“They did not so much shoot at us as use their thousands of lasers to sweep the space ahead of them. Even a battleship’s armor can’t handle being hit by a hundred lasers at once. Our ships blew up. Few survival pods made it away, and those that did were wiped out by the lasers still sweeping where our battle line had been.
“In the end, all any of us could do was run. Two of my ships died fighting to buy time for the Wasp and the Hornet to get away. In the end, the Hornet went one way, and the Wasp went the other, hoping that at least one of us would make it back.”
Kris paused to take a deep breath. “Not a morning passes that I don’t wake up hoping to hear that Hornet has somehow returned, or that one of the battleships has straggled in. But neither of the two battleships that I last saw running were from Musashi.”
There, Kris had said what she had to say. All she could say. She sat on the mat, exhausted, waiting for the reaction.
The monk rose gracefully from his mat and offered Kris a hand. As it turned out, her left leg had gone to sleep, and the monk had to half haul her up. He did not seem surprised. and there was no judgment in his eyes. Only a twinkle.
With them both standing, the monk turned to his congregation, or whatever Buddhists called a pack of themselves. “Those of you who wish may now say a few words personally with this afternoon’s speaker.”
Kris liked the way he deftly avoided any reference to rank or status. This afternoon, Kris was just a pilgrim with a story to tell. She liked it for a change.
One by one, men or women came forward. Many of them had a picture of the one they had lost. Some expressed pride now in what their lost one had done. Others merely expressed their loss.
Last in line was a young man. He clutched a wedding picture of himself and a lovely young woman. “I begged her to request a transfer off Haruna when the word came that they would be going along with you. I told her no good would come of following a Longknife. She laughed the way she did and asked me if I would transfer off Mutsu just before it sailed on such a mission?”
He paused, gazing longingly at the picture. “She knew I would never have abandoned my shipmates. Why did her Haruna get the orders and my Mutsu not?”
“I have no answer,” Kris said, and was rewarded by a gentle nod from the monk. “Neither do I know why the Wasp made it back and none of the others did. What I do know was that one ship had to return. Those who died deserve to have the story told of their gallantry, and courage, and commitment.”
The young man bowed, hiding the tears in his eyes, and quickly walked away.
Kris looked around at the empty room, her Gethsemane over.
Beside her, the monk bowed. “You did well, Your Highness.”
Kris bowed back. “It was you who arranged this, Venerable Sir.” Nelly got Kris the proper address for a Buddhist monk just a second before she needed it. “You did very well yourself.”
“One does what the universe allows. I knew from Captain Miyoshi’s request of me that he wanted this done before you dined in the wardroom. Several here were officers, including the young ensign you last talked to. However, I would like to take this opportunity to invite you to be the guest of the chief’s mess this evening. You will find our fare simpler, but we have better cooks,” he added, his eyes sparkling.
Kris thanked him but found that she was not ready to leave. She settled back onto the floor, her legs out in front of her so they would not go to sleep again, and began her own meditation. She’d spent enough time gnawing on the battle. She didn’t need to resurrect those ghosts again. No. What bothered her was the lack of knowledge that the crew and its captain had about their fellow battleship Sailors.
“Nelly, didn’t we send reports back to human space?”
“Yes, Kris. Several times.”
“And didn’t Amanda Cutter take the last ship back? Wasn’t she on a lot of talk shows, talking about what we intended to do?”
“Yes, Kris. I have the recordings.”
“So how come these people know so little about what happened?”
“Kris, I’ve done a search on all media reports in the Mutsu’s database. There’s a lot about the voyage of discovery leaving, but not a lot about it after it left.”
“How could that be, Nelly?”
“Apparently your report to Santa Maria after the first attack didn’t make it into the media at all. And while Amanda did appear on talk shows, they were usually syndicated and only had small audiences. She was on shows on Wardhaven, Santa Maria, and her own Lorna Do. But that left a lot of worlds not covered.”
Kris grimaced. “And those appearances weren’t distributed widely?”
“Apparently not, Kris. Musashi media didn’t give the fleet a lot of news coverage. Most of what these people learned about the battle they got from the Navy grapevine.”
“That’s disgusting,” Kris said.
“It gets worse.”
Kris sighed. “Tell me, Nelly.”
“Vicky Peterwald gave an interview that got very wide coverage just before the media got distracted and went off to other things. I think there was a spectacular sex affair involving four vid stars.”
Kris closed her eyes. “Nelly, what did Vicky do?”
“I will show you, Kris, but you won’t like it.”
On the mat before her, Vicky’s image appeared. “Where’d she get that dress?” Kris asked, not that it would have taken much space to pack it.
“I don’t know, Kris, but I suspect it encouraged the distribution of the interview.”
Vicky was talking. “It was horrible. The alien ships were huge and they were all over the place and we never had a chance.”
“Why did you attack them?” the newsie asked.
“I don’t know. Kris Longknife insisted we just had to attack. For some reason, she got the other admirals to go along with her. I think she had them twisted around her little finger. All but Admiral Krätz, he opposed her. He said we should come back and report what we had found.”
“Then why did he go along with the attack?”
“I think it was a matter of honor with him. The others were going to fight. How could he run away, but then, once the huge superiority of the aliens became clear, running away was all our ships could do. Kris Longknife was, of course, the first to duck out of the fight.”
“How did it happen that you survived? That you were on the U.S.S. Wasp rather than the Imperial Battleship Fury?”
“Princess Kris invited me as Grand Duchess to come over for dinner. I could hardly refuse. After that, there never seemed to be a time when she could arrange for my return. I kind of think she was holding me hostage, to keep Admiral Krätz in line. I don’t know. Maybe. Oh, I just don’t know. It was all so horrible.”
“Cut it off, Nelly.”
The computer did.
“Is there anything new in the rest of it that I should know?” Kris growled.
“No, Kris. She just goes on repeating herself. Many media outlets carried only what you just saw. Others carried more. During the rest of the interview, one breast falls out of her dress, twice.”
“That wouldn’t be hard, she wasn’t all that much in it.” Kris realized she was being catty. Her problem wasn’t that the girl she thought might become a good friend had dissed her in public.
The problem was that Kris had been walking around for several months with a knife in her back she didn’t even know was there.
“I’m sorry I didn’t do this news search earlier, Kris. There was nothing about any of this on Madigan’s Rainbow. On Eden, I did my best to tread lightly, and you know how blocked I was on Wardhaven.”