They paid proper honors to their burgers. The cook had gotten the onions and lettuce just right. Trouble got Ruth’s tomatoes which, as usual, made his burger almost too sloppy to eat. They had both finished their first bite when Ruth went on.
“I doubt there is anything I can say that will change Ray’s mind about anything he intends to do. That man is more pigheaded than all the pigs on a dozen pig farms, combined. No, I’ll do what I can. No doubt, I and my class will be drawing similarities between then and now. Oh, and the education channel on Eden has asked me to let them tape much of the class for net availability.”
“And you jumped to approve the request.”
Ruth got very ladylike. “Well, I did agree, after some careful negotiations. I get to approve what classes they film. And I approve the final edits.”
“Something I forgot to negotiate before my interview,” Trouble said, with a growl.
“Winston did not edit your interview. It’s the other guys. So long as they don’t quote too much of you, they can call it ‘fair use,’ and use it.”
“There ought to be a law against unfair use, slicing and dicing me up so that I don’t say what I said.”
“Yes, I agree, General. And what would you propose as language for that wonderful new law?” Ruth said, eyes shining.
“How should I know? I’m just an old mud soldier.”
Ruth took another bite of her burger, then put it down as she chewed slowly. Swallowing, she put a hand on Trouble’s elbow. “Enough of this for tonight, soldier. Tomorrow will come, and we’ll muddle through it somehow. Now, hard as it is for you to believe, Kris is not our only great-granddaughter. We’ve got a passel of others, and I think it’s time we talked about someone else.”
“And you have one in mind, no doubt,” Trouble said.
“Yep. Monica’s youngest girl. She’s got a bit of a wild streak, and there’s this girl.”
“Isn’t there always?” Trouble said with a sigh.
“Who plays in a band.”
“A musician, huh?”
“Yep. Drummer, no less.”
“Oh, this just gets better and better. Gee, wife, it’s almost like I’ve heard this one a couple of thousand times before.”
“Isn’t it wonderful? One of our problems is straight out of the cliché locker.”
“I didn’t think any of our seed would be so trite,” Trouble said, and laughed.
They spent the rest of the evening comparing problems that might be common to any other set of parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents.
And enjoyed it.
* * *
Trouble’s computer woke him at 0542 the next morning. “The king requests your presence,” it whispered.
Silently, the old general rolled out of bed and was done with his shower five minutes later. Shaved and ready to dress, he tiptoed from the bath.
To find his wife greeting him with a cup of coffee and a breakfast bar.
“I thought I’d let you sleep in,” he said, taking the offered cup.
“This may be the only time I see you today,” she said, heading for her own dresser. She quickly pulled out slacks and a sweater.
“You don’t have to get dressed.”
“I likely should if I’m going to drive you to the palace. Don’t want to give the poor Marines on duty a heart attack, do I?”
“Ah, yes, definitely get dressed. You might not give them a heart attack dressed the way you are at the moment, but you’d definitely be a distraction.”
She threw her nighty at him and added a kiss. Then both turned to make themselves presentable for the day.
Trouble dressed casually. It would very likely to be a long and difficult day. There was no reason why he had to be uncomfortable as well.
Trouble made one more effort to save his wife from driving him in. “I can call a cab,” he offered, “or drive myself.”
“Love, this is a workday. There’s no place to park, and getting a cab to take you downtown right now might take you halfway to noon. Nope, Sailor, I’m your ride, and don’t you talk back to me.”
“Never, kind lady.”
So it happened that, in the middle of rush-hour traffic, Ruth pulled up to the Grand Hotel and dropped her husband off.
“Pay toll,” she demanded as he started to open the door. So he leaned over, intent to offer a peck, and got pulled into one of those kisses that should be followed by getting a room.
“Remember what’s real, honey,” Ruth whispered as she broke for air.
“How can I forget when I’ve got you to remind me?”
With the scent of her still with him, he made his way through the security screenings with a smile on his face.
He only lost the smile when he opened the door to Ray’s office.
“Can you believe they sent the whole thing?” Ray was shouting as he came around his desk.
“The whole what?” was all that Trouble could think to say.
“Kris’s entire report,” Crossie answered. “Relax, Ray. It’s in a tight cipher, and they’re sending it highest priority. It’s not waiting around anywhere for someone else to pick it off.”
“It’s on the comm net. Someone will copy it,” the king insisted.
“What’s in the report?” Trouble asked. Enough with the security freak-out.
“They had the battle,” Mac said, looking up from a pile of flimsies. “We kicked their alien butts.”
“And they kicked ours,” Ray spat. “There’s a reason why no ship has followed the Wasp back. There aren’t any left.”
“That’s not for sure,” Mac said. “The Hornet is not accounted for, and two of the battleships were last seen running.”
“Battleships were running?” Trouble echoed. Battleships don’t run. They blow things up. And if they did need to run, it meant they were in deep shit because battleships are too big to run very fast. They blow things up. They did not run away.
“Can I see some of that?” Trouble asked. There was only one copy of the report. It was a hard copy, and it was being handed around in parts. Trouble got in line. Apparently, the last place in line.
He read what Kris had titled The Executive Brief Summary. And it was brief.
They kicked butt. They got their butts kicked by what was left over, and they ran. What with them having done major damage to the huge mother ship, the aliens were not at all inclined to let them just run away. The aliens chased. The humans fled. Some of Kris’s ships couldn’t run so good, so they fought.
“Damn, that takes courage,” Trouble muttered as he read on.
“Which?” Mac asked. “The courage to fight when you’re cornered or the courage to let others die so you can keep on running and maybe get the word back that we’ve got ourselves one hell of an enemy?”
“Both,” Trouble said.
“Christ on a crutch,” the king exploded. “They’ve got babies! Alien babies for Christ’s sake!”
“Babies?” got Trouble’s attention. He slipped around the king’s desk to read over his shoulder. It rapidly got crowded as both Mac and Crossie joined him.
“Aren’t they cute?” Trouble said. “They look just like my latest great-grandbaby.”
“Their parents tried to save them,” Mac noted, “but couldn’t save themselves.”
“Their parents were cold-blooded murderers, and they were coming for us,” Crossie added darkly.
“Or for the Iteeche,” Ray corrected. “Which, at the moment, is pretty much the same as us. Can’t believe I said that,” the king muttered as he let Trouble get his hands on the babies’ picture.
“Oh good God!” the king exploded again. “The head honcho from Chance got to walk off with one of the baby pictures.”
“He did?” Crossie didn’t actually ask.
“He did. Kris gave it to him, and Sandy didn’t get it back from him.”
“So, the rest of humanity gets to see some cute babies,” Trouble said. “There have been worse first contacts.”
“I’ve got enough problems getting people to look to their own defense without some nanny waving this picture at me and insisting, ‘Aren’t they cute?’”
“The story is pretty grim,” Trouble pointed out. “The ship they were on blasted the comm buoy as soon as it tried to contact them. We had to blast the ship to save our own. It looks like someone sabotaged the escaping launch, so the parents died. They managed to save the kids. That doesn’t sound like a nice story to me.”
“But who’s going to listen to your story, Trouble,” the king spat, “when they’ve got this cute baby picture to wave? Just like my latest great-grandkid, you said. I can hear it on every street corner.”
Mac nudged Trouble and raised an eyebrow. He didn’t have to tell Trouble that his granny would be waving the picture at the next family get-together.
“We’ve got problems,” Crossie said with finality.
“We’ve likely got bigger problems than any of you are thinking about,” Ray said.
“Which of our problems looks the meanest to you, Ray?” Trouble asked.
“This planet that Kris saved. What did the original report say about it? They were just launching their very first space mission.”
That got general agreement from the king’s listeners.
“And that bunch of newbies to space were able to wreak this kind of havoc on a moon-size alien base ship in the next system from their home planet,” the king said, waving the picture Kris sent of the huge alien ship just before the Wasp ducked out of the system.
“I see the problem,” Trouble said. “Whether the survivors of this horde go on to take down that planet, or their cousin horde does it, they’re going to put those people over a barrel and demand to know how they did this.”
“And none of them will know what the aliens are talking about,” Mac said.
“It means those bug-eyed monsters are going to come looking for who did this to their dumb cuz, and if they’re as implacable as those that wouldn’t quit chasing our corvettes . . .” Crossie didn’t finish his sentence.
“And our Kris just gave them another hot datum all the way over on this side of the galaxy,” Ray spat.
“It’s not like she had a whole lot of choice,” Trouble stepped in to defend the point of the spear from those who seemed to have forgotten what it was like out there, assuming they’d ever been there. “If that scout had gotten a good picture of the Iteeche Empire, the alien mother ships would be hotfooting it for here just as fast as their low-gee bodies could jump.”
“We need to keep their attention all the hell and gone over there,” Mac said.
“And how do you propose we do that?” Crossie shot back. “I still have no idea how Kris got those eight battleships and four corvettes all the way over there. I’ve read the account of her battle twice, and it seems like there was more luck involved in her battle than any sane commander has a right to expect. Anybody here have any idea how someone kills the next one of those monsters?”
Nobody offered a suggestion. Trouble just shook his head.
Ray took a while to absorb his chief spy’s horror story. When he spoke, it was slowly, as if he were thinking out loud.
“We need to get some kind of fleet over there to at least give the aliens a bloody nose the next time they go after that planet. Something that will give them enough of a fight that they figure we just got lucky last time, and there’s no need to go looking for something, or someone, else.”
“Who you going to volunteer for that suicide mission?” Trouble asked.
“This is all a pipe dream,” Mac said. “A fleet requires a base force. And if you’re going to put it all the way to hell and gone, they’ll need a fleet train. This is not a small sacrifice you’re talking about. This is a major investment and one we’re going to lose. Totally lose. I hear you, Your Majesty, and Crossie, wondering where you are going to get a fleet to defend human space. Why are we talking about throwing away a big hunk of our limited assets when we don’t have anything close to what we need for our own critical defense?”
The room fell very silent on that thought.
Around Trouble, the others began to once again immerse themselves in the report. Maybe there was an answer buried somewhere in it.
A half hour later, Trouble was tired of his brain’s running around in a hamster wheel, going nowhere, but doing it with a whole lot of effort.
“Ray, is that wall screen of yours secure?”
“As secure as anything in this room,” the king muttered.
“Mind if I use it to organize my thoughts?”
“Help yourself.”
“Okay. Priority one, we have to defend human space. Iteeche space if we can.”
Those words appeared on the wall monitor, replacing a lovely picture of a running brook in autumn that had not been helping anyone feel calm.
“Secondly, it would be nice if we could put up enough of a fight all the way on the other side of the galaxy so that these alien murderers didn’t come hunting for the ‘real’ source of their most recent defeat.”
“I’m not sure that qualifies as second priority,” Crossie said.
“We’ll argue numbers later,” Trouble retorted.
“We need to outpost all the star systems in human space,” Mac said, the practical military planner. “If some alien scout jumps into our space anytime soon, we need to know it. Maybe we can deploy an interceptor force to take them down before they see too much and report. Yes, yes, I know,” Mac said, waving Crossie back into his seat. “The more hot datums we give them, the more attention we’ll draw. Still, they’re just guessing there is something over here. They don’t know.”
“No,” Crossie growled, “I wasn’t coming out of my seat to argue with you. We also need to build an early-warning system of buoys out beyond our space.”
“First, we picket our own systems,” the king said, “then we get outposts. First things first.”
“And the nice thing about this is that it’s not going to cost us an arm and a leg,” Crossie said. “Just drop off some cheap warning buoys. Any schooner or corvette can do that.”
“And if we do get scouted,” Trouble said, “we can let everyone know it’s not just way out there, but getting real close here.”
“We’ll burn that bridge when we come to it,” Ray said. “And I do like your idea, Mac, of getting some cruiser squadrons deployed to back up the pickets. Did Kris give us a report on how big that scout ship was?”
Mac found that reference and pointed it out to the King.
He whistled. “That big? Ouch!”
“I don’t think they go in for small,” Trouble said. “If they’ve been in space for a hundred thousand years and can exploit all the resources of a system, no wonder they’ve got a lot of crap.”
“But if they’ve got access all the resources of a system,” Mac said slowly, “why pillage a planet down to bedrock? Bringing stuff up from a high-gravity well like that planet they raped has got to be a whole lot less efficient than just drilling the stuff out of an asteroid.”
“That doesn’t make any sense,” the king agreed.
“Maybe it doesn’t have to,” Trouble said.
“In what way?” Crossie asked.
“We exploit resources because we need them. Right?” Trouble said.
“Of course. Why else would we go after any resource?” the king said, annoyed by the drift of this conversation.
“But what if killing the intelligent life was the main reason for landing, and the extraction of resources was just a way of marking their territory?”
“Not just kill them, but desecrate the corpse?” Mac said.
“Yes,” Trouble said.
“That’s just sick,” Crossie said.
“Sick, but something we’ve got to consider about our new best enemy,” the king said slowly. “Trouble, have I ever told you that I hate you?”
“Regularly, Ray. Kind of like old times, ain’t it?”
“Too much like old time
s,” the king growled. “Okay, okay. Back to Trouble’s board. Is there anything else we should put at the top of our Do or Die List?”
“Maybe move the outposting to a subcategory under defend human space,” Crossie said.
“Crossie, you’re quibbling and not adding anything,” the king said.
For a long minute, the four men eyed the board . . . and came up with nothing.
“Okay,” the king said. “Now, how do we defend human space? And I include in that getting the budget we need to build a battle fleet and the people to crew it. Several of them, as well as put a decent defense system up on every major planet.”
“Whether they want it or not?” Mac asked.
“Whether they want to pay for it or not,” the king shot back.
“I was hoping we could just talk about the military problems,” Trouble said.
“We can’t talk about the military without talking about the money,” the king pointed out. “And we can’t talk about the money without talking about taxes. Which also means we have to talk about getting the taxpayer on board with this whole project. Don’t you just love democracy?”
“Lousy form of government,” Trouble admitted, “but the best anyone’s come up with. Hey, am I quoting someone?”
“Very likely,” the king agreed. “You can look up the quote when you have spare time. Now, boys, let’s dig in. I want ideas and I want them now.”
* * *
Ruth picked Trouble up when he finally got free. It was late in the evening by then, and he was exhausted, both mentally and physically.
“You hungry, dear?”
“No. They’ve been pouring coffee down our gullets all day, along with sandwiches. I’m too exhausted to bite anything. Just take me home and pour me into bed.”
She took him home, but he found he wanted a shower before the bed. Still, Ruth was waiting as he stumbled from the bathroom.
He hit the pillow and didn’t even bounce.
“Rough day?” was all Ruth said as she began to massage the knots in his back.
Ruth had once taken a course on massage. Trouble wasn’t sure that what she did to him was by any of the books, but there was no question that his wife’s hands roving his body was a delight to endure.
Kris Longknife: Welcome Home / Go Away Page 5
