Rebel

by Mike Shepherd

  But Vicky had another set of ears now. Those listened as Mannie would. Here were real human beings, who built with their own two hands everything the people in this room needed. They were the people, like Inez, who would protect them from the likes of stepmommy dearest.

  People who had just defended them from stepmom’s invasion fleet.

  Vicky closed her eyes. How could they miss the Ranger’s warning? If she issued those kids guns to shoot their mothers down, they’d be just as likely to turn those weapons on the officers ordering the murder of their family. On the likes of the people in this room.

  Fools!

  Vicky turned to Jansik. “I don’t think you’ve thought this through.”

  “Thought what through?”

  Vicky let her eyes rove the room. The grouch was scowling at her, as were many of those around the table. There looked to be a few who might have put two and two together, but they were few and far between.

  Vicky was tempted to just turn on her heels, grab Inez and her company of Rangers, and knock the dust of this place from her shoes.

  It was tempting.

  Then again, St. Petersburg needed Brunswick as a trading partner. Besides, if Vicky withdrew the fleet, the blackhearted Empress would be down on this bunch with her redcoats in two shakes. They’d be dead, and the lot of the workers would be no better.

  “Not long ago, I led a Fleet Marine Force and a task force out to bring food to a planet,” Vicky said, slowly. “We had to fight our way through a self-proclaimed duke and his gun-toting henchmen to get starvation rations to people dying of hunger. Inez here fought to make that happen. She’s a good warrior,” Vicky said, nodding at the captain.

  Inez met the praise with a hint of a smile.

  “Who has the guns on Brunswick?” Vicky asked. “Who got their hands on the guns left behind by the slaughter of State Security?”

  Vicky eyed grumpy, then Jansik.

  “I thought the guns were removed by the Navy when they took those thugs away,” Jansik said.

  “Who checked the inventory?” Vicky asked. “We’ve found a lot of them still locked up in that planet’s armory. That duke fellow blew open the gun vault, and, before long, he had his hands on everything.”

  “Aren’t the traffic safety officers using State Security Headquarters now?” someone around the table asked.

  That drew shrugs.

  “If they’re there,” Vicky said, “and you start shooting, whose hands will the guns end up in?”

  Several frantic people around the table started talking to their commlinks. Vicky waited patiently for them to find out what cow was eating their cabbage, as some of the ex-farmers in the fleet were often wont to say.

  “The gun vault opened at a touch, but it’s empty,” a woman near the foot of the table announced. “It looks like it was unlocked a while ago and just closed back up.”

  “So, my fine people, who has the monopoly on violence in your city and planet?” Vicky asked. “There is a thing I read about in one of the books I found on a Navy battleship. Not in the library at the palace, but something the Navy reads. It’s called a social contract. Have any of you heard of such a thing?”

  Heads shook around the table.

  “You come to a green light,” Vicky said slow, as if talking to particularly difficult preschoolers. “You drive through it, knowing that anyone coming from the other directions will see the red light and not smash into you. It’s the same way with other things. I work for you. I assume that you’ll treat me decently. That part of the contract can be a bit harder if you’ve got the likes of State Security to lean on the worker. The Emperor provided the duress, and you got to stint on the decent-treatment side. Now the machine guns are gone, and you’re caught between a rock and a hard place. My stepmother is providing the rock. She’s only too willing to smash you down and take what she wants from your dead body. The workers can’t help but notice that the guns are gone. They could sure use some decent treatment. Who do you want to bargain with, my mom or those women blocking traffic?”

  Vicky settled into Jansik’s chair, leaving the fellow standing at her elbow.

  The room’s silence grew long, but that was too much for grumpy. “A Peterwald is telling us to bargain with our workers. I never thought I’d hear that.”

  “I bet you never thought a Peterwald would save your sorry ass from another Peterwald, but it happened,” Vicky pointed out. “Face it, folks, you live in very strange times.”

  That drew a lot of surprised glances from around the table.

  “Any chance we could bargain with the Empress?” grumpy asked no one.

  “Have you talked to any of your family who are stuck in her ‘security sphere’?” a young fellow across the table from him said. “The last I heard from my sister, her husband had an offer he couldn’t refuse. That was a year ago, and there hasn’t been a peep out of them since. Not so much as a small text message. Anyone else hearing nothing, too?”

  He eyed the room. Suddenly, everyone was busy looking at the table.

  “Yeah, like I thought. Folks, we have one and only one choice. We can pull together, all of us, or we can all get pulled apart. Wallace, I know you won’t like it. You were chummy with General Zin before he got tossed out the window of State Security Headquarters.”

  “He jumped,” Wallace insisted.

  “Jumped, pushed? He was just a splat on the cobblestones when it was all over. I like this thing the Grand Duchess mentioned. We made our social contract with the Peterwalds and their State Security. They made it easy for us to do pretty much what we wanted to.”

  The young man looked around the table. “Now we have no guns to back us up, and the Empress is canceling all previous contracts and offering us stuff we can’t swallow but can’t refuse. So, unless someone has a third option I haven’t heard about, we either make our peace with the folks we share this planet with and give them guns to defend themselves and us with, or we kowtow to the Empress and let her do what she wants to us.”

  Now there was discussion around the table. Vicky figured she’d be there for a long time. She looked up at Inez and drew her close with a quick waggle of a finger.

  “Ma’am.”

  “You want to get back to work?” Vicky whispered.

  “Yes, Your Grace.”

  “And look into those missing State Security machine pistols. You might also want to put some guards around the protestors to see that no one decides to use those machine guns in crowd control. I think I’ve got this bunch stampeded into a circle, but who knows who is out there and willing to do their unspoken bidding.”

  At “stampeded,” the former rancher smiled, but at the thought of stray weapons wrecking what she and her Grand Duchess had worked so hard for this afternoon, Inez nodded and quick-walked from the room, her commlink already to her lips.

  CHAPTER 27

  TO Vicky’s disappointment, she did not find herself standing at several guys’ elbows, smiling prettily to banks of newsies, as contracts were quickly signed. Instead, she sat through another long meeting.

  It was clear to her what they had to do. Still, no one at the table could find their way clear to get off their rear ends and start making things happen. Thus, Vicky did her best to sit placidly as her tush began to ache and her patience grew shorter while all those around her yapped their way through more long-winded dithering.

  She was thinking of leaving. It was good she stayed.

  Half a dozen commlinks started flashing at the same time.

  “There have been shots fired at Greenfeld Plaza,” shouted the young woman who seemed to know more about what was going on than anyone else in the room, or knew it faster. She jumped to her feet.

  “Calm down,” Vicky ordered in the command voice Admiral Krätz had taught her.

  As the admiral had promised his budding JO, people did calm down . . . or at least grow silent. She could almost hear the admiral’s words. “People who know nothing are easily dominated by anyone who ac
ts like they know what they are doing.”

  Vicky’s own computer was passing along Inez’s report directly.

  MY SNIPER HAS TAKEN DOWN ONE PERSON WITH A MACHINE PISTOL. THERE IS NO EVIDENCE OF ANY OTHER SHOOTER. SEVERAL OF MY RECRUITS ARE RACING TO RECOVER THE WEAPON AND RENDER ANY AID NEEDED TO THE GUNMAN.

  “Captain, could you please repeat your report to those still in this meeting with me,” Vicky ordered.

  The Ranger did.

  “But, I am told there were several shots fired,” Jansik snapped.

  “Sir, I am at the scene of the shooting, and my Ranger sniper needed just one shot to put an end to this noise. You are misinformed,” was Inez’s reply.

  That drew quizzical looks Vicky’s way. “One Ranger, one target, one round,” she said with finality.

  That seemed to settle the matter.

  “My response team has arrived where the shooter is down,” Inez said, updating her report. “We have the weapon in custody. It is a State Security special. We are identifying the gunman. He is Ivan Hollerman, a shop foreman with Galactic Assemblers Limited. He’s still breathing.”

  A siren could be heard in the background.

  “Do you locals have anyone you want to take custody of him?” Inez asked.

  Vicky just raised an eyebrow.

  Instead of an answer, Jansik growled, “You sent your woman to provide guns at the protest?”

  “Yes, I did,” Vicky snapped back. “And if I hadn’t, you’d have blood in the streets and trouble beyond your worst nightmares. Who owns GAL?”

  Eyes around the table turned to grumpy.

  “Don’t look at me. I didn’t order that guy to do anything. I’ve been here all the time.” Which said nothing. Vicky had no problems communicating on net while her behind grew more and more pained in meetings. Still, Wallace might be that old-fashioned.

  “I think we ought to be grateful to that Ranger for saving us from riots aimed at us for something we had nothing to do with,” the young man said.

  Slowly, heads nodded.

  “Well, maybe you’re right, Steve,” Jansik finally mumbled. “Still, we should know what’s happening here.”

  “Clearly, you did not,” Vicky pointed out.

  Jansik forbore any further response.

  “May I repeat, is there any sort of police I can turn this fellow over to for questioning, assuming he lives?” Inez snapped on net.

  “Our traffic supervisors have been stepping up their game,” the young Steve answered.

  “You’ve been waltzing around with no one to handle domestic disputes, bank robberies, anything outside the law?” Vicky found herself saying.

  Grumpy scowled. Jansik shrugged. Steve provided the answer. “You didn’t want State Security involved in such matters,” he pointed out. “There were local ways of handling things in the projects, or so I’m told. As for major crimes, we don’t seem to have any.”

  “People, on St. Petersburg they have their crime families that handle the usual vices. They paid off State Security and ended up allied with the mayors when Security went away. Who’s running your black market, prostitution, what have you?”

  Those around the table just looked at each other.

  Vicky shook her head. “You’ve been skating on thin ice, sure that you’re running things, and you don’t know half of what’s going on five floors below your penthouses.”

  Nobody said anything.

  “Well, folks, I’ll tell you what I’m going to do. Kris Longknife, that Wardhaven princess, once talked me into giving the cities of St. Petersburg their own Imperial City Charters. They empowered them to elect mayors and establish city governance that held up during the hard times we’ve been having. Computer, shoot these fine folks the contents of one of those charters and the regulations Sevastopol is operating under. The coordination between cities is still kind of loosey-goosey. I suggest you look into something like that.”

  Vicky let that sink in. “Now, about your protestors. Captain, how’s it going?”

  “They all ducked when my sniper took out the gunner. Now they’re milling about. I think the rumor mill is going crazy, what with a shot fired and an ambulance making its way through the crowded streets. It’s not for me to tell anyone in your pay grade what to do, but I’d get someone out here to talk to these folks real quick if I were in your boots,” the Ranger said.

  “The gal has a point,” Steve said.

  “Who owns the projects these people are so upset about, and who employs their husbands and has been cutting their pay?” Vicky asked.

  No surprise, grumpy slowly raised his hand, but then so did Jansik, and Steve as well.

  “Boys,” Vicky said, “have I got a deal for you. Trade is open. You’re back in business. What do you say that you rescind those pay cuts and housing increases? People don’t fight for the people that do them dirty. From the looks of matters here, you’re just one blowup from everything coming down around your heads.”

  “We’ve liked to think of ourselves as the ones in charge, making things happen our way,” Steve said, his eyes roving around the room. Many met him. Others still scowled at where this was leading.

  “I’m willing to cut the rent back to what it was and restore pay to where it was last year. The rest of you will have to decide for yourselves.”

  “If you do that, kid, how can we not follow?” Grumpy growled.

  “Yeah, I see your problem, Wallace, but I see my problem as more pressing. The Grand Duchess here is right. We’ve managed to slide by on a pretty slick deal. Slick for us; not so slick for everyone else. If we don’t change the tune, I see us having to pay a pretty angry piper. Just how did your foreman get his hands on that machine pistol?”

  “I have no idea,” Wallace insisted, almost believably.

  “That may be true, but if there’s a black market in slightly used State Security machine pistols, I think we need to have ourselves some real soldiers with real weapons and training able to take down a problem in a crowd with one shot.”

  Finally, the people around the table were working their way toward an agreement.

  The Ranger hurried them on. “Well, if you folks can find your way clear to some agreement, I suggest you get some folks out here to talk to this bunch. My reading of them is these cows are getting real antsy. One hint of another lightning strike, and there’s gonna be a stampede.”

  Vicky stood and headed for the door. It was a short moment before Jansik, Wallace, and Steve joined her. On their heels followed the rest of the room.

  CHAPTER 28

  DECISIONS were finalized in Vicky’s limo on the drive over to Greenfeld Plaza. No surprise; Steve did most of the talking. The two older men usually were content to grunt unhappy agreement. The one time they got vocal was when Steve suggested that the crowd be invited to nominate a committee to present their grievances.

  “We’re raising their pay and lowering their rent. What more do they need?” grumbled the grouch.

  “Do you remember when you were invited to first sit in on the business round table?” Steve said. “I do. I can’t tell you how it made me feel. You must have felt it back when.”

  “I remember,” grouch admitted. “I’m not that old.”

  “Well, we need to know more about what’s happening. Happening for real. I agree with the Grand Duchess. Someone is running our black market. Someone opened that gun locker. Unless we want that someone to be heading up our round table, we need to play catch-up, and we need more eyes and ears to do it with. Am I not right, Your Grace?”

  Vicky thought back on all she’d learned from Mannie in the last months. All she’d experienced as both the gracious Grand Duchess on St. Petersburg and driving efforts to feed Poznan and get trade going with Metzburg. “Managing a planet is not something one man can do,” she said slowly. “I think the mess my father, the Emperor, is making of the Empire is very telling. I’m not suggesting that we want to go all Longknife with elections every day or such, but we do need to let
the people who know how to run things do their jobs.”

  “And how do we do that?” Jansik asked, not quite in full snide.

  “When I figure it out, you’ll be the first I tell,” Vicky said.

  They were at the plaza. Several Rangers and traffic supervisors helped walk the limo through the crowd. It wasn’t a problem. At seeing Vicky, her name swept through the crowd. People fell back while others hurried closer. It made for a jam, but a bubble formed around the car, and they were halfway to the inevitable statue of one of Vicky’s grand- or great-grandfathers when the car could go no farther.

  So Vicky got out and walked. She shook offered hands, and the jam of people seemed to open before her. Or maybe it was the Marines in their green-and-black uniforms. Where they came from, Vicky had no idea but, she was pretty sure she owed their skipper a thank-you.

  Steve fell in beside Vicky, shaking hands as well. Jansik and Grumpy were more reticent, but one way or another, they all found themselves on the marble platform before the statue.

  Kat produced a bullhorn from somewhere, and Vicky shouted, “Hello.”

  A long, shouted “Hello” rolled back at her.

  “Thank you for letting me visit,” Vicky said next.

  From a knot of mothers and grandmothers who seemed to have a secure place right in front of her came a “Thank you for coming,” that turned into a ragged but powerful response from the crowd.

  “It was my honor, and that of the Navy,” Vicky continued, “to secure the space above your head. You are now safe from without.”

  The crowd quieted as Vicky talked.

  “The question before you is what to do now.”

  “Yes,” came right back from the group of women at her feet.

  “I have someone who wants to talk to you. Will you listen to him?”

  The rumble from the women was none too sure, but Vicky handed over the bullhorn, and Steve began to speak. He played his cards right; he started by praising Vicky and the Navy that came with her. A quick nod to the reopening of trade and more jobs led quickly to announcing the cancellation of the pay cuts. That drew cheers, especially from the back of the crowd. There were more men there. No doubt, absenteeism was high today.