Vicky Peterwald: Target (3 page)

V
ICKY
studied her new, putative, best friend.

He looked old enough to know better but young enough to still be doing foolish things. If his legs were as muscled as the bare arms his shirt showed her, he likely was in good enough shape to get out of the messes he got into.

The eyes that watched her would have done good service to a hawk. The face they rested in was intelligent and alert.

“Words are easy,” Vicky said. “Do you have any deeds to back them up?”

“You may remember that bomb that messed up the Forward Lounge just a few minutes after you left.”

“I do recall such an event.”

“I’m the reason it blew five minutes after it was supposed to.”

“Why five minutes? Why not never?” Vicky asked.

His narrow lips formed a tight grin. “But if it hadn’t, you wouldn’t know that you needed a new best friend to be grateful to. Or that you needed to have your eyes and ears open for the next assassin who will, inevitably, come along. Now you do, don’t you?”

“You have a point. It was kind of hard on the help. They did lose a waiter to space.”

He shrugged. “What was he to you? It sent a message that needed sending. Messengers have been dying for a long time.”

“I could get to like you,” Vicky said. “You want to draw a plate and eat with us?”

“Don’t mind if I do.” He stepped away to take a run down the steam table.

While she’d been talking to her new best friend, her team had returned with loaded plates. “What do we know about that man?” Vicky whispered to them.

The chief and the lieutenant were madly running their black boxes through their paces. “He looks as unarmed as a newborn babe,” the lieutenant finally said.

Kit spoke for the two. “We’ve seen him in the ship’s gym. He’s good. We could probably take him if we got the jump on him.”

“Let’s let him run with his own thing for a while,” Vicky said, as the stranger turned back to their table. Around her, her minions settled into watchful alert.

He was dressed in an unmarked blue shipsuit, which told Vicky only that he was of the
Wasp
, but nothing about rank, rate, or status. Most likely he was carried as a contractor, but he could be assigned to anything from weapons to short-order cook flipping burgers in one of the restaurants.

Good camouflage.

“So, do you have a name?” Vicky asked as he settled in.

“You can call me Smith. Mr. Smith. It works as well as any.”

“And where do you draw your paycheck?”

“That might take a while to explain since I draw several for all the different things I do for all the different folks I work for. If you catch my meaning.”

“So who paid you to delay that bomb? A friend of Kris Longknife, or a friend of mine?”

“Honey, I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but you don’t have that many friends just now.” He took a bite of steak. “Not many at all, and you could use a whole lot more.”

Vicky leaned back in her chair. “So, with Kris hauled off for points unknown, you’re out of work and looking for a new employer. If you catch my meaning.”

The man chuckled. “You aren’t slow. Not slow at all. I could deadhead back to Wardhaven and wait for some new assignment to come along, or, as I see it, I could sign on with you and start charging hours to your account immediately.”

“You sure I can pay?” Vicky asked.

“I must admit, there’s a little risk involved, seeing how you’re at severe risk of not making it through until next payday, but I’ve bet on worse cases and drawn a bonus for the risk.”

“Again, I find you a lot of talk but not so much on the deeds. How do I know you’re worth your paycheck?”

The man went on eating for a while, then put down his fork. “You asked Kris Longknife to let you have a better computer. The one around my neck is a couple of steps up from the one around your neck. That thing around your neck is the new, fancy self-organizing matrix. But the software isn’t all that good at organizing it. Not at all good.” He raised an eyebrow. “What would it be worth to you if I upgraded you while we finish lunch?”

“You’ve got a computer as good as Nelly?”

“Nobody has a computer as good as that bit of matrix, but my computer is better than anything you can get your hands on in Greenfeld. Maybe not the best in your Empire, but a whole lot better than any you can buy in a store there.”

“Why don’t you start the upgrade, and we’ll see.”

He reached for his fork again. “Joe, upgrade. Transmit.”

The computer at Vicky’s neck said, “Receiving.” A moment later, it announced, “Processing.”

“Now, while these two are doing their thing, why don’t you and I finish our dinner?”

Vicky picked up her fork, but she hadn’t taken one bite when one very-angry-looking Marine charged into the wardroom. Jack looked around, spotted Vicky, and headed for her table like a herd of charging bulls.

They couldn’t have released that interview already,
Vicky thought, then retook her measure of the angry Marine rapidly approaching and changed her mind.
I guess they rushed it into production and distribution.

“You lying snake in the grass!” Jack whispered as he came to stand across the table from her, at Mr. Smith’s elbow. “You backstabbing purveyor of misinformation and twisted tales! I ought to lock you in the brig and throw away the key.”

“But you can’t because your brig is about to be torn down,” Vicky purred. She put her hands in her lap, struck up her most alluring pose, and waited for what would come next.

“I could leave you in it when they take away the outer hull,” Jack snarled. “I wonder how long a snake like you can breathe vacuum.”

Vicky knew Jack was just talking. No U.S. Marine would dare harm a Grand Duchess of the Empire. “Jack, why don’t you sit down and have something to eat? Life always looks worse on an empty stomach.”

“I wouldn’t take a drink of water from you if I were dying of thirst in a parched desert.”

“I’m sorry that you feel that way,” Vicky said, relaxing in her chair. “What does your Princess Kris say? ‘It looked like a good idea at the time.’ Well, I did what I felt I had to do.”

“We have orders not to talk to newsies,” Jack snapped.

“No order from United Society, or whatever you’re calling yourself today, has any power or authority over a Grand Duchess of the Peterwald Empire. I do what I will do.”

“Well, you can do it somewhere else. I want you off this boat. Now!”

“Fortunately, a Marine captain does not command a Navy ship. Why don’t you go talk to the real captain here?”

At that moment, Captain Drago himself walked into the wardroom. He too, looked around, spotted Vicky, and slow-marched for her table.

“Thank you, Captain Montoya, for sending me that news clip. Very informative. I had no idea any of that took place on our long voyage.” He turned to Vicky. “Miss Peterwald, your presence on my ship is no longer desired. You have one hour to cross the brow headed for the station. If you aren’t gone in one hour, I will have the Marines throw you out. Do we understand each other?”

“As always, Captain, your use of the Standard language is very exact and precise,” Vicky said, making no move to rise.

She locked eyes with the two captains for a long, hard minute. Then both of them turned and stalked toward the exit.

Vicky waited until they were gone before saying, “You heard the man. We have an hour to get out of here. Let’s start packing. We leave nothing behind.”

Her four minions were up and trotting without another word spoken. Mr. Smith continued eating.

“You coming?” Vicky asked.

“Ma’am, I packed my bag before I came down to talk with you. Give me ten minutes, and I’ll be across the quarterdeck. Now, my computer and yours are in the middle of a major upgrade. Unless you think you have to look over any of those four shoulders to make sure they get every little thing right, I suggest you stay seated here.”

Vicky stayed in her chair.

“Upgrade complete,” a pleasant male bass said. “I have a message for Her Grace, the Grand Duchess of Greenfeld.”

“Vicky will do just fine.”

“Vicky, you have a message coming in from Admiral Gort of Battle Cruiser Division 4. He has just jumped into the system and will be docking at High Chance station in twelve hours. He requests the pleasure of your company for a trip back to Greenfeld, if it pleases you.”

“Computer, who is Admiral Gort?”

“I don’t know, Vicky. When I was last synced to the Greenfeld database several months ago, there was a Captain Gort on the battlecruiser
Stalker
. That ship is now his flag, so I would assume he has been promoted since you were last at Greenfeld.”

“Sounds like a safe assumption,” Mr. Smith said.

There was still no way for Vicky to know if he had been sent to shepherd her home, or to see that she died “of natural causes” somewhere along the way. Still, unless she planned to walk home, she’d have to trust herself to some vagaries of fate. Her power base in the Navy seemed more dependable than the odds of her surviving a trip home on the average liner.

“Tell Admiral Gort that I will be happy for his support and protection on the trip back to Greenfeld.”

“I think you’ve just made a good decision,” Mr. Smith said before forking in a large bite of steak and potatoes.

“We’ll know in a week or two if I arrive at court still breathing rather than as a very lovely corpse.”

“Oh, you of little faith. Think of it as a game. Every breath you take is a win.”

“Are you sure you want to be so optimistic around me?” Vicky asked.

“It’s a whole lot more fun to live that way, Duchess, trust me.”

“Are our computers done?”

“Done enough for now.”

“Then I will go see how my team is doing.”

“And I will finish eating.”

Vicky left, wondering just how much her new best friend was going to be worth.

W
ITH
an incoming battlecruiser division, Captain Drago relented on his one-hour deadline and agreed to let them stay until the Imperial fleet arrived and took Vicky off his hands.

Vicky put the time to good use. It turned out that Mr. Smith had a few extra grams of the same self-organizing matrix that Vicky had bought on Wardhaven to be the core of her new computer. While his computer did more things to upgrade Vicky’s computer, he added unique capabilities to the four personal computers of her minions.

In the end, none of them were as smart as Vicky’s computer, but they all could communicate on a tight beam with each other. Vicky had her own private net!

He also had a tiny wire headset that he half attached, half implanted on Vicky’s skull.

N
OW YOU CAN TALK TO ME WITHOUT HAVING TO SAY A WORD,
formed in Vicky’s mind.

W
E CAN TALK, AND NO ONE WILL KNOW WHAT WE’RE SAYING,
Vicky thought back.

E
XACTLY.
Y
OU WON’T HAVE TO HOLLER FOR HELP, JUST THINK IT.
S
AME FOR ME.
I
F
I
SEE TROUBLE, YOU’LL KNOW BEFORE ANYONE CAN SHOUT IT.

J
UST LIKE
K
RIS CAN DO.
I
COULD GET TO LIKE THIS.

A
LL PART OF THE SERVICE FROM
N
EW
B
EST
F
RIENDS,
I
NC.

Y
OU’VE MADE A GOOD START AT EARNING YOUR PAY.
N
OW, MAKE ALL THIS KEEP ME ALIVE.

T
HAT’S THE PLAN.

Vicky had other plans to think about while others packed.

What to wear?

She was returning to the Navy. The white dress she’d worn for the interview would be totally out of place among the more puritanical officers of the Imperial Navy. She chose a simple shipsuit, though of imperial purple, not the usual Greenfeld green. She subdued the imperial by wearing the proper shoulder tabs of a Navy lieutenant.

She was ready well before the twelve hours were up.

Right on time, Admiral Gort himself led an honor guard of two dozen Marines and several Sailors to Vicky’s room. The Sailors took over responsibility for hauling away her trunks and gear. Doc Maggie joined them at the last minute and added her few things to the collection of baggage going to the
Stalker
.

On the quarterdeck, Captain Drago himself was there to see her off.

“Good luck,” he told the admiral. “With her aboard, you’ll need it.”

“As I hear it, your own princess did a good job of making her own good luck. Is all your damage aft?” Gort asked with a snide grin.

“We must share a bottle of scotch when you’ve sailed with the Grand Duchess for three months,” Drago said dryly in reply.

The two exchanged salutes. The admiral saluted the flag aft, and then it was Vicky’s turn. She departed the
Wasp
as smartly as the admiral, and they marched, him at her side, for where his battlecruiser lay at the next pier.

Several newsies tried to jam mics in Vicky’s general direction, but the Marines moved swiftly enough to keep them at a distance, and if a few reporters got elbows in their guts, surely it was an accident.

Admiral Gort paid proper honors on his own quarterdeck, and Vicky did the same.

“Walk with me,” were the first words he exchanged with her.

She followed him to his in-port cabin. Only when the door closed behind him did he let his face show anything but bland, military neutrality.

When he turned on her, he was livid.

“How could you make such a spectacle of yourself?” he demanded.

Vicky braced, like she’d learned under Admiral Krätz’s tutelage, but she was not the green recruit anymore. “I might have acted differently if I’d known that you were coming, sir.”

“Have you heard of communications, Lieutenant? You could have sent us a simple message.”

Vicky felt the blood drain from her face. She had never thought of something so simple as sending out a message. Besides, she had no idea who to address it to. Her dad? The Navy? She hadn’t the foggiest notion who, in this situation, she was supposed to report to.

She blurted that out, ending with, “It’s not like this has ever happened before.”

The admiral paused, his mouth half-open for some retort. He closed it, then snapped out, “What were you doing on that Kris Longknife’s ship, anyway?”

That one Vicky had an answer for. “There had been three attempts on my life. It seemed safer on the
Wasp
than on the
Fury
.” Vicky paused for just a second. “And the
Wasp
is over there tied up at the pier, and the
Fury
is nothing but atoms. I think I guessed right.”

The admiral studied her for a long moment. Vicky studied him right back. He was young to have his own flag; his black hair was showing only flecks of gray. His uniform still fit him trimly; he carried none of Admiral Krätz’s middle-aged paunch. Vicky couldn’t think of this man in the fatherly way she had the older admiral. The Navy officer in front of her was more a big brother . . . or a mature lover.

Choices. Opportunities?

The admiral finished his examination and turned from her scrutiny. “Take a seat, Lieutenant.”

Vicky looked around. She saw a standard suite: desk, conference table, a small discussion ring. Vicky settled herself on a red leather settee. The admiral took his own seat in a matching overstuffed leather chair across a low coffee table from her.

“May I ask, sir, how you came to be so close to Chance? It’s not like we were expected.”

“Yes. I saw that tub of Kris Longknife’s. Is it safe for space?”

“I’m told no. The wreck can’t be risked in another jump and will be scrapped where it lies there, pier side.”

“That news report I saw you give, was it accurate?”

“Allowing for the requirement that I entertain the lowest quality of viewer, yes, sir, what I said is basically accurate. We engaged the enemy by a battle plan that Kris Longknife developed . . .”

Admiral Gort interrupted, “The admirals let a mere lieutenant commander lead them around like bulls with rings in their noses?”

“She had the new superweapons. They had no idea how to use them. She came up with a plan, and the admirals went along, sir. Or maybe I should say, the other two admirals, the ones from Musashi and Helvetica agreed, and our Admiral Krätz had no choice but follow or be branded a coward.”

“No one would ever accuse Krätz of being a coward. Not to his face. I served under him,” Admiral Gort said. “If ships were headed into battle, he’d be at the head of them.”

“He was, sir. When we met the aliens, he was leading the battle line.”

“That sounds like Krätz. You said the aliens were more powerful than Kris Longknife expected. How much more powerful?”

“The main alien ship was the size of a large moon, sir.”

The Navy officer whistled. “That big, huh?”

“It had several hundred, I’m not sure exactly how many hundred, ships docked on it. Every one of the ‘smaller’ ships dwarfed our Terror-class battleships.”

That drew another whistle. “You’re right. I’m glad they are on the other side of the galaxy from here.”

The room filled with a worried silence for a few moments.

“Sir, may I ask again, how does it happen that your division was so close to Chance?”

The admiral frowned, not at Vicky but at a space off to the side. “Matters have not changed much since you sailed away. There is still much civil unrest. Far too much of the Navy is tied up to stations providing shore parties to back up the local police forces. There is even talk of forming an army. A real one, not the toy soldiers that prance around the palace and serve hors d’oeuvres at parties. The problem is, if they raise an army, they have to arm it and no one’s too sure that the army won’t become a player in the political blood sport that passes for governance at the moment.”

He eyed Vicky as he said those last words.

“No doubt Admiral Krätz turned in some kind of report and quoted my own opinion of the sad circumstances of our beloved Greenfeld,” Vicky said.

“Yes. He reported that to the Navy’s General Staff. I was provided copies when I was sent out on this mission. Officially, I was here to show the flag. Our intelligence was receiving a lot of reports from its sources that the Greenfeld fleet was being discounted as good for nothing but bashing in the heads of unarmed hooligans. We needed to counter that misperception, so it was decided to distribute the battlecruiser fleet by divisions around human space. To show the flag. To show that we could still make it away from the pier and to let the various Navies see the size of our guns.

“Oh, and being battlecruisers, we could make our way home very quickly if matters took a turn for the worse, or, young Lieutenant, if some of the mauled fleet came straggling in from what was supposed to have been a sightseeing excursion.”

“I and my six associates are all you will be getting back from our little ‘excursion,’ sir.”

“Are you sure?”

“I have the sensor take from the
Wasp
’s main computer. Computer, display battle visuals on the admiral’s screen.”

The large screen to Vicky’s left came to life. There was the main alien ship, fresh from the jump, looming huge and deadly, filling most all of the screen. Then the battle started. Lasers flashed through the thin space where the earlier scouts had died. Missiles from the
Wasp
lashed into the alien monster. Then the Hellburners smashed in, spewing fire and wreckage all over the screen.

Which went blank as the
Wasp
ducked through the jump the aliens had just used.

“That’s how she got out of there? That Longknife woman went where the aliens had just come from? She should have run into a huge fleet train.”

“Sir, the main alien ship
was
their fleet train,” Vicky said. “The previous system was as empty as any we had seen. It didn’t stay that way. The aliens were madder than hornets at us for burning their nest. They followed us. They followed us through three or four jumps before the
Wasp
managed to go one way and the
Hornet
seemed to lead the aliens in some other direction.”

“How did that happen?”

“The Wardhaven jump sensors can identify something they call a fuzzy jump. We’ve heard reports of this thing from research ships that have visited the newly discovered alien ruins that Kris Longknife found,” Vicky said. It was strange how often she had to say that woman’s name. Her fingerprints were on way too much of what was happening in human space.

“But those fuzzy jump points are only one of the surprises the Longknife princess popped on us. Those Hellburners as they call them. Where did they come from?” Vicky asked the admiral.

“I have no idea. That doesn’t bother me as much as our own intelligence services having no idea. The U.S. is pulling stuff out of their hat that has us scratching our head way too much. And while their researchers give them more and more, our own scientists have to stand in line for bread. Greenfeld needs a new day.”

That was a phrase that could be treason if said in the wrong place. But Vicky had heard it often enough from Admiral Krätz to know it was popping up more and more around wardrooms. “My dad is doing his best to settle the unrest. Admiral, the Navy is doing all it can to calm down the rioting.”

“Killing the Commander of State Security and dissolving that force was not well done.”

“General Boyng tried to kill my dad. What did you expect Dad to do, kiss him?”

“Of course not, Lieutenant. The Navy is not a pack of fools. Yes, State Security was rotten. It needed pruning. But burning down the tree, root and stem, has not worked for Greenfeld. Or do you see it differently?”

Vicky took time for a deep breath. Lieutenants did not argue with admirals. Certainly a young woman who needed a safe ride home did not argue with the only safe ride in sight. “No, Admiral, I do not see it differently. The suppression of State Security has caused no end of trouble. Separating the diseased limbs from the healthy ones looks wiser, with the benefit of hindsight, but it looked way too risky at the time. Dad solved the immediate problem. Yes, that did create the problem we have now. At the time, no one had a better idea for Dad.”

The admiral nodded. “That is the way it is with a benevolent despot. What he can see and do well is done well. What is beyond his grasp easily gets out of hand.”

“You’re starting to sound like Kris Longknife. Next thing I know, you’ll be calling for elections,” Vicky snapped.

“And let the mob raise up its own tyrant? Never!”

The two of them found themselves out of words, staring across the table at each other.

“What is happening right here and now?” Vicky finally asked.

“I’m trying to decide what to do next,” the admiral said, thoughtfully.

“What can you do next?” Vicky asked, suspecting that she was finally getting to the whole reason an admiral was having this little talk with a lieutenant.

“My orders are to deliver you immediately to Greenfeld and assure you a safe escort to the palace.”

Those sounded like the orders Vicky would expect him to have. Why did she hear a roaring “but” at the end of that sentence?

“But . . .” she provided.

“I have been offered a very large sum of money to assure that you suffer a serious illness on the way there. One sufficiently potent to assure that you arrive as a corpse.”

“And did you take that money?” Vicky asked, finding it hard to breathe.

“Of course I did. I wouldn’t be here if I hadn’t. Then, of course, I have also been provided with a somewhat smaller sum of money to assure that you arrive somewhere other than Greenfeld and the palace.”

Vicky couldn’t help but raise an eyebrow. “I had no idea I was such a valuable pawn. Would it be too much for me to ask who the bidders are?”

“Do you really want to know? The more you know, the less likely you are to leave this ship alive.”