Ron stepped forward to lay his elbows on the table, in a double imitation of Ray. From the chip of a smile Ray and Trouble gave him, there must have been a story behind it. One that old war buddies share only with each other.
“Teddon will brief you on the details,” Ron said through Nelly.
The Navy officer pulled a projector from beneath his robes and placed it on the table. It lit up, displaying a holographic star map. “You humans have been expanding quite a bit,” Nelly translated for him, as the occupied planets in human space lit up in red. A glance showed Kris that he had the Rim worlds very accurately identified. Yes, there were three of the four Sooner planets she knew of. And a few she didn’t.
Nelly, RECORD THAT.
Kris, This Doesn’T feel RIGHT. Ron TRUSTS us.
If I GET To FEELING GUILTY, I can always HAVE YOU erase IT. If IT’S NOT There, I won’T HAVE IT if I NEED IT.
Yes, MA’AM.
The king took a long minute to examine the map, then glanced at Trouble and Crossie before saying, “You seem to have a pretty accurate assessment of our growth.” Ray left the question How? hanging unspoken.
“We have our ways,” the Iteeche captain answered. “You may tell your Ms. Nightengale that her reports did not make it any easier to find Princess Kris,” he added with a slight bow to her.
Kris accepted the praise with a frown. Clearly, the Iteeche have not ignored humanity like we have them. Or have we? Kris shot a questioning glance at Admiral Crossenshield. He ignored it and, like Trouble and Ray, continued the study of the map.
Nelly, how ACCURATE is IT?
Very. They EVEN HAVE The Two alien PLANETS we FOUND THROUGH The new fuzzy JUMPS. I Don’T know how Much They know ABOUT The JUMP TECHNOLOGY, BUT They are on The Map.
The silent study period lengthened until the Iteeche Navy officer tapped his projector. “We have also been growing.” Now a section of stars turned golden. Like most humans, Kris had only a rough estimate of the range of the Iteeche Empire.
Eighty years ago, humanity’s 150 planets had formed a very small crossbar to a “T” where the bottom was a long sweep of Iteeche space. Now human space had expanded away from the Iteeche side, widened, and even begun to curve around. The Iteeche had thickened around their middle and grown away from human space.
HAVE you GOT a COUNT YET, Nelly?
They HAVE Gone FROM 2012 PLANETS To 2456, Kris. We’Ve Grown FROM 152 To 643 PLANETS. I’Ve CHECKED. NONE OF THEIR PLANETS ARE ON THE NEW FUZZY JUMP POINT MAP. THE ODDS ARE VERY HIGH THAT THEY DO NOT HAVE THE NAVIGATION TECHNOLOGY WE NOW HAVE.
Thank you, Nelly.
Kris waited for King Ray to say something. Instead, he turned to Grampa Trouble and gave him the smallest hint of a nod.
“I’m glad to see you’ve had some healthy growth. Though isn’t it a bit fast for what your grampa told us was usual for the Empire?”
“My chooser told me that you’d probably notice that,” Ron said through Nelly. “Yes, we sped up the pace of our exploration and colonization now that we know we are not alone in this corner of space. I can’t help but notice that you did not slow down your human drive for ‘water to swim in.’ One might even say you picked up the pace.”
“You are, no doubt, aware of the Treaty of Wardhaven that our mutual friend Ray here pushed through while he was still president of the Society of Humanity. It exerted control over that growth,” General Trouble said evenly. Nelly translated.
“My chooser noted it, but was quick to point out that it did not so much slow down your expansion as confine it to specific space. Humanity filled in its territory in concentric rings. Still, you spread.”
“That is what our people do,” Trouble said. “Go new places. See new things. Have big families and lots of friends.”
“So my chooser observed both to me and to the emperor. And as you also observed to my chooser, we Iteeche like our large, bustling cities surrounded by familiar, well-ordered lands.”
“I don’t imagine it was easy for you to get colonists for so many new planets,” Grampa Trouble said.
“It has caused discomfort to many,” Ron said. Beside him, his green-and-white counselors looked up from their intense study of the table and nodded as they met Kris’s eyes. Their necks showed purple. Kris had never seen an Iteeche go purple.
Nelly, WHAT’S purple Mean?
I Don’T know, Kris. IT’s NOT in any of The Books.
Score another for informal censorship. Kris glanced at King Ray. Or maybe it was quite intentional. He didn’t look all that bothered by what he saw. His face would have fit comfortably at any poker table. His eyelids flicked at a steady rhythm. His breath was slow and stable. Otherwise, he was motionless as a statue.
But behind the eyes, you could almost see the brain working, gnawing every word, every motion. Now Kris understood why her great-grandfather was a legend.
“So,” Grampa Ray said, suddenly entering the discussion. “You’ve told us that you’ve been keeping an eye on us, just like we’ve been keeping an eye on you.”
Kris had been doing her best to imitate her great-grandfather’s poker face. But at that, her eyebrows shot up. Truly, there was a lot she did not know about her world. Her and a couple of hundred billion other people.
“You’ve shown us your map, which pretty much agrees with ours. Roth didn’t need to send his kid for this. Certainly not at the price it must have cost him in political chits if it meant getting old sticks-in-the-mud like these counselors moving along. Ted, what’s really going on here?” the king finished, fixing his eyes on the Iteeche Navy officer.
The Iteeche barked one of their laughs, but said nothing as he turned to Ron.
The young Iteeche nodded. Kris reminded herself that a nod here was a shake to her. “My chooser said you were sharp. Much sharper than my counselors would expect you to be,” Ron said, and put a hand each on his green and whites, giving them a shove sideways. They went back to studying the table as soon as they had returned to their place.
“The Iteeche are in trouble, King Raymond,” the Imperial Representative said through Nelly. “That is the message my chooser ordered me to bring to you. That is the burden of the message my emperor placed upon me. That is not a message my counselors agree with. At the moment, the court of my emperor is very divided. Yet, the situation is fraught with such dark danger and chaos that my chooser dispatched me to you with these words. May I speak them?”
Kris recognized that as pure high court Iteeche. A messenger did not drop bad news on an emperor without his permission. More than one dynasty had fallen while an emperor sat quietly in his garden, a long line of refused messengers waiting without for permission to enter.
King Ray sighed. “Speak your words. I am attentive,” was the most positive reply.
“Our exploration ships are vanishing again,” Ron began.
“Near human space?” the king cut in.
“No,” Ron shot back. “Teddon, show him.”
Three stars began flashing white. They were as far from human space as they could get, well beyond the edge of the Iteeche Empire farthest from humanity.
“You are exploring far afield,” General Trouble said.
“The discovery of you by our Wandering Men who admitted no allegiance to any rule was very unpleasant for the old emperor. He did not want to repeat that again. He began, and his Wise and Heavenly Chosen Successor has continued to send out ships to map the stars as a Heavenly Chosen should.”