As they finished their brunch, Nelly reported. “The Monarch and Fearless are only minutes away from their jump. For the last half hour, orders have been coming in to the Wasp. Most are what you expected. Kris, you are ComAlDefSec.”
“Notice how that rolls off the tongue.”
“And includes deaf in it,” Jack said.
“You are also viceroy pending a petition from the colonials and your election by them.”
“Didn’t the colonials pass the word that they had voted on that?” Jack asked.
“Granny Rita persuaded Ada to keep it on the QT. She didn’t want to let Ray get all puffed up. She said, ‘Let him sweat a bit.’”
Kris found herself rubbing her eyes. Both of her great-grandparents could behave like such four-year-olds. “Please promise me, Jack. We won’t ever be like that.”
“I’m sorry, Kris, but I don’t think either of those two, on their honeymoon, ever expected to be acting like that. But yes, I will always remember this and do my best to avoid whatever did this to them.”
“Good,” Kris said.
“The orders have a surprise for Jack,” Nelly said.
“Me!”
“Oh dear,” said Kris.
“You are promoted to major.”
“That’s good news. Being married, I can use the extra pay.”
“What’s the bad news?” Kris said.
“Jack is also breveted up to full colonel and made commander, Marine Expeditionary Brigade, Alwa.”
“We’ve only got at best a battalion,” Jack said.
“Yes, but you are encouraged to recruit and train local colonial forces, either as full-time or a National Guard.”
“I wonder if the colonials know?” Kris said.
“Granny Rita has copied all this traffic and says she and Ada along with the rest of the Council of Ministries would like to talk with you before you go back topside.”
“Good-bye, honeymoon, hello, impossible tasks,” Jack muttered.
The shower managed to return a bit of the honeymoon spirit, and it clearly was a lot more fun than it ever was aboard ship. Too soon, they found themselves staring at the contents of their closet.
“You think you ought to wear your blues?” Kris asked Jack.
“No. Definitely shorts. I have no idea how these folks will take to the idea of being under my command. I expect they’ll be scared stiff of me. I doubt I’ll wear a uniform dirtside again for months unless things go better than I expect.”
“A good move, I think,” Kris said.
She slipped into her sexy underwear, then pulled a muumuu, blue with yellow and green flowers, over her head.
“So, the viceroy is also keeping the bridle and bit well out of sight.”
“I’ve raised a couple of armies from people who figured a few folks with rifles could take on anything and learned the hard way that professionals are a breed apart. Let’s see how coming more gently can work.”
Jack packed up their uniforms. As he loaded them into the backseat of the car, he eyed Kris. “I’m supposed to drive you back to town knowing that under that muumuu is nothing but a couple of thin undies and a lot of naked you?”
“May I remind you, good husband, that whatever I’m wearing from now on, you know very well that under it all, there is only naked me. And under all your clothing, there is only naked you.”
Jack scratched his nose. “Hmm, there’s a downside of this wild, passionate lifestyle that I never thought of.”
“I haven’t noticed that where women were concerned,” Kris said, as Jack got the car moving, “you men do a lot of thinking.”
“Oh, we do a lot of thinking about women, my dear. Lots of thinking about women. It’s just rarely very productive thinking about women. Now, tell me true, wife to husband, is it any different with you girls?”
Kris turned the question over in her mind for a couple of miles, then said, “I refuse to answer that question on the grounds that I’m good at blowing ships up, and my husband wants to stay on my good side.”
“Side, top, bottom, whatever.”
Sadly, that was about the end of the honeymoon. The rest of the drive was taken up analyzing problems they were likely to run into the second they stopped the car.
Jack was right. As they pulled to a stop at Government House, Ada and the entire Council of Ministries, both colonials and Alwans, were waiting.
They didn’t look happy.
23
“Are you going to draft colonials?” was thrown at Kris before she even opened the car door.
There was an Alwan blocking Jack from opening his door. “Will you tie ropes around our necks and make us walk in your footsteps?” Nelly translated.
Kris eyed Jack. “I didn’t read that in your orders.”
“Neither did I.”
Kris shoved open her door, and shouted, “Can we at least get out?”
“Let them get out,” Ada said. “Let’s save this for the Council Chambers, but you two have a lot of explaining to do, and this better be good.”
Granny Rita was on the veranda. As they passed her, she said, “Sorry kids. Maybe I’ve said too much about how sneaky Raymond can be. Ada was with me and Anyang, the Public Peace Coordinator, when the messages started coming in, and the hollering started, and runners left to get more members and none of them have ever read anything written by lawyers before.”
Kris could see how things had gotten out of hand. Getting a little technology was like getting just a little bit pregnant. She’d mark this down as a learning experience if she survived, and would be a lot more careful about what Nelly let Granny Rita see.
I’M SORRY, KRIS. I’VE NEVER HAD TO CENSOR MY NET BEFORE.
WE’LL TALK LATER.
There was a long table in the Council of Ministers’ room. Even though the chairs were distributed evenly, Kris quickly found herself and Jack on one side and everyone else on the other side or sitting in chairs behind that side.
Thank you, Grampa, for dividing us so well.
Kris sat silently for a while. There was some whispering among folks on the other side of the table, but no one really got matters moving. Maybe the Alwans weren’t the only ones who were out of their depth when it came to conflict resolution.
At least at this scale.
Kris opened her hands to Ada.
She shook her head. “You tell me how I’m reading this wrong,” she snapped.
“First off,” Kris began, “the orders to my husband Jack were never revealed or discussed with me before I found out about them this morning. Like any of you on a honeymoon, I had more interesting things at hand than reading dispatches.”
That got some smiles. One or two chuckles. Kris had hoped that appealing to the bridal role might get her more maneuvering room. Then she remembered her history.
The draft had been used extensively in the Iteeche War and not liked at all.
Draft riots were mentioned but skimmed over in most histories. Kris had read deeper on the subject. It had been ugly.
“I have no power as viceroy to create or impose a draft on Alwa or the colonials. It’s not there in my commission.”
“But Jack does,” Ada shot back.
“No, I don’t,” Jack snapped.
“It says you can,” Anyang, the Minister for Public Peace, insisted.
“No, it says that I can train them if you, yourselves, vote to establish a draft. It also says I can train volunteers. It says a lot of things that aren’t going to happen because, right now this minute, I don’t have any weapons I can issue to you.”
Jack paused to let that sink in.
“You could all volunteer en masse. You could pass a law that drafted everyone from five years old to ninety-five, and it wouldn’t mean a thing. My Marines have the weapons they were issued before they came aboard and maybe a dozen spares in the maintenance section.”
Again Jack paused. Realization was dawning in a lot of eyes across the table.