“I knew you’d get around to me sooner or later.”
“A thousand diplomats and a thousand more Marines are only the start. I’m need a support staff not all that smaller for them. We’ll be completely detached from the local economy, at least to start with. All our food and other essentials, as well as luxuries, will have to be imported from back home. I’m working on getting a weekly resupply shipment. We’ll need something passing both ways for the diplomatic pouch. My question is how do I feed, clothe and entertain all these people?”
“You want something that combines both the supply division and the Forward Lounge on the old Wasp, only on steroids,” Abby said.
“Considering where we’re going, I figure we’ll need quite a few different places to eat, as well as a central cafeteria that’s cheaper, if not free.”
“I’d like a mess hall for my Marines,” Bruce tossed in.
“You can have one,” Abby said, “so long as it shares the same kitchen with my cafeteria.”
“Fine by me. I don’t want my Marines complaining that they get worse chow than the civilian pukes.”
“Will I need to staff a hospital?” Abby asked.
“I’m not sure. I know we’ll be getting a dozen doctors. That may sound like a lot, but they’ll also be studying the physiology of the Iteeche as well as our aches and pains. I’ll see if the Navy plans on covering the entire medical spectrum or if you need to provide contractors.”
“Fine. I assume you’ll want at least one and likely several stores that can provide everything from soup to nuts to a couch?”
“I don’t know,” Kris said. “We’re bringing our own furniture. You might want to include a shop that can cover everything from woodworking to slapping together some electronic gizmo for the researchers. Hopefully, we can buy some stuff off the Iteeche economy.”
“What we gonna use to pay for it?” Amanda, the ever-alert economist, asked.
“That’s another thing I need to talk to my friendly Iteeche emissary about.”
“You got an Iteeche here?”
“Sort of. Ron, the Iteeche you and I have met, was here with sixteen Iteeche battlecruisers and the request for me to be emissary to the Iteeche court. Once he gave me the request, he and his sixteen battlecruisers set out to visit all the stations with Iteeche enclaves on them. He hasn’t come back yet, so I haven’t got a lot of my questions answered.”
“They needed sixteen battlecruisers to bring one guy here?” Abby asked, a deep frown forming her eyebrows into a V. “Is my paranoia acting up or does that seem like way too much overkill?”
“Grampa Ray intends to send me with thirty-two battlecruisers. It’s a king thing. I get the same escort and honor guard as he would take.”
Except for Abby, everyone else around the table seemed to think that was a good enough answer. Abby just shook her head and muttered something like “those damn Longknifes.”
Kris chose to ignore her. “So, I want you to pull some of your old strings and see what they think we need and who they think we should hire. Give them the same contract we’re offering the nannies. One year, mutually extendable to five years, with a new contract after that.”
Abby nodded. “I already checked. Your Grampa Trouble is in town. He knows the best people for burying the bodies.”
“Okay, now I move that all further business be outlawed. What have you all been up to? But first, Amber, have any aliens been sniffing around Alwa?”
“We’ve had problems here and there. The aliens won’t leave us alone and the cats are a handful and everyone on Alwa is, well, Alwan. Grand Admiral Santiago has handled everything pretty well,” the Alwa Battlecruiser Force commander replied.
“We’ve gotten some cold datums from ships running between here and Alwa. Nothing strong. Probably a small mining ship like the first one that attacked you. When we sent a task force out to check on them we find them long gone. We dropped those two routes off the approved list after that.” Admiral Kitano paused for a moment to think.
“The aliens are building some new ships with better lasers and reactors. We’ve run into them and had a few fights. Sometimes they fight, sometimes they just ran away. We think some of the young bucks think they can do better than their old man, but so far, no full wolf packs have shown up. Admiral Santiago is figuring the next big fight may be a whole lot tougher. As best we can tell, the aliens have gotten tired of being mowed down by you with nothing really to show for it and they’re hunkering down for now, thinking about it.”
“If they’re really smart, they’re doing a hell of a lot of thinking,” Abby said.
“Hopefully about how to negotiate a peace treaty,” Kris said without too much hope in her voice.
“More like working on something really bad,” Abby said.
“Okay, this is too close to work. Now, Abby, twins?”
“Yep, but I got a whole lot of foot rubs from Steve here for carrying the two hellions in my own way too small womb.”
That got the first laugh of the evening. There were a whole lot more where those came from.
Chapter 10
Kris, Jack, Amber and Alice were up early and made it to Main Navy a half an hour before the usual start of their day. No surprise, Megan was already at her desk with four cups of foamy coffee.
“If you don’t like what I got Admiral Longknife, Admiral Kitano, I put a fresh pot of black coffee on.”
“What does Kris take?” Amber asked.
“Whatever she gets me that doesn’t have caffeine,” Kris said. “It’s supposed to keep me from becoming an old stick in the mud.”
“Well, far be it from me to be old and stodgy,” Amber said, and sipping it, she made a surprised face. “It’s quite good. Alice, try a cup.”
As Alice did, Kris eyed Megan. “Four cups of morning coffee? Over a half hour early? What gives?”
“I asked Nelly to wake me up when you did and traffic was light.”
“Nelly?”
“She asked, Kris. I couldn’t blame her, wanting to make a good first impression, so yes, I did. Sue me.”
“I see Nelly is her same old self,” Amber said.
“Speaking of Nelly,” Kris said, “She and I have agreed that you and Alice, as well as whoever you dragoon into replacing Megan here deserve to have one of her children to help you fight off all the stick-in-the-mud Navy types who don’t understand battlecruisers and what you need to fight them properly.”
“I don’t get to keep your flag lieutenant?” Amber asked, eyeing Megan.
“Nope, she’s already signed up to go with me. There’s no accounting for tastes, is there?” Kris said, eyeing Megan.
She grinned and gave all three a shrug.
Kris went on. “However, I have asked her to suggest who might be her replacement. She not only knows what coffees I might like, but she’s hooked into the Junior Officers’ Grapevine and knows most of what happens in this building before Field Marshall Mac does.”
“A critical skill. Do you have anyone lined up for me to interview?” Amber asked.
“I’ve got four for you: two guys and two gals. They’re all good. None of them want to leave their present jobs but they wouldn’t pass up a chance to join Battlecruiser staff.”
“Line them up for me after lunch,” Amber said. “Is there any chance we might get two of them? I’d like both an Aide de Camp as well as a Flag Lieutenant. Kris, you’ve always been too thin on staff. Admiral Santiago has taught me the wisdom of having enough people on staff to make sure that everything gets done. Done in something like a real eight-hour day.”
Now it was Kris’s turn to shrug. “I may not have been a good role model,” she admitted.
“Ya think,” Amber retorted. “Alice, I want you to sit in with me. We’ve got to have good chemistry between the three or four of us.”
“Aye, aye, Admiral.”
Kris invited the two new arrivals as well as Megan into a morning staff meeting that went long and covered just about ever
ything that was on the front burners. After a break, Kris took Amber and Alice up to meet Mac. He promised to work with them as evenhandedly as he had with Kris.
“And maybe at a little less frantic pace?” he half said, half asked, and, likely, half begged.
“We shall see, sir,” Amber said. “You learn to walk plenty fast on Alwa Station.”
“Oh, God, please don’t tell me that the princess has hatched a whole solar system full of people just like her?”
“I’ll never tell,” Amber said, grinning from ear to ear, which produced a dimple Kris had never seen before.
Well, she seems to be settling in fast.
As Kris was leaving, Mac asked her to stay behind. Amber went on her way and Kris settled in for some serious talk about what she was getting herself into. Jack was called in and given hints as to what Mac really wanted from a military attaché.
“We want anything and everything you can get on their ground and space forces. We’ve got rough intelligence, but a lot of it dates back to the war and never was all that good. We want everything. Specifics on weapons, doctrine, how they get those four-legged monsters to march in step. What do you think, Jack?”
“I’ll do my best, sir.”
“But I will not have Jack risk being declared persona non grata. My kids need a father.”
Mac rolled his eyes. “Okay, okay, General, do what you can, okay?”
“Give me some good junior military attachés, that you don’t mind being sent home early, and I’ll see what I can get for you, sir,” Jack said this time.
Mac didn’t mention anything about the task force he intended to assign to escort Kris to her new post. Maybe he hadn’t yet decided. Maybe someone else would decide. Later Kris would wish that had been part of this conversation.
That night, Kris invited Megan to a sleep over at Nuu House. Nelly distributed her new children to Amber, Alice, and Megan. Amanda finally got her very own Nelly kid computer and Jacques’ got upgraded. Some the matrix for his child had been used up in several different fights before he got it.
Abby and Steve already wore Nelly’s kids at their collar bones. They, with Kris and Jack, slept with their doors open, listening for anything that went majorly wrong. If there were nightmares, they were not accompanied by screams.
Over breakfast the next morning, there was talk of strange dreams, dreams that drew on memories, some long forgotten, but no one complained of nightmares. Nelly seemed to be getting better at bringing her children awake and making that very first interface between her kids and their human partners go very smoothly.
Two nights later, it was time to invite Senior Chief Agent in Charge Taylor Foile of Kris’s Secret Service detail, as well as Leslie Chu, now of the Secret Service, and Gabby Arvind, Kris’s senior nanny and give them computer pals. They were invited to spend Friday evening and the rest of the night at Nuu House with their spouses, or, in Leslie’s case, a boyfriend.
Kris had to avoid smiling too often; she’d grownup in Nuu House and it was familiar to her. Clearly, the intimate others were gobsmacked to walk through the world that their lovers had grown blasé about with familiarity. Kris gave them plenty of time to adjust, and a delicious dinner from Lotty’s kitchen before she broached the issue of the night.
After desert was finished, a delicious French silk chocolate pie, topped with whipped cream and more chocolate dripped upon it, Nelly had Marines bring in small boxes of cherry wood and set them in the spot vacated by Taylor, Leslie and Gabby’s desert plate.
“Nelly is not only a computer,” Kris began for the significant others at the table, “but also a mother.
That drew surprised looks from only those three at the table.
“Seven of us seated here have shared our lives, some for quite a few years, with, in my case, Nelly herself, and in the other cases, with Nelly’s children. What we’re doing tonight is introducing your husband, your wife, your girlfriend, to one of Nelly’s newborn children.”
“You had Marines bring the computers in,” Mrs. Foile observed.
“Yes,” Kris said. “Nelly’s kids are extremely cutting edge technology. Each of these three computers cost about half as much as one of my battlecruisers.”
That brought surprise from the three visitors, but none from the others at the table.
“Let me get this right, you intend to have my husband walking around with a fortune around his neck. Excuse me, but what’s to keep someone from hitting him over the head and stealing this device?”
“That’s a good question,” Kris said. “Nelly, you want to explain that?”
“Yes, Kris. Mrs. Foile, I and my children are self-aware. If anyone were to try to separate us from our imprinted human, we would refuse to work. We would simply shut down. We won’t add so much as two and two. To the outside world, we are catatonic.”
“This fact of life has been spread among certain networks,” Kris put in. “Let’s say that both my grandfather Al and the criminal elements in human space, which may be the same, I’m never too sure, all know that Nelly’s kids won’t do them any good. In the last five years, no one has tried to hit me over the head and steal Nelly. Your husband has helped a lot in every aspect of my safety, and now he will be included in my security bubble. As will you.”
“I thought just agreeing to spending the next five years deep in the Iteeche empire was bad enough. Now this, Love?”
Agent Foile shrugged. “As you often say, I’m too close to one of those damn Longknifes.”
Everyone around the table got a laugh at that.
“Pardon me.” Now it was Leslie Chu’s boyfriend respectfully asking for the floor.
“Yes?” Kris said.
“Why are we here? Why have the three who are to pair with one of Nelly’s children sleeping over here, tonight?”
“Nelly, I think that’s your question.”
“While you three sleep, my child will be getting to know you. Deeply. He or she, as you choose to treat my child, will be learning your wants, desires, skills, and abilities. When you wake up tomorrow morning, my child will know you better than your spouse does. You will be prepared to function as a team.” Nelly paused before continuing.
“The first time my kids got to know humans, there were a few mistakes. I knew Kris. I had come aware working with Kris. I didn’t realize just how close we had become. What I paid attention to in her head, and what I ignored. For example, I ignore her nightmares.” Nelly actually coughed softly before going on.
“My initial brood didn’t know the difference between real memories and memories of dreams and other things that bounce around inside your human heads. Your fears. Your recollections of experiences or things you read or saw that disgusted you. My children brought those memories up, examined them and tried to figure out what to do with them.”
“It was a rough night,” Jack said.
“However,” Admiral Kitano put in, “when we were matched with one of Nelly’s kids just a few days ago, there were no problems.”
“Still,” Nelly said, “we ask you to sleep here tonight so that if my children run into something they can’t handle, we can all help sort it out.”
Mrs. Foile leaned over and gave her husband a gentle kiss on his cheek. “There are many things about my husband’s job that he will not even share with me. Yes, I suspect your child may need some help in sorting out all the cases he’s handled. Even the newspaper reports are enough to nearly give me nightmares.”
“So, you understand,” Kris said, “the invitation for a sleepover.”
“Is there anything we should not do?” Leslie’s boyfriend asked.
“I and my children are very aware of you human’s biological needs,” Nelly said dryly. “Sex is not off the table.”
“Nelly!” Kris said.
“Kris, they are two healthy, young humans. You know very well that was the question.”
“Is Leslie going to be stuck with something like Nelly?” her boyfriend asked.
“Ne
lly and Kris have a unique relationship,” Jack put in. “Most of us have a friendly and respectful attitude to each other.”
“Yes,” Nelly said, “Kris is the only one who has to put up with my ‘tude.”
The three new humans donned the fine net that sank through their hair to lay directly on their scalp. The net would never be taken off. In the future, it would permit them to communicate with their new computer. Once that was completed, the after-dinner conversation went on in a quite normal vein. It mostly centered on the challenges that they could already see that they would face during a five-year mission far from human space. When yawns alerted everyone to the need for sleep, they found their way up to their rooms.
“So,” Jack said, as he undressed. “Is sex off the table tonight?”
“I’d prefer it to be in the bed,” Kris said, turning to him, molding her naked body to him and kissing him seriously.
Chapter 11
Kris had intentionally delayed finalizing her budget submission. Over the next few days, she used that process to bring Amber and Alice up to speed on what she’d achieved in the last five years and what she hadn’t. The reference to going nowhere fast on a treadmill came up a lot.
The new team quickly picked up what they needed to know and began to relieve Kris of her Navy duties.
That left Kris to spend more and more of her time working the political and diplomatic side of her new job. The more she worked it, the less she liked it.
Then, one morning, an older, striking blonde walked into Kris’s office, sat down and said, “Hello. I’m Becky Graven. I’m retired from the Foreign Service but your father suggested that I give up a few games of shuffleboard to help you understand a bit about the diplomatic side of your new job.”
“Becky Graven,” Kris said, slowly. “Your name sounds familiar.”
“I was really hoping it wouldn’t,” she said, with a soft chuckle. “I worked with your Great-grandfather Ray when we were both a lot younger. I did my best to keep my name out of the history books where Savannah was concerned.”
Kris Longknife - Emissary Page 8
