Rebel (9 page)

“I had a little help from our Grand Duchess,” Mannie said, wryly.

“But I’m gracious,” Vicky said, innocently batting her eyes.

“In a pig’s eye,” Mannie said, under his breath for all to hear.

The tension in the room broke up in a good laugh.

Vicky let them enjoy their release for a long moment, then leaned forward as the silence returned.

“The blackhearted Empress tried to take your planet. As luck, and only luck would have it, I and my battleship were between trade missions, and we put a stop to that. It could have ended very differently.”

Vicky saw her words hit home, and continued, “Instead, we have acquired the invasion fleet. Some ten thousand thugs will
need employment that doesn’t involve swaggering around with guns. However, we have a problem.

“The Empress is thinking about St. Petersburg. You may be far from Greenfeld, but you are, no doubt, in every waking thought of the blackhearted Empress. That could be a problem. However, what might otherwise have been a problem now appears to be a gift.”

Several heads snapped around to give her some really strange looks.

“The Imperium, be it my father or my stepmother, has been ordering battleships and battlecruisers to be scrapped in midlife. Strange how they are soon showing up in different hands doing their best to pirate merchant ships going about their proper business of carrying trade between planets. The Navy has fought and captured those ships. Now, captains with orders to sail their ships to the scrap heap have strong suspicions that what is left of the Navy will all too soon be facing those guns crewed by pirates.”

Vicky relaxed back in her seat, but she chipped her next words from hard flint. “Several of those captains have chosen to sail here and place themselves at our disposal. I now lay before you a proposal that you accept their service in our mutual defense and do what we can to feed their crews and maintain their ships.”

Vicky paused to see how that idea went over. It hung there in the air, neither accepted nor rejected. “Not too long ago, there would have been no way for St. Petersburg to maintain a fleet of battleships. You, however, have recently upgraded the docks on your station. Now you have the choice of maintaining them or not. A few weeks ago, you did not have the heavy industry to repair such ships. Now, with newly arrived fabricators from Metzburg, you do.”

Vicky let her eyes rove those seated around the table. “You have made the decisions that have led you to this moment. Will you now make the decision that you can, not just for yourselves, but for your children?”

It was Mannie who broke the silence she left her listeners frozen in.

“We have a proposal before us to accept the services of the offered ships. Need I say, some were actually captured. It is
proposed that we create the St. Petersburg Division of the Greenfeld Imperial Navy Reserve Fleet. I motion that we open the floor for discussion.”

“St. Petersburg Division of the Greenfeld Imperial Navy Reserve Fleet, you say, Mannie?” the mayor of Kiev said. “That’s quite a mouthful. Did you just come up with it, or did Her Grace, here, help you?”

Mannie grinned. “That name is my very own creation. Me being a loyal subject of the Emperor, I don’t want anyone to get the idea that we aren’t just as loyal.”

“Whatever you call it,” a banker midway down the table put in, “it’s going to cost. And it’s going to take scarce resources I’m not so sure we have. Food, for one thing.”

“I’m looking for a great crop this year,” a rancher put in. “I was expecting to use it to trade with some of the mining planets out there. Am I going to have it taxed away so someone can feed Navy mouths that don’t contribute nothing?”

“May I point out,” a woman in a bright red business suit interjected, “that the security thugs the Navy just intercepted would have confiscated most of your crop, and you wouldn’t have seen a pfennig for it.”

“Being robbed for my own good is just as much robbery as when the Empress does it,” the rancher shot back.

“About those security thugs we seem to have acquired. Are any of them good for a day’s work?” another rancher drawled.

Vicky took that question. “The Navy will do a security check and interview each, ah, detainee. They’ll cull out the worst cases, but I suspect a lot of them were just looking for a job when they found that one. We haven’t had any trouble with them so far.”

“Kind of docile little doggies, huh?” the optimistic rancher said.

“A greenhorn ain’t no good on a working ranch,” the other spat. “They’re more trouble than they’re worth.”

“Well, Slim, I got land I could open up if I had some cowpunchers and plowboys. If you don’t want any of them, I’ll take your share.”

“Who said I didn’t want ’em? I got land to open up, too.”

“Gentlemen,” Mannie said, “the Empress’s foul deeds can
open up many opportunities for us. I think we’re up to them. Still, the only thing that she seems willing to drop in our lap is a bunch of thugs to take us down. If we’re to have something to face her next move, we need our own reserve fleet.”

“Okay, tell me this,” came from the banker. “How come we need all these extra ships? That nasty battleship the Grand Duchess has was good enough to handle things. Why can’t it stay parked in orbit while we lay up these other ships? Yes, I see that we don’t want them laid off where they can be turned against us, but why do we need them all crewed and fixed up?”

Mannie glanced at Vicky.

“As I mentioned,” Vicky said, “I’m headed for Brunswick with a convoy of freighters to open trade with them. The last time I rode a cruiser, it got shot up bad. My Navy superiors want me in something a bit more powerful. They still haven’t fixed the last ship that I got busted up.”

Vicky’s offhanded delivery of that line drew a chuckle from many.

“Anyway, when I leave for Brunswick, the
Retribution
goes with me. Possibly, I’ll also take one of the battlecruisers as well as a couple of cruisers. There’s also a convoy leaving for Metzburg. It will need an escort, too.”

“Can’t any of those other planets pay for some ships?” came from the banker.

“No doubt, I will broach that topic with Brunswick. It is quite possible that they will want to keep a couple of ships in their system for their own protection.” Vicky grinned at Mannie. “I see no reason why St. Petersburg should be the only planet with its very own division in the reserve fleet.”

Now the debate began in earnest, with a lot of people talking and few listening. At first, this experience in participatory decision making was a bit frightening to Vicky. Mannie kept a restraining hand on her arm. Anytime she started to open her mouth, the pressure would grow.

For a reason she was never quite sure of, she let him keep her quiet.

No, he kept her listening. Slowly, through the din of so much talk, she began to make out the thread of where the talk was leading. There were a few wanting to debate whether or
not to accept the ships. However, most of the talk now was how to manage a fleet, to feed it, pay for its upkeep, and spread its costs to other planets.

Since this was what Vicky really wanted to hear, she found it easier to listen. After a while, Mannie took his hand off her arm and gave her a smile.

It was a nice smile. She’d have to see about getting more smiles like that from him.

CHAPTER 11

T
HE
meeting broke for lunch when stomachs began to rumble louder than the babble. Everyone adjourned to a restaurant across the street that had a back room reserved for them. It was simple fare of various sausages served with a variety of potato salads and sauerkraut. The beer was excellent, but Vicky hardly touched it.

Or her food.

Her table had six chairs. One each for her and Mannie, the commander and Mr. Smith. A succession of people dropped into the two empty chairs and asked Vicky a lot of questions, starting with how the invasion had been stopped. She and Mannie told it as humorously as possible without making too light of how badly it could have gone.

The next-most-frequent question was when she’d be leaving for Brunswick and what she’d be taking. Vicky was not about to give away operational details but left it at the
Retribution
and maybe a few cruisers.

“Any chance Brunswick will chip in for operations and maintenance of those ships?” came on the heels of that answer.

“We’re swapping their goods for our goods,” Mannie
pointed out. “It’s kind of hard to put an excise tax on barter goods that will support the ships convoying the stuff.”

“I never realized how much easier things were with real money,” was the usual answer to that, even from bankers.

The lunch hour was almost over when the mayors for the three other major cities on St. Petersburg took over the two chairs and pulled up a third.

“We really need to know what this St. Petersburg Reserve Fleet is going to look like and what it’s going to be up to.”

“Can I ask why?” Vicky said.

“We need to figure out how to pay for it. To do that, we have to know what part of it to charge off to the trade side and what will be devoted to keeping the Empress out of our hair. We’re getting gripes from those who don’t see themselves getting all that much from the trading business. ‘Why should I pay for convoys?’ So, what’s the story?”

“You know, of course, that any answer I give you today may change tomorrow if more refugee ships show up. It could get a whole lot worse if we have a shoot-out. You know how the
Kamchatka
’s repairs have gone.”

That got winces from the three. Make that four. Mannie didn’t look any too happy to be footing the bill for another major ship repair job.

“She warned us that we were dealing with a moving target,” Kiev’s mayor pointed out.

“Have you ever tried to get a project through the finance committee with a price tag marked ‘to be determined later’?” the mayor of St. Pete grumbled.

“I don’t think a revolution is something you do to a plan or a budget,” Mannie pointed out.

“That might explain why so few of them succeed,” the mayor of Moskva grouched.

“No doubt we must try to win all our victories with a few words that induce heart attacks in our attackers,” Mannie muttered softly, so everyone could hear.

That drew a few dry chuckles.

“If we could only be so lucky,” Vicky admitted.

“So how many ships do we have, Your Grace? How many of them will be in trade and how many standing guard in our sky?” the mayor of St. Pete demanded. “And yes, I know that
there is such a thing as security, but I also know that I cannot ask people to write checks without telling them something. This is not the palace where Harry demands and everyone says, ‘But of course, Your Imperial Ass.’”

“No offense intended, Your Grace,” Kiev’s mayor put in.

“None taken,” Vicky allowed. “Maybe I should have asked Kris Longknife how this democracy thing worked. It seems that I am going to experience it or something like it, no?”

“Or something like it,” Mannie allowed.

Vicky tapped her commlink. “Admiral, I am talking to several mayors who are trying to draw up a budget for the St. Petersburg Division of the Greenfeld Imperial Navy Reserve Fleet.”

“The what?”

“Please don’t ask me to repeat it,” Vicky said. “That is what we’re calling the refugees presently under your command. The people down here need to have something with their name on it if they are to foot the bill for it.”

“Oh. I guess that sounds logical,” the admiral admitted.

“To work up their tax accounts, they need to have a rough guestimate of which ships will be escorting trade convoys and which will be allocated to the direct defense of their system against things like the Empress just sent our way.”

“Your Grace, I’m not even sure what ships I have now. Do you know what shape the old
Kasimov
and
Yamal
are in? When will I get the
Attacker
and
Kamchatka
back available to answer bells? You might as well ask me how many angels can dance on the head of a pin.”

“If you can’t tell us something,” Mannie said, “your budget may very well be the number of angels that can dance on that pinhead.”

“Your Grace, this is starting to feel dangerously like Longknife democracy.”

“Admiral, I could not agree with you more. Shall we just call off whatever it is that we are doing and present ourselves to the Empress for whatever she might wish to do with us?”

There was a long pause.

“Some bean counter in the Navy who never held a command once told me that the true power in the Navy lay in the hands of the man who held the purse strings. I am beginning to see his point.”

“Admiral, I, like you and these sincere men of government, are taking this journey one step at a time. I have no idea where we will end up. I do know where the Empress wants us. I do not want to go there. Shall we do what we can today and worry about tomorrow when it comes? Who knows, we might not live long enough to worry about it.”

“Well, the Lord High Commissioner could have taken your advice. I was just informed that he succumbed to his blackened heart. I am told that several of his subordinates were amazed to find that he indeed had one. I have been talking to them. He appears to have had few friends.”

“It’s amazing how few friends losers have,” Vicky said.

“Something I must remember,” the admiral admitted. “Now, about your ships. I propose to keep the
Scourge
pierside here while the
Retribution
is on convoy duty with you, Your Grace. Count one battleship for trade and one for defense. I propose to send the
Stalker
with you and the
Slinger
with the next convoy to Metzburg. It is possible that she might stay there. It is possible that you may find Brunswick interested in keeping the
Stalker
. Only time will tell.”