“Remember, you’re talking about Ray Longknife, Hammer of the Iteeche.”
“And I’m talking to his great-granddaughter, who’s got orders to way-out-to-hell-and-gone. Just the thing I’d do if she’d been hauling Iteeche around in her own private yacht. Those orders would keep her and her crew from talking.”
“There’s a reason for my new set of orders. Sandy, I’ve made lieutenant commander!”
“Congratulations. Wasn’t that very deep selection?”
“Only a year. Maybe a bit more,” Kris admitted.
“A bribe?” the reporter put in.
“Hardly. If they counted every attempt on my life as a year’s extra service, I’d be eligible for admiral.”
“God help us all,” Sandy said, folding her hands and casting her eyes prayerfully to heaven.
“Okay,” Winston growled, taking a long pull on his drink as if it might somehow become more powerful if he treated it like it was, “I know there’s something up. I know it involves Iteeche. You’ve told me that I’m being lied to by my sources. Some of them. You can go off to your jobs and leave me here with just a pinch of this and a dash of that, and I’ll keep looking for the truth. But you’re not being very smart.
“This story is going to come out. It’s got legs, and twisted one way or the other, it can hurt you. It could even bring down a government. Tell me nothing, and I’m going to hunt, and I’m going to hunt, and I’m going to find the fire that’s leaking this smoke.
“Then it will come out. Hopefully with more right and less wrong in it, but it is going to come out. King Ray and Iteeche is too big a story just to lie there and go nowhere.”
Kris had heard that argument . . . years ago from a college professor. She’d argued with him and had to appeal her final grade. She’d won, but the bad feelings remained.
Kris had once talked honestly with a reporter. She was ten. The results were a disaster. Her father hadn’t said much to her, just looked disappointed. She’d sworn she’d never make that mistake again.
She ought to throw this fellow out of the house.
No way she could physically do that. Though hitting him over the head repeatedly with her canes seemed promising.
“Sandy, you know this guy. Any chance he means what he’s saying?”
The admiral chewed her lower lip for a half minute, eyeing the reporter. Eyed him long enough that he started to fidget.
“I think he believes what he is saying . . . right now. Tomorrow, a month from now, I don’t know what he will think then. You and I take an oath to protect and defend. He is committed to the truth. But the truth is a slippery thing, I’ve learned. Makes one a whole lot less resolute over the long run.”
“Is that why reporters seem to go wherever the wind is blowing?” Kris said.
“Wherever the story is,” Winston put in. “We do what we have to do to get the story.”
“ ‘Story,’ not truth?” Kris said, cutting the legs out from under him.
He was honest enough to smile. “You got me there. The story is what we get paid for, and it’s what we think about the most. But we can be trusted with truth.”
“Truth above story?” Kris asked.
“There are times when the truth is bigger than the story,” Winston admitted.
Kris studied him when he said that. He did not flinch but looked her square in the face.
“How good is this fellow?” Kris asked Sandy.
“Good at getting to the bottom of things. He asked the hard questions, both for his story on my destroyer and after the battle. And his stories had traction. People read them. I think he had a definite impact on the public.”
“So he can change things?” Kris said.
Sandy eyed the reporter. “Yes, I think he can change things.”
“Are you good?” Kris asked.
“I’m good at what I do,” Winston Spencer said.
“We may have a chance to see how good you are,” Kris said.
“Sandy, Winston is right about one thing, I do have orders for a patrol out beyond the Rim. I’m going to be out of the flow of news, and definitely far away from any chance I might have to change the way the public looks at things.”
“If that’s where things need doing, isn’t that the place to be?” Sandy asked.
“I find myself wondering a bit about that when those damn Longknifes send me there time after time because I’m the only one who can do anything about it.”
“And that was what you wanted to talk to me about?”
“Yeah. How do you keep from being run around like a bull with a ring in your nose?”
“Don’t ask me. I’ve got this ring in my nose, and I keep running.”
“You’re no help.”
“Let me know if you find a way. I’d love to pass it along to my daughter.”
“I’ve got orders to leave, and I’m going to be in no position to make sure Grampa Ray makes time to address a problem of mine.”
“Has he addressed it much?” Sandy asked.
“I can’t say that he has. It worries me that he won’t.”
“Out on Chance, I’m not likely to be much help.”
“Yeah. That leaves me wondering if maybe you brought me someone who could be of help.”
“Hmm, I got the feeling that your grampa Ray isn’t going to much care about being reminded about what he doesn’t want to do.”
“There’s a real chance of that.”
“Ah, folks,” Winston said, cutting in. “I’m not following what you’re talking about, but I’m starting to like it less and less.”
“You remember that time on the Halsey,” Sandy said.
“You asked if I could arrange a meeting between you and the princess.”
“Yes, and you said you’d do me a favor and not get me an interview. ‘Folks live longer if they keep their distance from those Longknifes.’ ”
“You can’t say I didn’t warn you,” Sandy said.
“She’s right, you know,” Kris said.
“I’m starting to think maybe she might be.”
Kris ignored the young man. “Sandy, I’m contemplating what some uncharitable people might call treason. I’m thinking I ought to give you a chance to walk out of here before I decide anything definite.”
“What about me?” Winston asked. “Don’t I get a chance?”
“Nope. You came in here asking for the truth. If it happens to slap you in the face, you ought to be grateful.” Kris turned back to Sandy. “You once told me that you were sick and tired of the Longknife legend growing at the expense of Santiago family blood. You still feel that way?”
The woman didn’t even bat an eyelid. “I seem to remember that not long after I told you that I was risking my own neck and that of my crew to save your delicate rear end.”
“Which, as usual, needed saving,” Kris admitted.
“Still, yes, I think it is time and past time that other people stop bleeding for you damn Longknifes.”
“So there’s no chance you’d be willing to listen to something that might save all humanity.”
Admiral Sandy Santiago took a long pull on her ice tea. “Might save all humanity, you say.”
“I think so.”
“Treason, you say.”
“It’s a possibility. At least at first,” Kris admitted.
“If President Urm had lived and my great-grandpoppa had been found with that briefcase bomb, it would have been called treason.”
“So I’m told,” Kris said.
“Briefcase bomb,” the reporter said. “Her great-grandpa. I smell a story here.”
“Forget it,” the admiral said. “I like the Longknife legend just the way it is. For now. Okay, Kris, what are you up to?”
“Nelly,” Kris said, “send the meeting package to Winston Spencer’s and Admiral Santiago’s computers.”