Implacable: Vicky Peterwald, #5

by Mike Shepherd

  Unfortunately, lunch was not waiting for her when she entered the suite. However, she had Maggie make a quick call and a few minutes later, their lunch arrived. It was laid out beautifully; she gave the girl a nice tip.

  That done, she raced for the bath, shedding clothes all the way.

  Fortunately, Mannie joined her in the tub before she had to soak herself until she was a prune.

  Lunch quite definitely had time to get cold.

  Much later, draped across the bed with various bits of salad spread across her body for Mannie to either eat or feed her, Vicky said, "So, tell me about your meeting and I won't tell you about mine."

  "Were your meetings really so bad?" Mannie asked, then stuffed a tomato in her mouth.

  She chewed it and swallowed before answering, "It was just the usual. Me, the implacable pursuer of evil and seeker of liberty and freedom for all my subjects. Assuming I still have subjects."

  Vicky gave her husband the evil eye, not easy to do when sprawled out naked on silken sheets. "After your breakfast meeting I'm not Citizeness Peterwald, am I?"

  "I assure you, my lovely and gracious Grand Duchess, I would never do that to you."

  "Then why won't you accept a dukedom from my hand?" Vicky said, dipping a finger into the salad dressing, and letting Mannie suck it.

  "Because, Your Grace, I was born a commoner and I don't know any other way to live."

  "So you say, but I was born an autocrat and I'm learning your new constitutional ways."

  "Yes, you are, dearest heart, and I treasure you for it. Now, why don't you tell me a bit about why your favorite admiral called me? He was rather upset."

  "Alis? Upset! That man wouldn't be upset facing a firing squad." Vicky considered that thought and giggled. "No, he'd be ordering them to take down those Irish pennants and dress right."

  "And, no doubt, they'd be hopping to it," Mannie agreed. "Still, he was concerned when he called me."

  "I imagine he was," Vicky admitted.

  "So . . ." Mannie said, dangling a bit of cucumber in front of Vicky.

  She snapped it out of his hands, then licked the salad dressing from his fingers. After slowly chewing it, she sighed.

  "Mannie, why are there so few constitutional monarchs?"

  "Are there?"

  "Well, the Japanese have Emperors on all three of their cultural planets. I think that's just because they love having an Emperor around. They've had one for close to two thousand years."

  "Some habits are hard to shake," Mannie said with a grin.

  "The United Societies has their King Raymond," Vicky said, "but is he even a constitutional king? He acts more like an alert parent, chiding them where they need it."

  "And when Princess Longknife becomes their Queen?"

  Vicky snorted. "One, their constitution says she can't. Two, they'll have to drag her, kicking and screaming, to her coronation, and three . . . well, there is no three because it's just not going to happen."

  "Are you sure, heart of my heart? That girl is worming her way into their hearts. They will want her to be their queen more than she doesn't want it. In the end, she will give them what they want."

  Vicky considered his thoughts.

  "How many times has Kris almost died for her people? I've been there for quite a few of them. Hell, I even instigated a few of them."

  "Yes, dearest, you did, but none lately. Unless you've tried something behind my back."

  "Never."

  "Then, what are you trying to tell me?" Mannie asked.

  "Kris has risked her neck for her people, as well as being a gracious Princess. I've been the gracious Grand Duchess and I've risked my neck a few times for my people. As cautious as my love for you and the children I hope to share with you makes me, but I can't hide behind Admiral Bolesław's skirts. If I am to be a beloved as well as gracious Grand Duchess, I must earn the respect and love of my people."

  Vicky paused to think for a moment. Mannie continued listening, that was something she loved about him. He really listened. He wasn't chomping at his bit to jump in the moment silence fell between them.

  "My father tried running an Empire on the assumption that because he was a Peterwald, he was a god. We know how well that worked for him."

  Mannie nodded.

  "He ran up a debt that I cannot and will not pay. However, in this horrible time, I must show my people that I care for them, and, yes, will risk my life for them. Mannie, I have to," Vicky said, focusing her eyes on him, pleading for him to understand her.

  He nodded softly into the silence for a long moment before asking, "How many more times do you think you will have to walk into risks as great as the one that saved the people of Dresden from their mad Duke?"

  "Honestly, Mannie, I pray I don't have to do that again."

  Her husband rewarded her with a smile.

  "However, love of my life, when I started that drive in that evening I didn't expect to risk anywhere near as much as I did."

  Mannie gave her a face. "That, beloved, is what I fear. Just as you warned me that we can't change just one thing. That when we start down this trail to democracy, we cannot know where it will take us. Just so, you step out into the dark and you don't know where the missing step will be on that staircase."

  "Yeah, you have to watch that third step. It's a doozy," Vicky said, and rose up enough to give her husband a kiss. One thing led to another and lunch was put on hold.

  When they surfaced much later, Mannie softly ran his hands over Vicky as he said, "So, love, what are you going to do to try to spot that doozy of a third step?"

  Vicky told him about her various meetings and how she was deploying a lot of jump point buoys that would give her warning as well as plenty of time to run if things got bad.

  "That's space. What about when you do something delightfully courageous on the ground?"

  "Umm," Vicky could only answer. "Those times are harder to spot."

  "But when you spot them, you might try doing a u-turn and head back to where it's safe."

  Vicky shook her head. "On that dark night, Mannie, that was not going to happen. We were committed. All hell was about to break loose, what with the size of the force we were landing. Something had to be done, and this little girl was the only one with a computer she could shove in the dike’s hole."

  "You have mixed up so many metaphors, honey."

  "Yes, but you get my meaning. Maggie and I were the only ones that could throw together what we did."

  "We need more computers like Maggie," Mannie said.

  "Good luck getting one," Vicky answered. "And, for what it's worth, I figure I have Maggie only on probation. If I screw up, I fully expect one mad as hell mommy to come back here and yank her from around my neck."

  "I hope mother does not do that," her computer said from around Vicky's neck, "I am enjoying my time with you."

  "Never a dull moment, huh?" Vicky asked.

  "As if my mother gets a dull moment around Kris Longknife's neck." Was that followed by a sniff? So far Maggie had not started using contractions like Nelly, but . . .

  Mannie, however, was not to be distracted. "My Grandest Duchess, all I want you to know and keep in mind is that if something were to happen to you, there would be a huge hole in my heart. And, despite what you may think, there would be holes in millions of hearts whose lives you have touched."

  "You think so?"

  "Even someone as hard-hearted as your Admiral Bolesław would find something missing from his life."

  "Hold me," Vicky begged, and he took her into his arms. They lay there, together, with a few bits of salad sharing their bed with them.

  "It was so much easier to live when I was young and only afraid of being married off to some old guy with whiskers and bad breath," Vicky whispered to Mannie's chest.

  "I guess I'll have to stay clean shaven and brush my teeth regularly."

  "Oh, stop it with the jokes. I mean it. When Kris Longknife hauled me down to St Petersburg to sign th
at city charter you wanted, I hardly thought anything about what I was doing."

  "You were a brat," Mannie whispered into her ear.

  "And you were so demanding. And then you threatened to shoot me out of the sky the next time I wanted to see you," Vicky pointed out.

  "It seemed like a good idea at the time, you know."

  "Yes, I know," Vicky said, with a sigh. "I'm glad you didn't."

  "I'm glad I didn't, too. Think of all the fun I would have missed out on."

  "Chasing after me when I got kidnapped."

  "Oh, but having a beautiful naked girl clinging to me."

  "I was bug-eaten, cruelly scratched, and bleeding."

  "Yes, but that can't detract from your true beauty. I saw what was beneath the bug-eaten skin."

  "To my black Peterwald heart."

  "No, my dear," Mannie said, "to the soft and warm heart you are now sharing with all the people of St. Petersburg."

  "So, I need to get kidnapped on another seventy so planets and have you rescue me."

  "God forbid," Mannie muttered. "There must be planets in the Grand Duchy that will love you without you having to risk your life."

  Vicky scrunched up her face in deep thought. "There are one or two."

  "Most," Mannie countered.

  "People do like a good place to live under the rule of equal law for all, don't they?"

  "If only it didn't take all those bloody long meetings for folks to figure out how they want to get there," Mannie said, drolly.

  Vicky pulled her head back to get a better view of her husband. "Are you complaining about bloody meetings?"

  "Yes, I am."

  "Well, maybe I ought to cuddle you."

  "Please do," he said.

  Neither one said another word for a very long time after that.

  6

  The next week went quickly . . . and slowly.

  At the fabrication plants, the first jump point buoy passed its quality control tests. There, it was made in sections and then sent up to the space station for assembly and subjected to a lengthy test in the actual conditions of space.

  Vicky, however, felt like she was a fly trapped in amber. Every community and business group wanted to wine and dine her. She had breakfast meetings, luncheons to attend, as well as dinners and charity events in the evenings. Everyone wanted to see the gracious and victorious Grand Duchess.

  The destroyers Otter and Oxalate were almost finished taking aboard a load out of space buoys to use to blanket all the jumps around Oryol when disaster struck.

  After seven days of behaving itself, the test buoy took off on its own for points unknown. The destroyer Ostrich was sent to chase it down. Even before it returned to the station with the wayward buoy, an autopsy of the station keeping system showed where it had failed in the cold heart of space.

  There was nothing wrong with the design. The materials drawn from the available stores for its construction were also up to par. However, the fabrication allowed impurities to slip into the product. Impurities that did not fare well under the flexing of heat and cold the buoy was subjected to in space.

  Rather than reject the entire production run, some spare capacity at another plant was brought on line to produce a replacement part. Since they couldn't seem to produce the correct parts, the technicians just increased the design strength of the item by increasing its thickness by fifty percent. They also encapsulated it to protect it from the vagaries of space.

  Three days later, all the buoys had been brought up to the new, heavier and clunkier design, and the Otter and Oxalate sailed for Oryol space with orders not only to picket that system but lay buoys all the way back to the Grand Duchy. The Ostrich and Ocean sailed for Lublin four days later. Soon after that, the destroyers Ockham and Obverse began to enhance the buoy system around Dresden.

  It took longer than expected, but it looked like the safety net around all three planets would be in place at about the same time.

  That left Vicky with the question, could she reach for both planets at the same time?

  "Don't even think of it," Admiral Bolesław snapped as soon as she asked the question.

  "For the quick takedown of Oryol, we can keep the fleet here protecting Dresden and threaten to swing out to Oryol or Lublin. Lublin, however, will be different. We'll need to impress the hell out of those redcoats on Lublin. For that, you'll need damn near every ship you have, Your Grace. Whether they cave or we have to dig them out like we did here on Dresden, you'll need the fleet."

  "And what about Dresden and Oryol?" Vicky asked. "How can we defend them when we're at Lublin?"

  "The same way, Your Grace, that we're defending St. Petersburg right now. Deepen the depth of our defense, increase our reaction time, and wait for the damn fools to risk their fleet. Frankly, ma'am, I'm hoping they stay as reluctant to risk battle from now until the day we have them backed into the last rock they're holding, puking their toenails out as they drift in orbit."

  "You don't think they'll fight?" Vicky asked.

  "If you were a sailor on one of their recommissioned old battleships would you want to die for whoever is running the Bowlingame family business today?"

  "Are our Sailors willing to die for me?"

  "You were willing to die to save the lives of a lot of people on Dresden, Your Grace. It kind of makes it impossible for us common folks not to feel like we can't be worse than you."

  "You're a dear, admiral."

  "Now you're just being nasty to me, Your Grace," the admiral snapped, but he was grinning as he complained.

  It took another two weeks to deploy the net around the three planets. What it showed them was a total lack of any traffic to and from any of the three.

  Vicky knew why there was nothing coming or going to Dresden, they were just looking at how to set up trade with the planets of the Grand Duchy. That neither Oryol nor Lublin had any ships in transit around them told her that the Bowlingame side of the Empire was totally moribund. They'd stolen what they could and now they were letting their captive planets rot.

  Vicky had to put an end to that.

  "General Pemberton," she told him on net, "it’s time to saddle up. We are headed to Oryol."

  That got her an immediate call from Admiral Bolesław. "General Pemberton tells me that he's been ordered to Oryol. He seems to have the misunderstanding that you will be going with him, Your Grace."

  "Why shouldn't I?" Vicky asked. She knew she was about to receive a lecture, she figured she might walk into it slowly.

  "Your Grace," the admiral began gently, as if to a headstrong child. "The task force assigned to the Oryol liberation mission will only be a small force. A couple of cruisers, most of them light and a destroyer squadron of only two divisions. Surely you will want to stay with the main fleet, here around Dresden."

  "Surely I will want to be with the Oryol liberation task force, Alis. Certainly it will be easier to arrange the surrender of the small occupation group of Security Specialists if I am the one taking their surrender."

  "Your Grace," Admiral Bolesław began.

  Vicky cut him off with, "Admiral."

  "I'm not going to win this argument, am I?" the admiral queried.

  "Nope," Vicky answered.

  "I'll have to talk to Mannie," he said.

  "You're fighting dirty," Vicky snapped.

  "Yes," he agreed.

  On that, she cut the comm link.

  The conversation in their suite went long into the night, but in the end, as she knew she would, one Grand Duchess was headed for Oryol.

  The make-up sex was great.

  7

  Vicky watched Oryol grow larger on the main screen of her flag bridge on the battleship Victorious. Even with Maggie doing her own analysis of the electronic emissions coming from the planet, there wasn't much happening as they approached.

  She could only imagine the panic that had seized the Count commanding the regimental-size force of red-coated security consultants. From the little comm
unications that Maggie had intercepted and analyzed, the Bowlingame power was thin on the ground and actually exerted little control outside of the capital, Kromy. The docile behavior of the locals was little more than the right words accompanied by just the right number of bribes.

  "Well done, my people," Vicky said with a grin. "We Peterwalds have taught you well. Hopefully, you'll be ready and willing to learn an entirely new set of tricks.

  It was Captain Blue who noticed something strange. On the second day of approach, he mused, "We have comments on net from all over the planet but the capital, Kromy, is a black hole. Nothing is coming out of it. It's not even a subject of discussion among the towns and the other main city, Bonki."

  Vicky wasn't the only one that found that thought provoking.

  As they approached the space station above Oryol, the place locked itself down solid and refused to answer any of her hails. Vicky didn't have a very large force, just the Victorious, the heavy cruiser Sachsen, and two light cruisers, Rostock and Emden, rounded out her main force. The two divisions of four O class destroyers might or might not be worth much in a fight.

  The last time Vicky had confronted an attempted missile run-in by destroyers, she had slaughtered them. Lasers now had too much range to allow the destroyers to get close enough to effectively launch their missiles. However, for now, they looked imposing.

  At the moment, however, the station lay there like a rotting log in a forest, inactive and unresponsive.

  "Maggie, can you pull off one of your mom's miracles?"

  "My mother has access to a better suite of sensors," Maggie pointed out maybe a bit snidely.

  "We'll have to try to improve our sensors," Vicky said.

  "May I suggest you travel with a ton of Smart Metal?" Maggie snapped back, this time making no attempt to cover up her snide attitude anymore.

  "Thank you, Maggie, but the last I heard, the Smart Metal we were producing wasn't able to hold its shape for more than a week and refused to be reprogrammed into anything else after the first time. We have a few problems to work through."