Defender

18

The ride down had its own surprise. Grampa Ray arranged to have the aisle seat with Kris seated inboard of him. Crossie and Jack were across the aisle from them. Kris would have preferred to have these two dangerous old guys together and Jack next to her.

Halfway down, she found out why.

The king leaned over and shouted over the roar of reentry in her ear, “Kid, I hope you won’t mind, but in addition to Commander, Alwa Defense Sector, I’m naming you Vicereine and Governor General for the Alwa System.”

NELLY, RESEARCH AND BE QUICK ABOUT IT.

VICEREINE IS THE FEMININE OF VICEROY. ENGLAND RULED INDIA FOR SEVERAL HUNDRED YEARS WITH A VICEROY AND GOVERNOR GENERAL. MOST OF THAT TIME THERE WAS VERY LITTLE LOCAL PARTICIPATION IN THE GOVERNMENT BY THE PEOPLE OF INDIA.

THANKS, NELLY.

The roar was still pretty high, but lessening. Kris leaned over and shouted back. “You name me Viceroy, or you can forget the whole thing. And no way will I accept the appointment of Governor General. While it might help me ride herd on those vultures in orbit, the colonials have their own government, thank you very much, and there is no way I’ll take responsibility for the Alwans. Herding cats would be easier than getting them to do anything they don’t volunteer for.” Kris had said her fill, but added, “Respectfully, Your Royal Majesty.”

The king laughed. The high gees were slipping away toward something normal as he reached across to Crossie and held his hand out. The black-hearted security honcho reached in the pocket of his own blues and, drawing out a bill, handed it to the king.

As the king pocketed it, Kris got a look. The king had won a thousand-dollar bet!

Kris very much doubted it was for the vicereine part.

“What’s a viceroy do?” Kris asked, as the noise got low enough to allow normal conversation.

“Stand in for the king and other odds and ends.” The king paused. “I’ve seen a draft commission for you, Kris. Skipping the vicereine crap and the governor-general stuff, I think the big thing is that it empowers you to open negotiations with the bastards and sign draft peace treaties for submission to the U.S. Senate.”

“Peace Treaties?” Kris said to the king. “Aren’t you a bit optimistic?”

“If no one has the authority, then no one can,” he shot back.

Kris chewed on what the king and Nelly had said for a long minute. “Hold it, Grampa King Ray. You’re king over one hundred seventy-three planets. The constitution requires that every one of those planets have a single government in order to apply for membership. The Alwans are nowhere close to a single government, and I doubt the colonials would be all that interested in joining what the Alwans glued together. You can’t be king of Alwa, and if you aren’t king, this place can’t have a viceroy.”

“How many times have I heard that?” The king sighed. “But those fool loudmouths in Congress did agree to something new. The colonials can apply for associated membership in the U.S. Alwa is that important to us. And if they apply for associated membership, they can vote you in as viceroy. You and only you, I might add.”

“You’re telling me I have to run for election by an association I have to first persuade them to form!”

“You’re Billy Longknife’s bratty daughter. You’ve been hustling voters since before you started school. I don’t see a problem,” the king said with a huge grin.

“I ran away and joined the Navy to get out of politics!”

“Your sins will always find you out, my child.”

“Especially if my grampa leaves bread crumbs to help them,” Kris said, making a face.

The king really enjoyed a laugh at that one.

The longboat landed, but then had to thread its way carefully. Every pulling or sailing boat the colonials had was out on the lake waving flags of every color imaginable. A handful of banners were also up saying WELCOME and HOWDY.

They moored at the long pier. Ada was waiting.

Normally, the military has seniors exit a vehicle first. The king stood, taking up a major hunk of the aisle, and said, “You and Jack go first. You know these people. I’ll settle the order of my folks after you two.”

Kris led the exit, with Jack at her side. She found herself greeted with cries of joy from colonials she now recognized. She let them cheer for a bit, then raised her hand for silence.

Surprise of surprise, she got it.

“May I present to you, His Royal Majesty, Conqueror of the Iteeches, King Raymond I of the United Society.”

The cheering got even louder as Ray exited the shuttle, waving like an experienced legend. The cheering went on for quite a while before he also raised both hands. It took longer for them to quiet down.

“Thank you for your welcome,” he shouted into the final cheers. “I am glad to have a chance to reestablish friendship and relations with our long-lost shipmates and their children and grandchildren. I am delighted to see how you have prospered in adversity and persevered in the face of fearful odds.”

Now the crowd totally lost it. In the following uproar, Ada stepped forward, introduced herself to the king as the Chief of Ministries for the Colonial government, and invited him to come with her to Government House.

She gave Kris a wink before she led the king toward the jitney that hadn’t gotten any larger than before. Kris and Jack used the warning to settle themselves in the second row, behind the driver, who turned out to be Ada. The king settled into the passenger seat and his staff members, now exiting the shuttle, found themselves scrambling for seats. Penny got onto the last row, facing backward and explaining to a commander that she was on the princess’s staff and needed to be where Kris was. Besides, a second jitney was waiting.

There were two more jitneys at the end of the pier, along with several wagons with seats pulled by those huge beasts. Kris would have loved to wait and see who chose to walk rather than be pulled along by one of them.

The crowd made way for the jitney with the king on it. The Royal U.S. Marines formed up and route-marched behind them off the pier before falling into step. It was quite a show.

A show that was missing someone.

“Where’s Rita?” Kris caught as Ray leaned over to softly ask Ada.

“She’s waiting for you at Government House. All this shouting and excitement wouldn’t have been good for her.”

Shouting and excitement? Granny Rita would lap it up. But Kris kept on her game face and prepared to let it all play out.

The streets between the pier and Government House were lined with cheering people. The king got to do his royal thing, waving, waving, waving. Kris knew how much he didn’t care for this part of his job. She kind of pitied him.

She was also none too sure this was the proper lead-up to his meeting Rita.

They finally pulled into the round driveway of Government House. The trees shaded the drive, providing cool for a day that had become hot. The king’s gold-encrusted blues were showing sweat, and he seemed to breathe easier out of the sun.

Then he saw Rita, and his face went in all kinds of directions at once.

Rita was there, front and center on the veranda of Government House.

She sat smiling and waving . . . from a wheelchair!

Kris had a good view of the king’s face. She tried to catalog the feelings that chased themselves across it. Some managed to stop and homestead for a moment or two.

Ray was delighted and terrified at the same time. He looked worried, concerned, determined, and dismayed. Kris wondered if a normal man could have done this, or if she was once again seeing something only a legend of Ray’s stature could manage.

Ray leapt from the jitney before it came to a stop, not that it ever had been going that fast. “Honey, what’s wrong?” he asked, coming to kneel on the step below his long-ago wife.

“Nothing, Raymond, really nothing. I’m not as young and spry as you are and I got a bit carried away yesterday getting all this stuff ready for you and it seems I twisted my back. Those pills Kris gave me are making me feel great. I’m just not as great as I feel. Anyway, I think I could handle myself fine with a cane,” she said, brandishing a lovely wooden one, “but my bossy kids have got me in this thing, and my grandkid can’t wait to push me around in it.”

A teenager standing behind Granny Rita grinned, and said, “Vroom, vroom,” which did not encourage Kris to trust his driving.

Rita pulled Ray off his knees. “Come, come, most of the old surviving crew want to see you, and there are lots and lots of kids and grandkids. Do you know there’s a Raymond Longknife Junior family here on Alwa?”

If possible, the legendary Ray Longknife looked poleaxed. “No.”

“Remember that last good-bye, how we fought and made up, then fought and made up some more?”

The king nodded.

“Well, I’d been here about a month and started upchucking my toenails.”

“But all the women in the fleet were protected. You wrote the policy yourself.”

“Yep, best birth control on the market. Ninety-six-percent effective. But you were one hundred percent, my Raymond.”

“Good heavens, Rita, you didn’t have to fight for the survival of your crew while going through all that. I know pregnancies are hard on you.”

“Raymond, you keep forgetting. It wasn’t just the Furious’s crew, but also the Enterprise. If we hadn’t salvaged her ice armor for reaction mass, right now we’d be a lot of frozen bodies flying around the galaxy at very high speed. Also, building a colony was a lot easier with two thousand hands rather than just a thousand.”

The conversation might have gone longer, but Ada signaled the teenage motor, and the wheelchair turned and headed in the doors of Government House. The large foyer had been expanded by opening all the doors so that people in several huge halls could flow in and out of the central area.

Somehow, a receiving line got set up. If Kris had thought she had it bad meeting half of Granny Rita’s family, this was nothing to the mob scene of old codgers being wheeled in by their old kids or younger grandkids to see the man they’d fought for so many years ago.

Despite several attempts to detach herself from the king, Kris got nailed to his elbow, and every time Ada passed someone to Kris, it was with, “and here’s Her Royal Highness, Kristine Longknife, whom King Raymond has appointed our viceroy.”

Kris had tried to get a few disputing words in edgewise, but Ada wouldn’t listen. It seemed that the idea of their having a permanent representative of the faraway king was catching like wildfire.

It also appeared that the king had somehow managed to skip a few details about Kris’s appointment as viceroy. All the colonials flowing by seemed to think that a viceroy was a warm and fuzzy thing and just what they needed for the winter that was coming.

Kris smiled and shook hands and left tomorrow’s evil to tomorrow.

Kris smiled and shook hands until her face hurt and her arm was screaming in pain.

Kris kept smiling and kept shaking hands, but she couldn’t help but throw Jack a questioning glance. Where was a security chief when she was clearly at risk of bodily harm, as in her face falling off and her arm crippled for life?

Jack’s return look was pure helplessness.

Then Granny Rita, of course, saved the day. In a voice that could still echo through a huge hall, she announced, “Folks, it’s been a month of Sundays since I’ve had a chance to say a few words to my Raymond here. So, if you folks would be so kind, I’d like to duck out early on this shindig and find a place we can sit and talk.”

A wave of assent moved through the gathering. Granny gave Kris the high sign. Kris replaced the speed-demon teenager at the handles of Granny’s wheelchair.

“Out the front door. There’s a handicap incline to the left. It will get us down near the path you should remember fondly.”

Kris followed directions. King Raymond followed, with Jack at his elbow. The king waved off most of his staff, but he couldn’t wave off his Marine platoon. They followed him with full intent and purpose.

At the bottom of the incline, Kris found herself facing a dirt path and wondering how the wheelchair would take to its uneven surface. Granny Rita settled that. “Stop, child. I’m getting out of this contraption.”

And she did. The cane gave her a help up, and she hobbled down the path, leaning a bit more on the cane than Kris liked. Apparently, the wheelchair had not been a ruse.

“Honey,” the king said, “we brought a rejuvenation clinic. It’s not big, but it’s on Canopus Station a couple of thousand klicks above your head.”

“Raymond, I’ve already had two shuttle rides between here and the Wasp in a whole lot lower orbit than that. Talk to your kid there. She’s the one that won’t let me on a shuttle again. No shuttle-assisted suicide, right, honey?”

“Yes,” Kris said firmly.

“Besides, look at all those old codgers that just came out to shake your hand. How many of them do you think could survive a shuttle launch?”

The king acknowledged the obvious with a grimace. “I guess we can pack the clinic up and bring it down here. There are plenty of drugs that would help your old shipmates. Assuming you don’t insist on doing cartwheels when you hear I’m coming.”

“It wasn’t cartwheels I was doing, buddy boy. I gave up cartwheels years ago, after my fourth or fifth child.”

“The two kids we had, the third you had on this side, and . . . ?”

“Six I had with my two husbands on this side, God rest their souls.”

“I guess children were essential to the survival of the colony,” the king muttered, not at all happily.

“Raymond, don’t go giving me that survival excuse. You know our marriage was over before I took that suicide mission.”

“I still loved you. I didn’t want you to take the mission. That was what we were arguing about.”

Kris found herself in the middle of an argument she suspected had begun long before she was born. She stopped to let the two of them walk ahead. Get some distance. Get some privacy.

And was promptly rear-ended by a Marine captain and his guard platoon.

Kris and Jack turned to face the captain. The heated words were getting more distant but still all too clear. Kris mouthed, “Back off.”

The captain clearly had orders not to do that. Faced with Kris and Jack forming a block, he let his troops come to an unordered halt behind him.

Kris turned back to her two great-grandparents. Now they were shouting, and Granny was waving her hands and occasionally the cane as well. Kris took a few small steps forward. Steps more appropriate for a child’s game than a military formation.

The two elders were coming up on the stone bench Kris and Granny Rita had shared. No surprise, the two of them settled on it but as far apart as they could. While they shouted and gesticulated, Jack had a talk with the guard captain. He deployed his men and women in a crescent, troops alternating facing back and facing front, looking for anything that might threaten their king.

“What do I do if she tries to kill him?” the poor captain whispered to Jack.

“I don’t think she’s strong enough with that cane,” Kris said, but kept her eyes front. If things did get physical between them, it seemed a princess’s job to be there first.

AND HER SECURITY CHIEF, SECOND, Jack said on Nelly Net.

DO YOU WANT TO KNOW WHAT THEY’RE SAYING? Nelly asked.

NO, Kris said, then reconsidered that absolute rule. IF HE STARTS TALKING ABOUT MAKING ME GOVERNOR GENERAL OF THIS MADHOUSE, LET ME KNOW.

WAS THAT WHAT THE BET WAS? Jack said.

YEP. IT’S NOT BAD ENOUGH DROPPING THE WHOLE DEFENSIVE PROBLEM OF THIS OUTPOST, OR TO ADD VICEROY, BUT HE SEEMS TO THINK I SHOULD HAVE EXECUTIVE AUTHORITY OVER THIS HERD OF CATS.

AND YOU WERE WISE ENOUGH TO TURN HIM DOWN.

RIGHT, BUT WHEN HAVE YOU EVER KNOWN MY GRAMPAS TO UNDERSTAND THE MEANING OF A SIMPLE WORD LIKE “NO”?

Jack didn’t feel compelled to answer so obvious a question.

The rage between the two titans seemed to be winding down.

THEY’RE DEBATING WHO GETS TO USE THE REJUVENATION CLINIC FIRST. HE’S INSISTING SHE IS FIRST IN LINE. SHE’S INSISTING IT BE DONE BY LOTTERY. HE SAID HE DIDN’T BRING THE CLINIC FOR ANY TOM, DICK, OR HARRIET, BUT FOR HER. OOPS, THEY’RE BACK TO THEIR BASIC ARGUMENT. SHE THINKS HE CARES NOTHING FOR REGULAR PEOPLE. IF THEY DON’T HAVE POWER, THEY’RE INVISIBLE TO HIM.

TOO MUCH INFORMATION, NELLY, Kris said.

SORRY. IT’S NOT EASY TO FIGURE OUT WHAT IS GERMANE TO GENERAL OPERATIONS AND JUST TO THEM. OH, SHE JUST ASKED WHAT A VICEROY IS AND HE TOLD HER IT’S NOTHING. YOU ALREADY REFUSED THE REAL HEART OF THE APPOINTMENT, BECOMING GOVERNOR GENERAL OF THE WHOLE SYSTEM. SHE’S GLAD YOU DID. HE SAYS IT’S GOING TO MAKE A MESS, YOUR NOT HAVING TOTAL CONTROL. I’LL SKIP WHAT FOLLOWS, IT’S MORE OF HER TELLING HIM HE’S BOSSY. WELL, YOU’D NEVER GET ANYTHING DONE. OH YEAH, LOOK AT MY COLONY.

KRIS, THESE TWO PEOPLE ARE A HUNDRED YEARS OLD OR MORE, BUT I HEARD MORE COGENT ARGUMENTS IN THE SANDBOX WHEN YOU WERE IN THE FIRST GRADE.

WE MAY GROW OLDER, NELLY, BUT WE DON’T AUTOMATICALLY LEARN BETTER WAYS OF ARGUING OVER THINGS THAT REALLY GET OUR EMOTIONS IN A WRINGER.

Nelly thought on that for a long time, for a computer. MAYBE WE CAN HELP YOU FIND BETTER WAYS TO RESOLVE YOUR DIFFERENCES.

ANY HELP WOULD PROBABLY BE GREATLY RESISTED, Jack said.

PARDON ME.

NELLY, Kris said, THE PROBLEM WITH RESOLVING CONFLICT ISN’T ALWAYS THE HOW WE DO IT. LOOK AT THOSE TWO. THEY ARE AS DIFFERENT AS TWO PEOPLE CAN GET. IT’S NOT THE WAY THEY ARGUE BUT THE HUGE DISTANCE BETWEEN THEM. HOW DO YOU SETTLE THAT? WHO WOULD YOU HAVE GO FIRST FOR REJUVENATION?

THE ONE WHO NEEDED IT THE MOST AND WOULD BENEFIT THE MOST, Nelly said simply.

BUT RAY HAS BEEN CARRYING A TORCH FOR RITA FOR EIGHTY YEARS. THEIR UNRESOLVED ISSUES HAVE BECOME A BASIC PILLAR OF HIS LIFE. HOW WOULD YOU TELL HIM THAT HE SHOULD RISK HER NOT GETTING REJUVENATED BEFORE HE LOSES HER?

The fight was coming to an end only because the two of them were too exhausted to continue. Granny Rita looked as bad as she had when Kris first saw her in the shuttle bay and rushed her to sick bay.

“Captain,” Kris snapped. “Send a runner to Ada. Ask her to get a medical team here stat. Send another runner to get that wheelchair we left behind.”

“Aye, aye, ma’am,” the Marine officer said, and obeyed.

NELLY, GET CAPTAIN DRAGO.

DRAGO HERE.

GRANNY RITA IS HAVING A CRISIS. HOW SOON CAN YOU LAUNCH A BOAT DOWN WITH THE DUTY DOCTOR?

TEN MINUTES. IT WILL TAKE THIRTY MINUTES TO LAND.

GET YOUR DOC MOVING. ALSO, THAT REJUVENATION CLINIC, GET THEM ON THE HORN AND FIND OUT IF THEY HAVE A STANDBY GERIATRIC SPECIALIST.

WAIT ONE, didn’t take anywhere close to a minute. THEY HAVE A FULL CRITICAL INTERVENTION TEAM ON ALERT. THEY WERE SURPRISED IT WASN’T THE KING. THEY PROMISE TO BE HERE IN FIVE MINUTES.

THANKS, CAPTAIN.

ANYTIME, YOUR ROYAL HIGHNESS, VICEREINE OF ALWA AND GOVERNOR GENERAL.

FIRST, I’M VICEROY AND THERE’S NO WAY THEY’RE MAKING ME GOVERNOR GENERAL. YOU CAN TELL ANYONE WHO SAYS DIFFERENT YOU GOT IT DIRECT FROM THE PRINCESS HERSELF.

EMERGENCY GERIATRIC INTERVENTION TEAM JUST CROSSED THE QUARTERDECK. ALL SIX OF THEM WERE PUSHING CARTS. THEY’LL BE DOWN THERE ASAP.