Vicky Peterwald: Survivor (Vicky Peterwald Series Book 2) Page 13

  The poor man collapsed in a dead swoon.

  “Do you think he’ll recover in time to tell us where we’re going?” Vicky asked no one in particular.

  “I can show you,” a young woman said, stepping forward. Barefoot, she looked in need of a bath. Her scant clothing might have been alluring if all the skin it revealed wasn’t bruised and encrusted with dried cuts and sores. Vicky could count every one of her ribs.

  Mr. Smith, the only one who’d dropped today wearing civilian clothes, took off his coat and gallantly offered it to the young woman.

  “You know where we can find this duke fellow?” Vicky asked.

  “I know his place. I was there just last month, when his trusty Hussars dragged me in there to be raped for a couple of days.”

  Vicky’s grin got tight and vicious. “I think you’re just the one to introduce us to this bad actor.”

  CHAPTER 32

  “YOU ready to show us where this duke hangs out?” Vicky said as she joined the young woman in the last of the infantry vehicles heading into town.

  It had taken longer for the operation to get underway than Vicky wanted, but the time had been put to good use. They’d managed a shower for the poor girl. Maggie had dressed most of her wounds and given her a shot for a roaring urinary infection. The lead shuttle down for the second drop of the day brought a new set of clothes.

  “You’re my guide. How you look reflects on me,” Vicky had said.

  Given a choice of something feminine and something military, the woman had chosen khakis.

  She looked longingly at the Marine rifles around her. Vicky made a mental note to herself to keep the woman away from any loose weapons. Vicky might need her as a guide, but clearly, she was a bomb waiting to explode.

  While the young woman looked much the better for the delay, the real reason for Vicky’s needing four hours to clear the spaceport was the commander’s insistence on getting more troops on the ground.

  The second delivery had been a bit more widely spread.

  Word was getting around that there was food at the spaceport, and people were struggling to make their way there. The drone take showed scarecrows barely able to put one foot in front of the other, some not even able to do that, only dragging themselves along as they crawled. Still, they struggled out of their hiding places and onto the road.

  Vicky ordered a tank and two infantry rigs down the road and halfway into town to meet them. After some discussions with Maggie and Mr. Smith, rules were set.

  “Only three biscuits per person. No more, no less,” Vicky ordered on net. “Don’t let anyone get away with more. Tell them this is only for today. There will be food tomorrow. We don’t want anyone hoarding what they get today, and we don’t want anyone getting killed for three lousy famine biscuits.”

  In most cases, people were gobbling down their three biscuits before they got five feet past the trooper issuing them. In a few cases, where someone wanted to take something home to a wife, child, sibling, or parent who couldn’t make it to the rations stations, there had been violence as they made their way to wherever or whatever home was.

  If the attack took place within sight of the Marines or Rangers, they shot, and they shot to kill.

  If anyone got robbed of their rations, after a few of those incidents, it didn’t happen in range of Marine or Ranger weapons.

  “This place is sick,” Maggie said, tears in her eyes, as the first story of a mother struggling home to her children having her head beaten in came over the net.

  For the second drop, three of the shuttles didn’t land at the spaceport. On the other side of town, among the rolling hills, there were three lakes. There was risk involved, but B Company, First Rangers dropped a lander in each bit of water. There, they set up camp and began handing out ration biscuits.

  The sound of their landing and taking off was all the advertising anyone on that side of town needed.

  Vicky eyed the drone take and found that small clumps of people who had already started the long struggle from the western hills quickly turned and struggled toward the sound of the shuttles.

  There was no doubt in Vicky’s mind that way too many of those who drew food at the lakes would never have made it to the spaceport.

  The drone made a pass over Kolna, both coming and going to the western hills. Each time Vicky studied the pictures. When it made the return flight, the young woman, washed, medicated, and alert, was at her elbow.

  “There,” she said, stabbing at the screen, “that’s where that son of a bitch has set himself up. It used to be Government House. He calls it his palace. His Hussars are barracked in the bank next door. They have horses. They’re stabled next door in what was the City Library.”

  “That’s a shame,” Maggie said.

  “Not all that much of one,” the woman said, her voice dull, devoid of feeling. “The books that we didn’t eat, we burned. It got awfully cold last winter.”

  “We’ve got a lot to learn about this place,” Vicky muttered to herself.

  “Let’s make sure we don’t get killed learning any lesson, shall we,” the commander said. “You remember what happened to the curious cat?”

  “The same thing that happened to my brother when he thought he knew all there was to know,” Vicky said.

  One stupid, dead Peterwald in this generation was enough. Somehow, she’d have to learn and survive the learning.

  CHAPTER 33

  THE drive into town was an education.

  In so many ways, Kolna looked like any other medium to large city in the Empire. The streets were wide, not so much to improve traffic flow but to make it harder to barricade them during a rebellion.

  Daddy had told Vicky that once. He hadn’t mentioned the reduced street traffic in his Empire. Vicky had had to go into Longknife territory to discover what a traffic jam was. No, the idea of people rebelling and blocking the streets or dodging down narrow streets to elude the law was something seared into her dad’s mind.

  Thus, the streets were wide. Vicky could have paraded all four of her tanks side by side down Prosperity Boulevard and still had room to spare had she so desired.

  Instead, her tank commander kept his monsters spread out in a loose column, with infantry vehicles providing wide escort. The Rangers rolled along in trailers behind the tanks and infantry rigs, their eyes roving and alert.

  For now, their rifles were down, but that could change in a second.

  Vicky stood. She’d ordered the left half of her infantry fighting vehicle’s roof unlocked and swung up and over so she could stand and see what there was to see.

  Beside her, the commander was having a fit. He whispered something to Kit and Kat, and they now stood close to Vicky, but they were hardly tall enough to get in the way of any bullet fired her way from a rooftop.

  At the moment, the commander and Mr. Smith were engaged in a scowling contest. No doubt the commander felt the spy should be standing at Vicky’s shoulder, ready to block a shot with his body.

  Equally, there was no doubt that Mr. Smith had reviewed his contract and found no obligation to do so, either in the large print or the fine print.

  Vicky ignored her staff and concentrated on what there was to see and what it might tell her.

  Here and there, a handful of people would come out of hiding to see what the noise was about. At least one Ranger in each trailer was tasked with tossing ration biscuits their way.

  Their reaction puzzled Vicky. She would have expected them to cheer or shout their thanks. They did scramble for the bars in the dusty streets, but they did it in silence.

  “Do you think they’re afraid to draw a crowd?” Vicky muttered half to herself.

  “They could be,” Maggie offered in answer. “They don’t want to attract someone who might snatch the food out of their mouths. Worse, they don’t know if there’s more food wher
e that came from, so they’re keeping quiet about it.”

  “No share and share alike, huh?” Vicky said.

  “No. Sad to say, when you’re this close to starving to death, there’s not much room for kindness.”

  Vicky nodded but said no more. She knew that her doctor friend had struggled on St. Petersburg, even to the point of having to pay to be smuggled into Sevastopol.

  Did it get that bad while you were on the run?

  Vicky kept the question to herself.

  Most of the buildings showed peeling paint but were otherwise untouched, as if their owners had gone off for a holiday and would be back soon. Most doors were closed. Possibly locked.

  There were exceptions.

  On one corner, a store had been ransacked. Its door had been smashed in and torn off the hinges. The large, plate-glass windows were broken and the inside hastily pillaged. Glass lay scattered in the street.

  The tank treads made quick work of the glass. It shattered to powder under the first treads’ passage and made not a sound as the others came up behind.

  Other buildings had burned. There was no way to tell if the fire was the final stage of looting or just an accident that happened when desolate wooden fires got out of hand in buildings never intended for live flame.

  The thought that sent shivers up Vicky’s spine was the math that kept spinning around and around in her head. Normally, a city had thousands of people per hectare. Hundreds lived on every street.

  Few blocks had more than a dozen people struggling out to scramble for the food Vicky’s troopers tossed as they passed.

  “Where are all the people?” Vicky whispered.

  No one offered a reply.

  That question hung in the air as their armored column rumbled into Government Square. The square might once have been a lovely place. If anything, it looked even more the worse for wear than the rest of the city.

  In front of Vicky, an entire city block had been devoted to a park. In the center of what might have once been a fountain stood a large bronze statue. No doubt, it was her grandfather or great-grandfather, depending on who had been alive and arranged financing for this planet’s start-up.

  There had been trees in the park once; the stumps showed where they’d been cut down. Dozens of lovely horses struggled to graze on what might once have been grass but was now more dirt and weeds.

  Facing the square directly across from where Vicky’s task force was entering stood an impressive four-story-tall white house. Or it had been. It once had a wooden fence in front of it, but most of it had gone into someone’s fire. Sections of iron fence had been dug into the lawn. They would have given a stronger “keep out or else” signal if most of them weren’t slumped over at odd angles.

  To either flank of the big white house were the bank and library Vicky had been told about. The bank had snipers hurriedly taking up stations on its roof and upper windows.

  The bank was the source of some of the iron-fence sections that now festooned the approaches to the white house. They’d been taken from a half-meter-high stone wall.

  Between the low stone wall and the intermittent iron fence, Vicky figured any defense might slow her Marines and Rangers for all of fifteen seconds.

  She could almost hear her troopers licking their chops at the thought of taking down these duds with guns.

  To Vicky’s right was the library, now a stable. Several grooms were hurrying horses indoors. The horses were lovely animals. Dad loved horses. He could talk for an hour about Friesians, Lipizzaners, and Clydesdales.

  That was what Vicky saw. A dozen horses of various proud breeds were being trotted away by running grooms eager to get them out of the line of fire. More were racing to get the ones still grazing in the park.

  “Where did he get those lovely horses?” Vicky muttered.

  “He stole them,” her young woman guide said. She’d been huddled in the forward corner of the track, almost curled up upon herself. Now she stood up and took in all there was to see.

  “He killed the owners. Several of their daughters are locked up in the white house.”

  Vicky was taking a distinct dislike to this guy.

  “Do they eat any of the horses?” Mr. Smith asked.

  “Oh God, no,” the young guide almost gasped. “He says he’ll eat the grooms before anyone touches those horses.”

  “That’s horrible,” Doc Maggie said.

  Vicky made a face. “I think my dad would agree with his priorities.”

  The commander raised an eyebrow but said nothing.

  “It kind of explains how you got into this mess,” Mr. Smith said.

  The commander elbowed him.

  “Don’t look at me that way,” the itinerant spy said. “I didn’t swear allegiance to the nutcase.”

  “Enough!” Vicky snapped.

  While her staff discussed culinary preferences, the skipper of the Marine armor had been going about his business. Two tanks left formation and rumbled their way over to face the bank that had been turned into a guardhouse. One took a hard right and stopped in front of the tall, once-gleaming office building that still had its glass windows intact. So much so that the only weapons on display from it were being brandished by snipers on the roof.

  No doubt the tank’s long gun could not be brought to bear against them, but the machine gun atop the turret could be and was.

  The two infantry tracks that escorted that tank had their guns aimed high as well.

  The third tank and a pair of infantry rigs laid track for the library, now a stable.

  On all three buildings, the snipers and gunners who had been so boldly waving or aiming weapons a moment before took the measure of this newly arrived force . . . and blanched.

  Quite a few must have suddenly felt the urge to hit the head, because in only a few seconds, there was a lot less hardware aimed down.

  Vicky raised her commlink. “Captain, could you take this rig around to the front door of the white house? Oh, and lose the tank.”

  There was a pause, then, “Are you sure about the tank, Your Grace?”

  “I’m sure.”

  There was another pregnant pause. Vicky heard the commander’s commlink buzz.

  “Don’t answer that, Commander.”

  He didn’t.

  Finally, the Marine company commander said, “If you say so, Your Grace.”

  “I think I did.”

  Vicky’s and one other infantry track rolled over to the front of the white house. They stopped, facing a portico that covered the entrance to the building.

  For a long moment, nothing happened.

  CHAPTER 34

  A short man in a most curious uniform strutted out onto the balcony. Following him were four men with machine pistols. They looked at the tanks, and they looked at their guns. Then they didn’t look all that confident.

  They might be smart. Vicky wondered about the other man.

  He seemed quite taken with himself. His uniform was a crimson coat with gold dripping from just about every place the wild male military mind had ever thought to hang it on a uniform. His hat was also red, a fore-and-aft affair trimmed with even more gold. The britches were cream, ending high with white silk stockings.

  “Where did that outfit come from?” the commander muttered under his breath.

  “The last production by the Kolna City Opera Company was of Aida,” Vicky’s native guide provided.

  Vicky raised an eyebrow at that. “Suddenly you know a lot more than I was led to expect.”

  “That’s because you didn’t expect much from a starving woman in rags.”

  “I admit to the fault.”

  “Cindy, I was told you’d run away,” the man in the absurd uniform said.

  “I guess I didn’t run far enough,” Vicky’s guide answered back.

 
“You’ll always be welcome at my dinner table,” hinted at a lot more than just his table.

  “I doubt I’d get past the guards.”

  “You really should have left the dinner knife for the steak and not my throat.”

  “I only regret I missed my mark.”

  “So who have you brought to visit me this time?”

  Vicky wondered how long this talk would take to get around to her. Most conversation usually did bend toward her when she was present.

  “I have the honor of introducing you to Her Imperial Grace, the Grand Duchess Victoria of Greenfeld, and her army,” Cindy said.

  “Aren’t you going to introduce me?”

  “Your Grace, this is Herbert, one of my rapists.”

  “Cindy, you wound me to the heart,” Herbert said, clasping a fist to his chest where, depending on whose point of view was taken, he might or might not have one.

  “Dhimitër,” Herbert continued, “have the courtesy to introduce me to this fine example of a grand lady.”

  A large man, both tall and rotund, stepped onto the balcony. His head was shaved, and his mustache and goatee were well manicured. He was dressed in a long black robe, also likely of operatic origin though Vicky couldn’t place the character who had worn it and didn’t feel the need to ask. He sported a silver chain of office, which, Vicky strongly suspected, was costume plastic.

  “I have the honor of making known to you,” he said in a full-throated baritone, “His Majesty, the Grand Duke Hieronomo, Lord of All You Survey and Law of the Land.” And he bowed to him with a flourish.

  A sycophant of such high caliber Vicky hadn’t seen since leaving the Imperial court. How could her dad or beloved stepmom have missed hiring this guy?

  “Herbert, last month you were just a duke,” Cindy said dryly.

  “But I hadn’t known you,” he answered with a smirk.

  Vicky hadn’t thought when she hired her native guide—no Cindy—that her history with the local potentate or warlord or whatever would become a distraction from getting her mission done.