Rebel

by Mike Shepherd

Lieutenant Commander, Her Grace Victoria, once again found herself wondering at the admiral’s honoring her with a visit rather than waiting for hers, but settled into her armchair to await him. Captain Bolesław joined her as soon as he had his ship firmly settled into the space dock.

  “I’ve got my XO going over our needs with the yard bosses. It’s quite amazing what they seem prepared to handle.” He paused, then added, “I’ll believe it when I’ve finished a postyard shakedown with no write-ups.”

  They had not long to wait. There was a rap on Vicky’s door. “Enter,” she said, and a JG with a JOOD’s armband led a vice admiral and Rear Admiral von Mittleburg into a room that was busy snapping to attention.

  “As you were,” the vice admiral said.

  Vicky relaxed but did not sit down.

  “Your Grace,” Admiral von Mittleburg said, “may I present Vice Admiral Albert Lüth, Commander, Battle Squadron 22. He led his four battleships into the system a week ago, and we were most glad to see him.”

  “How did you happen to find your way here, Admiral?” Vicky asked, shaking an offered hand.

  “I was about to be asked to surrender my command to the scrappers or maybe the pirates. I got wind of it and polled my skippers. We are honored to present to Your Grace the Greenfeld Imperial starships Implacable, Adamant, Merciless, and Hunter of my own squadron. Along the way I picked up a few more. Vigilant and Unrelenting were both headed for the breakers, and they kind of tagged along.”

  “Tagged along,” Captain Bolesław said before Vicky could. “A captain doesn’t just decide to get up plasma and sail off into the sunset.”

  “No, you have to push the button,” the new admiral said, and had the good sense to cough at that oversimplification. “Your Grace, you have friends at Bayern who not only let us know what was headed our way like a runaway sun but arranged for certain ‘off-the-book’ options to open up for us. We ran for your territory, picking up a half dozen cruisers and a score of destroyers on the way. The nice folks at Metzburg were kind enough to give us food, fuel, and reaction mass and send us on to you.”

  “They didn’t want you to stay?” Vicky asked.

  “No, it seems they had just survived a small invasion of their own. The Empress sent two battleships to intimidate them. Metzburg already had acquired four by fair means or foul. Now they have six. Strange how that happens.”

  That drew a chuckle all around.

  Vicky took in a deep breath and let it out slowly. “So the opposition to the Empress grows.”

  “And not just with the ships that have managed to slip across into your territory. Ships that have been boarded by the Empress’s redcoats and ordered to sail against you suddenly develop the worst case of broke and can’t be fixed that you’ve ever seen. Not that the fleet hasn’t been run roughshod and given little enough maintenance support. Interesting how the shoddy workmanship done on new Navy construction is coming back to bite the Empress on her tiny little butt. The word has gotten out. Skippers and crews do not want to go up against you, Your Grace. Not after what you’ve been doing to the Empress’s sallies.

  “Our crews are motivated to not cross swords with you, and the redcoats don’t know the first thing about a warship. It’s amazing how a good chief can screw up the works. I mean, they’re the ones I count on to keep the ships in space. Now they’re pissed off, and what they can do to turn a ship into sick, lame, or lazy is totally beyond the ken of a bank clerk.”

  “What goes around, comes around,” Admiral von Mittleburg said with an enthusiastic grin.

  “Yes,” Vicky said, “but there’s still a lot coming at us that we need to do something about.”

  “Can I ask how bad things are with the two battleships you just brought in?” von Mittleburg asked.

  Vicky tossed that ball off to Captain Bolesław.

  He shook his head. “Slinger took some solid hits before we could win the fight around Brunswick.”

  “You had to fight your way into the Brunswick system?” Admiral Lüth was more than surprised.

  “The redcoats were already there and in control of the station,” Vicky said. “Captain Bolesław and his tiny squadron fought a brilliant battle that let the opposition know they faced destruction if they didn’t come up with some way to surrender. The jumped-up bank clerk was so busy prancing around the bridge that he didn’t bother to sit down and fasten a seat harness. When the flag captain put pedal to the metal on his flagship, along with the rest of the fleet following, he kind of broke his neck against the bridge’s aft bulkhead. Hard to keep a gun to a skipper’s head when gravity is slamming you around.”

  “He didn’t?” Admiral von Mittleburg said.

  “You know old Engle Rachinsky,” Captain Bolesław said. Von Mittleburg nodded. “You still can’t trust him when there’s a good practical joke in the wind.”

  “I don’t see him with you,” Von Mittleburg said.

  “I left him at Brunswick,” Vicky said. “He’s the seed of their Division of the Greenfeld Imperial Navy Reserve Fleet.”

  “Good, good, good,” Admiral Lüth said.

  “His ships did get a couple of good hits on the Slinger. We thought the yard at High Laatzen had repaired her, but as soon as we put on high acceleration, she started sloughing off ice. Retribution had to fight two 18-inch battleships to clear the way to the jump into this system.”

  “You hurt bad?” Von Mittleburg asked before the senior admiral could.

  “I got at least one turret badly damaged. Two more are down with sliced cables. Who came up with the design that runs two turrets’ power cables side by side, I ask you?”

  “No doubt it saved money,” Vice Admiral Lüth growled.

  “No doubt,” Vicky agreed dryly. “How fast can these new space docks make things right on these battleships? There’s trouble on the other side of the jump and no telling when it will drop into our lap.”

  That turned the conversation around to Admiral von Mittleburg.

  “The yard has been doing some pretty good work on our ships,” he said. “Redoing the armor on the Slinger is something they should be quick about. The question is what major parts will we need to set the damage on the Retribution right? I asked the mayor of Sevastopol to be up here, both to welcome you back, say thank you for all the goodies you brought, and see if there was anything he could do to speed up fabrication downside on any parts your battle yacht needs.”

  “Good,” Vicky said. She would very much like to see Mannie.

  “His shuttle should be coming alongside the station any minute now,” Admiral von Mittleburg said.

  “One more thing before we bring civilians in,” Vice Admiral Lüth said, eyeing the spy.

  “He is with me. What I know, he knows, especially if it keeps me alive,” Vicky said.

  The admiral made a face at that but took a breath and went on. “Certain friends of yours agree with your decision to wave the flag of rebellion. They don’t all agree with your timing, but since they couldn’t agree on the best time to do it, your choice is as good as any of theirs. However, now that you’ve done it, they would appreciate it if you would kindly keep your head down. Every time they hear a report of a battle, you are in the center of it. Now that you’ve done what you’ve done, they can’t afford to lose you.”

  Vicky eyed the man, wondering how much battle experience he had. Around Vicky, fights just happened. Vicky had heard Kris Longknife comment on that dryly. “It’s not like I go looking for fights, they just break out wherever I am,” she remembered the Wardhaven princess saying.

  Vicky fixed the vice admiral with a flinty eye and quoted Kris Longknife, without attribution.

  “Ah, yes, Your Grace.” The vice admiral gently coughed.

  “I told you,” Admiral von Mittleburg said, not quite under his breath. “She’s a fighter. You do not want to pick a fight with her.”

  “So it seems. Still, Your Grace, the powers that be wish you to be more cautious with yourself,” Admiral Lüth said ev
enly.

  There was another knock at the door, and Mannie came in with his infectious smile. “I’m so glad to see you back, Your Grace. I hear that you brought us all sorts of goodies.”

  “And a battle fleet from my loving stepmama,” Vicky added.

  “Yes, I heard about that, too. Is your yacht in space dock for maintenance, or did you bang it up again?”

  “I’m afraid I once more got it bent and dented. You know how traffic is.” Vicky found herself smiling at Mannie and loving the fellow’s way with words. Now, if he’d only lean over and give her a nice peck on the cheek.

  She waited, but it didn’t come.

  So she went on. “I was just having a little talk here with Vice Admiral Lüth. Have you met him?”

  “Your good Admiral von Mittleburg suggested he drop down to St. Petersburg for dinner with several of the nice people paying to keep his ships supplied with food, spare parts, and walking-around change for his crew,” Mannie said with a not-at-all-sly smile.

  The admiral rolled his eyes. No doubt it was an informative evening for a Greenfeld Navy officer.

  “Well,” Vicky went on, “he thinks I should keep my head down and try not to be around when my loving stepmommy’s thugs start fights, battles; you know, those things with loud noises and blowing-up starships.”

  Mannie made a face. “Don’t you just hate it when that happens?”

  Vice Admiral Lüth made a different face. “It’s rather hard to maintain a rebellion if the center of it gets herself blown to pieces.”

  “Yes, and I would dearly hate for that to happen to our Vicky,” Mannie said so quickly and with such sad eyes that Vicky actually found herself believing him. “However, Admiral, people can’t follow someone into battle who is hiding in some bunker way behind them.

  “Take for example, the first time her loving stepmom tried to blow up our Vicky. She’d just walked out of a meeting with quite a few important people from around Sevastopol, and we were quite upset when she walked back into our meeting, mad as a wet hen. She got exactly what she wanted after that.

  “Then there was the time her stepmommy dearest sent thugs to kidnap our Vicky and leave her tied up to die of thirst. Vicky, of course, got out on her own before any Prince Charming wandered by, and the whole attitude on our planet changed after that. Our people will not so much as let someone look cross-eyed at our Vicky without going to her defense.

  “And then there was the invasion fleet that Vicky single-handedly stopped.”

  “Stopped,” Lüth yelped.

  “Gave the redcoat in charge such a runaround that he died of a heart seizure,” Mannie pointed out, innocently.

  “I can see that possibility,” the new admiral said dryly.

  “Happens all the time around the girl,” von Mittleburg said. “I take my meds religiously.”

  “Tell me who your doctor is. I may need a referral.”

  “As you can see,” Mannie went on, ignoring the table chatter, “our gracious Grand Duchess is quite a handful, and she is most capable of taking care of herself.”

  “With a whole lot of help from my friends,” Vicky said. “I include most everyone in this room among those who have helped me stay alive and, no doubt, will soon be adding Vice Admiral Lüth to my list of saviors. By the way, Admiral, how do you propose to keep the blackhearted Empress’s latest move against St. Petersburg from burning its nice people to cinders?”

  “Cinders?” Manny asked with a bit of a gulp.

  “She’s sent us the Butcher of Dresden this week. He’s bragging that he’ll laser you from orbit right down to bedrock.”

  “Not a nice man,” Mannie said, then turned to the newly arrived vice admiral. “You do have a plan, don’t you?”

  “Not one I will be sharing with civilians,” he snapped.

  “So you don’t have a plan, huh?” Mannie said.

  “Not one that he’s shared with me,” Rear Admiral von Mittleburg said.

  “Admiral!” Lüth huffed.

  Vicky turned to the newest Navy officer she would have to bear. “Admiral, I’ve followed Princess Kristine Longknife. She never went into a fight without everyone with her knowing just how she intended to fight her battle. Not that any of them went the way she planned, but she seemed to think that the more her folks knew about her intent, the more likely they would be to improvise something new when the wheels came off. Now, Mannie here is very likely to be dirtside looking up at some very nasty lasers. I think we can count on him to be just as concerned about our operational security as you and I will be. Admiral, how do you intend to see that the Empress’s nine battleships don’t get into orbit around St. Petersburg, where they can lase the planet to fire and dust?”

  The admiral was most disappointingly quiet.

  “What are the chances we could hold the jump point?” Vicky asked.

  “During the Unity War and the following Iteeche War, no one ever tried to defend a jump point,” Admiral von Mittleburg said, no doubt saving his superior from having to cross swords with Vicky.

  “Yes,” Vicky said. “Admiral Krätz explained to me that no one wanted to float around the jump point with no gravity.”

  Both admirals nodded at her most sagaciously.

  “Of course, when he was gallivanting around in the train of Kris Longknife, it involved a lot of waiting for her in orbit with no station and no gravity. Admiral Krätz came up with an idea for hitching two of his battleships together with a long beam and letting them swing themselves around each other. The feeling of down wasn’t perfect, but it beat all to hell no down at all.”

  The two admirals exchanged glances. Neither of them was willing to say the obvious. Why didn’t I think of that?

  Then von Mittleburg shook his head. “That might be a good idea once things settle down, but for now, with those battleships liable to come through the jump at any time, it would not be a good idea for us to go charging off. There’s a reason why most battles in space take place around or near a planet.”

  “We could find ourselves just getting to the flip point on our way to the jump, and they’d come through,” Captain Bolesław said. “It would be a mess, what with us breaking for the jump as they started accelerating toward St. Petersburg.”

  “We’d be in worse shape than that idiot polo player I teased into charging us,” Vicky agreed. “Okay, we don’t go chasing off to the jump. But we don’t want to end up waiting here in orbit for them. Nine battleships have to be stopped well away from Mannie’s farmhands and fab workers.”

  “Yes, definitely, as well as my dear grandmadre. She wants to go shopping with you.”

  “Then we definitely make sure those wonderful dress shops are not burned to dust by any nasty lasers.”

  “Nasty, nasty lasers,” Mannie agreed.

  “So, Captain Bolesław, is there any planet between here and the jump we could swing around and use to put us on a parallel course so we could slug it out with the Empress’s battleships?”

  Her skipper was shaking his head before Vicky finished. “None close by,” he said.

  Vicky frowned in thought. “I know you used a high elliptical orbit both times you had to fight an incoming force,” she said slowly to Captain Bolesław. “Didn’t Kris Longknife once use a swing around a moon to get her more fighting time?”

  “I haven’t read too much about her fighting tactics,” Retribution’s skipper said.

  “I’ve spent a lot of time studying her file, both on my own and with Admiral Krätz’s assistance,” Vicky admitted.

  “You didn’t seem to think much of her after she got back from losing Admiral Krätz’s battle squadron,” Admiral Lüth said. “Not that I saw your interview. I just heard about it.”

  For someone who claimed to have only heard about Vicky’s time on the news, his eyes quickly slid from her face to her chest and what she’d showed off to get her extra time on the air.

  Vicky chose not to contradict the admiral, though now, every man in the meeting seemed
to have developed an intense interest in the overhead.

  “I learned a lot from Kris Longknife,” Vicky said. “I wonder where she is now.”

  Mr. Smith cleared his throat. “She was not at Wardhaven when I was last there with your shopping list. I understand she ended up at Musashi for some reason. They put her on trial for starting the war with the alien space raiders without getting proper permission or something.”

  Vicky snorted. “As if she had anyone around who might have given her ‘proper’ permission.”

  “That seemed to be the sticking point,” Mr. Smith agreed. “They could neither find her guilty nor innocent.”

  “Who could ever find that woman innocent?” Admiral Lüth agreed. “She killed your brother.”

  “I’m finding that harder and harder to believe,” Vicky said. That got her both admirals’ attention. “Admiral Krätz was in that battle and agreed with Kris Longknife that whoever sabotaged Hank’s survival pod was who killed him. Now I find myself wondering if the Empress and her family’s grab for power can be traced back to my brother’s death.”

  “You think so?” Admiral von Mittleburg asked.

  “No way to prove it, but the coincidences are piling up, aren’t they?”

  That left the two admirals deep in thought.

  “Again speaking of Kris Longknife,” Vicky went on, “where is she now?”

  Mr. Smith seemed to wait for the admirals to say something before going on. “There were rumors of her getting a ship from Musashi, one of the new, Smart Metal frigates. After that, she seems to have disappeared. No.” The spy snapped his fingers. “King Raymond later took off for the other side of the galaxy. You know that planet you were fighting to save?”

  “Yes.” Vicky nodded. “I always wondered what happened to it.”

  “It seems that King Raymond’s long-lost wife was out there. He went off to bring her back home and came back rather empty-handed.”

  “It would take a Longknife to tell a Longknife no,” Admiral Lüth muttered.

  “Did Kris come back with him?” Vicky asked.

  “Not that I heard,” Mr. Smith said.

  “There are reports of a lot of new Navy construction,” Admiral von Mittleburg said. “Not just in the US but also in clusters associated with them. Why are you asking, Your Grace?”