Once the room held only humans, Kris signaled Admiral Kitano and her Navy staff to move to the other side of the table. Nelly shrank it and switched out the Iteeche stools for comfortable human chairs, even before they were ready to sit down across from Kris.
“Now, Amber, is the fleet battle ready?”
“As ready as I could make it on the cruise out here. I’d prefer if it was a bit faster in its drills, but that will come with more practice.”
“Check with Nelly,” Kris said. “We’ve been holding live fire exercises using our lasers dialed back to .01 percent power. It creates an honest test on a moving target and makes it very easy to score the hits.”
“Lord, why didn’t we think of that before?”
“Because we didn’t have the crystal armor, although we’ve been doing it on Iteeche ships without it and just pumping in a few hundred kilos of extra Smart Metal to make up for the damage. Now, I need a few things from you,”
“I expected that you would,” Admiral Kitano said.
“I want you to dispatch a division of battlecruisers to take a look at this Zargoth system. I don’t want you to actually get in the system.”
“Use a periscope, huh?”
“Yeah. I expect they’re terrified of the retribution headed their way, but I need to know what I’m facing. As soon as they know, send the word back by one ship and keep the other three watching that spot.”
“Can I ask why?”
“Because I don’t want to wait forever to get a fleet moving. If there are few ships above that planet, I want to swoop in like an avenging angel.”
“What if they’ve got a peasant army on the ground?” Jack asked.
“Yeah. We’ll need to look like we have an invasion fleet. However, if all we’re after is the head of government, why not just send down a drop team, find the guy and bring back his head and a few others? Do you doubt that the rest of the fifty billion won’t turn their coats in a flash?”
“That’s a drop mission you will not be leading, right, my beloved Grand Admiral and mother?” was not a question from Jack.
“Yes, my loving general. I can see that look you get in your eyes when you’re dreaming of locking me in our cabin. Maybe with you inside to apply your special kind of torture. I will be a dutiful grand admiral and spend the drop watching the feed from my flag plot.”
“Good. You might finally be getting this adulting thing down.”
Kris just managed to not stick her tongue out at her husband. They were probably stretching the limits of PDA enough for this staff meeting.
“Any further questions?” Kris asked the Navy side of the table.
They had none. Kris stood, they stood, and filed out of the conference room.
That left Kris with just her key staff and Ambassador Kawaguchi.
“What can we do for you?” the ambassador from Musashi asked.
“How many ambassadors do we have left after that wild abandon ship exercise we ran?” Kris queried.
“It wasn’t so much an abandon ship drill as a ‘run for the hills and save yourself,’ kind of thing,” Abby drawled softly. “That bit of conspiracy to slaughter all us diplomats in our sleep so that SOB from Nuu Enterprises could seal the deal with one Iteeche family got the summer types out of our hair. We got a lot of junior types, some of which didn’t rate a seat on the last ships out, and some of which got told to hold the fort so the bosses could run for it. As of right now, all the yellow types are still running. I hear tell that someone told the fast transport skippers not to stop until they reached Wardhaven.”
“I may have mentioned a certain preference to that effect,” Kris admitted, diffidently.
“I strongly suspect it was a written order,” Ambassador Kawaguchi said. “I doubt many ship captains would resist orders from the great men of business and the senior diplomats if he didn’t have something locked away in his safe.”
“No doubt,” Emissary Kris Longknife said. “Okay, you two, talk to me about the trade side of this mission.”
“I was not surprised,” Ambassador Kawaguchi began, most diplomatically, “when Admiral Coth admitted that the Empire has many planets barely getting by. From what we have been able to learn, there is very little anyone is willing to swap. Most items made out of metal are in short supply. The Iteeche make great use of ceramics and glass wherever possible. Some of the artistic items may sell for their novelty, but that market will soon be glutted. We are looking into pharmaceuticals, but the Iteeche seem to be behind us in medicine and every time we talk about selling them life saving devices, some mandarin steps in and puts the kibosh on the talks.”
“They can’t afford to disrupt their death rate,” Jacques said, putting a sociology twist to the fact. “If the clans are to reward their preferred subordinates with time in the mating ponds and the right to choose a progeny, they must have Iteeche die.”
“There’s no interest among the mandarin class in extending their own lives?” Kris asked, incredulous.
“The guy from Nuu Enterprises who was helping equip the uprising we quashed,” Jack said, “may have been negotiating with that clan to give them exclusive access to our rejuvenation technology. Whatever he was doing, he’s gone, and so are most of Grampa Al’s henchmen. I have to wonder what he thought he’d get after he’d watched mobs of Iteeche slaughter the rest of us.”
“From an economic view,” Amanda said, “there’s not much to bargain for.”
“Power,” Kris said. “With Grampa Al, power is its own reward. No doubt the fellow he put in charge here was of the same ilk. Acquire power at any cost.”
“Well, they are gone,” Ambassador Kawaguchi said. “We will continue the search for something they can trade for what we want to sell you. This is not an unusual problem. I remember a time in Earth’s past when a place called China was all too content with itself. It sent forth what were misnamed trading fleets to distant places. There, they gave out huge gifts of silk, jewelry, steel, and porcelain. In return, they received gifts of skins, jewels, and animals.
“When the treasure fleets returned, the Emperor was impressed, but the Imperial Counselors managed to have the fleet destroyed and never sent out again. We think it was because they did not want to risk the changes those fleets might bring,” the ambassador said.
“Later, the Europeans discovered ways to sail their own ships to China. There was a mountain of silver in one land group the Spanish had conquered. They shipped a lot of the silver to a trading post off the coast of China and swapped the silver for what they wanted. For the Spanish, that worked out fine, until the silver petered out. For the Chinese, all that new silver created inflation and other problems their Empire wasn’t ready for.”
The twinkle in Kawaguchi’s eyes began to fade. “The next group of Europeans to attempt trade with China had little silver or gold. However, the English had captured a land where opium was grown. They introduced that dope to China, selling it for Chinese money, then buying what they wanted with that. A number of the leaders in China did not want their people becoming addicted to the English dope and tried to outlaw its import. The British brought in warships and forced the Chinese government to swap opium for the precious goods they demanded. China could not stop this robbery.”
Ambassador Kawaguchi ended his tale. “Do you see how this fits our situation?”
“No,” Kris said. “It’s kind of like the Europeans who got my Native American ancestors to swap pelts for whiskey. Whiskey was cheap and quickly gone. The pelts fueled a fashion industry in the lands all around the Atlantic Ocean. But in both cases, it was a more powerful group forcing something bad on a weaker group. To me, the Iteeche are our equals.”
“Yes and no,” Amanda said. “As far as you, a Navy officer, are concerned, they are our fighting equal. That, or close enough to it. In a few technological areas, like energy and maskers, they are our superiors. However, their huge, overpopulated planets leave them very vulnerable. Let’s say that one of the several pharmac
ology labs that came out here with you finds a drug that is like opium to the Iteeche. What happens when they offer to manufacture and import the drug? How do the Iteeche pay for it? If they take critical resources out of their bare subsistence economy to trade for it, what happens?”
“Given a choice between sugar water and nutritious food,” Jacques said, “rats will literally kill themselves drinking the sugar water. If we come up with the opium or sugar water of the Iteeche, we could bring the entire Empire crashing down and God only knows what would rise up in its place.”
Kris eyed her friends sitting at the table. “It could get that bad?”
The economist, the sociologist, and the ambassador all nodded their heads in silence.
Kris shook her head. “We are a potential poison to these people.”
“Yes,” Jacques said.
“How do we not become poison?” Kris asked no one in particular.
“Very carefully,” Abby said, dryly. “Very, very carefully.”
Kris took a long while to mull this development. “Okay, keep me in the loop both about ideas our side comes up with and what the mandarins slap a kibosh on. I’m looking for a pattern, folks.”
Everyone stood. This meeting was as over as one could get. Everyone filed out, leaving Jack and Kris alone.
“Good God, what am I doing?” Kris said. “Back in Earth’s dark history, some outside force might be invited by one faction or another to help them win the throne. Often enough, that outsider was the one to sit his butt down on the throne, over the dead bodies of both sides.”
Kris turned and folded herself into Jack’s arms. “I swore that I would not be such an outsider. I swore I would help one faction. Now I’ve seen the kid on the throne and the rebels. I don’t much care for either side, but I still don’t want to wreck this culture if it means something like anarchy will replace it. Thousands of planets loaded with fifty billion Iteeche they can barely feed. What would this place look like if the Empire imploded?”
“Any encounter between two cultures always causes change,” Jack said, holding her, stroking her back gently. “Let’s be honest, the Iteeche superior power transfer from their reactors hasn’t been without its problems among us humans.”
The post-battle hum had begun in Kris’s body before the meeting was half over. Between Coth and Kawaguchi, she’d been taken to a high mountain and shown a more gigantic butcher’s bill than she’d ever run up against the vicious alien raiders. To date, Kris estimated she’d killed a quarter of a trillion aliens. A check of the Empire’s population showed well over ten trillion, maybe fifteen.
Could a population collapse within the Empire cost the lives of a third? Half? More?
Kris had thought she was leaving a lousy bureaucratic job at Main Navy for a nice, comfortable, manageable task as an Emissary to an Empire.
Now she knew.
They wanted a killer. Instead, they’d gotten her, a deadly poison. Somehow, she had to avoid the Iteeche swallowing her down whole.
Oh, God, help me.
7
Lieutenant Megan Longknife, Admiral Longknife’s aide de camp, went straight to the motor pool as soon as that set of meetings closed down. She couldn’t help but notice that the Intel officer, Quinn Sung, was right behind her.
At the motor pool, Megan asked to check out a car.
“Where are you headed?” the second-class petty officer asked her.
“To the beanstalk terminal.”
“How long will you need the car?”
Megan considered the travel time up and down, then added in what she needed to do, and answered, “Five, maybe six hours.”
“Last week I would have given you a car, Lieutenant, but, in case you haven’t noticed, those Iteeche drivers out on the roads are damn near suicidal.”
“I’ve dodged a few that seemed intent on not surviving until sunset,” Megan admitted.
“We’ve hired locals to be our drivers. We’ve also come up with a Smart Metal version of the kind of four-wheeled cars the head high muckety-mucks ride around in. That should get our people some respect. Oh, and ours have extra armor. I’ll assign you one of them and a driver. When you’re headed down the beanstalk, call me and I’ll have a driver waiting for you at the curb.”
“That sounds like a deal. Now, can I help you, Captain?”
“Is the lieutenant’s car big enough for the two of us?” Quinn asked.
“Yes, ma’am.”
“You mind sharing the ride?” the captain asked.
“Not one bit,” the lieutenant answered.
They made only small talk while they waited for their car. Once in it, they continued the small talk until Megan said, “Lily says she’s nailed the last spy bot. She’s already reported the tally to Security. There was nothing new or special. We can talk now.”
“Right, you’ve got one of the special computers,” Quinn said.
“Yep. Lily is one of Nelly’s kids.”
“So, why are you headed up the beanstalk?” the intel chief asked.
Megan cocked her head a bit to the right and eyed her superior officer. “Likely for the same reason you are.”
“That’s a coy answer.”
“We’ll know I’m right if we keep walking together until we reach the lockers outside the drop bays.”
“You have an armored space suit,” Quinn said, no question at all in her words.
“I got it the first time I was assigned to Kris’s staff. It’s followed me around the fleet. I haven’t used it yet, but there’s always a first time. You?”
“I got myself fitted for one the day after I found out I’d be working for a Longknife. I figured sooner or later I’d be doing a drop mission, though I thought I’d be doing it right behind her.”
Megan shrugged, doing her best to make it cute. “You may be dropping right behind a Longknife. Just not the one you figured on.”
The two of them grinned at each other.
“So, do we tell her we’re going to drop onto Zargoth or not?” Quinn asked.
“I’ve heard her say many times that it’s easier to ask forgiveness than permission.”
Now the two laughed.
8
Kris Longknife now had so many irons in the fire she was amazed that she wasn’t burned to a crisp.
Having sent out an invitation to every Clan leader in the capital, it behooved Kris to put together a sing-along. Abby’s best efforts at figuring out what one of those involved came up with nothing. After contracting several available singing groups, it became clear that what the common people got to sing to, and sing with, was not the same as the flower of Imperial society.
Kris found herself sending a major off to visit Roth and arrange for a visit. The Marine officer returned quickly; he had arranged for a visit later that afternoon.
Apparently, Roth was not about to risk Kris crashing his party again.
Kris found Megan, for some reason, was up aboard the Princess Royal, so it was just her and Jack along with a company of Marines making their way to the Chap’sum’We clan’s palace.
The chamberlain, in his cloth of gold garments, with an entourage of staff, met them and immediately led them by not quite the most direct route to the tree-shaded and flower-perfumed pergola on the palace roof.
THE DETOUR IS AROUND THE LADIES’ QUARTERS, Nelly told Kris.
Kris failed to suppress a smile. Jack apparently got the same bit of information; he was smiling softly as well.
Both Ron and Roth were seated on pillows when Kris arrived. There were pillows for her and Jack. There were also several Iteeche seated around Ron and Roth. Since it was impossible to tell male and female Iteeche apart, what with their lack of external genitalia, the only hint that these might be females were the gossamer veils the four wore. It barely covered their faces and nothing else.
The females in the harem Kris had marched her Marines through had worn more.
Interesting.
“It is a pleasure to have my eye
s fall upon your visage, Royal Emissary from our Emperor’s brother ruler. It is joyful to see the face of such a conqueror. To what do we owe this visit?” Roth asked.
Kris bowed her head from the neck for a moment. “It is an honor to see such an eminent advisor to the Emperor and wise leader of such a mighty clan,” she said, modifying the Iteeche greeting she’d been given. She wasn’t worshiping the Emperor. Grampa Ray would never go along with that.
“Your eminent self and several other wise clan leaders have been invited to a sing-along in the gardens of the Pink Coral Palace. Sadly, those I have ordered to arrange the party have found that they are so ignorant of the fashion here in the capital that we do not know how to invite such singers to our palace.”
Kris would take anything she could get from Roth. Since his clan was risking its place near the seat of power, it was best for him that Kris’s embassy be acceptable to all the other clan chiefs who measured face with a micrometer.
“Oh, yes,” the clan leader said. “It would be difficult for someone so new to the capital to know who to choose and who would be too common for a party of such elite.”
“Yes. I do not want to offend.”
“Ron, my chosen, will you take care to help our victorious admiral to throw a celebration befitting of her station?”
“It is my honor to serve you and she who commanded me in the recent battle,” Ron said. The Navy may only be dirt under the feet of these powerful clans, but a victory you were part of was still something to remind your dad about.
“Yes, this must be appropriate to the status of a victor as well as an Emissary to our worshipful Emperor,” Roth said, before opening his hands and adding. “I am told that my chosen has often dined with you. Will you not allow us an opportunity to share the taste of some of the best from our tidal pond?”
Kris wasn’t opposed to sushi. Still, all that she could think of was eating the fish raw off the bone. The very thought was a bit horrifying. Instead, she replied, “I would be so honored.”
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