Kris Longknife 13 - Unrelenting (13 page)

Kris nodded. Jack made her decision easy. This could have been a whole lot worse.

“Oh, I have a question,” Kris said, remembering. “I was talking to a friend, and he mentioned that his wife used a mechanical womb, what do you call them?”

“Uterine replicators,” the doctor provided. “I take it Admiral Yi’s bad-mouthing his wife hit too close to a mark.”

“I’m not sure. It would be nice, if it is not too late, to move baby into one of them. I imagine Granny Rita would love to babysit one.”

“It was too late a year ago,” the doctor said flatly.

“Huh?”

“When the fleet sailed from human space, we didn’t carry any of them. You young women were all on implants, remember?”

“Right, and I don’t know that I would have authorized it if someone had asked to have her implants removed.”

“None have. These women know where their duty lies.”

“Yes,” Kris agreed. “Have you found anything out about that?”

“Yes, but in a minute. Let’s finish this thought. Nelly, could you make a uterine replicator out of Smart Metal?”

“I have the specifications,” Nelly said. “It shouldn’t be too hard to spin one out,” came across far too vague for Kris’s likes.

“Nelly, you don’t sound too sure of yourself,” Kris said.

“It’s not the machine itself. Making one is duck soup. It’s the supplies.”

“The consumables,” Doc Meade put in. “Proteins, enzymes, specially manufactured hormones. Things that you’re knocking together in that miracle of a body you were issued at birth, Kris, and that you’ve spent the last fifteen years since puberty practicing how to make.”

Kris nodded, suspecting she knew what would come next, but still she said, “Nelly, if I made your number one priority making them, how long would it take you to produce these ‘consumables’?”

“Kris,” came out actually sounding pained. “I’d have to make stuff to make stuff to make stuff, and that assumes I could find the basic feedstock on Alwa. There’s no bet that I could. If I got lucky, I’d say we could have some ready in six to eight months.”

“Just in time for me to pat your little darling on her rump and see how big a yelp she’d give me,” Doc Meade said.

“Is it going to be a girl?” Jack asked.

“Don’t know yet,” Doc Meade said, “but I figure a gal has a right to hope for a cute little girl until science proves otherwise. You got a problem with that, General?”

“Not at all. A cute little miniature of my wife would be a great end to this journey we’re on.”

Kris smiled at Jack. She’d figured him to want a boy. It was
great to be on this journey with him. And in the end, this little one had likely already made up his or her mind. What would be would be.

“So, this will be a body birth,” Kris said with finality. “How do we make this a safe journey? Doc, do you plan to beach every one of us seventy-one?”

Dr. Meade returned Kris a puzzled look. “Your Granny Rita spent the first six months of Alnaba’s gestation walking the bridge of her battlecruiser. She called to make sure I knew that.”

“She knows already!” Jack said.

“I suspect she knew the night we started this bit of fun,” Kris said, patting her belly.

“She told me great-grandmothers have a way of knowing,” the doc said, “the old liar. Anyway, we have better ways today to harden our ships against the background radiation of space than back then. Sailors rarely get cancer. What we don’t have is the ice cladding of the old battlecruisers. Two meters thick will stop a lot of high-energy heavy particles. I’m thinking of reassigning my ladies-in-waiting to two or three ships and having them given an old-fashioned ice cladding. I’ve already talked to Captain Drago, and he’s game. He’s kind of excited, what with his new reactors, new lasers and all the rest.”

Kris didn’t doubt that the old sea dog was delighted with the new
Wasp
. Of course, if she loaded it down with several thousand tons of ice, it might wallow a bit, but it wouldn’t likely be any worse than the recent
Wasp
with two Hellburners aboard or the older
Wasp
expanded to handle containers for five hundred Marines and scientists.

“We’ll tackle that problem tomorrow,” Kris said. “Now, what about the guy who put the bum implants in my arm?”

“As I told you,” Doc Meade said, “I’m old-fashioned. It just seems to me that a woman should have a woman installing her birth-control implants. It avoids some male coming up with bad jokes at moments like those.”

“A guy wouldn’t do that,” Jack said.

“You’d be amazed at some of the off-colored jokes I’ve heard,” the doc answered back.

Jack retreated into silence.

“Well, whether I’m sexist or not,” the doc continued, “my
policy seems to have given us a clear red light where you’re concerned. That and the logistics of how this all is possible. Rudo, come in here for a moment, will you?”

A young woman nurse came in. Her white nursing togs were striking against her ebony skin. Kris hadn’t met many people who still showed such strong evidence of roots to Earth’s old Africa.

“Tell this nice future mother what you found out about the other misused implants.”

“Yes, Doctor. Good afternoon, Admiral,” she said, giving Kris her full Navy due even if the doc was reluctant to. “This is one of the packets the birth-control implants come in,” she said, holding up a clear plastic container. Kris could distinctly see the three strips inside.

“The packet has a number on it that matches the number on the first strip. Each of the three strips has its own number, in sequence, from the first to the last, although sometimes the loading process back at the factory gets the strips out of order. Still, they’re supposed to be one, two, three, or nine, zero, one. You get the idea?”

Kris nodded.

The woman sighed. “Good practice requires that the nurse check each strip to make sure the numbers match.”

Rudo paused for a moment. “I’m sad to report that good practices have not been followed. Nurses always check the first one. Many check the second strip. When questioned over the last few days, everyone I talked to admitted to not bothering to check the third one. It didn’t seem like a problem,” came out with a bitter twist.

“Every one of the pregnant women presented with two effective strips and a third that had been issued three years ago, removed and, somehow made its way back into a new-issue packet.”

“Someone knew about the actual practice and took advantage of it,” Kris said.

“Yep. But that someone also had to have access to the expended ones on their way to disposal as well as the new packets. He’d need to check the packets out, take them to someplace safe and carefully remove the third strip, replace it, and reseal the packet so that no one would notice it had
been tampered with,” Doc Meade said, temper growing with each word.

“I’m guessing there aren’t many men who meet that requirement,” Kris said. “I’m also guessing that he wasn’t really risking much when he took the chance of installing my implants.”

Doc Meade’s scowl was dark. “We could have caught him. We didn’t.”

“That’s water under the bridge,” Kris said. “However, has everyone who got shortchanged on her newly issued implants gotten pregnant?”

“No. We’re running every woman who got new implants through sick bay. It seems that over half of those with one bum implant have not gotten pregnant. It was just the luck of the draw it seems.”

“But not for me.”

“No. He made sure that you were totally unprotected.”

“You’re seeing that those women get effective implants.” The doctor nodded. “Good. I’ve taken care of my responsibilities as the fleet’s admiral. Now,
I
want to meet this man. Do you have him in custody?”

“The Marines have him in a lockdown on the station,” the doc said. “Chief Warrant Officer Mugeridge serves in the Naval Supply Corp. He was trained as a nurse but went into supply when his knees went out and he couldn’t stand eight straight. We thought we were being nice to him. By the way, he came out on the
Constellation
with Lieutenant Commander Sampson. They go way back. He paid her quite a few visits while she was recuperating from that brain surgery. Right about the time he was hatching this plan.”

Kris groaned. “I should have sent the
Conny
back with the king. Her skipper has been just one problem after another, and now this.”

“No good deed goes unpunished,” Jack drawled.

“Good deeds had nothing to do with it,” Kris said. “I lusted for another ship with 20-inch lasers. It seemed like a good idea at the time.”

“Shall we go stationside and see what this bastard has to say for himself?” Jack asked.

“Hell, yes,” Kris said, then rethought herself. “Will there
be a court-martial? Do I need to avoid any appearance of command intervention?”

Doc Meade shrugged. “I was planning one, but it doesn’t have to come to that. I could just terminate his warrant and send him dirtside. I suspect he’d have a hard time finding a job down there. Most likely, he’d end up shoveling bird guano in the mines right beside his good friend Sampson. We could do it with a court-martial or the other way. Either way, he ends up the same place.”

“Fill out the paperwork to terminate his warrant,” Kris snapped. “Jack, let’s go talk to this ass.”

20

Kris
and Jack were quick marching for the detention center on Cannopus Station when they came to a roaring halt.

“Hi, honey child. When you going to bring that baby to see Granny?”

At “honey child,” Kris froze.
Nobody
talked to her like that. Fortunately, “granny” got added before Kris exploded.

“Granny Rita?” Kris said, turning to see her great-grandmother hurrying to catch up with her. “What are you doing on my station?” Kris would tackle that life-and-death issue before she tried to get a handle on this sudden twist in Granny Rita’s attitude toward her Viceroy.

“I caught one of your shuttles,” the old lady said, beaming proudly.

“Didn’t I tell you that you were grounded? No shuttle-assisted suicide,” Kris pointed out, all the time noting that granny looked rather well.

“You didn’t actually send me for a flight physical, so I am not officially carried in the log as grounded”—the old gal grinned even wider—“and I am not anywhere near to dead, just in case you haven’t noticed.”

“You are looking surprisingly well,” Jack said. “Last time you were fresh out of a shuttle, there was a distinct green to your gills.”

“I don’t have gills. I’m not an Iteeche,” the old Iteeche fighter snapped. “That rejuvenation clinic dirtside has been doing wonders for us old codgers. I suspect I’ll be ready to fly my own shuttle up here about the time that baby makes her bawling appearance. Maybe change the first diaper myself.”

“Nelly, see that Granny’s authorization to operate shuttles is canceled and logged.”

“Krr-i-sss,” sounded like Nelly really was pained, caught in the bite of the line between two Longknifes.

“Jack, you log the change and see to it that one of your sergeants walks the change through the system.”

“Yes, my love,” made it clear that it was the husband obeying, not the Marine major general.

“Oh, bother,” Kris snapped. “Granny, promise me and my baby that you will not try honking a shuttle around in space, no matter how frisky you feel after a rejuvenation session.”

“For that great-great-grandkid of mine, I’ll promise. Not for you, miss prissy pants, but for that little one I want to see married off to a man as fine as her dad.”

“Thank you,” Jack said.

“Now, where are you two off to like a herd of turtles?” Granny Rita demanded.

“To have a few choice words with the guy who sabotaged my birth-control implants,” Kris said.

“While I can’t complain about the results, I do have a few quibbles with a Sailor that doesn’t do his job,” the old commodore said through a stormy frown. “Lead on, McDuffy, and damned be he who gets in my way.”

So it was that three of them charged into Cannopus Station’s brig. A gunny pointed them at a door, not a word said.

Jack opened it, and two very angry ladies stormed in to face a man cuffed to a table.

Mugeridge apparently had been rousted out early that morning; he had a day’s worth of stubble on his chin. He also hadn’t been given a lot of time to dress; he looked to be in yesterday’s uniform. His shirt was unevenly buttoned. He looked a mess, but, to Kris’s minor surprise, the Marines had not used undue force.

“You,” he spat. “I should have known a whore like you couldn’t pass up the chance to gloat. A knocked-up whore, no less.”

“Since my husband knocked me up, I don’t think that word applies.”

“You turned this whole fleet into one big whorehouse.”

“As your friend Sampson told me every chance she got.”

“It’s true. Here we are out in the middle of nowhere, bug-
eyed monsters all around, and you let discipline go to hell with everyone sleeping around.”

Kris knew this train wreck was not going anywhere good, but she couldn’t look away or keep her mouth shut.

“So you took it upon yourself to render the women of this command less than combat-ready.”

“Somebody had to do something. No one will follow a knocked-up admiral. You’ll have to surrender your command to someone who knows how to fight a fleet.”

“In case you didn’t notice, Mugeridge, my command has blown away three of those monstrous mother ships. We must have killed close to two hundred billion of them. I know very well how to command a fighting fleet.”

“Whore,” was his answer.

Kris had had enough, but she had a cruel streak in her. Instead of turning on her heels, she stayed to tell him his fate. “Warrant, your services are no longer required by this fleet. Effective immediately, you are out of a job. Sergeant.”

Kris didn’t have to raise her voice. Gunny had followed her into the confinement cell although she had kept well out of the way.

“Ma’am.”

“See that this man is on the next shuttle down. You will remove his manacles when he is dirtside and send him on his way.”

“Yes, Admiral Longknife.”