Vicky Peterwald: Survivor (Vicky Peterwald Series Book 2)

by Mike Shepherd

  “Not your City Hall, today?” Vicky asked.

  “This is business. We will beard the lions in their corporate den. The men and women you’re about to meet are the most powerful industrialists and bankers on this planet. People from all over the Midland Sea have flown in for this meeting. It’s not just Sevastopol you’re dealing with this morning.”

  Vicky glanced down at her Navy undress blues with the few lonely stripes of a lowly lieutenant commander.

  It may take a bit of work to make the Grand Duchess shine through.

  The elevator took them to the top floor. The conference room Mannie led Vicky into was spectacular even by Greenfeld standards.

  Glass gave a breathtaking panorama from the room’s outer three walls. The ceiling was arched glass, inviting the sky to come down and sup with the powerful. The panorama from here must be awe-inspiring at night.

  Don’t gawk, girl. You may be underdressed, but you’re still the Grand Duchess.

  All conversation ceased as everyone stood upon Vicky’s entrance. The chair at the head of the table was empty; with gentle pressure on her elbow, Mannie aimed Vicky toward it.

  Vicky was halfway there when the silence broke into applause that continued until she took her place at the head of the table. She’d never been greeted with such a wave of approval. Vicky gave them her best Grand Duchess smile and sat.

  The applause ended, and they all sat.

  No one said anything. They just looked at her and she at them.

  Mannie cleared his throat but didn’t say anything.

  Vicky took a deep breath.

  “We want to thank all of you for coming here to meet with us on such short notice,” Vicky said, laying the Imperial “We” on with a butter knife.

  “We recognize some of you from our previous meetings and strongly suspect that all of you had a large hand in our effort to bring relief to Poznan and Presov. We can tell you that in both cases, your assistance arrived in time. Indeed, it arrived at a critical time before irreparable loss would have occurred. We wish to congratulate all of you.”

  Some of the men and women around the table smiled with satisfaction. Some, but not all. Vicky noted the number in attendance who let the praise wash off their backs like money vanishing into a corrupt politician’s pocket.

  This was not going to be an easy crowd to work.

  “From your generosity, you gave enough to pull these planets back from catastrophe. We thank you, and they thank you. Now, they have sent representatives to reopen the normal course of business and trade between planets. They need to buy what you want to sell. However, in order for them to restart this process, they need to borrow money.”

  Vicky paused for a moment. Around the table, some eagerly leaned forward. Others sat back. Were they reluctant to get involved or just waiting to drive the hardest bargain they could?

  “Only a few years ago, all of these businesses now applying for loans from banks in St. Petersburg were considered creditworthy by Imperial banks on Greenfeld. At least they were before those banks quit loaning money. Now they are willing to focus their trade on St. Petersburg if your banks are willing to help them get that trade going.”

  Another pause.

  “We, the Imperial Grand Duchess Victoria of Greenfeld, heartily endorse their requests to you.”

  There, Vicky had said all she could. Now she sat back in her chair and prepared to listen.

  Dear Lord, but they had a lot to say.

  With due respect, the two sides took turns presenting and reiterating their positions.

  “This is just the chance we’ve been looking for to grow our industries,” an industrialist would say. “We still are not up to full employment. We’ve got plant capacity that we aren’t using. This is what we need to get us out of the doldrums.”

  That optimism, however, would be quickly countered.

  “We don’t have the money for this. After the last tax collector came through, we’re just about out of Imperial gold marks. The St. Petersburg marks we’re printing are no better than fiat script at best. If we expand the money supply too much, too fast, we’ll have inflation. Maybe not runaway inflation at first, but it’s a risk that’s just waiting for us if we get this wrong.”

  Before that speaker even stopped talking, the next would be getting his oar in the water . . . or maybe slamming it over the last speaker’s head.

  “We’re a long way from inflation. Where is the demand for things that can’t be met with the goods available? You’ve got to have people waving money at you to get their hands on scarce resources or the too few goods before the market will let any seller start raising prices. Inflation is just you bankers’ bogeyman, and, frankly, I’m not afraid of the dark.”

  “You will be if our economy overheats, and you get that excessive demand.”

  “Show me some demand.”

  “Gentlemen,” Mannie finally said, “I’d like to introduce something else for our consideration.”

  “What?” came from several red-faced men at the table.

  “Captain Spee, of the good ship Doctor Zoot, has been swinging around the planets in our jump group, selling the crystal he picked up on Presov.”

  “And stealing our market,” someone down the table muttered low, but so all could hear.

  “Can I bring him in? I think you’ll find what he has discovered on his journey to be very interesting.”

  The captain was allowed in. He came to stand beside Vicky’s chair. With a formal bow and a good heel click to her, he turned to the table.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for allowing me to address you. I’ve just completed a voyage to several of your neighboring planets. Good Luck, Finster, Ormuzd, and Kazan have all, like you to a lesser degree, suffered from the breakdown in trade. I was the first ship any of them have seen in a year. They took my crystal, but all they had to offer were luxury goods and raw materials. What all of them needed were spare parts. None of them have any heavy industry. They need what heavy industry provides. They need to buy that, and, if they can, they want to buy some fab mills of their own.”

  He turned to Vicky with a nod. “You’ll excuse me, Your Grace, but the colonial policies of Greenfeld stink. They stank before, and now what with credit dried up and trade going the way of the proverbial dodo bird, they stink to high heaven.”

  “Are those planets in danger of going the way of Poznan?” Vicky asked.

  “Not this week. Maybe not this month, but, Your Grace, I am not at all willing to say what they will be like next year.”

  “More markets,” an industrialist said.

  “More demand. If it gets out of control, there will be hell to pay,” put in a banker.

  “Can we look at ourselves in the mirror next year,” came slowly from an old man, maybe the oldest person at the table, “if we do nothing about this now?”

  That brought the table to a long, meditative silence.

  “Captain Spee, would you mention to those gathered here what Ormuzd gave you in trade for your crystal?” Mannie said.

  “I got a consignment of rare earths. A nice balanced ton of all of them.”

  “What’s your asking price?” came from down the table.

  “What are you offering?” shot back the captain. “Ormuzd don’t want marks, gold or any of that stuff. They have a long list of machinery and spare parts they need. If you want the dirt, you get me those parts.”

  “It’s a deal.”

  “Rare earths?” Vicky said.

  “They are critical ingredients to just about everything electronic,” Mannie said. “Before the crash, Greenfeld bought all the rare earths Bayan Obo could produce and manufactured just about everything that used them. With a monopoly on the market, they priced them accordingly. We have a very small source of the stuff in the desert south of Moskva. We used it to develop our own
little electronics industry. Not enough to be noticed by the powers that be on Greenfeld but enough to let us make a few things cheap and local.”

  Mannie looked down the table. Several men grinned proudly and nodded along with him.

  “If we really want to build an electronics industry, and there is no doubt that we can, we’ll need a lot of rare earths. Right now, the best source on St. Petersburg is way off in the eastern desert. To get there, we’d need to build a whole lot of infrastructure and somehow figure a way to bring water to the place.”

  The mayor paused.

  “Or we could just start importing the stuff from Ormuzd and get the industry going now. No doubt, as our population grows, some of it will spread out into the eastern desert. Once that rare-earths mine isn’t so way off and gone in the outback, we’ll just naturally be able to exploit the stuff.”

  “Here, here,” came from many at the table.

  “It was fine for us to smuggle some cheap electronics into our economy,” a banker pointed out, “but when things get back to normal, and we get Imperial inspector generals from Greenfeld looking over our shoulders, it won’t be possible to hide a major, unapproved industry.”

  “And when are things going to get back to normal?” came from somewhere around the table.

  “Never,” came forcefully from several.

  “Your Grace, this meeting must be very tiring, and I know you just completed a long and harrowing voyage,” Mannie said. “Would you care to leave these fine people to their discussion of our planet’s future?”

  “Why thank you, Mr. Mayor,” Vicky said, grateful for the hint. She wasn’t so much tired as bored. She was starting to wonder if her dad didn’t have something with his idea of just telling the market what to do and see that it did it . . . and she really didn’t like the taste of that thought.

  It was all too clear to Vicky that her dad’s way of running things wasn’t working out all that well, what with him busy in the bedroom and the Bowlingame mob doing what they pleased.

  Vicky rose but did not turn to go.

  “We are appreciative of all your great concerns, both for your proud St. Petersburg and those other planets that have been thrown on such hard times. You ask when matters may return to normal. We must tell you that we do not see that day coming anytime soon. We don’t see it coming without even more disruption and pain. We hope that you will take it upon yourselves to alleviate as much of that pain and suffering as you can.”

  Now Vicky turned and let Mannie lead her to the door.

  To her surprise, he led her through it and over to the elevator.

  “You don’t have to come with me,” she said.

  “You think I want to stay in there? They’ll talk and talk for the rest of the day. Then, maybe about midnight, as they’re yawning, they’ll settle on something. I’ll be there to make sure they settle on something the way I want it.”

  “And you’re leaving now?” Vicky asked.

  “To take a nap, so I won’t be yawning later. Oh, and maybe talk a bit with you.”

  The elevator came, and they entered.

  “Me?”

  “How bad is it out there?”

  “Worse than you want to imagine,” Vicky said, and filled him in on some of what she’d seen. She finished her tale as they were crossing the foyer. “It was worse than I could take. I left before Poznan could start counting its dead.”

  Mannie shivered.

  “It could have been us,” he muttered, as the limo drove off.

  “But you held together.”

  “We wouldn’t have. Not without the city charter and the Navy work.”

  “I’m glad I let Kris Longknife talk me into signing that charter.”

  Mannie smiled. “I was flying by the seat of my pants that day.”

  “You flew very well.”

  Mannie seemed to like the taste of that, but he took the moment to hand Vicky into his limo, then joined her. When he spoke again, it was on a different subject. “I understand you were attacked on your return voyage.”

  “A pirate schooner or sloop or corvette came at us. We blew it to atoms, so we’re not all that sure what it was or where it came from. Anyway, we got it, but it got us good. We weren’t sure the entire way back that the Attacker would make it.”

  “About the Attacker. Will the Navy repair it?”

  “Not likely,” Vicky said. “They don’t have the facilities on High St. Petersburg to do all that heavy repair work.”

  Mannie made a face. “Maybe they don’t. Maybe we do.”

  “Maybe you do?” Vicky echoed.

  “We have two repair slips on High Petersburg. They were built to repair merchant hulls, but they’re large enough to take in a heavy cruiser like the Attacker.”

  Vicky shook her head. “It’s one thing to work on the light scantlings and engines of a merchant hull, another thing to tackle the heavy machinery of a warship or its 8-inch lasers, even less its heavy hull members needed to support the ice armor . . . and everything else.”

  Vicky started out sure of herself but was ending a lot less so. Mannie was smiling.

  “We’ve got enough heavy industry down here that we could ratchet up the docks to do heavier work,” Mannie pointed out. “We could make the upgrades to the docks as we make the repairs to the Attacker. Better yet, the upgrades to the yard and repairs on the Attacker would make a case we need for growing our heavy-industry base for generators, reactors, and 8-inch lasers, maybe larger. The bigger we grow, the more we can trade for.”

  They had arrived at City Hall. Mannie helped Vicky from the limo as she reflected on all that he had said.

  “How would you pay for the dock improvement?” she finally asked. “No. More importantly, how would the Navy pay for the repairs?”

  “That’s the problem,” Mannie said. “Your admiral is living pretty much hand to mouth, scrimping a bit here to add a little something off budget there. We’re letting him run up a tab for food, so he can feed his extra Marines. Likely, he’s using our free food to feed his Sailors as well.”

  “He can’t squeeze a heavy cruiser’s extensive repairs out of his food budget,” Vicky said.

  “But there is our tax account,” Mannie said, with amazing ease.

  “No one ever talks about taxes the way you just did,” Vicky said, then added, “and stays out of jail.”

  “Yes, but to continue about our tax account.” Mannie went on with a grin. “It’s growing. Everyone is meticulously paying their taxes, using St. Petersburg marks, I might add, but no one has shown up in over a year to collect them. We don’t have so many Imperial gold marks that it’s worth sending a ship out to actually carry off a few bales of paper. Despite our many offers, no one seems interested in us just sending a draft payment through the mail, certainly if it’s only backed up by our own script.”

  “Things really have broken down when paper and e-money aren’t worth collecting,” Vicky said, a frown growing as she entered the elevator.

  “But the ‘money’ is there in the bank, going nowhere and doing no one any good. Actually, it’s worse. It’s a drag on the economy and causing a bit of deflation. If, however, it was spent here, on this planet, for goods and services we can provide, it would help whoever got those goods and services and boost our economy at the same time.”

  “Are you suggesting that you pay your taxes to the local Navy account, and Admiral von Mittleburg puts them to good use?” Vicky said slowly.

  “Something like that,” Mannie said, his face an unreadable mask now.

  “My father, the Emperor, has never had the Senate make so much as a pfennig’s change in his budget, but he does submit it, and they do rubber-stamp it. If the local admiral here started spending money that hasn’t been through the appropriation cycle, some people might say that sounds dangerously close to treason.”
/>   “There is that,” was the mayor’s only reply.

  The elevator deposited them on Mannie’s floor. Vicky was still thinking as he guided her into his office and settled her on a couch before taking the chair across from her.

  Vicky opened her mouth but was interrupted by her computer.

  “Your Grace, you have a message.”

  “From whom?”

  “I do not know.”

  Vicky frowned. So did Mannie.

  “From where?”

  “I do not know.”

  “When did you receive it?”

  “I do not know.”

  Vicky frowned at Mannie. He just shrugged in puzzlement. “Deliver the message,” she finally said.

  “I cannot. It has visual content, and I do not have access to a screen.”

  “You can use the screen at my desk,” Mannie offered.

  Together they walked over to his work area and stood behind the desk, looking down at the screen inserted into its top.

  “Computer, play the message.”

  The screen came to life.

  “Hello, darling Victoria. Why are you avoiding me?” her very pregnant stepmom cooed.

  CHAPTER 47

  VICKY almost leapt away from the desk, but Mannie was in back of her. “Freeze playback,” she ordered.

  “Is that your stepmother?” the mayor asked.

  Vicky eyed the stopped video. There was her young stepmother in all her pregger glory. The loose green gown she wore flowed over her distended belly. It couldn’t be long now. The gown was cut low to emphasize her full breasts. Dad must be loving this.

  But it was the smile, full of viciousness and venom, that held Vicky’s attention.

  “Yep, that’s my loving stepmum. How did she get this message on my computer without leaving any tracks?”

  “That shouldn’t be possible.”

  “But she did, and it’s here. Do you mind if I play the rest of it?”

  “Do you mind if I call in my tech-support team?”