Mike Shepherd: Welcome Home / Go Away

Kris was conspicuous by her absence.

Ruth talked about her coming trip to New Eden. Now that the political life there wasn’t hobbled by blinders, the kids in that place had their eyes open and were turning out to be just as much fun to teach as their big brothers and sisters had been when they’d been made blind by a blind society.

“This quarter should be a lot of fun. I hear tell that there are actually student demonstrations now.”

“Oh, you’ll love that,” the dour general in Trouble said.

“Oh yes I will,” was pure farm girl, and accompanied by a smile that made the dour general retreat in full rout.

They’d gone to bed and enjoyed each other’s company to the fullest before Ruth let her question out.

She was nuzzling against Trouble’s bare chest, her own lovely breasts making him wonder if he was really ready to fall asleep yet, when she spoke.

“Have you seen our Kris yet?”

The general knew his wife was out-of-bounds, but what he’d shared, head on the pillow, had stayed there for over eighty years.

“She looks exhausted and run through a ringer,” he answered.

“It must have been bad out there,” Ruth said.

And it may get worse back here, Trouble did not share with his wife. That would, or would not, come out soon enough, and neither of them, apparently, could do anything about it.

“Did she bring back the Wasp?”

“Yes,” Trouble admitted. “It looks a whole lot worse for the wear. The thing I find interesting is that, beat up as it is, I couldn’t spot any battle damage.”

“That’s… interesting,” Ruth said.

Over the years, “interesting” had been Ruth’s answer to a lot of things. Trouble recognized it for all the things it said… and left unsaid.

“Yes, I find that interesting, too, but there wasn’t an honest ship driver around Ray, so it didn’t get talked about much.”

“There ought to be an admiral. Not Crossie, a real honest ship fighter.”

“A lot of them didn’t make it out of the Iteeche War,” Trouble muttered.

“Yes. We lost a lot of good friends, you and I. Still, there must be someone.”

“The crowd around Ray has gotten a lot smaller and older over the years,” Trouble said.

“That’s not good,” Ruth observed. “I’m glad the crowd around us has gotten younger and stayed a mob,” she said, and reached down to distract him from this conversation before it got morose.

He let her distract him. Then tried his own hand at distracting her.

Despite the way it started, it turned out to be a good evening. And he got a good night’s rest that left him ready to face the morning.

Which was a good thing, because the morning had a lot for him to face.

The thing about filling twenty-four hours a day with news is that you might not have that much news. Or, in the case of Kris’s return, there might not be a whole lot known about precisely what had or is happening.

Some media outlets, when faced with that, will report it and go on to something else, like a cat up a tree or a cute puppy with its head in a fence.

But other so-called news sources didn’t seem to have anyone out in the field following the fire truck to the treed cat, so they just keep talking about what they didn’t know.

In the case of Kris’s return, what they didn’t know was a lot. So they speculated.

“Where are all those battleships that followed Kris Longknife out into the depths of space? Are they going to follow her back, or did she lose over ten thousand men and women?”

“The Grand Duchess, Victoria Peterwald, followed Princess Kris out into the dark of space. Did she come back? If she’s lost, how will Emperor Henry I react to that?”

Which at least told Trouble the latest video from Chance hadn’t been leaked.

Then again, if it had, it might have saved a whole lot of empty speculation about a potential war between the U.S. and the Imperial Peterwald dynasty.

Trouble ignored the first twenty calls he got to go on someone’s show and fill up the dead air for the media. But the longer he watched what they were filling it up with, the more he wondered if he was following the right course.

“What do you think?” he asked Ruth over lunch. “Could I mess it up any worse?”

“Honey, if you got on the wrong show, you wouldn’t have to mess up. They’d arrange to cut it so you messed up whether you did or not. Even a Marine must know that there are some positions that are just a waste of flesh and blood to storm. Don’t tell me you never sat back and let the artillery pound a problem to a pulp.”

Trouble had to allow that he had. “But where’s the artillery here?” he asked.

“Ray? Can you think of a bigger gun, and doesn’t he have his own studio? Can’t he produce his own video that can’t be messed with?”

“You underestimate some news outlets, love. They can edit anything.”

His lovely bride shrugged at that. “You got me on that one. I guess I was being a bloody optimist.”

“That’s what I love in you, honey.”

“So, you’re going to go out there and let them shoot you full of proverbial and verbial holes?”

Trouble made a face. “No. I’m going to do my best to find a friendly news outlet.”

“You can be just as dead by friendly fire as any other type,” Ruth observed.

“You have any suggestions?” he asked.

“Now don’t you go getting me into this mess with you. I refuse to have anything to do with it. You’re a big boy now. You’ll get into this mess of trouble all by yourself.”

Trouble just eyed his bride of many talents.

“Though, if you must do something stupid, you could do worse than talking to Winston Spenser.”

“Winston Spenser, huh. You know him?”

“We’ve talked on background a few times. He has always been interested in Kris. He remembers how she fought the Battle of Wardhaven, and I think he dreams of being the one who writes her biography.”

“You think we can trust him?”

“When he writes about the military, he makes fewer howling mistakes than most of his ilk,” Ruth said, maybe damning him with faint praise.

“You have his number?”

“Sally, give the general’s computer Winston Spenser’s direct number.”

Trouble raised an eyebrow. “Speed dial, huh?”

“Usually when I want him, I want him fast. He doesn’t have a show of his own, but he does sit in for a couple of people when they’re on vacation or out sick. I suspect if he offers an interview with one of Kris’s great-grandpas, he’ll get someone to take it.”

“No doubt,” Trouble said dryly.

In less than a minute, the general found himself talking to the reporter Winston Spenser. “No, I wouldn’t mind talking about Kris on camera with you,” he said, wondering how soon and how much he’d regret this.

There was one advantage to being retired; he didn’t have to ask anyone’s permission to make a fool of himself in the media. He was as free a citizen as anyone else. Though some would expect him to have better judgment than the rest, and others, no doubt, expected him to be a whole lot dumber than the public in general.

It was strange how the same person was so many things to different spectrums of the public before he even opened his mouth.

Well, come three o’clock, Trouble would be opening his mouth. “With luck,” Winston’s word choice, they might just catch the six o’clock time spots.

By seven, Trouble hoped his name wouldn’t be mud in some circles. Then again, there were advantages to being known as Trouble with a capital “T” in all circles.

They had come to expect trouble from him.

The studio Winston directed Trouble to a little before three was something of a letdown and not a bit of a surprise. It was a small room with two comfortable chairs, a low table between them, but no bright lights and no cameras or cameramen.