Rebel

by Mike Shepherd

  The return to lower rents and a promise to improve the quality of the apartments sent the women into cheers. More of them cheered when Steve handed the bullhorn to Jansik and Wallace, who announced, if less enthusiastically, that they would be doing the same.

  The crowd was in a happy mood when Steve got the bullhorn back and played his final card. “I and my friends need to know more about what is happening here, in Laatzen and all the cities of Brunswick. You know a lot about what I don’t. Could you nominate a committee to work with us to see that things go better?”

  “Why not elect them,” came from a gray-haired granny at their feet. That was promptly seconded by several other old gray heads.

  “Maybe we will,” Steve allowed. “But we need to start with something, and we need to start right now. I’ll be back at my office in an hour. If you can get someone to speak for you, I’ll meet with them then.”

  “How will you know that someone who shows up is someone this bunch of yahoos wants?” Grumpy put in as soon as the bullhorn was off.

  “I won’t, unless they toss that someone out of my office,” Steve said.

  “Better you start this than me,” Jansik muttered.

  One or the other of them had summoned a car to get them out of there. They went.

  Vicky and Steve hung around, shaking hands and exchanging a few good words with those who wanted to get something off their chest immediately. When one old fellow began a long-winded harangue, two of the grandmothers edged him off until he was talking to two strapping boys who nodded agreement but kept him moving away from Vicky.

  That Kat was helping might have added to their speed of departure.

  It was a long hour before Vicky and Steve were back in her borrowed limo and driving slowly through a thinning crowd.

  “That went better than I’d expected,” Steve allowed.

  “I’m always surprised when it does. So far it always has. Sooner or later, my luck’s going to run out.”

  “That gas attack at Kiev didn’t go all that well,” the commander allowed.

  “Huh?” Steve asked.

  “A long story. Let’s save it for another time,” Vicky said.

  “Hmm. Interesting, I offer them a committee, and someone wants an election right off the cuff. I wonder where that came from?”

  “You say the projects handle their own problems.”

  “So I’ve been told,” Steve admitted.

  “And how do those who handle those problems get their authority?” Vicky asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  “You might want to find out,” Vicky suggested. “I suspect you’ll be dealing with them when you get back to your office. And if this really does go into an election for a committee or more, you may find that getting up there and being the face of the round table puts you in places you never thought of.”

  “Those old farts would never let someone as young as me lead them,” Steve said.

  “They may have fewer choices in the months to come than they thought they had last month.”

  “Hmm,” was Steve’s thoughtful response. “You know, this rebellion idea. It doesn’t quit, does it? I figured your saving our rear ends from the Empress’s henchmen was great, but I see each step leads to another step. Do you ever know where you’re going?”

  “Not even a guess,” Vicky agreed. “But I know where I’d be going if I went where the Empress wanted. Given a choice between her way and this crazy, unknown way, I’ll take the crazy.”

  “Yeah,” Steve muttered. “Yeah.”

  CHAPTER 29

  TWO days later, with nineteen freighters loaded with trade for St. Petersburg, four more than they’d arrived with, Brunswick was disappearing as quickly in the fleet’s rearview mirror as Vicky could make it. She left with very mixed feelings about Brunswick that left her wondering how matters were really going at Presov, Posnan, and Metzburg.

  Who are you kidding? Do you really think you can make a difference against all the bad karma you Peterwalds have piled up against yourselves and the lackeys that kissed up to you?

  Vicky had no answers to her growing doubts. She did know that there were good people working with her. Captain Rachinsky, for example. He’d seen to it that the two cruisers in his squadron had been whipped through the yard quickly and were now ready to answer all bells. The Savage and Ferocity were another matter.

  The Retribution had hammered the two opposing battleships pretty hard. The yard had peeled their ice armor off down to bare metal. They’d patched the refrigeration ducts and were slowly spraying layer after layer of new ice on. When they were done, the ships would be as well protected as the day they were commissioned.

  The reactors and engines, lasers and electronics were another matter. The fabs on the planet below were putting together a full set of machinery where they could or patching what they couldn’t. All that was nice, but it left Vicky with questions she didn’t like.

  “Is the Navy as rotten as these ships seem to show?”

  “I’m not surprised,” Captain Bolesław admitted. “Appropriations have been pretty thin, what with your father, our Emperor, building that palace of his. Worse, the ships have spent a lot of time tied up at the pier with the Sailors ordered out to shore parties for knocking heads. That doesn’t make for a well-ordered ship or ship’s company.”

  Vicky mulled that thought. “So if we can get our house in order, it just might save our necks when it comes to a fight?”

  “Then again, there are those two battleships building. Assuming the yards get them right, they might be a real tough nut to crack.”

  “You think the yards will get them right?” Vicky asked.

  The captain just shrugged. “No doubt, the Empress will see that they get everything they need. Will she be listening to the right people? Your guess is as good as mine.”

  Messages came in, and Vicky found that she had some very good people working for her.

  The Navy had run a team down onto Garnet and spirited away the wives and children of the 16th Marine Battalion before the local security honcho was any the wiser. It seemed a pretty slick operation until word got back that the command top shirt’s wife was off-planet visiting her daughter, who was about to give birth to their first grandchild.

  A video of the bloody murder of mother, daughter, and a newborn grandson, along with the son-in-law was not slow to arrive in Vicky’s in-basket. The warning to Major Burke arrived too late. His command sergeant major had already exacted deadly revenge on the redcoat who had commanded the station as well as his subordinate officers.

  “The Gunnys have him out getting drunk,” Burke reported. “I’ve got two in the group who will stay sober and ride herd on the rest. Damn, this is gonna get ugly.”

  Vicky killed the commlink. There was little she could add.

  Over the next weeks, as the convoy made its way back to St. Petersburg, more reports came in. Metzburg had sent several of its cruisers out with half-trained troops aboard them. They had been enough to garner the surrender of several planets in their trading zone that had recently been invaded by redcoats. Things seemed to be going well until two of the armed liners got into a fight with three Golden Empresses. The fight went long. The Empress’s ships finally broke and ran for it, but the Metzburg ships had to limp home for repairs, and there were no more planets cut out of the Empress’s so-called security sphere in that sector.

  There were sketchy reports of planets that rose up and tried to throw off their Security Consultants. A few managed to get word out. The Navy helped wherever it could. Too many, however, suffered bloody repression, no less savage than that meted out to the Gunny’s family.

  The Empress would either cow everyone to her side or reap a bloody revenge for what she had done.

  Only time would tell which would be meted out to her.

  CHAPTER 30

  WHILE Vicky marked her stepmother’s fate as pending, she herself had a rebellion to plan and execute. Kris Longknife might be able to keep vast
star maps in her head, but Vicky could hardly keep track of the ever-changing map of the palace.

  “Computer, show me a star map of Greenfeld space.”

  The largest wall in her borrowed admiral day cabin changed from flat crimson wallpaper with golden fleurs-de-lis to a 3D volume speckled with lightly tinted dots. There were a lot of dots.

  “Ah, computer, take away the uninhabited star systems,” Vicky said, and most of the space went blank. The ninety-four planets of the Imperium looked awfully lonely.

  There was a polite knock at her door. “Enter,” she said.

  Commander Boch and Mr. Smith did; they both eyed the map.

  “You planning a campaign?” Mr. Smith asked.

  “More like I’m just trying to figure out what the Empire looks like from a campaign perspective,” Vicky admitted. “Admiral Krätz taught me a lot, but grand strategy wasn’t in the curriculum.”

  “He would have saved that for your fourth year senior project,” the commander said offhandedly. “Do you want some input on your map?”

  “Please,” Vicky said, not keeping the pleading out of her voice.

  “Are you using your computer for this?” the spy asked.

  “Yes. I didn’t want this in the ship’s computer.”

  “Smart,” he said.

  “Computer,” the commander said, “show all jump points that connect the Imperium’s planets. Show unpopulated systems in that network with small white blinkers.”

  Quickly, there were a lot more stars, with thin golden lines connecting them.

  Vicky eyed the larger volume. The Empire was a gossamer web in the shape of a rather lumpy dumpling. “That might have sufficed a year ago, but I think we need to look at things a bit differently now. Computer, show the systems trading with St. Petersburg in green.”

  The map changed. One end of the dumpling now looked covered in green mold.

  “How many planets do we have?” Vicky asked the computer.

  “Twenty-four at last report,” it replied.

  “So the Empress has seventy on her side,” Vicky concluded.

  “That may not be quite true,” the spy said.

  “How so?” Vicky asked.

  “You have rallied the planets around St. Petersburg, Metzburg, and Brunswick,” Mr. Smith said. “Planets like Poznan and Presov you picked up because the Empress was content to let them fall into wreck and starvation. Others like Good Luck, Ormuzd, and Kazan, you picked up because you offered them trade before they, too, were in deep distress. Something like this is happening along the entire perimeter of your Empire. Bliven, for example, still had the vestigial institutions of a democracy that they had before voting to enter the Empire. I now have word that they voted to withdraw and associate themselves with the United Society.”

  “They switched to the Longknifes!” the commander said, incredulous.

  “My sources say they have,” the spy said. “And they took Fourier and New Kraków with them. In these hard times, those planets had become dependent on Bliven rather than the center of the Empire.”

  “So the mess we have here is repeated all around the Empire’s periphery,” Vicky concluded.

  “Very much so. Lublin and Kottubus have even realigned themselves with Hispania and the Esperanto League respectively. Sylt is reported to have feelers out to the Scanda Confederacy.”

  Vicky shook her head. “And if those developed planets go, they’ll take their dependencies with them.”

  “Exactly,” the spy said. “The Empress has the center of the Empire around Greenfeld in her tight grasp, but she’s letting most of the more distant planets slide away.”

  “How many does she have solidly in her control?” Commander Boch asked.

  “No more than fifty. Possibly as few as forty-two.”

  “But those forty-two are the heart of the Empire,” Vicky said, and had her computer turn the center of the Empire bright red. “The industry and populations of Minsk, Cologne, Dresden, and the space docks of Bremerhaven and Gdan´sk. If she turns those to war on the breakaway planets, she could scorch a path through the stars.”

  “If we give her time to consolidate her holdings,” Commander Boch said.

  “But we also need time to consolidate,” Vicky pointed out.

  “This war of yours,” the spy said slowly, “may be decided by whoever can get her act together first and strike while the other is still organizing her shit.” He was kind enough to smile as he gave Vicky his conclusion.

  “No shit,” said the commander.

  Vicky sighed. “Sadly, you are both right.”

  She studied the map that now covered her wall. “You know what is missing from this?”

  “No,” came from both the men.

  “The fleet. Where are the battleships and battlecruisers? The cruiser and destroyer squadrons? I know what we need to defend from the Empress and take away from her, but I don’t know what tools we have to do the job. We need to think about more than ships this war. We’ll need soldiers to dig the redcoats out of their holes and keep them from massacring civilians if I know the predilections of my darling stepmama.”

  The spy nodded agreement.

  “We can’t send that kind of hot data round the net for the Empress to intercept, Your Grace. Not with our communications so compromised.”

  “It would be nice if we had some idea of how many ships had come over to your side, though,” the spy pointed out.

  “And where the ships loyal to the Empress are,” Vicky added.

  She held that thought, and she was still holding it when a big chunk of the Empress’s ships sailed right into her face.

  CHAPTER 31

  RETRIBUTION cruised slowly up to the last jump before the one into the St. Petersburg system and came to rest only a few hundred klicks from it. Throughout the battleship for the last few days, all the talk had been of home.

  Vicky was no exception. She wondered if Mannie might be persuaded to suspend his rule about not getting into bed with a Peterwald for just one night. Or maybe forget the bed and use the sofa. Vicky’s daydreams had gotten quite lurid.

  She’d suspended her wicked thoughts for a bit and took herself off to the bridge. She had real dreams of commanding a warship in space and wanted to study just how a captain handled the transition from one fraction of space to another a dozen or more light-years away.

  Seated in her Grand Duchess chair on the Retribution’s bridge, Vicky watched as Captain Bolesław went about his duties with quiet confidence; Vicky had her computer recording. Everything went smoothly. Sovereign of the Stars slipped through the jump. There was a brief pause for her to report any problems, then Captain Bolesław took Retribution through.

  “The jump was nominal,” Lieutenant Blue reported from sensors. “Hold it, what’s this?”

  “What’s what?” Bolesław demanded.

  “We aren’t the only fleet in this system.”

  “What the hell? Report, damn it.”

  “I need a moment, sir,” the lieutenant replied. “There are a lot of ships, and they aren’t squawking. No, they are, just not on the usual frequency. I’m taking them down now, sir. I’ll have to match reactors to see what name goes with which ship. Oh, that’s a big one.”

  “How big?” the skipper growled.

  “I’m being jammed, but the reactors are making a lot of noise. They have to be as big as ours. Right, there’s another big mother. The lead ship is squawking as the Empress’s Revenge. Following it is the Empress’s Vengeance and the Empress’s Terror.”

  “Not at all subtle,” Vicky noted.

  “I can’t match these ships with anything in my database because of the jamming. Captain, I’d say we’re facing three big battleships, six cruisers, and a dozen destroyers in one formation and a pair of cruisers and another six destroyers escorting what look like five large liners and a dozen freighters.”

  “That would be the invasion fleet,” Captain Bolesław noted.

  “No half measures this
time,” Vicky added.

  “What’s their course and speed?” the captain asked Lieutenant Blue.

  “One-gee acceleration, course set for Jump Point Barbie into St. Petersburg.”

  “Navigator, plot me a course that gets us to Jump Point Barbie before they do at their present acceleration.”

  “We’ll need to go to at least one-point-two-five gees, sir, to get there well ahead of them. I’ll need a minute to give you something more precise.”

  “Send to fleet,” the captain snapped. “The Empress has challenged us to a race. Up acceleration to one-point-two-five gees. Course is for Jump Point Barbie.”

  The fleet took off at the highest acceleration it could maintain. Vicky had her computer check the incoming data from the rest of her tiny fleet. The battleships and cruisers seemed to handle the extra acceleration. Not so much the freighters. The fifteen Vicky had brought to Brunswick had been chosen for their ability to manage at least 1.25 gees. However, the four freighters added by Brunswick quickly showed their reactors moving into the yellow. Two ships from St. Petersburg weren’t much better.

  Captain Bolesław noted that Vicky had activated her board at her command chair and glanced at what she was tracking. “Good, Your Grace. You keep an eye on the civilians, and I’ll worry about the Navy.”

  Vicky waved a hand at her board and it changed to show the warships’ condition. “I’m keeping an eye on all of them. I assume we’re running because you don’t want to fight the Empress’s fleet in this system.”

  “Outnumbered as we are, no,” he agreed.

  “Hopefully, there will be reinforcements waiting for us around St. Petersburg,” Vicky half said to herself.