Free Deserter by Mike Shepherd

confiscated. While the two glared at each other, Kris slipped the weapon in her pocket; Abby would show her a better hiding place later.
    They got to the elevator seventy-five minutes before the Turantic Pride was due to lock up. Seemed like plenty of time to spare . . . until Kris spotted two men in brown raincoats hustling toward her. “Your people?” she asked Jack.
    “My boss’s boss,” Jack answered, “and Grant, his boss.”
    Way too much officialdom for this to be good. Kris kept her pace up and course steady for the boarding gate. Behind her, the luggage’s electric motors complained.
    “Ma’am. Ma’am,” came breathless from behind Kris. At the gate, she paused to let them catch up while Abby took the trunks through. There seemed to be more trunks behind the maid than when they left Nuu House, but Kris was too busy to do a recount.
    “Princess Kristine, you can’t do this,” the more out-of-breath Senior Agent Grant insisted.
    Kris glanced around the elevator station wide-eyed. “It looks like I am. Why, yes, I think I am. Abby, any problems?”
    “None at all.”
    “Yes there is,” the not-Grant agent insisted. “Security, that bag needs rechecking.”
    The woman behind the check station took in the agent and the badge he waved at her, glanced at the trunk, then at Kris, then smiled. “I got the picture of its contents in storage, sir. The computer says it’s safe. My eyeball says it’s safe. It is safe, mister. Right, Lieutenant Longknife?”
    Kris smiled at the woman who’d cleared her through security every morning for the last three months. “You bet it is, Betty,” and followed her trunks through security.
    “Ms. Longknife, you must reconsider,” the Senior Agent said, following Kris through the checkpoint.
    Alarms went off.
    More uniformed people with automatic weapons than Kris thought the terminal could hold converged on their security station. Now both agents waved credentials, but that didn’t slow down the fast-approaching, heavily armed horde.
    Kris flashed a smile at Betty. “The young one’s with me. He’s carrying and has all the permits you could dream of.”
    Betty took a close look at Jack’s papers, pushed a button, and motioned him to walk slowly through the detector. She whistled as she took in her monitor. “Man, is he carrying. Lieutenant, if I was you, I’d stay on the nice side of that one.”
    “Sometimes she actually does,” Jack said.
    The other agents finished resolving their failure to announce their armed status beforehand. As the small army backpedaled toward their stations, the Senior Agent turned again to Kris. “Ms. Longknife, you must not do this.”
    Kris kept walking. “You might consider getting to know me better before you start giving me orders,” Kris said, twisting the conversation in a misdirection. “You may call me Lieutenant. You may address me as Princess. I am not a ms. ”
    “I’m sorry,” one said. “Yes, Lieutenant,” the other agreed. “We aren’t ready.” “We don’t have a security team for you,” they said, stumbling over each other verbally. “We need more time!” they both got out together.
    “There isn’t more time,” Kris said, stopping at the door of the ferry to let Abby and the trunks precede her on board. Kris suppressed a frown as she again came up high in her trunk count, but the pause put Jack at her elbow as her noisy problems once more approached.
    “Then we won’t let Jack go without backup,” the Senior Agent said, playing his ace.
    “Fine. I’m twenty-two years old and a serving naval officer. I am of age to decline your protection. Nelly, register my declination.”
    “You wouldn’t dare,” Grant gasped.
    “She’d dare, Grant,” Jack said. “She dares a lot.”
    “Because you’ve never built the proper relationship of authority,” Grant snapped back.
    “I suspect no one in authority has ever developed a proper relationship with me.” Kris smiled through teeth.
    “You could