“Yeah, rough day,” Trouble mumbled into the pillow.
“You want to talk about it?” was accompanied by hands working down toward the small of his back.
“Not much I can say,” he said. “Not much that would surprise you, anyway,” he managed to get out, between several moans of pleasure as his back relaxed under her wandering fingers.
“Try and surprise me,” she said.
“Ray’s an ass,” he told the pillow.
“Nope. No surprise there,” she said, and her fingers wandered below the small of his back.
“Please don’t go there. I really am tired, and I’m afraid if you start something, I’ll fall asleep right in the middle of it.”
She settled down beside him, but her hands still roved, soothing the taut muscles of his back. “You really are beat.”
“Honey, you don’t know how hard it is not to kill idiots when they so richly deserve being throttled.”
“You’re getting forgetful, aren’t you? We’ve been in meetings where I damn near did kill some of the idiots.”
“Yeah,” Trouble said. “I guess I am forgetting old times. Strange how we remember all the good times and manage to forget the rest.”
“Not strange, just very human, love. Now you go to sleep, and I’ll keep you safe.”
Trouble didn’t manage another word. Sometimes it’s just smart for a husband to let his wife get the final word. Oftentimes.
Especially when he’s really tired.
* * *
“General, you are wanted at the Royal Court,” woke Trouble. Considering how loud the voice was, it must have been the fifth or fifteenth time.
“Thank you, computer, I’m up,” he said, feeling not at all like getting up.
Somehow, Ruth was still sleeping beside him. He made his way to the bathroom and ran a hot shower. With time short, he shaved there.
No surprise, Ruth handed him a cup of coffee as he headed for the closet. Today, he’d wear his uniform with full ribbons. If he had to speak for the poor damned souls on the tip of the spear, he’d look like someone who’d been there.
“We’ve got trouble,” Ruth said as she turned away and clicked on the TV in the bedroom. It was an old set they hadn’t used much in the last fifteen years. Not since they had both officially and finally retired.
They weren’t about to let the news be all that important.
The TV came on to a news channel. There was Vicky Peterwald. All redheaded and voluptuous.
“Damn, what is she almost not wearing?” Trouble said, dressing.
“Don’t worry, she won’t be wearing it in a minute.”
“She’s talking about the Voyage of Discovery and the battle, isn’t she?”
“Definitely.”
“So why’s she dressed like a stripper?”
Ruth sighed. “So all the media outlets will carry this after she falls out of it not just once, but twice!”
“Did she just say our Kris seduced the other admirals into attacking the aliens?”
Ruth shook her head. “I ran it back three times the first time I heard her say that. The words don’t quite add up to that accusation. But if you’re inclined to think that way, it will be a tiny hop, skip, and jump to that conclusion.”
“Ray is going to go ballistic.”
“Gee, and he called for you right off the bat. Think you can catch him on the second bounce?”
Now it was Trouble’s turn to shake his head. “Who’s going to catch me?”
“I’ll be right here, waiting. Just call me before you’re so all tuckered out that you got nothing for your best girlfriend.”
“I’ll try, honey, I’ll try, but no promises. It’s Ray we’re dealing with.”
“Ray and our Kris,” Ruth said. “Any chance I could come along? Maybe put an oar in the water for all us women. Women who’ve been out there as well as waited for you big lug-heads to come home.”
Trouble just shook his head.
“Yeah. Ruth is too close to Rita,” she said.
“And you even look a bit like her, love. Even I’ve made the mistake once or twice.”
“Too many ghosts in that man’s life.” Ruth said.
The drive to the Royal Chambers was a quite one.
Ray was in a full Wild Man mode by the time Trouble walked into this office.
“Trouble, has your granddaughter been sleeping with the admirals?” he demanded before Trouble was hardly in the door.
“My great-granddaughter also happens to be your great-granddaughter,” Trouble reminded His Royal Highhorseness. “Remember, she hasn’t even managed to bed that handsome guy we arranged to take care of her security, and he’s always at her elbow.”
“You sure?”
“Ray, Ruth is sure.”
“Yeah, and women usually know before us guys do,” Ray said, seeming to accept that . . . for the moment.
“Besides,” Trouble went on, “we have her report from before they sortied to contact. The admirals bought in because they wanted to buy in.”
“That was only her report,” Crossie put in, gently, like a snake hissing.
“The decision was made in an online conference,” Mac pointed out. From the looks of the poor fellow, he’d slept in his office. He was badly in need of a shower, a shave, and a less wrinkled shirt.
“They would be in the Wasp’s logs, wouldn’t they?” Trouble said, knowing very well what the answer was but wanting to walk as softly as he could . . . at least before noon.
It clearly was going to be a long day.
“Send for those logs,” Ray snapped. “I want the originals. That ship’s a wreck. Bring the logs and storage out of the Wasp. Then scrap her where she is.”
“I’m ordering that as you speak,” Mac said, turning away to issue the necessary orders through his commlink.
“Now, how do we get that naked girl off the TV?” Ray muttered to himself. “Crossie, could you get to the media outlets? Make them see this is a bunch of bunk. Lies.”
“We could get the real story out,” Trouble suggested. “Have Captain Drago on the Wasp hold a news conference and publish the logs of the ship for all to see,” Trouble suggested.
“Then it would all be out of our control,” Crossie said. “That would be a political disaster.”
“It would be the truth,” Trouble pointed out.
“And when did that ever matter to those newshounds?” Ray almost spat. “You saw yesterday what they did to you. You spoke the truth, and they cut it to ribbons. No, we’ve got to close this down. Put a damper on it,” Ray ordered.
The problem was, Trouble looked around, and there was no one at hand to salute and make it happen.
“If we can close it down, we can let it out a bit at a time, as it suits our purpose,” Crossie said. “Let folks know what we want them to know when we’re ready for them to know it.”
“This doesn’t feel good to me,” Trouble said.
“You never did like news management,” Ray said, getting up from his desk and coming around to rest a hand on Trouble’s shoulder. “You’re a good line beast, Trouble. See the hill. Take the hill. That’s what I always liked about you, Trouble. But this is a different matter.”
The king turned to Crossie and Mac. “Turn this off. Close it down. Nothing more comes out. We’ve seen this before. They’ve got to fill news twenty-four/seven. If nothing new comes out about this for a couple of news cycles, they’ll be all howling off for something else. Crossie, you know anything interesting that hasn’t broken yet?”
“I know three or four sex scandals that I don’t think you’d mind if they broke in the next couple of days.”
“Make them happen,” the king said, then turned to Mac. “Get the word out to Sandy. I want the lid on that ship and crew. Nothing. Absolutely nothing leaks out. Swear the crew to secrecy under pain of all kinds of misery. That should be enough for the contract crew. The Navy and Marine types get a transport out of there fast. Move them to some out-of-the-
way posts. Places no newsie can trace them to.”
“I’ll make it happen, Your Highness,” Mac said, coming to attention and saluting, like a good field marshal.
“Now, Trouble, you and me have some time on our hands. Kris is coming back at 3.5 gees, so she’ll be here in two or three days. We need to plan what we want to talk to her about and what we want to do about this hot potato she’s dropped in our lap.”
“Yes, we do,” Trouble said.
They spent the rest of the day looking at the political and military options. That involved sitting through the video take from the battle several times. Each time they watched it, Trouble was left shaking his head.
“Kris went up against that!” was the frequent refrain from both of them.
As a ground pounder, Trouble found himself especially moved by the huge force that deployed from the mining head in the system one out from the one where they faced the huge mother ship.
“Kris really saved some serious Marine bacon that time,” Trouble said. Ray seemed quite impressed with Kris as well, but he was falling more and more silent. By the end of the day, Trouble was happy to leave him to brood over thoughts he seemed reluctant to share.
Since he escaped feeling less run through a wringer, Ruth and he enjoyed a fine dinner at a new steak house his wife had read a review on. Trouble was halfway through a delicious sirloin when a hulking fellow came up to their table, put both his hands on it, and leaned into Trouble’s face.
“You the general who wants us all to go to war?” came with hundred-proof breath and too much spit.
Trouble had met his kind before. Now he was older. He chose to ignore him and cut another bit of steak.
“I’m talking to you,” the interruption blustered at full volume. “I saw you on TV. You want to draft my kid into some war for your greater glory, right?”
Ruth rested a restraining hand on his arm. Trouble gave her a quick smile and put down his knife and fork, the better to make sure he didn’t apply them to deflating this buffoon.
“I’m retired, fellow, so I doubt I’ll be fighting in the future,” he said with deadly calm. “However, I didn’t notice a lot of glory facing waves of Iteeche in that war.”
The blowhard opened his mouth, but a young man was suddenly at his elbow. “Dad, the desert’s here. Mom was wondering where you were.”
Deftly, the youth maneuvered his father away from Trouble’s table and headed him off for other places to bluster.
Ray couldn’t help but notice the young man’s long, delicate fingers.
As the pair made their way out of Trouble’s space, the youth turned back. “I’m studying to be a concert pianist. I really want to make it before I’m too old. Please don’t draft me into some war.”
Trouble found himself nodding at the kid’s plea.
With them gone, he turned back to Ruth. She was applying a napkin to her lips.
“Lots of young people with lots of dreams that don’t involve toting a gun, humping a pack, or doing their level best not to get suddenly dead before they’re twenty-one,” was all she said.
They finished their meal in silence. Which encouraged them to skip desert. Or rather to save the desert for when they got home. Thus, they both enjoyed themselves that evening.
* * *
Trouble awoke the next morning feeling eager to tackle the evils of the day.
But when he arrived at the Royal Chambers, Trouble found himself assigned to work with Navy types to put their early-warning system in place. Although the squids hadn’t been admitted into the contents of Kris’s latest report, they seemed fully motivated by what they’d seen in Kris’s earlier report from before they sortied to intercept the alien invasion force.
The admiral Trouble drew to head up this effort had a good head on his shoulders. He already had an inventory of all jump buoys and automated communication stations available in storage. Schooners and buoy tenders would do the initial deployment of these.
It still left them with a whole lot of uncovered systems.
Which meant meeting with Procurement after lunch. These folks, mostly civilians, didn’t need to be told this was important. They turned to quickly, applying what they knew about procurement practices. In only minutes, they had called up their own data on who made what and what was the cheapest way to get them making more.
Just before the midafternoon break for coffee, Admiral Crossenshield dropped in and answered the question that everyone had but no one wanted to voice.
“I’ve got a funding source that we can tap for this,” he said with a canary-that-ate-the-cat smile.
“Good, I’ve got people who need that money,” Trouble said, and they set about spending it. The coffee break kind of got forgotten, but enough portable caffeine was delivered soon after, leaving Trouble to wonder just how much Crossie was playing him . . . and this entire exercise.
Done, Trouble tried to drop in on the king, but it turned out that he was out. So he did drop in on Mac.
They exchanged pleasantries; Trouble brought the field marshal up to date on the early-warning system, and he seemed happy.
“Do you have a better ETA on Kris?” Trouble asked.
“I’m told it will be tomorrow. I’m not sure when,” Mac answered vaguely.
With nothing more to say, Trouble called Ruth for a pickup and set out to enjoy the evening. Soon, they wouldn’t be enjoying evenings together for a while. She was due to leave for New Eden in a week, so they made the most of their time together.
Through eighty-plus years split between each other and the Corps, they’d learned to make the most of what they had.
* * *
Mac hated lying to Trouble. Then again, as Crossie said, it wasn’t exactly a lie. Crossie had told Mac that Kris would be arriving tomorrow. And since Mac already knew she’d actually be arriving tonight, it was not a lie to say he wasn’t sure when tomorrow she’d arrive.
Still, all faking aside, Mac hated lying to Trouble as much as he hated keeping the old warrior out of the meeting the king had set up with their mutual great-granddaughter.
But orders were orders.
As soon as Trouble was well gone, Mac abandoned the mess on his desk after extracting a few things he’d work on tonight. He’d been following Crossie’s efforts to keep the newsies away from the meeting. Somehow, a couple of them had gotten wind of Kris’s early arrival.
The meeting had already been moved twice.
A final check before leaving showed Mac that it had been moved a third time.
He called for his car and gave the driver only general directions. It was probably unnecessary cloak-and-dagger crap, but he’d save the actual address until the last moment.
It was raining. Raining hard. The night was as black as Mac felt. He was torn. He admired and respected Ray Longknife. Hell, the man was a legend.
He was also Mac’s king.
Still, this whole thing stank to high heavens. Damn it, Kris and her tiny band of survivors deserved a parade down every Main Street in human space. If not for themselves, then for those that hadn’t made it back.
Mac shook his head. That was not going to happen.
Certainly not if Ray had any say-so in the matter.
Had the legend gotten too old and too tired to tackle a new set of problems?
Mac hated to even think that.
Still, the thought had been trying to cross his mind a lot since that first message about Kris Longknife had come in. Would the legend of old have hidden from a problem of this size?
No, that wasn’t the right question. The king was not hiding from the problem. He was tackling it just as much as he could with the resources he had on hand.
That was it. He was limiting himself to what he had on hand. Why was the man unwilling to bring more people into this? They were the ones who would be dying in industrial numbers if one of those monster ships showed up overhead.
Did the people really need to be manipulated into doing something about the danger that
could even now be headed their way?
But, of course, that was the problem.
Was such a menace headed their way?
And if it didn’t show up in a week, or a month, or a year, how long could the human psyche stay on guard for something that might never show, or could show up tomorrow?
Mac had been searching his memory for any other general who’d faced a leadership challenge anywhere close to this. So far, he’d come up blank.
The driver asked for further directions, and Mac gave them to him. He couldn’t help but notice that the woman was driving a good ten klicks below the posted speed limit. Between the rain and the dark, it was that bad.
That left Mac to muse, was even nature so opposed to what they were doing that it wept?
“You’re too old to be a poet, and too stuck in your ways to change that much,” he muttered to himself. Or maybe he was just too old for this kind of shit.
But his mumbling brought a question from the young woman driving, and he had to deflect her from his ruminations.
Fortunately, they were soon there. “There” proved to be a darkly lit mansion whose edges got lost in the surrounding gloom. Fortunately for Mac, the place came with a portico that allowed him to dismount the car without getting drowned. There were Marines about, most in full battle rattle, but the one who opened the door for him was in dress blue and reds.
Just inside, a major pointed Mac upstairs to a door guarded by a pair of sergeants. Somebody was taking no chances with some kid talking. Inside, Mac found Ray and Crossie, hands behind their backs, talking among themselves as they gazed out a window into the gloom.
The room was a very tastefully done study that smelled strongly of money. Off to one side was a fireplace. On another evening, it might have been called cheery. Tonight, it struggled against the gloom . . . and failed miserably.
Central to the entire blend of wood paneling and thick carpet was an exquisite marble desk. The king turned away from the window, but not toward the desk. Instead, he settled into an overstuffed chair with its back to the fireplace.
There were three other similar chairs, one at his right and left, and a final one facing him. Before Crossie settled into the right-hand one, he handed Mac an envelope.
Kris Longknife: Welcome Home / Go Away Page 6
