“Score one for our side,” Captain Miyoshi said through a tight smile.
Kris considered, but then decided not to ask him the secret of his success. She was glad not to show up for her presser with egg on her car. Someone had returned it to pristine blackness, and Kris would have hated to add another wash job to the growing tab she could not pay.
Might never be able to pay if Grampa Al didn’t relent.
A block from Fujioka House, they picked up a police escort: two cars and four motorcycle cops. They led them by back roads to the university and came to a stop in the back of a large white stone building. Inspector Dogen opened the door for Kris.
“Safe and sound,” he said, as if it was an accomplishment. “I got a report from New Eden. It seems you do not always arrive at your destinations without incident.”
“But I’m still here,” Kris pointed out.
“Despite it all,” Jack grumbled.
Around Kris, Imperial Marines formed up and began to march purposefully toward the back of the theater. Gunny Brown followed them.
Right up to the time he shouted, “Halt your movement.”
“Teiryuu,” split the air, and the Imperial Marines came to a smart halt.
“What is the matter?” came immediately from their own Gunny.
“There’s a bomb inside that doorway,” Gunny Brown snapped.
The Imperial Gunny rattled off a couple of names, and a man and a woman detached themselves from the formation, produced sensors from casings on their belts, and followed cautiously as Gunny Brown led them toward the doorway.
Another shouted order, and a third Marine double-timed it for one of the gun trucks and returned with a box. In the trucks, one of the drivers began to put on padding. Clearly, the troopers might be in fancy dress, but they were well trained.
“You might want to get back in the car,” Jack said.
Kris frowned. Hiding was not her first choice, second or last choice, either.
Captain Miyoshi shouted something to the Imperial Gunny, and more Marines broke ranks to bring their guns up and began searching the surrounding roofs through powerful sights.
“Please get back in the car,” Mutsu’s skipper ordered. “I did not bring you this far to have your brains splattered over my dress blues.”
Kris got back in the car.
“How did you do that?” Penny said. “Jack’s been trying to get her to take cover for the last four or five years. She never jumped like that.”
“I have daughters,” the captain muttered.
Kris compromised. She kept her head well inside the backseat, but she rested her legs on the ground outside. The captain gave her a look that would have melted lead, but she didn’t so much as blink.
“We have disarmed the bomb. It was set for a remote detonation.”
Sirens announced the arrival of the Kyoto bomb squad. They took over the removal of the device. They did it quickly, leaving Kris a full three minutes to make her way up onto the stage from which she was to talk.
She took one look at the twenty rows of reporters in front of her and flinched. “How are we going to do this?” she asked Tsusumu.
“We held a lottery. Only the twenty seated in the center-front row can ask you a question. They may ask one question and a follow-up. Anyone else will be out of order and an embarrassment to their agency.”
The lawyer seemed to think that would settle the matter. Maybe here on Musashi it would. Kris strode to the podium as the auditorium slowly began to quiet. It was filled to capacity; some students stood in the back, munching food. Kris remembered such lunches from her college days.
She never expected to be the one onstage.
The Marines had formed a thin red line below the stage. Behind her, her own crew, along with her lawyer and Captain Miyoshi, took their places in chairs.
Kris took a sip from a handy glass of water, smiled, and asked, “Who has the first question?”
A young man jumped to his feet. “How do you feel after causing the death of so many men and women?”
Kris remembered her father’s advice. Always pause a moment to let people think you are thinking about the question. Never pause too long, or they’ll think you’re thinking too much about your answer.
“I sincerely regret their sacrifice. Not a day comes that I don’t wish some more survivors of the battle will straggle in. That I don’t wish there had been more of us when the time came to turn and flee.”
“Follow-on question,” the man said, still standing. “Then you regret that you ordered the attack that caused so many to die?”
“No,” Kris said, without a moment’s pause.
“How could you not?” the man snapped.
“You’ve had your two questions,” Kris said. The man scowled and sat down.
Next up was a young woman. She looked at her notebook, then frowned as she closed it. “I am sorry to press the previous matter, but how can you say you regret all the deaths but do not regret the battle?”
“Please excuse me, but that was not the question he asked,” Kris said slowly. “I believe in my heart that all of us, those who lived and those who died, would still attack the hostile alien base ship.” Not mother ship. Base ship for these civilians, Tsusumu had insisted. “The crime it was about to commit was horrible beyond words, and we were all committed to stopping it.”
“What crime?” the woman asked, interrupting Kris’s answer.
So, these folks were operating with just as little knowledge as the poor shipmates on Mutsu, Kris thought.
“Didn’t Admiral Kota’s report make it back here? Haven’t you read it?”
“What report?” came from the woman, and a murmur from the entire hall.
That was just the opening Kris wanted.
“Nelly, would you please distribute my report to King Raymond concerning the murdered planet?”
“Yes, Kris,” Nelly replied, and handhelds came out around the theater and lit up as screens captured Nelly’s transmission.
The hall had been quiet before. Now it took on the silence of a tomb.
“In rapid succession, we made the discovery of this raped planet, a huge alien base ship, and a second planet, one teeming with life and a civilization little different from our Earth’s four or five hundred years ago. The alien base ship was headed for that planet with murderous intent. We decided to do something about it.”
The woman started to open her mouth, but she paused, looked embarrassed, and glanced at the seated man next to her. As he stood up, she sat down.
“You say ‘we decided.’ Don’t you mean you decided?” the next reporter said.
Ah, just the question my lawyer wanted. Kris suppressed a smile.
“No. I am a Royal U.S. Navy officer. You will notice there are two and a half stripes on my shoulder boards,” Kris said, pointing at them. “I’m a lieutenant commander. Captain Miyoshi behind me”—here Kris glanced over her shoulder; her grinning lawyer, clearly enjoying how things were going, was seated next to a stolid-faced captain—“has four stripes on his uniform. He very much outranks me. Rear Admiral Kota outranked even him. I could no more give a rear admiral an order than I could fly around this room. Very likely, I will learn to fly long before a lieutenant commander gives orders to an admiral. Is that not so, Captain?”
Captain Miyoshi growled an assent as the room enjoyed a laugh.
“There is the second matter,” Kris went on. “I serve in King Raymond I’s Royal United Society Navy. Admiral Kota served in his Imperial Musashi Majesty’s Navy. Even if I were a full admiral, a whole lot of promotions from where I am”—which drew another laugh from the students; Kris was beginning to like them—“I could never give an order to a ship of the Musashi Navy. I might suggest something to Rear Admiral Kota. I might ask him nicely, but I could never order him.”