“Your guess is as good as mine,” Colonel Cortez said, taking his own chair. “Does this happen often?” he asked Jack.
“The future of every Iteeche and human alive is at risk and in our hands. No, this is a bit much even for the princess.”
Penny entered the room. “The messenger pod is away. It made it to the jump point safely. What’s this about every human and Iteeche?”
“We’re all going to die if we don’t take this particular Iteeche to King Ray so he can deliver a message from his grandfather,” Kris said, not liking the taste of those words on her tongue.
“How’d we get in this deep?” Penny asked. “Things were going so well when I left.”
“You’ll have to ask the princess here,” Jack said. “One minute the two of them are playing footsie and making eyes at each other. I half expected them to rent a room and tell us all to get lost for a week. The next minute she walks out on him.”
“Am I the only one afraid he’s on an assassination mission?” Kris managed to keep her voice below a screech.
“No,” said both Jack and the colonel. Even Nelly, at Kris’s neck, added her own “No” to the consensus.
“Well, it’s nice to know that I’ve got a little support from my own Imperial counselors. Keep this up, and I’ll deck you all out in green and white.”
“You can’t do that,” Nelly said. “It would violate uniform regulations.”
“Hey, girl,” Penny said. “That was a good one. And appropriate to the situation, too.”
“Thank you,” Nelly said, sounding just a bit shy at the praise.
“Folks,” Kris said, her voice full of exhaustion, “can we focus here? We’ve only got an hour. Maybe two. Are we going to drag this Trojan horse in to see my great-grandfather? At the moment, I’m not really bothered by the thought Ron might try to kill Ray, but it’s the policy of the thing. Killing a king and all. Who knows, when I grow up, I might want to be queen.”
“No chance of that,” Colonel Cortez said. “I can’t picture you ever growing up.”
“Hey, the guy’s fitting in right well, don’t you think?” Jack said.
“Right quickly,” Penny said.
“But I wanted that line!” Nelly wailed.
“I give up,” Kris said, getting out of her seat. “The world as we know it is depending on us to save it, and I’m surrounded by clowns who only want to be unemployed stand-up comics.”
“Those stand-up comics might be unemployed,” the colonel said, “but no one expects them to know if a horse of many colors who just walked in off the street is an assassin or the last hope for mankind.”
“Since I do like eating regularly,” Jack said with a sigh, “I guess we’ll help Kris on this. Hey, that remark about a Trojan horse was really right on, Kris.”
“Thank you. Thank you. Now, for God’s sake, do any of you have an idea how we make sure this guy is on the level? Anyone know how to spot every kind of weapon ever invented?”
Jack shook his head. “Kris, I can’t even keep your maid from slipping weapons by me. I don’t know where she buys that stuff, but if it’s new on the market and guaranteed to slide through detectors, she’s got one.”
That brought silence.
“We need time to get to know him,” Kris said. “And the folks around him. And to look over what he brings along.”
“He definitely doesn’t bring his own ship. No way. Nohow. No ship,” the colonel said.
“He seems to be willing to give on that,” Jack said.
“Which only means he and his would have prepared to come aboard and keep their assassin’s kit well hidden,” Penny said.
“So, we need extra time,” Kris said, slowly.
“How do we get extra time?” Jack asked.
“Nelly, how are you feeling?” Kris asked.
“That question has no meaning, but, assuming you meant how am I functioning, my latest self-test shows I am firing on all cylinders, so to speak.”
“But wouldn’t you like to have some time with Auntie Tru and her computer Sam?” Kris asked, a huge, canary-eating grin consuming her face.
“Kris, you’re always threatening me with a trip to Auntie Tru’s, but there’s never time. I don’t need a trip to Auntie Tru’s. I’m fine just the way I am.”
“No question about that,” Kris said, though the headshak ing around her said she wasn’t the only one who considered now to be a good time to make time for Auntie Tru. The former Information War Chief of Wardhaven and a family friend had been helping Kris with her math and computer homework since the first grade. It was Auntie Tru who had gotten Kris hooked on constantly upgrading Nelly. Not even a catastrophic failure in the middle of a math test in the third grade had broken Kris of the habit.
Auntie Tru had been the only one able to do the last three upgrades to Nelly and had probably done the worst damage to Nelly’s good behavior. The last time Tru had her hands on Nelly, she’d installed an alien data chip of unknown purpose with instructions for Nelly to conduct her own exploration of the chip on her own time.
Nelly had never been the same. That chip and the twelve-year-old girl down the hall had done very strange things to Nelly. And now Nelly was doing very strange things on her own.
Now would be a very good time to let Auntie Tru have a look at Nelly.
“Kris, you’re not going to turn me off or let Auntie Tru turn me off or cut me up.” There was real terror in Nelly’s voice.
Kris forced her voice to soothing. She would only get one chance to keep her computer on her side. “No, Nelly, I’m not going to turn you off again. Of course, I’m assuming you’re not going to try shooting anyone up.”
“I learned my lesson. Unless you say shoot, I don’t shoot. Okay, Kris.”
“I can’t think of any other reason I’d have to lose your company, Nelly. I couldn’t let you kill people. Even I try to avoid killing people.”
“I know you do, Kris. I really don’t like killing people either. Somehow it just does not compute right. So, I agree not to harm anyone, without your order, and you agree to let me stay active for the trip to Auntie Tru and not let her turn me off to look under my hood.”
“Nelly, I don’t think anyone, even Auntie Tru, could tell anything from a look at your insides.”
“I know that, Kris, I just needed to hear you say that.”
“So, to restate the bidding,” Kris said, “we will invite Ron and his party to come aboard the Wasp. We will give them their own quarters and let them lock the area down. We will bug the place and do our best to spot any weapons other than those issued to the Marines. Only after the next jump, with his ship out of comm range, will we let him know I’ve got a computer that needs to talk to its momma, and the trip to King Ray will be a bit slower than planned. Any questions?”
There were none. But Jack had a comment.
“You know that suggestion that keeps popping up that we ought to have computer as smart as yours?”
“Yes,” Kris said.
“Forget it. I like my dumb one.”
“Me too,” came from Penny and the colonel.
Back at the docking bay, Ron and his team had been discussing their minimum needs for a trip to Wardhaven. Ron had flat-out refused to let the Imperial counselors bring their full retinue. The two of them would have to make do with just one body assistant. Same for the two Navy captains. Ron got to keep one of his, and would Kris mind if they brought a cook? They could eat what the humans ate, but they wouldn’t really like it.
Kris agreed on the cook, the three body servants, and their own stock of food. This required the ships to again dock and stretch the air lock. Under the watchful eyes of the Marines, crates of food, trunks of clothing, and household goods were brought aboard.