Kris considered the joy of sharing a shower with Jack and, in her lone frustration, scrubbed herself pink. Abby had her dress whites, complete with orders and medals laid out. Getting dressed in zero gee was no fun, but Kris got herself fully and properly uniformed before heading back to the bridge, just as the timer was coming up on an hour.
“Nothing, so far,” Captain Drago reported.
Kris settled at her station at Weapons and put her feet in loops so that she could stand if she needed to talk to the engineer from Musashi.
The main screen continued to show the stars above, the green-and-blue planet below. A third liberty launch was on approach while the first back was already dropping down for another load of disappointed Sailors.
Then a portion of the main screen changed to the cheerful face of Kikuchi Katsu, the senior engineer of Mitsubishi Heavy Space Industry and designer of the Wasp.
“I am so glad to see you again, Princess-san. We hurried here as quickly as we could. The Sakura broke its long journey at Wardhaven to give your King Raymond the joyous news that his wife still lives.”
Kris would not have wanted to be a mouse in that room.
“But your brother had already done so much to get frigates under construction at Nuu Docks. First the Intrepid and Fearless, only a bit bigger than your Wasp. But they were also working on something to take the new 20-inch guns that several planets of your United Society had been testing but saw no reason to build. Believe me, now they do, and the other four ships are larger frigates with six 20-inchers forward and four aft.
“Your honorable brother persuaded my most honorable father and your most honorable grandfather to take the question of our competing patents to arbitration. Your king and your most honorable grandfather agreed to merge the two big frigates building in each of the three large battleship slips. I added more to them and turned two of them into the Prosperity class armed transports. I can make them back into two large frigates each, but they are also loaded with mining and factory equipment and people to run them. You will have both warships, freighters, and lunar factories when I am done. Also, the Canopus will be a space station for Alwa until the moon base sends up enough material to make a normal station. Then it, too, will become frigates and ships for mining.”
Kris could imagine the horse trading that had gone on. Still, while Kris and the Sailors and Marines had fought and died to keep the bastards from strip-mining the system, Grampa Al was stepping right in, no need to thank me, and grabbing for everything. Kris was grateful for the new warships but none too sure the colonials would care for the price they’d pay.
A voice was heard from offscreen, and Katsu-san turned. “I am talking to Princess-san Longknife. Why?”
A hand reached in to pull his computer, Fumio-san, from around his neck, and the signal was broken.
“How dare they manhandle one of my children!” Nelly exploded. “I expect a full apology from them, or they won’t be able to trust any computer on their ships.”
“Nelly, please calm down,” Kris asked her computer. “We’ve got a lot of problems here, and I don’t really think they will harm either Katsu-san or Fumio-san. They need them too much. Spinning one ship into several has got to take genius, and I don’t know anyone else who could even try it out here.”
“We’ll see,” Nelly said.
“Promise me you will take no action without telling me,” Kris insisted.
“All right,” Nelly said with a pout.
“Are any of you aware that I’ve been following this?” Granny Rita said, butting in.
Kris chuckled. “I am glad I can honestly say that we didn’t order you to be included in this, but I’m not at all sorry you heard.”
“Is my boy Alex a bit grabby?”
“A selfish miser might describe him quite well,” Abby said, joining them on the bridge.
“Granny Rita,” Kris said, jumping in before Abby’s attitude toward wealth could tie up the conversation for the next hour, “I remember hearing that you had some nanos that you used to leach minerals out of mountains and other sources. Did you just take the stuff, or did you share it with the Alwans? Maybe agree to pay royalties?”
“Let me get Ada in here, but I think we gave the Alwans thirty percent of what we took out back then. Now that we have to get more invasive when we go after minerals, and they like the stuff we make, they want forty percent for their share. Same for our heavy manufacturing. They don’t much care for our dams and smelters, but they want forty percent of what comes from them.”
Kris had heard one word that kind of made it hard to hear the rest of Granny Rita’s report. “You ‘gave’ the Alwans thirty percent. Was that documented in a treaty?”
“Honey, we weren’t even making paper in those days. As for the Alwans, a pledge made in front of two elders is binding. They still haven’t really gotten the idea of writing things down.”
“Granny Rita, the kind of men your little Alex likely sent on this expedition won’t give a second’s thought to anything not signed, notarized, and filed in court.”
“My father was a hardheaded businessman, but not hard-hearted,” Granny said.
Penny stepped forward. “Granny, Alex is a tough case. His dad never had much time for him. You went off to war and never came back. He buried his first wife before the blush was off the marriage. He doesn’t expect anything from the world but what he can grab with his own two hands and hold on to tight. He’s surrounded by a lot of equally hard cases. We think a few of them have even taken shots at Kris when she got in the way of what Alex wanted for Nuu Enterprises, Limited.”
“That wasn’t the way my dad, Ernie Nuu, ran the business,” Rita said, her voice gone hard.
“Granny,” Kris said, “I need you to get some sort of document that records the present forty percent or the previous thirty percent. I’m not expecting that they brought a judge to set up shop here, so we may have some leeway in interpreting this document, but I need something if I’m going to stop what I see coming at us at one and a half gees.”
“You think you can do something if I get a paper?”
“She’s a Longknife,” Jack put in. “Never count her out.”
“We’ll see what I can do,” Granny Rita said. “When’s Raymond due in?”
“Ten, twelve hours. I’ll probably tie him up for a few hours making my report.”
“Don’t count on tying Raymond up. If he’s all set to charge down here, the best you can do, kid, is run alongside him. Don’t get in front. His horns can be dangerous.”
“Trust me, Granny, we’ve butted heads and crossed horns before. I’ve learned when to butt back and when to run.”
“Good luck,” Granny Rita said.
“And good luck to you,” Princess Longknife said. Then she turned to Captain Drago. “Are we prepared to receive the king?”
“Not yet, but we’re on schedule to be there right on time. I’ve taken the liberty of messaging the Fearless and Intrepid. Both of them look to be about our own tonnage. I’ve sent them the design for spinning out a crossbeam and swinging us around each other. I never knew a skipper who didn’t like the idea of putting some weight on his crew. However, the Canopus is spinning itself out. I think it may arrive in orbit already prepared to serve as some sort of space station.”
Kris raised an eyebrow at that.
Senior Chief Beni at Sensors had the forward screen switch to the approaching fleet. It ran down the four leading frigates; two were significantly larger than the other two, then the two huge something-or-others, trailed by something that was going from huge to titanic.