With slow agony, the great Kris Longknife took another step and broke finger contact with her frozen-in-place love. Vicky could almost hear the strings in the background that always went with such movie scenes of heartbreak and denial.
Vicky felt like puking.
She didn’t. Her staff was watching her watching Kris, and Vicky would measure her reaction to their expectations of their lord and master.
Finally, Kris turned from Jack and hurried into the waiting courier ship.
“I’m glad that’s over,” Vicky said dryly to her own audience . . . and switched gears, back to survival mode. “Lieutenant Heinbock, drop down to the wardroom and see if you can overhear anything about what they intend to do with this wreck of a ship. Chief Materhand, you know where the CPO still is. Go have a drink. Hang around and see if they have any better scuttlebutt.”
Her two subordinates might be serving members of the Greenfeld fleet, but here, on the strange ship that Kris Longknife had put together with more spirit than intent, they had become accepted as just one of the boys. Vicky still wasn’t sure how to take that. After all, the Peterwalds and the Longknifes did hate each other’s guts.
The two men hurried off to obey her. Vicky turned to Kit and Kat, two of the most deadly women she had ever met. Each was a hundred and twenty pounds of death in either hands, feet, or, no doubt, other portions of their lovely bodies.
They were also her body servants. “I would kill right now for a clean set of underwear.”
Since fresh water was flowing from the station into the wreck of the Wasp, laundry was finally possible. The two set to work on that immediately.
That took care of four of Vicky’s five remaining friends in this world, if you could call those bound to obey her every whim, friends. Her one true friend, Dr. Margarita Rodriguez had been making herself scarce for the last couple of weeks. The good doctor hadn’t much cared for the attack that killed, what, billions of aliens. She had been in a huff after Vicky went on a bender and very likely said some really nasty things.
Vicky, of course, had no recollection of anything she said that night. All she remembered was something about showing up on Kris Longknife’s doorstep and maybe something about Doc Maggie, and then waking up violently ill the next day.
I must be more careful with alcohol.
That left Vicky assigning herself a task.
Kris Longknife had been right about one thing: Vicky dare not go ashore. Until she got an update on conditions at her father’s Imperial Palace, there was no way to guess if, no, not if but rather how many assassins would be waiting for her the moment she set foot off the Wasp.
Vicky had come a long way on the Wasp and, at least of late, no one among the crew had tried to kill her. Strange as it sounded, this Peterwald had come to feel safe on this Longknife’s ship.
Vicky shook her head at that unheard-of thought. Her family and the Longknifes had been at each other’s throats since before the Iteeche Wars. For over a hundred years, if she was to believe the angry words her dad threw around at the mere mention of the Longknifes. Her father liked to brag that the Peterwalds had had wealth and power since the times when the Pope still had an army. But for three generations it had been the Longknifes. Always the Longknifes. Every turn, every twist that had kept the Peterwalds from their just place at the forefront of human affairs had a Longknife at the bottom of it.
Vicky had grown up believing every word her dad spoke. Lately, watching one Kris Longknife at work, Vicky was having trouble matching those words to Kris’s actions. Had her Dad and Granddad been mistaken, or was Kris just a different kind of Longknife?
And did Vicky want to become a different kind of Peterwald?
Could she?
Vicky mulled that question as she headed for the Forward Lounge. There, if anywhere on the crippled Wasp, she might find out both the fate of the ship . . . and her own.
As Vicky expected, Mother MacCreedy was back in business, if not fully restocked. Vicky ordered a beer at the bar, and turned to survey the place for potential sources of information. It took her only a second to spot her best bet.
Kris and her team usually took the table most forward, the one just below the huge screen. The screen was dead at the moment, like so much in the ship, but Jack Montoya of the recent kiss and Penny Lien Pasley were huddled together over beers at the usual table.
Vicky headed for them.
As so often happened when Vicky approached a conversation, it died. It wasn’t just that way on a Longknife ship. It had been that way everywhere and for as long as she could remember. She’d put it down to being born to power, but she couldn’t help but notice how rarely talk came to a roaring halt when Kris joined a conversation.
More to think about . . . when she found the time.
“Do you mind if I join you?” Vicky asked.
“No,” Jack said, “Pull up a chair.”
Vicky chose to sit across from Jack. Penny had been resting her hand on Jack’s but had quickly withdrawn it when Vicky approached. Vicky didn’t want to appear a threat to them. Still, she had to wonder, just how consoling Penny might be, and how much ‘support’ Jack was willing to accept?
Vicky quickly went down the short list of what she was supposed to know and decided a good opener was, “Jack, you look terrible. Is something wrong?”
“Kris has been rushed onto a fast courier for Wardhaven,” Penny supplied.
“Without any security support,” Jack growled into his hardly touched beer. “Not me. Not anyone.”
Vicky decided that a few supportive words might be in order. “If Wardhaven fast couriers are anything like the ones we have in Greenfeld, they’re about the safest way to travel in space. The crews are small and they’ve been scrubbed for any security flaw. If Kris got on one, I’d bet anything she gets off of it.”
“Yes, but where?” Jack snapped.
“Her great-grandfather, the king, wants to see her,” Penny provided.
“That sounds reasonable to me,” Vicky admitted. “We did kind of start a war out there.” Vicky found herself glancing over her shoulder as if she might, even now, see some angry alien raider chasing after them. They had been chased nearly halfway across the galaxy.
“I know, I know,” Jack said. “She’s safe on the courier. She’s safe around the king. But what next? Where will they send her? Wherever they do, she’s going to need security. Me. My Marines. A secure inner and outer perimeter. Otherwise, her odds of staying alive aren’t any better than yours.” Jack finished by running a worried hand through his hair. He was long past due for a haircut. It had grown out wavy and kind of cute on the guy.
Vicky kept her hands to herself. No running them through that mane.
Off limits, girl. No one else may have seen that kiss, but you did.
“Wasn’t it the king himself that got Kris her security team?” Vicky said, “Abby, you, Marines, then more Marines. Don’t you think he’ll be careful with his great-granddaughter?”
Jack glanced at the blank screen, then closed his eyes, as if to avoid seeing something only he could see. “Yes. Yes. Yes. I know. The king will do his best, but will it be enough? I know Kris. I’ve kept her safe for five years. I know the damn fool stuff she does. Sometimes I know what she’s going to do before she knows she’s going to do it. I can keep her safe. You willing to bet anyone else can?”
Vicky would bet that the real center of this conversation was that secret kiss, but Penny was shaking her head no, so Vicky shook her head no. That seemed to satisfy Jack. He put his head in his hands, rested his elbows on the table and went silent.
Penny rested a supportive hand on Jack’s arm. Vicky was about ready to give up on finding an opportunity to raise her own concerns, when Penny turned to eye her.
“How are you doing?” the intelligence officer asked.
“I’m still breathing,” Vicky admitted. “Not all that sure that I will continue that bad habit if I go ashore. How safe is High Chance?”
Penny almost chuckled. “Last time we were here, it was the dead end of nowhere, but I hear things have changed. Now it’s part of the Helvetican Confederation and becoming something of a trading center. This station is still US territory, though. Don’t ask me to explain how we ended up owning the station above a sovereign planet. It’s a long, twisted and kind of funny story.”
“Kris said I wouldn’t last an hour if she put me ashore.”
“I think she might have gotten carried away,” Penny said of her friend. “You have to weigh the odds. Your enemies only have so much money to hire assassins. They can’t know where you’ll be coming back to, or, let’s face it, even if we were coming back. I think you’ll be safe for now.”
“That your professional opinion? What you’d give Kris?”
That got Vicky a wry grin. “Kris could make enemies on the spot in no time at all. You don’t strike me as that kind of gal. Are you?”
“I try not to inspire murder by my walk.”
“On the contrary,” Penny said, now smiling. “Your walk inspires a lot of things in men’s minds, but murder is hardly one of them.”
Vicky shrugged. “I am what I was raised to be, somebody’s wife.”
“But now you stand to inherit an empire, Grand Duchess.”
“Weary rests the head that wears the crown,” Vicky said.
“Yeah, I’ve heard that one before. So, I don’t see any of your four security types following you. You feel safe on the Wasp?”
“Hard as it is for me to believe it, yes.”
“So you’re wondering how long you can stay in this safe cocoon, aren’t you?”
“Am I that transparent?”
“I’m an intelligence officer. I’m paid to connect the dots. Your dots are rather obvious. And I’ve been wondering, too. The chief engineer told Captain Drago this morning that he was down checking the reactors for space. He wanted to go cold steel just as fast as he could. Ship’s Lieutenant says that the only thing keeping space out of half of the Wasp’s spaces is emergency goo, and we’re not supposed to trust our lives to goo. At least not on a regular basis.”
Penny took a moment to reflect on the information she’d just passed along. “My best guess is they’ll scrap the Wasp here at the pier, or haul her out and set her on a course to crash into the sun.”
“It’s a coin flip, huh?”
“Mimzy, what’s your call?” Penny asked her computer.
“Chance is growing economically at nine to ten percent a year,” the computer answered. “The price for scrap metal is twelve percent above the average. There’s a ship wrecker on Bern just three jumps away that’s likely to bid on any contract to take the Wasp apart and drop it dirtside. While the reactors may not be safe for space, Chance is hungry for power and will jump at the chance to get two more reactors, cheap. If you gave me fifty-fifty odds she’d be scrapped, I’d take the bet.”
“No bet, Mimzy. I’d never bet against one of Nelly’s kids,” Vicky said.
“It would be dumb to,” Mimzy agreed.
“Are they all like that?” Vicky asked Penny, with a raised eyebrow
“It’s hard to be humble when you’re that great,” the Navy officer said with a grin.
“We are humble. We know our limitations,” Mimzy shot back. “But calculating the odds on a simple economic transaction is something we could do all day and never get wrong.”
“You have limits?” Vicky said, surprised to hear one of Nelly’s kids admit to any such thing.
The computer got real quiet.
Vicky turned back to Penny. “So you don’t think I need to worry about anyone trying to kill me just now. But about the time I need to start worrying about somebody getting here with a contract on my fair head, I’m likely to be shut out of house and home and dumped on the beach.”
Penny winced at the obvious conclusion to her assessment. “I guess I did say that, didn’t I?” the intelligence officer admitted. “You want to run for it now, rather than wait for them to come here?”
“Run for where, and with what? Your Kris kind of got my fleet whipped out.” Vicky had shown up to join Kris’s Fleet of Discovery with four of the biggest battleships in human space. She was coming back from the other side of the galaxy with little more than the clothes on her back. She would have some explaining to do when she got home. No doubt about that.
Penny’s face got circumspect as she nodded agreement. “We lost a lot of good people.”
“I lost just about everybody I knew. Everyone I could count on or trust,” Vicky said, and had to make herself not reach for the beer. She’d gone there and it hadn’t worked all that well. She needed to keep all her wits about her or she would die dead drunk.
Jack looked up from his funk. “I’ve got to get to Kris. I’ll go talk to Admiral Santiago. There has to be a ship leaving for Wardhaven soon. Maybe she could order that cruiser guarding the jump to the alien worlds off station for a quick run.”
Penny was shaking her head even as she said, “I don’t think that’s a good idea, Jack. The scuttlebutt is that they want to keep the crew together for a debriefing. Or maybe to keep the newsies away from us. We’re on lock-down, Jack. I’m not even sure the Marines at the brow would let you go see the admiral.”
“I’ve got to try, Penny. I’ve got to try.”
Jack was up and fast walking for the exit. Penny trailed him by only a few paces. She glanced over her shoulder at Vicky. “Sorry, I got to run. Men!”
Vicky raised a hand for a sardonic wave. It must be nice to have a friend at your side, trying to keep you from making the worse mistake of your life. Though, from the looks of it, Penny’s chances of getting through to the big lug were pretty slim.
Did he tell her what happened on the pier? Does the poor woman know what she’s up against?
Vicky shrugged. That was their problem. She had her own.
And no one to talk it over with.
She studied the bubbles rising in her beer. What was her problem?
Correction. Problems.
The list went long.
She was the Grand Duchess, the recognized heir to the newly created throne of the Peterwald Empire. Vicky winced. That should have been an asset, not a problem. But dad had this new wife, Annah Bowlingame. The Empress was what, six months older than Vicky?
Kind of hard to call her mommy.
But then the two had hardly shared more than a few minutes together. Just long enough for Vicky to swear fealty to the newly created Emperor and Empress and then ship out for the other side of the galaxy.
That should have been a safe distance.
Funny how it wasn’t.
Empress Annah had taken no time all before announce that she was knocked up and it was a boy and she was going to bear it in her own body. Dad had gone all goo-goo over it all.
Vicky sighed. Dad liked boys. He’d doted over Henry Smythe-Peterwald the thirteenth. Vicky had witnessed all that doting from the shadows. And God help her if she did anything to cause big brother any pain.
Boys were everything in the Peterwald world. Girls were good for marrying off and having babies. Oh, and for seduction. Vicky had seen enough of that around court.
So, Dad had a baby boy on the way and the Empress had a family of brothers and uncles and other vultures who were spreading out, taking every advantage of their place at court and grabbing for all the money and power in reach.
Oh, and likely hiring a couple of assassins and getting them into the Fleet of Discovery. Three tries at Vicky and three failures before the alien wiped out four battleships and put an end to further attempts.
Should Vicky just go home and set up her own security team to help her stay alive in that jungle? Could she?
But that presented the problem of getting home. She’d come on four huge battleships with some of the best people she’d ever met in her life. Kris Longknife had lost them in a fight that may or may not have saved a planet from being wiped out.
Which was bound t
o cause Vicky problems. Problems with the Navy and problems with Dad.
Somehow she had to cover her rear end for the loss of the fleet and then figure out how to get home without becoming excessively dead on the way.
Vicky left her hardly touched beer on the table and walked slowly, lost in thought, from the Forward Lounge. She needed to get out to the people her own version of how it came to pass that four powerful Peterwald battleships went exploring and none were coming home.
And she’d better get it out soon. If Penny’s assessment could be trusted, and Kris had almost always trusted her intelligence officer, Vicky was safe to walk the station today. Maybe tomorrow.
After that, not so much.
Vicky needed to talk to someone in the media, and real soon. That shouldn’t be too hard. The Wasp’s communications section had been bombarded with calls. Her computer had a list of them, stripped out from the ship’s computer. Vicky would have no problem getting a call out to the right one. They’d be delighted to have someone to talk to.
Still, she’d have to hold their attention for the full amount of time.
Vicky went down the wardrobe she’d managed to save from the Fury. Sure enough, she had one or two outfits that would be most camera worthy.
Chapter Two
It was so easy. Just one quick call and the media vultures were panting. Vicky agreed to meet early the next morning on the station; no news team would ever have gotten aboard the Wasp.
Getting off the Wasp, even at that early hour, proved to be more of a challenge than Vicky had expected, but no Marine sergeant was going to stop a Grand Duchess. Certainly no United Society Marine could stop a future Peterwald Empress.
Vicky had covered the dress, what there was of it, with a hooded cloak. No surprise, the sergeant of the guard got physical when she refused to let him stop her. He grabbed for her. The cloak came open, and he ended up with a hand full of her right boob when that bit of ribbon that was the halter top slipped easily aside. That left one red-faced Marine sputtering apologies as Vicky stormed away.
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