“Kris, I think I’ve been in love with you from the first time I set eyes on you. But I was a Secret Service agent, and you were my primary. Then I was your subordinate. You were untouchable. Until now.”
“And I’ve loved very much being touchable,” Kris said, fearing very much where this was headed.
“Thank you. I have loved touching and being touched by you, Kris. But let’s face it. You’re about to be tried for your life, and most of it will take place in the court of public opinion. We—no, you—can’t afford to give away any free points. Some might think it oh so romantic for the princess to take a lover just now, but a whole lot more will look at those who died to get us back here and wonder about you and me carrying on. And wonder if you and I were carrying on back then when you needed to put everything you had into the battle. A battle that left a lot of good people dead.”
Kris scowled. “I hate it when you’re right.”
“But you know I am,” Jack said as he got off the couch and walked over to the door. He opened it, then found a binder full of flimsies and used it to hold the door open. He glanced out at the Marines . . . smiled at someone . . . then trotted back to the couch. “If those Marines aren’t good chaperones, I don’t know who is.”
“It’s going to be a long trip,” Kris muttered.
43
The long trip started the next day. Apparently, Honovi, member of parliament that he was, did manage to shake something loose. Possibly he went straight to Father. Whatever he did, the Mutsu suddenly had leave to leave, and did so promptly.
Which left Kris pretty much locked in a room and at risk of going stir-crazy.
As she had done so often, she turned to the Marines. A request to join the ship’s company on their daily jog was granted.
With some reservations, that is.
The next day, Kris showed up with Jack and Penny; they were ushered to the back of the formation. However, somewhere as they jogged around ship corridors, up passage ladders, and around more passageways without missing a step, the icy formality began to give way. The Gunny Sergeant made it official at the end of the five-klick run when he gave Kris a bow from the waist and invited them to join the Marines any day.
When they showed up the next morning, Kris and her team were assigned the slot right behind the company skipper and the Gunny.
With Kris running all over the ship, it seemed ridiculous that she didn’t share meals in the wardroom. Captain Miyoshi agreed, but with one requirement.
Kris must first meet with all the members of the Mutsu’s crew who had lost friends or loved ones on the Haruna or Chikuma. As Kris was well aware, Navies are close and tight-knit things. The embarrassment of someone’s grief being suddenly confronted with Kris had to be avoided.
The captain turned the arrangements over to the ship’s senior Buddhist monk. A chief pharmacist mate in sick bay most of the day, the cheery fellow presented himself to Kris in saffron robes that very afternoon and invited her to join him in the Mutsu’s chapel. Intended to meet the needs of all faiths, the small compartment tucked away next to the ship’s library showed basic Buddhist simplicity.
Mats had been strewn around the floor in an approximate circle. The monk led Kris to a mat farthest from the door, indicated she should sit, then sat himself. Quickly, he assumed a lotus posture and closed his eyes.
Kris did the same, as best she could, even to the extent of closing her own eyes. She’d heard of meditation. She’d even had friends suggest she really needed to try it.
Kris was pretty sure Longknifes did not do meditation.
Still, when in Rome, and all that.
With nothing else to do, she tried to do nothing, for at least a few seconds. She slowed her breathing, she knew at least that much, to match that of the monk beside her. In the silence, she discovered that somewhere there was a small waterfall. She could hear its gentle sounds. There was also a bamboo instrument of some sort. It would fill with water, then drop to make a hollow sound, then repeat.
The monk breathed in time with the hollow bamboo, and Kris slowly fell into the same cycle. Her heartbeat slowed, and Kris entered a state of feeling that she’d never encountered. How long it went on, she had no idea.
“My fellow shipmates,” was spoken softly by the monk, but he might as well have shouted it in Kris’s ear. Her eyes flew open; she had to blink several times. The room before her was full, and the door stood open, with more people seated in the passageway. How many, Kris could not tell.
“Many of us have felt grief at the recent events. Some very close and personal. Among us today is someone who also has been touched by that grief, and who some might feel is the cause of it. Our captain has asked her to make herself available to you, to answer any questions you may have.”
Again, the room fell surprisingly quiet. Kris wondered how it had filled without her hearing so much as a hint of sound. Either there was something to this meditation thing, or these Sailors were more quiet than mice. Maybe both.
“I dream of my brother at night,” came in a whisper. “He was on Chikuma. I dream he is alive. Could he be?”
Kris formed an answer, but before she opened her mouth, the monk beside her rested a restraining hand on her knee. Kris lapsed back into listening mode.
“My friend was on Haruna. Did he die for a good reason?”
Kris had to believe he had. She told herself that every minute of every day. The hand on her knee was more insistent in its restraint. Again, Kris stayed quiet.
“My wife was on Haruna,” was loud and bitter. “How is it that she is dead and you, her commander, still live?”
The blunt anger in those words caused a murmur. After the room returned to quiet, the monk removed his hand from Kris’s knee, and whispered softly, “May wisdom and comfort be in your words.”
Kris repeated his words to herself; half prayer, half hope, and began to explain herself to these hurting people. First she told of the ravaged planet that she found. Its people and their world robbed, stripped, destroyed, and murdered.
“I thought I had the report I would carry back to my king. I thought my mission was done and I could go home. I was wrong.”
Quickly, Kris filled them in, as first the discovery of an alien base ship was made, then the report of a new planet and its sentient race came in. And the painful realization that the aliens had the innocent planet in their sights.
“You can imagine the argument that generated,” Kris said. “Some still wanted to go home. Still others, Admiral Kota among them, were for doing something about it if we could. That was the most urgent question. Could our small force do anything to help this new race?”
Then Kris introduced them to the neutron torpedoes: the Hellburners. Suddenly, the Fleet of Discovery had teeth big enough to take a bite out of the huge alien base ship. Could we? Should we?
“We decided, the admirals and I, that if we could prevent this crime, we should. Not everyone agreed. One of our ships suffered sabotage. I offered a free ticket back to human space for anyone who did not want to follow us in the attack on the alien base ship. About a hundred people took me up on that. Half of them were Sailors. They were quickly replaced by volunteers from the ships that had to go back. None, I think, were from Haruna or Chikuma.”
Several “Banzai!” were whispered softly but proudly.
“We all agreed on our battle plan. You are Sailors and Marines. You know every battle has its plan, but no battle goes according to plan. Our plan survived long enough for us to gut the alien base ship. The Hellburners ripped apart the aft half of that ship, roughly the size of a large moon. What we hadn’t planned on was the number of ships the base ship carried. They were huge, and there were hundreds of them.