“Very wise advice, good Mayor.”
CHAPTER 52
VICKY found that the third time she presented her proposal for St. Petersburg’s new future, it flowed smoothly into a natural structure. That was good. Its third audience needed to have it fed to them smoothly.
It did not go down easily.
She was hardly into her proposal before she was getting looks from around the table like she had never gotten before.
Half eyed her with eagerness, ready to follow her to hell and back. The other half clearly thought her mad and well gone around the bend.
“This treason is just plain suicide,” one banker shouted into the silence when she had finished her presentation.
“Maybe it is suicide, but if it isn’t, it’s the future for my kids, grandkids, and their grandkids as well,” followed on the heels of the first response.
Vicky sat down and allowed the initial reactions to gently wash around the room like a tsunami. By the clock, it took a full half hour for the waters to calm.
Finally, someone voiced an idea that captured unanimous consent. “Come on now, none of us here are innocents in the woods. We’ve all had our hands in a bit of smuggling somewhere in our lives. If we haven’t actually done the smuggling, we’ve passed this or that trade off to someone who has. And you bankers, you’ve funded a few accounts here and there that didn’t make any sense on the usual ledgers, now haven’t you?” The speaker raised his hands in an expressive shrug. “We smuggle a bit of this or that to New Brunswick or Metzburg, and they smuggle what we want right back.”
The room heaved a sigh of assent, and everyone smiled.
Until Vicky cleared her throat and said, “That confession of ancient sins sounds delightful, but it won’t work. Not in the here and now.”
She could not have unsettled the room more by lobbing a hand grenade onto the table.
“Hold it, Peterwald,” snapped an attractive young woman, one of the few females present. She sported a bright red power suit and had been a strong ally of Vicky’s until a moment ago. Now she was on her feet. “Did I miss something? Wasn’t this your idea? Are you suddenly getting all Peterwald graspy at talk of a bit of smuggling?”
Vicky waited for the table side chatter to settle to a dull roar. “No. I still support the idea. However, you will not be able to implement it with a bit of smuggling here, there, or yonder.”
“And why not?” the young woman demanded, hands on hips.
Vicky stood to face the woman eye to eye. “Because smuggling is out of the question. You smuggle a little bit of this or that by adding a few containers to this ship or that. You slip them through customs with a wink and a bribe, and all is well. Smuggling gets lost or hidden in the normal flow of trade. I’m sure you have noticed that nothing is normal about the flow of trade these days.”
Many around the table mouthed a silent “Oh.” The young woman actually gave voice to a squeaked one.
“The situation is even more complicated than that. We don’t just have a lack of trade. We actually have ships in space with a clear intent to restrict trade and even blockade certain planets,” Vicky said, going on in the face of growing amazement around the wide, gleaming conference table.
“My darling stepmama and the rest of the Bowlingame family are not just grabbing the fruit that falls as Greenfeld wallows through this autumn of its life but are actively shaking the tree.”
The woman in red had collapsed into her chair. Vicky settled into her seat, refusing to tower over those around her.
“Last night, Admiral von Mittleburg shared some of the nastier sides of our present situation. As revenues have shrunk, so has the official budget. So has the budget of the Navy. Ships that still had several years of use in them have been laid up in ordinary. Some have even been sold for scrap to raise money, no doubt so my father could pay the stonemasons working on his palace,” Vicky said dryly.
“The problem is, some of those scrapped ships have been showing up in the crosshairs of ships still serving our Empire.”
Vicky paused to let that sink in. “Just last month, a Navy light cruiser found itself fighting a Bremerhaven class heavy cruiser.”
That drew a gasp.
“Fortunately, the amateurs fighting the larger guns were less well trained and officered. The Emden left the pirate bloodied and glad to surrender. Navy intel is still going over the captured data, but they have a pretty good picture of what the pirates are up to and why. The only thing they haven’t been able to get to the bottom of is the “who.”
“What is going on?” Mannie asked in pure puzzlement.
“We are all suffering as trade shrinks,” Vicky said. “But we are not suffering fast enough for some people’s greed. These pirates have been unleashed to speed the decline of trade, and the Navy has been shrunk to cause the pirates less trouble, if not to fatten the pirates on the ships stripped from the fleet.”
“Damn their black hearts,” Mannie muttered.
“Yes,” Vicky agreed. “Interrupted trade causes fabricators to close down. No work sends jobless men and women into the streets. Overburdened governments can hardly feed the starving. And when the hungry riot, the Security Consultants arrive with an offer to bring back law and order, but at a price. A very high price, because the vultures quickly strip off what is worth taking at a price that would have been thought a bad joke only a few months before. My in-laws are building themselves a private empire off the scraps they strip from the carcass that was our Empire.”
Vicky paused, then made a sour face. “Did I mention that I do not like my new in-laws very much?”
“May I mention that I never had any love for any Peterwald?” the woman in red said.
“I have begun to see just why we are not loved,” Vicky said. “The last few years have been an eye-opening experience for me, as the Navy showed me what had been missing from my training, and a certain Wardhaven princess rubbed my face in my own shortcomings. She also laughed at some of the more absurd aspects of what I had been raised to firmly believe in.”
Vicky ran a worried hand through her hair. “It has been a tough time for me,” she said, but then turned to face those around the table. “But a worse time for you and the Empire.”
“You found out about this blockade gambit last night,” Mannie said.
“Yes.”
“But you still brought this idea to us this morning? I take it that you don’t see the lack of the smuggling option to be a showstopper.”
“No.”
“How?” the mayor asked.
“We do for Metzburg and New Brunswick what we did for Poznan and Presov. We load a convoy with what they need and we can provide, then have the Navy escort it to its destination. If pirates attempt to stop us, the Navy blows them out of space.”
“You make that sound simple,” the woman in red said.
“It has been simple enough to work in the real world. I’m told simplicity tends to.”
“But it lacks something,” the woman said, waving a hand. “What shall I call it? Subtlety? No. How about secrecy? We fit out a fleet and parade it halfway into the heart of the Empire. Everyone will know what we’re doing.”
“And right now they don’t already know it?” Vicky said, raising both eyebrows in mock shock.
“These consultations are secret,” the woman snapped. “We swore it among ourselves.”
“I have been a guest on your planet for only a short time,” Vicky said, “and already there have been two attempts on my life. Just yesterday, a little note from my loving stepmom was slipped into my computer in a fashion that left the best security technicians dumbfounded. Do you honestly think that you can do anything without its being reported to certain circles on Greenfeld?”
The tsunami of shock, fear, and desperation smashed back into the room. It swept around the table before swirling into eddi
es of panicked conversation.
Vicky waited again for the waters to calm, then stood. “You have the same choice I have.” She held up her fist. “One, you can wait for them to come for you.” She raised her thumb.
“Two”—she jabbed her pointer finger out—“you can run away and hide and hope you are not worth the cost of hunting you down and hanging you.”
She paused and emitted a laugh that came out sounding more like a cackle. “I don’t have that option.”
“Or”—she added her middle finger to the jab—“we can grab for something we want, that your planet needs, and make your future better than your past. We go for it and do our best to get away with it for as long as we can before anyone figures out what we’re up to. And maybe, in the grabbing, someone we all love to hate will unbalance herself into a pratfall. Remember, those who hoist themselves up on the bodies of their innocent victims can fall a very long way.”
Vicky let her eyes circle round the table. “Which will it be?”
The silence was hard and went long. Eyes flitted from one to another around the table as friends, allies, maybe even enemies silently took each other’s measure and waited for someone to launch themselves into the long hush.
“It seems to me,” the woman in red finally said, “that you have taken that second option. You fled Greenfeld to try to lose yourself on St. Petersburg. We are just about as far from the palace as you can go and still have indoor plumbing.”
That drew a nervous laugh from around the table.
“I think I have a higher opinion of St. Petersburg than you may have,” Vicky offered. “Yes, I fled here, but I fled to a planet that had the best industrial base I knew of.”
“Knew of and owed you a bit of a debt,” the woman shot back.
“Knew of and was in better shape because I had stuck my neck out and helped you when you asked for it.”
“Helped us because a certain Princess Kris Longknife suggested you help,” was sharp as any knife.
“Yes. I admitted that the last couple of years have been a learning experience for me. There’s nothing wrong with learning from the best, even if they are one of those damn Longknifes.”
Laughter softened the hard edge of the silence. Around the table, people turned to each other and whispered among themselves. Vicky could only hope they were not taking the counsel of their fears.
“How will we work this trade?” a man asked. “Ships showing up in orbit with a load of miscellaneous junk might work for planets in the depth of collapse, but I don’t see Metzburg and New Brunswick in that shape.”
“Many of you have business agents on those planets,” Mannie put in. “Admittedly, we were limited to selling dried fruits and fine wines before, but we have agents, and we can have them quietly check into expanding the range of our product line to include dried electronics and fine crystal fabrications.”
Again the room tasted the softness of shared laughs.
“You can have most of what we’re carrying already sold before it arrives in orbit, and most of what you want built and waiting for us on the pier as we dock,” Vicky said. “As quickly as we can off-load and onload, we’ll be out of there and on our way back here.”
“But you said our convoy could be fighting its way through a blockade of pirates with heavy cruisers. Some of us have heard about the Attacker. The pirates got it good,” the woman in red pointed out.
“Have you heard of my new yacht?” Vicky said, most daintily. “Its name is the Retribution, and it sports 18-inch guns and three-meter armor.”
“You call that a yacht?” the woman said, eyes wide.
“I’m a Grand Duchess. I do things a bit grander than most,” Vicky said, grinning.
“I should say you do.”
“What will happen to us if we start this new trade route?” a man asked.
“You will make enemies in high places,” Vicky said, as offhand as she could manage. “Or should I say, you already have people in high places plotting your downfall and plunder. You will make them unhappy. Is that a problem?”
“Not in my book,” Mannie said. Now it was his turn to stand. “For those of us living in Sevastopol, Greenfeld has kept us under its boot for a very long time. Sometimes harder than others, but there was never any doubt: We were the dirt. They were the boot, and they had the upper hand.
“Well, thanks to our city charter, we managed to soften the boot, but it was still a boot. Then things went to hell for some of you, but we down on the south coast managed to make lemonade out of those lemons. It was also nice to not have a boot on our necks.”
He turned to Vicky. “I don’t have a doubt that under any projected regime likely to take hold in the palace on Greenfeld, there is a boot in my future. Under the Empire I see in Vicky’s eyes, there is no such boot. Not for Sevastopol. Not for St. Petersburg. Not for the Empire.
“I don’t know about you, but I’m game for this chance for a change. I’ve had enough of boots; let’s see what we can do about making our own future.”
That got a few cheers from the table.
The woman in red stood silent, though. When the room grew quiet again, she shot a verbal dart at Vicky. “Do we need a damn Empire? What have the Peterwalds and the Empire ever done for us but keep that damn boot of yours, Mannie, on our necks. Put that in your pipe, Your Grand Douchessness, and smoke that.”
Vicky couldn’t say that she was surprised at the shot. She’d even found herself gnawing on that question quite a bit of late. Not while she was growing up. Not while she lived in the warm embrace of the palace. But fleeing from the palace had caused her to reflect, and in reflection, find herself questioning.
She examined the possible comebacks and found the first one the best.
“I’m not surprised at your barb, ma’am. I’ve found myself considering the same question as I dodged one assassin after another sent by the Empress. I think most of you were raised like me, to sing the praises of Greenfeld, and if it wasn’t an Empire back then, it sure walked and quacked like one, or so it seemed to me.”
She got a few nervous chuckles at that.
“I do not doubt that whatever we had is dead and gone. What we will have for your kids and grandkids and their grandkids will depend a lot on what we do here and now.
“Now, as for me?” Vicky laid her hands on the table and spread her fingers wide. “Princess Kris Longknife shared something with me that likely won’t surprise any of you. She has no idea what a princess is worth. She isn’t at all sure that the worlds need another princess, but she is one, at least for now, and she’s willing to see just how high she can push up the value of a princess.”
Vicky clinched her fists. “I don’t know what a Grand Duchess of Greenfeld is worth, either. What I do know is that I’ve got the title, and I see things that need doing. So, right now, I will use my Grand Duchess card to get all I can for the good people who have paid too damn high a price for this Empire my father has declared.
Vicky chose her next words carefully. I will not betray the Navy’s trust.
“If you feel that you can get some good for you out of me, I’m here to be used. If you have a problem with me, come, talk to me, and we’ll see what we can work out. You don’t have to be afraid of me. I am not followed about by an Imperial headsman. I have yet to order anyone’s head off. Maybe I’m a fool, but I think this Grand Duchess is worth more on the hoof than hung in the closet.
“What do you say?”
“I think you are worth a try,” Mannie said, right on the downbeat.
“It sounds worth it to me,” came from another. “I’m game.” “There’s bound to be one good Peterwald in the bunch,” seemed to fill the room.
The woman in red spoke last. “Yes. I do think we should give you a try.” She paused for a moment, then went on in a businesslike fashion. “So, Your Grace, how do you propose we work this t
hing? Do we come up with a wish list and an offer list and send it off in the mail to our factors on those planets? I’m no expert on the Imperial mail of late, but that looks like a good way to wave a red flag, or worse, get our mail intercepted and never delivered.”
“I couldn’t agree with you more,” Vicky said. “How about you come up with your two lists and I see if the Navy has a light cruiser or destroyer going that way. We deliver it for you and make sure it gets where you want it to go.”
“Having the Navy deliver it would also show the level of our support,” Mannie pointed out. “This isn’t just something a few, ah, intrepid souls are doing.”
“A few intrepid, traitorous souls,” the woman in red countered.
“Whoever is making the offer,” Vicky said, “having the Navy behind it will make it more real. Especially since you’re asking for heavy industry, the kind of heavy industry a Navy needs to get work done on its ships.”
“I think that will work best,” a banker said, eyeing the young woman in the red power business suit.
“If you insist, Preston,” the woman said.
“Then let us begin composing our lists,” an industrialist suggested.
“While others of us figure out how to pay for it,” a banking type added.
CHAPTER 53
VICKY found herself ushered out of the meeting on Mannie’s arm. Commander Boch rose quickly from his seat beside the door and opened it for them.
“Would you care for a late lunch?” the mayor asked her.
“It has been a long time since breakfast,” she admitted.
Kit and Kat joined them from their monitoring posts outside the conference room, accompanied by four of Mannie’s local security crew. As they waited for the elevator, Vicky cast a glance back at the door behind which the rumble of discussion was quite audible.
“Do we dare leave them alone?” she muttered to herself.
“Your father likely would not,” Mannie said, “but do you want to walk in the ruts he left?”
Vicky Peterwald: Survivor (Vicky Peterwald Series Book 2) Page 22
