Vicky Peterwald: Survivor (Vicky Peterwald Series Book 2)

by Mike Shepherd

“Thank you,” this time came out loud, but was lost in the wash of applause.

  She took several deep breaths. They were filled with the sweet air perfumed by the flowers and the roar of the people of Kiev.

  From deep in her chest, she brought up the voice Admiral Krätz had forced her to find. The voice of command. This time her “Thank you,” was just as loud as the applause.

  It did not stop it. It rolled on and on, drowning her in its thanks that she was still alive.

  Now two young people were ushered onto the stage. Vicky smiled as she recognized the girl even without her huge pink bear. Today, the two youths held flowers. They were simple bouquets of the kind a young boy might cut illicitly from a neighbor’s garden so he could give his girl her first bouquet.

  Vicky accepted the flowers and hugged the two kids, squishing the flowers between them. No doubt, her dress blues now showed streaks from yellow and lavender pollen.

  The two children stepped back. The boy did a bow. The girl’s attempt at a curtsy might have ended with her sprawled on the floor, but her brother spotted the impending disaster and grabbed her arm.

  Vicky laughed. It was possibly the most heartfelt and joyous laugh of her many years of laughing on cue.

  The applause showed no signs of abating. Vicky wondered how any pair of hands could keep this up.

  Mannie stepped up to the microphone. “Her Grace has words she wants to share with you. Would you like to hear them?”

  The clapping was replaced by a roar of “Yes,” and, slowly, silence elbowed its way into the stadium.

  Vicky found herself wiping away more tears before twenty thousand pairs of expectant eyes. She swallowed the emotions in her throat and spoke.

  “I want to thank you for all that you have done to secure my safety,” she said. No need for an Imperial and impersonal we. These words were personal, between herself and twenty thousand of her very best friends.

  The applause leapt out again, pouncing on the silence and banishing it. Vicky smiled into it, wiped tears again and waited for her next opening.

  The applause this time wound down before it became embarrassing.

  “I know that many of you were involved in breaking the chains that held me captive. I thank you from the bottom of my heart.”

  It was some time before she could go on. Again, she had to wipe away tears.

  “I know that no citizen of Kiev had anything to do with my abduction, and I want you all to know that I will always hold the people of Kiev close in my heart.”

  The applause exploded, spiked by whistles and cheers. There were shouts of “Yes” in the roar, as well as “Thank you” and “Our Grand Duchess,” or maybe it was “Our Generous Duchess.” Vicky couldn’t make the words out clearly.

  It didn’t matter. These people were special to her, and she would remain special to them. Vicky waved. Standing before her, people waved back. Men and women threw kisses, and she blew them kisses in return.

  The mayor of Kiev came to lead her away, and the cheering rose to impossibly new levels. Now Vicky did find she had hands to shake and hugs to exchange. The Kiev City Council was thirty strong, and each was there to say a few words of personal apology and offer the Grand Duchess best wishes in the future.

  Offstage, there was a lineup of stagehands who wanted to offer their own heartfelt wishes that she might never come into such danger as she had now been delivered from.

  Only then was Vicky able to make her exit, leaning heavily on Mannie’s arm.

  “I’m exhausted,” she confessed.

  “Great approval can be just as taxing as great censure,” Sevastopol’s mayor observed.

  “It is, however, a whole lot more fun,” Vicky said, allowing him a warm smile as he handed her into the limo that would take her to the spaceport.

  Inside, the jump seats were taken by Kit and Kat, each close to a window. Between them was Commander Boch, looking very much like a man with a report to make.

  Vicky settled deeply into the leather of her seat, allowed herself two deep breaths, finished with an exhausted sigh, and faced the commander.

  “What can you tell me that you didn’t know last night?”

  “Quite a bit, Your Grace. There are people in custody who are talking so fast we don’t have time to ask them questions. I can’t tell if their verbosity is the residue of State Security’s reputation or the sea change that has come over this planet’s attitude toward the Peterwalds. Or maybe just one Peterwald,” he ventured.

  “It might be,” Mannie added, “that our local organized crime has turned its organizing force toward the safety of the Grand Duchess.”

  “You know your organized crime?” Vicky asked.

  “Certainly. They paid their tithe to State Security and did what we needed them to do. Some were just petty criminals, smugglers, black marketeers, the things that made a failing economy work. Others were less socially acceptable but met the appetites of the less virtuous.”

  “And this went on under State Security’s nose?” Vicky demanded.

  “Here and everywhere else, I suspect.”

  Vicky pondered that for a moment. “I never heard that from my father. I wonder if he knew. Which makes me wonder if State Security’s private machinations were only minor games compared to what the Empress’s family has now started.”

  Mannie said nothing but raised a quizzical eyebrow.

  “Kris Longknife once challenged me on who was really running this Empire. I assured her it was my father. It seems I may have been a bit naive.”

  “We tell our young about a world we want them to believe in,” Mannie said. “As grown-ups, we live in a world devoid of such illusions.”

  “So it seems. I’ll think about all this when I have a spare moment. For now, Commander, what can you tell me about the plot that left me cuffed to a bed and dying of thirst?”

  “You were correct yesterday to raise the question of how your attackers got on this planet, what with trade so limited and traffic between planets near nonexistent. We showed the pictures of the dead bodies around the station, and a tramp freighter’s captain immediately identified them as the passengers he landed here a week ago.”

  “He was hired to bring them. Didn’t that raise any questions?”

  “Actually, the captain made the jump from Hobarton to here hoping to get a cargo of crystal assemblies he could sell on Metzburg. He’d heard we had crystal to sell. The ‘lawyers’”—a sour twist Commander Boch made as he spoke the word put it in quotes—“said they had been retained by the home offices to aid the defendants of the Mine Manager’s Co-op of Presov.”

  “Were they?” Vicky asked.

  “Initially, it appeared so. They immediately dropped down and met with the defendants. Only later did we check on how that meeting went.”

  “And it went . . . ?” Mannie asked.

  “Not well. They presented credentials introducing themselves as lawyers and told Mr. Adaman and his associates they were here for them, but, as the conversation went on, they seemed to lack any sort of grounding in the law. The Co-op had already retained some local lawyers here. The managers had been talking about their expectations of an Imperial pardon, but they also have heard tales of loyal servants hung out to dry. Anyway, our local lawyers listened to this new delivery and suggested to Mr. Adaman that he might want to continue to retain lawyers who understood the local law.”

  “Local law,” Vicky said. “I wasn’t aware that Imperial law was given to local accents.”

  “It may have just been our lawyers’ way of suggesting that this new bunch didn’t know their briefs from boxers.”

  It took Vicky a moment to catch the joke. It took the commander a bit longer to allow a smile. Kit and Kat totally missed it, but then, they were intent on what was going on around the limo. Vicky had a large escort this trip: Marine, police, Rangers. Still,
her own assassins were taking no chances.

  “So, what did our lawless lawyers do after talking with their so-called clients?” Vicky asked.

  “They seemed to have disappeared. No net presence. We would not know where they booked rooms if the hotel manager hadn’t come forward when you became the leading news topic. He recalled their rental of two black SUVs. This ability of strangers to drop out of sight is troubling,” the commander admitted.

  “Kris Longknife had problems with these types as well. Even her magnificent Nelly at times couldn’t get through their jamming.”

  “More of what your Mr. Smith is trying to get a handle on,” the commander said.

  Mannie’s eyebrows went up.

  “We’ll talk about it later,” Vicky said. “Maybe.”

  “They hired local help from the crime syndicates to track you,” the commander continued. “All of their contacts are now talking to us. The big picture we are putting together is telling, but the individuals knew next to nothing about what they were doing or why.”

  “Is this leading us anywhere?” Vicky asked, seeing a lot of data but not much information.

  “Sadly, no,” the commander admitted. “We did recover nano cameras. Several, from the room you were, ah, detained in. No one in the Navy has ever seen the likes of them. We started trying to examine one, and it went poof. As did the second. We are holding the other three for the return of Mr. Smith.”

  “Damn. I hate playing second fiddle in a tech duet,” Vicky said.

  The commander allowed a pained response. “It seems we are caught in just such a predicament. However, that crew from the Mining Management Co-op has decided that they have gotten all the help they are likely to get from their higher-ups and are singing like a bunch of choirboys.”

  “Is the song worth listening to?” Vicky asked.

  “Most of it we already know. One thing attracted my attention. The top managers were bribed for the last couple of years not to increase production but to cause it to plummet.”

  “Restrict the amount of crystal coming to market?” Mannie almost sounded incredulous.

  “Exactly. The Imperial economy needed more crystal. Someone was paying the producers to see that less was available for sale.”

  “Crystal is critical to just about everything we fabricate in the Empire,” Mannie said. “Power, electronics, everything high tech needs some sort of crystal in it.”

  “And if it’s not there, the entire economy crashes,” Vicky said, drawing the obvious conclusion.

  “My father’s economy is not crashing because of a hundred different things. They are only symptoms of a single dagger stabbed into its heart.”

  “So it would appear,” Mannie said.

  “I wonder,” Vicky whispered, “if they started this plan the moment my beloved stepmom caught the Emperor’s eye.”

  “Or if that was part of the plan?” the commander offered.

  Vicky shook her head at the sheer audacity of it all. Her father had been so confident in his power. Or so he had seemed to his little daughter. Had he been a fool the whole time? Was he the first of the fools, or had her grandfather and great-grandfather built their empires on the willing cooperation of men just as venial and corrupt as those who were finally grasping for it all while Dad lolled around the bed of that pregnant sow?

  Yesterday, her stepmom’s attempt to kill her had stripped all the blinders from Vicky’s eyes. Yesterday, she’d come to the realization that the Empress’s obsessive efforts to kill Vicky were only a part of an obsession that left the entire Empire in the dust and its subjects begging on their knees for any crust of bread the Empress and her family might allow them.

  Now I have proof to back up my conclusion.

  “Commander, tell the motorcade to speed up. Call ahead to the shuttle. I want it moving the moment I’m aboard. Oh, and tell Admiral von Mittleburg I’ll want to talk to him the moment I’m back on the station.”

  “Yes, Your Grace.”

  Vicky leaned against the window and stared out at the prosperous city of Kiev. A city whose prosperity owed nothing to the Empire.

  All her life, she’d been trained to never think of treason. To never even think of thinking about treason. Now, she opened her thoughts to rebellion. Her mind was hot with it.

  She grabbed some figurative bellows and blew the fire hotter.

  CHAPTER 63

  AS soon as the shuttle docked, Vicky was on her sore feet and moving. She ignored everything that got in her way between the shuttle bay and the admiral’s quarters.

  Smart people took one look at her and got out of her way.

  The admiral’s secretary had the door open for her as she steamed in. “Commander, you wait here. Mannie, with me,” she said curtly, and stormed in.

  The admiral was meeting with his yard-improvement staff. They’d been warned of her approach. They stood aside to allow her entrance, then quickly fled the room.

  “Admiral, we need to talk.”

  “I expected we would. By the way, Mannie, the work on the dock is progressing faster than any of my men thought possible. Thank you.”

  “We are glad to be of service to the Navy,” the politician said.

  “Mannie,” Vicky said, “if you have any problems with a discussion that some might consider treason to my father, you should leave now.”

  The mayor grinned. “I’ve been waiting all my life for a chance to sit in on that kind of thing. Admittedly, I haven’t done it yet, mostly for fear that half the people at the table would be in the pay of State Security.”

  “They likely would have been,” Vicky admitted. “Admiral, are you in anyone’s pay but the Navy?”

  “You know I am not.”

  “Mannie?”

  “I helped put them out of business on St. Petersburg, then I danced on their grave, and when no one was looking, I stood in a long line to piss on it, too.”

  “Then let us talk of how we may save the people who look to us for leadership. My most recent encounter with minions of my stepmother has clarified my thinking. What she wants is a wrecked Empire that she and her family may wander through and pick up select features to enslave to their will. I will save the Empire, though I have to admit that I have no idea what will be left of it when this cleansing tidal wave is done.”

  “That’s wise of you,” the admiral said. “You can throw a snowball off the top of a tall mountain. You can’t tell what the avalanche will do at the bottom.”

  “But,” Vicky said, fists clenching, “we have to stop them. We can’t let them continue their campaign of destruction and enslavement of what’s left.”

  “No,” both the admiral and mayor agreed.

  Vicky quickly told the admiral of the plot to wreck the crystal supply.

  The admiral spoke to his computer, and the wall turned into a series of bar charts. “Those are the demands for crystal, five years ago for all the planets. The yellow shows demand, the red supply.” Supply almost met demand.

  “Computer,” the admiral ordered. “Update charts to show the latest reports of the supply of crystal available to each market.”

  Only the Greenfeld bar showed supply meeting demand. All the rest showed available supplies as a small red portion at the bottom of a much larger yellow demand. Some of the markets had shrunk down to nearly nothing in just five years.

  “You knew this?” Vicky demanded.

  “The Navy is not blind. We knew the problem was there. You have just told me why. When you’ve got so much data coming at you, it’s not always easy to see which cow is wearing the bell. Which cow is leading all of them down a path to destruction?”

  “Crystal is the cow with the bell,” Mannie whispered.

  “Definitely,” Vicky agreed, then found herself with a new question. “Show me the planets under the control of my stepmother’s Securit
y Consultants.”

  The admiral spoke to his computer, and several markets changed color from red and yellow to black and white. No surprise—there, availability of crystal almost met demand.

  “Admiral, can you get this to the Navy high command? Also, until we get an answer back from them, may I suggest you assign a cruiser to the defense of Presov?”

  “We’d also better escort any shipments of crystal from there to St. Petersburg,” he added.

  “Also, any crystal assemblies we ship out from here,” Mannie put in. “We are at war. A war for crystal. Our economies need it as much, dear Duchess, as you needed water yesterday.”

  “Yes,” Vicky hissed. “When does the Retribution arrive?” she said, switching to the practical.

  “It is in system. It should dock later today.”

  “Mannie, where are we in our negotiations with Metzburg and New Brunswick?”

  “The admiral was kind enough to loan us destroyers for high-speed runs to both planets.”

  “Last I heard, you were worried about having civilians on your ships,” Vicky said.

  “Some of the industrialists were found to hold reserve commissions in the Supply Corps,” Admiral von Mittleburg said vaguely.

  “But the good admiral still sent along his own men to observe our negotiations,” the mayor observed downright aridly.

  “We have their wish list,” Mannie went on. “We’re using a single use, throwaway cipher. Much of what they need we had expected and already were producing. Some needs are very specific, and we’re working on them now.”

  “Where are all these trade goods?” Vicky asked.

  “Some have been shipped up here on the LCTs that were carrying dockyard gear.”

  “They have been?” the admiral growled, storm clouds rising in his eyes.

  “The dock gear is heavy, and leaves a lot of spare cubic meters in the LCTs empty,” Mannie said. “The crystal constructions are light. You could fit a lot of them in a load before you added much weight.”

  The admiral appeared mollified, if not happy that something had been done in his domain without his blessing.