All Enemies Foreign and Domestic (Kelly Blake series) Read Online Free Page A

potatoes.
          Kelly looked over at the battalion commander and asked, “George, do you have a conference room we can use for a couple of days?  
          Lieutenant Colonel Barrett laughed and said, “Sure, sir, if you’ll tell me how you arranged for that thunderbolt at just the right moment.”
     
    * * * * *
     
          Candy Blake was boiling mad.   The container with their linens, her law books, and the new baby furniture had not made the shipment with the remainder of their shipped goods.   The baby things were not needed for another six months, but the linens would have been nice, as would the law books that were to outfit her office in the new embassy.   No matter the advances in electronic publishing and data retrieval, lawyers still needed their books.   She would deal with it.   She checked the diplomatic pouch schedule and saw the next delivery was in three days.   She sent a message to the diplomatic shipping office to ensure her container was sent with that shipment.   Thank God for Kelly’s parents’ invention of the transport gates or it would have been months before they arrived.
          Candy got up from her desk and walked down to the Chargé d’Affaires’ office.   Maurice LeGrand was the Chargé d’Affaires and acting Ambassador while the embassy staff was selected and trained.   It had been decades since the State Department established an embassy on the Moosilian home world, so the diplomatic office was undermanned and unable to ramp up for two new embassies at once.  
          The former pirate world Barataria was admitted into the Republic before the ink dried on the treaty, so no embassy had been required there.   With only one small embassy on the Moose home world and a small consulate on the closest Moose world to the frontier, the diplomatic office had become a backwater and dumping ground for problem employees and low performers.   Realizing this limitation, the Secretary decided to establish the K’Rang embassy first, the Angaerry embassy second, and then sort out the Diplomatic Office, which reduced much of the pressure on the Diplomatic Office, but not all.   Some things, such as Candy’s linens and baby items, still fell through the cracks.   All in all, she mused, it could be worse.
          All the way down the hallway bustled deliverymen and grav-carts, scurrying junior diplomats, and stoic Marine Guards.   Even though it had been swept by the finest security specialists in the Republic, throughout this K’Rang-provided building were signs saying, “The walls have eyes and ears.   Watch what you say.   Watch what you do.”   Candy would be so glad when the new Embassy arrived in two days.   She would be even happier when it was up and occupied.
          It was an ambitious plan to prefabricate the six-story building on Antares Base and transport it here in modules to be assembled on site.   It was the way her mountain home had been built, but on a vastly larger scale.   It would be interesting to watch.
          She walked into Mo’s outer office and asked his secretary, Minnie Jenkins, if he was available.   The rather husky brunette checked her small video monitor’s view into his office and said he was.   Candy thanked her and entered the Chargé d’Affaires’ office.
          “Mo, how are things going?”
          Mo, a tall slender man, was a thirty-year veteran of the Diplomatic Corps, with a tendency towards grey wool suits, poetry by eighteenth century English authors, and half glasses perpetually hanging off his nose.   He had made his career out of postings to the few independent worlds still in GR space.   Ever the diplomat, he jumped up to offer Candy a seat before he even knew why she was there.
          “What can I do for you, Ms. Blake?”
          Candy replied, “Mo, first thing is you can call me Candy when not in a formal diplomatic setting.   Secondly, what is the