Mike Shepherd - Welcome Home / Go Away

Silently, the old general rolled out of bed and was done with his shower five minutes later. Shaved and ready to dress, he tiptoed from the bath.

To find his wife greeting him with a cup of coffee and a breakfast bar.

“I thought I’d let you sleep in,” he said, taking the offered cup.

“This may be the only time I see you today,” she said, heading for her own dresser. She quickly pulled out slacks and a sweater.

“You don’t have to get dressed.”

“I likely should if I’m going to drive you to the palace. Don’t want to give the poor Marines on duty a heart attack, do I?”

“Ah, yes, definitely get dressed. You might not give them a heart attack dressed the way you are at the moment, but you’d definitely be a distraction.”

She threw her nighty at him and added a kiss. Then both turned to make themselves presentable for the day.

Trouble dressed casually. It would very likely to be a long and difficult day. There was no reason why he had to be uncomfortable as well.

Trouble made one more effort to save his wife from driving him in. “I can call a cab,” he offered, “or drive myself.”

“Love, this is a workday. There’s no place to park, and getting a cab to take you downtown right now might take you halfway to noon. Nope, Sailor, I’m your ride, and don’t you talk back to me.”

“Never, kind lady.”

So it happened that, in the middle of rush-hour traffic, Ruth pulled up to the Grand Hotel and dropped her husband off.

“Pay toll,” she demanded as he started to open the door. So he leaned over, intent to offer a peck, and got pulled into one of those kisses that should be followed by getting a room.

“Remember what’s real, honey,” Ruth whispered as she broke for air.

“How can I forget when I’ve got you to remind me?”

With the scent of her still with him, he made his way through the security screenings with a smile on his face.

He only lost the smile when he opened the door to Ray’s office.

“Can you believe they sent the whole thing?” Ray was shouting as he came around his desk.

“The whole what?” was all that Trouble could think to say.

“Kris’s entire report,” Crossie answered. “Relax, Ray. It’s in a tight cipher, and they’re sending it highest priority. It’s not waiting around anywhere for someone else to pick it off.”

“It’s on the comm net. Someone will copy it,” the king insisted.

“What’s in the report?” Trouble asked. Enough with the security freak-out.

“They had the battle,” Mac said, looking up from a pile of flimsies. “We kicked their alien butts.”

“And they kicked ours,” Ray spat. “There’s a reason why no ship has followed the Wasp back. There aren’t any left.”

“That’s not for sure,” Mac said. “The Hornet is not accounted for, and two of the battleships were last seen running.”

“Battleships were running?” Trouble echoed. Battleships don’t run. They blow things up. And if they did need to run, it meant they were in deep shit because battleships are too big to run very fast. They blow things up. They did not run away.

“Can I see some of that?” Trouble asked. There was only one copy of the report. It was a hard copy, and it was being handed around in parts. Trouble got in line. Apparently, the last place in line.

He read what Kris had titled The Executive Brief Summary. And it was brief.

They kicked butt. They got their butts kicked by what was left over, and they ran. What with them having done major damage to the huge mother ship, the aliens were not at all inclined to let them just run away. The aliens chased. The humans fled. Some of Kris’s ships couldn’t run so good, so they fought.

“Damn, that takes courage,” Trouble muttered as he read on.

“Which?” Mac asked. “The courage to fight when you’re cornered or the courage to let others die so you can keep on running and maybe get the word back that we’ve got ourselves one hell of an enemy?”

“Both,” Trouble said.

“Christ on a crutch,” the king exploded. “They’ve got babies! Alien babies for Christ’s sake!”

“Babies?” got Trouble’s attention. He slipped around the king’s desk to read over his shoulder. It rapidly got crowded as both Mac and Crossie joined him.

“Aren’t they cute?” Trouble said. “They look just like my latest great-grandbaby.”

“Their parents tried to save them,” Mac noted, “but couldn’t save themselves.”

“Their parents were cold-blooded murderers, and they were coming for us,” Crossie added darkly.

“Or for the Iteeche,” Ray corrected. “Which, at the moment, is pretty much the same as us. Can’t believe I said that,” the king muttered as he let Trouble get his hands on the babies’ picture.

“Oh good God!” the king exploded again. “The head honcho from Chance got to walk off with one of the baby pictures.”

“He did?” Crossie didn’t actually ask.

“He did. Kris gave it to him, and Sandy didn’t get it back from him.”

“So, the rest of humanity gets to see some cute babies,” Trouble said. “There have been worse first contacts.”

“I’ve got enough problems getting people to look to their own defense without some nanny waving this picture at me and insisting, ‘Aren’t they cute?’”

“The story is pretty grim,” Trouble pointed out. “The ship they were on blasted the comm buoy as soon as it tried to contact them. We had to blast the ship to save our own. It looks like someone sabotaged the escaping launch, so the parents died. They managed to save the kids. That doesn’t sound like a nice story to me.”

“But who’s going to listen to your story, Trouble,” the king spat, “when they’ve got this cute baby picture to wave? Just like my latest great-grandkid, you said. I can hear it on every street corner.”

Mac nudged Trouble and raised an eyebrow. He didn’t have to tell Trouble that his granny would be waving the picture at the next family get-together.

“We’ve got problems,” Crossie said with finality.

“We’ve likely got bigger problems than any of you are thinking about,” Ray said.

“Which of our problems looks the meanest to you, Ray?” Trouble asked.

“This planet that Kris saved. What did the original report say about it? They were just launching their very first space mission.”

That got general agreement from the king’s listeners.

“And that bunch of newbies to space were able to wreak this kind of havoc on a moon-size alien base ship in the next system from their home planet,” the king said, waving the picture Kris sent of the huge alien ship just before the Wasp ducked out of the system.

“I see the problem,” Trouble said. “Whether the survivors of this horde go on to take down that planet, or their cousin horde does it, they’re going to put those people over a barrel and demand to know how they did this.”

“And none of them will know what the aliens are talking about,” Mac said.

“It means those bug-eyed monsters are going to come looking for who did this to their dumb cuz, and if they’re as implacable as those that wouldn’t quit chasing our corvettes…” Crossie didn’t finish his sentence.

“And our Kris just gave them another hot datum all the way over on this side of the galaxy,” Ray spat.

“It’s not like she had a whole lot of choice,” Trouble stepped in to defend the point of the spear from those who seemed to have forgotten what it was like out there, assuming they’d ever been there. “If that scout had gotten a good picture of the Iteeche Empire, the alien mother ships would be hotfooting it for here just as fast as their low-gee bodies could jump.”