Rebel

by Mike Shepherd

  The admiral looked at Mannie and Vicky. It was Vicky who stepped forward.

  “We will support you. We need you. Certain decisions have been made recently. They also can’t be talked about over an open comm line. However, we need you as much as you need us.” She glanced at Mannie.

  “Arrangements will be made,” he said. “I am the mayor of one of St. Petersburg’s largest cities. I don’t know how we will do it, but we do need you, and we will support you.”

  “Thank you,” the redheaded skipper said, and cut the circuit.

  “It seems that we really must get below,” Mannie said, “as quickly as possible.”

  “Yes, I think we must,” Vicky said.

  CHAPTER 9

  IT is a law of physics that what goes up must come down. In space, a similar law insists that what goes out comes back no faster than it went there. Or at least not all that much faster.

  The Retribution fell back toward High St. Petersburg Station with a slowness that almost drove Vicky to chew her well-manicured nails.

  Mannie called ahead to set up meetings that people were already clamoring for. They knew about the new ships in the system and wanted to know what they were doing there and what would be done about them.

  The mayor admitted that some of the ships were an invasion fleet that had been dissuaded. Others were a trade convoy coming back, and the rest were Navy ships seeking refuge.

  Yep, the leaders of St. Petersburg definitely wanted to talk. Mannie explained why he couldn’t call a meeting right that moment. After a long talk, Mannie broke the commlink.

  “That could have gone a lot better.”

  “How could it have gone worse?” Vicky snapped.

  “They’re worried. They need to talk.”

  “And they are going to talk behind our backs.”

  “You want to hold a meeting on a commlink and have it recorded and shot off to your stepmother?”

  “Not really,” Vicky had to admit. “Then again, will we have any better luck keeping the contents of a meeting out of her hands?”

  “What we say among ourselves risks all of our necks. What some hacker picks up and sends off for payment is another thing. They want to talk, but they aren’t going to talk on net. Your father’s late-lamented State Security Police taught us our lessons about that.”

  “So, what happens now?”

  “They are all heading to St. Pete for a meeting of all interested parties, and then some. We will get there as soon as we can. No doubt, we will be behind the curve when we do.”

  “Will you have a representative there when they start?”

  “I’m no neophyte. My lieutenant mayor, a very competent young man, will cover for me and take copious notes. However, he is not me. The businessmen and bankers will walk all over him, and the other cities will ignore Sevastopol. Here I thought sticking my neck out to stop an invasion would make me a hero. Now I’m out in left field playing catch-up.”

  Vicky could only sigh. “Strange how the world works. Commander, please check on how soon we can cut loose from the Retribution. Don’t worry about using the captain’s gig or the admiral’s barge. Any longboat that gives us a larger window for landing at St. Pete is just fine with me.”

  “Yes, Your Grace,” the commander said, and left them.

  Mannie and Vicky spent the next few hours sweating over every number they could find. Food would not be a problem. Finding tritium to fuel the extra ships’ reactors might be. “Finding docks for them may also be difficult,” Mannie said. “We were getting more freighters moving. If the warships are parked permanently, that could affect trade.”

  “Then we’ll just have to keep the ships doing something,” Vicky said. “I’m headed for Brunswick with a trade delegation and half a dozen freighters.”

  “A dozen,” Mannie corrected.

  “A dozen!”

  “Yep. Brunswick had a longer wish list, and what with all the shipments of crystal and rare earths, we can meet their needs. Oh, and we need to look at a second convoy to Metzburg.”

  “Half dozen or a dozen?”

  “A full dozen this time. It may not sail in the next few days. That load of rare earths we just got in will need to be processed into product before we send that convoy out.”

  “I’m starting to think that keeping enough ships at High St. Petersburg to protect it may be more of a problem than you’re thinking.”

  Mannie shrugged. “You could have a point. By the way, are we just protecting convoys and St. Petersburg from pirates, or is it something bigger?”

  “That depends on how many skippers turned their ships over to be junked, doesn’t it?”

  “How good will the skippers be that the Empress hires for her new battleships?”

  Vicky sighed. “Your guess is as good as mine. How much of the flexibility that we saw in the crew of the Golden Empress 1 was because they were so outgunned and how much was because they thought they were on the wrong side?”

  “As you said, your guess is as good as mine,” Mannie agreed.

  They went over more numbers and found more options and more challenges. It became clear that they were guessing at their problems and guessing even more wildly at their solutions.

  Mannie leaned back on his couch, spread his arms wide, and put his feet up on the coffee table that doubled as a computer screen. He let out a huge sigh. “Don’t things around you ever slow down?”

  Vicky gave the question all the time it deserved—about two seconds, then shrugged. “They don’t seem to although I will point out in my defense that I don’t have a lot of control over them. As a case in point, I give you that invasion fleet or the refugees.”

  “Yes, yes, yes,” Mannie agreed. “But don’t you ever want to lean back on a sofa, kick your shoes off, and curl up in front of a nice fire?”

  She wanted very much to curl her legs around him, fireplace or not. With regret, she deflected that thought.

  “There aren’t that many fireplaces on battleships. I don’t think they’re allowed.”

  Mannie scowled at her. “Not even for Grand Duchesses?”

  “Especially not for Grand Duchesses. Oh, I don’t know. Maybe for a Grand Duchess who doesn’t spend all her time running for her life. I don’t know about those kind, never having met one.”

  “You have a point. Not a good one, I allow you, but a point. When we get you back to Sevastopol, you are going to have to let me take you up to a place I know in the mountains. It’s great when it snows. There’s skiing and maybe even a snowball fight or two if you’re really daring. It has the most wonderful fireplace. Gray fieldstones all the way up to the ceiling. Beautiful high wooden ceiling. Or would you call it an overhead?”

  “Houses have ceilings,” Vicky allowed. “Warships have overheads. It’s the same with walls and bulkheads.”

  “You sure? Would a real Navy officer give me a different answer?”

  “I don’t know. If my commander/lifeguard ever comes back, you can ask him. Maybe if you’re third-generation Navy, even walls are bulkheads, but I’ve only been at this Navy thing for a few years.”

  “And someday you’ll be a full-time Grand Duchess and not part-time Navy and part-time Grand Duchess.”

  “Oh.” Vicky sighed. “It would be so wonderful not to have to check each footstep, each word. Am I Navy right now, or am I whatever a Grand Duchess is?”

  “You don’t know what you are by now?”

  “My dad seems to know what Emperor means. He can do whatever he damn well wants to. The Empress seems to think she can kill whomever she damn well chooses. Me, I can’t tell the difference between Grand Duchess and Grand Target.”

  “Probably because they appear to be one and the same at the moment.”

  “Apparently.”

  “You want to sit over here, or is there something in the Grand Duchess Handbook that says you may never share a sofa with a subject?”

  “Is there such a handbook?” Vicky said, letting her eyes go wide. “Ha
ve you got a copy I can borrow?”

  “So, you just like to keep your own chair.”

  “I didn’t say that,” Vicky said, and stood to walk toward the offered place beside Mannie.

  There was a knock at the door, and the commander entered, a chief boson’s mate right behind him.

  Vicky turned her slink to the couch into standing tall like a good Navy officer.

  “Yes, Commander?”

  “The chief is the most experienced man aboard at handling longboats. Chief?”

  “Your Grace, we got a picket boat aboard that we usually just use as a liberty launch. However, it does have more powerful engines if we want to use them and can carry extra reaction mass if we don’t need to carry a lot of junk, if you take my meaning, Your Grace.”

  “I’ve got five people plus me I need to get to St. Pete as soon as possible.” When the commander started to object, Vicky cut him off. “The admiral can send as many Marines down when he gets in range. For now, Mannie and I need to be there, and I think you, Mr. Smith, Kit, and Kat can take care of matters well enough.”

  “I have already called ahead and have an extralarge security detail going along with my lieutenant mayor,” Mannie put in.

  “If you insist,” the commander said.

  “I do. Chief, how soon can we detach from this battlewagon?”

  “I’ve double-checked my orbital calculations with the ship’s navigator as well as the captain and admiral. If I may say so, they agree the earliest time to depart is in”—he glanced at his wrist—“thirty-three minutes.”

  “Then I think we need to toss a few things in a bag, don’t we?” Vicky said.

  Mannie left to get the tiny overnight bag he’d brought up with him. The commander allowed that his baggage was already aboard the picket boat. Mr. Smith was back in five minutes, a bit before Kit and Kat managed to pack Vicky a couple of uniforms, a little red dress, and her toothbrush.

  They were aboard the picket boat well before it dropped away.

  CHAPTER 10

  VICKY could not recall a wilder shuttle ride in her life. Nor had she ever put on such heavy gees.

  Kit wryly suggested they all needed to lose weight.

  Vicky was haunted by the doctor’s words about bugs in the wild outback of St. Petersburg that laid eggs under your skin. He thought a high-gee shuttle ride just might knock those eggs loose into her bloodstream so the larvae could dine on her heart. She dearly hoped she hadn’t actually run into any of those little buggers during her naked wandering through St. Petersburg’s wilderness.

  Assuming us Peterwalds have hearts.

  The picket boat groaned and moaned as the chief put it through some sharp S turns during reentry. Vicky found herself praying to any god willing to listen to her blackened soul that the wings would stay on. Beside her, Mannie was fingering a rosary.

  Despite all the bumps and thumps, the wings stayed on, and the flight ended with the shuttle’s coming in for a smooth landing at the St. Pete spaceport.

  A limo awaited them with a large police escort.

  “I told you I phoned ahead for security,” Mannie said.

  “Let us hope no one in the Empress’s pay was listening,” Mr. Smith said with no softening smile.

  Kit and Kat kept their heads on a swivel. Vicky was glad she had on her spidersilk under armor.

  The drive through St. Pete showed a city recovered from its economic death spiral. Everywhere Vicky looked, traffic was thick on the streets, and people were walking with purpose. Several new buildings were going up.

  Their ride ended at an older building, built of marble in the classic style. They drove past the columned entrance and disappeared into underground parking. From there, it was a short elevator ride to the fourth floor. They walked down a thickly carpeted, marble hallway to a pair of tall wooden doors that guards swung wide for them.

  Inside, a huge room had walls covered in tall windows or equally tall mirrors veined in gold. The sun through the windows was reflected back, leaving the many crystal chandeliers with little need to shed their light. In the middle of the room was one long, thick, wooden table with several dozen people gathered around it. Many looked all too familiar to Vicky. They stared at her and Mannie in heavy silence.

  Again, chairs at the head . . . or maybe foot . . . had been left for her and Mannie. She didn’t need any suggestion but made for the empty seats.

  The meeting started before she was halfway there.

  “You told us nothing would happen, that this would be a secret rebellion to start with,” came from somewhere in the middle of the table. It was supported by “Yeah,” “Yes,” “I told you we couldn’t trust a Peterwald,” and worse.

  Vicky schooled her face to neutral and continued her walk. When she got to the chair at the end of the table, head or bottom, she sat down and surveyed the people around the table.

  Some had fallen silent, but others kept on with their own comments on recent events. She did not interrupt them.

  She sat there, stiff and attentive, keeping her silence until a question rose above the babble. “Aren’t you going to answer us? Or are you going to pull that Peterwald thing? You know, ‘You peasants, me Emperor, so shut up and do what I want.’”

  Vicky stood up on that note, and the room slowly bubbled down to silence. Then she sat down again.

  She took a deep breath of the silence, and said, “I told you when we last met that I wanted to take it slow. I wanted to feel my way into whatever it was that we were doing. I also made it clear that my stepmom had her own agenda, and it would unfold on her timetable.”

  Vicky let that circulate around the room. She was still facing some very hard looks, but other heads began to nod. “She did tell us that,” was whispered by several people. Vicky found it interesting that all three of the women at the table were in that group.

  “I don’t know if you realize it, but St. Petersburg was invaded a few days ago. Did you notice three regiments of the Empress’s best, or should I say worst, security specialists strutting around your streets?”

  Several heads shook slowly. Someone finally said, “That was an invasion?”

  “Yep,” Vicky said. “Three heavy cruisers and three regiments of security thugs. If the negotiations on Metzburg had dragged out, and my battleship had been in orbit there rather than here, there would have been nothing between you and them.”

  The room was deadly silent as the obvious became blatantly clear to even the densest heads.

  “As it is, Mannie here drove M’Lord, the Lord High Commissioner for Safety on St. Petersburg into a heart attack rather than a planetary attack.”

  “I knew Mannie was good for something,” came from the mayor of Kiev.

  “I had a little help from our Grand Duchess,” Mannie said, wryly.

  “But I’m gracious,” Vicky said, innocently batting her eyes.

  “In a pig’s eye,” Mannie said, under his breath for all to hear.

  The tension in the room broke up in a good laugh.

  Vicky let them enjoy their release for a long moment, then leaned forward as the silence returned.

  “The blackhearted Empress tried to take your planet. As luck, and only luck would have it, I and my battleship were between trade missions, and we put a stop to that. It could have ended very differently.”

  Vicky saw her words hit home, and continued, “Instead, we have acquired the invasion fleet. Some ten thousand thugs will need employment that doesn’t involve swaggering around with guns. However, we have a problem.

  “The Empress is thinking about St. Petersburg. You may be far from Greenfeld, but you are, no doubt, in every waking thought of the blackhearted Empress. That could be a problem. However, what might otherwise have been a problem now appears to be a gift.”

  Several heads snapped around to give her some really strange looks.

  “The Imperium, be it my father or my stepmother, has been ordering battleships and battlecruisers to be scrapped in midlife. Strange h
ow they are soon showing up in different hands doing their best to pirate merchant ships going about their proper business of carrying trade between planets. The Navy has fought and captured those ships. Now, captains with orders to sail their ships to the scrap heap have strong suspicions that what is left of the Navy will all too soon be facing those guns crewed by pirates.”

  Vicky relaxed back in her seat, but she chipped her next words from hard flint. “Several of those captains have chosen to sail here and place themselves at our disposal. I now lay before you a proposal that you accept their service in our mutual defense and do what we can to feed their crews and maintain their ships.”

  Vicky paused to see how that idea went over. It hung there in the air, neither accepted nor rejected. “Not too long ago, there would have been no way for St. Petersburg to maintain a fleet of battleships. You, however, have recently upgraded the docks on your station. Now you have the choice of maintaining them or not. A few weeks ago, you did not have the heavy industry to repair such ships. Now, with newly arrived fabricators from Metzburg, you do.”

  Vicky let her eyes rove those seated around the table. “You have made the decisions that have led you to this moment. Will you now make the decision that you can, not just for yourselves, but for your children?”

  It was Mannie who broke the silence she left her listeners frozen in.

  “We have a proposal before us to accept the services of the offered ships. Need I say, some were actually captured. It is proposed that we create the St. Petersburg Division of the Greenfeld Imperial Navy Reserve Fleet. I motion that we open the floor for discussion.”

  “St. Petersburg Division of the Greenfeld Imperial Navy Reserve Fleet, you say, Mannie?” the mayor of Kiev said. “That’s quite a mouthful. Did you just come up with it, or did Her Grace, here, help you?”

  Mannie grinned. “That name is my very own creation. Me being a loyal subject of the Emperor, I don’t want anyone to get the idea that we aren’t just as loyal.”

  “Whatever you call it,” a banker midway down the table put in, “it’s going to cost. And it’s going to take scarce resources I’m not so sure we have. Food, for one thing.”