“I’ve known a few who had space sickness that bad.”
“How long do you think it will take for your computer expert to do her magic on your Nelly?”
“I really don’t know,” Kris admitted. “I don’t think anyone has ever had this problem. I’ve always thought Nelly was way past even her Sam.”
“She names her computer as well.”
“Where do you think I got the idea?”
“An old family friend. How old?”
“She fought in the Iteeche War.”
“You nearly wiped us out, you know?”
Kris almost forgot to hold on to her chair. “We nearly wiped you out! It was you that almost made us extinct.”
“That is not what I hear from the Heroes of the Great Human War. We honor them for how desperately they fought to keep you humans from wiping us from the face of the stars.”
Kris really wanted to stand up and pace. Somehow, bouncing herself off the overhead, then the deck, then the bulkhead just didn’t offer the same release of tension.
“I don’t mean to disagree with you, but I’ve heard the same old same old from our Iteeche War vets since I was knee-high and starting to attend political rallies in my father’s arms. Holding me up for those old codgers was good for an extra hundred votes every rally.”
“Sometime you must explain to me what a vote is and why holding a baby girl up would get them for your father,” Ron said dryly. A true rarity for someone so recently of the sea.
Before Kris could explain anything, Aunt Trudy Seyd coasted into the room.
Tru got one look at the armed Iteeche Marine at the door and another at Ron and made a quick grab for a ceiling fixture. With an expert twist, she sent herself shooting behind the bar.
When she came up again, she held an automatic aimed at Ron.
Kris launched herself from her chair to get between that pistol and one Imperial Rep. Or as much of the seven-foot Iteeche as she could. Almost missing him, she made a grab for him—any part of him. So she slapped his face as she stopped herself. His skin felt soft and slick as she twisted around, steadying herself in front of him as his shield.
Auntie Tru took all of this in but did not lower her weapon. “Kris, has your ship been captured?”
“No, Auntie Tru. I’m as much in control of things as ever.”
“Are these Iteeche your prisoners? No, that’s a ridiculous question. That warrior is armed and kind of pointing his weapon at me. And your Marine is kind of pointing his M-6 at him. You want to tell your old auntie what’s going on before she has a heart attack or kills someone or something she shouldn’t?”
“Trudy Seyd, retired Chief of Wardhaven’s Information Warfare,” Kris said, still keeping herself in front of Ron. “May I present Imperial Representative Ron. He has a whole lot more name, but he’s letting me save time by calling him Ron and me Kris. His kind-of-grandfather was Roth, the Iteeche who worked with Grampa Ray to get the peace treaty done at the Orange Nebula. He wants to talk to King Ray about something. I don’t know what that is.”
Aunt Tru stood up from behind the bar, her gun still pointed in the general direction of the Iteeche Marine, but not directly at him anymore. The two Marines went back to their respective forms of attention. “You didn’t mention this when you asked to have me do a once-over exam of your pet Nelly.”
“Maybe it slipped my mind.”
“You’re getting to be more and more one of those damn Longknifes.”
“Comes from working for Grampa Ray.”
“We should never have made him king or whatever it is he’s styling himself.”
“Auntie Tru, could you hold up on your comments about the present political situation.”
“Why, my darling? You being a princess isn’t so bad, but that old vulture Ray being king will end badly. Trust me.”
“Please stop because I haven’t briefed our visiting Iteeche on the present political landscape.”
“You haven’t. Oh dear me. Why not, Kris?”
“Because he didn’t ask. I guess he assumed we were as unchanging as the Iteeche Empire.”
Ron did something that might pass as clearing his throat. “Yes, I had assumed that, but now I see that as wise as my chooser was, he might not have understood just how much the tides of change sweep you humans away.” Ron paused for a moment in thought, deep green and white at the neck. “Those two cruisers that fired on us . . . and you. They did not owe any allegiances to you and your King Raymond. I had thought they were just wandering men, pirates you call them. But they weren’t, were they?”
“No, they weren’t. And this kind of makes it easier for us to get into our talk about Nelly. Auntie Tru, Nelly almost started a war between us and the Greenfeld Navy.”
“Oh my, Nelly, you are a busy girl.”
“And I have been told I am not allowed to start a war,” Nelly put in. “That only Her Princesship can do that. I know the rule, and I will follow it. So there. Now, why are we having this talk?”
“Hmm,” Aunt Tru said. “I think I am seeing a bit of the problem.” She made her weapon disappear and propelled herself from the bar to snatch a chair across the table from Kris. “Zero gee is like riding a bicycle. Once you learn how, you never forget, even at my age.”
“Apparently, it is the same with Iteeche,” Ron said, moving to face the two humans at the table and looping his lower arms into tie-downs there for that purpose.
“You’ll have to excuse me. Your folks almost wiped us out,” Trudy said. “That gives one a caution that is hard to forget.”
Ron’s slits stayed green and white. “Yes, Kris was just telling me about that. Strange that the opposite is what I hear from our Heroes of the Great Human War.”
Trudy had been eyeing Nelly at Kris’s collar. Now she swung around sharply to focus on the Iteeche. “Your veterans say that!”
“I swear it by all my ancestors. Marine, is that not what you heard from your chooser?”
The Iteeche Marine came to even stiffer attention, weapon presented front. “Yes, my lord. It is common knowledge among all of my peers that only the courage of our heroes saved the People from annihilation.”
“This is interesting,” Auntie Tru said under her breath.
“But not the topic of this moment. Auntie Tru, I need help with Nelly. She’s doing all the translation for us and the Iteeche. And she’s developed a taste for jokes. You see the problem.”
“I know I’m not supposed to toss in a joke when I’m translating between the species. I found a very interesting dissertation that I doubt Kris could understand half of that defines just when a joke can help in a tense situation, and when it won’t. This is just sooo unfair.”
“She’s using contractions,” Trudy observed.
“Yes,” Kris answered.
“What have you had her doing?”
“Just the usual,” Kris said. “Plan this defense, work out that attack. Oh, she’s teaching a twelve-year-old girl. My maid Abby’s niece is on board.”
“Don’t forget blowing up that space liner with five thousand people aboard.”
“How can I ever forget it, Nelly?”
“I heard about that,” Auntie Tru said in a concerned voice. “I don’t imagine that was what you were intending.”
“Nelly and I spent hours hunting for a way to get a glancing hit that would knock it off course. The hijackers had put a spin on the ship. With that and the speed, our hits caused the ship’s structure to fail. Catastrophically.”
“There was nothing we could do about it, Auntie Tru,” Nelly said, plaintively. “We did our best, but it wasn’t good enough.”
Auntie Tru sighed. “Dears, I’ve done my ‘best’ often enough that I deserve to have it on my tombstone, in foot-high letters.”