Vicky Peterwald: Survivor (Vicky Peterwald Series Book 2) (3 page)

M
AYOR
Manuel Artamus’s office was quite spacious. His expansive wooden desk had a magnificent view, but his back was to the windows. Vicky doubted he ever swung his chair around to gaze out over the city he managed.

Facing him, and behind Vicky, were two walls paneled in light wood. On them, eight large screens showed people working hard at their desks.

None of them looked up as Vicky walked into the office. That none included Mannie.

Vicky sized up her situation. If she addressed Mannie at his desk, she’d have her back to the eight other people. If she turned to face them, Mannie got her back, something she doubted he’d care for.

She covered the distance to the side of Mannie’s desk and turned so she could face him and them at the same time.

Commander Schlieffen moved to cover her back.

She had plenty of time to do this; the important people of the planet of St. Petersburg continued to ignore her. It was tempting to see how long that could go on, but Vicky wanted to know what was going to happen next too much to just wait around and twiddle her thumbs.

Also, she had promises to keep to a certain commander.

“Having a busy day, Mannie?”

“I don’t have any slow ones,” he said, not looking up.

“You were having a pretty slow one the day you hit Kris Longknife up to talk me into giving you a royal city charter. How’s that working out?” Vicky said, playing her single ace.

“It’s on the wall there,” Mannie said, glancing up at the framed charter. Metal seals hung from it. Kris Longknife’s staff had researched what a mediaeval city charter looked like. When Kris Longknife’s gang staffed out something, it came on parchment and with silver seals.

Vicky would give her right arm just now for a staff like that.

But Vicky’s glance at the framed charter had included the eight city mayors keeping busy in their offices around this globe. On the wall behind most of them was a charter just like the one Mannie had.

Vicky took a few steps toward the wall of screens, studying the charters. “My dad was not at all happy to learn I’d signed that charter. Who’d you get to sign the other ones?”

“Nobody looks at the signatures all that closely,” Mannie said, now leaning back in his chair and eyeing Vicky. “We forged your signature and Kris Longknife’s on all of the other seven.”

“If it works for you,” Vicky said with a shrug.

“It’s given us the cover we need to keep our heads down and stay out of the shitstorm sweeping your father’s so-called Empire. We’re not going hungry here,” had force behind it.

“I know. You’re doing well here on St. Petersburg. You got the Navy to keep my darling stepmother out of your hair, and you have Navy contracts to keep jobs going on your factory floors. It couldn’t be better.”

“So why are you here?” didn’t give Vicky any cover.

The Grand Duchess chose to dodge the question. “How are you set for crystal? You need it for most of your high-power industry and communications. You need it for those screens you’re talking to me through. How long will your stockpile last?”

Mannie looked at one of the screens. A middle-aged woman frowned for a second, then tapped her desk. Numbers began to flow on a screen embedded in Mannie’s desk. Vicky
could just barely make them out. Mannie, however, studied them intently. A frown grew on his face as he did.

On seven screens, a lot of men and women frowned at what they saw.

“We can buy more,” the woman who’d done the work said.

“At a price set by my stepmother’s family,” Vicky pointed out. “Are you prepared to pay that piper? Their charge isn’t just an arm and a leg. They demand a chunk of your soul to go with it.”

“There are other sources,” the woman said.

“Yes,” Vicky said. “Presov is just a few jumps away from here. I recently visited them. Their miners are getting zero supplies, neither food nor spare parts. In three to six months, they’ll be unable to produce a gram of any kind of crystal. In six to nine months, they’ll be in economic chaos. By early next year, those who haven’t managed to beg, steal, or borrow a ride off that bejeweled mud ball will be eating each other.”

“It can’t be that bad,” the woman on-screen said.

“Computer, deliver to them the workup you did for me on Presov. Toss in the analysis of Poznan as well.”

Vicky turned to the screens. “The executive summary won’t take you long to read. Both end the same. I may be off by a few months, plus or minus, for either planet. They all end in the total collapse of civilization, starvation, and, well, whatever else happens when people have nothing to eat.”

“We knew it was bad out there,” a young mayor said, a man in a three-piece suit with ruffles at his throat, “but there’s only so much room in our lifeboat. If we overload it, we all end up drowning, along with everybody else.”

“Or you can expand the lifeboat,” Vicky said, turning on the young man. “You need crystal for your lifeboat, so you include Presov. Poznan has resources you could use as well. Not as critical as crystal, but still nice to have. You’re already trading with the Navy colonies. You expand your safety net to include more.”

“Why should we?” an older woman demanded. “We keep our heads down, and your loving stepmother and the rest of the bloodthirsty Bowlingame family look for easier prey. When all this is over, we will have saved ourselves and our own.”

“You dodged a bullet when their Security Consultants showed up last time,” Vicky pointed out, almost delicately. “You sure they won’t show up again? This time they’ll be bigger and badder, having fattened on easier prey.”

Vicky paused for only a second. “They don’t like the Navy. They’re trying to take it down, or better yet, take it and its ships over. You sure that if you stay small, you won’t become next year’s prey? That if you do nothing, this tragedy will ever end well?”

“That’s strange talk coming from a Peterwald Grand Duchess,” the older woman snapped.

“And one who has a rather high price on her head,” the man with the frilly shirt added.

“True on both counts,” Vicky conceded.

“Are you planning on going rebel on your old man?” Mannie asked. “What are you looking for? Us to be your power base?”

“No, no, and no,” Vicky said quickly.

“Then may I ask,” Mannie said, coming to his feet, “just what the hell are you doing here?”

Vicky had been asking herself that question for way too long. She opened her mouth to give them the only answer she had.

“H
AVE
any of you read the file we have on Princess Kris Longknife?” Vicky asked.

Her answer was a collection of shaking heads.

“It’s interesting reading. My dad’s in a lot of it.”

“Why’d she have to save his neck?” someone asked.

Vicky ignored that question and went on.

“I don’t know how many of you were aware or remember those six rogue battleships that showed up in the Wardhaven system and threatened to blast them back to the Stone Age.”

Some of the heads on the screens nodded. Others shook from side to side.

“No one ever found out where the ships came from,” Mannie said.

“I found out,” Vicky said, and suddenly had their full attention.

“They were our ships. My father sent them. Navy reunions have had a lot of unexplained empty chairs at their tables of late, haven’t they, Gerrit?”

The commander nodded solemnly.

“How do you know?” the older woman demanded.

“I overheard my father arguing with an admiral shortly
after the affair. I didn’t know what I was hearing until I shared it with Kris Longknife. Her and a few of her friends. One of them lost her husband of three days blowing up those battleships.”

“Oh my God,” someone said softly.

“But what is important for us here and now is that back then and there no one had any idea what to do about the incoming battleships. Wardhaven had been maneuvered into sending its fleet off on some wild-goose chase, and there was a caretaker government. No doubt my father’s fingerprints can be found on a lot of that.”

“Son of a bitch,” came from one screen.

Vicky wasn’t sure if it was a reaction to the revelation or a reference to her father. Once again, she tossed it off to bore in on her point.

“What matters to us here and now is that Princess Kris Longknife returned to her squadron. She’d been relieved of the command of one of the fast-attack boats. Tiny things, ships with no real chance against battleships. She declared herself the commander of the squadron. No one knew what to make of her actions. But while their government diddled, she and many others used her princess card as a pretense to rally a defense not one of them could have produced without her.”

Vicky stepped forward to face the eight screens. “I’m nothing. But I’m also a Grand Duchess. I can keep being nothing, or I can be the tiny grain of sand that causes an oyster to produce a pearl.”

“I understand the oyster considers that grain of sand an irritant,” Mannie said.

“I don’t doubt that,” Vicky said.

“Let me get this straight,” said the elder woman who wanted to wait until things blew over. “Are you rebelling against your father?”

“That is not my intention at this time. I pray it will never be my intention,” Vicky said with all the sincerity she could manage. She really meant the words. However, getting enough sincerity around anything a Peterwald said was always a problem.

The man with the frilly shirt was up from his desk and leaning into the camera so that his face filled the screen. “Are
you trying to tell me that a Peterwald is doing something good for altruistic reasons?”

“Yes,” Vicky said back as blandly as she could.

“There’s got to be a first time for anything, folks,” Mannie said. “Remember, people, I was there when she signed the first city charter. Her neck may not have been on the line, but a good bit of her skin was in the game.”

He came to stand beside Vicky and stared hard into her eyes. “I don’t know where she’ll be coming from next month, and surely not next year, but right now, I really do think we have a Peterwald in our lap who cares about starving people and parents who look at their children and the stew pot. And vice versa.”

Mannie leaned back against his desk. “Where’s the Navy in all this?”

“They loaned me a shuttle to come down here to talk to you,” Vicky said without flinching.

“A shuttle that damn near fell out of the sky,” one mayor said.

“I didn’t have any trouble flying it,” Gerrit lied through a smile.

Vicky really owed him tonight.

“We’ve got a lot of out-of-work ships drifting around behind the station,” Mannie pointed out. “We’re harvesting a bumper crop. We can afford to risk some of it to help these other planets, and we
do
need that crystal.”

The consensus was building, slowly, with every nod.

Vicky kept her mouth shut and let the mayors of St. Petersburg talk themselves into what they knew was a good thing. But a good thing that only she could offer them a chance to grab for. She felt a strange feeling, sitting in silence while all those around her struggled to meet some high bar they thought she’d set.

Dad always bragged about what he’d done, what butt he’d kicked in this or that meeting. Vicky found herself kicking no butt and not really doing much of anything. Still, around her,
because of her
, things were being done that neither they nor she thought possible.

This was a change from everything she’d ever known, ever even thought feasible.

But there was more going on. Somewhere deep inside her, something was happening. That dirty, naked savage, willing to do anything for a morsel of food was changing, metamorphosing into something entirely different. Vicky was none too sure just what the changed her would be like, but she kind of liked it.

For maybe the first time in my life, I feel good about something I’m involved in, and I really like it.

A
N
hour later, Mannie ticked off their action plan on his fingers.

“We will send a trade delegation to Presov to see about swapping food for crystal. We’ll include industrial agents not only to check out the quality of the crystal but also to see what goods and services, parts and supplies they need. Maybe we’ll carry some of what they likely need with us as well,” he said, half to himself.

“Considering the quality of civil discourse no doubt now existent on Presov, we’ll need a cruiser to protect our merchant hulls and a Marine detachment to protect our negotiators. Possibly our food and supplies as well,” Mannie said, glancing at Vicky.

She replied with a confident smile she didn’t feel.

On the screens, eight people nodded. Mannie then added, “It would be nice to have a certain Grand Duchess present to provide irritation and some cover for this.”

Grand Duchess Vicky Peterwald nodded. There were a few scowls from the screen, but they weren’t too bad. Not at all as bad as she might have feared.

“Your Grace,” Mannie said. “In your official Navy capacity,
I expect you to arrange with the appropriate admiral for the necessary escort, both cruiser and Marines.”

“That I will do,” Vicky said, having no idea how she would.

“Then I think we are done here,” Mannie said. “Your Grace, no doubt several people would like to have dinner with you tonight. Shall I have my chauffeur pick you up at eight?”

“That will be fine.” Where she would be at eight was anybody’s guess. That she had nothing to wear but a green shipsuit, now in need of a washing, went without saying.

The screens snapped off as the mayors no doubt returned to their busy day, which had gotten much more busy.

“I’ll arrange for your stay,” Mannie said. “The Imperial Suite at the Hilton has had few uses of late.”

“You know, of course, that my credit chit has been canceled,” Vicky said.

“So I was advised by our spaceport. We of St. Petersburg recognize a certain debt toward the Navy of unspecified monetary value. Your necessary expenses will be charged against that.”

“No doubt you’ve heard this from a woman before, but I really do have nothing to wear,” Vicky said, enjoying, for a moment, sounding just like any other girl.

“I also received a report from the spaceport that there was no luggage aboard your shuttle. Once you’re settled into your suite, I’ll have my grandmadre take you on a shopping expedition. Commander, we have tailors who can meet your needs.”

“I will need to stay at Her Grace’s side. My orders are that no one gets to her except over my dead body. From a personal interest, may I ask how secure she is on St. Petersburg?”

Mannie winced. “I’d like to say as safe as that pearl in a clam, but as we all know, that pearl is not safe at all. I suspect at least one of my fellow mayors will be sending a report to your stepmother. My net may even be compromised. Likely, a copy of our meeting will be on its way to Greenfeld within the hour. One of the few advantages of these troubled times is that news travels much more slowly, what with the lack of shipping using the jump points.”

“I suspect my dear loving stepmama will pay extra for premium communications service,” Vicky pointed out.

“And with the standing price on her head,” the commander
pointed out, “any local freelancer is likely to already be moving into position for a shot.”

“Which is why you will find my best agents waiting outside,” Mannie said. “The Imperial Suite was not a casual choice for your stay, Your Grace. Your father, our Emperor, requested and required that all Imperial suites throughout Greenfeld have bulletproof glass. Your suite will not only tuck you way up and out of sight, but also behind glass strong enough to stop a rocket grenade.”

Mannie paused, then smiled at Vicky. “We play no more games, Your Grace. You are a pearl of great worth, and you’ll be treated as such.”

“Thank you, Mannie,” Vicky said. It was one of the few “thank-you’s” she’d ever said that she truly meant.

Mannie actually cracked a smile. Then his worried face was back. He turned to his desk. “I have work to do. A lot more than I expected this morning when I came in with a full to-do list. So, if you will please go make yourself imperially beautiful, I’ll get back to work.”

“Will I see you at eight?” Vicky asked.

“No doubt,” Mannie said without glancing back.