Secure that her back was covered, Kris focused her full attention on the main table. Krätz, despite a bit of graying around the temple . . . or maybe because of it . . . was magnificent in his formal blue and whites.
Beside him, somehow made frumpy by Greenfeld formal naval dinner dress, stood Ensign Victoria Peterwald. Ensign!
Kris didn’t know where to start; she had so many questions.
Krätz started for her, sweeping her a full bow from the waist. When the young woman beside him balked, it took only a slight tap to her elbow to make clear that She’s a princess, you are not, and this is Navy business, and we will do it my way.
Vicky chipped off a quick shallow curtsy.
But her captain stayed in his full bow.
With a scowl, Vicky curtsied again. Lower. And did not recover, but went a bit lower. Then some more.
Finally, her head was even with her captain’s.
Only then did Kris smile and give them a most regal nod of the royal head. “Thank you, Captain, Ensign, but we are in Cuzco space, and I seriously doubt their government recognizes United Sentients patents of ennoblement.”
“But graciousness is recognized throughout human space,” the good captain said, rising from his bow. “Your Highness, may I present to you my new junior communications watch officer, Ensign Victoria Smythe-Peterwald.”
“I am glad that we are finally formally introduced,” Kris said, forgetting for the moment the several times they had informally tried to kill each other.
“It is good to meet you,” came from the ensign, as if each word out of her mouth was a snake or spider out of the fairy tales.
As Jack held Kris’s chair for her to sit, the captain did the same for the young woman. She seemed startled by the chivalry.
You have an awful lot to learn, Miss Vicky, Kris thought to herself. So do I, but at least I know I do.
Kris decided to open the conversation. “I was rather surprised to see the Surprise tied up along the next pier. If it isn’t a state secret, can I ask how you come to be here?”
“Some people might consider it just such a state secret,” Captain Krätz said, with a chuckle and a glance at the young woman he was escorting. “But a look at the ship you escorted in tells me that both our planets are likely concerned about the same matter. How did that freighter come to be so shot up?”
“I’m afraid that I did it,” Kris said, not quite succeeding at looking bashful. That only got her raised eyebrows from both the captain and the ensign.
“It fired on the Wasp while we were making like an unarmed merchant,” Kris said in formal report mode. “I was on weapons and returned the compliment. I put a twenty-four-inch pulse laser through their bridge, and that was the end of the discussion.”
“Just like you did to my brother,” Victoria Peterwald shot back.
“Ensign, we talked about that,” the captain said, giving warning.
Kris shook her head. “Excuse me, Captain, if you will,” Kris said, “Ensign Peterwald and I need to get this out in the open. She may never agree with me, but she needs to hear my side.” Kris turned her full attention to Victoria.
“You killed my brother just like you did that freighter crew,” Vicky got in first.
“I was involved in your brother’s death, but not ‘just like’ those people on the pirate’s bridge.”
Vicky’s mouth was half-open, a retort already coming, but with a glance at the glower on her captain’s face, she bit it off and shut her mouth.
“Your brother had my ship on the ropes. It was his ship and crew or mine. I fired six-inch lasers, aimed for his engines, not bridge. His evasion actions, or maybe it was just dumb luck, put his bridge where we were aiming.
“On his ship, every crewman had a survival pod. We did not find a single one on that pirate ship. When I opened up their bridge, they were all doomed. Most of their bodies were blown out into space.
“On your brother’s ship, they all activated their survival pods. With the exception of your brother’s, they all worked. His didn’t. Consider that.”
Kris paused. She studied the beautiful blue eyes across from her. Tried to measure the acceptance, the comprehension in them. It didn’t look like much, but there was some.
“There is one more thing I can add, though I doubt if anyone in my government will back me up.”
“What is that?” Captain Krätz asked.
“If it’s not a state secret, could you tell me what were the series numbers of the survival pods on the Incredible?”
“The Incredible and the Surprise were built at the same time. We all used 68000 series pods.”
Kris nodded. “The defective pods on the battleships we fought at Wardhaven all had a 90000 series identifier. Do you know what was the number on Hank’s pod?”
Both Krätz and Vicky shook their heads in silence.
“I have a picture of his pod. I could show it to you now, but I won’t.” Hank’s body was still in the pod. That was one picture Kris did not want to show Vicky. There were still pictures from poor Eddy’s kidnapping that Kris had never seen. Would never see.
“Do you know Hank’s survival pod number?” Vicky asked.
“Ninety-seven thousand, five hundred, and twelve,” Kris said.
“Holy Mother of God,” Captain Krätz muttered.
“That’s impossible,” Vicky said.
Kris rolled her hand, palm up on the table. “My computer has all the photos taken on my space station of your brother’s pod, both before it was opened and after. Several of them clearly show the pod number. Do you know the pod number on your battle station, Ensign?” Kris asked.
The woman looked at her captain. “Yes I do.”
“I also know mine,” the captain said. “And it’s nowhere near a ninety thousand.
“Why was I never told this?” Vicky demanded.
Now it was her captain’s turn to roll his hands open, palms up.
“Do you believe her?” Vicky spat.
The captain was silent for a long minute. “There is talk, late at night, in the back rooms of private clubs,” he said slowly. “Some in the Navy wonder. Some in the Navy remember Ralf Baja and Bhutta Saris and wonder why they’re not around anymore. The Navy is not that big a place, and you can’t have the crews of six super battleships vanish without them being missed. So, yes, ma’am, if you had to pick between the words of a woman who, just as cool as could be, shot out a pirate’s bridge, and the babbling of a political officer, whom would you trust?”
A waiter appeared, kept his distance until several sets of guards waved him forward, then took orders from only those at Kris’s table. He had been well briefed and left quickly.
“I don’t believe you,” Vicky whispered, when the waiter was well gone.
“Care to tell me why?” Kris asked.
“Let’s say my dad’s Navy just tried to pound your planet into rubble. Let’s say you were decorated for stopping them. How many friends did you lose?”
“A lot,” Kris said evenly.
“And yet, you are sitting here talking to me, my captain here. Eating dinner with us. No. You’re lying.”
Kris nodded slowly. “How much history have you studied?”
“Quite a bit,” Vicky claimed.
“What happens when two evenly matched countries go to war?”
Vicky seemed to puzzle over that one for a while, then glanced at her captain.
“When two nations of nearly equal strength resort to war to resolve their differences, it is usually a disaster for both,” the Greenfeld officer said. “The war is long, bitter, and indecisive. Neither side can win, but neither side will give up. Generations may perish in the fight. Nations’ treasures may waste away, and nothing is proven. Is that what you are alluding to, Your Highness?”
“That is what the wiser heads in my father’s high command tell me when I get angry at the deaths.”
“That is what the wiser heads in our command councils say,” Captain Krätz said.
“So far, they have prevailed.”
“Why are you telling her this?” Vicky asked her captain.
“You could just as easily ask her the same.”
Vicky turned to Kris, her eyes questioning.
Kris shrugged. “Two plus two is four. A war between ninety planets and a hundred will be a bleeding ulcer. Neither of these facts can be made a state secret. Only a fool would try. I’m not asking your captain how many battleships are building on Greenfeld. He’s not asking me about Wardhaven or Pitts Hope. He has his guess, I have mine. We probably aren’t off by more than two or three. But none of that really is worth the time of day. Let me ask you something I’d really like to know,” Kris said, turning to the captain.
“I have four armed security men to my back. I assume you will not ask me to commit treason within their hearing,” he said through a broad smile.
“I will assume they have no better sense of humor than my Marine escorts do,” Kris said. There were chuckles from both groups of guards.
Kris waited as the salad arrived, unfolded a napkin in defense of her disgusting evening dress, and picked up a fork. The others did likewise, but waited when Kris paused before spearing a bit of her Caesar salad.
“Why are you here?” Kris asked Vicky.
“I was drafted and ordered to the Surprise,” she grumbled. “Now I go where he goes,” she said, with a rueful nod to her captain.
As Kris so often did, Vicky had given her an answer, but only the tip of one. Kris wondered if that was all of the answer Vicky really knew.
“Georg,” Kris said, staking a regal right to a familiarity that a junior officer of her rank had no call on. “How many Greenfeld naval officers have as great a love of daughters as you have?”
The captain had started to frown at the familiarity. After all, he was trying to break one trillionaire daughter to junior-officer status and needed Kris to help, not hinder. But now he smiled.
“I don’t think there’s a captain in the fleet who’s resigned himself to enjoying, maybe I should say, surviving, feminine surroundings as much as I have.”
“Your oldest,” Kris went on. “She should have graduated from college by now. Did she join the Navy?”
Now it was the captain’s turn to ruefully shake his head. “Commissioned in the Nursing Corps on her graduation day.”
“Is she on the Surprise?”
“I would have gladly had her here, but there is a boy.”
“Isn’t there always?” Kris interjected.
“Sad to say, yes. He comes from a good family, and he is on a battleship. So she asked for orders to that battleship.”
“Do you trust him?”
The look Kris got from the captain was a puzzle she could not fathom. He almost smiled as he started again. “I will let you in on a state secret, Longknife girl. In Greenfeld, a loyal wife, be she wealthy or poor, will take nine months to present her husband with a fit little baby. However, blushing brides, in their eagerness, almost always do it in six or seven months. Strange that, no.”
The security guards behind the captain relaxed into their seats. Kris had no doubt that had the captain begun to reveal a more technical detail, they would have dragged him away. But from the smirks on their faces, a few of them might well be married and already beneficiaries of that bridal miracle.
“And your daughter?”
“Has been courted for almost six months and is still on active duty.”
Kris’s confused frown at that brought a dry “Get pregnant, get discharged” from Vicky.
“How medieval,” Kris said.
“I mentioned that to my father,” Vicky said, her voice desert dry. “Let’s say we agreed to disagree. Thank God I know where to get birth control.”
“Not on my ship you don’t,” her captain said.
The ensign wisely filled her mouth with her salad.
Kris stepped in to redirect the conversation. “When I asked why you are here, Vicky, I didn’t mean in the Navy. What I was really asking was why you aren’t back on Greenfeld. You cost your father a lot when he sent you to Eden, and I doubt your stay in the Navy will be any less expensive.” The way Captain Krätz rolled his eyes cut Kris’s doubt by half. “But what I really wonder, girl to girl, is why you aren’t tending to your knitting quietly back home?”
“I don’t knit, and I never do anything quietly,” Vicky shot back. “And I could ask you the same question. Why aren’t you doing something”—Vicky seemed at a loss for words . . . and settled for—“back on your lovely Wardhaven?”
“Why am I not on my lovely Wardhaven?” Kris said, beginning to move rather tasty but probably horribly fattening croutons out of her salad and into a row. “I don’t want to be any closer to my mother or father than I have to.”
That got a snort from Vicky and a thoughtful look from Krätz.
“I’m committed to a naval career and for some strange reason, the fleet can’t find any job for me near my father, the prime minister.” That got a third crouton into rank and a dry chuckle from the ensign.
“I refuse to become involved in politics . . . and every time I get too near Wardhaven, I get sucked into that mess again, and my father gets even madder at me. How am I doing?”
Vicky now needed the napkin to suppress her laughter.
Captain Krätz eyed Jack and got a serious nod of validation. Then he shook his head. “Your file is making better and better sense.”
“And if you report all this,” Kris said, “do you think it will make better sense to your intelligence analysts?”
“They wouldn’t believe a word.”
“Then let me add one more bit of wisdom. They shipped me off to Eden because they thought it was the only place in human space where I’d be safe.”
“And you might have been if I hadn’t been there,” Vicky said proudly.
“Hire better assassins next time. I didn’t even work up a sweat doing my escape and evade from those bozos.”
“I captured your grandmother,” Vicky pointed out.
“Major mistake on your part. The Marines took it personal. You never want a Marine company personally mad at you.”
“You realize she’s critiquing you,” Captain Krätz said.
“I thought she was just bragging.”
“You might learn a thing or three if you listen to her. Your father or his minions have been trying to take her out for a long time, and she’s still wrecking their plans.”
“More often than not, the only reason I’m messing with another’s plans is ’cause someone’s messing with me,” Kris said, with a sigh. “I wish you’d just leave me alone.”
“Is that why you’re out here?” Vicky asked.
“I figured if I was out beyond the Rim, I might get some peace and quiet. That why you’re out here?”
Vicky turned to her captain and raised an expressive eyebrow.
“Strange, isn’t it,” the captain said, “when chasing after pirates is safer than being back home.”
“Are we chasing pirates,” Vicky asked, “or is the Surprise just pretending it is?”
Captain Krätz shrugged his shoulders. “How’d you get a shot at a pirate?” he asked Kris.
“Notice how the Wasp looks like a simple little merchant ship.” They nodded. “They took the first shot. I got the last one.”
Their steaks arrived with appropriate trimmings. Kris and the rest paid appropriate homage to them before Kris threw out the next question.
“How bad is it, being a boot ensign in the Greenfeld Navy? My memories of being the junior officer aboard ship are much more fondly memorable as they disappear in the rearview mirror.”
“You started as an ensign?” Vicky asked.
“Yes,” Kris said, “with a captain who made my life far more miserable than I suspect Captain Krätz is making yours.”
Vicky raised her eyebrows as if to doubt that possibility.
“Making ensigns miserable is one of the prime perks of a captain’s job,” Ca
ptain Krätz insisted. “Is that not so, Captain?” he said to Jack.
“We have a thing called the Fifth Amendment, sir, and I’m going to invoke its protection, sir. Otherwise, I might have to apply for a transfer to your Navy.”
“We’re always looking for a few good men.”
“What is it about men?” Vicky exploded. “I get handed this ensign gig. My brother starts out as a commodore. He bosses Captain Krätz around. Me, I get bossed around by just about everybody. It’s not fair,” she growled at her captain.
He said nothing, just took another bite of his steak, chewed it for a moment, and then waved his empty fork at Kris. “As a lieutenant, two mighty promotions up from a lowly ensign, would you have any advice for my JO here?”
Kris thought the question over for a moment, then shrugged. “As a wise chief once told me, if you don’t want to be Navy, get out.”
Vicky scowled sidewise at her superior officer. He shook his head. “That is not an option for the moment.”
“I see,” Kris said. And thought some more. “Your brother started his Navy career as a commodore.”
Vicky nodded vigorously at that.
“From where I sat, that was part of what killed him.”
“What!” Vicky almost shouted.
“Do you disagree, Captain Krätz?” Kris asked.
The captain patted his mouth with the white linen napkin and put it down. “I can’t say that I do.”
Vicky studied them for a long moment. Kris let the silence stretch. She was learning that more often than not more was learned in the quiet between words than was ever conveyed by them. Now she waited for the young Peterwald woman to show she was learning . . . or not.
“Explain yourself. I would have thought that a commodore was safer, more powerful.” Vicky paused for a moment. “As an ensign I sure don’t feel any power. Or very safe.”
Kris eyed Krätz. He shook his head. “I can offer only advice. You have walked in her shoes and survived. You can speak to her from experience.”
Now Kris put her own napkin down and pushed back from the table. Beside her Jack did the same. Around them, the security people turned their chairs to face out, giving them as much privacy as their station and the risk factor allowed.
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