Vicky Peterwald: Target

by Mike Shepherd

  She opened the stall door to find the tall one waiting for her, leaning on the sink.

  “Not bad. Yous gots a brain for a doll.”

  Vicky scowled at him, but he was already turning for the door.

  The short one was just leaving the men’s room, hitching up his britches. They headed out the back door.

  She followed them.

  Outside, she trailed them for a good half block before they turned into an alley and waited for her. Two more men joined them. One looked like a big brawler who might just be dangerous in a fight. The other was the shortest of all four and had a hungry look on his ratlike face. He swaggered and bossed the others, apparently considering himself to be what passed for the brains of the band.

  God help them if they actually had to think their way out of anything more difficult than a wet paper bag.

  But one of them was Navy, she’d been told. Which one, was still a mystery to Vicky.

  Well, the stoop-shouldered guy in the sweatshirt might be hiding more than he was showing.

  Until she had a better idea who was who, she’d just have to let all four of them live.

  So far, they really hadn’t done anything to make her want to cancel their breathing permits.

  The fighter handed Vicky a toolbox. The stoop-shouldered one said, “Yous got the hat on wrong. Turn it around. Nosbody wears it straight.”

  Vicky had the baseball cap pulled down over her face to cover it. Now she swung it around.

  The tall guy came up and smoothed something over her forehead that stuck there. Then he added something else to her cheeks. “Thats’ll help. Yous ain’t so pretty now.”

  He also stooped down and slipped something in Vicky’s boot.

  The putative smart one handed Vicky a card. “That’s your pass up the beanstalk. Don’t say a word, just do what we do. You got it, doll?”

  Vicky nodded silently.

  “What does yous knows?” the stoop-shouldered one said. “A skirt thats can do whats she’s told.”

  The others laughed.

  They started walking.

  Vicky followed them, then had to suppress an outcry. That something in her boot felt like a small mountain. And it hurt. Still, she kept up with them, limping the whole time.

  Vicky decided that if push came to shove, the stoop-shouldered one died first.

  CHAPTER 32

  LIKE any Navy officer, Vicky had been up and down the space elevator many times.

  She’d never before seen this side of the place, though.

  It was probably just as well that they were using the worker’s gate. As they walked by the front entrance to the station . . . at a comfortable distance well across the parking lot . . . Vicky spotted a dozen of the big, heavy SUVs that the Imperial Guards used. There were heavily armed red-and-blacks moving in fire teams of four all over the outside of the station.

  No doubt, there were more inside.

  Someone had finally decided to put out the dragnet for her. Likely the rest of Anhalt was crawling with red-and-blacks.

  Maybe the palace would be the safest place for her?

  Vicky suppressed a smile.

  They walked around back, the guys joking among themselves, and left her carrying the heavy toolbox and limping. Vicky guessed this was part of the disguise, but if this didn’t work, she was going to make sure someone paid dearly for putting her through this.

  They came in a back entrance that Vicky had never seen before. It was dark and dirty and smelled. Greenfeld Elevator, Inc., didn’t waste any of its profits on the help.

  There was a guy at the gate, checking IDs. One of the others went first, handed him his ID and got it back. The rat face, next in line asked, “How’s the wife?”

  “I work all the overtime I can get, and she still spends it faster than I can bring it home,” he said, then smiled as rat handed him his ID with a couple of bills folded around it.

  The bills disappeared.

  Stoop-shouldered went next, and handed over his ID wrapped in cash, too.

  The guy’s smile grew.

  Vicky was next; she passed the ID she’d been given, but with no cash attached, not having been given any. The guy’s smile vanished but he took it, glanced at a list of names on a clipboard, and passed it back.

  The last of the five had money with his ID. He got a cheery “Have a great day on the job, guys,” and the five of them shambled along toward the EMPLOYEES ONLY gate.

  “Why didn’t I get any money?” Vicky demanded in a whisper.

  “Yous wants to draw attention to yous self, dumb skirt?” the slump-shouldered one whispered back.

  Yep, he definitely died first.

  They entered the ferry by a back entrance, and Vicky found herself surrounded by machinery that made a racket, gave off noxious vapors, and in general looked a whole lot less serviceable than the VIP lounge she had ridden down in just three days ago.

  “You two hide out in there,” Rat Face said, and pointed Vicky and stooped shoulders to a compartment whose door said ELECTRICAL FUSE BOXES. KEEP OUT.

  They slipped in, and Vicky found herself in close quarters with a whole lot of stuff labeled DANGER, DO NOT TOUCH. QUALIFIED TECHNICIAN ACCESS ONLY.

  “I wouldn’t touch those if I were you,” the stoop-shouldered fellow said, his use of Standard suddenly much improved. He was also standing up much straighter.

  “I wasn’t planning on touching anything,” Vicky said. “I don’t know what my ID says, but I am no way a qualified technician.”

  “For a lieutenant commander, you’re mighty smart.”

  “I’m alive. If I was dumb, I’d be dead already,” Vicky said, not failing to notice that he’d somehow been informed of the promotion she’d hardly heard about.

  “Yes, you are very much alive,” he said, glancing down at what had to be the worst fashion statement Vicky had ever made.

  She decided to direct the conversation where she wanted it. “What do we do if there is an emergency and some ‘qualified-tech’ type wants in here?”

  “There will be a lot of hooting and alarms going off long before anyone comes knocking at our door. Trust me, we’ll be hiding somewhere else, assuming there’s anyplace to hide. If this stuff fails, we are all in deep shit.”

  “You wouldn’t happen to know that because you’re Navy, would you?”

  “Might have been once,” he admitted.

  “And no doubt will be again, you hope.”

  “I can’t take much more of this undercover shit, I will admit.”

  “Where do we go next?” Vicky asked.

  “You’ll know as it happens, Your Grace. I can’t be captured. What I know dies with me.”

  “I won’t be captured again. I know what they have planned for me when they get their sick hands on my fair flesh. I go down fighting next time.”

  “Thanks for the warning. Are you armed?”

  “Heavily.”

  “So you can’t go through a metal detector.”

  “Not successfully.”

  “Thanks for the second warning,” he scowled. “We were just lucky that the employee-entrance metal detector was on the fritz again.”

  “Nobody asked,” Vicky said defensively.

  “And nobody told me,” he said through a scowl. “This lash-up is demanding too damn much luck.”

  “It’s not like we could have planned this in advance,” Vicky pointed out.

  “You’re starting to sound like some admiral,” he snapped.

  “I’m a lieutenant, maybe a lieutenant commander, and a Grand Duchess. When I’m a lieutenant whatever, I bow and scrape, and say, ‘Yes, sir, admiral sir.’ When I’m a Grand Duchess, I bow to no one and admirals do as I say. I try hard not to get confused about which I am on any particular morning.”

  “From what I hear, you’re a lieutenant commander, but junior to me by one very critical stripe’s width.”

  “So, Commander, Admiral Waller went ahead with the paperwork, huh?”

 
“That was what I was told: ‘See that Lieutenant Commander, Her Grand Duchess gets her ass out of here in one piece.’”

  “Your orders came in that format?”

  “You may have noticed that I’m on very detached duty.”

  “I think we both are now.”

  “Any more surprises I should know about?”

  “There’s one hell of a sharp knife in my right boot.”

  “Please don’t use it on anyone I need,” he said.

  “I was tempted to use it on you.”

  He chuckled. “Then I was doing my job right. The only reason I’m in here with you and not Rat Face is because he figured I pissed you off the worst, and he liked the idea of you maybe slitting my belly open while those three went out for a beer.”

  “Aren’t they supposed to be working on this ferry?”

  “Not everyone who draws a paycheck from this ferry company does any work, Your Grace. I’ve seen the report. Our ferries require twice the manning of any in Longknife space. There’s a lot of featherbedding going on in the Empire. You know someone, you get a job. You pay them their kickback; you keep your job, no matter what.”

  Vicky just shook her head. More data points of what was wrong with her beloved Greenfeld. No, what was wrong with the way her dad was running his Empire.

  How long had it been going on like this? How much longer could the Empire survive this kind of mishandling? And that didn’t even raise the new question. How long would Greenfeld survive if one of those humongous mother ships showed up in tomorrow’s sky?

  Vicky found a handhold as the PA system announced imminent departure. Maybe it was more noticeable since she had to be more careful about bumping into dangerous things, but the launch-out acceleration was bumpier than Vicky remembered.

  The Navy officer noticed it, too, and scowled. “It just keeps getting worse. They’re going to knock one of these ferries off the damn elevator one of these days. What a mess that will be.”

  “Not today, I hope.”

  “Most likely not,” he agreed.

  By the time the ferry had settled down at one-gee acceleration, the thrust was smoother. And Vicky had a few seconds to think.

  “How much do you trust those three scumbags?” she asked the commander.

  “They have a reputation for asking for too much money but for staying bought,” he said, but didn’t sound all that confident.

  “There’s a lot of money on my head, and other, more delicate parts of me, too,” Vicky said.

  “Are you thinking it might be a good idea to find another place to hide for a bit?”

  “You know of one?”

  His answer was to open the door, check the passageway, and motion her to follow him.

  “Don’t forget your toolkit,” he said as he led her out.

  Vicky went back to get said toolkit. Quickly, they went down the cramped corridor, up a steep companionway, then down another passageway. They were approaching another ladder when the sound of jackboots caught their attention from above.

  The commander opened a door, and Vicky found herself sharing a tiny broom closet with him and several noxious cleaning agents. The toolbox came in handy to keep the space between her and the commander from getting too narrow.

  Through the cracked door they heard Rat Face say, “It’s not much farther, just down this next set of stairs and around the hall.” Six pairs of boots followed him.

  “That was too close,” the commander whispered, then cracked the door and checked both ways. “Quick, we’ve got to get well away from here.”

  Vicky followed him as he jogged down the passageway, past the ladder and into a hatch marked, NO ADMITTANCE.

  The room Vicky found herself in was small and crowded with emergency gear, rescue breathers, bottles of fire suppressants, and other helpful stuff for when all hell broke loose.

  The commander ignored them and undogged a seriously airtight hatch. “Through here, quick.”

  Vicky went.

  It was cold in the next compartment. Vicky strongly suspected she was looking at the outer hull shell. Above her, ladder rungs were welded to the hull.

  “Up we go, Your Grace.”

  “With this,” she said, waving the toolbox.

  The commander produced a pair of leather shoulder straps from the side of the kit. “Yup, junior commander, you do the fetch and carrying.”

  Vicky scowled. “Can I at least get this damn rock out of my boot?”

  He paused while she did, then led off immediately. She slung the toolkit as a pack and followed right behind him.

  They must have climbed up five decks before they came to a solid bulkhead with another airtight hatch. As they stood on a landing below it, the commander studied it for a moment, then turned Vicky around without so much as a single pleasantry, and removed a couple of things from her toolkit.

  He attached a gizmo and several wires to the hatch before he began undogging it. Apparently it worked, because the notice on the door, DO NOT OPEN, ALARMS WILL SOUND, did not happen when he opened the hatch.

  Vicky climbed through it and caught her breath while the commander dogged down the hatch. “Up you go. We got two more of these bulkheads to climb through.”

  Vicky swallowed any protest and started climbing. Suddenly, she was very glad for all the walking in the garden and dancing at the banquets. She might not have been doing morning PT, but she had surely kept in shape.

  Two bulkheads later, the commander opened a hatch back into the ferry, and they found themselves once more among emergency gear and supplies.

  “You can leave the toolkit here,” he said as he moved to crack the door.

  The passageway outside was empty. They quickly moved around it until they came to a door with an anchor, globe, and eagle painted on it. The commander shoved Vicky inside as the sound of footfalls came from around the bend in the passageway.

  Vicky found herself facing thirteen Marines in full dress uniform and white gloves.

  Six of them had their rifles aimed at her heart.

  “Gentlemen, and Marines, too,” the commander said, “may I introduce you to Her Grace, the Grand Duchess Victoria.”

  The Marine captain snapped to attention and saluted. The rifles went back to parade rest, and Vicky gave a sigh of relief.

  CHAPTER 33

  NO longer staring down rifle barrels, Vicky could take a better measurement of the room.

  It was gently lit and smelled of flowers. Understandably, because in the center of the room was a flag-draped casket. She’d stumbled into a funeral honor guard.

  The blood drained from her face. Was this Captain Morgan?

  “Sorry, Captain, but we had to go to Plan B,” the commander said, not sounding at all apologetic. “It seems that our lowlifes are not as loyal as we thought our money bought us.”

  “Don’t you just hate scum that can’t be counted on to stay bought?” the captain answered through a tight smile.

  “Can you take over her protection? I’ve got to run. No doubt I’ve been burned and am as hot as she is.”

  “Can you get off safely, sir?” the Marine asked.

  “I’ve got several options, but none that I can do if I have her on my heels.” The commander turned back to Vicky. “Your Grace, I will meet up with you on the station. I know where we go next. The captain, here, does not. Hang with this bunch until I get back with you.”

  “Good luck,” Vicky said.

  “See you in a bit,” the commander said, and edged out the door.

  Four of the honor guard were already doing something around the bottom of the coffin.

  “Your Grace, if you will shed that gear, it’s going to be a tight fit where you’re going.”

  Vicky fished her machine pistol out and settled it in front of her coveralls. “I will not be taken alive again,” she said. Listening to her words, she realized they came out hard. She didn’t intend them for the captain, but she did mean them.

  “We understand, Your Grace,” the
captain said, without batting an eyelash. “They get you, they come at you over our dead bodies.”

  The sergeants around him nodded darkly.

  Vicky turned to the flag draped coffin. “Is this Captain Morgan?”

  “Oh, God! No, ma’am! We wouldn’t do that to you. No, Your Grace, this is General Colenberg. He died during interrogation by the security consultants. None of us know just why he had been hauled in a week ago, but he died of a heart attack, or so we we’re told.”

  The sergeants of the honor guard looked positively murderous as the story came out. Had all of them served under the general?

  Vicky shook her head. Did someone want a rebellion? If not, they were sure going about it all wrong.

  Half of the coffin’s bottom had swung down, Vicky crawled into the space beneath the satin top and the wooden bottom. She check the safety on her weapon once again, then nuzzled it close.

  One of the honor-guard sergeants gave her a wink, she lifted up her legs, and they began tightening the bottom back in place.

  The fit was more than snug. She found if she edged over to one side, she could wedge herself into the plush side foam. She spotted a light in the dark near one of the handles and wiggled over to get more air.

  She needed the outside air. What she shared with the corpse was heavy with death. If she had to guess, she’d say the body had not been embalmed.

  She hadn’t long to wait for something to happen. There was a demanding rap at the door.

  Vicky forced herself to breathe slowly, smoothly. She dare not starve herself now for air only to have to make a noisy gasp later.

  “Who is it?” the captain said indifferently.

  “Open up for the Imperial Guard,” was a demand, not a request.

  “Since you asked so nicely. Sergeant, let them in.”

  That was followed by the noise of a lot of heavy boots entering.

  “You have a problem?” the captain asked lightly.

  “We’re looking for a girl. A common prostitute. The tart murdered half a dozen men in cold blood.”

  “Imperial Guardsmen, no doubt, unable to handle a mere slip of a girl,” the Marine captain said with surprise that almost didn’t sound feigned. “Well, you can see there are only men here. Marines and the dead,” the captain added darkly.