Furious

23

The cottage turned out to be a little place. A very little place.

The one small bedroom was given over to the general, both because of his seniority, and the report that he snored. A painfully accurate report as it turned out.

That left Kris, Penny, Jack, and the colonel sharing the living room/kitchen. Clearly, the cottage was intended for a couple. A young couple with no kids.

Kris left the two couches to the colonel and Penny. She and Jack settled down with a few blankets on the floor before a pretend fireplace. It offered little heat against the night cold and a flickering light that a blind person might mistake for a fireplace’s cheery glow.

Kris didn’t care.

“I’ve missed you,” she whispered to Jack as she got close to him under the blanket. A rather lengthy stay in the bathroom had shed her disguise. She had not shed her spider-silk armor. While she might want Jack close, she had to make sure the world kept its distance with things like bullets, explosives, and other nasty stuff.

“I’ve missed you, too,” Jack answered.

The dialogue seemed a bit trite to Kris, but it said what she felt. Likely a lot of people had felt what she felt and found no better way to express it.

“Penny said you made quite a fuss when they took me away.”

“Worse fool me,” Jack said with a scowl that seemed almost satanic in the faux firelight. “The thought of you without security drove me up the wall. I tried everything I could to follow you. Finally, they flat out told me I was not going to be stationed anywhere near you. That’s when I resigned.”

“That work any better for you than it did for me?” Kris said, snuggling closer.

“You tried to resign, too?”

“In front of King Ray and Field Marshal Mac and Crossie. That’s when they told me they wouldn’t let me and were dumping me in Siberia, or Madigan’s Rainbow, whichever was closer.”

“I got HellFrozeOver,” Jack said, with a shiver that Kris was only too glad to try curing by rubbing up against him. Which led to another kissing interruption.

A bit later, Kris came up for air, and a question. “So how’d you get here?”

“You’ve got to thank your grampa Al.”

Kris raised an eyebrow. “I can’t picture him doing me any favors. Not intentionally.”

“Well, his new cybersecurity system also extends to HellFrozeOver. All security types have to be retrained. I don’t know if anyone gave it any thought, but Hancock had no trouble bringing his deputy security chief along to Wardhaven for the training class.

“Strange.” Jack’s effort to look puzzled had a lot of grin in it. “We were scheduled for the first class but had to drop out. Colonel Hancock gave me thirty minutes to pack my bag and join him for the shuttle to Wardhaven for this class. What do you think of that?”

“I think that anyone who underestimates my gramma Ruth, Gramma Trouble to many, should know by now just how foolish that is.”

Jack’s fingers found a very nice place on Kris, and they settled back to enjoy it for a while, despite the spider-silk armor in the way.

Jack was the one who let the world interfere next. “Are you serious about trying to see your grampa Al and talk him out of whatever he’s up to?”

Kris raised a finger. “Yes, I want to see him.” Then she raised a second one. “Yes, I want to talk him out of whatever he thinks is a great idea.” Up came a third finger. “Because I’ve spent some time thinking about what that cockamamy idea might be, and I don’t see any good ones on tap.”

Kris paused for a moment to organize her thoughts. “Eden’s president says Grampa Ray is beating the drums to build a fleet that can face the alien raiders.”

“He is?” Jack interrupted. “It hasn’t hit the media. There’s been total silence. The story of what we did vanished from the news before they decided to scrap the Wasp, and that took less than seventy-two hours.”

“That long?”

“Three days. Day One we were crawling with newsies and cameras. By Day Three, there wasn’t one in sight. It was like someone turned off the switch.”

“Maybe someone did?” Kris whispered. “It would be interesting to know who. Anyway, the president of Eden told me that he was getting tired of King Ray talking about nothing but raising taxes for a new fleet. He may not be saying anything like that in public, but the word is out to those who matter.”

“Is it working?” Jack asked.

Kris shook her head. “Eden’s president sounds like he’d walk out on the U.S. rather than pay for a new Navy.”

“So if Grampa Ray is tacking in that direction,” Jack said, his fingers doing their best to distract Kris.

“Grampa Al must know about it and is pushing ahead with something quite different. If I know him, he’s all in a rush to open trade routes.”

Jack’s hand slapped his forehead, which, sadly, interrupted his distractions for Kris. “He’s not that stupid, is he?”

“I don’t know how he thinks he can open trade negotiations with monsters who shoot first and don’t talk later,” Kris said. Now it was her turn to shiver. “If Grampa Al sends out a fleet, it will be loaded to the gills with trade goods. It would be shot up, no questions asked, no quarters given. But will trading captains blow their reactors to destroy their nav computers as our battleships did?”

Somehow, Kris doubted that.

Jack shook his head. “No. If your Grampa Al sends a trade fleet, it will be shot to pieces, then those pieces would be combed through with eager anticipation. Those alien bastards will find all kinds of goodies they’d love to steal and easy directions on where to get them.”

Kris rolled over to stare at the fire. After a while, Jack started gently rubbing her back, working on the tension that knotted her spine.

The two of them stared into the faux fire silently for a long time. Kris found her head cradled in the crook of Jack’s arm. For the first time in her life, she drifted off to sleep in a man’s arms.