“You’ve hung around that woman a lot over the last couple of years,” the commander said. “Are you going to start applying Longknife solutions to Greenfeld problems?”
“Do you think Longknife solutions might solve some of our Greenfeld problems?”
“Frankly, no, Your Grace.”
“It took guts to say that. I like that in the guy who’s hanging at my elbow.”
“We aren’t discussing me, Your Grace. We’re discussing where you’re rummaging for solutions to our Empire’s problems.”
“I’m not rummaging in a Longknife bag,” Vicky said. “I don’t know where I’m going to pull my next solution out of, but Kris Longknife is a Longknife, and they do things their way. I’m a Peterwald. We do things differently. Some of my father, the Emperor’s, latest solutions have brought more problems with them than the ones they were intended to solve.”
“You’ve noticed that?”
“And so have you, and so has just about everyone I’ve talked to in the last forever since I got out of the palace one step ahead of an assassin. No. Correction. The assassins caught me. I was just lucky enough to beat them to the kill before they did me the honor.”
Vicky looked across the spaceport. The sky above Kolna was clear of smoke. There were a few clouds. As the sun sank lower, they became tinged with pink, silver, and gold.
When Vicky spoke again, it was as much to herself as to the commander. “Herbert lives because I chose to let him live. My father would have killed him where he stood. That was a good enough reason for me to let him live through his little drama. Now, I let him live until I come up with a nice way to separate him from his thugs and their guns.”
She glanced at the commander. He was listening intently. “If I’d blown Herbert away, his thugs would have grabbed their guns and run. Then I’d be stuck sending Marines and Rangers out to chase each of them down. For now, I’ve got them where I want them. Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow will each offer me ways to solve my problems. I’m patient. I can wait and see.”
Vicky shrugged. “And I can always send in the tanks tomorrow.”
Darkness fell quickly, and no lights broke it, not even around the camp. The recently-thrown-up temporary buildings were all blacked out. Where troops moved, they did so with night vision.
Because Vicky was looking for them, she could just barely make out four trucks across the field. They had come down with the last drop of the day. Electric, they rolled silently out the gate, showing no lights to the night.
Vicky turned to the commander.
“Shall we go back inside and watch the fun?”
“It beats any other show in this burg.”
CHAPTER 37
THE plan for the raid had been hastily thrown together, building on what was already in place.
After Vicky returned from the so-called palace, she’d dispatched reinforced platoon-sized task forces around town to distribute food. Each consisted of two tanks and a couple of squads of Marines and Rangers. The Marines rode in four of their armored infantry fighting vehicles and the Rangers rode along in the trailers with the food. Three of these food-distribution points were about evenly spaced along the south side of town.
The drone coverage showed that they’d drawn starving people like magnets. People from inside hobbled out to them. People from farther out of town staggered in toward them.
With any luck, that would leave the farthest road around Kolna devoid of eyes. The sensor team on the Attacker continued to report no activity on the electronic spectrum. If it wasn’t Marine or Ranger, it didn’t squeak.
Opera Buff would have no warning before Rangers were all over him, eating his lunch.
The Rangers on the four electric trucks moved quickly and quietly around the outskirts of Kolna. They arrived at their jumping-off point well before midnight. There, they paused.
The plan was for them not to start into town until 0100, and to be at their target at 0230, the deadest time of night.
Inez changed her plan.
Instead of standing around in their trucks for an hour or more where they might be spotted and the wrong word carried in to town, the Rangers moved off immediately. The Rangers began silently to infiltrate up the main south boulevard that led into the center of the city. Scouts afoot checked block by block, found it clear, and advanced the trucks. This went on for the next two hours. Without surprises, they covered the five miles into the city center.
“We’ve got the library in sight,” Inez reported. “No lights visible from our side.”
“We see no lights from the overhead,” the Ranger battalion commander responded.
Vicky stood looking over his shoulder. The feed showed the four buildings around the central park. There were plenty of thermal images of human bodies in bed where they belonged. There were a few not in bed, but those on guard duty hadn’t moved for at least the past hour.
“Stay sound asleep,” Vicky whispered. Then frowned. “Do we have any images of the horses?”
“Sorry, Your Grace, but the horses are on the ground floor, and someone made that library out of local rock. We can’t get past the second floor on it.”
Vicky considered that and found it acceptable. “How’s the bank?”
“It’s locally made concrete. Maybe the contractor went a bit light on the stuff. We’re getting down into the basement with no trouble.”
Vicky shook her head, ruefully. Was graft and corruption the national pastime in her father and grandfather’s worlds?
That was something to think about when she had a lot more time on her hands.
The drone take drew back. Now Vicky could see the Rangers making their way stealthily up to the library.
“We’ve found a guard,” Inez reported. “He was sound asleep. We’ve bound and gagged him. It might have been better for him if we slit his throat.”
“When you get the horses running, you might want to cut him loose to run, too,” Vicky said.
“Copy that,” Inez said. “We’ll see what we can do, Your Grace, but no promises.”
“Your troops come first,” Vicky said.
At her elbow, the commander covered his lips with his hands. “You going soft?” he whispered.
“They are all my subjects,” Vicky answered softly. “Somewhere I read that royalty is supposed to concern themselves with the lives of their people.”
“You didn’t get that in a book from the palace,” Commander Boch said.
“No. It was from a battleship’s library, I think.”
On-screen, the horse raid was fully underway. Vicky had watched enough movies to have some idea of how this was supposed to go. This one wasn’t at all like the ones she’d watched.
In the stories, the raiders were usually Native Americans, but Vicky had checked, and all tribes where horses were available tended to do a bit of horse stealing. Take that Kris Longknife. The movies showed the raiders coming in shouting, scare the horses and stampede them, usually through the local village—dumb tactic—and off into the dark.
On-screen, the Rangers led strings of horses quietly out of the library and toward their trucks. Some were even saddled.
“Did Inez recruit her Rangers from the ranchers?” Vicky asked. She was pretty sure of the answer, but she asked anyway.
The Ranger colonel had to tap his database before he answered. “Yes, Your Grace, they were all ranch hands or rancher’s kids. We call Captain Torrago’s company the Rough Riders.”
“To their face or behind their backs?” the commander asked.
“Either way. They’re quite proud of their horse skills.”
On the drone take, they were putting those skills to good use. Now mounted, they led strings of horses up the road and out of town. A last squad of troopers jogged from the stable; a civilian ran with them. They made it to the last truck and piled in.
“Don’t you love it when a plan comes together?” the Ranger colonel crowed.
“Well done,” Vicky said. “We’ll have to strike a medal to commemorate the great, silent Kolna Horse Raid when we get back.”
The Marine colonel had been quietly watching as matters developed. He didn’t seem as happy at the success of his light infantry comrades as Vicky might have expected.
“There’ll be hell to pay tomorrow morning at my food outposts when those thugs see what’s missing.”
“But they’ll need most of the morning to walk out to them,” the Ranger said, still quite happy with the night’s work.
“But the food outposts are the closest,” Vicky said, “and it will be their hide that Herbert tries to take it out of. The Heavy Marines get the horse-raiding medal, too. Put everyone on alert come daylight, but it may take a while for anything to develop. Keep the drones on them.”
“Aye, aye, Your Grace,” came from two colonels. They saluted.
Vicky returned the salute. She couldn’t remember another time that anyone had given her a salute quite as meaningful as those two officers had.
As an ensign, she’d saluted her seniors and returned enlisted salutes. It was required. It was Navy.
But this one. This one had a whole lot of difference in it.
She relished the afterglow as she walked slowly to her quarters.
CHAPTER 38
VICKY’S quarters were spartan at best and still smelled of the plastic bag it had exploded from. There was a small sitting area with a tiny bathroom off to the right. Sharing that wall was an even smaller room with one bunk bed. Mr. Smith and the commander took it.
To the left was a somewhat larger room with two bunk beds. Vicky took one of the lower ones. Maggie took the other lower. Kit and Kat pulled the thin mattresses off the top bunks and put them where they wanted them.
Kit lay down blocking the door. Kat was closer to Vicky’s bed but solidly between her and the door.
“I may need to go to the bathroom during the night,” Maggie said.
Kit pulled a knife from her boot and laid it under her pillow, beside an automatic. “Be careful waking me,” she simply said.
“Me too,” Kat added, arranging her own arsenal.
“I may piss my bed,” Maggie concluded with a wry look at the two.
“Crew,” Vicky said, “let the lady through if she needs to go.”
Both of them got angelic smiles on their face as they said in disturbing unison. “Yes, Your Grace.”
“I’ll get a can or something from the mess hall tomorrow,” Maggie muttered.
Despite the portents, or maybe because of them, the night passed quietly but quickly.
Dawn was barely showing in the small windows of the quarters, high up near the roof, when there was a knock at Vicky’s door.
“Who is it?” she called.
“Commander Boch. I have a runner from the command post. They think you might want to see what’s developing.”
“This early?”
“No rest for the wicked,” he said through the door. “Or is it no rest from the wicked.”
Kit and Kat were out of Vicky’s way, rolling their bedrolls aside as she headed for the door. As she opened it, she said, “I think we qualify for both.”
The commander blocked her way.
“Lieutenant Commander, you are not properly dressed for the morning,” he said.
Vicky turned to find Kit and Kat holding out her body armor, top and bottom.
With a scowl, Vicky returned to her room and let her minions tie, clip, and otherwise strap her into her armor. “I’ve got to get some of that spidersilk underall armor that Kris Longknife has,” she growled, as Maggie handed her a helmet.
“It’s only available in Longknife territory,” Commander Boch reminded her.
“Order some.”
“There is the currency exchange problem at the moment.”
“Damn it, ask King Ray, or what’s-his-name, Grampa Trouble, to loan me a pair.”
“I’ll see what I can do about getting a begging-bowl request out through channels.”
“Damn the channels, write it up from me personally. Kris loves her Gramma Trouble. Send the letter to her.”
Dressed to her subjects’ pleasure, Vicky made it to the command center just as the sun was coming up. The place was abuzz.
During the night, apparently, a couple of more LCT drops had come in. The command center was now four temporary buildings, blown up and linked together through large archways in the middle of each long wall.
The colonels occupied one of the center modules. They looked like they had gotten little sleep; two rumpled cots in the back of the room attested that they’d gotten some.
The Ranger launched into a briefing as Vicky came through the door. “At 0400, someone missed the horses. Quite a few of the grooms were roused out of bed, lined up against the wall, and shot.”
The large screen that now held central place beside the passageway into the next building came to life. Vicky watched as the slaughter of the grooms took place.
“Damn,” was all she could say.
“Not all the grooms got popped,” the Marine colonel said. “Notice the ones racing out the back.”
“How’d they miss the honor?” Mr. Smith asked.
“No one really cared,” the commander said, darkly, and pointed at the balcony of the palace. There, a lone figure stood, watching the murder.
“Herbert,” Vicky spat.
“It was like that when the Navy and Marines were ordered to land and uproot State Security,” the commander said. “We had overseers assigned. We called them political commissars . . . never to their face. They wanted to see people lined up against the walls and shot. They didn’t care what rank they had or how important they were. So long as they were in the black uniform, they wanted to see them shot.”
Vicky shook her head, incredulously.
“Later, we found out that most of our commissars were drawn from the managers of Empress Bowlingame’s brother’s banks. They were good at keeping count. Not so good at knowing the value of what they counted.”
The room met the commander’s observations with silence.
The Marine colonel was the one who finally spoke. “Whatever went down, we’ll know soon enough. Most of the grooms who got away won’t quit running until they reach one of our outposts. As soon as they calm down enough to talk, you’ll know.”
“We knew we had a bad actor. Cindy told us,” Vicky said. “Now we’ve seen it for ourselves. I take it that you have your outposts on alert.”
“We’ve doubled the guard, but we’re letting the remainder sleep. Today looks to be a tough one.”
“No doubt,” Vicky agreed. “So, where and when do you think he’ll come at us?”
The two colonels took a moment to think before saying anything. Vicky liked that.
The Marine colonel went first. “We have tanks. Herbert doesn’t. He’ll want to get his hands on one of ours.”
Vicky turned to the Ranger, expecting disagreement.
“I agree. Tanks are big and sexy. We have them. He doesn’t. He’ll want one.” Then he shrugged. “Or at least want bragging rights that he destroyed one.”
“So he’ll hit the food-distribution outposts around the edge of town,” Vicky said. “You think he’ll leave the Rangers alone out by the lakes in the hills?”
“The Rangers are probably safe up there,” the Marine said. “It’s a long walk to get to them. My troops, however, one way or another, he will hit.” The last words held the finality
of death and taxes.
“Is there anything we can do to make them more secure?” Vicky asked.
“Short of pulling them back to the spaceport and locking down the approaches? No, Your Grace.”
“And since I insist we distribute food to the starving, that is not an option,” Vicky said with a firm but cheery smile.
The Marine just nodded. “No use bringing all that nice heavy metal here if all we do is just sit on our diddies and shine it. We’ll keep the drones up. With any luck, they’ll see what he’s developing. We can react a whole lot faster than he can act.”
He broke into a wide grin and glanced at the Ranger. “After all, all he can do is walk.”
They both enjoyed a laugh at that.
Two hours later, it didn’t seem quite so funny.
CHAPTER 39
VICKY was headed for the newly installed mess hall when the horses came in. The trucks hung back in the rear, but the Rough Riders were solidly in control as the herd of horses, stallions to the right, mares to the left, trotted onto the grass between the hangars and the terminal.
“Computer, get me Inez,” Vicky ordered.
“Good morning, Your Grace,” came quickly in a cheerful voice. Vicky would bet her entire fortune that some company commander was mounted up and riding herd herself.
“What took you so long? I figured you to be here before daylight.”
“We dared not push these horses too hard, Your Grace. They’re in pretty bad shape. We were all surprised at how little hay and fodder there was in the stable we got them out of. We had to get them out of town to some decent grazing and let them eat a bit. Also, they needed water. There wasn’t a lot of water in the stable where they had them.”
“Herbert couldn’t feed or water them, but he wasn’t about to let them out of his sight,” Vicky concluded.
“A really sicko, that man. How long you going to let him keep breathing our air, Your Grace?”
“I haven’t quite decided, but he’s got two solid strikes against him and working on the third.”
Vicky Peterwald: Survivor (Vicky Peterwald Series Book 2) Page 15