Bold

by Mike Shepherd

  Kris cleared her throat and redirected the conversation. “Okay, it looks like you’ve got a major opposition movement going here. Tell me, Vicky, in your own words, just how did this mess get started?”

  Vicky took a deep breath, eyed the admirals, and leaned toward Kris.

  “I thought it was the banks run by the Empress’s family, Kris. Credit suddenly dried up. With no money flowing around the Empire to support trade, the wheels of commerce crumbled. People lost jobs. The unemployed went into the streets, and riots made a wreck of things. The Empress’s family sends its ‘security consultants’ into the streets using machine guns for crowd control, and suddenly another planet is totally owned by the Empress’s family. Wash, rinse, repeat. That was what I thought. Then Admiral von Mittleburg did his own analysis.”

  Now it was the turn of the other vice admiral to lean toward Kris. “Really, it was the Grand Duchess here that got me wondering. She arrived with a report that a small mining colony a few jumps away was running low on spare parts and soon would be out of food as well. If they couldn’t produce enough product to pay their taxes, they’d be bought up for pfennigs on the mark. By exactly who, I didn’t feel a need to question.”

  “I passed through that system, Kris, when I was running away from my stepmother’s assassins,” Vicky added. “I just wanted to help, but there was more to it.”

  “There are only two planets in the Empire that produce raw crystal,” von Mittleburg continued. “The largest one is wholly owned by the Peterwalds. The newer and smaller one is just a hop, skip, and a jump away from here. The Peterwalds didn’t own it. Officially. But as demand grew, the supply shrank, and as it did, planets began to lack for a critical chunk of their industrial economy. The price of crystal shot through the roof. The Peterwalds made a fortune. It all happened because production from the mines out here was going down the tubes.”

  “I tried to help those mines,” Vicky said, “but next thing I know, the guys running them are doing things that just don’t make sense. I charged them with fiduciary malfeasance and hauled their asses back here to St. Petersburg for trial. Once I put some of the second-level managers in charge, the production at the mines shot up. We’re meeting the need for crystal for all those planets allied with us and growing our economies. My stepmother and her family are going unhinged as I get our economies back on the right track even while we’re spending more than we should have to on an Army and Navy to protect us from her goons.”

  Bill jumped on that. “Can you document any of this?”

  “I have a copy of my analysis right here,” Admiral von Mittleburg said, and aimed his wrist unit at the screens in Kris’s day quarters. They lit up as data cascaded across them.

  “Nelly, can you evaluate what you’re getting?”

  “Yes, Kris. I’ll need to verify this against other data, assuming I can find any such data from Greenfeld, but it is internally consistent with his words.”

  “Pass it along to Runda’s data hounds, Nelly, and see if this makes some of the data they picked up on Greenfeld more comprehensible.”

  “I will work with them, Kris.”

  “I’d like to talk to these other two admirals about how they saw this revolution getting started,” Chief Mediator Alfred Fu said, and was quickly joined by the other two leads of Kris’s brain trust.

  “Why don’t we adjourn to my office on the station,” Admiral von Mittleburg said. “I’ve got access to a lot more information there than I have on my wrist unit.”

  A moment later, the three leads were gathering up the members of their own teams, collecting a few data and electronic specialists from Runda’s support group, and heading off to the station.

  Soon, Kris found herself alone with just Vicky and Jack. He seemed to test the air, found it overloaded with estrogen, and dismissed himself to check on security.

  “Well, what’s been going on with you two?” Vicky asked with a salacious smirk on her face. No doubt, she wanted every detail of Kris’s sex life.

  “Some of this. A lot of that,” Kris answered, intentionally vague.

  “And a baby.”

  “You won’t believe how that happened,” Kris said, shaking her head.

  “I know where babies come from,” Vicky said slyly. “Don’t tell me that you and Jack didn’t.”

  “Oh, we did, but I had a bit of help from an unpleasant direction.”

  “Oh, do tell, but first, I have to tell you that I got access to the information they allow the top admirals to know.”

  “Yes,” Kris said cautiously.

  “I know the story about your Order of the Wounded Lion,” Vicky singsonged.

  Kris tried to frown, but Vicky was just so full of herself. Still, she grumbled, “That’s supposed to be a secret.”

  “Not from me it isn’t.”

  And the evening took off for points unknown.

  42

  Kris never had a sister. She’d tried a few times to find a substitute among some of the girls at school or daughters of Father’s cronies.

  It had never gone well. Girls can be hurtful and untrustworthy. Just as Kris’s first try for a boyfriend had ended in a disaster, her attempts to have a girlfriend had also crashed and burned. Not as bad as the boyfriend thing, but not nice either.

  As the hours went by, and she and Vicky talked and talked, Kris found herself discovering a girl that needed a friend almost as desperately as she had. Vicky talked about Mannie, the mayor of Sevastopol who had somehow managed to stay out of her bed, and Kris talked about Jack and how Granny Rita had finally forced them to take time for each other, then given them the push to rush at each other and into marriage.

  The heavy dress blue uniforms seemed too stiff and thick for the intimacy that was growing between them, and Kris invited Vicky back to her quarters. The uniforms came off, and Kris settled into a pair of sweatpants and a T-shirt.

  There was little in Kris’s closet that looked to fit Vicky, but Kris was not about to have Jack come in, late at night, to see Vicky in the nonregulation and very skimpy bra and thong the Grand Duchess revealed as she slipped out of her blues.

  Kris hunted up a pair of running shorts that she’d used to exercise in when baby was bulging all over the place. There was also a Marine T-shirt that she’d stolen from Jack when she felt like a blimp. Even in the last months of pregnancy, it had hung loose on her. On Vicky, it revealed every curve.

  There is no justice in the universe.

  But Vicky was in awe of Kris and Ruth when Sally Greer and Li O’Malley brought Ruth in for her lunch.

  “So that is what boobs are really for,” Vicky breathed.

  “Yes,” Kris said, “but don’t try this at home. There’s a whole lot of stuff they don’t tell us about pregnancy and nursing.” And Kris and the nannies dumped all the horror stories they could think of on the impressionable young woman.

  “Maybe it will be easier with a uterine replicator,” Vicky said.

  Once Ruth was taken off to a nap, Vicky began to unload on Kris just what it had been like for her for the last two years. Kris found herself shaking her head, time after time. Vicky might not have been facing down huge alien mother ships, but she’d been tackling a lot more human horror than any young girl should have to wade through.

  Kris ordered pizza in for lunch from the Forward Lounge. Its popping up on one of the empty chairs scared Vicky, and Kris discovered just how loud the gal could shriek. When they still hadn’t stopped talking by suppertime, the Lounge provided Chinese takeout.

  “Pizza, Chinese, what can’t your Forward Lounge do?” Vicky demanded.

  Kris shrugged. “I don’t know. I’ve never asked for something they didn’t have.”

  “You Longknifes. You’re so spoiled.”

  “You’re the ones with the Empire. Remember, we’ve just got a King.”

  “My dad ma
y be the Emperor, but he married the Empress from hell,” and Vicky told Kris what it was like to wake up naked, handcuffed to a bed, and not a drop of water in sight. She ended the tale with Mannie’s being the one to rescue her.

  “Really, Kris, you have just got to meet Mannie. If anyone is going to make a democrat out of me, it’s him.”

  “Democrat, hell, Vicky. Can he make an honest woman out of you?” Kris took the opening offered.

  To Kris’s surprise, Vicky got serious. She grabbed a pillow from the next chair over, pulled it to her lap, and huffed. “I sure hope he will. I think he will. Kris, how do you get a man?”

  And Kris found herself offering matrimonial advice to the sexpot who’d once used all her wiles to get a long line of men to do their best to kill her.

  I can’t believe I’m doing this.

  But she did. As the evening went along, Kris shared stuff with Vicky she’d never told another soul. Jack had never asked Kris what it felt like . . . really felt like . . . to order the fleet to fire on the aliens that screamed they wanted to surrender while they just kept steady on a course for Alwa.

  “I thought I’d finally taught them to surrender.”

  “But they were saying one thing and doing another,” Vicky whispered softly.

  “Yeah. Was there something wrong with the instructions we were sending them? I don’t know, but I couldn’t let them get through that jump. They could park on the other side and blast us out of space as we came through. Then they could bombard Alwa at their leisure. They had to disarm, but it didn’t look like they were going to.”

  “You had to kill them,” Vicky whispered.

  “Yes, I did. Still, I wonder how long it will be before I have a chance to take another surrender.”

  Vicky shrugged, then changed the subject. “I’ve got to tell you about the time I drove one of the Empress’s high lord commissioners so far around the bend that Admiral Bolesław, he was a captain then, got the entire squadron on the other side to surrender. We were trying to open up trade with Brunswick . . .” and the Grand Duchess was off on her way to another story.

  Were they tall tales? Kris listened to them, wanting to believe that her erstwhile friend just might have changed her stripes. The stories all held together, and they tumbled from Vicky’s mouth with no time at all to concoct them. When Kris tossed out a question about this or that, Vicky had an answer without taking time for reflection or construction of a lie. Only where Mannie was concerned did Vicky slow down. Only when Vicky talked of the mayor did she get circumspect and have to search for words.

  She really has it bad for that guy. She likes him enough that she really doesn’t want to screw it up.

  It was edging toward midnight when Jack showed up with the strangest foursome in tow. Two were the tiny ninjas whom Vicky had taken with her to circumnavigate the galaxy. They studied Kris and the room as if some assassin might drop from the overhead light fixture or one of the nudes still standing against the wall might come alive.

  One of them actually pinched each of the statues as Kris tried not to stare.

  The third was a commander who looked very official, kind of like Jack five or six years ago.

  But it was the fourth who caught Kris’s eye. Or rather, didn’t. He looked so bland that Kris had to work at making her eyes not slip past the fellow without taking note of him. She focused her eyes on him and stared.

  “Don’t I know you?” Kris asked.

  “I was aboard the Wasp for her last trip,” the fellow said. Jack had introduced him with a hint of a smile and a cryptic, “This is Mr. Smith.”

  “I thought I remembered you. What was your job?”

  “Officially, I was an Able Spacer. Actually, I was there to keep you alive. There were a half dozen or more of us. Some of us knew each other and worked together if we needed to. There were others we didn’t know.”

  Kris frowned. “Why not?”

  “If we all were chasing the same duck, we might miss the swan behind us. I’m sure you were worth the extra coverage. Every one of us I knew about was kept busy, saving you, then taking up the slack on the Grand Duchess. There were some really good people who wanted her dead and getting her, they might get lucky and get a twofer.”

  “I hired him,” said Vicky, jumping in. “He came to me when Jack was giving me the bum’s rush off the Wasp for that stupid stunt I did with the newsies. I was broke, but Mr. Smith was willing to work for me on consignment. He’s been worth every penny I’ve paid him.”

  Vicky pulled at the spidersilk-armor bodysuit Kris had spotted when they changed into something comfortable. She had said nothing then.

  “He got your Gramma Trouble to arrange for these to make it through Wardhaven customs.”

  “She is a very helpful Gramma,” Kris admitted.

  Vicky shivered. “And she didn’t even mention the time I had her kidnapped. Wonderful woman.”

  The two diminutive assassins collected Vicky’s blues and were clearly ready to lead her out the door.

  Vicky gave Kris one more hug. “We’ve got to do this again. I’m not half-done.”

  “I want to, too,” Kris said. “Let’s make it soon.”

  With a few more good-byes, Kris found herself alone with Jack. She leaned against him and sighed. “I really think she’s telling the truth. I feel it in my bones that it’s the stepmother, her father, and that family that is causing all this trouble.”

  Jack let out a sigh that was almost a rumble. “Did any of what she told you tonight rise to the level of evidence we can use?”

  “Not a jot or a tittle.”

  “You can plan an assault on an alien base ship based on one of your hunches,” Jack said. “God knows, you’ve gotten away with it enough times. You won’t be allowed to settle this mess on a hunch.”

  She hugged him. “Do you have any idea how we’re going to solve this?”

  “Not a clue.”

  “Take me to bed and make me forget about tomorrow.”

  “I thought you’d never ask.”

  43

  Kris was not allowed to sleep in. Ruth was hungry, so Kris tried to serve her breakfast in bed, hoping the nannies would take Ruth off to points unknown without her really having to wake up.

  That didn’t work.

  “Kris, your brain trust would like you to have breakfast with them in the Forward Lounge,” Nelly informed her.

  “How much sleep did they get last night?” Kris asked through a yawn.

  “A lot less than you did, honey,” Nelly answered, sounding very much like Kris’s former maid, Abby, in full ’tude.

  Kris rolled out of bed, took a quick shower, put on the undress khakis Jack had laid out for her, and went through the high points of her in-box while Jack finished dressing.

  “There anything there from the brain trust?” he asked as he tied his field scarf.

  “Nothing, which leads me to fear they’re holding on to some really nasty stuff for the sole purpose of ruining my breakfast digestion.”

  Jack finished, delivered a peck on her cheek, and said, “I will defend your digestion to the death. Mine, too.”

  There were still two very spacious, if a bit less decadent, circling staircases down to the Forward Lounge. The place still looked like an insane King’s fevered dream, but to the right was something more like a classical O club. A turn to the left led into a comfortable English public room. Beyond that was something French. A Marine waitress waited for them.

  “They’ve got a room to themselves in the six o’clock position from the stairs, Your Highness, General.”

  She led them through the O-club portion past walls decorated with classical military art. Double doors of apparent oak opened into a more utilitarian quarter of the pie that was the Forward Lounge’s circular deck.

  It was not at all plain. No, Nelly had arranged for
finely polished wooden walls and marble columns supporting ceiling beams. Interspersed around the room, and taking up at least half of the wall space, were screens filled with numbers and equations that were gibberish to Kris. No doubt, she’d know more than she ever wanted to know about them in a few short hours. The furnishings were tables of rich mahogany. Around them were comfortable chairs, with thick red brocade padding on the seats and armrests.

  Al spotted them standing in the double doors and opened his arms as he made his way to them, the affable host incarnate.

  “In here, it’s easier for our teams to work side by side,” he said, resting a hand on Kris’s elbow and steering her toward a couple of linen-covered tables close to a table laden with every possible breakfast food. “It’s easier for people to float from one group to the next without having to wander around the ship. Also, if someone needs you, they have only to holler.”

  At that moment, someone hollered, “Hey, Judge,” and Diana’s head popped up. A hand waved her over to a table halfway across the room. She excused herself from where she’d been and headed for where she was wanted.

  “We eat when we can. Your wardroom has been kind enough to keep all of our coffee urns filled.”

  “Have you been here all night?” Kris asked.

  Al rubbed his eyes, and Kris now saw past the amiable host to the exhausted elder who had gone without sleep for too long. “I’ve kept negotiating teams up for two days running. It’s amazing the concessions you can get when folks are looking out the window at their third sunset without a minute of sleep.”

  Kris felt very guilty for her night’s rest even if it hadn’t been nearly long enough.

  “Now, why don’t you two get yourselves some breakfast? We are getting the best food I’ve ever tasted. Listen as you eat, and we’ll see if we can put together a briefing for you once you’re finished. I might keep people up for days at a time, but I never interfere with their first cup of coffee come morning,” Al said, and chuckled at his joke as he left them to respond to his name and a waving hand.