A teenager standing behind Granny Rita grinned, and said, “Vroom, vroom,” which did not encourage Kris to trust his driving.
Rita pulled Ray off his knees. “Come, come, most of the old surviving crew want to see you, and there are lots and lots of kids and grandkids. Do you know there’s a Raymond Longknife Junior family here on Alwa?”
If possible, the legendary Ray Longknife looked poleaxed. “No.”
“Remember that last good-bye, how we fought and made up, then fought and made up some more?”
The king nodded.
“Well, I’d been here about a month and started upchucking my toenails.”
“But all the women in the fleet were protected. You wrote the policy yourself.”
“Yep, best birth control on the market. Ninety-six-percent effective. But you were one hundred percent, my Raymond.”
“Good heavens, Rita, you didn’t have to fight for the survival of your crew while going through all that. I know pregnancies are hard on you.”
“Raymond, you keep forgetting. It wasn’t just the Furious’s crew, but also the Enterprise. If we hadn’t salvaged her ice armor for reaction mass, right now we’d be a lot of frozen bodies flying around the galaxy at very high speed. Also, building a colony was a lot easier with two thousand hands rather than just a thousand.”
The conversation might have gone longer, but Ada signaled the teenage motor, and the wheelchair turned and headed in the doors of Government House. The large foyer had been expanded by opening all the doors so that people in several huge halls could flow in and out of the central area.
Somehow, a receiving line got set up. If Kris had thought she had it bad meeting half of Granny Rita’s family, this was nothing to the mob scene of old codgers being wheeled in by their old kids or younger grandkids to see the man they’d fought for so many years ago.
Despite several attempts to detach herself from the king, Kris got nailed to his elbow, and every time Ada passed someone to Kris, it was with, “and here’s Her Royal Highness, Kristine Longknife, whom King Raymond has appointed our viceroy.”
Kris had tried to get a few disputing words in edgewise, but Ada wouldn’t listen. It seemed that the idea of their having a permanent representative of the faraway king was catching like wildfire.
It also appeared that the king had somehow managed to skip a few details about Kris’s appointment as viceroy. All the colonials flowing by seemed to think that a viceroy was a warm and fuzzy thing and just what they needed for the winter that was coming.
Kris smiled and shook hands and left tomorrow’s evil to tomorrow.
Kris smiled and shook hands until her face hurt and her arm was screaming in pain.
Kris kept smiling and kept shaking hands, but she couldn’t help but throw Jack a questioning glance. Where was a security chief when she was clearly at risk of bodily harm, as in her face falling off and her arm crippled for life?
Jack’s return look was pure helplessness.
Then Granny Rita, of course, saved the day. In a voice that could still echo through a huge hall, she announced, “Folks, it’s been a month of Sundays since I’ve had a chance to say a few words to my Raymond here. So, if you folks would be so kind, I’d like to duck out early on this shindig and find a place we can sit and talk.”
A wave of assent moved through the gathering. Granny gave Kris the high sign. Kris replaced the speed-demon teenager at the handles of Granny’s wheelchair.
“Out the front door. There’s a handicap incline to the left. It will get us down near the path you should remember fondly.”
Kris followed directions. King Raymond followed, with Jack at his elbow. The king waved off most of his staff, but he couldn’t wave off his Marine platoon. They followed him with full intent and purpose.
At the bottom of the incline, Kris found herself facing a dirt path and wondering how the wheelchair would take to its uneven surface. Granny Rita settled that. “Stop, child. I’m getting out of this contraption.”
And she did. The cane gave her a help up, and she hobbled down the path, leaning a bit more on the cane than Kris liked. Apparently, the wheelchair had not been a ruse.
“Honey,” the king said, “we brought a rejuvenation clinic. It’s not big, but it’s on Canopus Station a couple of thousand klicks above your head.”
“Raymond, I’ve already had two shuttle rides between here and the Wasp in a whole lot lower orbit than that. Talk to your kid there. She’s the one that won’t let me on a shuttle again. No shuttle-assisted suicide, right, honey?”
“Yes,” Kris said firmly.
“Besides, look at all those old codgers that just came out to shake your hand. How many of them do you think could survive a shuttle launch?”
The king acknowledged the obvious with a grimace. “I guess we can pack the clinic up and bring it down here. There are plenty of drugs that would help your old shipmates. Assuming you don’t insist on doing cartwheels when you hear I’m coming.”
“It wasn’t cartwheels I was doing, buddy boy. I gave up cartwheels years ago, after my fourth or fifth child.”
“The two kids we had, the third you had on this side, and . . . ?”
“Six I had with my two husbands on this side, God rest their souls.”
“I guess children were essential to the survival of the colony,” the king muttered, not at all happily.
“Raymond, don’t go giving me that survival excuse. You know our marriage was over before I took that suicide mission.”
“I still loved you. I didn’t want you to take the mission. That was what we were arguing about.”
Kris found herself in the middle of an argument she suspected had begun long before she was born. She stopped to let the two of them walk ahead. Get some distance. Get some privacy.
And was promptly rear-ended by a Marine captain and his guard platoon.
Kris and Jack turned to face the captain. The heated words were getting more distant but still all too clear. Kris mouthed, “Back off.”
The captain clearly had orders not to do that. Faced with Kris and Jack forming a block, he let his troops come to an unordered halt behind him.
Kris turned back to her two great-grandparents. Now they were shouting, and Granny was waving her hands and occasionally the cane as well. Kris took a few small steps forward. Steps more appropriate for a child’s game than a military formation.
The two elders were coming up on the stone bench Kris and Granny Rita had shared. No surprise, the two of them settled on it but as far apart as they could. While they shouted and gesticulated, Jack had a talk with the guard captain. He deployed his men and women in a crescent, troops alternating facing back and facing front, looking for anything that might threaten their king.
“What do I do if she tries to kill him?” the poor captain whispered to Jack.
“I don’t think she’s strong enough with that cane,” Kris said, but kept her eyes front. If things did get physical between them, it seemed a princess’s job to be there first.
AND HER SECURITY CHIEF, SECOND, Jack said on Nelly Net.
DO YOU WANT TO KNOW WHAT THEY’RE SAYING? Nelly asked.
NO, Kris said, then reconsidered that absolute rule. IF HE STARTS TALKING ABOUT MAKING ME GOVERNOR GENERAL OF THIS MADHOUSE, LET ME KNOW.
WAS THAT WHAT THE BET WAS? Jack said.
YEP. IT’S NOT BAD ENOUGH DROPPING THE WHOLE DEFENSIVE PROBLEM OF THIS OUTPOST, OR TO ADD VICEROY, BUT HE SEEMS TO THINK I SHOULD HAVE EXECUTIVE AUTHORITY OVER THIS HERD OF CATS.
AND YOU WERE WISE ENOUGH TO TURN HIM DOWN.