Audacious (28 page)

“You can never tell, Doc, when there’s a Longknife involved,” Gramma Ruth said.

“And who might you be, young woman,” Doc said.

“Ruth Tordon, Doc. My eldest girl had the misfortune to marry into the Longknifes.”

“How’s she doing?”

“Dead some sixty years.”

“I’m sorry,” Doc said, and seemed to mean it. “Now, if the two of you will excuse me, I think my nurses have stabilized the patients, and I need to see if there is anything that I can do to keep them out of the morgue.”

“Try, Doc,” Kris said. “I— no— both of us, really want to talk with them while they’re still drugged and pliable.”

“That old wives’ tale is overrated. This your handiwork?”

“I nailed one. Sergeant Bruce got the other.”

“They were both trying to nail me,” Ruth said dryly.

“Horrible behavior. I ought to let them die for such poor taste.”

“We think they were paid to develop that poor taste,” Kris said. “We want to know who was passing around the money.”

“Then I shall let them live. If that is within my poor powers,” Doc said and entered his surgery.

Kris found herself with nothing to do but pace the room.

Ruth settled into a chair. “Could you please not do that?” she said a minute later.

“Do what?”

“Pace. The last fellow to do that tried to kill me. By the way, do you have a weapon I can borrow?”

They dropped down to the Marine armory. An old staff sergeant there was delighted when Ruth asked if he had an ancient relic of a gun to fit her old paw. With a sigh of pure pride, he produced from the back of his horde an old 6-mm Special.

“You don’t see many like this old baby around these days,” he told Ruth. “You want me to show you how it works.”

Gramma popped the magazine out, pulled the action back, and checked to make sure it was unloaded. “Works about the same as my old one, my lad.”

“Foolish me,” the sergeant said, “trying to teach my granny to suck eggs.”

“Or to plug those guilty of outrageously inappropriate behavior.”

Kris was about to suggest that Abby would have a holster for the weapon, but the sergeant pulled one from the lower shelf that fit Gramma’s new weapon nicely and let it ride comfortably in the middle of her back.

“You know,” Kris started, “Jack would insist that primaries are not supposed to go armed.”

“Jack was that nice Secret Service agent trying to keep up with you. What’s he doing in Marine green?”

“Didn’t Grampa Trouble tell you about that?”

“Oh no! Did my darling Terry do you in? I thought by now you’d have learned why they all call him Trouble.”

Kris made a face. “Let’s say that I don’t need any more lessons on that.”

“I have yet to figure out whether you Longknifes are just natural-born optimists or horribly slow learners.”

“I think we’re both,” Kris said.

“Well, I am not going anywhere without my new pet,” Ruth said, sliding the arrangement into the rear of her slacks. “Whatever started this morning is not finished. Not with all those hot boy-toys and go-boom boxes left at the warehouse. How did that finish out?” she said, turning back to sick bay.

“Our scouts say half the local police department is presently parked outside the place. I doubt anyone can vanish that revolution in a box now.”

“Good,” Ruth said, nodding. “However, with that stuff now in the public domain, or at least brought to the attention of management, whoever stocked that arsenal will have two choices.”

Kris nodded and started to enumerate them. “Run away, go to ground, and hope it blows over before starting again.”

Gramma nodded.

“Or throw the revolution into high gear, move H-hour to right now, and roll the dice.”

“Sadly, I don’t see a third option,” the older woman said.

“Kris, the ambassador wants to see you in his office,” Nelly announced.

“You want to go back to sick bay?” Kris asked.

Gramma shook her head. “Hasn’t been nearly long enough for Doc’s workup.”

“Want to tag along for my little visit to the ambassador?”

“Wouldn’t miss it for the world,” Gramma said with a grin of evil pleasure.

The secretary didn’t look up from his computer as Kris came in. “The ambassador is expecting you.” Then he did look up and frowned as Ruth followed Kris in.

She flashed him a smile and went right along with Kris. Kris had noticed, following Father around, that if someone acted like they knew what they were doing, people usually let them go right ahead and do what they wanted.

Gramma Ruth had that I-know-what-I’m-doing-don’t-juggle-my-elbow act down perfectly.

“What do you think you are doing, young lady” greeted Kris inside as Ambassador VanDerFund came out of his chair.

Since Kris had quite a few fish in the frying pan at the moment, she didn’t dare risk an answer to a question that vague. She chose to punt. “No more than the usual.” Then she spotted the person seated with his back to her at the ambassador’s desk.

He stood and she found herself offering a hand. “Inspector Johnson. Haven’t seen you for, oh, a couple of hours.”

“Yes, it’s been a pleasant interlude for me, too. So, how are you doing? And who is this fine woman with you?”

“Ruth Tordon,” Ruth said, and offered her hand.

“I heard you were kidnapped,” the inspector said, raising an eyebrow.

“I believe I was. Sloppy bunch. I managed to escape and took public transportation straight away to
my
embassy. Met Kris in the hallway just as I was going to pay Mr. VanDerFund my respects about the same time she was called into a meeting with him. Wonderful how things somehow work out.”

“Yes. Isn’t it,” the inspector said.

The ambassador looked like he might be having an attack of some horrible debilitating disease, but it was a silent attack, allowing everyone to ignore it… and him.

“This tenement you escaped from—” the inspector started, but Ruth cut him off.

“I believe it was a warehouse.”

“Did you have a chance to look into the boxes?”

“I was more concerned with hiding behind the boxes rather than looking in them,” Gramma Ruth said with a very straight face. “Come to think about it, I don’t remember even looking at the markings on the boxes. I was in rather a hurry to catch a bus, you know.”

The inspector scratched his ear. “I imagine you were.”

There was a break in the conversation at that point. Actually, it more like died. Kris filled in the space with a wide-eyed question. “Ambassador, you wanted to see me?”

VanDerFund blinked as if just waking up to a harsh light. He looked at Inspector Johnson, then at Kris. Then back at Johnson. “I thought the inspector had some questions for you.”

“I did, but I believe that Ms. Tordon has answered them for me,” the inspector said with a smile that didn’t touch his face. “Ma’am, I can’t believe you are the great-grandmother to this, ah…” Troublesome brat was clearly intended but “young woman” came out. “You are far too lovely. You must have had your children very young.”

Ruth gave him a smile. The kind that babies give just before they throw up all over adults. Inspector Johnson must have had children of his own. He took a step back.

“Well, if no one has further business, I am still rather rushed with work,” Kris said.

That got another raised eyebrow from the inspector. “Anything I should know about?”

“A little of this, a little of that,” Kris said with a shrug. “Nothing to bother you about. You know me. I’m often outside the box.”

Inspector Johnson glanced at Kris sideways. “An interesting choice of words. Since I found a lot of opened boxes earlier today.”

“Oh, what was in them?” Ruth asked, her face amazingly straight. Kris suspected she was seeing where she inherited a lot of her skills for unsociable behavior.

“Nothing,” Inspector Johnson said with a ruler-straight face. “Nothing of interest to a college professor and a Rim princess, I’d imagine.”

“You’d be amazed what interests me,” Kris said.

“Amazed, very likely,” Johnson said, heading for the door. “Interested in it. Not at all likely.” Hand on the door, he turned to Kris and Ruth. “Take my word for it. It is none of your interest. Keep out of it,” he said, and slipped out.

“Good advice. Good advice,” VanDerFund added. “What’s this I hear about the Marines being gone most of the day?”

“An exercise,” Kris said. “Just a bit of practice.”

“Well, if you say so.”

“Don’t take her word for it,” Ruth said, heading for the exit also. “Check with that handsome captain. Captain what’s-his-name. I bumped in to him as I was coming in. Reminded me of my husband. Say ninety years ago.”

And with that, the two women beat a hasty victory parade.

As they made their way back to sick bay, Kris glanced at Gramma Ruth. “Now I suspect I know where my love for creative fiction comes from.”

The older woman chuckled dryly. “Not me, Kris. I’m just a simple farm girl that married a Marine. God, but that Marine can come up with the most outrageous tall tales and keep the straightest of faces. Heaven help Saint Peter when the two of them cross paths.”

“Then how do you know to trust him?” Kris asked.

“Oh, my child. He never lies to me. And he never lies to the chain of command or to any of his Marines. He’s one hundred percent loyal there. But take that fellow. He was offering us nothing. In return what right had he to the truth from us? And he knew it. He gave nothing. He got nothing.”

“And we don’t know anything more about that weapons stash.”

“It’s pretty clear he knows even less.”

Captain DeVar joined them, with Jack at his side, a few paces from sick bay. “Doc says he’s got something,” he said.

They entered sick bay, but the door to the surgery was still closed. Kris just finished bringing the others up-to-date on Inspector Johnson’s latest fishing expedition when the door opened and Doc entered, removing his gloves.

They waited while he finished that and retrieved a pad of paper from his hip pocket. “Your guy is a talker,” he told Kris.

“Will he live?” she asked.

“More than likely. Can’t say the same for the guy the sarge plugged. Captain, it’s been a long peace. That the first man your sergeant has likely killed?”

Captain DeVar nodded.

“You might want to send him around for some counseling. Even sergeants can get the shakes the first time they come face-to-face with how fragile life is.”

“I’ll see to that,” the captain said.

“Now, as to your guy,” Doc said, turning to Kris, but eyeing his pad. “Since you were hoping he’d talk, I used that new gear your maid dropped by, using an IV rather than running tubes down his mouth… and tried some of the anesthesia your maid had in her kit. Where’d she get that stuff?” Doc said, then waved his hand. “No, don’t tell me. Cause then you’d have to kill me, and if you didn’t I’d be stuck knowing something I really didn’t need to know… and likely didn’t like knowing.”

“What did he say?” Kris finally let herself say. Clearly, Doc was enjoying being the center of attention. Enjoying it way too much not to be sinful.

“Hold your horses, gal. I’m coming to that. You know a Miss Victory or something like that?”

“Victoria Peterwald?” Kris offered.

“Oh, so that was the second word. He kept mangling it. Or my corpsman’s handwriting is even worse than mine. You know, all the time they complain about us docs’ poor penmanship, but I say corpsmen are the worse of the lot.”

“What did he say?” Now it was Captain DeVar’s turn.

“Well, Kris here said she wanted to know where the money came from. So once he started muttering, I had my anesthesia tech keep whispering ‘money’ in his ear while I’m doing my cutting thing. ‘Money’ and ‘Where’s the money?’ It must have worked cause he started talking about Miss Victory— no Vicky— and how he needed to get the money from her with no one around or the others would know how much he was making on this gig.”

“No trust among bandits,” Jack noted.

“Not that I ever noticed,” Doc said. “There was also something else. Something about a Mr. Grant, or Shredder. Not sure about that last name. Anyway your guy is scared to death of him. And scared to death of ruining something. Kept saying he wish he’d found a better place. Another place. That make any sense to you?”

Kris nodded. “We found them in an arsenal. The cops are now crawling all over it wondering what it’s doing on a nice gun-controlled planet like Eden.”

Doc whistled. “That’s perforating someone’s stomach lining. I can see why he’s scared.” There was a high, steady tone from inside the surgery. “I better get back to the meat business. Hope this helps.” And Doc was gone.

“I think he helped us,” Kris said. “Captain, can we make use of your Tac Center for a new project?”

“I suspect we better,” Captain DeVar said.

37

Kris
found herself standing next to Gramma Ruth as the old campaigner studied the pictures on the wall. Ruth reached out and yanked hers down, then turned to Captain DeVar.

“I will respect your opinion, but in my book, the scales aren’t balanced. Me free, two Marines dead. Somebody still owes us.”

“My mission is to protect the embassy,” the captain said slowly. “And I will not throw good lives after good lives.” He said the words, but his face said something else. “Your Highness, what would you like to do next?”

“Captain, as happens so many times, I don’t have a clue… at this specific moment. Let’s look at what we have and see if it tells us anything.”

“Be glad to, Your Highness. Where do we start?”

“First, I want to add one more person to our group, a police lieutenant by the name of Martinez. I have a right to ask him about my gun permit and there are a few things I’d like to get a straight answer to about things local.”

The captain didn’t look sold on bringing in a stranger, but, as Kris had come to notice, people found it hard to tell a Longknife, and a princess, no.

“If you think he has something important for us,” he said.

“Won’t know until I ask him, but this place is pretty strange, and you can never tell. Nelly, make the call. And if you can, make a search on Grant, or that other name… Shredder?”