Never one for informal chitchat, Tru folded her hands and began. ''As you know, Kris recently drew a rescue mission.''
''Yes.'' Father nodded.
''No,'' Mother breathed in shock. ''It wasn't dangerous, darling. After all we've been through with…'' The sentence petered out like all where Eddy's name might be mentioned.
''Mother, of course not,'' Kris immediately filled in the vacancy left by the sudden hush, trying to put just the right twist on the words to make them beyond doubt.
''I think we should all be seated,'' the prime minister suggested, pointing to a report-laden low table surrounded by worn couches and chairs where he met with his closest staff. Father took the rocking chair at the head of the table, an affectation he acquired after reading about some other politician who reached the pinnacle of power at a young age. Unlike so many others of his fads that were dropped as quickly as Mother changed fashions, the simple wooden rocker remained. Father's bad back liked it. Mother took the overstuffed leather chair at the opposite end of the table, leaving the two couches in between for the rest. Kris hated it when her mother did that. It left her swiveling her head, trying to keep track of how each of them was reacting to whatever the other was saying.
''What about this rescue mission?'' Mother insisted. ''If it wasn't dangerous, why was the Navy asked to do it?''
''Honey, the Navy would never put our daughter at risk,'' Father assured her. ''I followed the entire thing on net.'' He'd told Kris about the family addendum he'd put on his news search after Grandfather Alex did something with Nuu Enterprises that caused Father a lot of political fallout.
Grandfather had resigned the prime minister's job and demanded his son give up his seat in the House. Not only had Father not left politics, he'd wrangled all his party connections into making him the next prime minister. The two hadn't shared a word since.
''You knew all about it and didn't tell me!'' Kris tuned out what followed; she'd heard it too many times. While Mother and Father did their individual theatrics, Tru cleared a space for the captured computer and attached its working parts to the table's station.
''Unfortunately, I must disagree with you, Mr. Prime Minister,'' Tru said softly into a break in Mother and Father's battle of clichés.
''No!'' came from both of them. Tru had everyone's attention.
''Before I begin, let me point out what I am dealing with here,'' Tru said, pointing at the computer parts arranged on the table. ''Outward appearance is that of a very old, cheap, and battered wrist unit… and they are totally deceptive. Sprayed onto the inside of the case is the latest in self organizing computer hardware. The cost of this alone is several times the ransom demand.'' Tru raised an eyebrow to the prime minister but did not state the obvious. Money was not the objective of this crime. Kris's father rocked back in his chair, hand coming up to rub his chin, but he said nothing.
''You must be wrong.'' Mother filled the silence. ''No one with money would behave like that.''
That was Kris's mother's inevitable answer to money. Not born to it herself, she worshiped it now that her marriage made her the high priestess of lucre on Wardhaven. And since those with money had servants to do their work, they, of course, never did anything nasty.
''I've cracked two of the longer messages in his rather sparse collection of mail,'' Tru said. ''Here is one.''
''They've taken the bait. Navy is being called in. Deploy greetings,'' appeared on the computer screen recessed into the tabletop.
''What kind of greeting?'' the prime minister asked, leaning forward. Kris had a strong suspicion that greeting involved a very invisible minefield.
''Here's the other message,'' Tru said. ''We got the ship we want. Activate greetings. Assume plan B,'' scrolled onto the tabletop.
''What kind of greetings, and what do they mean, the right ship? I hate it when people don't say what they mean,'' Mother snapped in the voice that had made Kris jump when she was eight or nine. Now she hated it.
Tru, for her part, leaned back into her couch and folded her hands. As she had so many times before when teaching Kris, Tru had laid out the problem; now she left Kris to figure it out. Kris had learned to hate that, too. Where was a role model when a young woman needed one?
Kris leaned forward, looking at the two messages. Assuming the Typhoon was the ''right ship,'' the ''greetings'' were…
''The kidnappers,'' Kris began slowly, ''had a field of Mark 41 land mines scattered around their hideout. Had we jumped as planned, we would all have been killed.'' Kris had intended to corner her father about the shoddy equipment. But the busted uplink to the ship had forced Kris to fly the LAC down, making a jump impossible, thereby spoiling the best laid plans of the bad guys. Kind of hard to bitch about the equipment now.
The prime minister mumbled to his computer link. ''Mark 41s haven't been issued yet,'' he repeated after his datalink.
''Yes, Father, Navy doesn't have any. And a field of them would cost a hell of a lot more than their ransom demands.''
''Kristine Anne, a lady does not use such language,'' Mother contributed to their considerations.
''Between the traps that wiped out the first three rescue attempts, the mines, and this computer,'' Tru pointed out, ''this was a losing financial proposition.'' The prime minister rubbed his chin some more, raised an eyebrow to Tru, but said nothing.
''But who would do that?'' Tommy blurted out.
Mother shot a freezing glower at Tom for interrupting, then an even colder one at Kris for dragging a stranger into something that clearly was a family matter. Well, it wasn't a family matter when I came here, Kris shot back wordlessly, then remembered she was a serving naval officer, not just Mother's little darling. Leaning back, she stared at the ceiling.
''I'm staying at Nuu House,'' she said. ''The place is crawling with guards. One of my great-grandfathers wouldn't happen to be in town?'' she asked the ceiling, wanting to make official what Harvey had given to her under the table.
''Both of them,'' Mother spat. Neither were among Mother's favorite people. Mother blamed Trouble for Kris's decision to join the Navy. This despite Trouble staying long and far from Kris with his job as president of Savannah's War College, the post he'd taken after retiring from chairman of the Joint Staff on Savannah. Ray had spent the last thirty or forty years since leaving public life mostly on Santa Maria, about as far from the rest of humanity as possible, with his youngest daughter, Alnaba, a researcher. Kris kept hearing rumors that they were going to crack the riddle of The Three real soon, the three species that built the jump points between planets. Hadn't yet. Maybe Grampa Ray had finally met something he couldn't do.
''If I identified those troops roaming around Nuu House, they were Earth marines.'' Kris found the hint of a grin start to wiggle across her mouth as she turned to eye her father.
''Who they're meeting with is on a need-to-know basis, young woman. Need I remind you, you're in the Navy. I can have you transferred to the refueling station on HellFrozeOver,'' the prime minister pointed out. ''And darling, you should not have mentioned that my grandfathers are here,'' he added to Mother.
''You invited them to the reception tomorrow.'' Mother pouted. ''It can't be that secret.''
''By then they should be done,'' the prime minister answered, a tinge of sadness creeping into his voice. ''Until then, we don't want it blasted all over the news.''
''So you are dividing up the fleet.'' Kris said, surprised she could get her mouth around the words.
Father blanched; if he had any faith, it was in the union, the absolute belief that humanity had to go to the stars as one. And the Society was the embodiment of that union. ''It is my policy,'' Father said, hand going dramatically to his heart, ''and the policy of every prime minister of Wardhaven since we were admitted to the Society of Humanity, that Humanity must go to the stars a single people.'' Father repeated the words Kris had heard hundreds of times. Missing today was the vigor and confidence that the policy would remain.