Vicky Peterwald: Survivor (Vicky Peterwald Series Book 2) (31 page)

“Did she say anything about the St. Petersburg merchants?” Vicky answered.

“A technicality, some might say,” the woman in the shimmering blue dress shot back.

“Yes. And what court adjudicated differences over technicalities?” Vicky asked.

There was a long pause. Again, Vicky had the impression that the woman at the head of the table was silently polling the others. “We will need to talk on this,” she finally said. “Can you rejoin us tomorrow?”

“Of course,” Vicky said. Smiling softly, she stood and strode from the room.

H
ER
companions were waiting outside among a much larger group than Vicky expected. The commander from the Supply Corps stepped quickly up to Vicky.

“What did they decide?” he asked. It wasn’t quite a demand. Not quite.

“Nothing,” Vicky spat. “Absolutely nothing.”

“Nothing!” the merchant in uniform squeaked.

“We will talk again tomorrow.”

“Should I start unloading the cargo?” he asked

“Only if you are prepared to load it back up again, it seems.”

“The meeting did not go well?” Commander Boch asked softly.

“It did not go anywhere,” Vicky spat. “Enough of this in public. Am I to stay dirtside or go back to the
Retribution
?”

“Traveling is dangerous, but I am not sure I trust your safety anywhere but on our own ship,” the commander said. The suspicious glance he threw those he’d been waiting with told Vicky more than his words. “We will talk more in the limo.”

“Yes,” Vicky agreed.

She seemed to exit the house faster than she’d come in, as if it had shrunk, or perhaps her feelings toward the people it held had gotten smaller.

In the portico, the limo awaited her with the black SUVs before and behind and Marines standing tall all around them. She headed for the open door of the limo. Before she had taken two steps, the commander put his hand on her head and forced her to duck down.

He low-walked her to the SUV behind the limo.

Vicky allowed herself to be moved by his will. The commander slid into the seat beside Vicky, his hand on her arm, pulling her down. He was as hunched down as Vicky. He rested his finger over his lips.
We will talk, but later.

Already seated across from Vicky were Kit and Kat. Their small bodies showed hard and eager, like tightly wound springs. Their heads swiveled slowly. Their eyes took in everything and gave back nothing.

Orders were given. The click of Marine dress shoes on the stones showed they were obeyed even before doors began to slam.

The convoy gunned away from the mansion.

Vicky waited for an explanation.

“Lieutenant Blue’s black boxes brought hints of matters not being as well as they should be. Our commander of supply had one of his contacts sidle up to him and suggest that he might not want to be in the same limo as you. He was assured that there would be business aplenty for him tomorrow but not if he got too close to you today.”

“Nice of his contact,” Vicky said, dryly.

“The Marines are on full alert. Lieutenant Blue is using everything in his command to give us warning.”

“Who is in the limo?”

“Only a Marine driver in full battle armor. We brought down several sets.”

“Is there a set for me?” Vicky asked.

“Sadly, there are none that fit a woman,” Kit spat.

“Wasn’t there a set of battle rattle for me on Poznan that you forced me into?”

“Sadly,” Kat said, “that pirate destroyed the locker we stored it in on the
Attacker
.”

“I have got to get some of Kris Longknife’s spidersilk undies,” Vicky said. “Some for me and some for you two.”

The two assassins showed no sign they’d heard her.

Vicky waited. She didn’t have to wait that long.

As the convoy rounded a bend in the road, there was a huge explosion. The SUV Vicky was in shot into the lead and rocketed faster than the winding road really allowed.

After a moment, it slowed. “That was not much of an attack,” the commander said.

“What was that bang, then?” Vicky demanded.

“A roadside bomb aimed at the limo.”

“And that’s not an attack?”

The commander shrugged. “I was expecting a full assault. You know, like the one that got your last escort.”

Vicky gave him a dirty look, then got a different idea. “Let’s go back.”

“Your Grace, I’m not sure that would be safe.”

“Someone just risked his life for me. I will see how he fares,” she demanded.

The SUV found space and turned about.

“Besides, if this is the only vehicle leaving the area, doesn’t that pretty well say who is in it?”

“I hadn’t thought of that,” the commander admitted.

“We are going to have to think of more things than we have in the past,” Vicky snapped, as much to herself as anyone else.

What she found when she got there was a limo up a tree. The blast had hurled the long transport against a gnarled oak and wrapped it around its trunk. They were just cutting the driver out of the wreck as Vicky arrived.

“I’m okay. I’m okay,” the corporal insisted. “Though it feels like I have a two-by-four up my ass.”

He might have a lot of wood intimately involved with him. His armor made him look like a hedgehog, so many splinters stuck out of the protective plastic.

When he was finally out and lying down for the medic to check out, Vicky came to stand over him. “Thank you for your service to my life. It seems I need a medal for those who have placed their life between me and death.”

“Between you and the black-hearted Empress,” the corporal corrected his Grand Duchess.

“Did that room leak as bad as that?” Vicky said.

“I could tell just how badly it leaked,” the commander said, “by those who laughed when you said that.”

“Did Lieutenant Blue bug the room?”

“One of many.”

Vicky paused to look over the scene. The limo was still up the tree, a total wreck. The backdrop, however, was gentle and bucolic. Now undisturbed, cows grazed in green fields or stood chewing their cud. The restful scene spread away to rolling hills.

Vicky wondered what it would look like in a year. Half a year? Next month, if her stepmother and family got their way?

“I don’t think that meeting accomplished nearly enough. Commander, mount up the troops. We’re going back, and we’re not leaving again until our business here is finished.”

V
ICKY
stormed through the vast rooms. She did not run. Marines may have had to hurry to catch up and form a phalanx around her, but a Grand Duchess does not run.

A Grand Duchess in full fury does not halt when foolish men get in her way. Her Marine outriders discouraged such fools and sent them on their way to cause other people trouble. Vicky did not bother herself with them.

She arrived back at the doors from which she had been ushered out without breaking stride. Two Marines hurled the doors open before her. She marched in, followed by most of her entourage.

Apparently, her approach had been so rapid that word had not gotten to the conferees. Silence fell on them like a hurtling mountain as Vicky quick-marched up to the table.

She eyed them all. “Which of you just tried to kill me?”

Her voice was low and deadly. The room plumbed new depths of quietude.

The woman in the shimmering blue dress at the head of the table stood up, her stance neither quelled nor belligerent but finely tuned somewhere in between. “I take it that someone
did
just try to kill you?”

“A roadside bomb wrapped my limousine around a tree. Someone knew I was here. Someone knew when I left. And that someone knew the only way I could take back to the space elevator and when I would pass their bomb.”

“How could anyone have known of such timing and routes?” the woman said, honestly puzzled.

“Let me guess. Did you broadcast a notice about this meeting in all your media?” Vicky spat a broadside of pure sarcasm.

“For our own safety, we desperately wanted to have this meeting in private.”

“You failed,” Vicky shot back.

“So it seems,” the woman said, her eyes roving the attendees. Few met her glance.

“Then, the black-hearted Empress knows you are here with me and, no doubt, every word said here will be reported,” Vicky snapped. “So, shall we finish our business now rather than later? Metzburg can be an important trading partner for St. Petersburg, but it is not the only one we are talking to. After that attack, I will not waste any more of my time negotiating with you. Are you with us or will you open your hearts for my stepmother’s dagger?”

“There must be another option,” someone at midtable almost pleaded.

“You’ve talked for a week, Abe, and you haven’t come up with anything more than that very same question,” a young woman snapped. “It’s time to fish or cut bait. I say we fish. Otherwise, we’ll likely be cut up for bait.”

“She has a point, damn it.” “She’s right, God help us,” and “The Empress will have our heads on her mantelpiece,” came in quick response.

Vicky listened to them but did not sit down. This meeting would not last that long.

“Okay, tell me again what you want us to do?” the middle-aged woman who sat at Vicky’s left asked.

“We can provide you with electronic, crystal, and other miniaturized components that you need to keep your industry humming and your workers on the job. In return, you ship us what St. Petersburg needs to quickly grow our heavy industry.”

“Why do you, I mean St. Petersburg, need heavy industry?
If we spur your growth, we’re just cutting our own throats. Killing our own markets, aren’t we?”

“If we followed that to its absurd end,” Vicky pointed out, “St. Petersburg would not be shipping industry to the new colonies around her. They are hungry for industry. We are feeding it. You need to look to growing your markets, not grasping to keep what little you have.”

“Spoken by a Peterwald with all your Imperial monopolies,” was tossed from midtable like a hand grenade.

“I’m a Peterwald, and I’m shilling for St. Petersburg today. Shilling for their products that have no Imperial warrant and defy Imperial monopolies,” Vicky snapped right back.

“Strange, that,” a man’s voice observed dryly.

“Yes, it is strange,” Vicky agreed.

“You brought the goods we asked for?” the woman at the head of the table asked.

“Yes. And our escorted trading fleet is ready to carry away the heavy-fabrication plants we want for them. I know your inventory is full to the choking point. Do you have them ready for us?”

“My jigs are in storage on the station,” one woman said.

“My heavy fabs went up the beanstalk yesterday and today,” a man said.

“Then let’s do business,” Vicky said.

The woman spoke again. “I’ve ordered my station representative to start loading my consignment as soon as we review the delivery we were expecting.”

“I’ll order my man to do the same,” the man said.

“Commander, is the cargo from all eight of our ships being unloaded?” Vicky asked the Supply Corps officer.

He spoke on his commlink. “It started fifteen minutes after you boarded the ferry for dirtside,” he admitted, a bit taken aback. That hadn’t been his answer an hour ago.

“Then it seems that the deed is done,” the older woman at the head of the table said, and stood. “Your Grace, will you walk with me?”

Vicky strode to meet her and was led to double doors that opened onto an immense balcony. Vicky paused at the wide glass doors. C
OMPUTER, GET
L
IEUTENANT
B
LUE AND THE
M
ARINE SKIPPER TO ME.
H
AVE THE
M
ARINES BRING THEIR BEST SNIPERS.

Y
ES,
Y
OUR
G
RACE.

“Is there a problem?” the woman asked when she noticed that Vicky was slow to join her on the terrace.

“Only for a moment,” Vicky said.

Four Marines, long rifles held at the ready, double-timed out onto the balcony. Lieutenant Blue was only a few paces behind them. Commander Boch and the Marine skipper brought up the tail of the parade.

“Commander, see to it that this balcony is secure. Lieutenant Blue, see to it that no one else hears our conversation,” Vicky ordered.

“Yes, Your Grace,” in three-part harmony greeted Vicky.

Lieutenant Blue, joined by his petty officer, set themselves up at a marble bench and bent to their business. The snipers distributed themselves around the edge of the balcony and began covering the distance. Two more Marines joined each sniper, one with binoculars, the other covering the close in as the man with the long rifle covered the far out.

“Is it always like this around you?” the older woman asked.

“Only since I decided I didn’t want to let my loving stepmom kill me.”

“That is a sorry state of affairs,” the old woman spat.

“A sorry state for state affairs,” Vicky agreed. “Now, I believe all my Marines are out of earshot. My signal intel team is not waving madly at me, which I take to mean they are happy with the silence. What do you wish to say to me?”

As they strolled together toward the edge of the terrace, the woman said, “You and I both know that the steps we are taking today are only the first. While I am old enough to know that every journey begins with a first step, I am also wise enough to know that a planned itinerary is an optimistic hope for the latter stages of the journey. Still, it is well to have some idea of where you are going.”

“And you want to know where I am going? What I am doing?”

“I confess to some curiosity.”

“I am Emperor Henry’s daughter and his loyal subject. Does that surprise you?”

“No. But you say nothing of his present wife and Empress.”

“I prefer not to.”

“That is good, as far as it goes.”

“That is as far as I choose to go today.”

They strode to the end of the balcony. The older woman leaned against the rail; her gaze wandered the land before them. In the distance, rolling hills were covered with fir trees native to distant Earth. They looked no more than forty years old. Closer in, the land flattened, softening into pastures where cattle grazed or sought shade under wide-spreading oak trees. Directly under the edge of the wide terrace was a several-hundred-meter drop. In the gorge below, white water boiled over rocks, sending up spray.

The woman took a deep breath. Vicky did likewise. She breathed deeply of cool water, grass, and cows, with a hint of the distant firs.

“It’s a lovely land,” Vicky said.

“And you are asking us to take a tremendous risk,” the older woman said. “Since it was settled, this planet has not seen the fire and ruin of war. What will it look like next year, or the year after that, after an army fights its way over it?”

“We of Greenfeld have no army,” Vicky said blandly. “What army could possibly rape and pillage your lovely homeland?”

“Ha,” the woman snorted. “We had State Security to keep us in line, or else. Now those wolves have their Security Consultants. An army by any other name is still an army.”

“So you need an army to protect you from those wolves,” Vicky said.

“But for us to raise an army is treason against your father,” the woman snapped.

Vicky shrugged. “So you don’t raise an army. The black-hearted Empress has raised herself an army by another name, and she seems to have successfully skirted that treason. Why don’t you do the same?”

The woman turned her gaze from the distant hills to fix Vicky with a hard stare, but she said nothing.

Vicky raised a hand and ticked off her fingers one by one. “You have out-of-work young men and women. Left on their own, they are just the tinder that provocateurs need to start riots guaranteed to bring the black-hearted Empress’s Security
Consultants down on you sooner or later. Then you do have an army loose on your lovely planet to wreak havoc and nothing to stop them. Nothing at all.”

Vicky let those words sink in, then raised another finger. “But what if those out-of-work young people were put to work? What if they were out of the cities and busy from sunup to sundown?”

“How?” the woman shot at Vicky.

Vicky turned away to the view. “Your planet has many lovely vistas like this one, but much of it is still in need of terraforming. There are whole mountain ranges begging to have trees planted on them, rolling hills just ready for grass.”

“There’s never enough money to make this planet what we want,” the woman admitted.

“But now you have out-of-work youths who you must get working, even if it’s only backbreaking labor. I had my computer do a search last night for historical situations like this. In one of them back on Earth, they raised a Civilian Conservation Corp. Don’t those words just drip of peace and harmony as they roll off your tongue? A corps of civilians working to conserve the planet. Almost as innocent-sounding as Security Consultants, don’t you think?”

“Don’t armies have corps?” the woman didn’t really ask.

“Yes. Yes they do,” Vicky answered, holding tight to the grin on her face. “In this particular case, the young civilians working hard out in the woods were supervised by officers and NCOs from their nation’s army. Some were active duty and detached for this work. Others were recently retired.

“Now,” Vicky went on, “I just happen to know where we have a supply of recently retired officers and NCOs. Even more, a lot of officers and noncoms are being RIFed out of the fleet as the Navy and Marines find themselves forced to trim their budgets, retire ships, and disband Marine battalions. I think we could get our hands on quite a few competent leaders for your civilian conservationists.”

“Civilian terraformers,” the woman corrected. “About this drawdown, I haven’t heard of it. How’s it going?”

Vicky suppressed a smile. If the woman was renaming the corps, Vicky had her headed in the right direction. Still, Vicky stepped away from that and followed the woman to the RIF.
“The Reduction in Force is not going well. The Navy gets smaller. Strange thing, some of those retired ships sold for scrap are showing up as pirates. Some are even crewed by officers and Sailors who got their pink slips just recently.”

“So the Navy is being split,” the woman said, “as the officers and crews are dumped on the beach. Those who can stomach working for that damn woman end up under the pirate flag, and those who can’t are stuck seeing how long they can survive on unemployment.”

“That’s what we’re looking at.”

“And you want me to hire your laid-off Navy types to teach my young men and women to plant trees and what?”

“Am I correct that you are allowed hunting rifles?” Vicky said, knowing very well the answer.

“In our outback and gone, there are some really nasty critters that don’t much care for us humans, except as dinner,” the woman admitted. “Anyone who goes there better carry a rifle.”

“So, if we’re sending young folks out to terraform your outback,” Vicky said, “it might be a good idea to teach them how to shoot. Shoot a rifle and hit what they aim for.”

“Unlike the State Security boys who just sprayed everything and let the coroner sort them out.”

“And, no doubt, like the Security Consultants do.”

“So,” the woman said, “our Civilian Terraforming Jobs Companions will plant trees Monday and Tuesday and spend Wednesday at the rifle range. What do they do the rest of the week?” There was a fey smile on the older woman’s lips.

Vicky brushed a speck of dirt from the balustrade. “They might well go back to the mountain they planted on Thursday and figure out a way to dig in and defend it? Maybe spend Friday learning how to storm that defense?” Vicky said.

“I think our gun makers could well benefit from a contract for several thousand, maybe tens of thousands of hunting rifles,” the woman said.

“And I think I know just the people to train your tree planters?” Vicky said.

The woman leaned on the stone balustrade. She eyed Vicky, then eyed the drop-off from the terrace. It was a long way down to the tumbling river below.

“It would be nice to be able to protect Metzburg, to stop the
Security Consultants from landing and making a mess even as they die,” the woman said to the drop-off.

Vicky nodded.

“Could the Navy protect us the same as they protected St. Petersburg?”

Vicky shook her head. “Sorry, did I mention the fleet was getting smaller?”

“I think you did.”

“But,” Vicky said, and let that word hang over the gorge and the shadowed white water below, “if you are raising an army, by some other name, there is no reason you can’t raise a Navy to defend this verdant land you call home.” Vicky noted the curl of a smile her words brought to the woman beside her. “I have been told that Metzburg makes some very effective defensive lasers for merchant ships, 4- or 5-inchers.”