Bold

by Mike Shepherd

“I’ll need to see it to believe it,” Kris said. “Are you operating on hearsay or do you have any solid evidence?”

  “Most is hearsay,” Mr. Gladsten admitted. “However, we cracked several coded messages from someone who appears to be close to the Empress. She is quite adamant in her demands for more ships, more crews, and more security specialists. Oh, and she wants them all trained better. I believe the quote was, ‘These better put up a better fight than the last bunch,’ or something to that effect.”

  One of the women at the support table cleared her throat. “We just finished decoding a large report in answer to that last one that is working its way back to whoever ordered it. It has a long list of suggested crew members for recommissioning over a score of reserve battleships, as well as cruisers and destroyers. The potential crew for each ship is divided among Former Navy, Merchant Marine, and Untrained Landsmen. The first two categories account for less than a tenth of the crew list.”

  “I’ll want to see that list,” Kris said. “Can you cross-index those lists of names against any other databases: births, employment, unemployment, Navy retirement, and separations.”

  “We’ll get on that. You are aware that unauthorized fishing around in databases in the Greenfeld Empire is a capital offense,” the woman pointed out.

  “I have been told that by none other than the Grand Duchess, herself,” Kris admitted. “However, I don’t expect any of you to be taking shore leave, and I assure you, no law-enforcement officer will be allowed aboard this ship. If push comes to shove, I will accept full responsibility in my role as mediator and tell them to see how arresting me works. Right, Jack?”

  “I’ll double our security at the pier,” he said.

  “Now, about the more curious part of this conundrum,” Kris went on. “Are we dealing with a two-sided problem, Papa Peterwald vs. Vicky, or is this a more complicated three way: the Emperor, the Empress, and the Grand Duchess?”

  Now there was a three-way exchange of glances among the troika of Kris’s brain trust. No, there were definitely furtive looks aimed at the support tables. It took a long moment and several nods before Mr. Gladsten continued.

  “There is no question that there is a power base out on the rim of the Empire. Certainly, St. Petersburg, Brunswick, and Metzburg are mentioned as fully involved in the rebellion and allied with the Grand Duchess. No question, she is definitely a part of this conundrum.”

  The senior arbitrator took a deep breath before diving into the other half of the civil war. “From our analysis of message traffic, it appears that there is only one center of activity with respect to the civil war here on Greenfeld. Exactly who is at the center of this traffic is not clearly defined. We are leaning toward the Empress, but there is still some chance that it is the Emperor himself seeing to the marshaling of forces.”

  “You don’t have a solid signature on any of that traffic?” Jack asked.

  “No we don’t. None of us wants to jump to a conclusion, so we are holding back, waiting for some clear evidence pointing at who the primary actor is, both on the rim and on Greenfeld,” Chief Mediator Fu said, entering the conversation for the first time.

  Kris shook her head. “If Harry Peterwald, old Emperor himself, does anything, he has his name plastered all over it. If there are no names on all this message traffic, it’s that way because someone wants to maintain some sort of deniability.”

  “That is a logical conclusion,” Judge Frogmore said. “But it is not our way to draw conclusions in advance of the data. Until we are sure beyond a reasonable person’s expectation, we prefer to wait for more information.”

  Kris nodded. She could understand the way they did business. She, however, had blown away billions of aliens on the force of her hunch.

  Is now the time to change my way of living, or do I bull through?

  She glanced at Jack. He raised a questioning eyebrow but said nothing.

  “Let’s wait a bit longer,” Kris said. “Who knows what we’ll see.”

  On that note, she called the meeting to a close.

  28

  Kris had spent most of the voyage out, when she wasn’t dodging this or that particular ambush, with Ruth and her nannies. Ruth was starting to show signs of teeth. That not only made teething the pits, but two very delicate parts of Kris were none too happy when Ruth tried teething on them.

  The senior child-care manager, as the former Gunny Li O’Malley was now wont to be called, knew something about most every situation that a mother and child might encounter. She walked Ruth and Kris through the fundamentals.

  Kris couldn’t help but notice that her nannies were absent every morning, all but the two on duty. When she asked, she found that they had attached themselves to the Marines for morning PT. “You want to come along?”

  Kris eyed Jack. “Are you telling me that my exercise regime of jumping to conclusions and running away from my problems isn’t restoring me to my svelte, prebaby, girlish figure?”

  Smart husband, Jack just smiled softly at her.

  Kris had to admit, she’d been meaning to do something about the extra pounds, and other things left behind by Ruthie’s shared occupancy of her belly. Really. She’d been doing a few things in the privacy of her own bedroom. When Jack wasn’t around.

  So it happened that Kris followed the nannies to join the Marines the next day.

  And wished she hadn’t.

  Even though she fell out a few times, she still returned to her quarters limping, winded, and in desperate need of a shower. Had even one of the young women said a word, Kris would have crawled under her bed and not come out again.

  They didn’t say that word, and Kris found herself with no excuse not to go back the next day, and the next. After Jack mentioned one evening that Kris was looking good, she put morning PT solidly on her schedule.

  Who knows, I might have to chase Vicky or her dad or stepmom down and hog-tie them to get them to the table.

  Kris was just getting out of the shower after an hour’s worth of PT that she’d actually enjoyed when Jack hollered, “Are you decent, Admiral?”

  “When have you cared if I was,” she shouted right back.

  “I’ve got Captain Ajax with me.”

  “Oops,” Kris said, stopping her sashay across her night quarters, towel trailing.

  “She wants to talk to us about our in-port security once we dock at High Anhalt Station.”

  “Good idea,” Kris said, toweling her hair vigorously. “I’ll be with you in a second.”

  Kris finished drying off, hurriedly pulled on a nursing bra, blue shipsuit, and some shoes, and joined the two other officers in her day quarters. Jack had seated Captain Ajax at the conference table. Kris joined them.

  “The general here asked me to double the guard at the pier and be prepared to seal ship at a moment’s notice. Are you expecting trouble?”

  “This is Peterwald territory, Captain. Expect anything.”

  “You mean Greenfeld, don’t you?” Ajax asked.

  “I’m pretty sure that if you asked Harry Smythe-Peterwald which is which, he’d tell you it didn’t matter. They’ve pretty much run the place as a family business.”

  “A family business that is on the ropes,” Jack added under his breath.

  “Well, whatever it is,” Helen said, “you want to keep the Princess Royal safe from any of their troubles bleeding into us here.”

  “Exactly,” Kris and Jack said together.

  “Have you considered not docking at the station?” the captain said. When Kris said nothing, she went on. “I’ve read your reports. I’m not sure exactly how you do it, but you seem to be able to have your ships swing around each other and get the equivalent of gravity. The main reason we’d be docking at the station would be to get some down for our crews’ health. So, if we don’t hitch ourselves to their station, they’d have a lot more troubl
e getting anything aboard us.”

  Having stated her idea succinctly, she quit talking. Kris had come to like that in the captain. She glanced at Jack. He had his eyebrows up, tossing a big question mark right back at Kris.

  “We don’t need any housekeeping support from the station,” Kris said, talking half to herself. “We’ve got plenty of water, air, and reaction mass. Even if we docked, I’d want to keep our hull sealed from everything except landlines. Nelly, I’d expect you to put up the biggest firewall in human history.”

  “The Great Wall of China would have nothing on me, Kris,” her computer answered.

  “Great Wall of what?” Kris said.

  “You slept through that part of old Earth geography,” her computer said sassily.

  “You’ll protect us from any electronic invasion,” Kris said doggedly.

  “Definitely.”

  “Enough,” Kris said. She’d let the banter go on long enough while she mulled the basic question. “It was Admiral Krätz who came up with the idea of anchoring the ships bow to bow,” she said slowly.

  “But the folks around Vicky,” Jack said, “were the only ones from Greenfeld who actually saw it done.”

  “And we have made very good use of that idea to defend our jumps from the bug-eyed monsters,” Kris muttered softly.

  “Captain Ajax,” Jack said, “have you heard of any Greenfeld Navy ships moored nose to nose?”

  “No, I’d never heard of anything like this before I read your report. It’s totally new to us on this side of human space. At least I think so.”

  Kris gnawed on her lower lip. “It would be a shame for us to come as mediators between these two warring parties, then give away one side’s advantages to the other side,” she said slowly, testing each word and finding them good.

  Kris finally shook her head, decision made. “No, we do not stop short of the station. Not only would it be giving away something that Vicky might not want to have common knowledge, assuming it hasn’t become that, but it would also be inhospitable. You can’t accept an invitation to dinner and mediation, then turn your back on the hospitality. All of it.”

  “You really going to go down there?” Jack asked.

  “I didn’t say that,” Kris said. “I believe I told my great-grandfather of royal pretensions that someone would have to be dumb, insane, or the boldest person in human space to get themselves neck deep in this mess. I am none of those, so let’s see how we can avoid anything like that.”

  “As your putative security chief and husband, I couldn’t have said it better,” Jack said.

  “So, we dock the squadron on the station,” Captain Ajax said, “but no shore leave, and we accept nothing, not so much as a drop of water from them. Any message packet has to be scrubbed and vouched for.”

  “By Nelly, right?” Kris asked.

  “Only too happy to,” her computer agreed.

  “Then I think we’ve got everything organized just the way we want it,” Jack said.

  And they had, for just about another hour.

  “Wardhaven warship, we identify you as a frigate, but you are squawking as a Royal diplomatic ship. Please explain yourself.”

  “Wait one,” came back at the frowning officer in Greenfeld greens.

  “That’s the message we got”—Captain Ajax glanced at the timer below the screen—“fifty-four seconds ago.”

  Kris, who had gotten the call to the bridge and ridden the elevator in something close to a free fall, nodded. “Such a message is beneath the dignity of an admiral and diplomatic mediator. As flag captain, it seems right up your alley.”

  “Oh, joy,” Helen muttered under her breath . . . and shooed Kris out of the camera take.

  Kris quickly let herself be shooed.

  “High Anhalt Station, this is Commander Ajax, captain of the United Society Frigate Princess Royal.” They discussed the benefit of jumping the ships up to battlecruiser status and chose to keep the eight ships small, unthreatening frigates. “I am flag captain of Admiral, Her Royal Highness Kristine of Wardhaven. King Raymond, first of that name, has graciously accepted the pleadings of Your Imperial Majesty, Henry, first of that name, and dispatched Her Royal Highness to render such service as Your Imperial Master may request.”

  “Oh,” came out quite flat. “Pardon us, we were not expecting you so soon,” was rushed. “I will get back to you,” was cut short, as the screen went blank.

  Kris shook her head into the silence. “Let me get this straight. First, they tell us to go home. Then they ignore us. When they finally get around to asking who we are, they cut the line when we give them the only answer they could have expected. Am I missing something?”

  “Well,” Jack said, rubbing his chin, “they might have expected you to be dead, or very late, limping in on a badly damaged little frigate after you tangled with two old but really nasty battleships.”

  “I’m getting the feeling that the right hand doesn’t know what the left hand is doing here,” Kris growled.

  “More like each finger is in the dark about the other ones,” Captain Ajax muttered.

  Jack glanced at the skipper. “I think you’re going to fit into this madhouse just perfectly,” he said through a grin.

  “Don’t look at me,” Ajax said. “I’m just on my way to Alwa. They may be big, mean, and nasty out there, but at least they aren’t totally crazy.”

  “You toss Longknifes and Peterwalds in the same boiling kettle, and there won’t be an ounce of sanity to be found,” Kris muttered, then took a deep breath. “Okay, we’ve got an Empire running around, unable to answer us with any degree of rationality. What do we do?”

  “We do what gravity requires of us,” Helen said. “We make orbit and hitch our fate to their station, just like we talked about.”

  “That sounds like a plan,” Kris said. “How long until we’re there?”

  “Six hours,” Ajax answered.

  “Then I better get ready.”

  Of course, Kris needn’t have bothered. It would be a long time before she got a chance to go anywhere.

  29

  “Wardhaven Frigate Squadron 22, we were not expecting you so soon. We will have to dock you where we can around the station. Here are your ships’ assigned piers.”

  Captain Ajax covered her mouth with a hand, and whispered, “They’ve scattered us all to hell and gone up and down the station.”

  Jack turned his back to the port captain on the screen and added in a low whisper, “There’s no way we could provide any mutual support to each other if we needed it.”

  “Then we will not dock the squadron like this,” Kris answered them both.

  Captain Ajax stepped aside and left Kris pride of place in front of the port captain on the screen. He was middle-aged, graying, and his clothes fit him loosely, as if they still remembered when he was several sizes larger.

  “We will not have our ships scattered all over the place,” Kris snapped, becoming the demanding, spoiled princess in high dudgeon. “How can we muster our Marines for their daily Royal pass in review? We intend to conduct weekly inspections of our ships’ companies. They will not look at all the way we like them if they are strewn all about the station. Not shipshape and Bristol fashion at all,” she harrumphed. “We won’t have it. We certainly will not. Young man, you tell your Emperor that we didn’t come out here to be treated like this. No. Better, we will tell him, personally. Captain, raise the Emperor immediately,” Kris said, turning to Ajax.

  She might have had no idea what Kris was talking about, but she ran with it.

  “Chief, connect us to Emperor Henry’s private line.”

  “Aye, aye, ma’am.” the chief on comm watch answered. “This will only take a moment.”

  “Hold, it. Just wait a minute. It’s the middle of the night,” yelped the poor man, stuck between Kris’s demand
s and whoever had given him the order on where to dock her ships. But he was facing a very angry Princess.

  “We will certainly not wait until tomorrow morning. We hardly have any gravity out here. It’s horrible for our digestion, young man. Captain, use the private number he sent our Royal great-grandfather.”

  “Yes, Your Highness,” Captain Ajax said primly.

  “No. No. Please don’t wake up the Emperor in the middle of the night. We’ve just had several freighters vacate their piers. You know how busy the station is. These used to be Navy piers, but what with the fleet down and trading up, we’d been using them for cargo. I think I can get you right in over there. Give me a moment.”

  The screen went blank.

  “The fleet is down?” Kris said.

  “Assuming there were no freighters in those piers . . .” Jack said.

  “Captain Ajax, can your sensor team give us a good nose count of how many of the station’s piers are occupied?”

  “I’ll get my team on that, Your Highness.”

  Kris gave Ajax a pass on that “Your Highness.” She’d been throwing her Highness weight around enough to confuse any poor Navy commander about her proper form of address.

  The lieutenant on sensors stood. “By my count, half the piers on that station are empty. We could dock a big chunk of the Wardhaven fleet and still have space left over.”

  “Thank you, Lieutenant,” Captain Ajax said. “You need anything else, Admiral?”

  “No, Captain, you did quite well.”

  The skipper glanced at the chief on the comm watch. He looked about to bust a gut. “I think we all figured that running with a Longknife would mean some fast footwork, ma’am.” She paused for a moment. “What exactly would we have done if he hadn’t broken and run? I don’t know of any Imperial phone number. Do you, Chief?”

  “Not a clue, skipper,” said the chief, very much the spitting image of the laughing Buddha.

  Kris grinned back. “I’ve found that people with a poor hand will frequently fold if you make like you have five aces.”