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.
Mac started to open it, but the king put a restraining hand on his arm. “You’ll know when to open it,” he said. No better informed, Mac tried to get comfortable in the left chair.
For a moment he fidgeted, eyeing the large envelope uneasily, but no one did anything, so he settled himself down for the wait.
It wasn’t long.
Kris entered the room and, so it seemed to Mac, overpowered it.
Her and her stink.
She must not have bathed for a week. Her rank aroma advanced well ahead of her. Her undress whites were wrinkled and sweat-stained. On most subordinates, all of this would have brought a sour, disapproving scowl to Mac’s face.
But that was not his reaction to this young woman. She strode toward them with both power and purpose. Her eyes held Mac, and he found himself sitting up straighter in his chair as if he was the junior and she the senior officer present.
Damn, she’s come a long way from the mutinous ensign I first dressed down.
Kris reached the empty chair and pushed it aside with a swift shove of her hips.
The room hung on the silence. Mac took a deep breath and waited to see who would dare take the lead.
Kris eyed them. There was nothing defiant in her eyes, but nothing subservient either. Mac searched his memory for when he’d seen that stance before. Yes. Ray had looked just like that standing before a commander’s call. His glance alone had brought a crowd of headstrong officers from a hundred different worlds to expectant silence.
It was Ray who finally broke the silence. “What have you been up to?”
“Nothing you folks didn’t want me to do,” Kris shot right back.
“That’s not true,” Crossie seemed almost to whine as he contradicted her.
“Isn’t it?” Kris answered. “I wanted to take a squadron of tiny scouts out to see what lurked in the big, bad universe. Lightly armed and traveling fast, we could see what there was to see and run home quick with our report. So what do you send me out there with, Crossie? Eight battleships! Even better, you get three shills to serve up the ships. None from Wardhaven, excuse me, the United Society, or whatever you’re calling it now. Nope, we’re sending scouts. They’re the ones sending the battleships.”
Kris paused. No one dared take the floor away from her. “Of course, you’re sending out a Longknife, and everyone knows that Longknifes go loaded for a fight. That’s what the legend says, right, Grampa?”
The sarcasm was thick enough for Mac to cut with a knife. Dear God, grant me to never have a grandkid this mad at me, he prayed.
The king shook his head. “They chose what they sent. They gave them their own orders.”
“Yes they did, thank you very much,” Kris almost snarled. “Of course, Crossie here sent them out a copy of our secret meeting. He made sure they knew there was something nasty out there.”
Again, Kris paused, but neither Mac nor anyone present was about to put an oar in these trouble waters.
Kris went on. “But eight dinky battleships were hardly enough to take on those alien monsters. No sir, I may be a Longknife, but even I’m not that crazy. Or not that crazy yet. How many years, Grampa, does it take to get as crazy as the legend needs?”
“A bit longer, Kris,” her grandfather said softly. Mac measured his words for feelings and found a definite lack. Where had this man learned to deal with his own flesh and blood?
Or is there any flesh and blood in him? Mac wondered.
“So, you sent me the Hellburners.”
“Hellburners?” Mac found he’d spoken only when he heard the sound of his own voice.
“Yeah, that’s what we named the torpedoes with chunks of a neutron star in their warheads. By the way, we managed to spike that stuff with antimatter. Boy, you talk about an explosion.”
“How did it go?” the king asked.
“Rather spectacular. That huge mother ship… about the size of a big moon… we clobbered it. Maybe as much as half of her was gone when we had to duck out on the show in a hurry. Best guess is we killed ten, twenty billion aliens. Maybe more.”
Mac found himself measuring the child… and found her as cold as the father. Was this a show she was putting on, or had something happened to her out there?
“The problem, Grampa, was that the monster mother ship had kittens. Lots and lots of kittens. Huge things that made our battlewagons look tiny. And boy, were they mad. They took off after us like you’d expect someone who had just beat up their mother ship.
“And surprise of surprises, those kittens pack a wallop. Laser and lasers and more lasers. They didn’t have any armor. Something tells me they’ve been the biggest, meanest bastards around for a long time. Nobody’s gotten a good hit on them for a while. We changed that. I expect they’ll be slapping on the protection real quick.”
“I warned you not to use our best weapon right off,” Mac told his king.
“Duly noted,” the king muttered, dismissing Mac’s renewed concern with a few curt words. “Kris, did you take out the mother ship?”
“I don’t know. Things got bad, and we had to run. It’s all in my report. But you might want to read the addendum first.”
“Why?” the king asked evenly.
“Because we ran into another alien ship on our way home. It was a scout ship that managed to jump deep into the Iteeche Empire and, bad luck for it, landed in the one worthless system where we were refueling. Likely they planned to make a couple of small jumps, glance into several systems, then run home. That didn’t happen. We killed it.”
“Good.” Mac found that he and Crossie had spoken at the same time.
“However, a couple tried to escape with their babies. Cutest things. We got them alive. Not the parents, the hatch on their craft came open. They’re dead. The kids are alive. And we’ve got a DNA sample of the aliens sniffing around the rim of the Iteeche Empire.”
“Are they the same ones you ran into before?” the king asked.
“Yes and no. We’ve got DNA from three of the four groups we ran into. If we can trust the DNA results, they are related. Related,” Kris repeated quickly, “but distantly, like no intermarriage in the last hundred thousand years for some. Apparently, we ran into three or four different monster mother ships wandering the stars looking for systems to devour. How much you want to bet me that we’ve found all there are?”
“Shit,” Mac said, and discovered the other two men, even the king who was never flustered, had also resorted to cursing.
Kris seemed satisfied with what she had said and settled into the chair she’d ignored earlier.
“That changes everything,” Mac said, glancing at the king.
“No it doesn’t,” Crossie insisted.
“The people aren’t ready for another long war,” King Ray said, his voice sounding like a man who hadn’t slept in a thousand years. “We need more time to mobilize them. There are enough complaints about taxes as it is. If we start building a huge Navy, there’ll be hell to pay.”
“Ah, guys, one word of straight dope,” Kris interjected. “Wars come when someone else decides, not when you’re ready for them.”