Contents
Dedication
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
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
About the Author
Dedicated to Granny Dot,
1924 to 2011
She survived the Great Depression, the Greatest War, a bad marriage, and so much else. But through it all, she did what she had to do to raise three strong children. She had a soul that survived and looked for the best in people.
Granny Dot and Granny Rita share that indomitable spirit and drive to survive.
As for how much of what Granny Rita says and does Granny Dot would approve of, I can’t say. Like many authors, I draw from myself after looking at all the people around me.
However, I do know that Granny Dot would have loved to have been the second reader for Kris Longknife: Defender.
1
“That’s what was gonna attack Alwa?” Granny Rita said. Once commodore of BatCruRon 16, she’d fought hopeless battles. Still, her voice held dismay as she surveyed the wreckage of the alien base ship.
“It was about twice that size before we took some bites out of it,” Lieutenant Commander, Her Royal Highness, Kris Longknife said. Herself no stranger to hopeless battles, she added, “And we’re still quite a ways off. It will get bigger.”
Rita Nuu Longknife Ponsa, former captain of the battlecruiser Furious, was the recognized leader of the humans, and uniformly called Granny Rita by both the heavy ones, us humans, and the indigenous inhabitants of Alwa, who named themselves either the People or the Light People.
Granny Rita turned to translate for the delegation of six Alwans who had come to see for all the unbelievable story Kris had told their Association of Associations.
Privately, Granny Rita called the assembly “the flock of flocks,” but she’d warned Kris never to say that where any Alwan might overhear.
Kris listened as Granny Rita and the Alwans clicked and cooed with maybe one word in five sounding familiar to Kris. It was a pigeon dialect they’d worked out over eighty years.
However, Nelly, Kris’s not-very-personable computer, was working on a translator for the two peoples. Kris wondered if the peace that had held for the last eighty years between the Alwans and the humans might have been helped along by both sides’ not fully understanding what the other side said.
When Nelly finished this effort, Kris would have to have a talk with her.
The six Alwans’ movements were quick, almost jerky, as they moved around the forward lounge. Their arms and hands waved. Kris had a feeling that a couple of million years earlier, the flock would have taken flight at this news. Now, having given up most of their feathers as well as flight, they formed and re-formed groups of two or three, talking among themselves and rarely glancing at the view screen that showed the battered alien-invasion base.
This meeting was not being held on the USS Wasp’s bridge. The Alwans had taken in the intensity of the bridge crew at their work and immediately expressed distress to Granny Rita. Kris had offered instead the Forward Lounge, with its four huge screens. Since Kris’s staff were all equipped with Nelly or one of her children, Kris was confident they could do anything that needed doing while letting the Alwans take in the familiar activities of humans eating, drinking, and, in general, enjoying themselves in the familiar surroundings of a restaurant.
And now, thanks to the magic of Katsu’s wizardry with Smart MetalTM, Kris was able to separate the restaurant from her transferred Tac Center with a transparent wall. Yep, Katsu-san could make Smart MetalTM clear as glass!
Kris missed him already, but Katsu said he had trained the Wasp’s ship maintainers as well as he could. He wanted to get back to Musashi and his job at Mitsubishi Heavy Space Industry; his head was already full of ideas for making the next class of ships even better. Thus buzzing with new ideas, he joined the IMS Sakura for the long voyage back to human space.
Kris hated the idea that the Wasp was all by itself clear on the other side of the galaxy. Still, there was no question folks back home needed to know that the sacrifice of their Fleet of Discovery had saved the world they fought for. Even more, the strange planet they laid down their lives for had provided a home to a desperate group of humans. Now, eighty years later, it sheltered a growing human colony.
That colony was led by the former wife of King Raymond of United Society (or United Societies depending on how you thought the new constitution should be interpreted). Problem was, she had buried two husbands in the last eighty years on Alwa and was now mother to seven, grandmother to thirty-four, and great-grandmother to at least 123. That number was subject to change . . . often.
Kris herself was included among the great-grandchildren and had spent a full week meeting a big chunk of half uncles, aunts, and cousins. Still, to one and all of the humans on Alwa, related or not, the former commodore was Granny Rita.
Surprises on top of surprises. Kris could only wonder how the news carried by the IMS Sakura would be received.
But for now, she had no time for Longknife family matters; a huge alien mother ship loomed larger and larger on their screens. Now the Alwans seemed mesmerized by its promise of death. They huddled before the screen, eyes locked on it, only occasionally whispering something low.
“This isn’t good,” Granny Rita whispered to Kris. “Once or twice, I’ve seen one group of them resort to confrontation to settle differences. When one side is fully intimidated by the others’ show of force, the weaker side just hunkers down and surrenders. These folks don’t fight. If you can strut yourself a good enough show, you win.”
“Can you get across to them that a couple of human ships smaller than this one chewed that monster up pretty good and only spit out this much?” Kris said.
Granny shrugged. “They’ve walked this ship. They know its measure. That . . . ?”
“Maybe we should have shown them the two Hellburners we have amidships?” Jack said. He was her chief of security, skipper of a rump battalion of Marines composed of a reinforced Wardhaven Marine company and a borrowed, and equally reinforced, Musashi Marine company.
For all too brief a time, they’d managed to be lovers.
At the time, they were fugitives and Jack not in Kris’s chain of command.
Now Kris was back on the new Wasp and Jack was keeping her safe and both of them were keeping doors open whenever it was just the two of them alone.
Simply put, Navy regs on fraternization sucked bilgewater . . . through a straw. But Kris and Jack wore the uniform and followed the regulations.
Kris shook her head. “The Hellfire missiles look pretty tiny.” Though the few cubic millimeters of neutron-star material weighed fifteen thousand tons, it was hard for anyone who hadn’t seen them in action to believe how destructive they were.