5
“I brought along three replenishment ships and a repair ship to accompany the four battlewagons,” Vicky said proudly, as Kris greeted her on the USS Wasp’s quarterdeck.
“I watched that parade the Fury led in,” Kris said. “Between the big guns and the big cargo capacity, you look ready for anything.”
“Her father, my Emperor, requires it,” said Vice Admiral Georg Krätz, commander of BatRon 12, all its supporting elements, and one Victoria Smythe-Peterwald, now a lieutenant in her father, the emperor’s, Navy.
“I think Dad was afraid I’d starve to death or run out of oxygen or maybe break a nail and not have a file,” Vicky said, dismissively.
“I think he’s more worried about why Iteeche scouts are not coming back at the end of their voyages,” the admiral said darkly, “and very much wants his daughter back after this voyage.”
Vicky gave him a sideways glance. “I wish I really believed that. I’m not at all sure his new wife wants me back. And her already preggers with a boy, not that she doesn’t mention that every five minutes.
“And it’s going to be a body birth. No auto-jug for my new brother. Dad is just always checking in on her. He has Brother’s heart monitor forwarded to his personal computer. Old men should not be fathers!” Vicky said in exasperation.
Kris had been delighted to have a younger brother. But then she’d been four and already being bossed around by a big brother. To her, Eddy looked like a chance for Kris to even up the bossing. Vicky’s experience of her big brother, now deceased thanks to Kris, had not been a topic for much conversation.
At fifteen, Kris had made the discovery that her family met most of the requirements for dysfunctional. Poor Vicky had only recently come to that conclusion.
From the sound of things, the Peterwalds were about to plumb new depths on the dysfunctional scale. In the back of Kris’s head, a small alarm went off. People died in the games Peterwalds played.
So how could Kris keep her distance?
Funny thing, people died around those damn Longknifes. Now it was Kris’s turn to watch her back around someone else.
“How’d your father take to us digging the dirt on the economic wool that’s being pulled over his eyes?”
Vicky snorted. “He didn’t. He didn’t believe me. Didn’t want to do anything about it. Didn’t want to hear another word about it. If you ask me, between my stepmom’s not liking the sight of me and Dad’s not wanting to hear about the way he’s being snookered on the economy, he’s glad to be rid of me.”
Kris shook her head. As much as she wanted to hear more about this, she said, “You’ll have to bring me up to date on all the gossip later.”
“You girls do that on your own time,” Admiral Krätz said, “but I have some official business to perform.” He pulled a flat box from his pocket.
The form of the box was familiar. They usually held a military decoration of some level, but Kris was more than surprised when he flipped the lid up.
A blue Maltese cross was surrounded by golden eagles. Kris would have mistaken it for finely crafted jewelry except for the words written on the decoration.
Pour le Mérite
“Dad, being emperor and all, decided he should start doing emperor stuff, like having a greatest and highest award. The Order of Merit. Or Mé-rite as he insists it be pronounced. Anyway, you’re the first to get it. That oak leaf at the top, that’s for valor. Only people who earn it in combat get the oak-leaf version.”
“What am I getting this for?” Kris asked. “Is there a citation to go with that?”
“Everyone else got a citation on parchment suitable for framing,” Vicky said. “Somehow you got skipped. You can decide whether it’s for surviving the admiral here lasing you from orbit on Port Royal, or liberating Kaskatos from our rogue state-security nut, or for saving Dad’s neck on Birridas. Your call.”
“Ah, no citation to read at my award ceremony, huh?”
“Award ceremony? What award ceremony?” the admiral said, looking around blandly. “You’ve got the medal. You can explain it the same way you do that Order of the Wounded Lion.”
“I don’t explain it,” Kris said sourly.
“Just so.”
Kris pocketed the award; one more thing to add to her growing collection of stuff she rarely wore because of the problem of explaining it all. It was time to get down to business.
“Admirals Channing and Kōta are already waiting in the Forward Lounge with their command teams. I see you brought yours.” Kris eyed the large collection of Greenfeld Navy and Marine officers who followed behind Vicky and the admiral as they went through the ceremony of crossing the Wasp’s quarterdeck.
Most looked familiar.
“You bringing everyone who was with you at Port Royal?” Kris asked.
“In truth, we have orders to make ourselves scarce,” the admiral said. “After the slaughter at Port Royal, there was never any doubt my battle squadron was to be exiled with you. While the Greenfeld Navy, er, I mean Imperial Navy is happy to have Port Royal as a Navy colony, no one wants me running into any stockholders of N. S. Holding Group. The only question was whether or not the young grand duchess here got to come along for the ride.”
“Dad took some persuading.”
“I can imagine. Grampa Ray is making noises like he doesn’t want me doing this either.”
“I thought your gramps considered you so totally expendable,” Vicky said.
“I sure did,” Kris agreed.
“One would think so after perusing your file,” the admiral said.
“Grampa Ray had me to dinner last night,” Kris said. “He spent half the meal trying to convince me that my different assignments had been intended for my development.”
“Development!” Vicky said. “Did he read the same file I did?”
“Selfsame,” Kris said. “The other half of the meal he tried to talk me out of leading this scouting mission.”
“Did he?” the admiral asked.
“Not bleeding likely,” Kris said.
They reached the Forward Lounge. A Marine guard held the door open for them, then closed it behind them.
“You’re keeping this meeting quite secure,” the admiral observed.
“Yes,” Kris said. “I didn’t invite Crossie. There will be no leaks from my meeting.”
“Did King Raymond’s Chief of Intelligence admit to being the source of the leaks?” the admiral asked.
“Yes, and no, and maybe. The man is pathologically incapable of telling the truth. At least Grampa Ray is no longer holding me responsible for the leaks.”
No one announced “Attention on Deck” when Admiral Krätz entered. The Forward Lounge already had two other admirals present. Adding complications to the etiquette challenge were the princess and grand duchess. A consensus had apparently formed that the Forward Lounge was a private restaurant, owned and operated by its own contractor, even if the containers were presently attached to the USS Wasp. When Kris introduced Krätz to Channing and Kōta, they all kept it informal although Kōta did give both Kris and Vicky a very stiff bow from the waist.
NELLY, DOES MUSASHI HAVE AN EMPEROR? I FORGOT.
YES AND NO, KRIS. MUSASHI PROFESSES TO OWE AFFECTION TO THE EMPEROR ON YAMATO. HOWEVER, FOR THE LAST TWO HUNDRED YEARS SINCE ITS FOUNDING, THEY HAVE KIND OF GROWN THEIR OWN EMPEROR. A PRINCE OF THE IMPERIAL BLOOD, THE EMPEROR’S KID BROTHER, STARTED OUT BEING A KIND OF VICEROY BUT AFTER TWO OR THREE GENERATIONS, THE BIRD IN THE HAND WAS A LOT MORE REVERED THAN THE BIRD FIFTY LIGHT-YEARS AWAY.
ISN’T THAT CONFUSING?
ONLY TO OUR WAY OF THINKING, KRIS. I UNDERSTAND THAT THE JAPANESE ARE MUCH BETTER THAN YOU AT HOLDING TWO CONTRADICTORY OPINIONS AT THE SAME TIME AND NOT BEING BOTHERED BY IT.
Kris did her best to not let her internal discussion with Nelly reach her face as she returned a half bow to the admiral. The highest introductions done, Kris glanced around the room. The captain, XO, and Marine detachment skipper for her ships held down the left-hand side of the room, closest to the bar, though that watering hole seemed decidedly unbusy tonight. The representatives from Musashi and Helvetica occupied the middle, while the Imperial Greenfeld contingent took up nearly half the room on the right.
“Let’s get started,” Kris said, and went to stand with her back to the forward viewing screen. In space, that usually showed a lovely view of stars. At the moment, all it showed was the ugly underside of a working space station.
“Admirals, ladies, and gentlemen, good afternoon,” Kris said. The room fell silent as all heads turned to her. Captain Jack Montoya, the skipper of the Wasp’s Marine detachment and chief of Kris’s security detail, came to stand a bit behind her and off to one side. Even here, on her ship, he didn’t relax the alertness he’d acquired as her Secret Service agent. Some might say his devotion was excessive.
Kris had survived enough assassination attempts to appreciate it.
In the silence, Kris continued, “I suspect we all know why we’re here. In order to make sure we all understand it the same way, I’d like to lead you through a short review.”
Kris turned to the screen behind her. From a view of pipes and cabling, it changed to a star map. “This is human space. Over seven hundred colonized planets stretching across several hundred light-years. Linked by jump points bequeathed to us by aliens who built them a couple of million years ago, our migration from Mother Earth has been relatively quick over the last not quite four hundred years.”
Kris paused for people to take in the view and her words. “You might notice that, from a certain outside perspective, human space looks very much like a sausage.” She waited to get a few nods and smiles, before adding dryly, “Only one species has tried to take a bite out of us, and they haven’t been heard from for eighty years.”
That got a few chuckles.
NELLY, EXPAND TO VIEW TWO.
“Which brings us to the Iteeche Empire.” Kris used a laser pointer to draw an oval around a much larger expanse of space that now showed. “Over two thousand worlds, but growing slower than us. They, too, kind of resemble a sausage, larger and lumpier. One of its ends kind of bumping up against the middle of us.”
Kris let the image of the Iteeche Empire, covering nearly four times the space of humanity, sink in to her audience.
“I can say, from personal experience, that we’ve been expanding human space away from the Empire.” NELLY, LIGHT UP RECENTLY COLONIZED PLANETS.
Quite a few planets on the edge of human space began to flash. None of them were close to the Empire.
“I can now say that I have it on good report that the Iteeche have taken the same approach.” NELLY, HIGHLIGHT THEIR RECENT COLONIES.
A large number of planets began to flash, not as many as those in human space, but still a major number. However, all of them were well away from human-occupied planets.
This brought a murmur from Kris’s watchers, but no one voiced the question that should have been on all their minds.
How did Kris know where the new Iteeche colonies were?
Well, Crossie had leaked them the original meeting’s video.
Kris waited for her audience to process that.
NELLY, VIEW THREE.
Slowly, the view of human and Iteeche space shrank as the star map expanded to a view of the entire Milky Way galaxy.
“Humbling, isn’t it?” Kris said, once the view settled. Human space and the related Iteeche area were two tiny eggs in a vast expanse of stars.
“We’ve got a big backyard. Unexplored. Unknown. The last time we went charging off into the unknown with wild abandon, we bumped heads with the Iteeche. I believe the Treaty of Wardhaven that my great-grandfather rammed through the Society of Humanity’s senate passed unanimously. Since that time, we’ve been more careful about sticking our noses into the unknown. I understand the Iteeche have gone about their exploration with a similar caution,” she added dryly.
Again, heads nodded. No one seemed to doubt she was humanity’s greatest living expert on the Iteeche.
She was. Still, it surprised her that no one demanded to examine her credentials.
“As some of you have heard, the Iteeche Exploration Bureau has suffered some losses lately. Three jump points to certain stars have been eating up any ships that drop in and not spitting up so much as an atom. Anything the Iteeche send there do not come back. We have been asked if our high technology might allow us to slip something in without drawing fire. Could one of our probes make it back?”
Her audience leaned forward. What she said next could easily have a life-or-death impact on them.
“I’ve refused to dangle our highest technology in the dark where it can be snapped up by unknown forces with us none the wiser as to what we face. So far, that has been adopted as Wardhaven, ah, excuse me, U.S. policy. If we’re going there, we’re taking the human eyeball along with us. Which brings us to the next options.
“I spent much of my dinner last night listening to King Raymond, Grampa to me, telling me in great detail why we should not duplicate the same search that the Iteeche have already done and lost a small squadron of ships while doing it. If Grampa had let me get a word in edgewise sooner, we could have saved a lot of time for some other topic to argue over.”
Kris went on quickly without waiting for a reaction.
“I do not propose this Fleet of Discovery go anywhere near those stars. They are hot datum for somebody, drawing attention to this edge of the galaxy, and I would just as soon not attract their interest any closer to my dad, brother, nieces, and nephews.
“Are we clear on that?” Kris said firmly.
“I’m glad to hear it,” Admiral Krätz said for all.
“You might not be so glad to hear what comes next,” Kris said, putting her hands on her hips. “I’ve already heard mention of the fear, even if it is said as a joke, that I or we will come back with something mean and ugly snapping at our heels.” Kris’s eyes roved the room. From the looks of things, most of them had heard, or made, the same crack.
“None of our ships return unless and until we are sure that there is nothing behind us but empty space.”
“How very Japanese of you,” Admiral Kōta said into the silence.
“So far, all you’ve told us is what we won’t do,” Admiral Channing said. “When do we find out what we will do?”
“Right now,” Kris said, turning back to the star map. “All of the Iteeche and just about all of humanity are hanging out here on this arm of the Milky Way. Humanity does have one exception. Santa Maria.”
Kris swung her laser pointer to a tiny light Nelly had blinking a third of the way around the galaxy. “Founded by the hopelessly lost and desperate crew of one of Earth’s first exploration ships nearly four hundred years ago, it hangs alone out here. There’s been some exploration around it, but the Santa Marians are still busy colonizing their own system. Few people looking for fertile ground want to start out with the long jump it takes to get to Santa Maria.”
Kris turned back to her listeners. “However, for a voyage of discovery, it looks like a great place to begin. Gentlemen, I hope your ship’s power plants and stabilization systems are in good shape. I intend to lead this fleet on some fast jumps with very high and very precise spins on our ships. If you don’t think you can do it, drop out now. I’d hate to lose your ship in a bad jump.”
If possible, the room fell even more silent.
Somewhere, someone broke it. “I told you we were crazy to follow one of those damn Longknifes.”
Kris let a wry chuckle sweep the room before going on.
“I would draw your attention to the U.S. contingent. PatRon 10. They are converted and armed merchant ships. Corvettes, folks. Small, fast, and loaded with sensors. They’re good at poking their noses into things and getting out fast.
“That, folks, is our mission. We will scout far, scout well, and run like bats out of hell. Our job is to see and report back. Nothing else.”
Kris paused to let that sink in. “I can’t help but notice that for some reason, you have brought battleships. I know it feels good to be backed up by muscle and they are good in a fight.”
That brought proud smiles from the battleship sailors among them.
“But you Big Boys are slow and very conspicuous. I do not intend to start or allow myself to get involved in a fight,” Kris snapped, and the smiles got swallowed.
“We are going out there to see, identify, and run back. You remember that old saying. ‘I came, I saw, I conquered.’ Forget it. Our goal is, We came, we saw, we ran like hell away.”
That got a laugh, which grew louder when some wag was heard to exclaim, “Who is this strange woman, and what have they done with Kris Longknife?”
Kris waited a moment for things to quiet down to a dull roar before saying, “Just so long as we understand ourselves.” Then she began to outline all the boring details that needed to be covered before they departed on their voyage of discovery.