Vicky Peterwald: Survivor (Vicky Peterwald Series Book 2) (17 page)

T
HE
afternoon saw Vicky buried up to her eyeballs in adminutiae to the point where she found herself looking back on the near battles of that morning with fondness.

Her one break from paperwork was provided by Herbert himself.

He somehow took it in his head that he could ride out to the spaceport with two of his most trusted henchmen and carry out his own attack where his minions had failed.

He had three horses that the raid had missed because they were grazing behind the palace that night. Now he and his two biggest, baddest thugs rode them.

The drone take caught him before he was two blocks from the palace even though he was keeping to side streets.

People began gathering around him before he’d gone four blocks.

He tried to outrun them, but his horses were spent before they put spurs to their flanks.

He tried to shoot his way out, but he only had so many bullets and people would flit into view, then drop out faster than he and his panicked gunmen could react.

His horse didn’t take well to all this. It reared, and his poor horsemanship was revealed to all as Herbert slid off its hindquarters. The horse wisely bolted, leaving the scene before Herbert could pull himself off the ground and dust himself off.

He called for one of his trusty henchmen to give him his mount.

His trusty henchmen were already retreating at a gallop.

Herbert whirled in place, firing his two six-shooters at shadows.

A rock hit him, likely thrown from the upper window of a house.

More rocks flew. He went down.

Then the people closed in.

Vicky ordered the drone view moved to somewhere more important to the mission.

Later that day, two emaciated skeletons each brought a pearl-handled six-shooter to the spaceport. They offered to turn them in for jobs.

They were hired on the spot. Vicky found this out when the colonels offered her the six-shooters.

She gave one each to the colonels as trophies of this fight.

Vicky now considered her main job to be getting Kolna back to some shade of normal. She could feed people for a month, maybe two. What she needed was people to do what they’d done in better times.

She tried to jump-start the economy immediately by giving people jobs distributing food. Others were sent as a kind of town crier to shout job opportunities to those in line for rations. Vicky found some of the skills she needed among the starving people, but most of those left in town were those who had been too weak or unwise to flee.

So Vicky went hunting for Cindy. “You going to live on that horse?” she asked the young woman.

“You mean I can’t,” had a shy smile behind it.

“You’re the only one I know that knows where your dad is. I got a Ranger gun truck reserved to run you back up into the hills. I really need him back down here.”

Clearly in pain, Cindy dismounted and joined the motor Rangers.

Vicky got a call as dark was settling in that evening. Cindy had indeed found her father’s fishing lodge, and her family was safe.

Vicky talked to Mr. Arnsvider. He did have several of his business friends and associates close at hand. Many had their own places along the streams leading into a fine lake. Many had brought with them some of their most devoted or critical subordinates when they chose to run.

Most had cars, trucks, or all-terrain transport; what they needed was gas.

Vicky ordered a fuel truck to head out west that night. Next day, a convoy arrived at the spaceport. No surprise, Cindy shared a ride with Judge Valburg. He had taken two of his clerks to safety with him. He was eager to see his court back in session.

After dropping Cindy off, he drove straight to his chambers.

Now the LCIs and LCTs were dropping with supplies, spare parts, and small machinery. The emergency association of businessmen met with the businessmen Vicky had brought from St. Petersburg.

The bargaining was hard. Everyone needed everything.

Vicky sat in but avoided the temptation to step in. She’d seen just how bad she was at the business end of bargaining when she blew it the first evening above Presov. She promised herself that she would keep her mouth shut and ride to the rescue only later this time without making a fool of herself early on.

As it turned out, she didn’t have to rescue anyone.

The factory owners, administrators, and managers of Kolna had a pretty good idea of what had to come first.

“We all want to get our businesses up and running again, yes. But we need water and power if we’re going to live in our homes,” said Cindy’s dad.

“And sewage treatment about fifteen minutes after you get the water running,” another added. “Oh, to take a dump in my own warm bathroom.” He sighed.

Everyone laughed, but everyone agreed.

The operator of the fusion plant had a short list of what was necessary to get his reactors back up and a long list of what he’d really like to have.

The St. Petersburg men had most of the stuff on his short list. Vicky was able to get the rest released from Navy stores. Until the local could round up all his workers, Vicky arranged for Navy reactor specialists to be on loan from the fleet in orbit.

Two days later, the lights started coming on.

Not all. There were problems with the distribution network that would need some careful work, but at least most of Kolna had lights that night.

The waterworks went through a similar process. St. Petersburg had sent the consumables to get water purification going again. The waterworks needed repairs, but there were plenty of welders and small-machinery mechanics either looking for work or available aboard the ships. Water came on.

Several sections of town with electricity didn’t get water and vice versa. Vicky sighed. “What do they call it in Longknife space? Murphy at work.”

“I believe in Greenfeld, we call it sabotage,” the commander grumbled.

“Maybe we need a better sense of humor for our beloved Greenfeld,” Vicky countered.

The cargo of the four freighters was quickly transported down into the empty warehouses, with the ready help of the
Crocodile
’s landing craft.

At first, the Rangers did guard duty, but Kolna had a police force, and the many unemployed cops were eager to get it working again. Sadly, they found the chief of police and his wife murdered in their home. Likely, they were the first of Herbert’s victims. The police chief’s friends remembered that he’d been proud of a glass display on his wall of two pearl-handled revolvers that he said came from old Earth, where an ancestor had been a Texas Ranger.

Among the weapons collected from hungry thugs were police automatics. They were returned to the recovering police force. The rifles were mostly taken from farmers and ranchers up-country. These folks usually came in to claim their guns even as they trucked the extra hands they’d hired for security back into town to see about their old jobs.

The machine pistols from State Security were placed under lock and key. No one wanted them issued, but no one wanted them destroyed, either.

How they’d end up wasn’t something anyone wanted to address at the moment. It didn’t seem to matter; they recovered very little ammunition for the machine pistols.

When the
Biter
arrived with the next four freighters, Vicky was ready to take this half of her Fleet of Desperation back to St. Petersburg. The
Crocodile
stayed in orbit to help with the unloading, but Vicky wanted to return to see how matters were developing on what she was now thinking of as home.

The first fleet had carried goods and gear, much of it to be given away. Vicky was heading back with plenty of equipment orders from Poznan, accompanied by loan papers already filled out. Poznan now wanted to buy what St. Petersburg had to offer
if
the money could be found for loans so they could pay for it.

Vicky wondered how much a Grand Duchess’s encouraging word would be worth. She dearly hoped that she wouldn’t be required to cosign the loans; she was not at all sure she could stand surety for an entire planet’s needs.

All that was in the future. For the moment, the
Attacker
was headed home from a job well done. Vicky asked and was granted permission to stand the bridge watch as the
Attacker
made its jump out of Poznan system.

It wasn’t a Kris Longknife thing. No, not really. It was just that it had been a long time since Vicky stood a watch on the
Fury
. Who knew what the future might hold? She really should have a solid feel for how a warship got around in space.

Tomorrow might hold many surprises. Someday, Vicky might have to fight a ship in space.

This jump was taken very carefully. The cruiser was dead in space, the freighters strung out behind her, as the skipper of the
Attacker
went through his prejump checks.

Having a Grand Duchess at his elbow seemed to make him loquacious. Vicky had seen the
Fury
go through jumps many times under Admiral Krätz’s watchful eye.

But he had never explained what he was doing.

Captain Bolesław explained every part of his routine, and Vicky listened with her computer on
RECORD
so she could listen to it again until she had it memorized.

Maybe I’m not the only one who thinks it would be nice if a Grand Duchess knew how a warship goes about its business.

As the final step, the captain ordered everyone to tighten
their seat belts. “Some captains take their ships through a jump with them standing around, gawking. I remember the old ways. ‘Get your ship ready because you can never tell when you’ll be in a fight on the other side,’ my first skipper insisted. We young ensigns thought he was a Nervous Nelly, but let me tell you, you really don’t know what’s on the other side of that jump.”

Vicky tightened her seat belt.

The jump buoy went through to warn the other side to keep their distance.

They edged through the jump at a few kilometers an hour.

There was that moment of disorientation, as the stars wavered and changed. Then there were new stars.

And something else.

“What the hell is that doing there?” the captain blurted out as he hit the general-quarters button on his command chair.

E
VEN
as the
Attacker
beat to quarters, the ship was rocked by laser fire.

The hull-breach alarm sounded as the cruiser spun up quickly to the normal battle defense of twenty revolutions a minute, intended to spin the damaged hull armor away from any searing laser hits.

And the
Attacker
had taken hits. Damage control boards to Vicky’s left lit up with flashing red lights showing where the cruiser had been hit fore and aft.

“Forward batteries. Fire,” Captain Bolesław ordered, and the lights dimmed as the forward 8-inch batteries responded. At least two of the twin turrets fired. The third had been nailed by incoming fire and was one of the red flashing lights that Vicky struggled to ignore.

The hostile ship, no more than twenty thousand kilometers off their port quarter was quickly pinned by all four 8-inch lasers. For a long moment it just hung there in space.

Then it vanished.

Oh, there was a roiling cloud of hot dust and atoms where it had been, but of the ship, not a shred of evidence.

“What, in the name of all that’s holy, was that?” the skipper demanded.

A picture of the vaporized ship appeared again on the screen. Slowly, the sensor team replayed what had just happened, then provided in rapid fire, their analysis.

“It’s a small ship. No larger than a schooner or corvette.”

“Pirates use them a lot.”

“It’s got four 18-inch pulse lasers. You can see them firing.”

“It had no squawker. There’s no way to tell who it was or where it came from.”

Vicky scowled; she knew damn well where it came from.

She and the commander exchanged glances. Stepmom had struck again.

And the bitch is getting bigger and badder.

What wasn’t clear was whether or not she’d missed this time.

The
Attacker
had been hit aft and hit bad. Her reactors were damaged and going critical. If the snipes lost their battle with the superconductors, the demons that took ships between the stars would exact their price.

And their price was your life and soul.

“Is there anything I can do to help?” Vicky asked.

“Keep your seat belt tight, Your Grace. There is nothing any of us up here on the bridge can do right now but pray. Are you good at that?”

“Not very.”

“You might get better.” Captain Bolesław’s suggestion was just short of an order.

Vicky remembered to breathe and look calm. That was what the captain was doing. Vicky glanced around the bridge. There were youthful seamen and ensigns struggling for the first time with the prospects that their young lives might be ephemeral.

Here and there, older chiefs and commanders went about their duties as calm as on any other day. That was the image Vicky must project. She wore the stripes of a lieutenant commander. She warned Admiral Waller when he had rushed her promotion that she didn’t think she was ready for the extra thin stripe.

Today, you show if you’ve earned it, little Victoria.

Vicky waited; others had things to do besides look calm. Calm was the only job for her at the moment.

On the board to her left, some of the flashing red went to yellow.

Then it got exciting.

The first freighter came through. It was almost on top of them and coming fast.

Captain Bolesław shouted orders and the
Attacker
used its maneuvering jets to zig right as the big freighter rolled left.

Just barely, the ships did not crash together. Even a kiss aft might have been the jar or knock that lost the fight the engineers were slowly winning.

Reminded of the tiny fleet behind them, Captain Bolesław used what little he could coax from his maneuvering rockets to increase the drift of his cruiser from the jump point.

When the next freighter came through, they had a less hairy time of it.

“Can we render assistance?” the skipper of the second freighter asked.

“Just stand clear,” was simple in its clarity. If the
Attacker
’s reactors blew, there was no need for two ships to go up with the one.

The freighter skipper remained on-screen for a few seconds longer, then he turned away, and the screen went blank. He had a second question. He had it but he didn’t ask it.

Does the Grand Duchess want to run away to someplace safe from harm?

Likely he would have worded it a bit differently. Maybe in some delicate way that would save her a shred of pride.

It would still have been . . . what?

An insult.
Yes.

Just what her dad would have been screaming for.
Oh, you bet.

Vicky didn’t like where these thoughts took her.

Her dad was her father, and she had to respect him.

Her dad was her Emperor, and she owed him her allegiance and her life.

Her dad was Greenfeld, and he was making a wreck of the place. Or at least he was letting his young bride make a wreck of the place, which was the same thing.

Now the target Stepmother had painted on Vicky’s back was huge enough to snuff out the lives of an entire heavy cruiser’s crew.

While others went about their duty to God and Country, trying to save their ship and their lives, Vicky Peterwald, Imperial Grand Duchess of Greenfeld, stayed calm and quietly contemplated treason.