GET INSIDE, Nelly screamed in Kris’s skull.
Kris let herself be guided in the door.
“Gee, that was fun!” Cara said, hardly out of breath.
Kris, more out of shape than she wanted to admit, still gasped out, “What’s going on here?” as she produced her automatic. She held it low, not pointed at anyone or anything in particular.
But at everything in general.
“Put the gun away,” an all-too-familiar and wonderful voice said even as the lighting went from near nonexistent to just painfully dim.
“Penny!” Kris managed not to shout. “What are you doing here?”
“Trying to stay invisible,” said the Navy lieutenant, intelligence officer, and daughter of a cop. She aimed Kris at a cheap dining-room table with four mismatched and even shabbier chairs. Abby, Kris’s erstwhile maid, was already in one. Cara slipped easily into another. Penny settled Kris in the one facing Abby before taking the last chair.
Kris took a moment to survey her surroundings. The room was tiny, cluttered with dirty dishes, leftover Chinese food cartons, and other junk. Several cockroaches scuttled from the brighter light. This was not Kris’s Tac Center on the Wasp. Still, with the present company, it felt more like home than anyplace Kris had been for way too long.
“And invisible we will stay,” Nelly said from around Kris’s neck. Kris’s personal computer had been often upgraded since it was given to her before first grade. After the latest upgrades, she’d taken to arguing with Kris more often than not. And now she told atrocious jokes. The alien chip Kris had volunteered to have planted in Nelly’s self-organizing matrix for examination might have had something to do with the present state of affairs.
It didn’t matter. The last month, while Nelly had given Kris the silent treatment, had been its own special kind of hell.
“I’ve fed old feed, properly revised, so that our watching dogs will not notice the loop,” Nelly went on. “It shows Kris and Cara taking a side trip into the park to violate a bush. Kris is now collapsed in her own vomit, and Cara is crying for her to get up, while making sure Our Princess doesn’t suffocate. That should keep the boys at the station house delighted for some time.”
“Did you have to make me that disgusting?” Kris grumbled.
“I would have made it worse,” Abby snapped, rubbing gingerly at her eye.
“I’m sorry about that,” Kris said. “I never thought I could lay a hand on you.”
“And you wouldn’t have,” Abby said, “if I hadn’t let you. This shiner was just the excuse I needed to let the security cameras in our quarters show me sulking in my bath while I sent poor Cara to beard the beast tonight.”
“We’ve got security cameras in our bathrooms!” Kris squeaked.
“Goes to show how much you needed me,” Nelly said.
“All of us are under a tight security lockdown,” Penny said.
Kris might have befogged her brain an hour ago, but that didn’t mean she’d miss important information now. “You aren’t supposed to be here,” she said to Penny.
“My assumption is that if I’m caught, my folks will not get a body to bury.”
Kris leaned back in her chair. “It’s that bad?”
“Baby ducks,” Abby said, “consider yourself to have gotten off easy. I was told in no uncertain terms that if I did anything but help you look pretty and presentable, Cara and I would end up dead, very dead. Haven’t you noticed how good I’ve been lately?”
“I noticed you showed up with only three self-propelled steamer trunks,” Kris said. Until Kris got the Wasp for her home away from home, she and her team had gauged how much trouble they were in by the number of steamer trunks following Abby through customs. It wasn’t unusual for her to leave Kris’s quarters with three or four and have as many as a dozen following her an hour later.
What she produced from them was always amazing and usually critical to keeping Kris and company alive.
Now Abby chuckled. “You had your royal head so far up your ass, I didn’t think you noticed.”
“Did most of your tricks get confiscated?” Kris asked
“Most, but not all. Nowhere close to all. What surprised me is that none of them even tried to get their meat hooks into Nelly or any of her kids.”
“I had something to do with that,” Nelly said, seeming to clear her nonexistent throat. “There wasn’t a lot on Wardhaven about me and the kids. What there was, I made disappear. It’s easy to run boneheads around in circles if they don’t know what I’ve got up my sleeves.”
“Smart move,” Penny said, stroking Mimzy at her own collar. There weren’t just four sharp minds met around this table, but eight.
“Where’s Jack?” Kris asked, choking on the question.
Penny shook her head. “He didn’t play cool. When they put you on that fast boat to Wardhaven with no security, Jack went ballistic. No common sense at all. What got into that man?”
“We kissed,” Kris said softly, letting the memory of Jack’s soft caress warm her.
“Oh,” Penny said. “That explains it.”
The four women sat silently for a moment, savoring that revelation.
“Yes,” Kris whispered. “For a few seconds there on the pier at High Chance, we were making up for lost time.” Internally, Kris winced at her choice of words. A bride of three days when widowed fighting under Kris’s command, Penny of all people did not need to hear of lost time.
But Penny only nodded before going on. “Jack was pretty adamant that he had to follow you. You weren’t safe without him. Admiral Santiago did her best to calm things down. Did she see the way it was between you two?”
“Yeah,” Kris admitted.
“Now I understand Jack’s problem,” Penny said. “Dumb me. I should have put two and two together, but I never thought you two would ever find the time for something more serious than arguing over your next stupid or suicidal move.”
“Me neither,” Kris muttered. “But when you’re being chased across the galaxy, by really nasty and mad aliens, sometimes you think about what’s really important.”
The three others gave that thought the sardonic chuckle it deserved. They’d all been with Kris on the Wasp, making high-speed jumps into the unknown. Dodging some pretty upset and vengeful aliens. Not knowing if they’d have the fuel to slow down. Or the wits to find their way home.
“Where is Jack now?” Kris asked.
“He’s detailed to security on HellFrozeOver,” Penny said.
“You’re kidding,” Kris said.
“What’s that?” Cara asked.
“A naval station in the Wardhaven system,” Nelly said quickly. “It orbits a large gas giant, and the base sends tankers down into it to recover reaction mass, which is then shipped to High Wardhaven for fleet use. There is also a private concern that does the same for commercial use. There are unconfirmed reports that very top secret research is also carried out at the base, but the government refuses to answer questions.”
“Wow,” Cara said.
“The night I announced that I’d joined the Navy, my father swore he’d see that my entire career was on HellFrozeOver,” Kris said. “He’s threatened me with it a few other times. Jack must have really pissed them off. Is he in charge of security?”
“Nope,” Penny answered. “They don’t trust him any farther than they can throw him and a herd of elephants. The commander of that hellhole, with orders to ride close herd on Jack, is a certain Colonel Hancock.”
“Old Hard Case himself!” Kris said.
“You know him?” Penny asked.
“I served with him on the Olympic Humanitarian Mission. Another hellhole, only this one rainy and bandit-ridden. I wondered what happened to him after that mission closed down. I thought he’d have the good sense to get the message and retire.”