“I completed your mission,” she spat.
“Already?” came from the king in what sounded like a royal yelp.
Have I really surprised him?
“Done, completed, finished,” Kris said. “You ordered me to take care of the budding pirate problem out on the Rim of Peterwald space without getting any complaints from the newly crowned Emperor Harry.”
The newly officialized King Raymond nodded.
“I captured three pirate schooners, one freighter, and a skiff. I liberated one potential pirate refuge and took down a main base. I also put out of business fifteen thousand hectares of drug plantations and liberated twenty-five thousand slaves. Oh, and you didn’t get one whimper from your new, neighboring emperor, did you?”
Kris eyed Field Marshal Mac.
“Not a word from him,” he said.
“I’m just guessing on this, but I think we’ll split the two planets. Kaskatos will likely apply for membership in United Society. The Greenfeld Empire will get Port Royal, and they are welcome to it,” Kris said.
“All that in three months?” Grampa Trouble whispered. There might have even been a touch of respectful awe hidden in there.
Kris kept her eyes locked on Grampa Ray. “I’m sick and tired of draining swamps and dodging alligators. I want to get on to something important.”
“Um,” the king said. Exactly what Kris considered “important” was too classified to discuss among even this small group. From the glance around that Field Marshal Mac gave the others, even he apparently hadn’t been read into this one.
Mac opened his mouth to say something, then froze.
He struggled for a long moment to keep a look of horror off his face. When he finally got words out, they were full of horror. “Two. No three. Make that four super battleships just jumped into our system, using Jump Point Gamma.”
The last time six super dreadnoughts jumped in system using that jump point, they’d threatened to blast Wardhaven down to bedrock if it didn’t surrender.
“What are they squawking?” Grampa Trouble asked, standing bolt upright like an old fire horse who heard the alarm bell and couldn’t stay out to pasture.
“They’re Greenfeld,” Mac said.
King Ray and Grampa Trouble paled. There was much bad blood between the Longknifes and the Peterwalds. Neither one breathed, waiting for the next shoe to drop.
“Oh, good,” Kris said, clapping her hands with all the joy of any four-year-old presented with a tall stack of birthday presents. “Vicky Peterwald talked her dad into letting her come, too.”
All four of Kris’s team now rolled their eyes at the ceiling.
Four sets of very senior eyes locked onto Kris as their mouths dropped open.
3
King Raymond, being the legend that he was, recovered first. He was half out of his seat as he shouted, “You told Vicky Peterwald about our meeting with the Iteeche!”
“What?” said Mac. The field marshal apparently was the only one in the room who didn’t know about that very secret meeting.
He turned to Crossie, the intel chief, who whispered, “I’ll explain it later.”
Kris didn’t dare wait to defend herself but jumped right in, talking over them. “I did not,” she snapped, keeping her seat.
“Then what’s Henry Peterwald’s daughter doing riding four battleships into Wardhaven space?” the king demanded. Halfup, half-down, he was clearly torn between his options.
With reservations, he settled back in his chair.
“She wants to come with me to find out what’s gobbling up Iteeche scout ships and not spitting back so much as an atom,” Kris said.
“You told her!” Grampa Ray repeated the accusation.
“I did not.” Kris repeated the denial.
“Then how does she know?” Grampa Trouble asked, kindly breaking Kris and her other grampa out of an endless do-loop of accusations and denials.
“He told her,” Kris said, and pointed at Admiral Crossenshield, the chief of Wardhaven, or maybe all U.S. Intelligence.
“I did not,” he snapped, with sincerity so refined and polished it might actually pass muster of, say, a kindergartener.
Both of Kris’s grampas scowled as they eyed the man who was supposed to find out other people’s secrets and keep their own. From the looks of them, Crossie’s sincerity had not passed their smell test.
“I didn’t tell her about the meeting,” Crossie insisted.
“No, you just sent her a video of the whole get-together,” Kris snapped.
“You’ve seen it?” Grampa Trouble asked.
“Vicky showed it to me,” Kris admitted. “I let my team view it after she did.”
“What makes you so sure it came from me?” Crossie demanded.
From the glowers around the room, including her own staff ’s, that was considered a valid question.
“I’m in it,” Kris said. “The king and Grampa Trouble are in it.” They nodded agreement. “Jack’s in it.” At her request, the king had allowed Jack to remain when everyone else had been ushered out.
“The Iteeche are in it.” Humanity and the Iteeche Empire had fought a six-year war that almost made humanity extinct. Just ask any veteran. Kris had only recently discovered that Iteeche vets of that war felt the same way. That the humans had almost made the Iteeche extinct! After twenty-five years of being told one story, Kris was still struggling to absorb the other viewpoint.
“The only person who was in the meeting that wasn’t in the vid that Vicky had was you, Crossie. Methinks you did edit things a bit too much.”
Now it was the admiral’s turn to frown. “I might have outthought myself on that one,” he admitted, and admitting to the edit, he allowed that he was the guilty party.
“So, Crossie,” the king said with a tired sigh, “why isn’t my most important secret a secret anymore?”
The head of black ops, white ops, and all the rest in between didn’t seem at all embarrassed to be caught red-handed going against his king and luring the daughter of his strongest opposition in human space into some sort of game.
And probably gaming Kris as well.
She hated being played by Crossie.
Usually, she refused to get involved in his dirty tricks.
Problem was, today, the two of them seemed headed in the same direction.
Which left Kris wondering if she needed to make a hard right turn.
Oh bother.
While Kris spun those thoughts through her own head, Crossie was doing his best to spin his own defense.
“You and I both know this is the worst-kept secret in human space,” Crossie said. “Walk into any pub in the capital here, and I’ll bet you money that half the tables in the place are discussing whether or not you met with an Imperial Representative.”
“They’re arguing the case,” Trouble pointed out. “They don’t know. Big difference.”
“The difference was big enough that your pet project of naming us United Sentients fell through,” Crossie countered.
That got a wince from the king.
“You and I agree, we can’t bring up the problem of Iteeche scouts disappearing without a trace while all we have is their own word. Your granddaughter here wanted to go do some exploring. You sent her to chase pirates instead. Sorry to say, the pirates didn’t provide her all that much of a distraction.” He gave her a respectful nod.
Kris returned a proud grin . . . showing plenty of teeth.
“Now she wants to take a swing at whatever is going bump in the night under the Iteeche beds. If a Longknife goes out there hunting bug-eyed monsters and finds something, how much of human space will believe her? Her word alone. If Kris Longknife and Vicky Peterwald come back saying they found something . . . ?”