7
To Kris's complete surprise—and immense relief—the wedding went off without a hitch. And Mother lived.
Adorable Dora showed up, got her pics, jammed her mike in several faces for sound bites she wanted … then vanished. ''The Pandoris have a barbecue this afternoon and The Rachael, Super Nova vid star, will be there.'' Apparently a vid star's face at a barbecue trumped two junior officers' wedding in the Nuu gardens.
Mother went ballistic before spiraling into a pout.
So she missed Chandra's darling five-year-old daughter, Klesa, doing cute perfectly as a flower girl. She walked solemnly down the aisle, taking two steps dutifully before casting each handful of flower petals over her shoulder. She waited until she reached the altar before turning to face the waiting audience, grinning like the angel she was … and upended the flower basket.
Klesa's brother succeeded admirably well as the ring bearer, only interrupting the ceremony twice to ask in his soft three-year-old whisper that carried from one end of the garden to the other, ''Is it time for the ring, yet?''
Father Mary Ann smiled both times and assured him in that soft, lilting, Irish-Chinese brogue of Santa Maria that ''No, not yet. Wait a wee bit more.''
With five maid of honor dresses in her closet, Kris was getting to be an expert on weddings. Father Mary Ann and Commander Petrulio did a superb job of concocting a ceremony. Kris drafted the chaplain when Penny's mother's Reformed Methodist minister backed out at the last minute. Seems the Reformed Methodists were in negotiations with Rome for reunion, and doing a wedding two hundred light-years from Earth with a schismatic Santa Marian woman priest put all that at risk. But chaplains follow a different chain of command and, though Penny was willing at the last moment to give up, defy her grandmother, and do it all Tom's way, Tom insisted on someone to hold up Penny's end of the faith bargain. If ever two people deserved a long wedded life, these two did.
With no loss of blood or other noticeable disaster, the padre and priest reached the end of the ceremony, the part that everyone watching surely took for the most important. The two ministers said, ''Tom, you may kiss your bride.''
He did. A nice kiss, enthusiastically returned by Penny.
The chaplain cleared his throat. ''May I present to you Lieutenant junior grade and Lieutenant Lien.''
Penny put her arm lovingly in Tom's, and the string quartet began the recessional. Kris would be next, on Phil's arm. The padre and priest corralled the kids under their wings and showed evidence that they could indeed ride herd on them until the adults had left. Father Mary Ann had brought hard candy!
Kris sighed as she put her arm in Phil's. ''Any wedding you can stagger away from,'' she said.
''No casualties so far,'' he agreed.
Penny and Tom made little progress out. Family on both sides of the aisle offered hands, cheeks, congratulations, advice, whatever it was you said to a young woman on her first day of wedded life. It was also quite possibly the first chance some had to meet Penny. Kris was glad to see Phil was in no rash to get out. He was demonstrating a solid grasp of things that had nothing to do with the Navy. Good man. Kris took the moment of the stalled wedding recession to lean against him. Nice. She wondered how many dances she could hold him to at the reception. In this getup, she ought to be able to attract a dead man.
Mo-ther was that your idea!
And Father's phone went off.
Actually, Kris was amazed that there had been no phone interruptions during the ceremony. With this many politicians in one place, and the elections at their present heat, it was amazing no one had felt the desperate need to interrupt for something or another. She really couldn't fault Father for now pulling out his ear set. Mother shot him a glare that could have burned a battleship, but he failed to notice her.
Father spoke softly for a moment, his words not reaching Kris, then turned away and walked down a garden path bordered by magnolias and lilacs. Other phones buzzed. In a moment, every politician present was distancing him- or herself from the affair and each other to talk to someone else, somewhere else.
Kris frowned. Had the Prime Minister Pro Tem had a heart attack, fallen on a banana peel? It would have taken something like that to get all these politicians so excited in lockstep.
''Nelly?''
''Nothing on the regular net. There is a spike on the private net, but I don't know the reason,'' her computer admitted. Okay, the Prime Minister was still breathing. So what happened?
Kris eyed the back rows where the other Navy contingent sat, the putative intelligence types. With the media circus in full blow, Penny's friends had been advised not to take a prominent role, leaving all the bridesmaids' dresses to the patrol boat skippers. Such luck. Now they were looking at each other, open questions on their faces, but no answers there.
Seated over by herself, Commander Santiago was talking to someone. Kris pointed her out to the PF skippers. Groomsmen quickly, bridesmaids a bit more slowly lest they lose what little modesty Mother's gowns allowed them, made their way to the Commander. On the way Kris passed three phone conversations. She picked up ''warships,'' ''surrender,'' and ''orbital bombardment.'' That was enough to hurry her along.
Around the Commander, the men stooped close in, letting the women stand in their daisy getups and still see without showing too much. The intel types filled in behind them. No one interrupted Commander Santiago while she continued to listen.
''Keep checking, XO,'' she finally said. ''I got a major contingent of JOs here from the PF Navy about to turn blue. Maybe a few intel weenies to boot who can't stand to have a tin can sailor in the know when they aren't. I better brief them before they get violent. I'll monitor your traffic. Interrupt me if you get something.''
The Commander looked around the small circle. ''We're in trouble. Six ships exited jump Beta doing a comfortable 1,500 klicks an hour. Their beepers and squawkers are throttled.''
Kris hadn't heard that from any of the politicians she'd passed, but then, none of them would understand the implications of that simple statement. Every ship able to do star jumps was built with a transponder that reported its name, owner, and most recent ports of call. The buoys that tracked traffic through the jumps noted the transponder number and used it to control the traffic and by exerting such control, avoiding head-on collisions in the jumps between stars.
For someone to mess with, much less silence, a transponder was a major offense against the transportation regs of the Society of Humanity. At least it had been for the last eighty years. Someone was taking major risks. Someone was willing to take those risks to make sure people didn't know who they were.
To a naval officer, this little said a lot. To the politicians talking on their phones around Kris, it was very unlikely any of them understood what it meant.
''The ships are now in line ahead,'' the destroyer skipper went on, ''doing a constant one-g acceleration. Assuming they flip at midpoint, they will arrive over Wardhaven in ninety-six hours.''
''Battle line ahead?'' Kris asked.
''They're acting like a battle line,'' Commander Santiago said. ''Sensors report the power plants on all six are dual reactors, GE-6900 class.'' That brought out a low whistle around the circle. Large passenger liners used dual reactors for safety, never larger than 2200-class output. Six ships with twin 6900-level power generators meant plasma for accelerating a lot of mass and for generating a lot of electricity for lasers.
''Battleships,'' an intel analyst said. ''President-class.''
''Or Magnificents.''
''Those are all Earth ships.''
''Earth ships wouldn't use the Beta jump point. We would have had a report of a squadron of Earth battleships boosting around the Rim worlds,'' an intel Lieutenant insisted.