Audacious by Mike Shepherd Page A

little Eddy died under the kidnappers’ pile of manure.
    “Gramma?” Kris half whispered. “Gramma Ruth?”
    The woman opened her arms, and painful shoes or not, Kris ran to hug her.
    “I figured for sure your mom had seen that you forgot me, after she ushered Trouble and me out of the house and told us never to come back.”
    “Did she?” Kris asked, looking down into sparkling gray eyes. “She didn’t tell me that. And I had my pictures of you and the general. I didn’t exactly leave them out on the dresser for Mother’s maids to steal, but how could I ever forget you. You haven’t aged a bit.”
    “Now you’re lying like a Longknife,” Gramma Ruth said, and swatted Kris gently.
    “Is Grampa Trouble here?” A frown crossed Kris’s face as the question sneaked out without a lot of thought.
    “Let me guess. From that reaction, I’d say the old boy has been up to his usual no good and maybe you’re starting to understand why so few of us love that rascal’s lopsided smile.”
    “Let’s just say I’m learning to double-check, no, triple-check any advice he gives me.”
    “Good girl. Now you just be sure to do ten or twenty checks on anything that scamp Ray comes up with and you just might live to have as many gray hairs as I’ve got.”
    Good advice, Kris would have to think about how a serving Naval officer did that to a king who had authority over her.
    “So, what are you doing here?” Kris asked as she guided her great-grandmother to her table and settled down for a long talk.
    “I’m teaching ancient history, you know, the stuff five, ten minutes ago. I have a visiting professorship at Garden City University. I guess they figure a relic of the Unity and Iteeche wars is just the old fart to ramble on about the dusty past.”
    S HE HAS A P H. D . IN MODERN HISTORY , Nelly put in.
    “If you ramble anything like I remember, you’re keeping them awake in class.” Kris remembered that Gramma Ruth hadn’t just talked about the past but dropped reading hints like petals off a three-day-old rosebud. “And probably burning the midnight oil finishing assignments.”
    Gramma shrugged. “Don’t get too many complaints.”
    And are you here just for that, or is there more to your travels, like there always seems to be to mine? Kris decided to prod that gently.
    “Will Grampa Trouble be joining you here?”
    Gramma snorted. “Eden is one of quite a few planets that has a standing invitation for him to be on the next ship out if he should pause here a moment. Probably for good cause, too.”
    “I’m still working on one of those here,” Kris said. She cast a look at the woman Marine that had taken over the nano-scouts. She shook her head curtly. A social event like this took place in a flood of bugs.
    Kris nodded, and quickly gave her favorite great-grandmother the official version of the assignment that brought her to Eden.
    “Well, honey,” Gramma Ruth said, “they also serve who only hang around. Or so I told myself when I was officially just growing vegetables on the old Patton . I understand you had a chance to horse that old wreck around space.”
    “You would have been proud of the vets, turning the Patton into a museum, and then into a semidecent fighting ship.”
    “If they got her up to semidecent, they had her in better shape than we ever did.” The old woman laughed. “She always was a mess. Is she a wreck now?”
    “I don’t know. Last I saw her, she was as attached to High Chance as they could get her, what with all the damage. She’s their ship. They’ll have to decide.”
    Gramma paused for a second, then asked, “And what are you deciding?”
    Kris looked around, as if she could see the nanos buzzing them. “I really don’t know. Any chance we could do lunch?”
    “Not like your lunch today, I hope.”
    “You heard?” Which raised the question: “How?”
    Now Gramma Ruth laughed, a hearty belly laugh that got most of her shaking. “One of my students is from the