Furious

40

Kris was surprised to find that Jack was having a bad case of the shakes, too. She’d always managed to get to her quarters before the shakes got too bad. To find that Jack had them, too, was . . . interesting . . . on several different levels.

“You’re shaking?” was her first reaction.

“Yes. I do it a lot after I’m around you.” That didn’t keep him from hugging her close. Somehow, they found themselves on one of the sofas.

“I didn’t think you . . .” Kris couldn’t find a word to finish her thought.

“Had any weaknesses,” Jack finished.

“I didn’t say that.”

“Kid, everyone gets the shakes. Didn’t they teach you that in school?”

“No.”

“Bad school. They warned us at the Academy. Grizzled old agents talked about what it’s like after the shooting stops. Some have to change their underwear. Others get the shakes. Some have a crying jag.”

“Then I’m normal?”

“Kris, love, you are never normal,” Jack said through a grin. “But yes, Kris, your body shares some traits with the rest of us humans.”

Kris considered that as she listened to the pounding of his heart slow. And felt the pounding of her own heart go from a gallop to a walk.

She was normal. Everyone felt this way.

How interesting.

She rested in Jack’s arms and let that thought soak deep into her. The world didn’t go away. Outside the door, there were still lions and tigers and bears waiting. But here, in Jack’s arms, they weren’t gnawing on her. She could relax.

She did.

There was a knock at the door.

“The quiet sure was nice,” Jack said.

Kris stood, adjusted her borrowed uniform. It was wrinkled and a mess, but it had come by all the sweat and stains honestly. “Come in,” she said.

Captain Miyoshi entered. “There is a very upset Royal U.S. Navy captain busy reporting to his superiors that you are not available.”

“Thank you, sir,” Kris said.

“My Mutsu now has a Royal U.S. Marine honor guard standing proudly at each of my gangplanks.”

“I am sure they will do you honor, sir.”

“I told them you were not leaving.”

“That is correct, sir.”

“Commander Longknife, you are a lot of trouble.”

“Usually, sir.”

“Sit down, sit down,” Captain Miyoshi said, waving her at a chair. “You are no cadet, and I am no drill sergeant. I have taken the liberty of ordering some tea and sandwiches brought up. When did you last eat?”

“Yesterday, about fifty thousand years ago,” Kris said with a grin.

“I thought so. I am already in receipt of a request to return that shuttle you rode in on. Am I to assume that you came by it somewhat irregularly?”

“Somewhat, yes, sir. It is Longknife corporate property, and I am a major shareholder in our family corporation, but no, I’m afraid I forgot to sign it out through proper channels.”

The captain listened attentively to her story, weighed it carefully, found it wanting . . . and went on. “I have some personal questions for you. There is no recorder in this room. These are purely questions I have not been able to answer for myself about your recent . . . experiences. Would you mind my asking you?”

“You can ask, sir. I can’t assure you that I can or will answer,” Kris said. There might be no recording device. Still, many courts of law would allow secondhand statements when a person gave it against their own best interests.

“My sister’s husband was XO of the Chikuma, you see.”

“I’m sorry to hear that, sir,” Kris said. So this was personal. She hadn’t considered when she chose the Mutsu to surrender to that she might be placing herself in the hands of someone who personally bore the grief for her actions. Then again, every Navy she’d encountered was a small world.

“Could you tell me how my brother-in-law died?” The words were simple and direct. She certainly owed this man, and his sister, an honest answer.

“He died honorably and courageously, fighting against impossible odds,” Kris said, keeping her words simple and direct.

“Yet he was running away from the alien base ship. Or did I misunderstand the reports in the media?”

Kris nodded and chose her words carefully. “We are both correct, Captain. The Chikuma and Haruna were fighting courageously against impossible odds. They were, at that time, opening the range between them and the alien base ship. That was according to the plan I had presented to the admirals, which they had accepted.”

The captain of the Mutsu frowned.

Kris went on. “Sir, it was critical for the battle line to draw and hold the aliens’ attention. If they did, there was the barest of chances that my squadron of corvettes could survive long enough to launch our Hellburners and destroy the base ship. We knew the odds were against us. None of us realized just how badly. Still, the battleships achieved their mission. The aliens fixated on them, and my corvettes gutted the base ship. There were just a whole lot of alien ships left over.”

“I think I understand. You set a rabbit trap and caught a bear,” the skipper of the Mutsu said.

“I prefer to think that we set a bear trap that caught the biggest bear ever. But there were a whole lot of other bears that were quite upset with us.”

“That might be a better comparison,” Captain Miyoshi agreed. “I have just one more question.”

“Yes, sir.”

“My brother-in-law wrote home that you said the mission of your Fleet of Discovery was to look and report back. So why were you carrying those huge torpedoes? What did you call them, Hellburners?”

Kris nodded. Yes, she could imagine some people found what she said and what she did two very different matters. “When I told your brother-in-law that discovery was the mission for my squadron, I truly believed that was our one and only mission. When we departed Wardhaven, none of our ships were equipped with Hellburners.”

“Then when did you get them?”

“I shipped home the wreckage of the first alien ship we encountered. The one that attacked us, then destroyed itself. When my messenger returned, he had three freighters and a repair ship with him, gifts from my King and Grampa Ray.”

“I don’t understand. You had not yet encountered the worst evidence that you found, yet your king sent you those weapons.”

“Yes, Captain. I left those weapons behind when my squadron made the long search. It was only after our long search that we knew we had some real monsters out there, and that one of them was about to destroy a civilization. If I had not had the Hellburners, I could not have taken on the monster. I did have them, and we chose to do something about them.”

“I heard that you offered to let any Sailor go home.”

“Yes. I did. Your brother-in-law and everyone else who followed me after the aliens knew what we were getting into, or at least as much as we knew about them, and accepted the risks we were taking to save the bird people.”

“Now it all makes sense,” the captain said. “I’m afraid what I took from the media reports did not add up.”

“I think it was politically advantageous that two and two not add up,” Kris said. “I am sorry that it left you doubting the honor and courage of your fellow officers.”

“Yes. This is very different. I will have to think upon this. Then I will message my sister.” Captain Miyoshi stood and turned to leave.

Suddenly, he stopped.

“I have a message for you. There is a man on the Mutsu’s quarterdeck. He says he is Taylor Foile, a senior chief agent of the WBI. Do you know him?”

“I’ve been doing my best to avoid meeting him face-to-face for much of the last week,” Kris admitted.

“He would like to meet you. He says he has no arrest warrant, just questions. Apparently, I’m not the only one who wants answers from you tonight.”

Kris shrugged. “Your Marines have orders to keep me here. I expect them to come to my aid if he tries to drag me out of here.”

Captain Miyoshi actually chuckled as he authorized the agent to come aboard.