Vicky Peterwald: Survivor (Vicky Peterwald Series Book 2) (4 page)

V
ICKY
hardly had a moment to step into the hall and take a deep breath and exhale before she was surrounded by a team of eight agents. Vicky did her best to look beautiful while Commander Schlieffen and the Special Agent in Charge did their bulls-suddenly-locked-in-the-same-pasture male thing.

It didn’t last overly long.

At the elevator, they were joined by two female agents. The ride down was uninterrupted and longer in length.

They stepped out into a lower parking level. Five large black, passenger vehicles waited with motors running. Vicky was escorted to the fourth one in line as the agents with her joined those waiting in the cars.

She was asked to fasten her seat belt. She did.

Then the ride got exciting.

In the screeching race up three floors of parking, her ride changed from fourth to second to third in line. This game of musical cars continued when they hit the street. She wondered about the wisdom of her being in the lead car or the trailing car, but while driving five minutes to the Hilton, her car changed its place in line at just about every block.

“Are they taking this too seriously, or am I at this much risk?” Vicky asked the commander.

He smiled. “I don’t see a problem.”

The hotel was much like the City Hall. She was taken to the lowest parking level, then whisked up an elevator to the top floor.

“I have the shower while you talk security,” she declared, and was lathering up nicely in a spectacularly luxurious shower a minute later. The needlelike hot water washed off the tension of the morning, leaving her pink both in skin and mind . . . and delighting at the thought of sharing it with the commander when the time came.

Said commander came into the bathroom as she was getting out of the shower.

“All measures have been arranged,” was all he got out before she threw herself on him, wet and willing. His shipsuit was already in need of washing, so getting it wet certainly was a minor thing. She wrapped her legs around him as he stumbled back into the bedroom.

“Things are a bit different from the ship,” he managed to mutter as her tongue explored his mouth.

Things were. No doubt she weighed more.

And there were two female agents across the bedroom.

One turned beet red.

The other, maybe a bit older, ushered the younger out and closed the door firmly behind them.

The commander fell backward into a large, fluffy bed. Vicky quickly lost herself in fulfilling all the promises she’d made him. She added some extras as a special reward for his outstanding performance in the hours since they’d docked at High St. Petersburg station.

It was a very pleasant hour and ended with her showing him just how delightful the shower was.

V
ICKY’S
computer announced the arrival of Mannie’s grandmadre. “She has clothes for you. The Senior Agent in Charge also has clothes for the commander.”

The bathroom offered fluffy robes. The commander helped Vicky into one, then quickly slipped into the other as she went to meet their public.

Grandmadre had brought Vicky a simple business suit and skirt in soft earth tones. Everything, from bra to skirt, was exactly one size too small.

“I may have erred a bit when asked your sizing,” the commander admitted.

His set of dress greens fit him perfectly.

“I know just the store for you,” Grandmadre assured Vicky.

That store was their first stop. It was small and quiet but as modern as any on Greenfeld. Vicky’s measurements were quickly taken by lasers.

The store also had an amazing quantity of merchandise. Apparently, what was in the store could be augmented by a quick run across the street or a duck down the alley.

The staff ducked and ran a lot.

The senior of the two female agents insisted Vicky add
ballistic protection to her ordered clothes, a recommendation supported by her own Senior Agent in Charge and Commander Schlieffen.

A beige suit that actually fit was quickly produced . . . with protection.

Vicky sighed as she put it on. She’d always been well rounded. Now her curves had padding.

The commander assured her she looked very cuddly.

A similar power suit, this one in red, was just as quickly made for her, armor and all.

Vicky balked when they tried to add ballistic protection to a simple black dress.

“First off, there’s not all that much dress here for you to armor,” Vicky pointed out.

“We were hoping you’d choose something more conservative,” the female agent said.

“I’m not,” Vicky said flatly.

The look on the agent’s face caused Vicky to offer a compromise. “Computer, do you have a copy of that new dinner dress uniform I wore at the palace not too long ago. The one I proposed that Admiral Heller authorize for all female Navy officers?”

“I do.”

“Provide it to them.”

The computer did. The entire sales staff quickly congregated around a hologram table where her diminutive self modeled the dinner dress uniform. From the sounds of their comments, they liked the design.

From the moans of the seamstresses, there was no way they could duplicate it anytime soon.

“We lack the cloth. We haven’t had any cloth of gold in months,” one pointed out.

“Those colors. We’d have to dye them ourselves,” another groaned.

“How did they get that skirt to fall that way with ballistic-resistant cloth?” a third asked.

“They didn’t,” Vicky said. “That dress was not armored.”

Vicky and the agent were back to a standoff.

“I will not go to dinner tonight looking like a brick outhouse,” Vicky said. She’d learned that expression during her Navy time and found it useful.

Vicky got her simple black dress.

As her purchases were bagged, the commander shook his head. “We have got to order you some of that spidersilk underall armor that they have in the U.S.”

“Why don’t we have any here?” Vicky asked.

“Restrictions on sales of it outside the U.S.,” Gerrit said. “We’ll have to smuggle it out.”

“Please have someone do it,” Vicky said.

Grandmadre returned Vicky to her suite a good four hours before Mannie was due to pick her up.

Vicky put it to good use. The commander voiced no complaints.

T
HE
mayor of Sevastopol voiced delight in Vicky’s appearance when he met her at the door at eight o’clock sharp.

There were eight large, identical, vehicles waiting for Vicky in the lowest parking basement of the Hilton. Again, they played shuffle car, but this time it was a lengthy drive that took them out of the city.

The dinner meeting that evening was at an estate high in the hills overlooking the city lights and enhanced by the sparkle of a newly risen full moon on the bay. Surrounded by croplands, pasture, and woods, the uniformed and armed troops walking the perimeter had clear lanes of fire.

The commander voiced approval.

“We’ve had need of a secure meeting location a time or two,” Mannie admitted. “This used to belong to the head of State Security for our province. I doubt there will be time for a tour this evening of the lower basements. I would have thought dungeons had gone out with the horse-and-buggy whip.”

“When I was a little girl, General Boyng, the head of State Security, used to give me the loveliest dresses,” Vicky said dreamily, then added cynically, “With bugs on them so he could
record my daddy’s conversations with me. I did not weep when my father had him killed,” she finished dryly.

“None of us did,” Mannie agreed. “It just would have been nicer if the destruction of the black shirts hadn’t taken the entire Empire down with them.”

“Yes, change is difficult. You seem to have managed it better than most.”

“Yes.” Mannie smiled at the praise. “We had the black shirts tamed and half replaced when your father chose to demolish the rest.”

They entered what might have passed for a hunting lodge on old Earth five hundred years ago. A wood fire blazed away with cheerful snaps. A dozen men and women awaited Vicky.

She was introduced to each one of them individually. Spouses had not been included in tonight’s invitation.

Colonel Mary White was introduced first. A tall, athletic woman, she’d been an explorer of the southern continent out in the back and beyond of Sevastopol when the need had arisen for a soldier. She’d mustered ranchers and distant farmers who had been allowed hunting rifles even under the old regime. A few retired Navy hands strengthened her organizational skills, and, suddenly, Sevastopol had an army.

“Now we’re standing up a National Guard. On old Earth, there’s an animal called the porcupine,” Colonel White said. “Sharp spines all over it. No one bothers it.”

“I doubt you’ll be bothered either,” Vicky offered.

“In a pig’s eye,” Mary spat. “We lose the Navy and we lose the high ground. Are we going to lose the Navy?”

“Not if the Navy has any say in the matter,” Vicky said, but aware of how insecure any meeting might be, she named no names.

Mary, the new-made colonel, didn’t look all that reassured.

Most of the remaining attendees were businesspeople, with only two women among them. Two were farmers who also had large ranching spreads in the valleys beyond the hills. All wanted to know what Vicky knew of matters on Greenfeld and how those would impact them.

Vicky answered with a shrug. “If this were a fairy tale, I’d say my father was under the spell of a witch. Unfortunately, this is no fairy tale, and what we are seeing is a middle-aged
man making a fool of himself with his new, much younger bride. The Bowlingame family in the meantime is taking full advantage of his distraction to grab for power and wealth. You are lucky to be this far out. It’s worse closer in.”

“And I hear say that you talked the mayors into us making ourselves a target,” one of the ranchers said.

“I’ve suggested that you expand your sphere of influence to include all the resources you need to make a successful go of it in the present circumstances,” Vicky said. “I don’t know who said that ‘No man is an island,’ but you know you aren’t. You, sir, grow cows and crops. They feed the hungry city. You get wondrous things like the clothes on your back and those nice boots on your feet. You want to make a go of it on your own?”

The man raised his glass in salute and took a sip of the fine liquor. “I do like the finer things in life.”

“For others out there, it’s not a case of the finer things in life, sir,” Vicky said, taking the offered opportunity to drive home her point. “There’s not enough of any of the basic things they need for daily living. Not even food. People are literally starving to death. I saw it when we passed through their systems headed out here.”

Vicky paused, hunting for a conclusion. “We built a civilization to provide us with the things that make life worth enjoying. Now that civilization is tearing itself apart at the seams. Civilized people count on each other for the basics of life as well as the luxuries. All that has vanished for a lot of people. Together, we can bring it back to them.”

Vicky glanced around the room. “You here on St. Petersburg can do something about it. Not for everyone, but for some. Do you really want to turn your back on a starving child?”

“That’s a strange argument coming from a Peterwald,” an older man, his paunch hanging over his belt, said. He’d been introduced as George Gatewood, an industrialist.

Vicky nodded. “I’m hearing that a lot. It kind of surprises me, too.”

That brought a round of silence, but it was an expectant silence.

“I don’t know why my dad decided to send my brother to the Navy. All his upbringing had been business, but there was Hank one morning at the breakfast table in a Navy commodore’s
uniform. I thought he looked so handsome and grown-up. We women have a weakness for guys in uniforms, don’t we?”

Two of the women present nodded agreement.

Mary’s grin was almost a leer. “A regular chick magnet.”

Vicky went on.

“Six months later, my brother was dead. I spent much of the next year trying to kill the woman I thought had killed him. You may have heard about her? Princess Kris Longknife.”

“You tried to kill her?” Mary was impressed.

“I tried. You may have noticed, she’s kind of hard to kill.”

There were nods.

“Then Dad shipped me off to the Navy, too. He didn’t say why. But there was no commodore’s uniform waiting for me. I was an ensign. A boot ensign.”

Vicky eyed Mary.

“You can’t get much lower than a butter bar LT,” the woman agreed.

“I learned basic things like how to shine my shoes. Dress myself. Keep my uniform shipshape. I learned to stand my watch and pull my weight. Not much weight at first, but more as I learned the Navy Way.”

She let her eyes rove around the circle. There was a lot of skepticism there, but maybe some belief. Some trust.

“There’s more to the Navy Way than shining shoes and getting your gig line straight. There’s things like duty and honor and professionalism. I hadn’t heard much about those things growing up in the palace. I learned it from Admiral Krätz.”

She paused. “And if I didn’t get it right, I got the toe of his boot up my ass.”

That brought a laugh.

“Up your Imperial ass?” Mary asked.

“For him, I don’t think there was anything Imperial about my rear end,” Vicky said. “I was a boot ensign, and my ass belonged to him.

“It was an entirely new sensation for me.”

That drew another laugh. Vicky let them enjoy it before she went on sardonically.

“And then there was Princess Kris Longknife. I kept running into her. A very strange woman.”

That drew nods all around.

“You went with her out there,” Mary said, motioning with her drink to the ceiling and the dark, star-speckled sky beyond.

“Yes, I went out there with Princess Kris Longknife in the Fleet of Discovery. And yes, I’m one of the few survivors who made it back.”

“How?” Mary demanded.

“More luck than any human had a right to, that I’ll tell you. Luck and some folks who were willing to fight to the death so that we might have even a slim chance of making it back here to tell the rest of you what’s out there.”

Mary took a drink from her glass. “Sometimes it’s like that.”

“And you have to learn to live with it,” Vicky said, then went on.

“Maybe I’ve seen as much dying as I care to in one lifetime.” Vicky discovered the words as they fell from her tongue. “Maybe it terrifies me that we’re falling apart at the seams when something like what we fought up there might drop into our sky tomorrow. I’ll let the historians decide for me. What I do know is that you here and the Navy up there have a chance to make it better for some folks who didn’t do anything to deserve what’s killing them.”

Again, Vicky let her eyes rove over her listeners, polling their souls. Now she saw understanding. Maybe not acceptance, but understanding for why a snake-in-the-grass Peterwald was trying to grow two hind legs and pass for human.

“We can make a difference. Why the hell won’t we?”

A bell rang. A voice announced. “Dinner is served.”