Their car was waiting for them as they marched from the Palace. Kris glanced at her wrist; she still owed the Navy another hour. With a sour look at Jack, she decided time in the royal presence counted for double. “Home,” she said to the driver.
Jack nodded agreement. That settled, Kris tried to relax back into the leather seats; she was pumping out enough adrenaline she could likely outrun the car home. She wanted to talk to Jack, but she needed time to think through all that had been dumped on her. Right now, it was just a big withering pit of snakes.
Besides, though she trusted the Marines in front with almost anything, this was a bit too hot to discuss with anyone but Jack.
Kris let her eyes take in the city they drove through. Old buildings were being torn down. New, bigger, fancier ones were going up. Her father, the prime minister, had presided over the longest expansion anyone could remember. There had been a few dips, but nothing that cost him his job or hurt the people he served.
What will it be like when the Iteeche and humans start to intermingle?
Kris know the theory of creative destruction. She’d seen it in action a time or three. Hell, her battlecruisers were upsetting the comfortable world the Navy had lived in for close to two centuries. Until the battlecruiser showed up, battleships built eighty years ago for the Iteeche War were still considered front line.
No wonder I’m facing so much push back. I’ve tossed a hand grenade into their quiet, staid dog show.
If she thought she’d lit a fire under some folks with her battlecruisers, imagine what she’d cause with the first treaty between Iteeche and humans.
Kris let out a groan; Jack reached over for her hand.
“Anything you want to talk about?” he said softly.
“If I thought I was saddled with conflicting interest groups in the Navy, imagine what we’ll have tagging along with us on this project.”
“You’re trading a couple of cows for a huge herd of elephants.”
“With a few Alwan ostriches thrown in to kick my head off.”
“No doubt.”
“Do you think I’ll regret this?”
“You haven’t regretted anything that you’ve done for the whole time I’ve been with you?”
Kris suppressed a chuckle. “I hate to say it, but for a bit, I regretted drafting you onto my staff,” she said, sending him an air kiss.
“And look how well that worked out.” He air-kissed her right back.
With no Iteeche to distract them, two small cannonballs hit Kris as she stepped into the foyer at Nuu House. They excitedly screamed, giggled, and chattered about their day and all they’d learned from their computers and nannies.
Kris did her best to listen, but the brass band parading around in her brain left her more than distracted. Apparently, the kids could tell that she was elsewhere. They climbed up to get in her face, or drag her down to their level and jacked up the volume. Jack, as usual, was at her side, doing his best to share the bedlam.
The nanny on duty this afternoon was Mai Taimat; she’d survived five years with Kris and now had a little one of her own. She brought little Emma to work most days. Thus, John was getting a chance to be a big brother to someone younger than he.
Mai, ever sensitive to Kris’s moods, took note of the dynamics between parents and children. “Auntie Lotty has cookies and milk ready for you. I understand they have the wading pool cleaned up and filled with water. Who wants to get wet?”
“Me, me,” echoed as Mai, like some pied piper, led the eager children off to where they would not disturb their obviously worried parents. She glanced back long enough to give Kris an encouraging smile as she followed the noise toward the kitchen.
“I hope they’ve got something set up for us in the library,” Kris muttered and led Jack off to the right.
Some angel had laid out hot water and several types of tea. Kris steeped herself a cup of gentle chamomile and appropriated a handful of the plain shortbread cookies.
She and Jack settled into their usual chairs hidden among shelves of old books, across a low table from each other. They munched cookies while sipping tea and let the chairs do their best to soothe the tension from them.
It was a lost cause, but it did pass critical time.
“The nano spies you picked up today are destroyed,” Nelly said. “I don’t know if the two you picked up in the king’s office were his or some strays going after his talk, but I’ve killed them all.
“Thank you, Nelly,” Kris said, still leaning back in the chair. She took a deep breath and began. “One, do you think Ray has told us everything he knows about this mission? Two, do we risk our children on this ‘diplomatic’ mission?” She put verbal air quotes around their official objective.
Jack kept leaning comfortably within the gentle clutches of his chair. “First, when has Ray ever told us the half of what he knew when he sent you on a mission? I will admit that today he made me a believer in him. Today, he may just have told us all that he knows about why we’re going and what’s ahead of us.” He raised an eyebrow toward Kris.
She scowled. She really would have preferred not to believe the king. It was so unlike her grampa. Still, at this moment, she felt it was very possibly true.
“As to your second question, can you think of anyone whom you would be willing to hand off the raising of these two short people?”
They’d been over this several times when Kris insisted on keeping Ruth at her breast while she got to the bottom of the little civil war her friend Vicky Peterwald had gotten herself into with her stepmother, of unlamented memory.
Of course, Ruth had nearly been kidnaped and might have been if one of their nannies hadn’t slowed the thugs down at the cost of her life.
Kris shook her head. “Nope. Hanovi’s up to five kids and another daughter is in the tank. Ruth and John would surely have friends, but as much as I love my brother and his wife, I can’t help but worry that mine might get lost in the mob. Your sister is enjoying being single and your younger brother is just that, young. You got any other ideas?”
Jack shook his head. “I admit, I love coming home to the kids, playing with them and putting them to bed. I really don’t want to let them disappear out of my life for two, three, or five years. What would they look like when we got back? Worse, how would we fit back into their lives by then?”
Kris nodded, measuring the hole that would be driven through her heart if she left her kids hundreds of light years away. If she was ordered back to Alwa or any of the other planets now associated with the US and under their protection, she’d take the kids. The last she heard, the folks out Alwa way were enjoying a baby boom. They might as well, no planet was safe from those blood-thirsty aliens intent on the annihilation of all sentient life in the galaxy that wasn’t them.
“Whatever we do, unless there is a clear danger, the kids go with us,” Kris said with finality.
“Now that that’s settled, what do you think of this job we’re being offered?” Jack asked.
“I have no idea,” Kris said. “Really, I have no idea. For the first eighty years after the Iteeche War, they stayed on their side of the demilitarized zone and we stayed on ours. It was only when Ron showed up that I found out there was some tiny pipeline between us that passed fragments of information back and forth. What with Iteeche and humans actually living in each other’s space, our intel people have to have learned more about them.”
“Have you heard anything about the Iteeche in the five years we’ve been here on Wardhaven?”
Kris shook head. “Hardly a word. It’s curious. I’ve spent some time up on the space station, reviewing the fleet and attending the commissioning of new battlecruisers. In all that time, I’ve never run into an Iteeche.”
“Me neither,” Jack said.
They considered that startling fact for a long moment. Then Kris said, “If Ray really doesn’t know any of the goings on inside the Iteeche Empire, then Crossie must be as much in the dark.” Again, Kris shook her head. “Strange that we’re being tasked to fill in the holes in Crossie’s intelligence.”
“Does anyone have any information?” Jack asked. “Is there any chance you could set up a play date with your brother’s brood and while the kids are having fun you could pump him for anything he’s heard?”
Kris nodded agreement. While one hundred and seventy-three planets were joined together in the United Society, each had been independent after the breakup of the Society of Humanity. They were sovereign planets then and every last one of them was stubborn about surrendering even one drop of that independence to the United Society.
Or United Societies if they were really independent minded.
Wardhaven was one of the largest and most developed planets out on the rim of human space, both before and after the break up. It made its own contribution to the Navy and Army as well as Exploration Corps and Intelligence Agency, all of which flew the Wardhaven flag. Kris strongly suspected that if King Ray knew something, Kris’s father, the prime minister of Wardhaven, knew it as well. Her brother, Hanovi, stood at father’s right hand; he would be in the know if anyone was.
“Yeah, let’s put the family connection to work,” Kris said, then added, “I also think a visit to Aunt Trudy is also in order.”
Trudy had been the Chief of Information Warfare for Wardhaven prior to and during the Iteeche War. She knew information management from the byte up. During her retirement, she also had an uncanny tendency to win the lottery when she needed money for computer research and upgrades. Her computer might be the only one that could stand toe to toe with Nelly, but he had refused to touch Nelly the one time Kris had asked if they could do anything about her independent tendencies.
Nelly had, almost, started a war between Wardhaven and Greenfeld one midnight watch.
“Nelly, could you ask Aunt Trudy for a time when I could drop by and make some wonderful chocolate chip cookies with her?”
There was a brief pause before Nelly said, “She would rather come here to talk with you.”
Jack and Kris exchanged puzzled frowns. Kris had figured that Trudy would want Kris to enter her web so she would have everything she needed at her fingertips.
“We can at least lay out our questions,” Jack said, “and she can bring the answers back another time.”
Kris considered that. They did have six weeks, maybe more. There was time.
“Okay, tell her tomorrow evening is open,” Kris said.
“She’d like to drop by this evening,” Nelly replied.
Kris and Jack’s frowns deepened. “Do you think, by any chance,” he said, “that we’re the last to be let in on the know?”
“I’m starting to feel that way. Nelly, tell her we’d be glad to have her drop by any time. If she gets here for dinner at six, we’ll set another place and add a bit more water to the soup.” As if Lotty wasn’t ready to serve a small army on an hour’s notice.
“Aunt Trudy says she’ll be here at six sharp and is prepared to stay late.”