26
The Fearless came in only a short time after the Wasp. She had visited nine systems. All of them were full of profound scientific data but not a scrap of life that her crew could spot. Also, as best they could tell, no life had visited the systems since the Three aliens first installed, built, or hatched the jump points into them.
The good news was that this allowed Captain Drago to throw a Smart MetalTM yard over to the other corvette and put a spin on the two ships. By the time Vicky arrived, the Wasp had a good half gee of imitation gravity to offer people’s stomachs.
“You’re alone,” Kris observed with a raised eyebrow, as Vicky exited the admiral’s barge. “No admiral?”
“He’s not talking to you. I hope that doesn’t break your heart. I told him I was coming over to the Wasp. He grumbled something about ‘don’t get killed,’ and went back to whatever he was doing. I’ve noticed lately that he keeps his distance from me. You know, I don’t think he wants to be around when I get blown up.”
“How rude of him,” Kris said. “Though I’ve also noticed that it takes a real friend to hang close with me.”
“I like to think that my work helps in that area, Princess,” Chief Beni said.
“No doubt,” both Kris and Vicky said in the same breath. That gave the two young women a chance to share a laugh. A Greenfeld Navy lieutenant and a Marine sergeant followed Vicky off the barge. Between them, they lugged a large footlocker. Vicky introduced them to Chief Beni.
Before the three technical experts headed off on their own, Kris felt she should explain the rules. “The chief here will help you with your own equipment. After you get it working, he may give you suggestions on how to get the most out of it. Fine-tune it. He may also share some of the software workarounds that he’s developed. What I will not let him do is share any Wardhaven technology that you don’t have.”
“Do you have to keep that last restriction?” Vicky asked. “We already know that mainstream Greenfeld technology has a ways to go to catch up with Wardhaven. We also know that some people back home have tech that’s just about as good as you have.”
“In some cases better,” Kris grumbled. “I know. I’ve had to dodge it.”
Kris worried her lip. “Vicky, my government has restrictions on tech transfer to Greenfeld.”
“After the report you just shared with us, you think two different human families should be building walls between them?” Vicky asked.
“No, I don’t,” Kris said. “But until your dad and my grampa agree to bury the hatchet someplace other than in each other’s skulls, I feel I have to live by those rules.”
“Let’s hope I can live by them, too.”
Kris sighed. “Okay. I’ll tell you what I’ll do. Chief, you go over the gear these folks have. Tell them what you can under the limits I’ve placed on you. Then, when you’re done, give me a call. We’ll talk then. That enough for you?” she asked Vicky.
“It’s a start,” the young woman agreed.
The technicians left.
“Now we head for the Forward Lounge to meet Ron the Iteeche.”
“I’m going to get to meet your Iteeche!”
“I keep telling you, he’s not my Iteeche. He’s very much the Emperor’s Iteeche. Oh, and his chooser’s.”
“Chooser?”
“Think of your dad, only worse.”
“That’s not possible.”
“Is it getting that bad?” Kris asked.
“It was getting pretty bad when I left. He’s really all googoo eyes over his new woman. And the baby boy. I figured things were going to get bad, even before the bombs started dogging my footsteps. Now I don’t know what to think.”
“Nelly, will you invite Ron to join us in the Forward Lounge? I’d like to introduce him to Vicky, ah, the Grand Duchess of the Greenfeld Empire, and we can talk about the report I sent him.”
“He says he will be honored to meet with you two, and yes, he wants to talk about your report,” Nelly said, formally.
“So I’m going to meet an Iteeche. In the flesh.”
“And he’s got a lot of it,” Kris said.
“Heavy?”
“Oh no. Actually, he’s rather good-looking, I think. But there’s eight feet of him and a whole lot of elbows and knees.”
“And you think he’s cute,” Vicky said, with a giggle. “Have you kissed him yet?”
“Do you think a Longknife would tell a Peterwald?” Kris snapped back. “Would you believe anything I told you?”
“No and no. So don’t tell me. I’ll have more fun making up stories.”
Kris threw her hands up in the air.
Ron was waiting for them outside the Forward Lounge. Kris did the introductions.
“Ron, this is the Grand Duchess Victoria of the Greenfeld Empire. She’s the daughter of Emperor Henry I. Vicky, this is Ron, an Imperial Representative, though I don’t think he’s carrying a full portfolio this trip out. Oh, and his full name goes on for half a mile, but he’s willing to let me call him Ron. And he calls me Kris.”
“I am happy to be on a first-name basis with Princess Kristine,” Ron said through his interpreting computer.
Vicky did a lovely curtsy, and said, “I’m honored to meet you. Call me Vicky, please.”
Ron offered each of the women an elbow, and they entered the lounge.
Vicky giggled. “I’ve never had a guy with so many elbows. This is neat.”
“I didn’t know that you humans had empires,” Ron said, quickly switching his four eyes from Kris to Vicky. “The last time I was in human space, there was no mention of such things except in the history books.”
“It was kind of my dad’s idea,” Vicky said. “When Kris’s great-grampa got officially recognized as a constitutional monarch, Dad decided to go him one up. Be a full power emperor. The old geezers in our families have had this thing for years. Kris and I are hoping to skip that foolishness in our generation. Who knows, maybe we will.”
“It would be nice,” Kris said.
Ron mulled that over for a moment. “I remember an article in one of the news magazines about how Kris saved your father. The reporter thought that was a very strange thing to do, considering all the stories about Peterwald’s attempting to have Kris killed.”
“None of those stories were ever proven,” Kris pointed out.
“There must have been something behind all of them. What is your saying? Where there is smoke, there must be fire.”
“All that didn’t matter. At the time of the attempt on her dad’s life, it seemed like a good idea that those trying to kill him not succeed.”
“Fortunately for my dad, Kris was there. So, what brings you here? I saw the video of your meeting with King Raymond. Was that all true? Are you losing ships?”
Ron glanced down at Kris, and the color of his residual gill slits did not show happy. “I thought that meeting was private. Not to be recorded. The way your king ushered everyone out of the room. I heard him say there should be no recordings. I testified so to my Emperor. Did you make my word false, Kris Longknife?”
“It wasn’t me,” Kris said. With Nelly laughing in the back of her skull, she went on. “I mean, my king did order that no recordings be made. And you yourself saw how the room emptied out. It turned out that our chief spy didn’t follow my grampa’s orders very well. He made copies of his recording and sent it around to I don’t know how many governments. The fleet you see around us is the result of that leak.”
Ron halted beside an empty table in the front of the lounge. Two of the bar folks brought one of the things he could sit on, and they settled down before Ron went on.
“You humans are very strange. Your chooser could not or would not order a scout force out, even though he is king. Yet his subordinate violates his orders and because of that, a search fleet goes out. Very strange behavior.”
“You’ve got to give Kris credit for the scout fleet,” Vicky said. “The battleships showed up to go where she went. If Kris hadn’t insisted her next mission was to do some snooping around the far end of the galaxy, I don’t think anything would have happened. Really, Kris, do you?”
Kris shrugged. “I made up my mind that I was going out here once we cured the pirate problem out beyond the rim of your empire, Vicky. All the rest just kind of followed after me like a speckled giraffe on wheels that I had when I was a little kid.”
“Though it took a lot more pull,” Vicky said, grinning.
“I didn’t pull anything. I went. They followed. Kind of like you Ron. I didn’t do anything to have you here, but here you are.”
“I think my chooser and the Emperor did not want me at the court. No one wanted to talk to me, but the drift of the current was clear. People were talking about me a lot.”
“Boy, we girls can really relate to that,” Vicky said, with just the hint of a giggle.
“So, can we talk about what you found?” Ron asked.
Kris nodded. “I don’t have a lot to add to it. What’s in my report is pretty grim. What I wrote was just an effort to document what I saw on the ground.”
“Will I be allowed to take some of the bodies back to the Empire?” Ron asked.
“I’ll let you take a complete set of bodies from the ship that attacked us,” Kris said. “If you want, you can have a complete exoskeleton from the murdered planet.”
“What about the other skeletons you found? Our scientists will want to make their own determination about who those people are.”
“That’s a problem. There are only three of them. We’ve already found DNA in the pulp of some teeth. If you have the technology to identify DNA, I guess we could probably spare a few teeth for your Empire.”
“Yes, we can do the thing that makes the DNA tell its story,” the Iteeche said. “A tooth from each of the bodies would be a generous gift.”
“I imagine all the other governments who sent representatives to the Fleet of Discovery will also want teeth,” Kris said.
On the screen, a star lit up.
“There goes the Mercury,” Nelly told them. “It has Kris’s report and some of the artifacts from the planet, including teeth.”
“Whoever those poor murdered girls were,” Kris said, “they’re going to end up with their teeth scattered all across the galaxy.”
“They may be murdered souls, Kris,” Nelly said, “but they were murdering souls as well.”
“Too true,” Kris agreed.
“Kris, the Hornet just jumped into the system,” Nelly reported. “Phil Taussig has an urgent message for you.”
“Put him on.”
“Commodore, we have a problem,” Phil Taussig started without preamble. “I have seen the bug-eyed monsters, and they are even more huge than we feared.”