Redoubtable

43

Around Kris, the Forward Lounge went silent.

Well, not totally quiet. Gunny Brown was on his feet, pointing at first one, then another group of Marines. Pointing at them, then pointing at the exit.

Marines stood, took a last pull from their beers, and headed for the door.

Beside Gunny, the Command Master Chief went through the same exercise. Under his stern visage, sailors moved out. Behind the bar, the guys and gals stopped fixing the next round, put their glasses down, and made for the door, too.

In less than a minute, the Lounge was clear of everyone below the rank of Marine captain or Navy lieutenant.

For a moment, Kris marveled at what she had just witnessed. Then she remembered. King Ray had asked Gunny Brown to protect the security and privacy of his meeting with the Iteeche.

When officers like Ray Longknife extract such promises from the likes of Gunny, they become the pledges by which folks live or for which good men and women die.

Kris took a moment to bathe in the warmth of that kind of loyalty . . . but only a moment. It cut both ways. Now she owed Gunny and his Marines something in return.

She glanced around the near-empty room. On the couch by the wall, Abby sat with a very subdued Cara. Kris should ask Cara to leave. However, to do that would mean that Abby would go with her. There was no way that a certain aunt would leave her niece alone at this time.

Kris was none too sure that Abby would not be running for the exit in a few minutes, but the erstwhile maid had earned her place at Kris’s side time and time again.

They could stay.

Penny had walked in while the others were leaving. A lone salmon breasting a river in flood to swim upstream would have had an easier time of it. She’d come without a shower or a change of clothes. Her underarmor padding was grimy and sweat stained from the day’s work. The Navy lieutenant had also earned her place in what was coming . . . even if Kris did pray that she’d head for the exit before they got too deep.

Colonel Cortez sat comfortably in his chair. The beer in front of him was untouched. His eyes roved the room, taking in everything, but his body was as unmoved as a carved Buddha. He was the newest to her band. He was the one who most surprised her by keeping to his chair. He’d often joked about leaving after sitting through one of Kris’s friendly family talks.

He joked about leaving . . . but today he stayed.

Kris took in the ship’s officers from her squadron. They were innocent of this matter . . . and totally in the dark. She ought to give them a choice.

“In a few minutes, I may be asking for volunteers,” she told them. “Whole ships of volunteers for something that may end in all our deaths. If you walk out that door now, you won’t be in line to volunteer. If you stay, you may find that you’ve already volunteered yourself. This may be your last chance to make a call for yourself and your crew.”

That got them looking at each other and scratching not a few heads. It was Phil Taussig who finally broke the silence. “I figured when I saw the Longknife name on my orders that I’d been volunteered for something, Your Highness. The last few weeks haven’t been nearly horrible enough to qualify for Longknife duty. I guess I’ll hang around for the rest.”

That seemed to settle it for PatRon 10.

Jack. Well, Jack alone knew what was behind all this. Jack alone had sat through the meeting with her. He eyed her now with easy confidence and open expectation. What rabbit you gonna pull out of your hat this time?

Kris only wished she knew.

“All right,” Kris said, turning face on to Vicky, “you said my great-grandfather Ray Longknife, King Raymond I to some, met with an Iteeche. That’s quite a claim to make. You want to back it up?”

For a second, Vicky just sat in her seat, as if she was still trying to absorb the results of her claim. Was it a claim or just a gambit? Kris wouldn’t have to wait long to find out.

Vicky got to her feet and slowly walked to the Forward Lounge door. She opened it and stuck her head out. She smiled. Kris imagined there were a lot of Marines out there to smile at. No doubt some of them now carried locked and loaded weapons.

Vicky walked back to the table but did not sit down.

“I have it from one of the boffins who used to be on the Wasp that your King Ray met with an Iteeche Imperial spokesman about a problem facing the Iteeche Empire.”

“You do, do you?” Kris said.

“I do. Are you going to deny it?”

Kris shook her head. “Not at the moment, but I am going to ask you a question.”

“What?”

“Do you think any boffin could get by the guard you saw outside?”

“What do you mean?”

“Let’s say my grampa, King Ray, was on this ship. He’d be protected by the likes of those loyal Marines. How do you think a boffin would get by them?”

Vicky already had her mouth open, ready to shoot back a reply, but she stopped, no words spoken. For a moment, she actually mulled over the question.

Good. The girl’s learning to think.

Well, maybe not so good. The girl is a Peterwald.

“Maybe he got a nano spy into the room,” she finally said.

“Past Nelly? How much you want to bet me?”

Now Vicky did frown. “That’s not a bet I’d take.”

“Smart girl,” Nelly said.

“But I’ve got a recording of the meeting,” Vicky said. “Our analysis says it’s Ray and Trouble’s voices. Yours, too.”

That added an ugly twist. Could Admiral Sandy or her news scribe have sold a copy of the meeting that Kris had given them? Such disloyalty as that was unthinkable.

Kris chose to go with what she found very thinkable.

“Let’s just say for a moment that the voices on your tape aren’t a concoction in someone’s sound lab. Who was there?”

“King Ray,” Vicky said. “General Trouble. You. I think your captain was there, but he didn’t say anything during the meeting.”

“That all?”

“Yeah.”

So the leaker had taken himself out of the meeting before distributing it. Why was Kris not surprised?

“That’s interesting,” Kris said. “Do you honestly think King Ray would have a meeting that important and not include Admiral Crossenshield?”

Crossie, as Kris called him to his face, was the head of Wardhaven Intelligence. He ran black ops and always knew where the bodies were buried because he had dug the graves.

“You think,” Vicky said slowly, as if doing the thinking as the words came out of her mouth, “that your own head of intelligence intentionally leaked that meeting to us.”

“Crossie’s always trying to play me. I’m always trying not to get played. Sometimes, I think you have the right idea, shooting the head of your State Security every once in a while.”

Kris really wouldn’t shoot Crossie. Blood was so messy. No, but retiring him to some planet with no heavy industry to raise chickens or goats or pomegranates?

Now that was appealing.

“But why would your security chief intentionally leak this meeting to us?” Vicky asked, still more puzzled than enlightened.

“What was the meeting about,” Kris asked, “according to your leaked recording?” Kris wasn’t willing to officially break the seal of security her king and grampa had put on that meeting. Not so publicly. Not with so many guns at hand.

“The Iteeche have run into a problem. Or something. Their scout ships are going missing when they visited certain places.”

“Hmm,” Kris said, a thought dawning on her that might actually cause her to respect Crossie’s twisted mind. “And what did King Ray do about that?”

“I don’t know,” Vicky said.

“What has he done in public since this supposed meeting took place?” Kris asked.

“Nothing, I think.”

“Nothing in public, but his chief of intelligence is leaking the meeting’s contents to who knows whom. Do you find that as interesting as I do?” Kris asked, trying not to grin.

Vicky gnawed on that for a while. “What’s going on?” she finally asked.

“I don’t know,” Kris said. “Remember, I’ve been on pirate patrol since, oh, I don’t know.”

“Since not too long after this meeting,” Vicky said.

“Which, of course,” Kris pointed out, “I have not said took place.”

“What do you think is going on? He’s your grampa,” sounded more like an accusation than a statement of fact.

“I’m beginning to more and more understand why Gramma Trouble, Gramma Ruth if you prefer, warned me to be careful around Ray. And I thought he was so cuddly when I was small.”

“And I thought General Boyng was such a dear because he always brought me a new dress. By the way, Kris, I had those dresses checked after we took him out and shot him. They had bugs on them. When I was wearing those dresses, he always knew where I was and could listen in on anything I said or that was said to me.”

“We live and learn,” Kris said. “We get older, or we get dead.”

“So, what are you going to do about all this?” Vicky asked, taking a seat next to Kris.

“Hmm, let’s see. I was ordered to take care of the pirate problem outside Peterwald space without getting your old man too mad at my king. How’d I do on that, Admiral?”

“Not too shabby,” Admiral Krätz said, carefully emptying the last few drops from his bottle. “Four pirate ships captured. One pirate base taken down. Port Royal. One potential pirate base secured. Kaskatos. We won’t hold it against you that it’s more likely to ask for membership in the United Sentients than to give old Greenfeld a call.”

The admiral suddenly got a grin on his face. “Excuse me, I misspoke. There were several late votes before your Constitutional Convention closed down at Pitts Hope. One of them changed the name of who you work for, princess.”

“Changed the name of United Sentients?” Kris’s stomach had been through too much lately to react to this. She waited for Admiral Krätz to get to the point he seemed so happy to avoid.

“Yes, it seems that rumors of meetings with Iteeche are not limited to this public house. They were flying fast and loose on Pitts Hope. So certain factions proposed a name change.”

“To what?” Kris and Jack demanded together.

“United Societies,” Vicky said, letting the cat out of the bag.

That got her a scowl from her admiral.

“It seems that not only was sentients too inviting to aliens like the Iteeche, but United Societies had the right flavor for what they wanted.”

“And what was that?” Kris asked.

“Something not so united,” Jack said. “I think your grandpa has more trouble than he’s let on.”

“Quite likely, but his problems are far away, and our problems are right here underfoot,” Kris said, trying not to snarl. “What do we do with ours, Admiral?”

“I don’t think I will have any trouble registering Port Royal as a Navy colony,” Admiral Krätz said. “All the records of its previous existence seem to have been destroyed. I can’t picture N.S. Holdings making a bid to take back control of it, what with all the witnesses to piracy, drug production, and slavery around to raise questions about its former management, should they be identified.” The admiral fairly beamed at the outcome.

“We also have a strong lead to a certain shipyard concerning products from its space docks going missing and turning up flying the black flag. There are already Navy inspectors at that yard. They may get reinforced with Marines and do more no-notice inspections of this or that corner of the place. Yes, Your Highness, I think you can claim this job is done. What do you plan to do next?”

“Not go on vacation,” Kris said.

“Why am I not surprised?” Jack sighed.

“What do you think about most of PatRon 10 trailing me back to Wardhaven?” Kris asked no one in general.

“Most?” Jack Campbell said.

“You had the best luck on convoy duty, Jack. What do you think of you and the Dauntless coordinating your patrols and convoy duty with the admiral’s two new ships, assuming he gets to buy them?”

“I could do that. But what’s this about something that has even the Iteeche scared to death. That really sounds like fun.”

“Somebody has to see that trade flows, Jack.”

“And the rest of us?” Phil Taussig asked.

“You get to follow me back home, where I will have a little talk with my grampa about things that go thump in the night and the need for us to know more about it before it thumps us some night.”

“Volunteers, huh?” Phil said.

“Of the Longknife flavor,” Jack Montoya said.

“Oh hell, count me in,” the skipper of the Hornet said, followed by those of the Fearless and Intrepid.

“What about me?” Vicky asked.

“What about you?” Kris asked right back.

“Can I go with you?”

“I don’t think your father, my Emperor, would be very happy if I let you follow a Longknife home. Bad precedent.”

“So I have to go ask him,” Vicky said.

Kris could almost hear a little finger getting back in the practice of wrapping someone around it.

Kris sighed. She’d never wrapped anyone around her little finger. Or big finger. Or thumb, for that matter.

Some girls had it easy. Other girls learned to tough it out. Kris really didn’t mind being one of the tough ones.

“Captains, crew, tomorrow we sail for Wardhaven. After that, the gods of space only know where we’ll end up,” Kris said.

“You’re assuming your grampa don’t put a shorter leash on you next time he sees you,” Abby put in.

Kris laughed. “I’ve had enough experience with leashes. From now on, this girl is going to go for the free-and-wild ranging life.”