“Then why did he and all the other admirals, what were there, three? follow you into this disastrous battle?” the man asked.
“That’s several questions. Why don’t you sit down and let the next reporter stand up and see if she can get a question in,” Kris said. The watching students got a laugh at that. The man did sit, but only after shouting, “You owe me an answer.”
“Yes, I do,” Kris said. “Let me share with you the discussion I and the three admirals had about this leadership challenge we faced. Nelly, do you have our net meeting recorded?”
“Yes, I do,” Nelly said.
“No. Don’t distribute it,” the lawyer behind Kris shouted.
“Oops,” said Nelly. “It’s out.”
Screens lit up again. “As you can see, Admiral Kota was the first to say that he had not put on his uniform to do nothing about an atrocity like this. Still, if we only had eight battleships and my four corvettes, there would have been nothing we could do. We would have sadly returned and made our report. However, my king had shipped us a new, super weapon. A neutron torpedo. Its warhead held a tiny chip off a neutron star. Tiny,” Kris said, holding up her fingers a few millimeters apart, “but weighing fifteen thousand tons.”
That drew soft whistles.
“You wash it down with a beam of antimatter at the same time it smashes into something, and you can do a lot of damage. I had three of them. Our conclusion was that those three Hellburners just might let us take down the huge alien base ship.”
“Excuse me, Your Royal Highness,” the now-standing woman said, “but wasn’t the fact that you are a princess, great-granddaughter of King Raymond, the real reason why they all followed you? You pulled royal rank.”
The entire room took in a deep breath at the abruptness of the interruption and the effrontery of the question.
Kris smiled. “I didn’t ask to be a princess. I think it’s me working off some really bad karma.” That drew a laugh from the kids. “When the Society of Humanity broke up, some guys came along and offered my great-grampa a crown. We’d never had a king on Wardhaven. Didn’t want one, didn’t need one. But I made the mistake of talking my grampa into accepting the job. Foolish me, I never thought that having a grampa for a king meant I’d be stuck being a princess.”
Kris gave the room a resigned shrug, and the students broke up laughing.
“So there I am, a lieutenant in the Navy, and suddenly also a princess. You talk about a problem. It’s not just for me. Everyone else is trying to figure out what to do with a princess: salute her or kick her.”
Kris took another a sip of water as laughter rolled around the room.
The students were having fun. The reporters . . . not so much.
“Here on Musashi, you have had an Imperial family since, well, forever.” Kris turned back to Captain Miyoshi. “Do members of the Imperial family ever serve their nation? If they do, would a senior officer accept an order from a junior officer who was a prince or princess?”
The officer did not scowl at Kris like she expected him too. Instead, he stood, and, in a commanding voice that easily carried through the auditorium, said, “For the last two hundred years, young princes and princesses have served their planet in the Imperial Army and Navy. When I was a junior officer serving under Admiral Kota, he told me that if ever I commanded one of the Imperial family, I should cut them less slack than I did other boot ensigns. ‘They must learn faster and do better than any other officer, for more may be demanded of them in life.’ Yes, I know that Admiral Kota would never allow a princess of the Imperial family, much less an upstart princess from a place like Wardhaven, to give him any kind of command.”
With that he sat down.
Upstart princess from the backwoods. Well that puts me in my place. “Thank you, Captain,” was what Kris said.
“You’re welcome,” he said.
Kris turned back to the audience, who were thoroughly enjoying the joke at her expense. She took another sip of water while things settled down.
The standing reporter jumped in with the next question. “Still, once you and the admirals made up your mind to risk the lives of everyone on those ships, the crew didn’t have any choice but to follow you, did they?”
Kris could feel the backbones stiffen of the Marines around her and the captain behind her at this questioning of military discipline. Kris ran a hand through her hair to give her a second more to think.
“You know, your question goes to the very heart of military discipline. I think you’ve offended a lot of the people present in uniform.”
The reporter didn’t back down but hammered the question. “Still, all those people didn’t have a choice, did they? It was obey and die or else.”
Kris kept quiet, letting the reporter dig herself in deeper. Then she snapped her trap shut. “However, in this case, they did have a choice.”
That got a lot of “What”s from the room.
“We had at least one Sailor in my squadron who did not want to go. He or she sabotaged work on the Fearless. Normally, discipline would handle this situation, but I didn’t have time. Instead, I drew the proverbial line in the sand and offered anyone who wanted one a ticket home on the transports that would not be going into battle.”
“You didn’t!” came from the Imperial Gunny.
“Damned if she didn’t,” came back from the USMC Gunny.
The standing reporter opened his mouth but settled into his seat. He whispered something to the next reporter as she jumped to her feet.
“Did anyone from our ships ask to return?” that reporter asked.
“As I’ve said before, I had no command or control over the Musashi ships. I know that fifty Sailors did ask to be relieved. I don’t know if any were from Haruna or Chikuma.”
“One young Sailor from the Haruna asked to return,” Captain Miyoshi stated from his seat, in a voice that carried through the hall. “She will be discharged as soon as she has her baby.”
The room took time to absorb that. The standing reporter peered at her notepad and seemed to be having trouble coming up with a follow-up question.
From the back of the room a student stood. “May I respectfully ask to pose a question, Your Highness?”
Kris raised an eyebrow to the standing reporter. “Just so long as you don’t count it as mine,” she said.
“Fine. You students don’t count,” Kris said with an impish grin.
It took a while for the room to settle down after that, but it did.
“Again, thank you, Your Royal Highness, for allowing this lowly student who doesn’t count to pose a question.” He paused for only a moment to let his classmates react to his humility. Some praised him. Others threw bits of rice balls.
“I have just finished scanning your report. Can you tell me if you saved the bird people and their planet?”
The room fell into a hush.
“I wish I could,” Kris said. “What I know is that we badly damaged the alien base ship. Our Hellburners smashed up all its engines even though it was about the size of a large moon. However, we underestimated the hundreds of other ships it carried. Faced with overwhelming laser fire, and after six of our battleships, including Haruna and Chikuma, were blasted out of space, we had to run. Two of my own ships fought bravely to their destruction to give the Wasp and the Hornet a chance to get back and tell the story of how they died.”
Kris paused. No one jumped in to fill the silence.
“There isn’t a day that I don’t wonder if all our fighting and dying was for something, or in vain. My ship, the Wasp, just made it back to human space. I understand that they wouldn’t even risk a final trip to the breakers for her. They’re scrapping her at the first station in human space she finally made it to.”