“Yes, ma’am,” the chief bosun said, and issued orders.
Kris eyed the civilians of her court and their blur of color. One young boffin was in a leopard faux-fur tux.
“Nelly, do we have any pictures of life in the Imperial Iteeche city?”
“Not a one,” Nelly admitted.
Kris turned around to find the missing military contingent of her court approaching. Jack had apparently been scheming with Gunny, Colonel Cortez, and Penny right at hand. Now the Marine captain was grinning from ear to ear.
“I wondered how you’d take to that,” he said as he saluted.
“Why didn’t you do something to get them off of this crazy court kick and onto something useful?”
“They’re boffins, Kris. I have no idea of anything useful for them to do or the power to make them do it,” Jack pointed out.
“And while I may take a bullet in a firefight,” Colonel Cortez added, “court life, even that borrowed from a romantic vid, is something I run, not walk, from. That bit of courage I will leave to you.”
But as the colonel took in Kris’s full-dress uniform, his eyes widened. “Is that the sash and Order of the Wounded Lion? Earth’s highest honor?”
“Yes,” Kris said curtly.
“I hadn’t heard Earth had stooped so low as to ship those out by return post to anyone’s bratty daughter who asked for one,” the colonel said.
“I don’t believe they have,” Kris agreed.
“So what are the chances I’ll hear the story behind that bobble? Clearly, it’s not got the wide distribution such an honor should enjoy.”
“And it won’t,” Jack put in.
The colonel frowned.
“Don’t you go feeling put-upon,” Abby said. “Her and Jack and, maybe, Penny are the only ones in on the story hereabouts. And me, I got to dust that thing off whenever she decides to haul it out of storage, but she won’t say a thing about it.”
“More and more you surprise me, Your Highness.” Then he chuckled. “At least this surprise won’t strip me of a command.”
The chief now had sailors stringing lines across the docking bay. “What are those for?” the magnificent Teresa demanded.
“We’ll be matching ports with the Iteeche ship soon. After that, until we separate from that ship, we’ll be in zero gee. Being without gravity doesn’t bother any of you, does it?” Kris asked, trying to keep malicious out of her voice.
Well, trying a little bit.
Teresa broke for the door, others following in her wake. “Come back if you feel better after getting some meds,” Kris called after Teresa. And felt truly evil for it. And really enjoyed the feeling.
Then she got serious.
“What is this Iteeche doing this far beyond their space?” Kris repeated the question.
“And do we trust whatever answer he gives us?” Jack said.
“Is this really that far?” Penny said. “Yes, I know it was eighty years ago, but does anyone have any idea what the present boundaries are of their Imperial territory?”
That brought Kris up short. Human space was a whole lot wider than it had been three generations back. The Iteeche were not known for their rapid expansion. But could that have changed once they bumped into the hairless bipeds, as they called humans?
“I am not liking all the questions I don’t have answers to,” Kris said.
Those around her just frowned.
7
“The ship will go to zero gee. Now,” told Kris her wait was about over. She held herself steady on the inside of the docking bay while noises on the outside told her connections were being made. Given a choice, Kris would have been out there doing something useful rather than in here waiting, waiting, waiting.
Her first hint that the Wasp and the Iteeche were hooked was a sudden influx of moist air, smelling of salt. Five minutes later, an Iteeche ducked his head in the bay, looked around, then backed out. The Iteeche was in a space suit, or battle armor; it wasn’t easy with a human to tell the two apart. Add in an extra ration of arms and legs, and it only got worse.
“Well, we’ve been scouted,” Penny said. “Won’t be long.”
Kris hung like a spider in a web of social constraints. Her feet were looped into the net restraints that held her retinue in place around her. She wondered how the boffins were taking to the general rearrangement. Under normal acceleration or pierside conditions, they would have stood on the floor. Now, in zero gee, the netting helped them stay fairly close to the floor, facing the dark maw of the open air lock and the tunnel beyond.
One of the boffins grabbed for her mouth and weakly pushed herself off, heading for the exit above. A Marine added an extra push. A sailor at the hatch caught her and got her outside. Only then did the sounds of explosive sickness come. Sadly for Kris, it wasn’t de Alva.
“Stand by to render honors,” drew Kris back to face the air lock. Six side boys, half of them side girls, stood by, with a bosun ready to pipe the Iteeche aboard. The chief bosun had a straight view up the docking tunnel.
When he announced “Stand by,” showtime wasn’t far off.
Two Iteeche, fully seven feet tall, sailed through the hatch in perfect formation. Their uniforms were black as midnight. The poles they held before them were topped by wicked-looking hacking blades and streamers of every color of the rainbow, many with two or three colors in clashing combination. The two expertly caught themselves on the lines strung across the docking bay, changed directions, and came to rest at stiff attention, one to the right of Kris, the other to the left, a good four meters in front of Abby and Cara, who, with the exception of the side crew, were the closest humans to the hatch. The two black-clad Iteeche left plenty of space between them for more.
One spoke softly into a mic at its throat.
I CANNOT say EXACTLY WHAT The ITEECHE REPORTED, Nelly said, BUT I Think IT WENT SOMETHING like “The aniMals are FRIGHTENED BUT QUIET.” I COULD Be WRONG.
Kris doubted that.
For a long minute, nothing happened. Kris studied the two Iteeche in black. There were huge holes in human knowledge about the Iteeche, their language, culture, and government. Humans knew quite a bit about their anatomy; they’d dissected plenty of dead bodies. Their four legs were all the same, the rear ones were not specialized like, say, those of horses. Each leg folded in two places; the top and bottom bones went one way, the middle one the other. This allowed them to fold their long legs into a very small space. The arms had two elbows. Engineers marveled at how their shoulder allowed all four arms to swivel forward or back. The head was larger than a human’s. They breathed and spoke through a vestigial beak that once might have looked like a hawk’s but now was softer and more flexible, if no less frightening.
Their long necks could swivel most of the way around and showed eight strips that might once have been gill slits but now changed color in interesting ways. The four eyes gave a panoramic view, and the rear ones could rotate separately from the central front pair. The Iteeche were built for situational awareness . . . and could quickly respond in almost any direction.
“You don’t go hand to hand with an Iteeche and live to tell the story,” Grampa Trouble had explained to Kris. “You shoot the bastards from a safe distance, then do a dead check to make sure they’re sincerely dead. Don’t count an Iteeche dead unless you can see their brains splattered around them.”
It had been an ugly war.