Kris Longknife: Audacious Part 1

Kris Longknife.

AUDACIOUS.

Mike Shepherd.

Acknowledgments.

No ma.n.u.script becomes a book without a lot of dedicated work from wonderful people. Ginjer Buchanan deserves a special thanks for all the support she gave a writer she discovered in the slush pile. The gang at Ace has been wonderful to work with. Jennifer Jackson is all the agent that a writer could hope for. And there is no better first reader than my wife, Ellen.

And I will never pa.s.s up the opportunity to thank those of you who tell me your stories. Those of you who go "down range" to help folks who hardly know they need helping and may have no idea how to say thank you. You know only too well that Kris Longknife is not the only one whose good deeds never go unpunished. Thanks for sharing.

1.

Lieutenant Kris Longknife, sometimes styled Princess of Wardhaven, hated running in high heels. To make matters worse, the street here was paved with uneven cobblestones...and they were wet!

The street was also empty. The brick buildings were five-and six-story-high relics of New Eden's early days four hundred years ago. Rehabilitated and converted to government offices, they'd emptied at the close of business with amazing speed. The restaurants and small "shoppes" that serviced them had also closed down for the day.

Kris had the place to herself-except for tonight's a.s.sa.s.sins.

The ratcheting back of an arming hammer on an automatic weapon reminded her that she was once again the hunted.

Kris dodged to the right, heading across the street. Forcing a.s.sa.s.sins into a deflection shot had often kept her alive. One "shoppe" had an open alcove for an entrance. She sharpened her angle and redoubled her speed despite complaining ankles...

And ducked inside the cover not a second too soon.

A spray of rock shards told her the stone front of the store was real. Only scratches showed on the large display windows where they'd repulsed shots as well. A glance at the name on the gla.s.s told Kris she'd been lucky...again. Brevel's Fine Jewelry had paid for bulletproofing.

Kris took all this in as she dropped to the ground and reached for her service automatic.

Abby, Kris's erstwhile maid, had insisted that she show off her figure tonight. "Let the newsies see it once, then we can do what we want." The clingy burgundy sheath had been padded, so Kris almost looked like she had a bust, and it fit nicely over Kris's armored underthings. The short slit up the side reminded her to take graceful little princess steps tonight. Now it was a much less modest long rip; Kris easily got at her weapon.

Kris rested her automatic on the brick pavement and edged it around the corner, then waited for Nelly, Kris's pet computer...worth more than several blocks of the surrounding real estate...to paint a sight picture on the retina of Kris's eyeball.

Nothing happened.

NELLY, WHERE'S MY TARGET?

KRIS, WE ARE STILL BEING JAMMED. I CANNOT READ THE GUN'S TRANSMISSIONS.

STILL! Kris spat in dismay. SHORT-RANGED PERSONAL NETWORKSCAN'TBE JAMMED.

YES, MA'AM. I KNOW, KRIS, BUT WE ARE. The computer voice in Kris's head conveyed disappointment at her failure, but Nelly was absolutely sure of her conclusion. Between woman and computer there was a direct hookup. Kris hadn't known when she signed for the hardwire that she'd face this, but she was grateful she had.

Scowling at what couldn't be-but was-Kris waited. When the next blast of rapid fire ended, Kris risked using her own eyeball to draw a bead on the gunner. In formal black tie and tux, he seemed a bit chunky for the tights he wore in place of the more conservative pantaloons that were in this year for men in Garden City.

Kris put two rounds in the center of his chest.

That only drove his aim high. His next burst smashed windows above Kris...government offices didn't rate armor. Shards rained down on Kris, including one that speared her gun hand.

She bit back the pain and raised her aim. The next three rounds did things to his face that Kris didn't need to see. She'd been there, done that...and had a long lineup of gory memories for her nightmares. She scanned left for a second shooter.

He'd skidded to a halt poorly, dropping down on one knee. A hand on the cobbles steadied him. He whirled around and headed back the way he'd come.

Kris put two rounds in his head but all it did was knock him down.

SMART MAN, ARMORED TOUPe, Nelly observed dryly.

Kris's long ringlets were also borrowed for the night-and similarly fortified. She took off running for the corner while the a.s.sa.s.sin picked himself up and decided if the game was worth the cost.

"Where is Jack?" Kris growled.

Normally her chief of security was attached to her at the hip and full of nanny advice. As a Navy lieutenant she outranked his Marine first lieutenant. She should have been able to ignore him. Only after she made the mistake of drafting him did she learn that he had absolute say over her security matters. Which he insisted extended much further than she found plausible.

They argued a lot.

Sometimes it was actually fun.

At the moment, Kris would love to have him to argue with.

2.

Tonight's a.s.sa.s.sination attempt had been layered. First the attendant in the ladies' room...one of the few places Jack didn't insist on escorting her. After putting that overly helpful and far-too-deadly woman to sleep, Kris found the door locked and even Nelly unable to do anything about it. That blasted jamming.

So Kris threw a chair through the low back window.

Only to find some very fancy dressed men waiting for her.

She'd kicked the closest one in the groin before he realized this Navy lieutenant was not the usual damsel, given to easy swoons when in distress. Both guys went down in a ball and Kris took off running for her life...or at least freedom.

Which frequently meant the same. It had for poor little Eddy.

The front of the Hotel Landfall had been a zoo of newsies, cameras, and security. The back was quiet as a Buddhist temple, but Kris lacked the time to contemplate. To her right, at the end of the alley, a car waited with two more thugs. She headed left at full speed.

Running footsteps and the crash of several garbage cans told her it was going to be a long night.

At the end of the alley, Kris found a guy in a full-length, leather coat taking a leak. Bad timing. While he scrambled to finish with one hand, he clutched inside his coat with the other, grabbing for what Kris suspected was an illegal weapon on this wonderland of planets, New Eden.

Or just plain Eden as the locals insisted.

Kris didn't wait to see what he came up with. She chopped him on the side of his neck to put him down.

She'd kept running and had been running ever since.

As Kris ran for the corner, behind her came more sounds of the chase. Either her second pursuer was finding the nerve to keep this up, or whoever was paying for this. .h.i.t had not stinted on numbers. The quality his money bought had yet to be determined.

Maybe it was the first time for them.

It wasn't for Kris Longknife.

As she neared the corner, a gruff "You're blocking my fire lane" greeted her in Jack's wonderful voice.

Wonderful for at least the moment.

Kris went wide around the corner, then skidded into a turn and a stop. Jack knelt there, in dress red-and-blues, service automatic covering the street. Kris took the situation in as she caught her breath.

Ineye's Qck-Stp. "Lunch in five minutes or it's on me" probably didn't have armored gla.s.s, but solid bricks covered the lower half of his store front.

Kris ducked behind Jack. "You got a handkerchief or a bandage?" Kris asked as she eyed the half-inch gla.s.s sliver in her gun hand.

"Bandage in my hip pocket," Jack said, and snapped off two rounds. There was a shout out there and the clatter of a weapon bouncing along the cobblestones.

Kris located the bandage, drew the sliver out with her teeth, then spat it out as she wrapped the bleeding hand if not expertly, at least with experience. "What took you so long?"

"How am I supposed to know how long you need to take a leak, put that outfit back together, and powder your too-large nose. Your opinion, not mine," he said, and snapped off two more shots. No noise rewarded him this time. A stream of bullets st.i.tched the gla.s.s of the far window but failed to make it through to the window above Kris's head. Other rounds ricocheted off the pavement.

"I am not slow in the head," Kris snapped. Well, there was the time she'd planted bombs to blow up a s.p.a.ce station's sewage treatment plant, but that was a special occasion.

"Besides," Jack continued, "the Hotel Landfall did not take well to me shooting the door off their ladies' room. Insisted I wait for someone with a key. And asked dark questions about whether or not I had a permit for this thing." Jack fired two more rounds to punctuate the reference to his Corps-issued weapon, authorized on Wardhaven...but illegal on a mature, civilized place like Eden.

Kris had been naive enough to believe that line in the official "Welcome to Eden" handbook given her by the inattentive secretary in the amba.s.sador's office. But not naive enough for her and Jack to leave their backups at home on this night of Kris's coming out as the visiting princess from the Rim.

"You'd have thought they'd give us a couple of free pa.s.ses," she grumbled. "Two or three quiet nights out."

Kris's complaint was cut short by the roar of a car engine. A gray sedan shot around the corner up from them, an automatic pistol already out the window. But the gunner was busy holding on tight as the car took the corner, giving Kris the first shot.

A major mistake.

Kris aimed one for the gunner, then quickly s.p.a.ced ten across the front window.

The car wobbled in its turn. Then slammed into a fire hydrant. Water geysered up, showering everything, including the car. No motion there.

"Somebody's got to notice that," Kris said.

"Glad we've heard from the motor brigade," Jack said, then followed it by three shoots down the street he was covering. The storm sewer was backing up fast, turning the street corner beside them into a lake. Water now lapped at Kris's very expensive, if nearly nonexistent shoes.

Jack snapped off two more shots, the last of which brought a scream from someone. "Unless you're planning on walking on water tonight, Your Princesshood, what say we make tracks?"

Kris did not argue. Not tonight. She was already up and running.

3.

The Wardhaven Emba.s.sy was just a few blocks farther down, its gray stones looking wonderfully bulletproof. Still, Kris figured they'd spent about as much time on this street as they dared and zigged right at the next block. Halfway down that block, in midstreet, Kris's luck ran out-again.

The guy in the leather coat came racing around the corner, so intent on beating feet to get a shot at where Kris's back had been that it took him a second to notice her front. Kris and Jack put a pair of rounds into his jacket.

It must have been armored, the shots just sent him sprawling backward, his feet flying into the air like he'd stepped on a banana peel. His gun clattered halfway across the street.

Kris took a hard left. This government building had a well-sheltered entrance. Surprise, it wasn't locked. Kris held it open for Jack, then followed him through.

"Nelly, can you lock that door?" Kris bit out.

"No. That jamming, Kris."

"I'll belt it shut." Jack whipped off his issue belt and began tying the door handles together. "Check the back door."

Kris galloped the length of the foyer, past a bank of elevators and a tiny coffee stand. Through the gla.s.s she could see the front entrance to the Emba.s.sy. She tried the door.

"It won't budge," Kris shouted over her shoulder.

"Or unlock," Nelly added.

"Shoot it," Jack said, racing for Kris.

She did. It flew open. Kris took the right side of the granite-sheltered entrance.

The street looked empty. Across it lay the emba.s.sy; a stately colonnade lorded it over the center of its many wings. An inviting driveway led to the formal greeting area within the columns. Kris just wanted to slip into the bas.e.m.e.nt entry of the nearest wing. Only an empty, white guardhouse with a red roof offered anything like protection. The black, wrought-iron fence looked strong enough to hold back a mob of very angry cub scouts. On second evaluation, make that preschoolers.

Jack joined her on the left. "I don't see anything."

"But tonight we don't usually see them coming," Kris said.

"Lucky amateurs. Make for the guard booth."