of them will want you to take care of them in ways they never taught you in nursing school."

Somebody guffawed.

"Who laughed?"

Nobody said a word.

"If nobody steps forward by my count of three, all of you will be doing pushups until you puke. One."

"I did," Bean Pole said, stepping forward.

Vicky was pretty sure she hadn't so much as snickered at the joke.

"Drop and give me twenty, ensign."

The young woman did, going up and down like a power hammer. In a moment, she was on her feet and back in ranks.

"You're pretty good, dearie. Who are you and where'd you learn that?"

"I'm Betlan Makovsky, ma'am. I'm trained as a dietician, but my father was a coach at South Anhalt College and taught all us girls to handle ourselves."

"Well, Betlan, we may have more use for you than the rest of these blushing beauties. You," she pointed this time at Vicky. "What are you doing in my Navy?"

Vicky couldn't very well say that the planet's owner and CEO had signed her into _his_ Navy. Vicky could see that ending in all kinds of bad.

"My brother was killed in the Navy," Vicky said.

"How?"

Vicky found herself struggling for an answer. Officially, Greenfeld had not been in a battle since the end of the Iteeche war. The fight with Kris Longknife Never Happened. She'd heard the Longknife bitch say that there had been something wrong with Hank's survival pod. For the moment, she chose Kris Longknife's lie for her own.

"My brother died in a training accident."

"Are you a training accident waiting to happen?"

"No, Ma'am!" Vicky answered at the top of her lungs.

"Maybe you aren't." The chief said and returned to stand before them all. "Well, we might as well see if you lovely ladies can learn." She began by teaching them to stand at attention and parade rest, do right face, left face, about face and the like. None fell flat on their face. In a few moments, they were marching off to chow.

"You officers will be eating in the officer's wardroom. I will be eating in the chief's mess, which in our training command is just a different bay in the same mess hall. Any questions?"

By now the girls had learned to keep their mouths shut.

One step into the mess hall, and they'd wished they'd asked a pack of questions. Most of the building was filled with a noisy eating mob of young men. Off to the right, however, were several old, grizzled seniors. That was the direction the chief went.

Off to the left was a table with a linen table cloth, china plates and flatware. Men and women in blue uniforms with one or two circles around their sleeves sat there, eating their dinner.

The five of them passed glances among themselves, then Vicky risked the ire of these gods. "Can we eat here?"

"You better," said a one young woman at the head of the table who wore two stripes. Vicky was having problemswith the two stripe thing. Some of the second stripes were thin. Others were the same thickness as Vicky's lone one. The woman had two of the wide stripes.

"Since you are boot ensigns, you will, no doubt, take the foot of the table."

One young man got up from there and moved his plate and glass higher up. "So glad to have you," he whispered as he passed Vicky.

"Seat yourself," the two striper said. "We'll pass what's leftover down to you. Better you show up on time for breakfast tomorrow."

Vicky realized she was hungry. It had been a long time since breakfast. No doubt the other girls were hungry too. Still, they did their best to split up what was left in the bottom of the bowl of Swedish Meatballs, egg noodles, corn, and bread.

Fortunately, before they had to leave the table with their stomach's still rumbling, more food arrived and they got to eat their fill. Bean Pole Betlan, she shared that name out herself, really could put it away.

Chief Polidarus was soon standing in the passageway, respectful in the presence of the officers, but clearly expecting the boot ensigns to hop when she said hop.

Vicky and the rest hopped, exited the mess hall at a fast walk, and formed up before the chief demanded it of them. The march to their quarters was a short one. The chief actually dismissed them, but that was only to a woman with one chevron on her uniform.

"This is my building," she said. "You make a mess of it and I don't care what you may think of your fine new uniforms, I'll have you down on your knees cleaning my floors with toothbrushes. You hear me?"

"Yes, ma'am," came through loud and clear.

They drew bedding and found themselves in a huge bay with thirty bunk beds, and only the five of them.

"You think we should sleep closer to the woman in charge?" Blush said.

"I say we sleep closest to the bathroom, and if my nose hasn't lost its power of smell, it's back there."

They finally settled on five lower bunks in the middle of the bay.

"Does anybody else besides me wonder why we got called in this morning?" Betlan asked. "I was scheduled for a training class in August, but suddenly there's a car outside waiting to get me in here. Any of the rest of you have something of the same?

Three other girls nodded.

Vicky soon found the other four looking at her.

"What's your story?" Betlan asked.

"I'm Vicky Peterwald," Vicky said.

"I dated a Peterwald once," one of the girls said.

"Was he nice?" Vicky asked.

"He was an asshole."

Vicky winced. "Probably related to me."

Betlan eyed Vicky. "There's a lot of Peterwalds in this town. Some that say they are. Some that actually are. I can think of only a few that would ruin my summer by getting me hauled in by the Navy to keep her company in training."

Vicky sighed and then kind of shrugged. "I guess I'm that one."

One of the other girls put it into words. "Are you Henry Peterwald, XII's daughter?"

Vicky didn't say a word, just nodded.

The bunk room got silent for a long while before Betlan said, "Did your brother really die in the Navy?"

"Yes," Vicky spat. "He and his cruiser squadron got in a fight with Kris Longknife. When the shooting stopped, my brother was dead."

"Kris Longknife is still alive, last time I heard," Betlan said.

Vicky made a face. "Not for my lack of trying."

Several pairs of eyebrows went up, but no one actually asked Vicky if she'd tried to kill Kris Longkife.

"Well, folks," Betlan said, "tomorrow, no doubt, will be another long day. I suggest we turn out the lights and get some sleep."

They quickly got out of their new officer finery, ill-sized and all. They made their beds, although Vicky needed some help in that area. Fortunately, she wasn't the only one.

"My college had one maid to a dorm room. I never had to make up my bed," Blush admitted, going pink again.

Beds made, Vicky offered to hike down to the light switch at the end of the bay. As she got back to her bunk in the dark, Betlan leaned over. "You really are Harry Peterwald's daughter?"

"And he really did ship me off to the Navy. There's no signature of mine on my commissioning paperwork."

"No shit?"

"No shit."

# 15

The next morning started early and didn't slow down. Her computer said it was 4:30 am when the lights went on. "Okay, we got some running to do, and since you didn't get your proper PT clothes issued yesterday, you get to do two miles in your blues."

Vicky couldn't remember running anywhere, but fifteen minutes later, with her bunk made with Betlan's help, she was out front. Vicky's height put her up front when they formed up, with Betlan beside her. Per chief's orders, who was in shorts and a t-shirt emblazoned with, 'Yes, I am a Navy God' on the front, and her chief rank insignia on the back, they jogged off from their barracks and onto the gravel shoulder beside the road.

It did not go well. Blush fell out first, and after some verbal abuse, was allowed to limp back to the barracks. About that time, Vicky checked with her computer and was softly told that they were jogging in a circle around their new home.

That was confirmed when they trotted by the barracks to see Blush sitting forlornly on the steps.

The second circuit saw one of the other girls drop out. She got the same ragging by the chief, and was allowed to walk back. The third girl dropped out shortly into the third circuit.

Vicky was huffing. Her feet hurt, but there was no way she'd let the chief talk to her the way she'd talked to those others.

_I'm a Peterwald, damn it. I can do this._

But the truth was, there was no way she could keep up with Betlan. Vicky was gasping for breath, and the coach's daughter wasn't even breathing hard. By the grace of God, or the chief . . . Vicky was starting to have a hard time telling them apart . . . they turned into the barracks.

While Vicky stood with her hands on her knees, desperately trying not to collapse, the chief asked if any of the fine ladies had blisters from their new shoes. She had all of them sit down on the steps and actually looked at their feet.

"Your shoes are too tight," she told Blush. "That's a blister forming. Have the barrack's captain put a plaster on it." The next girl got a different treatment. "Your shoes are too loose. You got blisters forming, too. See the barrack's captain. What's the sizing on your shoes?"

When the two pairs of shoes showed not to be a match for the other's feet, the chief scowled and allowed that they'd have to revisit the shoe store. "It's next to the barber shop, so it will save you waiting in line."

They were allowed only a few minutes to shower before they were back in ranks, marching to chow. Again, they sat at the foot of the officer's table and ate the bacon and eggs fast, lest they not finish before the chief. The bacon was burned and the eggs were runny. It was like no breakfast Vicky had ever eaten, but she wolfed it down.

The run had left her famished.

They moved out when the chief called them, chewing their last bite as they ran.

As promised, a haircut was next on the list of Navy things to do. The young men ahead of them were in shorts, t-shirts, and running shoes for their hair cut, or maybe shearing might be the better phrase. They went in looking as clean cut as Greenfeld expected their boys to look.

They came out with bald scalps, not a few of them in shock as they ran hands through what had been hair a few minutes ago.

"They wouldn't dare do that to us?" Blush asked, then added nervously, "Would they?"

"Check out the chief's hair," Betlan suggested.

The chief's hair was well off the shoulders but below the ear.

Vicky steeled herself for what was coming. She was not surprised. Each girl was pointed at a chair immediately after the last boy had vacated it. The barbers changed from their sheering clippers to scissors. Snip, snip, snip and Vicky's long tresses were on the floor.

"You want me to take care of those roots, princess?" her barber asked.

"If you could," Vicky made the mistake of saying.

"Nobody's going to look at your hair, princess," the barber said with a chuckle and tapped Vicky on the back to vacate his chair. The next group of boys were already standing in line.

It was uniform issue after that. They started with underwear. All white. All so big and lacking in style that Vicky wouldn't have been seen dead in it.

But it was the Navy Way, as she was coming to understand.

The undress uniforms were khaki and white . . . and didn't fit any better than the blues. Apparently, neither 38 busts nor 36 hips were supposed to have a 28 waist between them. At least she was issued a belt along with suggestions to just suck it in.

Oh, and "embrace the suck."

"Suck," was just the mildest of the words she was learning. Yes, she knew the common vocabulary. It popped out of a guard's mouth on occasion, and all of Vicky's girlfriends had joined in the game of discovering this unknown verbal world that adults kept them in the dark about as much as the sex thing.

But here the words were sprinkled in every sentence. Blush stayed beet red as they went down the uniform issue line and got everything they needed described in the most distasteful manner.

_Did Daddy really want me introduced to this?_

Numbed by the language, Vicky finally decided that Daddy had never really been outside the palace and certainly had no idea how the common Sailor or Soldier talked.

_I'll have to give Daddy a lesson next time I see him._

They got PT uniforms this time, so they went for another run before lunch. Again, the chief had them circling the barracks. Blush tried for all her worth not to be the first to fall out, but on the third circuit she did. The other two girls fell out together half way through the fourth. Vicky made it to five. Betlan and the chief did another two and raced the last lap.

Betlan won.

"I must be getting old," the chief allowed. "Get showers. The uniform for the rest of the day is khaki."

The barrack's captain was standing by to take their blues as they dressed in khaki. "I'll send them out to be dry cleaned. Put your name on the dry-cleaning bill."

Vicky was glad to see that she wouldn't have to wear that uniform until the sweat stains and hair clippings had been removed.

_Maybe the Navy could make sense._

Lunch was another meal eaten in haste. She'd never tasted a goulash so lacking in spices, but there was plenty of it. Vicky was wolfing down the last few spoonful in her bowl as the chief came to hover in the passageway just outside officers' country.

Suddenly, the entire atmosphere of the wardroom room changed.

A man walked in and stood beside the chief.

The chief stiffened into what Vicky was learning was attention.

The two striper commanding the officer's dining room, shot to his feet. The other officers were hardly a heartbeat behind him.

The officer trainees were late putting down their spoons, but with stolen glances at each other, they did their best to stand at attention, too.

One of the other girls knocked over her chair and blushed as red as Blush.

"As you were. As you were," the man said.

It took Vicky two tries to count the gold braid on his sleeve. It came up four both times. Twice as many as the man lording it over the table. More than the stripes on the man who had brought her here. Even the chief was treating him as god.

_Did gods have gods?_

The chief had stayed at attention. Now he addressed her. "Chief, I believe you have one of my junior officers in your training unit."

"Sir?"

"Victoria Peterwald?"

"Peterwald, front and center," the chief ordered.

Vicky knew enough that she was supposed to march up there, squaring her corners as she did. She managed to not stumble over her feet and at least one corner was close to square.

"Sir?" she reported.

"I guess that will do," the man said, almost kindly. "I am Captain Krätz of the cruiser _Surprise_. You have been assigned to my ship. Please get your gear and report to Commander Murkoff's office where I will be waiting. Do _not_ keep me waiting."

"Yes, sir," Vicky almost stammered.

"Have a good day," the captain said to the officers. None had sat and resumed eating. With a smile, more for himself than those around him, the captain left.

"You've been assigned to a ship already?" Betlan asked Vicky.

"I guess."

"Get your asses moving," the chief said. "We don't keep captains waiting. Certainly not your first skipper!"

The chief double-timed them back to the barracks. Once there, Vicky looked at her uniforms which the chief had just instructed them in stowing in their lockers, then at the sea bag that she'd only just been issued.

"Oh hell, you don't have any idea how to pack that, do you?"

"No, Chief."

"Then let momma chief give all you girls a lesson on how you get all that nice gear the Navy has given you, and you officers will be paying for, into that itty-bitty bag."

In ten minutes, the chief did have all Vicky's gear stored. Then Vicky tried to pick it up and ended with the bag almost putting her on the ground. Or deck, as the chief insisted on calling that space down there.

"Betlan," Vicky begged.

"You can hardly ask the captain to help you lift that," the chief said. "Some guys can swing it up on their shoulder, but I think you better just put that strap over your shoulder and lug it any way you can. Now, it's been nice knowing you, ensign. God help me if our paths ever cross again. You got a Navy reader?"

"No, ma'am."

"Yeah, that was on the afternoon's issue. Heidi, get your reader out here," and the captain of the barracks came running.

"Among all that guy porn, you got the regular Navy reading list?"

"Yes, Chief."

"Give it to the ensign here. She's sailing today."

"Chief, it's got all my stuff on it."

"You can find it again. Give it up."

Heidi gave, and the chief passed it along to Vicky. "You might want to wipe the naked boys before some less forgiving type checks your reader out, but there's stuff here that will help you. For God's sake, read the section on how to wear the uniform and recognize ranks. Maybe someone on the _Surprise_ can show you how to march. Heaven knows I haven't. Good luck, dearie. I hear the _Surprise_ is a good ship and assigned to pirate duty. That's real Navy, baby cakes."

The chief stepped back and allowed the girls a moment to give Vicky goodbye hugs. Blush and Betlan did. "I hope to see you again," Betlan said.

"Me too," Vicky agreed.

With that the chief was walking a very overburdened Vicky down a street lined with identical barracks to the one four-story building at the end of the street. The sign outside announced Intake, Processing and Training Command. Now Vicky had a much better idea of what it meant.

There was no elevator. Vicky lugged her burden up four flights of stairs and was out of breath by the time the chief led her to a door with Commanding Officer painted in gold letters.

The chief led Vicky through the door. "I'm to hand off Ensign Victoria Peterwald to you," she announced.

"Paperwork is already done," a clerk behind a gray metal desk said, and handed a copy to the chief while passing a large manila envelope to Vicky. She took it carefully, fearful that it might just be the straw that broke the camel's back.

A moment later, both Captain Krätz and Commander Murkoff joined them.

"You sure you don't have a job on the _Surprise_ for me? Hell, I'd trade places with this boot ensign to get some decent ship plates under my feet," the commander said, half in jest, but Vicky could see half his longing was serious.

"Sorry, Klaus, but you really don't want to be in this ensign's shoes. Trust me," he said, throwing Vicky a sour look. Apparently, the smiles in the dining room had not been intended for her.

"Well, a good voyage to you, and not too long."

"It will be as long as it takes to reach its end," Captain Krätz said.

Vicky expected them to salute, but no one did. Clearly, she had a lot to learn. The chief had said to read, and she suspected she better.

Vicky lugged her sea bag down four flights of stairs and again was struggling to catch her breath as the captain strode down the hall. At the door, sat four sailors in fresh uniforms that fit them as poorly as Vicky's did, but showed no rank insignias. The captain pointed at the biggest of the four.

"You, Sailor, assist this ensign with her baggage."

"Yes, sir," the man said, and in a blink had hefted Vicky's bag over his shoulder and was following them out the door.

The captain put his hat on and eyed Vicky until she did the same. Only then did the saluting thing began. Everyone saluted the captain, and Vicky had to return every one of them. She was tempted to keep her hand up at her eyebrow except it was more complicated than that. Those without gold braid saluted the captain first. Even chiefs.

Vicky was expected to return their salutes just as the captain did.

Those with gold braid were more complicated. Anyone with more braid than Vicky, and that was everyone, had to be saluted. And Vicky better get her hand moving up into a salute before they started to salute the captain.

Her right shoulder had been exhausted from lugging the sea bag. Now it looked ready to fall off from all the saluting.

Fortunately, the captain had a car waiting. The sailor doffed the sea bag into the boot, saluted the two of them, got a grateful smile from Vicky, and a real one from the captain and double-timed back to his station. Vicky wondered if that was his job, or just a chance for a trainee to get some rest. Lord knew, if she racked up more days like the last few, she'd be glad to sit and wait for some petty job to do.

Assuming she could manage such a job.

The driver had opened the door for the captain. The captain stood there eyeing Vicky.

"Sir?"

"Junior officers enter a car first."

"Oh. Yes, sir," Vicky said. Actually, she usually entered a car first. Her security team required it. She'd just been wool gathering, or maybe in shock, as she tried to fit herself into the weird Navy Way of doing things.

She got in and slid all the way over. The captain joined her.

"Back to the space elevator, please."

"Yes, sir."

Vicky found her first Navy home disappearing behind her.

# 16

"Ah, Captain, may I ask a question?" Vicky said.

"I am told that you were sent to the Navy for an education. Any questions you have should be answered, if possible and at the right time, of course."

Vicky tried to measure the tone of his answer. It was not one she was familiar with. She chose to go on with her question. "Sir, it appears to me that the other four girls in the training unit were pulled in to provide a training experience with me. Then, suddenly, you pull me out of training and I'm rushed off to a ship. I don't understand."

Captain Krätz nodded. "A reasonable question. Yes. When the Navy received a request to provide an experience to you, we did collect the four most available young women and handed you over to an equally available chief's tender mercies. It was assumed you'd get six weeks of officer training.

"Unfortunately, the _Ambush_ suffered an engineering casualty. She replaced us on pirate patrol and we were intended to replace her at the end of her three-month cruise. Now we are replacing her early. No doubt, if the reactor problem requires major yard time, she may replace us late. Things like that happen."

Vicky didn't understand half of what he'd just said. Engineering casualty? Yard time? She'd spent time at a resort on New Eden where some workers still spoke Spanish rather than Standard. She couldn't understand them.

It looked like the Navy spoke its own language as well.

"What will happen to the other ensigns now that I am gone?"

"What? A Peterwald asking questions about the little people?" the captain asked, sarcasm heavy.

"I just wondered," Vicky said, defensively. "I liked a few of the girls. I think one liked me."

"The chief will give them expedited training until they can be merged into the class ahead of them. Does that satisfy your curiosity?"

"Yes, sir."

"Any more questions?"

"The _Surprise_? Wasn't that one of the ships that fought with my brother against Kris Longknife? I remember the name. It surprised me," Vicky added with a wry smile.

The captain became distant. "Yes, I was with him at the Chance system."

"Why did you survive and my brother didn't?"

"That is always a hard question after a battle," the captain said vaguely.

"Could you have saved my brother?" Vicky demanded.

The captain took a long moment before answering that question. "I don't think anyone could have saved your brother, except your brother."

"What do you mean, sir?" Vicky spat.

"He was vain. Headstrong. Rarely did he take advice. He had a temper, and Kris Longknife had gotten the better of him. He wanted to get back at her. A battle is a chancy thing, Ensign. It is no place to solve your problems."

"That makes no sense," Vicky snapped. "Isn't the Navy here to do battle for Greenfeld?"

"What the Navy does is something I hope we can teach you, Ensign Peterwald, before you hold the power that your brother did."

Vicky did not like that answer. Next thing, he would be telling her that Kris Longknife was right to kill her brother. She looked out the car window. The drive to the space elevator and the ride up was silent.

The captain took out his reader. Vicky did the same. The chief had been right, she did need to know more about this strange place she'd been tossed into. She called up a book, The Sailor's Manual. She realized a woman's uniform shirt should be outside her skirt and inside slacks she had not been issued. Her hat was never worn inside and she only saluted when wearing it.

Oh, and her hat was a cover. New word.

She found the list of ranks and discovered enlisted, even chiefs, had rates, not ranks. She reviewed the list of ranks and rates against the people she'd run into in the Navy and some of it finally began to make sense.

Flipping through the reader, she found a diagram of a warship with directions on how to find your way from one place to the next. She spent a good five minutes memorizing it before she realized her computer had captured it and would help her.

Then she came to damage control and realized that on a warship, things could get broken quite badly, and even her computer might not be of much help.

Vicky went back and spent more time memorizing the diagram. There were even Braille identification markers in the ships to help her find her way around if all lighting was lost. She memorized the Braille alphabet and numbers.

The trip passed in silence; not so much as a cold shoulder between the captain and her, but time was well spent learning.

# 17

The captain was met at the High Anhalt station by a 3/c boson's mate with an electric cart showing the _Surprise's_ name and shield. He immediately relieved Vicky of her sea bag.

Apparently boot ensigns in training were beasts of burden. Ensigns in the fleet were not.

"Show her to the female junior officers' berthing quarters, Hans," the captain said as they reached the pier.

The petty officer made to lead off.

"Wait, excuse me, Captain, but Hank had his own suite of rooms. Am I not to have the same?"

"Your brother was a bloated ego with a fool attached, Ensign. I do not suffer fools aboard my ship. Follow the petty officer to where you will find a bunk among the junior officers, or leave my ship."

For a moment, Vicky was ready to turn around and storm off. For a moment, she considered it. Mashed together in her mind's eye were Ms. Rotterdame's shock stick and her brother's slick smile as he pranced into breakfast in his commodore's uniform.

Did she really want to end up like Hank? Did she really want to see if Ms. Rotterdame was waiting in some corner of the palace? More importantly, did she want to amount to something? Be someone?

She remembered the Marines that had brought Grant's plan to nothing: dirty, bloody, but standing proud. Could she be someone like them?

She eyed the captain. He returned her, stare for stare. Few men had ever done that.

Vicky turned and followed the petty officer with her bag.

She followed him down stairs that the Navy called ladders, and around corridors that she'd learned were called passageways. The ship was crowded. Many passageways took her through bunks where sailors slept behind curtains.

"Do sailors get to sleep the day away?" Vicky asked Hans.

"Even in port, we stand watches twenty-four hours a day," the Sailor said. "If you have the midnight watch, you're gonna sleep when you can."

Again, Vicky found her new world taking on twists. "Thank you," she said before realizing that the palace ran through the night. Even the cooks had something new out of the oven when Vicky wanted it at midnight.

"You're welcome, ma'am," the petty officer said.

Vicky blinked. She'd said "thank you", he'd said "you're welcome". How many servants in the palace had drawn similar responses from her? The cooks, yes, when she was raiding the cookie jar and got caught. Maggie, when she was listening to her. Oh, and a boy she had slipped into her bed.

They were real to her, but most of those who passed like shadows through her life had been nothing.

Vicky remembered the section on damage control. She might be expected to lead a team of Sailors with torches and crowbars to pry any Sailor on this ship out of steel clutches.

Or one of them might pry her out.

This ship was nothing like the palace. These people were nothing like the people she had ignored there.

Vicky felt overwhelmed by everything coming at her.

The petty officer shouted, "Man coming on deck!"

"It's clear in here."

And Vicky was ushered into her new world.

The junior female officers' quarters on the _Surprise_ was about the size of her sitting room back at the palace. The bulkheads were steel, covered by gray paint, a gray and gritty paint on the deck, and a gray overhead with many colored pipes running through the space. There were eight bunk beds jetting out from the bulkhead with sixteen lockers lining it.

A young woman with towels wrapped around her head and body stepped out from a hatch to the left. Apparently, there was a shared bathroom and shower in there. What had the chief called it? The head.

"Oops," Vicky's petty officer said, and turned his back on the newly showered woman. "If you're done with me," he said, settling Vicky's seabag to the deck, "I'll get back to work."

In a blink, he was gone.

"You the new meat?" one woman said. She was seated at a table, studying her reader. The collar of her khaki uniform showed a single silver bar. _Lieutenant J.G._ Vicky remembered. _The same as one and a half stripes._

"I guess I am," Vicky said, not offering her name. She looked around. Of the sixteen bunks, two were closed up and one had soft snoring issuing from it. Apparently, junior officers worked the midnight watch. Only two bunks had their thin matrices rolled up double on them. Both were upper bunks.

"I take it I have a choice between on upper bunk or an upper bunk?" Vicky said.

"You might want to take the one furthest from the head," the gal who was now vigorously toweling her hair said. "Lieutenant Schnoor likes to stay close to the head and she can snore up a storm. I hope she passes her engineering qualification tests and gets promoted to lieutenant commander finally."

"Lieutenant commanders have their own dorm?" Vicky asked as she pulled her sea bag toward the far bunk.

"Lieutenant commanders get their own stateroom. They only have to share it with one other person," the J.G. finally looked up from her reader. "Hi, I'm Nadya Ruhl, and I will pass my engineering qualification test the first time I try it. You are . . .?"

There was no way to avoid that question forever. "Vicky Peterwald," Vicky said, eyeing the locker. "How do I find the combination to this thing?" With luck, they'd pass by the name and go straight to her problem.

"Oh, it's defaulted to one, two, three, four." the fresh clean girl said, working her own combination. "Then you take it back to zero and you can reset it to your own code. Do you need a hand?"

Did Vicky want a near-naked woman leaning over her? Back home, it would have led to fun, but here, with some book-cracker watching and anyone free to walk in, maybe not.

"Let me try this myself," Vicky said. A moment later, she had the door open. She then changed it to something more secure, closed it, then reopened it. "I'm fine."

"Peterwald," Lieutenant Ruhl said. "We had a commodore by the name of Peterwald a while back. A real asshole who almost got us all killed and did get himself killed. He related to you?"

Vicky took a deep breath, lowered her eyes and turned to face the woman. "He was my brother."

"Sorry about that," said the other gal who was now naked but getting into underwear that fit her better than what Vicky had been issued. "I lost my father. Family is hard to get over. By the way, I'm Zenzi Ungar. If you're Peterwald's sister, then you're . . ."

"Yes, my father kind of runs Greenfeld."

"Not kind of. He owns most of it," Zenzi said. "My dad worked for a company that he pretty much owned."

"I think mine does too," Nadya added. "What brings you into a junior officer's dormitory?"

Vicky shrugged. "I don't know. I may have screwed up on New Eden. I really don't know. When I got back, I couldn't talk to Daddy, and the next thing I know, this lieutenant commander says I've been commissioned an ensign in the Navy."

Vicky raised her eyes to the two girls and found them looking at her.

"You need a shoulder to cry on?" Zenzi offered.

"How about a wall to hit?" Vicky answered.

"There's a punching bag in the gym," Nadya offered. "I knock it around after a bad day."

"Considering you work for Schnoor, there's a lot of them."

At that, the other young women want back to what they were doing and Vicky took to unloading her sea bag. The chief had packed everything in tight, but that didn't mean it didn't end up wrinkled.

It had been ugly to begin with and had only gotten worse.

Vicky turned back to the room where Zenzi was putting on a J.G. uniform that actually looked good on her. Of course, she was pretty much a midsized woman. Not too tall, not to buxom, and nice at the hip. She spotted Vicky looking at her and turned.

"How did you get your uniform to fit like that?" Vicky pleaded.

"They ship you here straight from training?" Zenzi asked.

"I got one day of training," Vicky said and heard herself sound almost desperate.

"Honey, somebody's really got it in for you," Nadya said, looking up from her studies. "I think we need to give you a helping hand before you drown in space."

For the first time in her life, Vicky said "Please," and really meant it.

Five minutes later, the ship's seamstress was bustling around Vicky, making marks to take this in and let that out. When Vicky was switching between uniforms, the 2/c petty officer got a good look at Vicky's underwear.

"That will not do. That bra will not hold and look what it is doing to your shoulders. Those panties will rub in all the wrong places," was her final observation.

"I've noticed that," Vicky admitted.

The seamstress sighed. "You are a hard person to fit. I can order you properly fitting under-things. With luck, they'll make it aboard before we sail, assuming we sail when the grape vine says we will. I know a guy in engineering who says the _Ambush_ isn't the only cruiser with a sick reactor. They're working night and day to get ours back on line after our yard period. Anyway, with luck, we'll have you comfortable. Can I have your IDent to charge?"

Vicky offered her Ensign Victoria Peterwald's fresh Navy ID. The seamstress ran it past her wrist unit. "You haven't been paid yet, but we can run a debit until you are," the helpful petty officer said, and went on her way with most of Vicky's khaki and white uniforms. The blues would have to wait.

"I can't pay for underwear," Vicky half-laughed.

"When was the last time a Peterwald was broke?" Zenzi chortled.

"Then we'll just have to take you out for ice cream on us," Nadya said, closing down her reader.

# 18

That afternoon and evening, Vicky met the other sixteen who made up the junior women officers of the _Surprise_. About half chose to ignore her. It wasn't her or her name so much as the stench left in the air from brother Hank. He really had muddied the water for her.

The others seemed willing to take her as she came, glad to have another hand to share the extra assignments with. "You will be helping out with the "George" work, won't you?"

"George?" Vicky echoed.

"Yeah, 'let George do it', and in the Navy, every ensign is named George, no matter what our plumbing arrangement."

"I think Captain Krätz intends to see that I get the full Navy treatment," Vicky said.

"You've met the skipper?" one J.G. asked.

"He pulled me out of Processing and Training to make sure I made ship movement," Vicky said.

The J.G. shook her head. "Peterwalds use captains for runners. Oh, my."

"I don't think it was quite like that," Vicky said. "I think he didn't want to miss planting his boot up my butt and wanted to get an early start."

"Uh, oh," Zenzi said. "Suddenly, I really don't want to be you."

There was a knock at the hatch to junior ladies' country as Vicky had learned to call it. Everyone looked at Vicky.

"George, you gonna answer that?" Ruhl said through a grin.

Vicky went to the hatch and cracked it an inch. "Yes."

"Begging the ensign's pardon, but Captain Krätz sends his compliments and requests the presence of Ensign Peterwald in his in-port cabin."

"I am Ensign Peterwald. Can you show me the way?"

"He told me I should."

"Damn," Vicky heard as she stepped over the high combing, "the old man is sending a runner for Peterwald."

"Well, would you want the 1MC bawling for Ensign Peterwald the way it was always bawling for Ensign Ungar?"

Vicky closed the door, no hatch, on a laugh.

Thank heavens Captain Krätz had sent her a runner. All her study of the ship diagram would not have helped her in the slightest. For one, she had no idea the address of the captain's in-port cabin. She asked her computer, but it advised her that she was above Greenfeld's GPS system and it had no frame of reference.

So much for a high-priced computer when she really needed it.

The runner finally came to halt beside a door, not a hatch, this one was not air tight, and knocked.

"Enter" came from within.

The Sailor waved Vicky in and stepped back, maybe with a bit of satisfaction that it wasn't him going in.

Vicky entered, closed the door behind her, and turned to see Captain Krätz sitting at a gray metal desk. A lieutenant commander sat in a grey metal chair at the side of his desk. Vicky took a breath and reported, all the while taking in the room.

It was tiny. Maybe the size of her bathroom at the palace. It had a desk that was up against the wall, with two chairs, all occupied. The gray steel bulkhead, floor, and overhead, were the same as the dorm right down to the colored metal pipes running through the overhead.

Apparently, captains didn't rate all that much more than junior officers. Except he had what might be a sleeping alcove off to one side and wouldn't have to worry about snoring or roommates talking in the middle of his night.

"Ensign Peterwald, I would like to personally introduce you to your division officer and give you the full benefit of the briefing I am giving him."

"Yes, sir," Vicky said, standing at attention as best she knew how, which wasn't very well if the chief was to be believed.

"Your division head is Commander Glunz, the _Surprise's_ Communication Officer. Based on your lack of training, we agree that standing a communication watch is probably the best way to get you into harness. He needs a junior officer on the midnight watch, and since you were kind enough to drop into our lap, you are it."

"Yes, sir." Vicky repeated.

"I have told Glunz that you are Hank Peterwald's little sister and that we are to bring you along quickly as a good, competent, officer. I have also told him that this is likely your first experience with authority and that you may have problems adjusting to a subordinate role. Will you?"

"I will do my best not to, sir," Vicky shot back.

"I would have expected a 'yes, sir' or a 'no, sir' answer to that ensign," Captain Krätz said, storm clouds forming above his brow.

"Yes, sir," Vicky said, "but as you just pointed out, I have no experience at being in a subordinate position. How can I say that I will when I don't know how?"

The two officers eyed each other, then Captain Krätz fixed her with a gimlet eye. "I will assume that was a smart answer, not a smart aleck answer."

"It was intended as such," Vicky put in.

"As which such?" the skipper shot back.

Vicky found herself going over the conversation and not remembering which deserved a positive or negative response. _Maybe I wasn't so smart_.

"Whichever answer you preferred, sir."

"That's better. Commander Glunz, she gets one bite out of any apple. One mistake. You will not tolerate a second mistake. Understood?"

"Yes, captain," the commander said.

Captain Krätz eyed Vicky. "Understood?"

"Yes, sir," she shot back.

"Very good. Commander, she is yours. Treat her as you would your daughter."

"I don't have a daughter."

"But I do."

"Yes, sir. Ensign, you're with me."

# 19

At 0800 the next morning . . . yes, the Navy had its own way of telling time . . . Vicky presented herself at the comm shack, as she'd already learned to call it. She had eaten an early breakfast and started hunting for the communication center immediately afterwards.

It had taken her an entire hour to find the place.

Several Sailors had helped her. One chief had finally taken mercy on her and assigned a Sailor to take here there.

As it turned out, Vicky was late.

"You are supposed to relieve the watch fifteen minutes early," Commander Glunz pointed out firmly.

"Yes, sir," Vicky answered. Zenzi had pointed out to Vicky over ice cream the afternoon before that Navy officers wanted three answers. "Yes, sir." "No, sir," and "No excuse, sir."

"Occasionally you can get away with an "I don't understand, sir," Nadya had added, "but don't make it a habit.

To be on good ground, Vicky added, "No excuse, sir. It won't happen again."

"See that it doesn't, Ensign," the commander said and assigned a chief to begin Vicky's education. Vicky would come to learn that a chief was the best person to go to for help when she needed it, whether she knew it or not. More often than not, Vicky had no idea she needed the help.

The chief took Vicky from station to station, showing her the machines that received the communication signals, be they radio, network, or land line. Every message, be it formal, or just a telephone call, was logged and recorded.

"Don't call your boyfriend from a government phone," the chief added in a low whisper. "We'll have the recording right here, in case anyone needs to know what you said."

"Oh, and if I send it on net from my computer?" Vicky asked.

"Personal computers have to be registered with the State Security Officer. We can't have anyone sending clandestine signals from the _Surprise_ , now can we?"

Vicky nodded agreement and made a note to herself to figure out whether she wanted some State Security goon messing with her assistant. For now, she'd make sure she didn't ask her computer anything that required it to access the net.

She spent most of the day going from station to station, following a signal from its arrival to its decoding, and then its dispatch either by ship's internal net or by an actual runner if the message traffic was important enough to require initialing.

"Can't we just record the time the message was opened by the recipient?" Vicky asked.

"Ensign, runners have been taking messages to commanding officers since before we went into space. It's a good system. It's worked fine since before I joined the Navy, so you see that you don't break it, you hear?"

"Yes, ma'am," Vicky shot back. What had Zenzi said? "There's a right way, a wrong way, and the Navy Way." Everyone had shared a laugh then. Now, Vicky mulled it over.

Part of her wanted to say this was stupid. Another part of her was remembering those Marines, bloodied and looking like they'd been through hell, but strutting off the battlefield singing their own song.

Was it stupid stuff like messages being run up to the captain that made it possible for those Marines to go through hell and swagger their way back?

"And this machine is yours, Ensign," the chief said, ending Vicky's reflection.

"Mine?"

"Yep, this little puppy, a SSQ-2323 Mark VI, mod 4 high grade cryptography reader and writer is yours to command. Any message that comes aboard with a security classification of G or higher goes straight to you. You decrypt it yourself. You do not read it. If it's got a H classification you will draw a sidearm from the locker over there on the wall and will personally run that message up to the bridge where the conn will either read it, or wake the captain. Do I need to repeat myself, Ensign Peterwald?"

The chief had been calling her ensign, or ma'am. The sudden use of Ensign Peterwald got Vicky's attention up close and personal.

"Ah, Chief, how do I operate this machine?"

The chief actually cracked a smile. "I'm so glad you asked, Ensign," and proceeded to help Vicky run a test message through the contraption. It didn't look all that different from the coding machines she'd seen first class petty officers using. This one, however, required her to put all five fingers of her right hand on a plate while staring into a retina scanner with her left eye. Only then did the machine accept her message, process it, and print it out. The completed package plopped into the out bin with a blank sheet of paper on top.

Well, almost blank sheet. In big, bold red letters in the middle of the page announced Class J message traffic.

"Well, ensign, it appears that you drew a dinner winner. What do you do now?"

"This is just a training exercise. That's not a real message."

"This is a training exercise, and you're wasting time."

Vicky took one more second to realize that in this chief's Navy, a training exercise wasn't finished until it was finished.

Vicky scooped up the message, slipped it into a clipboard that was hanging there, no doubt just for this purpose. She raced for the gun locker where she again used her hand print. One bin clicked open allowing Vicky access to a belt, complete with a holstered automatic. Vicky managed to get it on without putting down the message, and got another tight smile from the chief.

"Coming through," Vicky shouted, and one of the petty officers opened the door for her and the chief. "Coming through," Vicky shouted as she ran down the passage way.

"Make a hole," the chief got in the next time Vicky needed to get past four people, including an officer, talking in the passageway. Even the lieutenant got his back to the wall when Vicky waved her clipboard with the red bold writing.

She arrived at the bridge grateful for the running at OTS, and wishing she'd done more of it, to find herself confronted by several officers.

"Who has the conn?" she demanded.

"I have the conn," a commander said, turning to face her.

Vicky ran the last few steps to present the clipboard to him.

"J traffic. That will be for the captain, Ensign. He's in his in-port cabin."

Vicky remembered passing the bridge on her way to and from the captain's cabin. She spun on her heels and raced by the chief who had known to get out of her way, and headed for the captain's private quarters.

"What do I say when I get there?" Vicky asked over her shoulder as she ran down the corridor.

"Knock and announce 'Message traffic for the captain'," came back at her.

Again, she found herself in front of a door. She rapped on it and announced, "Message traffic for the captain."

"Enter," came before she finished.

Vicky opened the door, spotted where the captain sat at his desk, talking to a lieutenant commander, and covered the remaining distance in three quick steps.

"Message for the captain," she said as she handed across the clipboard.

Captain Krätz lifted the cover sheet and glanced at the message. "It seems we're to have goulash again for supper. Thank you, Ensign," he said, and tossed the clipboard aside.

Vicky stood there at attention, struggling to catch her breath without looking like she was. It finally dawned on her that the officer talking to the skipper was Lieutenant Commander Glunz.

Quickly, Vicky ran down what the chief had told her.

"Captain, I require initial receipt of a Class J message, sir."

Captain Krätz picked up the discarded clipboard. Quickly he initialed the message about dinner tonight and handed it back to Vicky.

"Ensign, when you start a remark with captain, or any other officer's rank, you don't need to finish it with a sir or ma'am. Unless you're being sarcastic, right chief?"

"Just try to add emphasis most of the time, sir." the chief answered.

_Gods bantering with gods_.

"Dismissed, Ensign. Be sure to log this exercise."

"Yes, sir," Vicky said. She managed a half decent about face and made her way to the door. The chief got there ahead of her to open it. And give her a wink.

_I'm an officer. She's enlisted. She knows a hell of a lot more than I do, but she's opening the door for me._

Vicky tried to match this Navy world with the world she'd grown up in at the palace. They didn't fit. She felt like Alice in the storybook who went down a rabbit hole.

_Only I went up a space elevator_.

"Well done, Ensign," the chief said, and together they walked back to the comm shack. Vicky returned her weapon to the locker, and, with the help of the chief, figured out how to archive the message in a safe that again demanded her palm print and retina scan. Vicky also annotated the log for an exercise run.

At 1545, Vicky stood by as the next watch relieved her watch. There was no one to formally relieve her, since she was a watchstander-in-training, but she watched as both the officers and enlisted were relieved by the afternoon watch.

The lieutenant who had commanded the day watch invited Vicky to join the rest of the officers for supper in the wardroom. Vicky watched and listened as they debriefed their day and their plans for the evening.

"You, Ensign," the lieutenant said, "had best spend it reading up on comm equipment and the watchstanders guide."

Vicky raised a quizzical eyebrow, but kept her silence.

"You're the officer of the watch come midnight tomorrow."

"Or is it day after tomorrow?" a J. G. said. "I always get confused."

"She can sleep through midnight tonight," the lieutenant said, "but she better be wide-eyed and bushy-tailed next midnight."

Vicky thanked them for their advice . . . and headed for her readers.

# 20

Vicky joined Nadya at the study table, going from one reader to the next. She needed to know how to stand a watch, but she also needed to know the communications business from one end to the other. So, to start with, she skimmed.

She had no need just now to know how to stand a watch at the quarterdeck or on the bridge. She also skipped the sections on a watch underway. She found what she needed in the back of the watchstander's guide: maintain the necessary activities of the ship and support the training of the crew for promotion as time allows.

Vicky rephrased that. She would keep the message traffic flowing, and when that didn't fill up the watch, train her subordinates and herself. A quick check of the ship's library showed that each petty officer rate had a whole book of things they needed to know for promotion to the next rate. It was similar, though shorter and different from, the long list of things she had to do to qualify for her promotion to J.G.

Vicky had to learn how to tear down her own Mark VI, mod 4. The men seated at each of the other crypto machines had to be able to do the same for their box. By the next day, Vicky was pretty sure that she could take apart and put back together her box. She was pretty sure she knew how to stand her watch.

She was not prepared at all for what she faced.

# 21

Vicky relieved the head of the afternoon watch fifteen minutes early. He left immediately. So did several other petty officers, as well as the chief of the watch.

Vicky found herself in charge of four men who were actively grumbling about who would relieve them.

At midnight on the dot, four young women came through the hatch. They relieved the four men after a few mumbled words, and settled down at their machines.

One of them turned on a monitor and adjusted it to bring in a hockey game. The four communication petty officers proceeded to cheer on an all-girls team as they got clobbered by a professional team of men.

This wasn't the way Vicky had intended to spend her watch.

"Do we have any message traffic?" Vicky asked.

"No radio traffic addressed to the _Surprise_ ," one reported, taking her eyes from the game long enough to check her machine.

"No net traffic addressed to the _Surprise_ ," a second said.

"Only the usual land line traffic. Nobody's called a sex hot line yet," said the third, who had head phones on, but only on one ear.

"Ma'am," said the first class petty officer who seemed to be the senior one present, "the _Surprise_ is in port. A midnight watch is pretty dull, at least we have the game, huh?"

Faced with a solid front, Vicky fell back to her own cryptography device. She had no traffic either. The game went on, the girls cheered this or that hit, and groaned as the men scored and the women didn't. Vicky had never watched hockey, had no idea how it was played, and thought it strange that a gal's team was playing guys.

And as she sat at her station, she had flashbacks to what it had been like to watch Hank and his friends play. They'd played their games and left little room for Vicky.

She had so wanted to play with them. Their games looked so much better than what she and the girls her age could play. Yet, Hank played on with the girls and boys of his age, leading the fun and never having a moment for little sister.

Vicky had been here before, over in the corner, feeling small.

If the four sharing her watch had been boys, she might have tried some of the things she learned when her breasts showed up on her chest. That left Vicky wondering why the watch she had replaced had so few women and this one was all female?

She began to examine her work station. It didn't just have the Mark VI, mod 4. There were readers, several dedicated to the equipment, how to trouble shoot them, how to take them apart, order replacement components, and put them back together again. There was also one in a green cover marked Personnel. It opened to her palm print.

Vicky looked up her own file. It was sparse to the point of nonexistent.

_I guess if you need to know anything about me, you know it already, and if you don't, then you don't_.

Vicky had no idea who she was sharing the midnight watch with, but the files had pictures. Since it was limited to the officers and ratings of the Communications Division, it didn't take her long to have four files open.

Amala Muller was Vicky's first class comm tech. She'd been passed over for chief three times running and had been put on report twice in the last year for a slovenly uniform. Her latest fitness report said she was not a leader but recommended her retention as a competent technician.

_So why did I draw her as senior tech on my first watch?_

Her three other technicians were more of the same. Good technical skills, but no real future in the Navy. Still, they were all three 2/c petty officers. Why were they in the Navy? What had they expected when they joined? What did they expect now?

Vicky frowned; there was little chance they'd tell their new watch officer any of that, even if she led them on a raid of the nearest cookie jar.

_Nothing I've done before prepared me for this_.

_So, you going to sit back and let Amala run this watch?_

_No._

_You going to charge in their like Daddy or call State Security to take names and haul people off to jail, like you've heard happens?_

Vicky answered that with a deep sigh.

_I'm an ensign in the Navy. I seem to have some authority, but not a lot. How am I going to use it so that I'm trusted with more? Sitting on my duff here isn't getting me anything._

Vicky went through the files on her people again. Amala's scores on her technical and leadership tests had been trending down. Not enough to get someone with fifteen years in the Navy kicked out, but how could someone who had done better before do worse now?

_Maybe she just doesn't care_.

Vicky checked the other ones as well. Two hadn't even bothered to sit for their technical tests the last time they were offered. None had done anything to improve their leadership qualifications in the last year.

_Do any of them care?_

Vicky did a check of the entire divisions personnel. There were only two other women in the division. They were younger, dare she say, prettier, and they were testing every chance they had.

"Computer," Vicky whispered softly, "have you copied the personnel data I have been looking at?"

"Yes, ma'am. I could download a complete set if you wish."

"No, don't touch any database aboard ship. Don't do anything I don't tell you to do."

"Understood."

"Map me the career progressions of the chiefs in the division."

It quickly did. It showed that every chief was a graduate of C school, a hard technical course, as well as several leadership schools.

All of Vicky's watchstanders had applied for C school. None had been selected. The same went for all the leadership schools. The four of them had been on straight ship duty since they graduated from B school.

What had she heard her chief say at OTC? "In this man's Navy." She'd said it several times. She'd never said, "This woman's Navy."

Vicky went back to her own four. All of them had qualified for C school years ago. They all had the knowledge, though it seemed to be getting stale.

The game ended, Amala went to change the channel. Vicky walked over and hit the breaker switch on the power cord.

There was dead silence in the room.

"I'm your new watch officer," Vicky said into the silence. "I expect I'll be the midnight watch officer for a long time."

That got a rise out of several of them, but still not a word.

Vicky eyed them as hard as she knew how. "You're stale in your training and out of shape in your gut. This morning, we will work on technical skills. After our shift, we will repair to the ship's gym and see what we can do about the other."

"Oh," came from most, but it was the "Why bother?" from Amala that brought the rest to silence again.

"We'll get in shape," Vicky said, "because I had to run a message up to the captain and don't want to have to do that again all out of breath and slow. If I'm down with a hot piece of metal in my leg, Petty Officer Muller, you would have to run the Class J message up to the skipper. How long do you think it would take you?"

"So he gets his message about today's goulash a few minutes late. Listen, ma'am, I don't know who you are, but you better learn that there's really no place in this _man's Navy_ for a woman." She made both words sound like curses. "You can learn it now, or you can learn it later, but you're gonna learn it."

Vicky wondered if Kris Longknife ever faced stuff like this. Instead of wilting under her subordinate's gaze, Vicky put her hands on her hips. "Maybe you have, but it's not something I intend to learn in this Navy. Now, half the stations are unmanned and off line at this hour. Let's tear them apart and see what makes them tick. You, with the network station, you go first."

Scowls she got aplenty, and slow was the operative word, but the silent network station got torn down under Vicky's intent eyes. Amala even took to answering Vicky's questions. They were putting the telephone station back together when their reliefs showed up.

Vicky led the way to the ship's gym even as the three 2/c techs grumbled about supper, but they all went. There, Amala asked Vicky if she'd hold the punching bag for her.

Vicky did, and got knocked back quite a few times. Then it was Vicky's turn. She'd been watching Amala and at least knew how to hold her fists.

After Amala got knocked back a few times the petty officer grinned. "You got some anger management issues, there."

"A few. Likely not as many as you."

"Likely not. You're still young. You got time to collect them, ma'am."

"Or to knock them for a loop."

"I thought that way once."

"Let's see what we can do about it."

Vicky had intended for the watches to continue on as she had begun, but the _Surprise_ got underway while she was asleep. Her next watch had plenty of message traffic to keep them busy. The _Surprise_ was hunting pirates and that meant listening to everything that happened in near human space.

# 22

Hunting pirates turned out to be as boring as being alongside the pier. They were never where the _Surprise _was.

Vicky brought calls for help by merchant ships under attack up to the bridge. By the time they got there, space was empty except for the occasional bit of wreckage where someone had been damaged.

Vicky wasn't the only one frustrated. The punching bag in the gym had a long line most times. Fortunately, the hour after the day watch went on duty was usually light.

Since hunting pirates wasn't all that busy, Vicky found plenty of time during and after her watch to study. The leadership tests for Chief and J.G. weren't all that different. She and Amala started studying during the slow times of their watch. Then Amala joined Vicky at the training center to work on them in their off times. Their answer to leadership challenges started to get closer to what the tests showed as optimal.

Not that Amala always agreed with the optimal answer. "That's not going to motivate anyone. Words don't mean a thing unless you got the walk that goes with them."

Training with Amala was an interesting experience.

Then Vicky found a note on her bunk left by a runner. They were about to make port at Cuzco. Vicky had heard that. The rumor out of engineering was that one of the reactors was going lame and they desperately need a spare part. With luck, the ones available on Cuzco might be better quality than the one they just finished installing on High Anhalt station.

Vicky expected some quiet watches.

The note appeared requiring her to present herself tomorrow at 1600 to accompany Captain Krätz to a formal dinner ashore.

"What do you wear to a formal dinner?" Vicky asked the room in general and no one in particular. "Your dress blues?"

"Formal dinner dress, deary," Lieutenant Schnoor tossed at her with a wicked smile. "You'll love it."

Vicky went hunting for Zenzi. "Oh, formal dinner dress," was her response, too. "You better drop down to the ship store and see if the seamstress can help you."

So, it was that at 1600 the next day Vicky waited just short of the quarterdeck for Captain Krätz. If she'd had any doubt about how much the Navy men hated the women, what she wore verified it all.

The white skirt hung on her like a gunny sack. Even with the expert work of the ship's seamstress, the blue dinner jacket didn't fit at either waist or bust. The shirt had ruffles down the front. Who wore ruffles these days? And the shoes! They were hardly better than those she'd done her first run in.

Worse, she wore a tiara that was nothing more than a jumped-up beret with her officer's hat insignia on the front. Not side. Front!

She would be laughed off the floor at any dance at the palace.

Worse, Captain Krätz looked gorgeous in his own dinner jacket. His white trousers and his blue dinner jacket fit him perfectly. If he wasn't her boss, she'd take him off to the paint locker for a trial run.

He saluted the flag on the aft bulkhead, saluted the officer of the deck and was piped over the side. " _Surprise_ departing."

Vicky followed silently in his wake like a dingy being towed along by some huge man-of-war.

"Are things going well?" he asked.

"Yes, sir," Vicky answered properly.

"I understand you're studying a lot."

"Yes, sir," this time from Vicky was a bit cautious. Did the Navy want its ensigns studying? Or just its male ensigns?

_Down girl. Don't let your talks with Amala ooze into the wrong conversation_.

"Are you learning anything?"

"I passed my proficiency test for communications yesterday," Vicky answered.

"Good. We must rotate you through several more divisions," he said, smiling happily.

Vicky thought about that for a moment. Did she want to become someone who glided in and glided out of a division? She'd done that for a lot of during factory visits.

_Did I really learn anything?_

"If possible, sir, I would like to continue working with my watch mates," Vicky risked.

"You would, huh?"

"They are all overdue for promotion. I have worked with them, preparing them for their tests. I think they have good prospects."

"You do, do you?"

Vicky had seen Daddy when his mind was made up and nothing was going to change it. Had Captain Krätz already made up his mind about her watch mates?"

"Yes, sir. I do."

"Then we will have to see how they do, won't we?"

"Yes, sir," Vicky said. And prayed her girls did as well as she hoped.

They were approaching a fine restaurant. At least, fine for a space station; it was nothing like the best restaurants in Anhalt or the palace. She only realized she had been surrounded by security teams, Marines, and State Security, both when their perimeter collapsed around her and Captain Krätz as they entered, then expanded to take over half the dining room.

The captain seated her at a table set for four. Apparently, captains were courteous to women in this miserable get up.

Vicky said nothing. The captain said nothing. The silence stretched. Some of the security team actually started to fidget.

_What's going on here?_

Then the captain stood. Vicky stood and turned to follow his gaze.

More security types were coming through the door. Some were clearly security from the suits they wore. Others were in the Red and Blue that so many Marines in human space used as their uniform.

Then Vicky saw who they were protecting.

_Princess Kris Longknife_!

Vicky's stare went from neutral as befitted a junior officer to feral. Her hands formed fists and her teeth gritted tight.

_Can I kill you with a butter knife? A fork? A spoon?_

Worse, Kris Longknife's dinner dress wasn't as miserably frumpy as Greenfeld's issue.

Vicky suppressed a snort at that.

Krätz swept Kris Longknife a full bow from the waist. When Vicky just stood there like a glaring statue, he tapped her elbow, a clear order, "She's a princess, you are not. This is Navy business. We _will_ do it _my _way."

Vicky gave the Wardhaven princess a quick, shallow curtsy like she'd learned at six.

Captain Krätz stayed in his full bow.

With a scowl, Vicky curtsied again. Lower. And did not recover, but went a bit lower. Then some more.

Finally, her head was even with her captain's.

Only then did Kris smile and give them a most regal nod of the royal head. "Thank you, Captain, Ensign, but we are in Cuzco space and I seriously doubt their government recognizes United Sentients patents of ennoblement."

"But graciousness is recognized throughout human space," Captain Krätz said, rising from his bow. "Your highness, may I present to you my new junior communications watch officer, Ensign Victoria Smythe-Peterwald."

"I am glad that we are finally formally introduced," Kris Longknife answered.

All the times they'd met, and all the times the Longknife bitch had dodged her bought and paid for death, cascaded through Vicky's mind. She grit her teeth but said nothing.

Her captain eyed her. Under his demanding pressure, Vicky bit out, "It is good to meet you." Each word felt like fire in her mouth.

The Marine officer with Kris held her chair for her to sit, and her captain did the same again for Vicky. It still seemed unbelievable that a god would hold her chair just because she was a woman. All things considered about what she was learning about a woman's life in the Navy, it was downright unbelievable.

Kris Longknife spoke first. "I was rather surprised to see the _Surprise_ tied up along the next pier. If it isn't a state secret, can I ask how you come to be here?"

"Some people might consider it just such a state secret," Captain Krätz said, with a Father Christmas chuckle and a glance at Vicky. "But a look at the ship you escorted in tells me that both our planets are concerned about the same matter. How did that freighter come to be so shot up?"

"I'm afraid that I did it," the Longknife girl said trying, but not succeeding at all, to look bashful.

"It fired on the _Wasp_ while we were making like an unarmed merchant," Longknife said in formal report mode to Vicky's captain. "I was on weapons and returned the compliment. I put a 24-inch pulse laser through their bridge and that was the end of the discussion."

"Just like you did my brother," Victoria Peterwald shot back.

"Ensign," her captain said, giving warning.

Kris shook her head. "Excuse me, Captain, if you will, but Ensign Peterwald and I need to get this out in the open. She may never agree with me, but she needs to hear my side." And Kris Longknife turned her full attention to Vicky.

"You killed my brother just like you did that freighter crew," Vicky spat out before the Longknife bitch could confuse the matter.

Kris Longknife seemed weight carefully Vicky's words before she said, "Yes, I was involved in your brother's death, but not just like those people on the pirate's bridge."

Vicky already had her mouth open to shoot down any defense that Kris Longknife girl offered, but the glower from her captain caused her to bite her tongue.

"Your brother had my ship on the ropes. It was his ship and crew or mine. I fired 6-inch lasers, aimed for his engines, not bridge. His evasion actions, or maybe it was just dumb luck, put his bridge where we were aiming.

"On his ship, every crewman had a survival pod. We did not find a single one on that pirate ship. When I opened up their bridge, they were all doomed. Most of their bodies were blown out into space.

"On your brother's ship, they all activated their survival pods. With the exception of your brother's, they all worked. His didn't. Consider that."

Kris paused, eying Vicky. If she was expecting to see acceptance and forgiveness on Vicky's face, she was sorely mistaken.

"There is one more thing I can add, though I doubt if anyone in my government will back me up."

"What is that?" Captain Krätz asked. Vicky couldn't seem to open her mouth.

"If it's not a state secret, could you tell me what were the series numbers of the survival pods on the _Incredible_?"

"The _Incredible_ and the _Surprise_ were built at the same time. We all used 68000 series pods," the captain answered.

Kris nodded then went on. "The defective pods on the battleships we fought at Wardaven all had a 90000 series identifier. Do you know what the number on Hank's pod was?"

Vicky shook her head in silence. So did Captain Krätz.

"I have pictures of his pod. I could show them to you now, but I won't." Vicky saw her brother alive, near godlike in his last visit to the palace before he shipped out to forever. Did she want to see a picture of his cold dead body? She didn't demand the pictures from the Longknife bitch. She did whisper, "Do you know Hank's survival pod number?"

"Ninety-seven thousand, five hundred and twelve," Kris Longknife said evenly.

"Holy Mother of God," Captain Krätz muttered.

"That's impossible," Vicky snapped.

Kris rolled her hand, palm up on the table. "My computer has all the photos taken on my space station of your brother's pod, both before it was opened and after. Several of them clearly show the pod number. Do you know the pod number on your battle station, Ensign?" Kris asked.

The woman looked at her captain. "Yes, I do." Her station in communications had a number. She'd followed procedures and memorized it.

"I also know mine," the captain said. "And it's nowhere near ninety thousand.

"Why was I never told this?" Vicky demanded.

Now it was her captain's turn to roll his hands open, palm up.

"Do you believe her?" Vicky spat.

The captain was silent for a long minute. "There is talk, late at night, in the back rooms of private clubs," he said slowly. "Some in the Navy wonder. Some in the Navy remember Ralf Baja and Bhutta Saris and wonder why they're not around anymore. The Navy is not that big a place, and you can't have the crews of six super battleships vanish without them being missed. So, yes ma'am, if you had to pick between the words of a woman who just as cool as could be shot out a pirate's bridge, and the babbling of a political officer, who would you trust?"

A waiter appeared, kept his distance until several sets of guards waved him forward, then took orders from only those at the captain's table. He left quickly.

All the time the others were ordering, even while Captain Krätz was ordering for her, Vicky's thoughts tumbled and swirled.

"I don't believe you," Vicky whispered when the waiter was well gone.

"Care to tell me why?" Kris Longknife asked gently.

"Let's say my Dad's Navy just tried to pound your planet into rubble. Let's say you were decorated for stopping them. How many friends did you lose?"

"A lot," Kris said evenly.

"And yet, you are sitting here talking to me and my captain. Eating dinner with us. No. You're lying."

Kris nodded slowly. "How much history have you studied?"

That sudden turn in the conversation left Vicky blinking. "Quite a bit," Vicky claimed. _Not nearly enough_ , she thought.

"What happens when two evenly matched countries go to war?"

Vicky had never given that question a moment's thought. Puzzle, she glanced at her captain.

"When two nations of nearly equal strength resort to war to resolve their differences, it is usually a disaster for both," he said. "The war is long, bitter and indecisive. Neither side can win, but neither side will give up. Generations may perish in the fight. National treasures may waste away and nothing is proven. Is that what you are alluding to, Your Highness?"

Kris Longknife nodded. "That is what the wiser heads in my father's high command tell me when I get angry at the deaths."

"That is what the wiser heads in our command councils say," Captain Krätz said. "So far, they have prevailed."

Vicky felt like she had become the punching bag for her captain and Kris Longknife. "Why are you telling her this?"

"You could just as easily ask her the same," Captain Krätz said.

Vicky turned to Kris, more confused than she'd ever been in her life.

Kris shrugged. "Two plus two is four. A war between ninety planets and a hundred will be a bleeding ulcer. Neither of these can be made a state secret. Only a fool would try. I'm not asking your captain how many battleships are being built on Greenfeld. He's not asking me about Wardhaven or Pitts Hope. He has his guess, I have mine. We probably aren't off by more than two or three. But none of that really is worth the time of day. Let me ask you a question I'd really like to know," Kris Longknife said, turning to the captain.

"I have four armed security men to my back. I assume you will not ask me to commit treason within their hearing," Captain Krätz said with a grin Vicky would never have expected.

"I will assume they have no better sense of humor than my Marine escorts do," Kris said. There were chuckles from both group of guards.

Kris waited as the salad arrived, laid a napkin in defense of her disgusting dinner dress, and picked up a fork. The others did likewise but waited when Kris paused before spearing a bit of her Caesar salad.

"Why are you here?" Kris Longknife asked Vicky Peterwald.

"I was drafted and ordered to the _Surprise_ ," Vicky grumbled. "Now I go where he goes," she said with a rueful nod to her captain.

Kris Longknife did not seem satisfied with the answer. She turned to Captain Krätz

"George," Kris said. Vicky had already learned that a junior officer, even a lieutenant like Kris Longknife, are not familiar with a captain. "How many Greenfeld naval officers have as great a love of daughters as you have?"

Captain Krätz had begun to frown at the familiarity. No doubt, he did not want Vicky developing bad habits. But at the reminder of his daughters, he smiled.

"I don't think there's a captain in the fleet who's resigned himself to enjoying, maybe I should say, surviving, feminine surroundings as much as I have."

"Your oldest," Kris Longknife went on. "She should have graduated from college by now. Did she join the Navy?"

Krätz ruefully shook his head. "Commissioned in the Nursing Corps on graduation day."

"Is she on the _Surprise_?"

"I would have gladly had her here, but there is a boy."

"Isn't there always?" Kris interjected.

"Sad to say, yes. He comes from a good family and he is on a battleship. So she asked for orders to that battleship."

"Do you trust him?"

The captain almost smiled as he started again. "I will let you in on a state secret, Longknife girl. In Greenfeld, a loyal wife, be she wealthy or poor, will take nine months to present her husband with a fit little baby. However, blushing brides, in their eagerness, almost always do it in six or seven months. Strange that, no?"

The security guards behind the captain had tensed up at the mention of state secrets. Now they relaxed back into their seats.

"And your daughter?"

"Has been courted for almost six months and is still on active duty."

Even the mighty Kris Longknife did not seem to understand the meaning of that count. "Get pregnant, get discharged," Vicky said dryly.

"How medieval," Kris Longknife said.

"I mentioned that to my father," Vicky said, now desert dry. "Let's say we agreed to disagree. Thank God I know where to get birth control."

"Not on my ship you don't," Captain Krätz snapped. Clearly what was passed around the junior female officer's quarters did not reach his ears.

Vicky Peterwald wisely took a bite of salad and said nothing.

Leave it to Kris Longknife to send the conversation off in a totally different direction. "When I asked why you are here, Vicky, I didn't mean in the Navy. What I was really asking was, why aren't you back on Greenfeld? You cost your father a lot when he sent you to Eden, and I doubt your stay in the Navy will be any less expensive." The way Captain Krätz rolled his eyes told Vicky that the Longknife brat was right once again.

"But what I really wondered, girl to girl, is why you aren't tending to your knitting quietly back home?"

"I don't knit, and I never do anything quietly," Vicky shot back, "And I could ask you the same question. Why aren't you doing something ..." Vicky seemed at a loss for words ... and settled for "back on your lovely Wardhaven?"

"Why am I not on my lovely Wardhaven?" Kris Longknife said. She arranged her croutons in a row before saying. "I don't want to be any closer to my mother or father than I have to."

Vicky snorted at that, but Captain Krätz seemed thoughtful.

"I'm committed to a Navy career and for some strange reason, the fleet can't find any job for me near my father, the Prime Minister."

Vicky could only imagine someone telling her Daddy that she didn't want to go where she was supposed to go. Or worse, that she insisted on going someplace different from his will for her.

Kris Longknife went on. "I refuse to become involved in politics ... and every time I get near Wardhaven, I get sucked into that mess again, and my father gets even madder at me. How am I doing?"

Vicky had to grab for a napkin to suppress her laughter. As much as she hated Kris Longknife, the look on her face was . . . unforgettable.

Captain Krätz eyed the Marine seated next to Kris Longknife and got a serious nod of validation. Then the captain shook his head. "Your file is making more and more sense."

"And if you report all this," Kris Longknife said, "do you think it will make better sense to your intelligence analysts?"

"They wouldn't believe a word," Captain Krätz said, dryly.

Kris Longknife thought for a moment before going on. "Then let me add one more bit of wisdom. They shipped me off to Eden because they thought it was the only place in human space where I'd be safe."

"And you might have been if I wasn't there," Vicky said proudly.

"Hire better assassins next time. I didn't even work up a sweat doing my escape and evade from those bozos."

"I captured your grandmother," Vicky shot back.

"Major mistake on your part. The Marines took it personal. You never want a Marine company mad at you."

"You realize she's critiquing you," Captain Krätz said.

"I thought she was just bragging."

"You might learn a thing or three if you listen to her. Your father or his minions have been trying to take her out for a long time and she's still wrecking their plans."

"More often than not, the only reason I'm messing with _their_ plans is because someone's messing with _me_ ," Kris said. "I wish they'd just leave me alone."

"Is that why you're out here?" Vicky asked.

"I figured if I was out beyond the rim, I might get some peace and quiet. That why you're out here?"

Vicky turned to her captain and raised an expressive eyebrow.

"Strange, isn't it," the captain said, "when chasing after pirates is safer than being back home."

"Are we chasing pirates," Vicky asked, "or is the _Surprise_ just making like it is?"

Captain Krätz shrugged his shoulders. "How'd you get a shot at a pirate?" he asked.

"Notice how the _Wasp_ looks like a simple little merchant ship," Kris Longknife said. Vicky nodded, as did her captain. "They took the first shot. I got the last."

Their steaks arrived with appropriate trimmings. All paid appropriate homage to them before Kris Longknife threw out the next question.

"How bad is it, being a boot ensign in the Greenfeld Navy? My memories of being the junior officer aboard ship are much more fondly memorable as they disappear in the rear-view mirror."

"You started as a boot ensign?" Vicky asked, more than surprised.

"Yes, with a captain that made my life far more miserable than I suspect Captain Krätz is making yours."

Vicky allowed a raised eyebrow to cast doubt on that possibility.

"Making ensigns miserable is one of the prime perks of a captain's job," Captain Krätz insisted. "Is that not so, Captain?" he said to Jack.

"We have a thing called the Fifth Amendment, sir, and I'm going to invoke its protection, sir. Otherwise, I might have to apply for a transfer to your Navy."

"We're always looking for a few good men."

"What is it about men?" Vicky exploded. "I get handed this ensign gig. My brother starts out as a commodore. He bosses Captain Krätz around. Me, I get bossed around by just about everybody. It's not fair," she growled at her captain.

He said nothing, just took another bite of his steak, chewed it for a moment, then waved his empty fork at Kris. "As a lieutenant, two mighty promotions up from a lowly ensign, would you have any advice for my J. O. here?"

Kris Longknife weighed the question for a long moment, then shrugged. "As a wise chief once told me, if you don't want to be Navy, get out."

Vicky scowled sidewise at her superior officer. He shook his head. "That is not an option for the moment."

"I see," said Kris, then reflected a moment before going on. "Your brother started his Navy career as a commodore?"

Vicky nodded vigorously at that.

"From where I sat, that was part of what killed him."

"What!" Vicky yelped.

"Would you disagree, Captain Krätz?" Kris asked.

The captain patted his mouth with the white linen napkin and then put it down. "I can't say that I do."

Vicky studied the two of them for a long moment. All the confused thoughts that had been tumbling around in her head began to fall into place. Well, maybe some of them.

Vicky eyed Kris Longknife. "Explain yourself. I would have thought that a commodore was safer, more powerful. As an ensign I sure don't feel any power. Or very safe."

Kris Longknife eyed Krätz, as if offering him a shot at the answer.

He shook his head. "I can offer only advice. You have walked in her shoes and survived. You can speak to her from experience."

Kris Longknife put her napkin down and pushed back from the table. The Marine beside her did the same. Around them, the security people turned their chairs to face out, giving them as much privacy as their station and risk allowed.

"A commodore does seem to have a lot of power ... if he or she knows how to use it," Kris Longknife said, slowly. "Captain, did Hank know how to use the power of a commodore?"

The captain shook his head. "Sadly, no. He played with the power, but he neither understood it, nor did he knew how to wield it."

"That was my observation, too," Kris Longknife said. "Captain, how long have you been preparing to command a cruiser?"

"Ensign to command captain, twenty years," Krätz said, "including two years commanding a destroyer."

"How long had Hank worn the uniform?"

"Four months when he died."

"That, Vicky, is what killed your brother. Power he didn't know how to use. You're an ensign. Do you have any power?"

"Painfully little."

"Are you able to use it properly?"

Vicky eyed her commanding officer. "I am learning to be a very good assistant communications officer."

"You are," he agreed.

Vicky turned back to Kris. "Are you saying that it's better to do a job you know how to do than fake a job you don't?"

"I think so."

"I paid good money to get a copy of your file," Vicky Peterwald said. "It sure doesn't look like you practice what you preach."

Beside Kris, the Marine snorted. "Amen to that."

"Whose side are you on?" Kris said, and elbowed the fellow.

"The side of me staying alive," he said.

Kris got serious. "You bought my file," she said to Vicky. "You read it. Did an analyst explain it to you?"

"I just got the file," Vicky admitted. One thing about being a communications officer; a lot of classified stuff crossed her desk. That, and a connection she'd made with a cute ensign on the Political Officer's staff and bingo, she had a copy of Kris Longknife's file. She hadn't had time to slip off to the paint locker with him and have him explain it, or get naked before she was found there with a hunk of an ensign from gunnery. She still smarted from Captain Krätz's dressing down. No more paint locker for her.

For a while.

"Captain, you might walk her through it," Kris Longknife said. "You can explain to her where I was just bleeding lucky and where maybe I had a little help from my friends."

"Would you, sir?" Vicky almost pleaded. _There_ are _things I just don't understand here_.

"My orders are to educate you," Captain Krätz said, his voice almost fatherly. "To help you stay alive and learn. I think that could be considered part of my job. Though I warn you, your father probably would not consider Kris Longknife a proper role model for his daughter."

"I don't think _any_ father would consider me a good role model," Kris said dryly.

"Certainly not for any of _my_ daughters," Captain Krätz agreed. "But I remind you, Ensign Victoria, anyone without dumb Longknife luck would have died a dozen times doing what is recorded in that file. And no, none would have occurred when you were paying the piper."

That hurt, but Vicky was thinking that pain like that might teach her what she needed to know to stay alive.

Captain Krätz and Kris Longknife talked on for a bit more, but Vicky was lost in her own thoughts. They tumbled around in her head like a basket full of kittens chasing a dozen balls.

Hank got himself killed. He was doing something foolish, but it was survivable except for a sabotaged survival pod. Was it someone who lost a loved one during the attack on Wardhaven, or did someone else take advantage of the defective pod production? It would have had to have been someone with access to Hank's ship, the _Incredible_. The more Vicky thought about it, the more she knew it was an inside job and not by any minor player.

_But why would someone kill Hank?_

_Am I next?_

_Can an ensign keep her head down lower than a commodore?_

_Can Captain Krätz keep me alive?_

Too many questions, and none of them had any answers. Vicky changed her reflection to a problem might have an answer.

Kris Longknife asked why I am here. _Why_ am _I here_?

_Daddy sent me here, I had no choice?_

_Yes, but that doesn't mean I just sit in a corner and pout. I did that when I was six. What have I done _here?

This gave Vicky pause. Most of her life she'd done nothing. Oh, she'd raided cookie jars, driven tutors to distraction and snuck some boys into her bed as much to get Daddy's attention as to enjoy the wresting under the sheets. Still, she'd never been given a chance to do _anything_.

The Navy, however, had given her a job. Admittedly, it was not much of one, but it was the first she'd ever had and Vicky thought she'd done pretty well by it. She'd delivered the occasional high priority message. She was training her crew.

_I'm really training my girls and I'm really making a difference for them._

_I hope_.

Would she walk away from this if she suddenly had the chance?

_No. No, I would not._

Captain Krätz finished up with the Longknife princess, and the two of them, in their security bubble, returned to the _Surprise_ in silence.

# 23

Before they crossed the brow, Vicky broke the silence. "You have the Longknife file, sir?"

"I do," her captain said.

"Could you walk me through it, sir?"

"I think I have an hour just now. Shall we do so while the little hellion is still fresh in your mind?" he said. A small smile and a distant look came over her captain as he spoke of the "hellion."

"Please, sir."

They went straight to his in-port cabin. He had that particular reader in his safe. Together, they flipped through the first couple of pages.

"Kris Longknife joined the Navy straight out of college," Vicky noted.

"To her parent's dismay and disgust, I might add, as a parent myself."

"She was Navy, but she led Marines in the rescue of a little girl," Vicky noted.

"Which turned out to be an assassination attempt on her."

"A very complex one," Vicky noted. "Well done compared to those feeble tries I made."

The captain just nodded.

"She was at the Paris system when all the fleets from the Society of Humanity came together to celebrate the break up," Vicky read.

"There are rumors that the fleet review didn't go quite as planned. You may have noticed that large gold star Kris Longknife sports. It's Earth's highest honor, the Order of the Wounded Lion. Ever wondered why Earth gave it to her?"

Vicky shook her head.

"Neither do our intelligence boys," Krätz said.

"She was on Turantic when it almost went to war with Hamilton," Vicky said, going on. "There was a quarantine of some sort."

"It turns out that Ironclad Software may have had something to do in faking the quarantine that kept Kris Longknife trapped there."

Vicky thought back. "I met the owner of Ironclad. Mr. Sandfire isn't it?"

"Yes. He died on Turantic when the space station blew up."

"Wasn't Kris Longknife at the bottom of that?" Vicky asked.

"Even our security types can't figure out how she might have done it."

"So that Wardhaven princess is a terrorist."

"Maybe. Maybe not. There were amusement parks on that space station. Strangely, they all emptied well before the station exploded. Something about the toilets not working."

Vicky gave her captain a puzzled look. He just shrugged, but there has a hint of a smile as he did so.

Vicky flipped the page. "Oh, she stole Hank's yacht to escape the station. I wonder how Hank took to that."

"You will note that he was requested to file a contact report, but failed to do so."

"Hmm." Vicky said. Hank was always bragging about the girls he had on his yacht. Was Kris Longknife one of his conquests? Somehow Vicky doubted that.

"And that brings us to those mysterious battleships and their attack on Wardhaven. Only twelve little mosquito boats to defend. It says that Kris was relieved of her command of one of them, then came back and took command of the squadron and the entire defense effort."

"How did she do that?"

"The analysts are stumped," Captain Krätz said.

Again, Vicky and her captain found themselves exchanging puzzled glances and shrugs.

"Then she gets command of Naval District 41, an admiral's billet, and her a lieutenant. That was when your commodore brother crossed her path, and you know how that turned out."

"And I know how things turned out on New Eden," Vicky added, trying to avoid her own fiasco.

"You might want to read the entire section. There was a lot more going on than just your sideshow."

"I will, but I've taken enough of your time, Captain. There is one thing, sir. I would like to continue in my assignment as communication watch officer. I'm working with my team and I don't want to leave them until the next promotion list comes out."

"You should begin rotations if you're to know how a warship works."

"Yes, sir. I know, but I really want to . . . finish what I started."

"Then you shall," the captain said. There was something strange in the look he gave Vicky. Something strange she didn't understand, and that she'd never seen before.

Vicky stood, came to attention, did a better about face . . . she'd been working on it as part of her leadership training . . . and walked from the captain's cabin.

Back in her quarters, the girls wanted the lowdown on her date with the captain. When Vicky told them it had actually been a meeting with Princess Kris Longknife, she was greeted with a chorus of "Oh," and the room fell silent. They may not have read Kris's file, but the story of the Wardhaven princess that was a Navy officer had not failed to reach the women of the Greenfeld Navy.

"Is she as good as they say?" one J.G. asked.

"She's a Longknife. She is bad," one lieutenant with strong political inclinations said.

"She's good," Vicky whispered. "She's very, very good."

_And I think I want to be like her when I grow up_ , Vicky dare not add.

Vicky needed a nap before her watch. This dinner had come out of her sleep time. The rest of the girls left her alone as she got out of her dowdy dinner dress and into some shorts and a tee to sleep in.

# 24

The weeks flew by quickly. Her team took their tests and came back pumped like they had never been before, or at least in the last few years.

"Ms. Peterwald, I gave the book answers," Amala said. "I still don't think they're right, but I put them down."

Vicky nodded, being a friendly as she dared be to a petty officer. "You know, Muller, after working with the midnight watch for this last month, I kind of agree with you, but I put the book answers down, too."

"I can't wait to see how we did."

Vicky was still waiting when a runner appeared at her elbow in the wardroom. "The captain sends his compliments and requires Ensign Peterwald in his in-space cabin."

That cabin was just off the bridge. The officer with the conn might be officially in charge of the ship, but the skipper was always in command.

Vicky wolfed down the last few bites of her hash on a plank, and followed the runner to the bridge. Now, she knew her way blindfolded. Really, she'd made her way there blindfolded to pass her own communication watch standing requirement.

_I've learned a lot since I stumbled aboard._

And she was proud of every jot and tittle of it.

As she knocked on the open door, Captain Krätz looked up from a red printed message.

"Come in and close the door, Ensign."

Vicky did. The room would make a broom closet look spacious. There was just enough space for a small desk, table, and a bunk. Vicky stood.

"Sit down, Ensign."

Vicky blinked twice in surprise, and sat on his bunk.

"We have been ordered to Birradas. It seems your father wants you at his side for a safari. Do you have any idea why?"

Vicky thought for a moment. "Daddy does like to hunt, and the bigger they are, the better. Computer, what animals are hunted on Birradas?"

"The most sought after trophy head is that of a t-rex. The animal is similar to a huge and vicious dinosaur that roamed Earth sixty-five million years ago. It is hunted with a rocket launcher."

"Oh, Lord," Vicky moaned. "Birradas just joined Daddy's alliance. He's off to kill one of those things."

"Well, he wants you there when he does, so we are headed to the newest planet in the alliance."

Vicky frowned. "How new?"

The captain consulted his own computer. "Two months ago. There appear to be claims of vote tampering and there have been incidents during its initial occupation."

"Oh, State Security will love having Daddy roaming the outback of that planet with other people out there with rocket launchers."

"That is their problem. Now, I must consider ours."

"If I have to follow Daddy around while he's hunting, does that mean I won't return to the _Surprise_?"

"That, I don't know. I am more worried about having both you and your father loose in a shooting gallery. May I ask who inherits after you?"

"You aren't really expecting an answer, are you?"

"Not really. Rather, I will leave it as an exercise for the class."

Vicky considered the question and didn't like any of the answers.

"Maybe Daddy will get his t-rex before I get down there."

The captain nodded. "I am pulling you from communications and assigning you to the Marine detachment for instructions in personal safety and security."

"I'd hate to leave my watch before the promotion lists are posted," Vicky said. Her watch rated a chief and two or more first class petty officers. Amala and at least two of the other girls were working higher jobs for less pay.

Vicky locked on the captain and did not break eye contact.

He tapped his computer. "You can tell Muller that she will be getting her hat the end of this month. Your radio and network techs have will also be making first class."

"Any chance you could swing a promotion for my telephone tech?"

"She fell half a point below the cut," the captain said, with no flex in his words.

"May I see her test, sir? There is always a chance that the grading machine might have missed something."

"You want me to break out the actual test and go over it with you?" On his brows a storm was brewing.

Vicky prepared for some rough sailing. "No, sir. But you could authorize the training officer to let me review the test. Or would it be better if I just went through channels?"

"You are a dog, young woman. You get your teeth into something and you don't let go."

"It might be one of the few virtues we Peterwalds have, sir."

"Well, persistence is a virtue. No need to ask, all four of your petty officers earned their promotions with outstanding grades on their tests."

"All four?"

"Can't a captain give one of his junior officers a test that is not in the book?"

Vicky watched as a wide smile grew on her skipper.

"You had me fighting for nothing!"

"I wanted to see what, or rather, whom you would fight for. You passed."

"Yes, Sir," Vicky said. She twisted the "sir," the way Amala would.

"Now we go to Birradas and see what we must fight for, no?"

"Yes, sir," Vicky said again, not at all enthusiastic.

# 25

No sooner did the _Surprise_ dock at High Birradas, than Vicky had orders to dawn her blues and report to the captain's in-port cabin. She found him hunched over an unfamiliar communications device with the X.O. at his elbow.

"The _Wasp_ is about to dock, too," Captain Krätz said.

"With Kris Longknife? What in the world is she doing here?" Vicky asked.

No one answered.

"Now we see if this little gadget really works. Connect me with Kris Longknife's computer," the skipper said. The box he'd been studying blinked twice.

"Who is calling?" came through clearly.

"This is Captain Krätz. Don't tell Kris Longknife, but she really wants to take this call."

There was a long pause, then, "I've put you through."

"Hi Kris, Captain Krätz here. I saw the _Wasp_ had talked her way in and figured you might still be aboard."

"How are the girls and your junior communications officer?"

"The girls are fine. Looks like some weddings are in a couple of their futures. Good men all. It will be a joy to marry them off. And the junior comm watchstander is at my elbow. Her dad wants her on South Continent with him, but she's in no hurry. Your file says you like to stay clear of your old man, too. Glad my girls don't have whatever disease you two girls have."

"I love talking family, Captain, but I don't think that's why you called."

"Nope, I figured I better warn you. Real soon you're going to be asked to dump your reactor core and offload all ship-stored power to the station. That includes the capacitors for the lasers you don't have."

"We're going to be asked to dump our reactor core before we dock?" Kris repeated.

"What?" came from somewhere.

"Nelly, go public with this call."

"Yes," Captain Krätz said. "Every ship tied up, including my _Surprise_ , is to cool their reactor and empty capacitors. If I didn't know better, I'd think they didn't trust us."

"What could possibly make them think that?" came from the other voice.

At that moment, a background message that sounded like Talk Between Ships interrupted. "As soon as you attach to the first dock tie-down, you must vent your reactor to space. Both of them. You still got an engine problem that just has to be worked on here."

"I told you I do," that other voice said. "Engineering, prepare to vent all reactor contents to space. Be sure to do it away from the pier."

"You got it, boss."

"Thank you Captain Krätz for the warning," Kris said.

"I figured you'd like a bit of advance word. Your file says paranoia runs in your family."

"Understandable, since someone does seem out to get us."

"I would know nothing of that."

"Speaking of that, you must be curious as to why I'm here."

"The thought did cross my mind," Captain Krätz said dryly.

"It seems their's a plot afoot to kill Mr. Harry Peterwald."

"Do tell. There's been only four attempts this week," he said, eyeing Vicky. "Three died in the act and one during interrogation. Mind you, none of that is in the papers. My security officer told me as a stern reminder that all of the restrictions on movement for my crew are indeed necessary."

Vicky silently echoed Kris's "Four?" who then went on, ""Captain Krätz, were any of the assassins connected to either Xanadu or the Abdicator movement?"

"Good heavens, are those nuts still running around?" her captain actually looked surprised. Was that possible? "But no, all were home grown from Birridas. At least that's the story. Me, I suspect if they looked real hard at some of those entrails, they might lead back to the Palace. but dead men tell no tales."

"Xanadu does exist, and I've been there twice in the last month or so. It appears that a small tactical team of young enthusiasts have been sent by the Guides of the Abdicators to start a war. Our best guess is that it would involve killing your Peterwald."

"The Abdicators, ah," Captain Krätz tapped a reader, then scowled at what he saw. "They were street-corner noisemakers. Never used terrorist tactics."

"Things have changed. The new and improved version does."

"Oh." Her skipper eyed the overhead, then spoke slowly. "But how would killing Harry involve us in a war?"

"As I said, Captain. I've been to Xanadu twice in the last month or so. They are now here. I suspect that the whole business is intended to have Longknife fingerprints all over it."

Her captain's "Oh," was echoed silently by Vicky.

"Princess, I need to talk to my security officer pronto," Captain Krätz said. "Will you be available to talk later?"

"I've been told none of us can leave the _Wasp_."

"Right. You're under even tighter restrictions then we are. Give me a bit. I suspect State Security will want to talk to us. Oh, and I've had Ensign Victoria listening in on this. We may need a direct line to the Palace soon.

"I think we will," Kris said.

The commlink was hardly broken, and the black box put away before Krätz was asking the ship's senior Political Officer to his quarters. It took longer to explain to him what was coming at them than it took to hear it the first time. Vicky finally settled the matter.

"Someone is out to kill my dad. Are you going to ignore this matter?"

They were soon headed for the _Wasp_. Somewhere along the way they picked up an escort of State Security guards with machine pistols. They only to come to a halt at the Wardhaven ship. Kris had a six man security team waiting. They were in full battle armor.

Their leader stepped forward. "Do you have business on this ship, sir?"

"I am Colonel van Martin to see this Longknife girl."

"You request an audience with Her Highness, Kristine Longknife," the NCO corrected.

"May I remind you that we are in Greenfeld space? We have no truck with princesses."

That left Vicky wondering how she managed to grow up in a palace

"I know where I am, Colonel," said the armed and armored NCO. How he got his voice so gentle but ringing of steel was something Vicky wanted to learn. "May I point out that you are on board a Wardhaven warship bearing the great-granddaughter of King Raymond the First of United Sentients?"

The two men glared at each other for a bit. It was the colonel who folded. "Please advise this putative princess of yours that State Security requests and requires a meeting with her."

A moment later they were told. "You are granted an audience."

What followed was the most thorough tour Vicky had ever gotten of a warship. They did avoid the room marked Cryptology, but that must have been the only one missed. While she and Krätz began to exchange smiles, the politically appointed colonel seemed none the wiser.

The tour ended in a room. Vicky would have figured it for a conference room, but the table and chairs were gone. The screens on the walls showed deep space and unblinking stars. Several Wardhaven officers stood at the opposite end.

Kris Longknife sat in a most imposing armchair in full princess mode and totally bemedaled.

_How did you get that Order of the Wounded Lion, girl_?

While Vicky was studying Kris, a few of the State Security guards were having a tough time with the low light and star studded void. One leaned against the Marine behind him, who steadied him. Vicky edged over to put her back against the wall and assumed a stiff parade rest. From where she stood, she could see everything, including her own captain.

The colonel eyed Kris through narrow eyes. Kris gave the colonel a wide eyed, almost innocent look. _Who's she kidding_?

"You wanted to see me, Colonel?" Kris Longknife inquired, superior to junior.

State Security scowled. "I am told that you have information about a plot against the life of First Citizen Smythe-Peterwald. If so, the State demands and requires that you provide it."

"I have already told all that I know to Captain Krätz. If you have talked to him, you know as much as I do."

"I am required to hear it from the source's lips."

So Kris Longknife did, quickly.

"That hardly constitutes quality intelligence," the colonel snapped. "It is no more than an allegation of rumors heard."

"You may take it as you please," Kris said. "But I assure you, if your First Citizen ends up suddenly dead in the next few days, your superiors may not take it that way."

The colonel swallowed. Hard. "Do you have a picture of this Lucifer fellow? The devil's own, he sounds like."

"The Abdicators do not believe in making representations of themselves," Kris said.

The colonel paused for only a moment before saying "That was not their way when last they were heard from."

"Suicidal terrorism was not their way when last we heard from them, either," Kris said. Captain Krätz chipped off a tiny grin at her quoting him.

The colonel did not look happy.

"There is one thing I can give you, Colonel," Kris Longknife said. "We have the boy's father aboard. We have photographed him and run it through a computer program to take the years off his face. Captain Drago?"

"Yes, Your Highness." A man beside her in a Navy blues with four stripes spoke into his commlink and a large envelope quickly arrived.

Kris opened it. Inside was the picture of an older man and a youth.

"Colonel, I have personally met the young man you are hunting. That reworked photo is almost a perfect image of him."

"You have met the young mad man?" A dozen indictments lurked behind those words, starting with high treason.

"He was a guide when I first visited his world. I did not see him the second time. His father says he had already left."

"Ah, yes, there is the matter of the father," and Vicky quietly shook her head as the colonel crossed verbal swords with Kris Longknife again, and lost . . . again. It ended with the colonel being ordered off the Wardhaven ship, and him leaving. But not gracefully.

"Your embassy will hear of this. I will go now, but I expect to return soon." As he marched out Captain Krätz rested a hand on his shoulder.

"I have had dealings with this woman before. I'll stay behind and see if I can't wangle her out of a trifle more."

"You can give her the spanking she deserves, but get that man," the colonel snapped, but kept on marching.

As soon as State Security was herded out, and the tread of Marine boots grew distant, Kris ordered, "Lights, Chief. It's too dark in here to think."

The lights went bright. Screens went blank, and chairs and the table were made to appear. Kris's staff settled into chairs at the head of the table. Vicky took her place beside her captain at the foot.

"Have you really come here to save my Daddy's life?" Vicky asked.

"I don't see much choice in the matter." Kris Longknife sounded almost tired. "If your dad is killed anytime soon, Lucifer and his will paint my fingerprints all over the plot. Propagandists will demand I either stand a kangaroo trial here or there will be war. Since I don't think King Ray would hand me over for a show trial, it looks like war."

"You don't sound all that sure about your King," Captain Krätz said, a knowing smile on his face.

Kris made a face. "Let's just say I don't want to find out. Grampa Ray has tossed me into a lot of messes, sink or swim. I'd prefer not to see how I could manage on Greenfeld."

"I wouldn't want to take my chances with what passed for justice back home, either," Vicky admitted, something she would not have said before she spent a month teaching her watch crew, and learning from them. But that wasn't the point today.

"How do we stop this devil boy from killing my dad?"

Captain Krätz shook his head. "I don't see him getting close to the First Citizen."

"I agree," Kris said.

"Now hold it," the young Marine beside Kris was half out of his seat. "You dragged us out here to stop devil boy. I like her choice of words. But now you say he ain't likely to kill anyone? Kris!"

Kris just shrugged, eyed Captain Krätz but when he made no effort to talk, she went on. "Lucifer and his Xanadu team are fish out of water. They're hicks with hayseed in their hair. They can't open their mouths without getting arrested. No. There is no way they'll get close enough to kill Peterwald."

"And we're here because?" Now the Marine sounding tired.

"Because," Captain Kratz put in, "they will be captured. Under interrogation, they will mention your Kris. If anyone does succeed in killing Ensign Victoria's dad, the trail is set to lead straight back to Kris. Heads, they win. Tails, you lose."

The Marine settled back into his chair, muttering a long stream of curses.

Now it was Kris's turn to lean forward. "Who came up with the stupid idea of having Vicky's father go on safari on a half-pacified planet?"

It was Vicky turn to answer. "It could have been any number of factions. Dad prides himself on being 'The Mighty Hunter.' Show him something he hasn't killed and he's off in a flash. When I heard Birridas was joining the Alliance, I would have bet Dad would be here hunting in no time."

Captain Krätz nodded along. "It was just that none of us thought he'd come before planetary defenses were in place. And the idea of not trusting the Navy to guard the planet . . . it's almost as if ..." The captain could not finish that sentence.

"It's almost as if you were being set up for something," the Navy captain on Kris's team said. Then paused. "Wait one." Now his eyes fixed on the overhead as he listened to something. Then he stood. "Kris, I strongly suggest that we continue this conversation on the bridge. It seems matters are developing."

"What's happening?" came in a half-dozen voices.

"It's quicker to see than explain," hung curtly in the air as the captain rushed for the door.

# 26

A moment later, Vicky stood beside her captain as a Wardhaven Navy lieutenant explained what was on the bridge's main screen.

"Three minutes ago, the FolkFestiva starliner _Dedicated Workers of Tourin_ , came through Alpha jump point. It did so at twenty thousand klicks an hour."

That drew a low whistle.

"Is that a problem?" an army colonel asked.

"Only if you want to get where you're going," Kris's captain answered and explained what Vicky already knew: jump points were dangerous at high speeds. He finished with, "Usually liners and expensive battleships tiptoe through jumps. Strange."

"Stranger still," the lieutenant added, "she's hit the accelerator. 3.26 gees."

"No liner captain puts his passengers under those gees," Captain Krätz said.

"So, we should assume that the _Tourin_ is no longer under its captain's control," an army colonel on Kris's staff observed softly.

"Talk to me about the _Tourin_ ," Kris's captain ordered.

Specifications appeared on the screen.

"A million tons," someone whispered. "Oh, God."

"Five thousand passengers and crew," another said, voice breaking.

"How long before she gets here?" Kris asked, voice cold.

"Assuming the _Tourin_ keeps accelerating, and does not flip and start decelerating," the lieutenant said as the screen changed to reflect her words, "We've got seven hours, thirty-three minutes, before it digs a big hole off the coast of South Continent."

"Where Daddy's hunting," Vicky added, her gut going into free fall.

"You'll have to get him out. There's time," Kris said.

"No," Krätz cut in. "There's a hurricane. Big. Bad. It's got everything grounded."

Kris frowned. "Assassin's luck or planned?"

Krätz shrugged. "It is the season for those things."

"So, seven and a half hours. How many ships can you get underway?" Kris asked, eying Vicky's captain.

Captain Krätz shook his head. "We told State Security that this dinky station's reactor would need a month to boil enough plasma to power up the fleet, but no. 'One of your ship's engineers might send his reactor critical and try to kill the First Citizen.' Every ship had to go cold steel. They are all a bunch of idiots" Krätz roared.

With effort, Vicky's captain recovered his temper. "And now it seems that some of them are traitors as well. We have been set up."

The other captain cleared his throat. "With all respect to the captain, there is one ship that can get underway."

"Who?" Captain Krätz demanded.

"Us," Kris's captain said with a sly smile.

Captain Krätz frowned. Then his eyes grew wide, "You wouldn't do that?"

"The _Wasp_ was rigged for that procedure last overhaul. We are an exploration ship. There was no way to foretell what our needs might be out beyond the rim."

"That's insane," Captain Krätz shouted. "It's suicidal and mass murder."

"Not when properly done with modern power supplies."

Kris must have felt as confused as Vicky was. "Would one of you mind telling the rest of us what you are talking about?" she shouted

For a moment longer, the two captains glared at each other. Then Captain Krätz gave a curt wave to the other four-striper.

Kris's skipper gave a confident half-bow. "Our four landers have anti-matter cells. We can remove them and rig two of them to our auxiliary power supply generators. Those two will get the magnetic containment field up. Then we dump the other two into the main reactor and jump start the fusion process."

Kris turned to a very angry Captain Krätz. "Is your _Surprise_ rigged with such capability?"

"Hell, no," he shot back. "It would be a violation of Society of Humanity rules as well as Greenfeld regulations. For the last sixty years, since the old _Canopus_ blew herself up and half the Borden station, it's been illegal. A hundred thousand died in one second."

Kris distanced herself from both captains. She finally eyed Vicky.

"What do you think?" she asked.

Vicky shook her head, feeling empty and torn. She wanted to do things. But this? "I don't know what to think, Your Highness."

"Talk to me, Vicky. I need to know something about what you're thinking."

"Okay, Kris." Vicky took a deep breath and marshaled her racing thoughts. "I want to save my daddy. Other people may hate him, but he's mine. Maybe he's not the best one around, but he's all the daddy I have. How do we do it?"

With a sigh, Kris winked at Vicky as if to say "watch and learn, my friend." She whirled to face the captains.

"Captain Krätz, how long would it take one, just one, of these ships hanging on to this station, to get underway?"

"Twelve hours. Maybe more. This station is a piece of shoddy junk," and he went on to explain. He finished shaking his head. "Some son of a bitch set us up."

"So, you are set up," Kris agreed. "Somewhere about two thirds of the way into powering up one ship, her dad gets suddenly dead. Out of curiosity, what happens next? Does your ensign get promoted to First Citizen?"

That was the last question Vicky's would have expected from a Longknife. Captain Krätz studied the polished toes of his shoes. "I don't know. You know our attitude toward women." Now his gaze rose to take in his J.O. "But I'd fight to my dying breath to protect you."

"I don't want your dying breath," Vicky snapped. "I want to save my dad."

The captain's shoulders slumped. "That I cannot do. No one in the fleet can."

"But someone in the Wardhaven fleet is willing to take a good solid try," Vicky growled. "A Longknife is willing to risk her neck to save a Peterwald!"

"And maybe kill us all."

"You just told me that I'm not likely to outlive my dad for more than a couple of months. Strange, Captain, that is one thing we can agree on. Maybe someday I could tame the palace with a whip and a gun and some gallows working overtime, but not now. Not today. We need to save my father." Vicky could hardly believe the words as they came out of her mouth. "Captain, please help these people save my dad."

"And if they fail?"

"None of us will be any more dead than we're likely to be this time next year," Vicky said.

For a long moment, Captain Krätz continued to shake his head. Then he turned to Kris. "Your Highness, what can I do to help?"

# 27

Vicky Peterwald watched as Kris Longknife gave her captain a short but demanding order. "Get this ship underway – ASAP."

"Aye aye, ma'am. I've had men stripping the anti-matter pods from the landers. They should be done soon."

"Two have been off-loaded, Captain," the lieutenant reported.

"Have them plugged into the emergency generators," the Wardhaven captain ordered.

"No," came from around Kris's neck. "The pods that will be fed into the reactors need to be carefully aligned and balanced for the dump. That's your critical path. The auxiliary power is pretty much a standard rig."

Vicky found that both she and Captain Krätz were staring at Kris's collar bone. So that was the computer called Nelly.

"Captain?" Kris said, raising an eyebrow. Around her, quite a few eyebrows were bouncing off the overhead.

"Let's do it the lady's way," the ship captain ordered,

"Nelly, are there any scientists that can help you on this?" Kris asked her computer.

"A few, I've alerted them to get down to Engineering. There are several assumptions about the status of the anti-matter that we will need to create if they are not already so."

"You go, gal," Kris said, then turned to Captain Krätz, "Certainly, we'll have to advise port authorities that we are getting underway."

"Even a blind man would notice what we're attempting."

"When do we have to tell them?"

Captain Krätz mulled Kris's question for half a second. "Usually it's easier to ask forgiveness than permission."

"So I've observed," Kris agreed.

"However, I'm not sure that I'd apply that rule, what with all the security running around this station at the moment. Sudden moves could have very sudden reactions."

"If you say so."

"Let me talk to my political officer," Krätz said, and tapped a few buttons on his wrist unit. "Sooner or later we'll have to bring them in on this." Nothing happened for a long moment, leaving the captain frowning at his wrist. "What call is he taking that is more important than mine?" he demanded.

He was still frowning when a hurried voice came on. "Sorry, Captain, I have Lieutenant General Boyng on the line, sir. May I pass him to you, sir?" hardly sounded like a question.

Captain Kratz turned white as a sheet. Beside him, Vicky went up on tiptoes with glee. "Uncle Eddie! He'll help."

"Put the captain's call on screen," Kris ordered.

A thin faced man with a hatchet nose and a pristine black uniform filled a portion of the main screen. Kris Longknife spoke immediately.

"General, I am Lieutenant Longknife, Princess of Wardhaven. I and my staff have been examining the behavior of the Starliner _Dedicated Workers of Tourin_. It is our opinion that it is on a suicide dive into South Continent, intent on assassinating your First Citizen. It must be stopped."

Vicky watched as General Boyng showed no reaction to the threat against Daddy.

"Go on," he said.

Kris Longknife tossed the ball to the general. "What conclusions have you and your staff drawn from the behavior of this starliner?

The general frowned. "The liner's behavior is out of the ordinary. However, the drill presently going on in your ship is also unusual. This makes us wonder if you are not intent on some suicide mission."

Kris Longknife spoke quickly. "There are two faults in that logic, General."

"Would you care to innumerate those errors?"

Kris raised one finger. "First, you know from all the attempts made on my life that there isn't a suicidal bone in my body. I very much like being alive and will fight to stay that way."

"So it would seem. However, things might change. High objectives might be worth a high price."

"Not in my book. Secondly, your First Citizen is down on South Continent. Me blowing up this station would hardly ruffle the hair on his head."

"Yes, but you might be trading a queen for a queen?"

Kris Longknife glanced at Vicky before going on. "That does not even qualify as a jest, General. No offense, Vicky, but I am a full-fledged queen in this game the likes of which your general and my admiral play. You are at best a pawn, maybe someday to be a queen, but you have a way to go."

"No offense taken," Vicky said before stepping forward. "Now, Uncle Eddie are we going to sit here arguing who might be doing something while doing nothing for my daddy? Are the rumors true that you'd just as soon see him dead? Is that why you sit here jabbering while time ticks away from the one ship that could save his life?"

Under Vicky's upbraiding, the man went from board stiff to solid marble. "It was necessary for me to assure myself that a treacherous Longknife was not playing us for fools. They've done that often enough."

"That is why I'm aboard. I have satisfied myself that this ship can do this difficult evolution," Vicky shot back.

"Maybe you would like State Security's best troops to take over the ship and do what is necessary."

"Eddie, when I need your State Security hacks to gun down a few hundred unarmed peasants, I'll call you. I need a ship sailed and a battle fought and won. Let's leave that to a crew that knows how to do it."

"Yes, Citizen Victoria," the general said, almost bowing. "May I send a security team to assure your safety?"

"If you wish, but make them few and see that they keep out of the way. Oh, and send us a different colonel. One that isn't the dullest in your collection."

"Yes, Citizen Victoria. If you will excuse me, I will see that these things are done."

"One more thing. This ship needs power. Have the station give it full access to electricity." She turned to Captain Krätz. "What about plasma?"

"That would take too long. Electricity will do."

"To hear is to obey," the general said and rang off.

The silence on the bridge was broken only by the necessary sounds of a space ship. Pumps pumping, fans spinning. Here and there, a light blinked. No one spoke.

Captain Krätz was still white as a sheet.

Kris Longknife took Vicky by the elbow. "Ah, you may have been a little hard on that general, Ensign."

Vicky worried her lower lip. "You think so? Always when he came around the house, he was so friendly. Almost fawning. A new toy when I was young. A fancy dress later. After he was gone, Daddy would say things like 'two faced.' That comment about shooting peasants, that was one of Daddy's."

"But did he ever say it to his face?" Kris asked.

Vicky thought for a moment, then said, embarrassed. "You're right. I don't remember him actually saying it to him."

"You might want to tell your dad when next you see him that that particular cat is out of the bag," Captain Krätz said.

"We're getting extra power from the station," the lieutenant announced. "I'm sending it straight to Engineering."

"Well, he's carrying out his orders," Kris's captain said. "Now let's see how huge Princess Vicky's security team is."

"I'm not a princess," Vicky snapped, "except I guess you have a point. My dad is acting like an emperor or something and that kind of makes me a princess or something."

"Mostly, it makes you a target or something," Kris said, but softened it with a chuckle.

Five minutes later, Vicky watched a large squad of black uniformed security types double time up to the gangway. A Marine team just as large met them there.

"I know that colonel," Vicky said, watched the exchange. "He's got a head on his shoulder and he uses it."

"Let's see how good he is," Kris said and tapped her comm link. "Gunny, advise the new colonel that this ship will be doing 3 plus gees when we sortie to contact. High gee stations will be limited by space on the bridge. If he wants, he may join Citizen Victoria on the bridge. You'll need to find space and stations for the rest of the team he brings aboard."

In silence, they watched the exchange took place. The colonel turned to talk to his captain who listened, saluted, shouted orders and led the squad aboard.

Kris's Gunny and the Vicky's colonel watched them go, then boarded the _Wasp_ together.

"That went smoothly enough," Vicky said.

"Captain Drago," Kris said, "We're going to need some high gee stations on this bridge real soon now."

"I've got a chief working on that. What station will you take, Your Highness?"

"Weapons, Captain, "came hard. Suddenly Vicky realized that if someone was to shoot out the engines on the line it would be Kris Longknife. And if those shots destroyed the ship and killed the five thousand souls aboard, it would also fall on Kris.

Kris turned toward the bridge hatch. "Sulwan, could you send the information on the _Tourin_ to my Tac Room?"

"Yes, ma'am."

Vicky was starting to match faces with names. Captain Drago. Lieutenant Sulwan.

Kris was half talking to herself. "Nelly, if you have any spare capacity, could you search for more data on the _Tourin_?"

"Yes, ma'am," came back in a raw computer voice. Apparently, even Nelly could get busy.

"Let me check with my political officer," Captain Krätz said. "He may have information that has not been published."

He did, but he most certainly would not send it to a Wardhaven ship. Krätz tried reasoning with him. That didn't work. He was on the verge of losing his temper when Ensign Peterwald stepped forward and raised his commlink to her lips.

"This is Citizen Victoria Peterwald, daughter to the First Citizen," was cut from the hardest stone in Vicky's gut. "His life is in danger. Is it your intent to hinder the fight to save him?"

"No, ma'am." came back in a stutter.

"Then get those plans and files over here or I will personably go over there and see you shot."

"Yes, ma'am. The files are on the way."

Vicky released her captain's wrist. He retrieved his arm as if he wasn't sure it was still attached to him.

"I'm sorry, Captain," Vicky said. "I know that is not how you taught me to lead. However, that is what I learned in my dad's lap. I am just starting to learn that there is a time to do things your way ... and a time to do things Dad's way."

"It's not an easy lesson," Kris Longknife said.

"No," Vicky agreed easily as she looked into her soul and found it divided now: part Navy, part something else. "You are right, Kris. It is not at all easy. Was it like this for you?"

"I think you'll find it harder. I get the feeling there's a bigger gap between the way your dad does things and the Navy way and the way my father goes about his business and the Navy way."

"That's something I hope we can talk about."

"First we save your dad."

# 28

Kris's conference room was just the way they left it. One chair had been overturned in the hasty exit.

One wall now showed a schematic of the _Dedicated Workers of Tourin_. The wall next to it was covered with opened files. The wall across from it showed ... a spider web. Beside it was a series of file not found, and similar error messages.

At the table, a pot-bellied chief was alternately cursing, pulling his hair out or pounding on his own large unit that he'd plugged into the board. He looked up as Kris came in. "What kind of junk is this we're getting from that Peterwald ship? Are they _trying_ to bring down our main ship's computer?"

"They better not be," Vicky growled, and rattled off her personal password. The wall of spider webbing blinked black for a moment, then came up steady with a schematic of the _Tourin_ not at all different from that on the opposite wall.

Vicky found a chair and watched Kris Longknife study what State Security had provided. It didn't mean a lot to Vicky, and Kris wasn't in a talkative mood.

"Do we target the bridge?" Kris mused, half to herself, half to those around her. Captain Drago had stayed on his own bridge. The one captain among them shook his head.

"I don't think the bridge will get you anything," Captain Krätz said. "There's a backup control room well aft, just before Engineering." On one of the schematic behind Kris, a space glowed red. "These liners are intended to be easily converted to either troop transports, or, if big lasers are provided, ships able to stand against anything but a battleship."

"Might explain your security man's reluctance to provide this to us," one of Kris's staff said. Speaking of State Security, the colonel arrived just as Kris was muttering, "How do we damage a starliner with five thousand souls aboard?"

"Why damage it?" the colonel snapped. "Just blow it up."

That brought a strained silence.

"Kris," Vicky said in a low voice, "that is how I feel too. It's my dad's life we're talking about."

"Your dad and a whole lot of people down on that planet," Kris agreed. "But it's not as easy as that. Anyone have the kinetic power of one of our pulse lasers?"

"I've got it," another Navy lieutenant said. "Entered it before that battle above Chance and never purged it."

Vicky swallowed hard at the mention of the battle in which her brother died. She also eyed the lieutenant hard, memorizing her face.

She looked back just as hard. "A lot of us fought at Chance, and my husband died stopping those battleships above Wardhaven."

Vicky started to open her mouth.

Kris cut her off. "Enough, girls. A lot of people are hurting from a lot of things that might have been better not done. Today, we have today's problems. Captain, can you tell us something about the thickness of the hide on this thing? The decks and strength girders."

"That is a state secret," the colonel pointed out.

"You can keep the secret and start looking for a new head of state, or you can tell us and maybe we can save your First Citizen's life. Your call, or should I have Miss Victoria call Lieutenant General Boyng again?" Kris Longknife snapped.

The colonel in black looked like he'd swallowed something bitter, but he nodded Captain Krätz's way. The captain ran off a list of numbers.

The lieutenant fed them into her computer, then announcing. "Not good. We'll achieve complete burn through, one side to the other, using only 25% of the power of one of our four pulse lasers."

"So, we can punch four or maybe sixteen holes in this can," Kris said. "Can we slice it in half? Quarters? Sixteenths?"

"Half, definitely. Maybe into three chunks. Not four," the lieutenant said.

"And they would hit the planet in three places with one third the power," the army colonel said.

"No," Kris said at the same time Krätz did. Kris deferred to Vicky's captain.

"If we do anything to the engines as we pass, the ship stops accelerating. Its course assumes that it will keep its acceleration constant right up to collision. If we stop its acceleration, it will miss the planet entirely."

"Assuming they do not change its course," the security colonel snapped. "Just one hit in the right part of its power plant and the containment field collapses. The ship and terrorists vanish and we have no more problems."

"Kris ..." Vicky said, not quite pleading.

"That is an option," Kris said slowly. "But it is my last option. I did not put on this uniform to kill five thousand people whose only crime was buying a ticket to ride or taking a job to pander to them. Am I understood, Colonel?"

Kris locked eyes with the man from State Security. He glared right back at her.

"My duty is to the state, and the First Citizen."

"And you know way too much about blowing up a ship for my liking and seem only too quick to blow one up."

"Enough the two of you!" Vicky shouted. "If you don't want to hit the electric generators, what do you intend to hit?"

Kris ran her hands along the schematic on the wall. "The bridge, the living spaces have no value to us. The colonel is right, we need to hit the engineering area," she said, coming to rest there. "The question is how do we cripple the ship and drive it so far off course that it can't help but miss?" For the next five minutes Vicky tried to follow a discussion that was way above her training.

_I'll have to read a lot more to get up to her level._

What was clear to Vicky, was that the discussion kept coming back to hitting the power plant. The State Security colonel kept wanting to blow out the reactors. Kris Longknife kept refusing.

Vicky finally entered the heated argument. "I do not understand anything about power plants. Still, I trust Kris Longknife will hit what she is aiming at."

"I tell you she is wrong." The security colonel snapped.

"Don't be tiresome, colonel. It is the measures of State Security that have left my captain's ship a beached observer of this drama. Has someone chosen to take advantage of your brain-dead measures or were State Security's orders an integral part of this plan? I wonder."

The colonel opened his mouth several times before, "Of course not. You can't even think such things," finally got out.

"Oh, but I can, and I think my dad will, if he lives. Captain Krätz, may I have a word with you? In private."

The ensign led the captain into the passageway. The colonel made to follow, but several of Kris's staff got in his way. Vicky had the door closed behind them and held it closed. "Captain, nothing about this smells right. How did these hayseeds, to use Kris's words, get control of a huge liner? Why are none of our ships in any condition to intercept it?"

"State Security failed at one end and arranged for the mess at the other," Captain Krätz said.

"Can the Navy do anything to protect either my dad or itself from State Security?

"I will need to make some calls on a secure line with a coded phone."

"Please do so.

Captain Krätz left to make his calls. Vicky waited for his return. When he did, she opened the door and allowed the colonel to join them. He acted like nothing had happened. Together, they headed for the bridge.

# 29

They arrived as Kris's Captain Drago announced, "We have fusion. We are growing the plasma core. Thank God we are taking electricity directly from the core. Give me another five minutes and I'll be ready to jump start Reactor B. Sortie in fifteen minutes, Princess."

"What do you mean you're drawing power directly from the core?" Captain Krätz demanded as he escorted Vicky onto the bridge. The Security colonel said nothing, but seemed intent on looking at everything.

"Something we can't talk about," one captain said to the other. "However, we do have plasma and should be underway in half an hour." Drago tapped his comm link. "Set getting underway details, minimum." Throughout the ship, came the noise of hands moving to stations.

Captain Krätz settled into a high-gee couch next to Captain Drago's station. The State Security colonel was parked at the rear of the bridge where he could see everything and touch nothing. He had several marines around him.

Exactly thirty minutes from when Captain Drago said he could get the _Wasp_ underway, the pier tie downs began to rattle backwards and the _Wasp_ smartly backed away from the dock.

"Nelly, start an intercept clock," Kris ordered. A clock before her began to count down. 3 hr 24 min 24.242 sec was its initial display, but it quickly changed.

Vicky settled down at Kris's elbow in what the Wardhaven people called a high gee station. Kind of like a baby's stroller, Vicky could lower her back and raise her legs. The cushion could also inflate. _Maybe this Wardhaven tech would work._

Kris seemed busy, lost in things Vicky knew nothing about, although she did her best to track her. With her computer's help, Kris had just tried something she liked.

"That's optimum?" she said.

"Yes," Nelly answered. "We'd need all the luck in the world to pull that off."

Vicky raised an eyebrow.

"Nelly's been reading fiction for several years now. It makes her easier to talk to."

"Makes _you_ easier to understand," the computer shot back.

"Assuming we have all the luck in the world," Vicky said

"Assuming," Kris agreed.

"Is it always like this?" Vicky asked.

"Always like what?"

"Your planning. You start with one plan. Bounce it around among your team, get it better, then have some others look at it and it keeps getting better."

Kris seemed to think for a moment. "It was like this at Wardhaven." Then Kris shook her head and began again. "At Chance, your brother didn't give us a lot of time to plan."

"Do you think he'd be alive if he had?" Vicky asked, this time meaning an honest question.

"I really don't know. I tried to talk him down. He had a Captain with him, just like you do, but he was the Commodore, and I understand Captain Slovo spent the first half of the battle in the brig."

"Poor planning on my brother's part," Vicky said with a shrug.

"And part of the reason you're an ensign."

"That's the story of my life, doing penance for my brother's sins. What about on Eden, did you plan for that?"

"Not for any of the things you threw my way. Those were run and shoot, shoot and run affairs."

"I didn't do any planning," Vicky said, shaking her head. "Just hired who I could find available. Very poor planning on my part."

"I hope you aren't thinking of having me plan your next assassination attempt on me." Kris said. Vicky heard a joke, well, maybe half of one.

"No. I'm sorry Kris. I'm not _ever_ planning another attack on you." _State Security, maybe, but not me._

Break over, Kris and her Nelly went back to testing different options to use if the _Tourin_ changed course or the _Wasp_ was slower on the approach.

Vicky watched, but understood little. It was one thing to stand a communication's watch, quite another to plan a tactical shoot-out.

They were about half an hour out from intercept when a boffin called up to the bridge. "Are you aware the target is rotating?"

"No, we weren't," Kris said.

"Kind of hard to tell, but there's a dull part on the ship. We clock it as coming by about every 56 seconds. That dude is making 3.2457 gees acceleration and rotating about every minute. God help the passenger that tries to get up and walk."

"Send me your data," Kris said. "That may have an impact on my targeting."

"It's on its way, Miss Longknife."

Vicky gave Kris a look. "Miss Longknife?"

"With the mad scientists, I can never tell what they're going to call me. My father cut the long-term research budget this year and half of them aren't talking to me."

"So it's not all crumpets and cream on Wardhaven."

"I never told you it was."

"I don't know if the _Tourin_ is having trouble keeping up its acceleration," Nelly said, "or if your boffins are giving me better data, but it appears the acceleration is falling a bit."

"What about the rotation?" Kris asked.

"If I was a bunch of hayseeds," Captain Drago said, "flying a ship into a planet, I'd put a rotation on. Right Captain Krätz?"

"Yes, we should have expected it. By rotating the ship, they don't have to correct for any rocket engine that can't quite keep up the demanded thrust. Just like an arrow spins to balance any wobble in its flight."

"But we don't know exactly which way is down when we hit it," Vicky said.

"I should have mentioned that," Kris said. "No battle plan survives contact with the enemy. That's what makes sure that all our planning doesn't make life easy for us."

_Even for you, Kris Longknife_.

The clock at the top of Kris's station was now counting down the last half hour. The target ship was now one of the brightest stars on the screen. Their encounter would be very soon.

# 30

"Four minutes to close encounter," the quartermaster announced.

"Cut acceleration," the captain ordered.

Vicky went from near three hundred kilos to nothing. Her stomach did not like the change. She grabbed for the burp bag, held it clamped to her mouth for a while, then put it aside, still feeling queasy.

The State Security colonel filled his bag then added to another.

"All hands," the captain announced, "where you are is where you stay. Don't even think of moving."

Vicky watched as Kris Longknife focused on her instrument board. "Rotate Battery 3 and 4 to minus 30," she said. "Rotate ship up thirty."

Vicky could understand none of this.

The distance to the _Tourin_ now counted down at a mad pace. The millions of klicks passed in reasonable time. When the count reached hundreds of thousands, the numbers raced. The last five hundred thousand klicks passed in a breath.

Beside Vicky, Kris quit breathing as the count passed a hundred thousand.

The lights dimmed as lasers fired, then the ship began to flip like a mad dervish.

Vicky fought dizziness.

The _Wasp_ steadied for less than a heartbeat. Lasers 1 and 2 fired.

The _Tourin_ raced on, seemingly untouched by their efforts, unmarred by the lasers' caress.

Vicky's eyes widened as nothing happened.

A spark shot out from the liner. A split second later, the ship seemed to twist in its mad course.

Then, in the blink of an eye there was nothing left of the liner and five thousand human beings but glowing dust cooling through red and yellow into violets and blue.

"Holy God," someone whispered on the bridge.

Kris sat there staring.

"Well, I'm glad that's over with," came from the State Security colonel.

From around Kris's neck a suddenly little girl's voice asked. "Kris, did I just kill five thousand people?"

What could Kris tell her own computer?

"I'm sorry, Kris," Vicky said, reaching out to stroke Kris's elbow. "But it's not your fault. You did everything you could not to have this happen."

"Did I?" Kris said, then mashed her comm link. "Everyone who's been following this last evolution, save all your data. There will be an inquiry into it."

"Whose?" Vicky asked.

"Mine," Kris snapped. "Captain Drago, if you will, put one gee on the boat to help with the saving of data."

"Sulwan, one gee if you please."

Kris stood. "Captain Drago. Captain Krätz, Jack." She tapped her commlink. "Colonel Cortez, Penny and Abby, please report to my ready room. Professor mFumbo, you better come too."

"Yes" and "As you wish" answered her commlink. "Why?" came on the bridge from Captain Drago.

"Because I am sick and tired of hearing that a Longknife did this or that or the other, all during the same supposed whatever. I'm tired of not knowing who did what to whom. This time, so help me God, I'm going to know just exactly what happened, and if Peterwald state security wants to say one thing and Wardhaven intelligence patches together another story, at least I will know the truth. You understand me?"

Now it was Captain Krätz's turn to step forward and face the fire in Kris's eyes. "That assumes that, using the data we have, that we can actually tell you what happened."

That seemed to take a bit of the firestorm out of Kris's sails. But not much. "We have the best instrumentation of any ship in space, between what Captain Drago has pirated from whoever is his employer and whatever the boffins have ripped off from their universities. Maybe you can't tell me what I did and how it happened that five thousand lives were put to the torch. But I want you to face me, with your hands on the best information that these instruments can yield, and tell me that. You hear me?"

"Yes, we hear you," Kris's Marine said, coming forward. So he was Jack. "You've got a lot of people on this board you've set up. I understand the two captains. Maybe even the colonel. But me, Penny, and Abby?"

"You and Penny are trained criminal investigators. Abby's the board's secretary. That ought to make her job easier."

Jack didn't look like he liked what he'd heard. But he looked even less eager to argue with Kris.

"Now, if you will excuse me," Kris said, "I have to talk to a father who pleaded for me to save his son's life. Somewhere I've got to find the words to explain why I killed his boy."

"Kris, that's cruel," Jack cut in. "Don't do it."

"When somebody makes you prince, you can gainsay me," Kris shot back. "Until then, shut up."

The bridge stood aside as Kris marched out.

# 31

Vicky sat in the back of Kris's conference room as the young Wardhaven princess gave herself a court martial. For Vicky, it was simple. What was done, was done to save her father, and likely a whole lot of other people on South Continent. A few had to die to save the many.

That didn't seem to make any sense to Kris Longknife

Slowly, it became clear to Vicky that a lot of the senior officers on Kris's "court martial" were just as concerned as Vicky was, kind of, to see that Kris came to understand that there really was no way things could have turned out different.

Vicky watched as picture after picture, pictures that neither Kris nor the wondrous Nelly had access to during the shoot showed matters coming apart. Even Nelly was almost stumped by a calculation of the possible strength of the reaction mass verses the standard strength merchant hull girders. While Nelly was busy calculating a problem that had been turned down by all the other computers on the ship, Kris's gaze fell on Vicky.

She gave her a wan smile. Vicky gave her a thumbs up.

Was this how Kris Longknife handled failure, even failure against impossible odds?

_There are some things about Kris Longknife I don't want to take on._

In the end, Kris Longknife said, "Either way, the ship blows up," her voice dead with exhaustion.

"I should have recalculated my assumptions," Nelly said, "once the scientists told us the ship was under spin."

"I didn't tell you to and I didn't think of it," Kris said.

"None of us did," Captain Drago said.

"None of us wanted to admit what that meant," Vicky said.

"That any way it went, five thousand people were doomed," Kris said.

"It was either them or my dad," Vicky pointed out.

"Your dad's death and a horrible, horrible, war," Kris said.

Vicky walked over to stand beside Kris. "Once State Security let those hijackers board the ship and take it over, every solution involved deaths. Lots and lots of them."

"Don't let General Boyng hear you say that," Captain Krätz said. Vicky said nothing.

# 32

The _Wasp_ returned to High Birridas at a gentle one gee. That allowed plenty of time for matters to develop on South Continent. The hurricane blew itself out. Several plots to kill Henry Smythe-Peterwald were uncovered. Some people sang under interrogation, leading to further arrests. Others died.

Vicky wondered what leads died with them. She sent several coded messages to her dad. She got several replies.

No sooner had the last pier tie down locked onto the _Wasp,_ than the State Security colonel demanded to see Kris on the bridge. He marched his entire detail onto the bridge and arrested Kris Longknife for the murder of five thousand loyal citizens of the Greenfeld Alliance and the destruction of a million-ton liner.

When Captain Krätz tried to put an end to that, it turned out his commlink was jammed. Rather than start a shootout on her own ship's bridge, Kris went with them.

Vicky found herself loaded aboard a ship's longboat and she and Captain Krätz were zipped back to the _Surprise_. There, Vicky double-timed it for the comm shack. The messages she would send would be in her own personal codes, codes her Daddy would receive immediately.

Maybe he might actually react to them.

# 33

Daddy's first reply conveyed shock that he'd been subject to such an attack and been saved by Kris Longknife. It took a second message from Vicky to persuade him. She laid it on pretty thick about how the hijackers had gained control of the ship despite State Security and the very same people had left the Navy tied up to the pier unable to interfere with the assassination attempt.

Maybe she laid it on too thick.

Daddy didn't message the next time, he called. He was livid. He insisted Captain Krätz patch him through to the senior Navy admiral present. He demanded that the Navy collect all the State Security officers on the station and herd them into cells for interrogation.

"General Bayng himself?" a vice admiral stuttered.

"That black-hearted bastard himself. He's been aiming for me for too many years. This time he missed again. He won't get another chance."

"Daddy, Kris Longknife was marched off, I think to General Bayng," Vicky said. "Could you give him a call and have him turn her loose?"

"Right after we finish this."

It took a long while before he rang off. Vicky hoped it wasn't too long for Kris Longknife.

While Captain Krätz and those around him prepared for what was to come, Vicky arranged with some of the Sailors and Marines she knew to carefully stake out the General's office and catch Kris before she caught something that might be the death of her.

So it was that a JOOD led Kris into the wardroom.

A very busy wardroom.

Schematics of the station covered two walls. Maps of the planet below filled in the other two. Captain Krätz and Vicky were studying them with several other officers when Kris entered.

Without a word, the walls went blank.

"Keeping secrets?" Kris asked.

"What Greenfeld internal matters exist, are ours," Vicky said coming to take Kris down to where they might get some ice cream. "Let them stay that way for now. I'm sure your Admiral Crossenshield will give you a badly garbled and totally wrong assessment of this situation. It may take him a few days to jump to the wrong conclusions, but, no doubt, he will find his pole vault somewhere. How do we stay alive with such bunglers?"

"I think I've given you a pretty up-front and honest sample of how I do it over the last few days," Kris said evenly.

"So you have," Vicky said. "But you can't tell me that dad getting you out of old Eddie's maw wasn't a big help."

"You've talked to your dad?"

"Yeah, the Navy has a landline down the beanstalk State Security doesn't know about. Dad says thank you. He says he'll rethinking his attitude toward you Longknifes."

"Can I take that to the bank?" Kris asked.

"Probably not," Vicky said. The ship's store sold only vanilla. No doubt the _Wasp_ had more variety. "We best get you out of here fast."

"Am I going to do more catwalk dancing?" Kris asked, taking a spoonful.

Vicky allowed a very small smile at Kris's joke. "You can return to the _Wasp_ the way we got to the _Surprise_. Your longboat is in our Number 2 lander's bay."

Vicky waited until they'd finished their small scoop, then walked Kris down to the docking bay. It was a quiet walk. At least until they got to the longboat's hatch.

"I'm glad I didn't kill you on Eden," Vicky said.

"So am I," Kris agreed.

"I'm really sorry I brought your great-grandmother into this mess. I've never known my grandmothers. Didn't know my mother; she died when I was born."

"It hasn't been an easy life for either one of us."

"Ever have a real friend?" Vicky asked. "A bosom buddy?"

"Oh, you would have to bring those two up, wouldn't you?"

"These?" Vicky said, glancing down at what, with the effort of a fast walk behind them, could only be described as heaving bosoms. "They get in the way when I'm running. They're two big pains in the back. You don't know how lucky you are to have gotten off lightly."

"And, of course, the boys just never notice your problems," Kris jabbed.

"You have no idea," Vicky began,

"The troubles I've got," Kris finished.

Vicky laughed for a moment, then swallowed hard and glanced off into the unmeasured distance. "You don't, do you?"

"Mine are different," Kris agreed.

Vicky suddenly felt the need to hug Kris Longknife. She opened her arms and, after a moment's hesitation, Kris stepped into it.

"I hope someday we can get together when no one's life is on the line. Someday when we can just talk girl talk," Vicky said.

"It would be nice," Kris agreed. "I'm not sure I've ever done that."

"Me neither. But all the books make it sound so nice."

Vicky hated to break from the hug, but Kris needed to get somewhere safe before all hell broke loose. _No doubt, I'll be making it break out._

"I will see you," Kris said.

"Looking forward to it."

And they went their separate ways, Kris into the launch, and Vicky to whomever the internal affairs of Greenfeld was killing at the moment.

# About the Author

Mike Shepherd is the National best-selling author of the Kris Longknife saga. Mike Moscoe is the award nominated short story writer who has also written several novels, most of which were, until recently, out of print. Though the two have never been seen in the same room at the same time, they are reported to be good friends.

Mike Shepherd grew up Navy. It taught him early about change and the chain of command. He's worked as a bartender and cab driver, personnel advisor and labor negotiator. Now retired from building databases about the endangered critters of the Northwest, he's looking forward to some fun reading and writing.

Mike lives in Vancouver, Washington, with his wife Ellen, and not too far from his daughter and grandkids. He enjoys reading, writing, dreaming, watching grand-children for story ideas and upgrading his computer – all are never ending.

For more information:

www.mikeshepherd.org

mikeshepherd@krislongknife.com

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# Also by Mike Shepherd

In 2016 I amicably ended my twenty-year publishing relationship with Ace, part of Penguin Random House.

In 2017, I will begin publishing through my own independent press, KL & MM Books.

I have high hopes of bringing a lot of fun stories to you in 2017 and then again in 2018 and 2019.

We have already started the year with **Kris Longknife's Replacement** which tells the story of Grand Admiral Sandy Santiago as she does her best as a mere mortal to fill the shoes left behind on Alwa Station byKris Longknife. Sandy has problems galore: birds, cats, vicious alien raiders. Oh, and she's got Rita Longknife as well!

February had a novelette for you. **Kris Longknife: Among the Kicking Birds** was part of Kris Longknife - Unrelenting. However, it went long and these four chapters were cut to one short paragraph. I hope you enjoy the full story.

**Rita Longknife - Enemy Unknown** is the first book of the long awaited Iteeche War series. It was published as a e-book March 1, 2017 from your favorite source. Will Rita have had enough of Ray Longknife gallivanting around the universe. No sooner is little Al born, than ships start disappearing. Is it pirates or something more sinister? Rita gets herself command of a heavy cruiser, some nannies and heads out see what there is to see.

April will have another short offering. **Kris Longknife's Bad Day**. You just knew when Kris asked for a desk job that she'd have days like you have at the office. Well, here's one that will bring you up to date on the technical developments in the Royal US Navy, as well as silly bureaucratic goings on. In the first draft of **Emissary** , these were the opening chapters, but I found a better opening and this got cut. Enjoy!

**Kris Longknife - Emissary** begins an entirely new story arc for Kris. It will be out in e-book May 1, 2017 from all your favorite sources. Here is the story of what it takes to get Kris out from behind a desk. And for those of you betting in the pool, you'll get your answer. More I cannot say.

June will have Abby Nightingale's view of things around Alwa as **Kris Longknife's Maid Goes on Strike**. You knew sooner or later this was going to happen.

July 1, 2017 will see another book set in Alwa as **Kris Longknife's Relief,** Sandy Santiago, continues to battle aliens of various persuasions and not a few humans.

September 1, 2017, **Rita Longknife - Enemy in Sight** will resolve the unknowns left by Enemy Unknown as humanity slips backwards into a war it does not want and may not be able to win.

November 1, 2017, **Kris Longknife - Admiral** will see Kris up to her ears in warships, enemies and friendlies who may be not as friendly as she'd like, as battlecruisers square off against battlecruisers. A fight where both sides are equal is a bloody fight that often no one wins. In **Admiral** , that is exactly what Kris faces.

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Each month that a book isn't published, a short story or something from the cutting room floor, a scene that had to be cut from an overly long book will be published. The price will usually be 99 cents.

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These will be available at all your favorite bookstores in all your favorite formats.

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