Intrepid by Mike Shepherd Read Free Book Online Page B

number. Do you know the pod number on your battle station, Ensign?” Kris asked.
    The woman looked at her captain. “Yes I do.”
    “I also know mine,” the captain said. “And it’s nowhere near a ninety thousand.
    “Why was I never told this?” Vicky demanded.
    Now it was her captain’s turn to roll his hands open, palms up.
    “Do you believe her?” Vicky spat.
    The captain was silent for a long minute. “There is talk, late at night, in the back rooms of private clubs,” he said slowly. “Some in the Navy wonder. Some in the Navy remember Ralf Baja and Bhutta Saris and wonder why they’re not around anymore. The Navy is not that big a place, and you can’t have the crews of six super battleships vanish without them being missed. So, yes, ma’am, if you had to pick between the words of a woman who, just as cool as could be, shot out a pirate’s bridge, and the babbling of a political officer, whom would you trust?”
    A waiter appeared, kept his distance until several sets of guards waved him forward, then took orders from only those at Kris’s table. He had been well briefed and left quickly.
    “I don’t believe you,” Vicky whispered, when the waiter was well gone.
    “Care to tell me why?” Kris asked.
    “Let’s say my dad’s Navy just tried to pound your planet into rubble. Let’s say you were decorated for stopping them. How many friends did you lose?”
    “A lot,” Kris said evenly.
    “And yet, you are sitting here talking to me, my captain here. Eating dinner with us. No. You’re lying.”
    Kris nodded slowly. “How much history have you studied?”
    “Quite a bit,” Vicky claimed.
    “What happens when two evenly matched countries go to war?”
    Vicky seemed to puzzle over that one for a while, then glanced at her captain.
    “When two nations of nearly equal strength resort to war to resolve their differences, it is usually a disaster for both,” the Greenfeld officer said. “The war is long, bitter, and indecisive. Neither side can win, but neither side will give up. Generations may perish in the fight. Nations’ treasures may waste away, and nothing is proven. Is that what you are alluding to, Your Highness?”
    “That is what the wiser heads in my father’s high command tell me when I get angry at the deaths.”
    “That is what the wiser heads in our command councils say,” Captain Krätz said. “So far, they have prevailed.”
    “Why are you telling her this?” Vicky asked her captain.
    “You could just as easily ask her the same.”
    Vicky turned to Kris, her eyes questioning.
    Kris shrugged. “Two plus two is four. A war between ninety planets and a hundred will be a bleeding ulcer. Neither of these facts can be made a state secret. Only a fool would try. I’m not asking your captain how many battleships are building on Greenfeld. He’s not asking me about Wardhaven or Pitts Hope. He has his guess, I have mine. We probably aren’t off by more than two or three. But none of that really is worth the time of day. Let me ask you something I’d really like to know,” Kris said, turning to the captain.
    “I have four armed security men to my back. I assume you will not ask me to commit treason within their hearing,” he said through a broad smile.
    “I will assume they have no better sense of humor than my Marine escorts do,” Kris said. There were chuckles from both groups of guards.
    Kris waited as the salad arrived, unfolded a napkin in defense of her disgusting evening dress, and picked up a fork. The others did likewise, but waited when Kris paused before spearing a bit of her Caesar salad.
    “Why are you here?” Kris asked Vicky.
    “I was drafted and ordered to the Surprise ,” she grumbled. “Now I go where he goes,” she said, with a rueful nod to her captain.
    As Kris so often did, Vicky had given her an answer, but only the tip of one. Kris wondered if that was all of the answer Vicky really knew.
    “Georg,” Kris said, staking a regal right to