Vicky Peterwald: Survivor (Vicky Peterwald Series Book 2) (13 page)

T
HE
drive into town was an education.

In so many ways, Kolna looked like any other medium to large city in the Empire. The streets were wide, not so much to improve traffic flow but to make it harder to barricade them during a rebellion.

Daddy had told Vicky that once. He hadn’t mentioned the reduced street traffic in his Empire. Vicky had had to go into Longknife territory to discover what a traffic jam was. No, the idea of people rebelling and blocking the streets or dodging down narrow streets to elude the law was something seared into her dad’s mind.

Thus, the streets were wide. Vicky could have paraded all four of her tanks side by side down Prosperity Boulevard and still had room to spare had she so desired.

Instead, her tank commander kept his monsters spread out in a loose column, with infantry vehicles providing wide escort. The Rangers rolled along in trailers behind the tanks and infantry rigs, their eyes roving and alert.

For now, their rifles were down, but that could change in a second.

Vicky stood. She’d ordered the left half of her infantry
fighting vehicle’s roof unlocked and swung up and over so she could stand and see what there was to see.

Beside her, the commander was having a fit. He whispered something to Kit and Kat, and they now stood close to Vicky, but they were hardly tall enough to get in the way of any bullet fired her way from a rooftop.

At the moment, the commander and Mr. Smith were engaged in a scowling contest. No doubt the commander felt the spy should be standing at Vicky’s shoulder, ready to block a shot with his body.

Equally, there was no doubt that Mr. Smith had reviewed his contract and found no obligation to do so, either in the large print or the fine print.

Vicky ignored her staff and concentrated on what there was to see and what it might tell her.

Here and there, a handful of people would come out of hiding to see what the noise was about. At least one Ranger in each trailer was tasked with tossing ration biscuits their way.

Their reaction puzzled Vicky. She would have expected them to cheer or shout their thanks. They did scramble for the bars in the dusty streets, but they did it in silence.

“Do you think they’re afraid to draw a crowd?” Vicky muttered half to herself.

“They could be,” Maggie offered in answer. “They don’t want to attract someone who might snatch the food out of their mouths. Worse, they don’t know if there’s more food where that came from, so they’re keeping quiet about it.”

“No share and share alike, huh?” Vicky said.

“No. Sad to say, when you’re this close to starving to death, there’s not much room for kindness.”

Vicky nodded but said no more. She knew that her doctor friend had struggled on St. Petersburg, even to the point of having to pay to be smuggled into Sevastopol.

Did it get that bad while you were on the run?

Vicky kept the question to herself.

Most of the buildings showed peeling paint but were otherwise untouched, as if their owners had gone off for a holiday and would be back soon. Most doors were closed. Possibly locked.

There were exceptions.

On one corner, a store had been ransacked. Its door had
been smashed in and torn off the hinges. The large, plate-glass windows were broken and the inside hastily pillaged. Glass lay scattered in the street.

The tank treads made quick work of the glass. It shattered to powder under the first treads’ passage and made not a sound as the others came up behind.

Other buildings had burned. There was no way to tell if the fire was the final stage of looting or just an accident that happened when desolate wooden fires got out of hand in buildings never intended for live flame.

The thought that sent shivers up Vicky’s spine was the math that kept spinning around and around in her head. Normally, a city had thousands of people per hectare. Hundreds lived on every street.

Few blocks had more than a dozen people struggling out to scramble for the food Vicky’s troopers tossed as they passed.

“Where
are
all the people?” Vicky whispered.

No one offered a reply.

That question hung in the air as their armored column rumbled into Government Square. The square might once have been a lovely place. If anything, it looked even more the worse for wear than the rest of the city.

In front of Vicky, an entire city block had been devoted to a park. In the center of what might have once been a fountain stood a large bronze statue. No doubt, it was her grandfather or great-grandfather, depending on who had been alive and arranged financing for this planet’s start-up.

There had been trees in the park once; the stumps showed where they’d been cut down. Dozens of lovely horses struggled to graze on what might once have been grass but was now more dirt and weeds.

Facing the square directly across from where Vicky’s task force was entering stood an impressive four-story-tall white house. Or it had been. It once had a wooden fence in front of it, but most of it had gone into someone’s fire. Sections of iron fence had been dug into the lawn. They would have given a stronger “keep out or else” signal if most of them weren’t slumped over at odd angles.

To either flank of the big white house were the bank and
library Vicky had been told about. The bank had snipers hurriedly taking up stations on its roof and upper windows.

The bank was the source of some of the iron-fence sections that now festooned the approaches to the white house. They’d been taken from a half-meter-high stone wall.

Between the low stone wall and the intermittent iron fence, Vicky figured any defense might slow her Marines and Rangers for all of fifteen seconds.

She could almost hear her troopers licking their chops at the thought of taking down these duds with guns.

To Vicky’s right was the library, now a stable. Several grooms were hurrying horses indoors. The horses were lovely animals. Dad loved horses. He could talk for an hour about Friesians, Lipizzaners, and Clydesdales.

That was what Vicky saw. A dozen horses of various proud breeds were being trotted away by running grooms eager to get them out of the line of fire. More were racing to get the ones still grazing in the park.

“Where did he get those lovely horses?” Vicky muttered.

“He stole them,” her young woman guide said. She’d been huddled in the forward corner of the track, almost curled up upon herself. Now she stood up and took in all there was to see.

“He killed the owners. Several of their daughters are locked up in the white house.”

Vicky was taking a distinct dislike to this guy.

“Do they eat any of the horses?” Mr. Smith asked.

“Oh God, no,” the young guide almost gasped. “He says he’ll eat the grooms before anyone touches those horses.”

“That’s horrible,” Doc Maggie said.

Vicky made a face. “I think my dad would agree with his priorities.”

The commander raised an eyebrow but said nothing.

“It kind of explains how you got into this mess,” Mr. Smith said.

The commander elbowed him.

“Don’t look at me that way,” the itinerant spy said. “I didn’t swear allegiance to the nutcase.”

“Enough!” Vicky snapped.

While her staff discussed culinary preferences, the skipper
of the Marine armor had been going about his business. Two tanks left formation and rumbled their way over to face the bank that had been turned into a guardhouse. One took a hard right and stopped in front of the tall, once-gleaming office building that still had its glass windows intact. So much so that the only weapons on display from it were being brandished by snipers on the roof.

No doubt the tank’s long gun could not be brought to bear against them, but the machine gun atop the turret could be and was.

The two infantry tracks that escorted that tank had their guns aimed high as well.

The third tank and a pair of infantry rigs laid track for the library, now a stable.

On all three buildings, the snipers and gunners who had been so boldly waving or aiming weapons a moment before took the measure of this newly arrived force . . . and blanched.

Quite a few must have suddenly felt the urge to hit the head, because in only a few seconds, there was a lot less hardware aimed down.

Vicky raised her commlink. “Captain, could you take this rig around to the front door of the white house? Oh, and lose the tank.”

There was a pause, then, “Are you sure about the tank, Your Grace?”

“I’m sure.”

There was another pregnant pause. Vicky heard the commander’s commlink buzz.

“Don’t answer that, Commander.”

He didn’t.

Finally, the Marine company commander said, “If you say so, Your Grace.”

“I think I did.”

Vicky’s and one other infantry track rolled over to the front of the white house. They stopped, facing a portico that covered the entrance to the building.

For a long moment, nothing happened.

A
short man in a most curious uniform strutted out onto the balcony. Following him were four men with machine pistols. They looked at the tanks, and they looked at their guns. Then they didn’t look all that confident.

They might be smart. Vicky wondered about the other man.

He seemed quite taken with himself. His uniform was a crimson coat with gold dripping from just about every place the wild male military mind had ever thought to hang it on a uniform. His hat was also red, a fore-and-aft affair trimmed with even more gold. The britches were cream, ending high with white silk stockings.

“Where did that outfit come from?” the commander muttered under his breath.

“The last production by the Kolna City Opera Company was of
Aida
,” Vicky’s native guide provided.

Vicky raised an eyebrow at that. “Suddenly you know a lot more than I was led to expect.”

“That’s because you didn’t expect much from a starving woman in rags.”

“I admit to the fault.”

“Cindy, I was told you’d run away,” the man in the absurd uniform said.

“I guess I didn’t run far enough,” Vicky’s guide answered back.

“You’ll always be welcome at my dinner table,” hinted at a lot more than just his table.

“I doubt I’d get past the guards.”

“You really should have left the dinner knife for the steak and not my throat.”

“I only regret I missed my mark.”

“So who have you brought to visit me this time?”

Vicky wondered how long this talk would take to get around to her. Most conversation usually did bend toward her when she was present.

“I have the honor of introducing you to Her Imperial Grace, the Grand Duchess Victoria of Greenfeld, and her army,” Cindy said.

“Aren’t you going to introduce me?”

“Your Grace, this is Herbert, one of my rapists.”

“Cindy, you wound me to the heart,” Herbert said, clasping a fist to his chest where, depending on whose point of view was taken, he might or might not have one.

“Dhimitër,” Herbert continued, “have the courtesy to introduce me to this fine example of a grand lady.”

A large man, both tall and rotund, stepped onto the balcony. His head was shaved, and his mustache and goatee were well manicured. He was dressed in a long black robe, also likely of operatic origin though Vicky couldn’t place the character who had worn it and didn’t feel the need to ask. He sported a silver chain of office, which, Vicky strongly suspected, was costume plastic.

“I have the honor of making known to you,” he said in a full-throated baritone, “His Majesty, the Grand Duke Hieronomo, Lord of All You Survey and Law of the Land.” And he bowed to him with a flourish.

A sycophant of such high caliber Vicky hadn’t seen since leaving the Imperial court. How could her dad or beloved stepmom have missed hiring this guy?

“Herbert, last month you were just a duke,” Cindy said dryly.

“But I hadn’t
known
you,” he answered with a smirk.

Vicky hadn’t thought when she hired her native guide—no Cindy—that her history with the local potentate or warlord or whatever would become a distraction from getting her mission done.

Then, on reflection, what exactly was her mission now that she had to consider this new twist? An opera buff with ducal delusions and a predilection for raping his dinner guests?

Time to think on your feet, girl.

“I’m glad to make your acquaintance, Herbert,” Vicky said. “I’m here on a mission of mercy. We’ve brought famine rations for distribution to the starving populations.”

“Why that’s a fine idea. Why don’t we discuss it over dinner? I am told that I set an outstanding table. We can work out the fine points of how my army will distribute this food you’re donating to famine relief.”

The commander threw Vicky a cautionary eye. Caution that Vicky did not need.

Cindy had only horror in her eyes as she turned to Vicky.

“I have a better idea. No doubt the chefs aboard my battleship in orbit can set an even finer table. Why don’t
you
come up to the station? We have it operational, and we can discuss the food distribution with all the technical support we might need. It would be a shame for something to fall through the cracks, now wouldn’t it?”

The man laughed. It was not a nice one.

“So you don’t want to eat my food any more than I want to eat yours.”

“Not one bit,” Vicky said with a shake of her head.

“Well, my army will do the distribution of the food,” he said, cold stone in his voice.

“My Marines and Rangers have already begun the distribution and are having no problems.”

“On Poznan, my army controls everything. Your strangers could find themselves in trouble and not even know what happened before it hits them.”

“Please don’t say that too loud. My Imperial Marines might take umbrage at such an idea,” Vicky said, buffing her fingernails.

“You have been warned. This audience is over,” Herbert said with a theatrical flair, and turned to exit, stage right, off his balcony.

For a long moment, there was silence.

“You going to level the building?” Mr. Smith asked. For once, the look in the commander’s eyes showed full support for something from the spy.

“No doubt, my dad would,” Vicky said, considering her options and their outcome.

“No doubt,” the commander agreed.

“What do you say we don’t and say we did,” Maggie said.

Everyone gave Maggie a puzzled look. Even Vicky.

“Let’s not do it, but later we can say we did,” the doctor said by way of explanation.

“Why would we do that?” the commander demanded.

The doctor just looked at Vicky.

“We are not going to do it today. And it doesn’t matter what we say tomorrow. Captain,” Vicky said to the company commander of the heavy Marines.

“Your Grace?”

“Conduct an orderly withdrawal.”

“Ma’am, we have some grooms from the stables asking if we have any food they might have. They’ve heard we’re handing out stuff to eat.”

“Have the Rangers make the usual three-biscuit issue.”

“And if they want some for their horses?”

“Please,” Cindy said. “They’ve got my horse and my sister’s pony.”

“If we feed horses, will there be enough for the people?” Maggie made haste to point out.

Vicky took a deep breath and turned to Cindy. “If you had three starvation biscuits, would you share them with your horse?”

“In a switch of her tail.”

“Issue six bars to the grooms. Three to any other goon that asks us for food. Withdraw the tanks to the next block and hold for ten minutes while half the tracks distribute food.”

“What do I do with the other infantry rigs?” the captain asked.

“Spread them out, two to a street, and distribute rations.”

“And if we take fire?”

“Return it heavy,” Vicky said, tasting the blood in her voice.

“Aye, aye, Your Grace,” said the captain, then, a moment
later added, “Ah, Your Grace, what do you want me to do with that fellow who was demanding landing fees?”

“Is he still with us?” the commander asked.

“We tied him up and tossed him in a track. He’s been amazingly quiet ever since, but now I’ve got a sergeant asking what we want to do with him.”

“Drop him off here,” Mr. Smith said. “He can explain this all to Mr. Duke, grand or otherwise.”

“He’s begging not to be left here. He wants to come with us.”

“Suddenly he knows which side his bread is buttered on,” the commander said. “He picked his side long ago. Toss him.”

“He’s done us no great wrong,” Maggie said. “You dump him here, and he’s a dead man for sure.”

Vicky eyed the spy. He shrugged most expressively and made to wash his hands of the matter.

“Captain, dump the guy two blocks from here. He can decide where he goes from there,” Vicky said.

The withdrawal from Government Square was slow and orderly. It was also peaceful.

Vicky glanced back at the white house as they motored from the square. Behind one window, she might have caught the glint of gold.

She swore she heard the gnashing of teeth.