Kris Longknife: Tenacious (Kris Longknife novellas Book 12) Read Online Free PDF Page A

that,” Kris admitted. She’d wondered about it but asked no questions. “What about the new Smart Metal coming out of the foundries on the moon?”
    “Ah, yes,
that
metal,” the yard manager said. Kris did not like the sound of the way he said it.
    “Is there a problem with it that no one told me?”
    “No. No problem. Not actually, but some of us are worrying a bit about problems down the road. Right now we’re kind of pushing the safety margins to get that metal out of the mills. It’s not the same stuff that came from the foundries back in human space that was originally spun into the ships. Simply put, it doesn’t meet the standards that Mitsubishi Heavy Space Industry sets for the stuff.”
    “It’s better,” came from Nelly at Kris’s neck.
    “That’s what some folks think,” Benson said, with a hint of a shrug, “but it’s different. That may be good. It
could
be bad.”
    “So when you finish beating around the bush, what are you going to tell me?” Kris said, tiring rapidly of this conversation. She had not given up her honeymoon to dance around the barn with anyone.
    “No skipper wants to have a ship that’s half Mitsubishi standard and half local stuff,” the yard boss said. “Some are willing to fight a ship with the new stuff. Many of them won’t have a ship at all without this metal. The Smart Metal we had did pretty well in the fight. There were no apparent failures. Anyway, ten of the ships that were skinned the worst have been drained to refill the ships that suffered the least damage. That means we’ve got ten ships tied up to the pier with hulls and internal walls that are eggshell-thin.
    “Once we get metal from the moon, we’ll spin it into them and pull out the original stuff. With the basic structure and matrix already in place, the new metal should flow in quickly. It won’t take nearly the time to refill the ship that it took to spin it out. We’ll recover the original Smart Metal from the first nine and likely refill the tenth with it.”
    “How long will this take?” Kris asked.
    “That depends on how long it takes the mills to cough out the Smart Metal, which depends on how long it takes the raw materials to get back from the asteroid belt, which depends on when the miners get the mines producing.”
    “So you’re telling me that you haven’t the foggiest idea,” Kris said.
    “Not even a guess,” the now re-retired admiral admitted.
    “And if I was to take eight of the good ships off to visit the ancient home of the aliens?”
    “There wouldn’t be enough left here to spit at an alien scouting force.”
    “Thank you, Admiral. I find myself wondering why I’m here and not back lying on a beach enjoying the sun,” Kris said.
    “I ask myself that on a regular basis,” the old ship driver said with a smile and a nod as he went his own way.
    “Where’s Pipra Strongarm?” Kris asked Nelly.
    “Waiting for you in your day quarters on the
Wasp
. Captain Drago wants to see you, and so does Abby.”
    Officially, Abby was Kris’s maid who did her hair and made her look lovely for balls and other social events. In fact, Abby could shoot as well as any Marine and had saved Kris’s life too many times to count.
    Trying to school her face from an I’m-going-to-bite-your-head-off scowl to I’m-the-boss, tell-me-the-truth bland, Kris headed for her next set of meetings.

4
    Abby was in the passageway outside Kris’s quarters.
    “You want to see me?” Kris said, as she and Jack came to a halt in front of Kris’s erstwhile domestic.
    “It don’t seem to me that you’re going to need your hair done for any balls on this alien home planet. Anybody after your skin is going to be doing it with monster warships, not assassins. I could be wrong, but it looks to me like your latest promotion has kind of done me outta my job.”
    “I’ll never fire you,” Kris said, none too sure where this conversation was going. That was not an unusual state of affairs