officially recognized as a constitutional monarch, Dad decided to go him one up. Be a full power emperor. The old geezers in our families have had this thing for years. Kris and I are hoping to skip that foolishness in our generation. Who knows, maybe we will.”
“It would be nice,” Kris said.
Ron mulled that over for a moment. “I remember an article in one of the news magazines about how Kris saved your father. The reporter thought that was a very strange thing to do, considering all the stories about Peterwald’s attempting to have Kris killed.”
“None of those stories were ever proven,” Kris pointed out.
“There must have been something behind all of them. What is your saying? Where there is smoke, there must be fire.”
“All that didn’t matter. At the time of the attempt on her dad’s life, it seemed like a good idea that those trying to kill him not succeed.”
“Fortunately for my dad, Kris was there. So, what brings you here? I saw the video of your meeting with King Raymond. Was that all true? Are you losing ships?”
Ron glanced down at Kris, and the color of his residual gill slits did not show happy. “I thought that meeting was private. Not to be recorded. The way your king ushered everyone out of the room. I heard him say there should be no recordings. I testified so to my Emperor. Did you make my word false, Kris Longknife?”
“It wasn’t me,” Kris said. With Nelly laughing in the back of her skull, she went on. “I mean, my king did order that no recordings be made. And you yourself saw how the room emptied out. It turned out that our chief spy didn’t follow my grampa’s orders very well. He made copies of his recording and sent it around to I don’t know how many governments. The fleet you see around us is the result of that leak.”
Ron halted beside an empty table in the front of the lounge. Two of the bar folks brought one of the things he could sit on, and they settled down before Ron went on.
“You humans are very strange. Your chooser could not or would not order a scout force out, even though he is king. Yet his subordinate violates his orders and because of that, a search fleet goes out. Very strange behavior.”
“You’ve got to give Kris credit for the scout fleet,” Vicky said. “The battleships showed up to go where she went. If Kris hadn’t insisted her next mission was to do some snooping around the far end of the galaxy, I don’t think anything would have happened. Really, Kris, do you?”
Kris shrugged. “I made up my mind that I was going out here once we cured the pirate problem out beyond the rim of your empire, Vicky. All the rest just kind of followed after me like a speckled giraffe on wheels that I had when I was a little kid.”
“Though it took a lot more pull,” Vicky said, grinning.
“I didn’t pull anything. I went. They followed. Kind of like you Ron. I didn’t do anything to have you here, but here you are.”
“I think my chooser and the Emperor did not want me at the court. No one wanted to talk to me, but the drift of the current was clear. People were talking about me a lot.”
“Boy, we girls can really relate to that,” Vicky said, with just the hint of a giggle.
“So, can we talk about what you found?” Ron asked.
Kris nodded. “I don’t have a lot to add to it. What’s in my report is pretty grim. What I wrote was just an effort to document what I saw on the ground.”
“Will I be allowed to take some of the bodies back to the Empire?” Ron asked.
“I’ll let you take a complete set of bodies from the ship that attacked us,” Kris said. “If you want, you can have a complete exoskeleton from the murdered planet.”
“What about the other skeletons you found? Our scientists will want to make their own determination about who those people are.”
“That’s a problem. There are only three of them. We’ve already found DNA in the pulp of some teeth. If you have the technology to identify DNA, I guess we could probably spare a few teeth for your Empire.”
“Yes, we can do the thing that makes the DNA tell its story,” the Iteeche said. “A tooth from each of the bodies would be a generous gift.”