Vicky Peterwald: Survivor (Vicky Peterwald Series Book 2) (30 page)

T
HE
Retribution
made orbit exactly one hundred kilometers behind the
Golden Empress No. 34
. It wasn’t for their lack of trying to dodge the inevitable.
No. 34
slowed, and slowed, then made as if to go for a higher orbit.

The
Retribution
might have a warped turret support, but it had a lot more energy to play with. When the
Empress
finally gave up and made orbit, there was one huge battleship on its tail.

“Battleship
Retribution
,” came over the hailing net, “there is nothing for you here. Move along.”

Grimly, the battleship returned silence.

“This is Commissioner Lanz. I hold a warrant from the Empress to reduce the striking workers on Presov. They have put down their tools and refused the lawful orders of their management. I command Security Consultants Group 121 and 122. We will set matters right.”

“Put me on-screen,” Vicky ordered, standing in her gee station, careful in zero gee not to drift off.

The screen came alive. Vicky found herself facing a middle-aged man of balding pate and nervous demeanor. He frowned at her, probably trying to remember where he’d seen her. She solved his problem.

“I am the Imperial Grand Duchess, Her Grace Lieutenant Commander Victoria of Greenfeld. And I know very well where the managers of the mining co-op are. I arrested them for taking bribes to act against the fiduciary interests of both their employers and their stockholders as well as conspiring to illegally restrict trade. The workers are working under new management I appointed. Rather than downing their tools, they are producing several times more crystal a month than they could under those now awaiting trial for their crimes.”

Commissioner Lanz looked like he’d swallowed something both surprising and poisonous. After several moments of looking like a landed fish trying to gulp down air, he got out, “But I have my warrant. From the Empress.”

“Who, no doubt, will withdraw it when she discovers she was misinformed.”

In a pig’s eye,
Vicky did not say aloud.

“But right at this moment, I have my orders.”

“And I am telling you that you will not land on that planet.”

Now the landed fish found some sort of backbone. “I am under the Empress’s protection.”

“And the miners of Presov are under my protection. I might add that my protection includes a battalion of Marines on the ground with them and this battleship in orbit. Which protection would you care to rely on at the moment?”

The fish took only a moment to flop and slithered back whence it came. Without another word, the screen went blank.

“They are powering up their engines,” sensors reported.

“Captain, will you please follow them as long as they are in orbit.”

“Yes, Your Grace.” He gave the necessary orders but motored his high-gee station over to Vicky’s elbow.

“Would you have ordered me to fire on that ship?” he whispered.

“Do you think I am so foolish as to threaten what I would not do?”

The man leaned back in his chair. “So that was what the admiral meant,” he muttered.

Vicky did not ask him to explain what he now thought the admiral meant. Since the poor captain had not been required
to act on anything, he might still be allowed to clutch some shred of ambiguity from which to hang his peace of mind.

Let us see how much longer we can put off starting the rebellion.

The
Golden Empress No. 34
dropped down, then applied power and made a clean break from orbit. On Vicky’s word—she still didn’t like to use the word “order” where the captain was concerned, and no doubt he preferred it as well—the
Retribution
adjusted its own orbit and managed to stay in the planet’s embrace.

They did prepare to receive the
Golden Empress No. 21
. It, however, chose to come in fast and low. After that pass, it swung out high, applied a lot of correction, and blew right out of orbit without completing one. Only when it was headed back to the jump did Vicky suggest that the
Retribution
join the two of them accelerating out.

The navigator had a course already in hand. “If we do two-gee acceleration and deceleration to the jump, we can catch up with the convoy just before they jump out of the next system.”

“That sounds good to me,” Vicky said.

“Make it so,” the captain said.

“Captain, I need to send a message back to Admiral von Mittleburg.”

“I imagine you do,” he said, but for her ears only.

“I wanted your permission before I used your communications.”

“Thank you,” he said, and turned back to his duties.

Vicky encoded her message using a single-use cipher. She brought Admiral von Mittleburg up to date on what had happened. “I suggest that you arrange for the reinforcement of the garrison on Presov. I suspect this is just the first attempt to take the mines back. This is just my guess, but I wouldn’t be surprised if not only the so-called scrapped ships are showing up either in her livery or as pirates, but if other merchant hulls that could be armed aren’t also hauled in for merchant cruiser conversion. Please ask Mayor Artamus to examine with your yard managers the prospects for outfitting some of those laid-up merchant ships with armaments.”

There, she’d said it. She was outfitting a fleet to fight the Empress’s fleet.

When Empress and Grand Duchess fight, who is the traitor?

Only the history books could tell, and the winner would write them.

As Vicky headed for Communications to dispatch her message, she passed a door marked
INTELLIGENCE CENTER
. In all her time on the
Fury
, she’d never seen such a door. Clearly, Admiral Krätz had his source for intelligence, but it did not rate something called a center.

Vicky tried the door. It was locked. She waved her ID card over the admittance sensor. The door stayed locked.

So she knocked.

A second class petty officer, young for his rate, opened the door a crack. His eyes lit up as he recognized her, but the door didn’t open farther.

“Lieutenant, the Grand Duchess is here,” he called.

“Well, don’t keep her standing in the passage. Open the door, Kelly.”

The door opened only wide enough for Vicky to squeeze inside. She did, with a whole centimeter to spare. What she saw brought her to a halt as the petty officer closed the door. It locked behind her with a solid click.

The room Vicky found herself in was Navy gray, but very spacious in a non-Navy way. Its bulkheads were lined with computer stations, only half of them occupied, and black boxes.

The black boxes were what gave Vicky pause. The computers and communications gear aboard ship all bore manufacturer’s labels with familiar brand names. Most owned by a Peterwald concern.

These black boxes were black and devoid of any markings. The Sailors hadn’t even taped nicknames on them or operating instructions.

Vicky blinked and turned to meet the approaching lieutenant.

“I’m so glad you came, Your Grace,” said the lieutenant, whose name badge identified him as Lieutenant Blue. Vicky wondered if that was any more his real name than Mr. Smith’s. “You saved me from having to find you and introduce you to our setup here. We have some interesting intelligence for you. Would you care to sit down?”

Vicky took the offered chair.

“We were able to sync with the ship’s main computer on that ship you talked to. I bet you didn’t know that it wasn’t christened the
Golden Empress No. 34
.”

“Yes, it was originally the
High Ball
, of the Humphrey Shipping Company,” Vicky said.

“So you do know.”

“I know about the reflagging of those ships, yes. Do you know more than I do?”

“A lot more. We got a complete dump from the ship’s main computer and from several others although there was at least one computer we could not so much as touch. I was warned to expect such things when around the Empress’s handiwork.”

“Yes,” Vicky said. “I know about that. What did you find out from your dump?” she asked.

“Not all of the Humphrey Line’s ships became
Golden Empress
es. The ships with the strongest scantlings, hull strength members, and reactors were ordered to the yards on Stettin. I checked. Stettin has the capability to make up to 6-inch lasers, although their 4-inchers for arming merchant ships are their most reliable product.”

“Yes,” Vicky said, “I know about Stettin. What I didn’t know about was the shunting off to them of the hulls most ready to be made merchant cruisers. That’s interesting.”

“That was the news we found the most eye-catching,” the lieutenant said. “There’s a lot more. We also caught a full update on what’s happening in the Empire, at least from one perspective.”

“Yes, though perspective is such a malleable thing these days. Do you have a comm station I can use? I need to change the message I’m sending Admiral von Mittleburg.”

The lieutenant looked pained. “Your Grace, we try to keep the equipment in here as separate from the rest of the ship as possible.” Then his eyes lit up. “We do have one standard comm station. We wipe it after every use, though, and reinstall its system.”

“Then that is what I would like to use.”

Vicky quickly had her computer interface with the comm station, uploaded her message, and updated it to change her hunch to a very likely fact. She added, D
EFINITELY HAVE
M
ANNIE LOOK INTO GETTING NAVAL LASERS MOVING UP TO THE STATION AND START ARMING THE BEST AVAILABLE MERCHANT HULLS FOR CRUISERS.
W
E WILL NEED THEM SOON ENOUGH.
M
ORE TO FOLLOW FROM ANOTHER SOURCE.

Vicky then had the updated message recoded and sent.

“You will send a full data dump to me and Admiral von Mittleburg as quickly as possible,” she told Lieutenant Blue. He’d been watching as words popped onto the commlink’s screen but showed no surprise.

“Yes, Your Grace. As soon as we have something to show.”

“Very good,” Vicky said. She paused for a moment. The lieutenant showed no interest in showing her around his domain. Vicky considered asking but then decided she very likely knew more than he would tell her.

While the
Retribution
had sailed with a captain chosen with Imperial approval, Vicky would bet money she didn’t have that this room had been outfitted after leaving Greenfeld. Quite likely at a Navy retirement colony that wasn’t only full of retired Sailors.

The Navy knew it was behind in the computer, signal-snooping, and intel games. Behind, maybe, but it was playing its own game of catch-up. This room no doubt sported the best the Navy had in the game.

Vicky nodded. “Well done, Lieutenant. All of you, a job well done.” And, having said all that needed saying, Vicky turned and left.

Just before the door clicked shut behind her, the room broke out in happy, confident talk.

So I leave behind me more folks happy to serve their Grand Duchess. I wonder how happy my stepmommy dearest’s worker bees are?

Then Vicky remembered the ones who’d gone down shooting when the odds were impossible.

It’s going to be a tough civil war.

T
HE
Kamchatka
and its lone merchant ship arrived at Presov before the
Retribution
jumped out of the system. The two
Golden Empress
es were fully committed to their jump by then. As planned, Vicky’s battleship yacht caught up with the
Rostock
’s convoy just before it made its next jump. That allowed them to hold one gee as they crossed the last system before their jump into Metzburg.

At the jump, no pirates blocked their way. The
Rostock
jumped into the Metzburg system first; they sent no warning back through the jump buoy. The
Retribution
and the merchants followed her through.

In system, they accelerated toward their goal, with silence their only companion.

Vicky was in her day quarters when intel reported that the planet up ahead appeared normal. “They’re going about business as usual. Strange they aren’t trying to talk to the five-hundred-pound gorilla in the room,” Lieutenant Blue reported.

“I’ll try to do something about my weight,” Vicky said dryly, while Commander Boch looked daggers at the lieutenant.

Lieutenant Blue smiled back, devoid of good sense and either missing the meaning of everything or refusing to acknowledge it.

I may keep this fellow close,
Vicky decided.

“Lieutenant, does intel have a station on the bridge?”

“No, Your Grace.”

“See about setting one up. Say, next to sensors. I’d like to compare what the sensors see and what you see.”

“If that’s what you want, Your Grace.”

“It is. I want you keeping track of things on any planet we approach. If you see anything that changes, especially regarding business and industry, let me know. If it’s 0200 hours, let me know.”

“Understood, Your Grace,” he said, and left to fulfill her wishes.

“Do you trust that man?” Commander Boch asked.

“I trust him as much as I trust anyone,” Vicky said. “Are we getting any reports from the men of business we sent out here first?”

“Nothing, Your Grace,” the commander said.

“I do not like the taste of this. Tell sensors I want a report of every ship in system. Every reactor burning hydrogen.”

“Yes, Your Grace,” and the commander now left her.

Kit and Kat eyed Vicky. “You are getting bitchy. Would you care for a bath, and maybe a massage afterwards?”

Vicky knew where that would lead. Did she want to be satiated and satisfied or stay cranky and bitchy?

She chose the latter and dismissed the seductive assassins.

“Computer, show me everything we know about the industry of Metzburg again. I want to see what it produces. What it needs. How it can go to war.”

The wall screen in her quarters began to cascade information.

Now, how do I bring it all together? Better yet, if I were my stepmother, how would I kick it all to pieces?

With a day of acceleration, a flip, and deceleration, they went alongside the pier at High Metzburg station early the next local day. No one on the station questioned their docking, but no one from the planet below sent so much as a greeting to their Grand Duchess.

Vicky took the beanstalk down into that continued silence.

She did not go alone. The commander had half a company of Marines around her, along with Kit and Kat. No surprise to
Vicky, but not to the commander’s liking, Lieutenant Blue and a second class petty officer joined her collection, black boxes in hand.

The space-elevator ferry carried the kinds of workers, businesspeople, and travelers you’d expect. Vicky took over half the VIP lounge with her teams. The Marines took station at the exits.

That didn’t stop customers from coming in for a drink and staying to talk.

Vicky exited the ferry to find that the ground station was as normal as could be. Of a welcoming committee, not so much as a gleam in anyone’s eyes.

What if a Grand Duchess came to visit and nobody noticed?
was not a thought she’d ever had, but she had it now.

The commander left to arrange transport and returned quickly. “There’s a limo waiting for you, Your Grace, and transport for the Marines.”

So there was. Out front, at the curb, waited a black limo and six black security rigs. There was also the Supply Corps commander who had been sent ahead.

“I’m the lead man the admiral sent with the first group on the destroyer
Viper
,” the supply commander told Vicky. “I’ve set up a meeting for you. Sorry about all the secrecy, but no one trusts their commlinks these days.”

“Understandably,” Vicky said.

As they left the elevator complex, two police cars fell in line ahead of the Marines. Another two pulled up the rear. The convoy sped up but did not head into the city but rather turned outwards, toward rolling hill country. They drove for less than half an hour before turning into what looked like a working ranch with one huge mansion on a low rise.

The enormous central building looked like someone had crossed a massive box with a spaceship. There were angles and glass everywhere. In the middle of it was a lake with fountains everywhere. Raised in a neoclassical palace, Vicky found the effect . . . disturbing.

She waited in the limo while the Marines, Commander Boch, and Lieutenant Blue did a security sweep. The commander was back in fifteen minutes to usher Vicky through one mammoth, coolly impersonal room after another, footsteps echoing off
marble walls. Finally, she was swooped up to a meeting room in a high-speed elevator of all glass, even the floor.

The room Vicky was ushered into was huge and cold. High glass walls showed a view that was both spectacular and intimidating. Above a long and wide marble table swept something like an airplane wing. From the screens spaced along its surface, the table might have been one huge computer.

Twenty men and women were widely spaced around its sides. The foot of the table was left open for Vicky. As she moved toward her place, the Grand Duchess quickly took in the people sharing the table with her. The faces raised to meet here were expected, with the usual blend of skin tones from olive to dusky. One was extraordinarily dark. Most were young to middle-aged in appearance, except the woman at the head of the table. She carried an unknown number of years with grace and poise. Her dress was a shimmering dance of crystal light that embraced the blue end of the color spectrum.

Vicky settled at her reserved place, then noted the lack of anyone else in the room who wasn’t seated at the table. She turned to the commander. “Leave us. Take the lieutenant outside and see to it that this room is not disturbed or monitored.”

His “Yes, Your Grace” and bow had obedience but no agreement in it.

No one spoke until the door was closed.

The woman at the head of the table broke the silence. “Your men may join our men, doing their best to see that these conversations are not distributed to the four winds. Personally, I doubt they will succeed.”

“We do seem to face superior tech,” Vicky admitted.

“Yes,
you
do,” the woman agreed. “The day before your ship jumped in system, we all received a notice of unknown origin, warning us to have nothing whatsoever to do with you on pain of earning our Empress’s severe displeasure.”

“The Empress’s displeasure. Not the Emperor’s, my father’s, displeasure.”

“While he takes his pleasure with the Empress, who rules but her?”

“Yes,” Vicky agreed.

The woman eyed Vicky as if to read her fortune on her
forehead. Dissatisfied with what she saw, she said, “What are you here to say that we risk so much to hear?”

Vicky cleared her throat and had her computer feed their computers the information the admiral had developed on crystal need and availability.

“I had thought,” Vicky said, “that the credit disruption was the main cause of our difficulties. I had
thought
that a bit of manipulation of the planetary banks by the black-hearted Empress and her clan might explain the sudden lack of central credit from the Imperial-enfranchised banks on Greenfeld. That lack of credit certainly is
a
problem, but crystal is
the
problem.”

“And how would you presume to solve this problem?”

“I now hold the crystal mines on Presov under my protection. Fabricators on St. Petersburg, fabricators that established themselves there without Imperial rescript or warrant, are ready to provide you with the crystal assemblies you so very much need. As production in the mines increases, no doubt raw crystal will come available to you as well.”

“Assuming we dare to risk Imperial ire by developing an industry for which Greenfeld holds an Imperial monopoly,” said the woman.

“Yes,” Vicky said.

The woman emitted a sigh. Others around the table seemed to be barely holding their tongues. The woman silently surveyed the others, then asked, “But at what cost?”

“You can imagine what the cost might be if you go against the Empress, and your imaginings can be quite dark, no doubt. However,” Vicky said, raising a hand with a finger pointing at no one, “what is the price for doing it the Empress’s way?”

Vicky did not wait for them to attempt an answer. “On my way here, we stopped an effort by the Empress to retake the crystal mines on Presov.”

There was a sudden gasp of surprise from people who had stayed bland-faced through everything thus far. Vicky went on. “We sent two Golden Empress Line ships on their way with a tattered warrant to return to the black-hearted Empress.”

Vicky had been wondering what to name her stepmother. Annah preferred to name herself golden. Vicky would love to
see her face when someone first let her know what she was called on the Grand Duchess’s side.

“You can see from the chart that Minsk, Cologne, and Dresden now have all the crystal they need. They are all under the boot of the Empress and Bowlingame’s Security Consultants. How are your family and associates making out there?”

Vicky paused only for a moment. “You
have
heard from your friends and relatives, haven’t you? Well, even if they are not saying much, you have tried to talk to them. Sent them messages?”

“Businesses that are not held by Imperial corporations do not need to talk to each other to carry out their activities,” the woman at the head of the table said with the sound of tired repetition in her voice.

“But your brothers and sisters are often the husbands and wives of those who run those businesses, are they not? I used to read the bridal registries as a young girl and dream. Have you not heard from your uncle or aunt, brother or sister? Has no one announced a new baby or pending nuptials? Has no one arranged a family reunion, or even shared a skiing vacation on New Alps?”

“Do you know something, or are you just filling the air with noisy speculation?” the woman demanded.

Vicky had watched the data cascade in front of her eyes. They’d been just cold names and numbers, reports and statistics. For this woman, they’d be flesh and blood. A family silent for too long was a growing chill around the heart.

“We stripped the
Golden Empress No. 34
of the content of its main computer in addition to several others. I have a report that brought me up-to-date on the official news of the Empire. What I found most scary was the private news, one commissioner to another. Foolish men brag . . . and often do it in easily broken codes.”

Vicky said a few words, and her computer began to spew out the organized report that Lieutenant Blue’s intel specialists had provided Vicky. At the time, they had just been the stories of wolves armed with Imperial warrants feeding on those helpless to protect themselves. Now, Vicky realized the full impact of her organizing the catalogue of crimes alphabetically, by
family names. For her it had been a convenient way to get a handle on crimes that seemed to go on forever.

For those seated around the table, it made for an easy search for their own family’s tragedy. Those who’d sat so quietly as the elder woman questioned Vicky now gasped and muttered curses.

“Can we trust this?” one young man demanded.

“Have you heard from your aunt lately?” an older woman snapped. “We knew they’d been strangely quiet of late. Now we know why.”

“The lieutenant waiting outside can provide any of you who want it the raw feed he got from the
Golden Empress No. 32
,” Vicky said. No doubt the Navy would be angry to have its capability flaunted so openly. Vicky would take that slap on the wrist when it came.

Today, she needed these people on her side.

The iron silence broke as people turned to each other, asking for whatever clarification might be found. Better yet, for anything that might prove that what Vicky had shown them was just another Peterwald lie.

A Peterwald bearing truth was a strange sight indeed. It took them a while to admit that what they saw from her was indeed true.

“Is there no court of law?” one man demanded. “If they actually bought my uncle out of his life’s work for next to nothing, worse than nothing, there must be a court that will hear this crime.” He had raised his eyes to the heavens, but he finished looking down the table at Vicky.

“Where Security Consultants hold Imperial warrants from the Empress, there are no courts to review their actions,” the Grand Duchess responded, keeping her temper and voice ice-cold.

Angry, despairing words wound down to another hard silence.

“So. There is this. What would you have us do?” the woman at the head of the table asked.

“Nothing that you are not already doing. You run businesses. You employ workers, meet payrolls. Some of you manage the banks that are now financing the industries that are struggling to hold themselves above water. I stand behind St.
Petersburg’s merchants, who want to sell you the raw stock you need to keep your plants running, your people working. That is all I came here today to do.”

“And what will you come here to do tomorrow?” came back at Vicky from the other end of the table.

“Today has enough evil for the moment. Let us worry about tomorrow when it comes.”

“But the Empress doesn’t want us to have anything to do with you, either today or tomorrow.”