her message was received by all, she added, “Just like you always did, Grampa Trouble?”
Grampa’s lips showed just the hint of a smile as he turned to his king and shrugged. “She’s our kid, Ray.”
“She’s an undisciplined brat,” came back in a royal growl that any old lion would be proud of.
Kris locked eyes with her royal grampa and prepared to renew their unblinking war. To keep from being too bored, she used her peripheral vision to check out how her own team was taking this little family unmeeting of the minds.
Abby, Kris’s maid and occasional spy, seemed unbothered by it all. She studied the coffee table/comm display between their couches as if she might somehow decant whatever secret it had lately displayed.
Across from her, Lieutenant Penny Lien Pasley likewise eyed the table. She was Kris’s intelligence analyst, interrogator, and, by right of her upbringing by two cops, usual contact with the police, a frequent and inevitable part of any visit Kris paid to a planet. Right now, her eyes were also fixed on the low table between the couches.
Beside Penny sat Colonel Cortez. As a result of having led a hostile planetary takedown that Kris had defeated, he was her prisoner. Since she’d put him on her personal payroll, he was her tactical advisor and principal ground logistician. He’d last begged to be returned to prison . . . any prison . . . rather than risk the cross fire at another Longknife family confab. Today, he calmly studied the ceiling.
Closest to Kris, and in the direct line of fire between her and her royal grampa, sat Jack. As her Secret Service agent, he’d sworn to take a bullet for her. With her spending more and more time away from home, Grampa Trouble’s suggestion that she draft him into a Marine captain’s uniform and head of her security had sounded like a good idea. Only after he was in uniform did Grampa Trouble let drop that, as the security chief for a serving member of the blood, Jack now had authority to countermand any order of Kris’s that he considered a risk to her safety.
And Jack had a pretty broad definition of what constituted Kris’s safety.
They were still working out their differences.
And Kris was now a lot more careful about any suggestion coming from Grampa Trouble.
Today, even in the holy of holies, Jack’s head swiveled slowly, eyes searching for anything that might physically harm Kris.
Grampa Trouble cleared his throat again. And again, that got his king’s and Kris’s attention.
“You know, Commander, when one is given a mission a couple of hundred light-years out in space, normally, you don’t show up at home with your whole squadron.”
Kris nodded. “You have a good point,” she admitted to Grampa Trouble, before rounding on Grampa Ray.
“I completed your mission,” she spat.
“Already?” came from the king in what sounded like a royal yelp.
Have I really surprised him?
“Done, completed, finished,” Kris said. “You ordered me to take care of the budding pirate problem out on the Rim of Peterwald space without getting any complaints from the newly crowned Emperor Harry.”
The newly officialized King Raymond nodded.
“I captured three pirate schooners, one freighter, and a skiff. I liberated one potential pirate refuge and took down a main base. I also put out of business fifteen thousand hectares of drug plantations and liberated twenty-five thousand slaves. Oh, and you didn’t get one whimper from your new, neighboring emperor, did you?”
Kris eyed Field Marshal Mac.
“Not a word from him,” he said.
“I’m just guessing on this, but I think we’ll split the two planets. Kaskatos will likely apply for membership in United Society. The Greenfeld Empire will get Port Royal, and they are welcome to it,” Kris said.
“All that in three months?” Grampa Trouble whispered. There might have even been a touch of respectful awe hidden in there.
Kris kept her eyes locked on Grampa Ray. “I’m sick and tired of draining swamps and dodging alligators. I want to get on to something important.”
“Um,” the king said. Exactly what Kris considered “important” was too classified to discuss among even this small group. From the glance around that Field Marshal Mac gave the others, even he apparently hadn’t been read into this one.
Mac opened his mouth to say something, then froze.
He struggled for a long moment to keep a look of horror off his face. When he finally got words out, they were full of horror. “Two. No three. Make that four super battleships just jumped into our system, using Jump Point