Ninety minutes later as Kris finished formally dressing for the forthcoming festivities, a schematic of the Princess Royal appeared on the wall in front of her.
“I thought you might want to see how things have changed,” Nelly said.
“How bad can it be?” Jack said, looking around Kris as the same ship diagram.
“Not bad,” Kris said as she took in all the changes. “Nelly, was the captain okay with this?’
“He asked for some changes. I ran them by Captain Tosan, who brought in Commodore Ajax because she had experience with you doing strange stuff and they agreed to what I’d suggested.”
“You suggested,” Jack said, his eyebrows going up.
“You must admit, this is much more logical, and you’ve been moving Admiral’s Country and the quarterdeck around the ship pretty easily,” Nelly said, almost sounding defensive.
“I know we’ve got a lot of people coming, but do we really need three quarterdecks?” Jack asked. “The merchant sailors and officers and the business people don’t really need a formal quarterdeck, do they?”
Kris stepped over to run her fingers along the schematic. “How large is the Forward Lounge?” which wasn’t at all forward, but right smack amidships.
“One point four kilometers across at the largest point,” Nelly answered.
“It looks like an amphitheater.” Jack observed.
“It is, with the starboard side slanting down two stories to the port side in steps,” Nelly pointed out. “The civilian quarterdeck is on the top deck. It forms a stepped balcony, about as wide as we could make it. Most of the civilians enter there, find a drink at several of the bars I borrowed from the dining rooms and pubs on the transports. Several of them were very well appointed. They provide good service to the business types riding in your wake.”
“How many bars, Nelly?” Kris asked.
“Six, evenly spaced around the starboard bulkhead.”
“And the second deck, Nelly?” Jack asked.
“That’s the official quarterdeck of the Princess Royal. Fleet personnel have been advised to skip the first one and go to the second deck where full military honors will be exchanged. There’s a passageway that gets them around to the lower portside where the Forward Lounge crew will give them the full “O club treatment.”
“Our quarters are now on the lower deck, below all this,” Jack pointed out.
“As are most of your team, Kris. There is a formal quarterdeck to render diplomatic honors to the ambassador level officials and their staff. You will be greeting them and Marines will be standing by to help you usher them around to the seats just below your platform. The staff of the Forward Lounge will keep their drinks full. We’re charging those drinks to King Ray.”
“And if a riot breaks out?” Kris asked, only half seriously.
“I can raise a wall between the three groups to keep the bloodshed to a minimum,” Nelly replied.
Kris eyed the set up. Likely quite a few of the wealthier merchants would not like being dumped in the cheap seats, but just as likely, up there they’d flock together and exchange nasty comments about her. There was no other way to get over ten thousand people in one place to tell them just exactly how they would live for the next year and what the rules were that they would have to live by if they wanted to make their fortune and not land in Kris’s brig.
Or keep their head off an Iteeche pike.
With a shrug, Kris went to meet the diplomats she’d been saddled with. She’d been careful to pull on her spidersilk underarmor; no doubt it would dull their diplomatic daggers.
As Kris headed for the hatch between her day quarters and the quarterdeck, the bulkhead moved close to her. Behind her, her day quarters expanded; Kris wondered who was losing space, but didn’t care enough to ask. No doubt, all would be made right by the end of the evening. A wet bar appeared on the bulkhead to her left and two bartenders and several waiters and waitresses in dress Marine Red and Blues stepped through a new hatch to attend the drinks that had also miraculously appeared at the ready.
“Got to love that Smart Metal,” Nelly said.
On the quarterdeck, the band was already in place. Captain Klum had chosen to skip greeting the arriving Navy officers on the quarterdeck above to serve Kris’s diplomatic needs.
NELLY, HAVE YOU PROVIDED CAPTAIN KLUM WITH A LIST OF WHO WE EXPECT TONIGHT?
YES, KRIS, AMBASSADORS AND STAFF, AS WELL AS FULL PICTURES. I PRIMED HIS COMPUTER THOROUGHLY.
THANK YOU.
Nelly did not need to name the first man across the brow. The Honorable Kingston LeJuinne was a white-haired imposing man, a good four inches taller than Kris. As Earth ambassador, newly developed protocol made him the dean of Kris’s diplomatic corps.
As he came across the gangway, the band met him with four ruffles and flourishes. Captain Klum saluted him and Kris stepped forward to receive him. As Kris was learning, civilians expected honors, but rarely rendered them. He held out his hand to Kris and she shook it.
“I’m so glad to finally meet the inimitable Princess Kris Longknife,” he said.
“I wish we could have arranged it sooner,” Kris said, diplomatically.
“Well, my government gave me my orders. What can one do but obey?” he said with an all too well-practiced professional shrug. “I do wish you could have seen your way through to hold a formal dinner once the ambassadorial cats were let out of the bag, so to speak.”
“I thought about it seriously, but the Iteeche Lord arranging for this mission asked that I delay until his master could make arrangements to greet you as well.”
That got ever-so-slight a twitch of an eyebrow from LeJuinne. Was he annoyed that two could play this surprise game? Was he as nervous now as Kris was to be only minutes away from meeting Ron’s chooser, a most senior and personal advisor to the worshipful Imperium?
Lieutenant General Juan Longknife had been moving the ambassador’s staff along with a courteous wave. Lieutenant Meg Longknife took them in tow and led them to where the drinks were in the reception laid on in Kris’s quarters. Quickly, she returned, and Kris had her escort the ambassador, directly to the bar.
Now, coming up the brow was someone Kris was delighted to see. When had last they parted, Tsusumu Kawaguchi-san had just saved Kris from losing her head, literally, to the headsman’s axe on Musashi. Now, he was Ambassador Kawaguchi-sama in full kimono and representing an alliance that included not only Musashi and Yamato, but other highly industrialized planets like New Krakow, Far Pusan, and Surabaya, as well as a dozen developing ones.
He returned the captain’s salute with a bow and then reached for Kris’s hand with both his own. “It is so good to see you again, my young friend.”
“It is good to see you too, my wise counselor. I hope you got a good price for that white kimono you bought for me to wear to meet the headsman.”
“Anything that holds the memory of your visit goes for a pretty penny, Your Highness, but no, I did not buy any such thing. Though you must admit, the picture of you bravely going to meet the headsman in a pure white silk kimono would have guaranteed my party enough votes to keep us in power until my dying day.”
“My children would have sorely missed their mother’s smiling head,” Kris pointed out.
“Ah, yes, there are more of you now. You must visit Musashi again and bring your children by to meet the Crown Princess’s brood and share tea some time.”
“Her father, your Emperor, is doubtlessly taking delight in his grandchildren?” Kris asked.
“So much so that he is threatening daily to abdicate the hard work to her. I think he would retire to a hermitage as a simple monk except he knows the grandchildren would drag him home and he would allow them to do so with a broad smile on his face and many giggles from them.”
“So, all is well with you and Musashi?”
“Let us say that things are as exciting as always. Not as exciting as when you shared our fine days, but exciting enough. And this,” he said, waving his silken sheathed arm at Kris’s quarterdeck, “How did you bring all this to pass?”
“I may have had more help than I realized, and definitely more than I need. Why have I not met with you until now?”
If possible, the man’s smile got even broader as he shrugged, the full diplomatic mirror of LeJuinne’s. “There was much discussion about who should represent us on this great endeavor. Such discussion went long and I arrived only moments before your fleet sealed locks. I feared that I might have to commandeer some transport so that I might chase after you.”
“It sounds like opinion on Musashi is just as convoluted as always.”
“How could it be otherwise? We are merely humans, eh?”
“Are you happy to have won this mission? It seems at times that my great-grandfather, King Raymond to you, seems to frequently drop me into hot water with no warning.”
“And has the water gotten hot all of a sudden?”
“Very,” Kris said.
“Is there more to this mission than I was told?”
“Were you told that we might have to fight our way to the Imperial presence through a rebel blockade?”
Kawaguchi-sama’s eyes narrowed. “That was a surprise to me and all who speak with me. We assumed that you knew about it and had it under control. After all, you are a Longknife.”
“Your friends are too trusting of my skills. Or luck.”
“Your aide-de-camp is standing not too far behind you with a young Marine at her elbow displaying a plate of hors d’oeuvres and several cups of saké.”
Kris turned to see Lieutenant Longknife waiting patiently, but clearly waiting. Deftly, Kris turned and passed the ambassador along before turning back to see who was next.
There were another ten ambassadors, representing greater and less powers in human space. The Helvetican Confederacy was represented by two people, a woman and a man. No doubt, finances and lack of trust had something to do with the double representation. The Greenfeld Empire had an ambassador, a man Kris recognized as from Vicky’s half, no it was three quarters of the Empire now that followed Vicky. The Esperanto League, Scanda Confederacy as well as the Hispania Quatrain were represented by full ambassadors even if they were trailed by smaller staff.
Others of the ambassadors came from alliances on the other side of human space from Wardhaven who had yet to send aid to Alwa and, thus, not gotten Kris’s attention. Nelly, however, both knew them, had their pictures, and could show Kris a map of where they came and how powerful they were.
All of them shared the same questions that the Earth ambassador had. Why had Kris taken so long to get them together and why were they here now?
Kris sidestepped their questions as well as she had LeJuinne’s.
As Kris watched her aide take the last ambassador into the reception, Kris said, “Nelly, where are our guests of honor?”
“Ron is just passing through the security cordon at the exit from the quay. I’ve got them on visual, and, to answer your next question before you ask it, I expect they will be here in three or four minutes, assuming nothing slows their present rate of advance.”
“Do you think anyone might try to slow them down?”
“Kris, I may not be human, but I don’t see any way that even one of your most crazy type meatheads would get in their way. I’m making out ten large, very sharp axes leading the way and some really big, mean looking Iteeche ready to swing them.”
“The main pier clear?”
“Yes, Kris.”
Kris paced off the distance to the brow, trailed by an ever-alert Jack, walking between the eight side boys who the JOOD was swapping out with another eight. A chief took those who had stood at attention for the last half hour and marched them off the quarterdeck for a break.
The dock section that faced Kris was empty except for four Marines and a sergeant standing formal guard at the end of the gangplank.
Across from the brow were six huge elevators; each large enough for an oversized station truck. Now the first set of doors opened and Iteeche began to march forth, rank on rank.
“Oh, God help us,” Kris breathed as she and Jack back peddled to their proper place at Captain Klum’s side.