“I hear it wasn’t much of a funeral,” Kris said dryly. “So, we still don’t know anything.”
“Sadly, that is all too true.”
“Kris,” Nelly said, “have you ever thought of asking Vicky Peterwald?”
“I was hoping to put that off until I had to meet her,” Kris said.
“You may not be able to put it off much longer,” Nelly said. “I just got a message that she’s arriving at St. Pete next week, and she’d like to see you there.”
Kris rolled her eyes at the ceiling. “I thought I had every problem I could have. Nelly, you’ve just added another. Have Abby compose a note responding in the affirmative to Vicky’s message and have her ask Vicky for any information about the local pirate activities hereabouts. Tell her I’ve come up blank.
“And tell Abby she can give Vicky a full report on everything I’ve been doing since I arrived here. No need to hold anything back.”
“I’m doing it, Kris.”
“Kris, I’m supposed to get my time,” Penny said, not moving from the couch.
“It’s not already bad enough?”
“We have worse problems here on Kaskatos.”
“It can get worse?”
“The cops, Kris.”
“Solve it.”
“Do you really mean that?” Penny asked.
“I don’t know. Your dad is a cop. You’re the closest thing I have to a cop on staff. Is this planet in such bad shape that you can’t patch it back together in a week or two?”
“Try ten or twenty years.”
Kris eyed her subordinate, but it was clear she was not joking. “You have my attention. Talk to me.”
“I take it that you know how simple the local judicial system is?”
“Judge Francine filled me in. We don’t have any problems, so we don’t need no stinking solutions. Right?”
“Same with the cops. There’s a dozen that got bit by the police bug and learned the business from training tapes and stuff. Most are just well-meaning locals who put on a badge a couple of hours a week and show up for the odd juvenile high jinks or domestic disturbance. It’s a small-town attitude.”
“So they can go back to being a small town now that we’ve gotten rid of the wicked witch,” Kris said, hopefully.
“You ever hear that story about the first two people on Earth taking a bite out of an apple?”
“Yeah. I never like the way one of us girls took the fall for the guys.”
“Me neither, but Kaskatos has taken a bite out of one nasty apple and, Kris, I don’t think these folks can ever go back to the way it was.”
Kris sighed. “Enough with the stories, tell me what’s happening.”
“There are a lot of guns floating around now. Lots of them. Longtime locals don’t much care for the new kids on the block, but they’re outnumbered six or seven to one. The first three million new kids really don’t like the last arrivals. Not all of them were gunslingers for Jackie, but a lot of them are really bad apples. And now all three groups have guns and think they ought to be the police.”
“So suddenly these people need a real police department,” Kris said.
“Yes. Honest cops. Fair cops, but the original locals don’t have any idea how to form a police force. The new kids’ only experience with police is in the Peterwald police state. Not a good reference point. Kris, if Greenfeld State Security arrests you, everyone assumes you’re guilty of something. People that are arrested never come back. They don’t need prisons, just mass, unmarked graves.”
“That’s not good,” Kris said.
“But that’s the way things have been for the last hundred years. Keep your nose clean, don’t ask questions, and you can live to a nice old age. Get caught in the wrong place at the wrong time . . .” Penny shrugged.
Kris leaned back and stared out the window. Rolling hills were green with trees and crops. It looked like a lovely paradise. Maybe it had been . . . once. Maybe it could be . . . with a lot of work by the right kind of trained people.
“So,” Kris said, thinking out loud, “I need to call my brother, Honovi, and ask him to send a couple of thousand of Wardhaven’s experienced cops, judges, law professors, lawyers, and civil liberty advocates out this way. Am I missing anything?”
“Nope. Other than they’d better plan on spending the next couple of dozen years here.”
Kris pushed her chair back from her desk, leaned back, and studied the ceiling. “How do I explain all that to Vicky? No, sister, I’m really not taking over a planet in your sphere of influence. But yes, I’m shipping in a whole lot of civil-affairs experts to set up a full political and legal system that is anathema to you and your old man.”
“I believe the original idea was that we’d just deliver some famine biscuits and get the hell out of here,” Penny said.
“No good deed goes unpunished.” Kris sighed. She stood and walked over to stare out the window. Of late, she’d spent a lot of time staring out that window. Thinking about what she’d do once she was done chasing pirates.
There was a big hole in the star map several thousand light-years away. A big unknown space that had recently taken to eating starships. Kris wanted to explore that hungry void.
But whatever or whoever lurked in that space might very well eat her . . . and any of her friends she took on that voyage of exploration.
Kris turned back to Penny. “What if it was just you hanging around here for a year or so? You probably wouldn’t even be noticed. Haven’t you been talking to the Speaker of the City Council of Elders?”
“Yes,” Penny said. “He’s a nice guy, and he likes a lot of what I talk about, Kris. But just me?”
“I could leave you the colonel. Kaskatos needs a militia. I think I could trust Colonel Cortez to train a local self-defense force for this one little planet. And besides, he’s been begging to get off my staff . . . preferably before the next time we see Grampas Ray and Trouble.”
“He has that, and I admit that I’ve considered what I could do here all by myself, but, Kris, have you thought this through?”
Actually, Kris had thought this and a whole lot more through time and time again.
If Kris took the Wasp out into deep space to see what was chewing up Iteeche scouts and swallowing them whole, how many of her friends deserved to be dragged along to that potential death.
Kris wouldn’t really need Penny to go looking where she wasn’t wanted. Or the colonel. Or Abby and Cara. Chief Beni might come in handy.
What about Jack? That was a tough one.
Kris realized she was letting the silence stretch.
“Penny, you and Colonel Cortez look into what you can do here while I’m gone. I’ll go find out what bee Vicky has in her bonnet and see what she’ll let me do for the people running away from the Greenfeld Workers’ Paradise. We ought to have a better idea of our problem in a couple or three weeks.”
Kris put a hopeful look on her face.
It didn’t squelch the sour glare Penny shot her way.
15
A glance at the station above St. Petersburg told Kris all she needed to know about the political and economic disaster that had overtaken the Peterwald empire.
Four battleships and a half dozen cruisers were tied up at the station’s piers along with several destroyers and auxiliaries. Normally, such ships would be concentrated with their peers in a battle fleet. Now they occupied over half of the station’s docks, leaving little room for the freighters that carried the trade that was the economic lifeblood of planets.
Way too many of those freighters were strung out ahead and behind the station. Scores and scores of merchant ships drifted there in cheap storage, earning no money, moving no trade, and doing their best to incur no costs for their owners.