Kris spent the rest of the afternoon meditating on all that had been dropped on her. She was sure that her advisors had offered her the best they had, but was that all the advice she had available?
“Nelly, give Grampa and Gramma Trouble my most sincere compliments and ask them if they might drop by my day quarters at their earliest convenience.”
“I’ve asked. They are playing with the kids, but they’ll be here as soon as they can pry John Junior off Trouble’s leg.”
“Trouble’s leg?”
“They were rough housing. Several of the four year olds were attacking the monster and doing their best to drag him down. I suspect they may win a bit faster than they normally do.”
Kris could only shake her head. Shake her head, and feel deep in her heart a sense of loss. She should be the one playing the monster while their nannies tried to exhaust the children’s energy before supper.
“Nelly, set me up a comfortable conversation group.” A small coffee table with two comfortable chairs and a couch appeared in one corner of Kris’s expanded day quarters, taking space from her night quarters. On the table, a pot of tea stood with several choice teas to choose from.
Kris went back to her ruminations, examining the sensor take for the last two hours. It was huge. Even Nelly and her kids, controlling a massive server farm were having trouble figuring out what was worth extracting and what was minor communications of no import.
Fifteen minutes after Kris’s request, her great-grandfather and great-grandmother knocked respectfully. “Enter,” Kris said.
In theory, her five stars outranked Trouble’s four stars, but there was no way Kris would consider herself anything but outranked by these two. She stood and went to greet them.
“You having a ball with the kids?” she asked as Gramma Ruth engulfed her in a hug.
“Oh, I’d forgotten what fun a dozen four-year-olds could be. A barrel of monkeys has nothing on these tykes.”
Kris went from one hug to the next from Grampa Trouble. Greetings done, she offered them seats. The elder couple took the couch together. Grampa took the seat closest to one of the chairs and that was the one Kris settled in. She offered them tea. The water was still hot. They poured for themselves and then sat back to quietly steep their tea.
“You have a problem, Kitten?” Ruth finally asked.
Kris, the grand admiral smiled at Ruth’s use of the endearment she’d given Kris harkening back to a younger, more innocent self. Still, her problem today was all grownup. Grownup and big, mean and nasty.
“I need your opinion on Grampa Ray,” Kris said.
“What’s he done this time?” Gramma Ruth drawled.
“I’m not sure. That’s why I want to talk to you. You know him best.”
“If any one does,” Ruth shot back.
Kris nodded. “I suspect you’ve heard about the little civil war we’ve sailed into.”
“Kind of hard to avoid it,” Grampa Trouble rumbled.
“Very little misses your Grampa Trouble,” Ruth said. “Lots of people want to say they’ve talked to the great general, and he gets them talking and then pumps them for all they’ve got.”
“Hey, what can I say? I’m good at gathering intelligence,” the old general said in his own defense. But he was smiling proudly while he said it.
“Okay, do you think Ray knew about this little unpleasantness we’re sailing into?” Kris asked.
The two elder warriors extraordinaire glanced at each other. Ruth leaned back into the couch as Trouble leaned forward. “That’s something we’ve been thinking about, Kris. I hope you know that we would have told you about this war if we’d known about it.”
“I know you would have. Ray? I’m not so sure about.”
Now Trouble leaned back, and it was Ruth’s turn to lean forward. The couple did it as if they had their own special Nelly Net to talk on. “You know I don’t have a whole lot of respect for that rascal Ray,” Ruth said.
Kris knew about Ruth’s attitude toward their fellow Iteeche War commander and longtime friend. Great-grandmother Trouble had never shared with Kris where this attitude sprang from, but she knew Ruth was sour on Ray.
Ruth took a deep breath and shook her head as she continued. “Neither Trouble nor I picked up anything in our grapevine about civil war among the Iteeche. The appearance of that rebel fleet was just as much a surprise for us as it was for you. If we’d known, you can bet you’d have a larger escort or Trouble and I would have picketed that old bastard’s palace. Us, and a whole lot of our friends.”
Kris found herself chuckling despite the seriousness of their discussion. The mental image of these old war horses carrying picket signs, along with a whole lot of their friends, children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren with greater grandkids in strollers would have been something to see.
“Okay, for the moment, let’s assume we were all blindsided by Iteeche politics. I’ve got a second question. I’ve just gotten a name for myself from Ron, whom I thought was my Iteeche buddy. It seems I’m both emissary and speaker for humanity.”
“Not the Royal US?” Grampa Trouble asked, his face a serious frown.
“Nope, humanity. Oh, and I’ve discovered that I’ve got six or seven more ambassadors in my fleet, including one from Earth and the rump Society for Humanity.”
Now both elders leaned back into the couch, looking very thoughtful.
“My question to you is: could Ray have warned me, or even known that I was headed for a much bigger job and not bothered to tell me?”
Now it was Ruth’s turn to chuckle. “You talk about mission creep.”
Trouble snorted at that. “It ain’t got any better since our time, has it, honey?”
Both shook their heads at that.
It was Ruth who leaned forward first. “If you are asking me if that old SOB might have known about all the extra work he was slapping on you and not bothered to mention it to you, the answer is yes. He’s just the type to do that. But the question I think you really want us to answer is did he do that to you?”
“Yes. I’m to stand in his stead at the Imperial Iteeche Court. Will I be doing it while mad as hell at him for doing this to me?”
The two stared at each other for a long moment. Again, Kris had the impression that they were talking on their own private Nelly Net.
Finally, Ruth shook her head. “I still have contacts in the Foreign Service,” she said. “I heard nothing about this mission being for all humanity. If anything, the folks I talked to were almost giddy, and I’d never seen them giddy before, about this coming to the US and them getting to set the tone for the rest of humanity.”
“I agree,” Trouble said, now taking over from his wife. “There are people in the palace that will still talk to me. Everything I picked up was that Ray was kind of tickled that the Iteeche were asking for you, a Longknife. He also was doing everything within his power to help you succeed. Most people don’t know it, but Ray doesn’t have much actual power. He can ask, suggest, recommend, but most of the real power is with the planets. Wardhaven may have given you the US ambassador, but a whole lot of the other one hundred and seventy-three planets have people in the delegation. Everything I heard was that Ray was doing everything he could to make sure you got good people. That you wouldn’t have to waste a lot of time mediating between your own people.”
Kris nodded. “And doing that, he may have not had a lot of spare time to worry about what was going on outside his sovereignty. So, you think he’d be just as surprised as I was to find a whole lot of ambassadors waiting for me to discover them and ask for their papers?”
“You have gotten to know him almost as well as we have,” Ruth said. “You know this could be him, but it likely isn’t. Say 60-40 or 70-30.”
Again, Kris nodded. “I think I agree with you. Do you have any suggestions what I should do with these ambassadors? All of them, not just the new ones but the five I’m supposed to have.”
“If you spaced the lot of them, the neighbors would likely talk,” Trouble said, with an impish grin. “As much fun as that might be, it’s not something you can get away with. And there would be all the mess. So, I guess you’re just going to have to wade through them and get the job done. Do it for good old Wardhaven and all the little kids that don’t have a choice in the messes we adults get them into.”
Kris chuckled. This was one of the reasons she loved her Grampa Trouble . . . when he wasn’t causing her a lot of trouble. He could make her laugh at the absurdity of life.
With all the heavy stuff out of the way, she shared some time with her great-grandparents. They talked of children and the fun they were having. To the kids, this was just one great adventure. Spaceships were cool, and all the attention they were getting from grownups was just tickling them funny. Kris found herself regretting that she couldn’t spend a lot of time with her two, but she was very glad that her two most wonderful ancestors had hitched a ride with her and them.
With any luck, it would all turn out fine.
Of course, it was up to Kris to create that luck.