Vicky Peterwald: Target (11 page)

T
HE
palace was changing.

Great-Grandfather had built a large, four-story, hollow square, with the family living at the far quarter, the two sides having offices, and the front side divided between a large ballroom and an equally large banquet hall.

Grandfather had added two wings to the square with an even larger banquet hall and gigantic ballroom, along with offices. Lots of offices for his growing corporate power.

Dad had made only limited changes in his early years. A few extra outbuildings, several lovely gardens, and three fountains.

All that was changing now. From the look of the foundations being laid, the two long wings Grandfather had built were about to become mere sides to a pair of huge squares. And the entrance to the palace had sprouted a covered portico with columns.

As Vicky disembarked from the limo, she got a closer look. The portico was wooden, but beside it were marble columns laid out and marble blocks as well. Some night, the wooden framework would be hastily pulled down and the marble replacement quickly raised up in its place.

Great-Granddad had built in concrete. Granddad had built in granite. Dad would build in marble.
Ah, the requirements of Empire.

While her entourage organized itself, and her trailing courtiers caught up, Vicky took a moment to examine the work going on around her. There were a lot of laborers doing their best to put up the Imperial Palace . . . which left Vicky wondering where all the money for this was coming from.

According to the Navy’s best information, taxes were not flowing into the Imperial coffers at anything close to the expected rate. Where was Dad getting the money to pay for all this?

C
OMPUTER, WHAT DO WE KNOW ABOUT THE COSTS OF THIS CONSTRUCTION WORK?

T
HE REPORTS AVAILABLE TO ME HAVE NO INFORMATION OR ONLY VAGUE ESTIMATES ABOUT ITS COST, MA’AM.
I
CANNOT ANSWER YOUR QUESTION.

I
S MY FATHER, THE
E
MPEROR, BORROWING MONEY TO PAY FOR ALL THIS?

T
HAT IDEA HAS BEEN SPECULATED ON, BUT NO ONE HAS ANY SPECIFIC INFORMATION.

No help there. Vicky tried another tack. C
OMPUTER, WHAT ARE THE FIVE LARGEST BANKS ON
G
REENFELD?

The computer rattled off five names, only two of which were familiar to Vicky. She fed back the other three names and asked the computer who owned them.

It quickly provided three names, all ending in Bowlingame: the Empress’s father, her uncle, and one cousin. Vicky remembered something about them. A
REN’T ALL THREE OF THEM TAX FARMERS?

A
LL THREE OF THEM OWN LARGE TAX-GATHERING FIRMS THAT ARE UNDER CONTRACT FROM THE
M
INISTER OF
F
INANCE TO INVESTIGATE TAXES THAT ARE IN ARREARS.

Vicky had to suppress a giggle. How cute. Dad was likely borrowing money that the contractors had skimmed off the taxes actually due him.

I wonder if there have been any audits of those tax contractors lately,
Vicky thought to herself.

T
HERE HAVE BEEN AUDITS,
her computer answered;
HOWEVER, THE
N
AVY FINDS THE FIRMS THAT DID THE AUDITS ALL WERE OWNED, IN ONE WAY OR ANOTHER, BY PEOPLE CONNECTED TO THE
E
MPRESS’S FAMILY.
T
HEY DOUBT THE AUDITS WERE RELIABLE.

Time after time, as she grew up, Vicky had been told just how sharp a businessman her dad was. And not always by himself, either. Why was he letting himself be hoodwinked by the likes of Vicky’s stepmom and her extended and grasping family?

Men! Worse, middle-aged men!
Vicky spat, but only in her mind.

The circus around her was finally forming up. It had grown. Several men in knee pants, silk hose, and doublets of various cuts and colors had joined her. A few sported silver chains of office. One held a solid-looking staff; wood, inlaid with gold.

“If Your Imperial Grace would care to change before her audience with His Imperial Majesty?” the staff holder suggested.

“We would not think of keeping our father, His Imperial Majesty, waiting. It has been so long. We will go now,” was pure Imperial command.

The majordomo led the way with his staff of office.

The dozen steps he led Vicky up were still wooden and creaked a bit under the weight of her parade. Vicky led, with Mr. Smith and Doc Maggie right behind her, flanked by Kit and Kat. The two sensors trailed them just ahead of the Marine captain and his men in a double file, with shouldered arms.

Some of the courtiers from the space-elevator station tried to attach themselves to the majordomo, but most ended up trailing the Marines. The palace guards formed a thin outer layer to the Marines, leaving open the question of just who was guarding whom.

The entrance hall had gone from business efficient to gilded cage with marble and gold everywhere, and dazzling chandeliers making it all sparkle.

Vicky’s estimate of what her dad had borrowed doubled.

It was in the entrance hall that the majordomo turned to Vicky. “Your men are under arms. They must disarm.”

Vicky did her own assessment of her safety in this vast shooting gallery and she really didn’t want her Marines all that far from their loaded weapons.

“Our honor guard has their weapons on safety and no rounds in the chamber,” the Grand Duchess informed the lackey. “They have protected us through two assassination attempts.
We
will not be without them. “

A colonel from the palace guard joined them, an unctuous smile on his face. “Maybe if Her Grace will allow us to assure that the Marines’ weapons are on safety and the bolts are open on no rounds . . .”

Vicky allowed herself time to consider an option she would have accepted at the drop of a hat. After the proper interval, she nodded. “Captain, please join the colonel in inspecting our honor guard.”

The two officers went down the two lines of Marines who smartly presented arms with their bolts pulled back on empty chambers. That done, the colonel nodded agreeably.

“Now, sir, if you will, do the same for your guards,” Vicky said. While butter might melt in her mouth, there was clear, sharp steel beneath her words.

The colonel and the Marine captain again reviewed the troops, only this time it was the black-and-reds. Three of the six had rounds in the chamber and two of those had not safetied their weapon.

The young lieutenant drew a glare from his colonel. If it portended for him what such a glare from Admiral Krätz forecasted for a certain young ensign, it meant a future Vicky would hate to have for herself but would dearly love to watch as it overwhelmed another.

Two servants arrayed in cloth of gold opened the huge double doors, and they now processed into the Imperial throne room.

Don’t gawk, girl,
Vicky had to remind herself.

Thanks to her Navy apprenticeship, Vicky had learned to take in a lot from her peripheral vision while staying smartly at attention, eyes front. She put it to good use.

The former ballroom now had a row of marble columns setting off the center from two side porticos. Guards stood at each column, protecting it from what? Walking away? Being carried off?

But it was the courtiers that almost made Vicky’s mouth fall open. The men were in silk short pants and stockings with brocade coats of every color that glittered and shone. The women were hardly less spectacular in hoopskirts and tight bodices that lifted and damn near revealed as much as that dress Vicky had worn for the reporters.

But there, she’d been the center of attention.

Here, there were so many women competing for the men’s eyes that it must have all the men on overload.

Only the men seemed to pay the women no attention. All eyes were on Vicky . . . when they weren’t on her dad.

Father wore those short breeches and silk stockings, with a flowing cloak of brilliant purple cloth widely edged in ermine. He sat a gilded throne, six steps up from the common floor. There was a slightly less gilded affair on his left one step down, and an only slightly less fancy perch two steps down on his right.

Vicky would bet that was where she was expected to squat and set a spell, as Admiral Krätz would say.

She was about a third of the way to the throne when the majordomo brought them all to a halt. “Everyone approaching the Imperial throne is expected to bow . . . or in the case of a woman, curtsy . . . three times,” he whispered. “The first one is here.”

Vicky dearly wished she’d been briefed on this. She was wearing Navy dress whites and had chosen the option of the choker blouse and trousers. When it appeared that she might have to run for her life, it had seemed like a good choice.

Now, not so much.

How ridiculous would she look attempting a curtsy in this rig?

Totally.

Now Vicky understood why most of the men in court affected wide-brimmed hats with large feather plumes. Those would look gorgeous in a sweeping bow.

Vicky’s Navy-issue cover would look absurd being swept around in such a show.

The Grand Duchess took a deep breath, swept her hat from her head to under her left arm, drew her right leg back, and did a rather decent job of “making a leg.” Admittedly, the sweep of her right hand seemed rather bare without a plumed bonnet of some sort, but military styling was more centered on the practical than the Imperial.

She was better prepared for the second one, and was getting downright comfortable with it by the third time.

Through all of them, the majordomo looked like he was about to split his gut over a woman’s refusing to curtsy.

Or maybe it was a woman in pants.

Very likely it was both.

Her team did themselves up proud. As she completed her third bow, Mr. Smith led the first line in a retreat to the left. The lieutenant and chief followed his lead. The Marine captain had his two files do a smart column right or left and marched off to guard the nearest marble column that might take it in its head to flee the scene.

But Vicky was busy with other concerns while they did that all on their own.

“Daughter, I am so relieved to see you. I wasn’t sure you would ever make it back. Come closer. Let me get a good look at you.” Dad sounded sincere.

But then, he usually did. He was very good at “sincere.”

“There were times I wasn’t sure I’d ever see you again, either, Dad. Or should I say Your Imperial Majesty?”

“Hang it all, girl. I’ve forgotten to use the Imperial ‘We,’ I was so glad to see you.”

Maybe it wasn’t “sincere” but something real?

He opened his arms and she ascended all six steps in a rush and let him give her a hug. The first one in how long? Since she was ten?

“Was it as bad as they said it was?” he asked her.

“It got pretty bad there a few times, Dad. A lot of good people died. I hope it was worth it.”

“But it’s all the way on the other side of the galaxy, right? We don’t have anything to worry about here,” he said, and glanced to the left of the throne.

Admiral Waller, chief of the Navy General Staff, at least on Greenfeld, stood there, a bit behind the throne. Now, he stepped forward.

“It is, of course, as you say, Your Imperial Majesty. Unless, of course, Her Grace wishes to venture a different opinion based on her experience.”

He raised an eyebrow toward Vicky, and if there was a bit of a roll to his eyes, space legs had nothing to do with it.

So Dad doesn’t want to think about the monsters under the galaxy’s box springs. Vicky wondered if she dared try to raise doubts in her father’s mind. “There were the Iteeche survey ships that went missing,” she ventured. “That was why we went out there in the first place.”

“Iteeches, they hardly belong in space,” her dad spat. “Their ships likely took a wrong turn and just got lost. Besides, if the problem was off there beyond Iteeche space, why would that Longknife girl take off in the opposite direction? Of course, there’s always cowardism when you’re dealing with a Longknife, but she sure got her tits in a wringer if she thought going the wrong way would keep her safe, didn’t she?”

“Quite painfully,” Admiral Waller agreed.

So that was the way it was on the home front.

“What has happened to Kris?” Vicky ventured to turn the subject away from pure fantasy.

“The devil only knows,” Dad said. “Ray Longknife does not look at all happy with the mess she made, losing a fleet of ships from four different alliances. You know, I’ve sent him a bill for four battleships. A bill for the ships and the cost of annuities to pay the pensions of the widows. He hasn’t answered me. Der Vill, we must send him a reminder. I won’t have him just forgetting me. After all, I’m an Emperor. He’s only a king.”

A fancy-dressed old graybeard with a gold chain of office nodded, turned to someone much younger, said a few words, and the younger man sprinted off.

Dad smiled at how promptly his words were turned into actions.

Vicky suppressed a sigh. What was the worth of doing quickly something that was a total waste of time?

Dad turned back to Vicky and seemed to take her in fully for the first time. “Vicky, dear, you’re uniform is mussed. What happened to you?”

“There was a bit of an accident on the expressway coming in,” she said, and glanced at Admiral Waller. He gave her the tiniest shake of the head and a “don’t go there, girl” warning.

“Apparently someone tried to pass us at high speed and knocked into my car. Then they bounced off the concrete divider. It became quite a mess after that.”

“Oh, dear. Commissioner Martin, why didn’t you tell me this had happened? Do we need to restrict traffic on the expressway when Imperials are using it? Or should we reserve it totally for people at court who can recognize their betters and get out of the way?”

“I will look into it immediately and have a report for you in the morning,” said Commissioner Martin. A much younger man, he looked rather slick in his doublet and hose. His chain of office was also gold.