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  “Admiral Ballo has a bad back,” Erwin explained.

  “He’s not in today?”

  Erwin glanced at the wall that the admiral shared with Mac’s office. “He didn’t say so, but I think he wanted to stay out of range of the collateral damage.”

  “Smart man,” Kris said, and began to loosen the coat of her dress blues.

  Erwin got the message and left.

  “So it’s just you and me, babe,” Kris said, and settled Ruthie at her right breast, which, to be honest, was starting to ache. If Ruthie hadn’t called for a chow break, Kris might have had to.

  Kris began to relax as Ruthie suckled hungrily. She had a good view from her seat of blue sky and white clouds. That scene could match hundreds of worlds humanity had settled on.

  Kris chose to let that thought wander on its way and smiled down at the miracle at her breast. “It is just you and me, little one.”

  2

  “Kris, we’re going to stay,” had become an all-too-frequent refrain in her last days on Canopus Station.

  Penny had been the first.

  “Kris, would you mind terribly if Masao and I stayed?”

  “No,” Kris had said, as cheerfully as she could manage. “Of course not.”

  But Penny went on talking, as if an explanation might make it hurt less.

  “Admiral Santiago has offered us both a place on her staff. I’m to head up her intelligence section. She says it will mean captain stripes.”

  “How will Masao feel about you outranking him that much?” Kris asked.

  “He won’t. Santiago has authorization to create a staff drawing in officers from all the Alliance we have out here on Alwa Station. And she can promote them, too. Masao is overdue for lieutenant commander, and commander as soon as she can find an excuse for it.”

  “I wonder why I never got that authority,” Kris grouched.

  “I don’t know, but it’s nice she has it. I’ve also talked with Taussig. We’re going to go in on a farm along that big river in Rooster territory. We’ve asked for a young colonial couple to go in with us. They’ll cover the place all the time, and we’ll rotate being home.”

  Penny paused. “Home. Strange to call this place all the way across the galaxy home.”

  “If it’s where your and Masao’s roots are, then it’s home,” Kris had said.

  “I’ve got to get past losing Tommy,” Penny said, suddenly. She still choked when she said the name of her husband of three days, who gave his life so that she might live.

  “Yes, you do,” Kris said, softly. She suppressed a shiver at the memory of ordering the dumb metal of her ship to seal all the holes in its hull . . . and seal Tommy’s fate.

  “I know, Kris. I will. Masao is the man I want to do it with.”

  Their conversation meandered along for a while longer before Penny finally left, leaving Kris to contemplate the changes that life brought your way.

  Captain, no, Vice Admiral Drago was next.

  “Commander Pett do okay by you?” he asked Kris after he had smiled at Ruthie Anne and assured Kris that she was a perfect baby.

  “I’m alive, and the Wasp isn’t even in line for the body and fender shop.”

  “Any landing you can walk away from.”

  “So, what really brings you around?” Kris had finally asked.

  “Do you trust Commander Pett to get you and this cute little one back across the galaxy without a problem?”

  “I do. Why?”

  “I’m thinking of hanging around here for a while.”

  “Lots of people are,” Kris allowed.

  “I mean, it’s not like admirals around here spend all their time trapped behind a desk. Everybody fights from four stars down to an Ostrich seaman recruit.”

  “It seems to go that way,” Kris said, and paused to see if there was more to his hankering.

  “And there’s this colonial woman. She’s buried two husbands and claims she can put me in the ground. I told her my wedding gift to her will be her very own burial plot,” Drago said, grinning.

  “Whatever floats your boat,” Kris answered.

  They talked for a bit longer, Kris praising Drago’s handling of Fourth Fleet in the last battle. They left with promises to get together when next they shared the same space and share a beer and bring each other up to date.

  There must have been something wrong with the air-recycling system; Kris needed a tissue to blow her nose.

  Amanda and Jacques were no surprise.

  They dropped by to gush to Kris that Prime Minister Ada of the colonials had set up a Science Advisory Committee and invited both of them to fill slots on it.

  “We’ll have an entire budding economy to work on,” Amanda said.

  “She’s in hog heaven,” Jacques growled.

  “And you aren’t?” Amanda growled right back. “You’ve got all kinds of bird cultures to work with, and I’ve heard you say the humans have many divergent cultures among themselves, what with the colonials and the Navy and the industrial types.”

  “Oink, oink,” Jacques said through a happy grin.

  “And we’ve also been asked to establish Alwa’s first university,” said Amanda, getting even more enthusiastic. “They haven’t agreed on a name. Rita U just doesn’t carry, and she’s had so many other last names.”

  “Rita suggested we name it after her father, Nuu U,” Jacques put in.

  The two of them talked nonstop for most of the time they visited with Kris and only took a few moments out to fuss over Ruthie Anne before leaving to collect the last of their belongings still on the Wasp.

  It took Kris a half hour of nursing Ruthie to calm down from that whirlwind.

  She found herself wondering when Abby would come calling and what her own decision would be. They were only a few days shy of departure when Kris’s maid, bodyguard, and so much more came into the Wasp’s wardroom at lunch, went down the steam tables, then casually settled into the chair across from Kris.

  “How are things going?” Abby asked, buttering a roll.

  “I would give half my trust fund to sleep through the night just once,” Kris said.

  “I hear that youngsters are death on sleep. What did Shakespeare say? ‘Babes doth murder sleep.’”

  “You may have that wrong,” Nelly provided from Kris’s collarbone.

  “Whatever.”

  “Did you snap up some of that free land down among the Ostriches?” Kris asked, kind of sidling up to the big question.

  “No, General Bruce and I have signed for some land along that nice, long river in Rooster territory. We’ve got the homestead between your Penny and Commodore Taussig and my boss Pipra.”

  “I figured Pipra would have you and Bruce as part of her farm crew,” Kris said.

  “She did, too,” Abby said, “but I set her straight. Steve and I will be teaming with four fab supervisors and another brigade commander. We got two colonial couples signed up to help us. It shouldn’t be too hard, and if Pipra tries anything too friendly with my Steve, well, I still know how to shoot.”

  Kris took a long drink of milk. “I don’t blame you for not wanting to go back. You were just a maid there. You’ve really soared out here.”

  “I was never ‘just a maid,’ and you never treated me as if I were.”

  “Not after you saved my neck once or twice,” Kris admitted.

  “Even before I did,” Abby put in. “Kris, you good people, and I’m so glad I met up with you.”

  “I’m glad you’ve been a major part of my life for the last six years,” Kris allowed.

  “If I don’t get out of here, I’m gonna start blubbering,” Abby said, and suddenly, her place across from Kris was empty.

  Kris would have happily left her lunch right there, too, but she was feeding Ruthie as well as herself. Af
ter dabbing at her eyes with a linen napkin, she resolutely finished her lunch, but ship food was never so lacking in taste as it was that day.

  * * *

  Kris found herself blinking her eyes as she stared out the window at the sky over Wardhaven. She borrowed one of Ruthie’s cloths and dabbed away the moisture threatening to run down her cheek.

  “Would I have stayed there if we could?” she asked Ruthie. Like all infants, Ruthie had no answers, only needs.

  There was a knock at the door.

  “I’m not decent,” Kris called.

  “I don’t care,” came in Jack’s voice, and the door opened to let him in. He covered the distance with a few long steps, then traced Ruthie’s busy cheeks with a gentle touch that also just happened to make feathery strokes on the breast the babe was busy draining dry.

  Kris shivered at the pleasure.

  “How are things back there?” Kris asked a minute or so later, motioning to Mac’s office with her chin.

  “No blood on the carpet.”

  “Yet.”

  “I don’t know. I think Ruthie has kind of secured a temporary truce. Ray hasn’t asked Billy a single political question, and vice versa. The two women are talking maternity and sharing pictures of the latest grandkid or great-grand tyke. I won’t bet money on it, but I think your mother might just be softening a bit.”

  “That would be nice. Maybe we can find peace at last.”

  “You both know what it’s like to be a mother now.”

  Kris nodded, then changed the subject. “Has anyone told you what’s so on fire that they needed to haul me all the way back here to put it out?”

  “No, but I think Ray’s about to split a gut to get it out for you. You weren’t nearly as close to popping with Ruthie Marie as Ray is with his secret.”

  “Speak for yourself, husband. I’ll decide how close I was to popping and who gets to claim they’re worse.”

  “My mistake,” Jack said quickly, but with a fond grin.

  Kris assumed the grin was for her breasts hanging out while she tried to return Ruthie’s logistics to the properly hidden place polite society demanded.

  Jack might be grinning, but he was also reaching for Ruthie, pulling her to his chest, and giving Kris two free hands. With that bit of help, she was able to get properly uniformed without dripping milk down her dress blues. Hurray for our side.

  “Well, let’s go see what sneaky mess Grampa Ray wants to get me into this time,” Kris said, and led the way, letting Jack provide the rear guard, with Ruthie in his arms for the moment.

  3

  By the time Kris, Jack, and Ruthie got back, the room had changed. Gramma Trouble and Brenda were on a couch, eagerly awaiting Ruthie. Kris took in the rest. The King sat at the head of a conference table. Crossie and Mac were at his elbows.

  There was an empty chair at the foot of the table, with Billy and Trouble sitting at its elbows. Kris expected that chair was for her. What she didn’t much care for was that the two empty chairs, one of which would have to be Jack’s, were too far from her.

  “Father, would you mind letting Jack have that chair?” Kris said.

  Billy looked surprised, but he sheepishly rose and took the next chair down. Kris hoped that didn’t put him too close to the other side. She’d hate to see him back Ray if it came to that.

  Nope, the two of them were too much alike to agree on much of anything.

  Seated, Kris let the silence in the room stretch for only a bit, then said, “Okay, why am I here and not out there where you said I was indispensable, Your Majesty?”

  “Do you remember Vicky Peterwald?” the King said without preamble.

  “How could I forget her? I saved her neck when the aliens wanted us dead, and she stabbed me in the back the first time she could get her lovely, ivory boobs in front of a camera.”

  “You don’t like her?” Ray said.

  “I didn’t say that. I pity the kid, growing up in that gutter that passes for Imperial Harry’s Palace. What’s she up to that makes you ask?” Kris said, still no more informed about where this was going and getting less and less patient for Ray to get there.

  Grampa Trouble must have sensed Kris’s mood; he jumped in. “Greenfeld is going to hell in a handbasket. The Empress has made several attempts to kill Vicky and they are the two leaders of a civil war that threatens to tear Greenfeld apart.”

  “And that matters to me how?” Kris asked.

  “The Emperor has asked you to mediate between the two women,” King Ray said. “Since you once saved his life, he thinks you’d be fair. For some reason, Vicky has also accepted you as mediator.”

  “And the stepmother?” Kris asked.

  “We haven’t heard from her,” Crossie admitted.

  “But if we did?” Kris asked the intelligence honcho.

  Crossie scratched his left ear. “I have no idea if she’d say something positive, but she hasn’t said anything negative.”

  Kris let all that she’d been told run around in her head for a few moments. Her mouth started talking long before she wanted it to. “Are you folks crazy? I’d have to be dumb . . . or insane . . . or the boldest person in human space . . . to get between the three of them. The only reason I saved Henry’s worthless skin was because his death would have had my fingerprints faked all over his body, and there would have likely been a war.”

  Kris shook her head. “As for him and Vicky, you can’t trust either of them to agree to anything and keep to it for more than five seconds. I hear the Empress is even worse.”

  Crossie had the good sense to nod along with Kris.

  “So why are you trying to send me into this valley of death? You know, Ray, your last idea, setting us up for a stalking horse out on Alwa, was really dumb. There is no way anyone could look at our DNA and the DNA of the rest of the animals on Alwa and think we were from there. No way.”

  “We kind of figured that out,” Mac said. “Fortunately, we came up with the beam weapons. How were they?”

  “Horrible. Wonderful. They just barely saved our asses. They were one mad scientist’s wild science project, and we just barely managed to duct tape them into something like a warship. You really need to do better next time.”

  “We’re working on that,” Ray said. “Maybe after you do this little favor for the Emperor, you can help us.”

  “You mean maybe if I survive this little suicide mission,” Kris said dryly.

  “We plan to send you with a fleet of the new frigates,” Mac said.

  “Battlecruisers,” Kris corrected.

  “Rita has you call them battlecruisers,” Ray said, his face clouding up.

  “No, I’m calling them battlecruisers,” Kris snapped. “What with twenty 22-inch guns, they can stand up against any battle line we’ve got.”

  “But they can’t fight in a battle line. Their lasers all point fore and aft.” Admiral Crossie, who’d never commanded a ship, provided the Navy input.

  Kris’s growled “Who in here has the most experience commanding a battle line?” was hardly a question.

  The room fell silent, as if a guillotine blade had slashed through further comment.

  Kris waited a long minute before going on. “Besides, if I’m going to become the mediator hunting for any peace that can be found between these two crazies, I’ll need to impress them. I expect to keep these admiral stripes, and I intend to lead a battle line. I’ll also likely need a whole hell of a lot more, but that, at least, is a start.”

  “It’s no big thing to change the manuals to say battlecruiser instead of frigate,” Mac offered.

  “You like those stripes,” Ray said.

  “You want to send a commander, or what am I, a captain, out there to patch together something between those three huge egos?”

  “I see you made your husband a lieutenant general,
” Ray said, eyeing Jack.

  “He commanded a corps dirtside with three Colonial Guard divisions and attached Alwan auxiliaries as well as the Fleet Marine Force afloat. I see no reason the people risking their lives shouldn’t have the rank to show for it. There was damn little pay.”

  Grampa Trouble wetted a finger and made two marks in the air.

  Grampa Ray scowled at him but said nothing.

  “Well, if that’s settled,” Mac said, “I think we can call this meeting done and move on to other things. Admiral,” he said, looking at Kris, “I’ve had several of my staff examining what a mediation mission might look like.”

  “Fine, but one more thing, Your Royal Majesty, before we go,” Kris said.

  “Yes, Your Royal Highness?” Ray said, returning formality for formality.

  “When this mad job is done, no more. No more wild jobs. I want a job with a desk in Main Navy. I want Jack to have a desk, too. Maybe we share the same office, maybe he’s on a different floor. But I want us to have lunch together without anyone trying to blow us to hell, and I want to go home at 1700 to the kids. Yes, I said ‘kids,’ as in two at least. You hear me?”

  “Message received and understood,” the King said. “But I’ll bet you any amount of money that you won’t last a month.”

  “And you’ll lose,” Kris said. Retrieving Ruthie from where Gramma Trouble was doing her best to settle her down after Mother had gotten her sputtering and spitting up, Kris led Jack from Mac’s office.

  “Take me to Nuu House,” she almost begged Jack.

  4

  Nuu House seemed somehow smaller, Kris reflected, as they drove up to the portico. It couldn’t be that she was taller: She’d lived here through university. She’d thought herself fully grown to womanhood back then.

  Maybe it wasn’t so much a case of size as perspective. She’d seen an alien raider’s base ship up close and personal.

  After you’ve seen one of those puppies, everything looks tiny.

  Kris smiled at that reflection.