“And what have you found?” Trouble asked.
“Many planets suitable for Iteeche to swim in, just as you have found many planets for your people to walk on. Until recently, all had gone well and left us full of harmony and peace.”
“Until?” Ray said.
Ron turned to Ted. The Navy officer took up the story. “A ship failed to return. It was not the first ship that did not return its crew to the People. Accidents happen to Iteeche as they do to humans.” No debate there.
“We sent a second ship to follow in its wake. It also did not return.”
Both Grampa Ray and Trouble emitted a low whistle. “Once may be chance. Twice, and you look for enemy action,” Trouble said.
“That is something I learned while still sucking scum off the pond,” Ted said.
“I learned it at my pappy’s knee,” Trouble agreed.
“As I often tell other Iteeche,” Ted said, eyes burning holes in the heads of two green and whites, “wisdom does not count elbows. We sent out a number of ships, one to each of the planets the missing ships were ordered to explore.”
“A good approach,” the king said.
“The ship sent to this one did not return,” Ted said. A planet quit blinking white and turned to a steady bright white.
“Do you know anything about that planet?” Trouble asked.
“We have sent two more ships. We have not gotten so much as a messenger pod back,” the Navy officer said.
“Not good,” Trouble said.
How could something blast a ship out of space before it could even get a messenger pod back through the jump point it had just come through? Someone or something must be right there ready to hit them with massive force. Kris started to open her mouth, then closed it. The Iteeche must have extracted every bit of information from those events long before they told her. The problem was that there was so little data available.
The words hung between them. No one spoke. What could anyone say?
When the silence stretched so far it was about to bend into a pretzel, Kris could keep her mouth closed no more. “What do you want from us?”
“Help,” Ron said. One word, simple, yet pregnant with unidentified needs.
“What kind of help?” Kris asked.
“Just a moment, Mr. Imperial Representative,” King Raymond said. “Kris, you’ve probably figured out by now that Trouble and I answered the reporters’ questions honestly, but if they didn’t ask the right questions, we didn’t help them get the whole story.”
“That has crossed my mind.” Kris admitted dryly. On the table, Nelly went right on translating everything into Iteeche.
“Well, there’s a thing that I learned about the Iteeche from Ron’s grampa. The Iteeche take the long view. Show them a problem, and they start looking at it from every direction immediately. They like to get all the input, all the information, everything they can know about it before they start doing something about it. They also like to start doing something about it a whole lot earlier than we humans might want to. Have I got that right, Mr. Ambassador?”
“That is the way of it.”
“They sure got into a war with us fast and furious,” Kris pointed out.
“Yes, but we were an exception to their normal rule. Maybe the previous emperor had allowed the Wandering Men to get more out of hand than normal. Some advisors thought it was smart to let misfits wander away from a civilization they didn’t fit. Right, Imperial counselors?”
“It is possible that such fools who failed their master and the heavens might have wasted air,” one of the green and whites admitted. He followed that up by spitting on the deck, whether because of the admission or because of the blunder, Kris was left to guess.
“So, they weren’t expecting us,” King Raymond said, “and had no reason to suspect they weren’t alone in the universe. Then bang, we collide head-on and there are blood and guts all over the place and not a lot of brains. For an Imperial court that prided itself on its foresight, it took them a while to admit that they’d been blindsided and do something about it.”
Which left Kris something new to chew on, but it didn’t answer her immediate question. “So, what are Ron and his grandfather expecting from us? Action, a shoulder to cry on, a battle fleet?”
Grampa Ray turned to Ron. “I think this comes under the heading of a warning to us. There’s a problem out there. He wants us to know about it and maybe start getting our rumps moving toward some kind of alliance. Am I right on that?”
“All of that,” Ron said, “but my chooser said to tell you that we also would like more.”
The king’s eyes grew wide, and he leaned back in his chair, giving General Trouble a quick nod.
“What kind of ‘more’?” Grampa Trouble asked.
“Before I met Princess Kris and her amazing Nelly, I did not believe the words my chooser gave me. Now I understand much more about the remarkable and intelligent machines you humans have. He asks if you might provide us with very small explorers who can slip into a system and back out again without setting off the weapons that destroyed our ships.”
Now it was Grampa Trouble’s turn to lean back in his chair. “Kris, you’re the one that’s been doing the exploring. What are your thoughts on this?”
Kris had rather enjoyed sitting in a meeting and not having to say a word. It also had been a joy to see two old legends doing their stuff. Suddenly, she was reminded that she was one of those damn Longknifes and had to earn her keep.
“I’m divided,” she said for an opener to keep the silence at bay. “I’d like to help Ron,” Nelly translated. “I’d like to do something to show his People that us humans can be a good ally.”
“I hear a ‘but’ coming,” Trouble said.
“There is,” Kris agreed. “Not having any idea of what’s on the other side of the jump, I’d hate to make a present to them of our best technology. I don’t want to show them what we’ve got. I really don’t want to let them capture and reverse-engineer it.”
“All good points,” Ray agreed. “Still, in my lifetime we’ve gotten into one war already we didn’t have to fight. I suspect Roth might be looking for some way to avoid a repeat of that experience.”
“That is so,” Ron said, “but with the disappearance of each ship and crew, he begins to have trouble seeing through the murky water to any other outcome. ‘We are at our wits’ end,’ his words for me to tell you. He hoped that you humans might have a different, ah, perspective. A way of looking at things.”
The idioms Ron and Roth threw around told Kris, even more than the accurate map of human space, that someone had been studying humanity quite a bit.
“Yes,” Grampa Ray said with a sigh. “Yes, we humans do have different ways of looking at things. Not just different ways from you Iteeche, but different ways of doing things and seeing things among ourselves. I need time,” King Raymond said.
“My chooser told me you would. I am prepared to wait.”
“Good, now, if you will excuse me, I hope you will stay here while I get things moving outside. And maybe have a few words with my great-granddaughter. Crossie, would you take care of them. Don’t tell them too much, if you can, and see if you can’t get something worthwhile out of them.”
“You’re asking a lot, Your Highness. Can I at least have the famous Miss Nelly?”
Kris nodded yes.
“So much for the benefit of this job,” Ray grumbled. “Trouble, you want to come with me? You, too, Jack.”
The four of them left Admiral Crossenshield staring across the table at five Iteeche, with no one saying a word.
21
Outside, Jack used his new computer to tell the Iteeche Marines to rejoin the others. They quickly filed in.