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  “I’m glad to hear you talking in those terms,” the man at the head of the table said.

  “Then let our people of business continue to complete the trades already commissioned and add any more that now become possible. You will excuse me, but I wish to return to my quarters on the battleship Retribution. There have been too many attempts on my life for me to risk much exposure. If you will negotiate with my commander and advance man outside, I will be glad to make a select number of additional meetings if my security can be vouched for.”

  “I think that can be accomplished.”

  And on that, Vicky retired gracefully.

  CHAPTER 24

  THE ride up the space elevator was without surprises. Inez had stayed behind with her platoon to begin the formation of Brunswick’s Basic Training Command. Vicky also left Mr. Smith behind to coordinate with the local police and establish a suitable security team for the next time Vicky came to town. The lack of even a police escort from and to the elevator station had shown that the locals needed an education on what happened around this Grand Duchess.

  Fortunately, the Empress’s claws hadn’t been ready this time or had been knocked for a loop when the battle was lost in space and at the station.

  Vicky had time for a bath with Kit and Kat and a brief rest before it was time to dress for dinner. Her first choice was the formal dinner dress uniform, but that would show her rank. Captain Bolesław had made it clear it was better for her not to rub a captain’s nose in the fact he’d surrendered to someone two ranks his junior. She had several formal gowns. Unfortunately, they showed enough décolletage to distract two rooms full of males from any serious discussions.

  She had business suits, but they’d work for the next day’s meetings. That left one royal blue gown in the back of her closet. It still flashed her soft and willing breasts, but it came with a cloth-of-gold shawl that could be put to good use. No doubt the men would be removing it with their eyes, but the more mature of them would be able to meet her eye to eye and maintain enough of an IQ to discuss the needs of the future.

  She chose that one, much to her assassins’ dismay.

  “You will not be bringing anyone home to bed tonight with that one,” Kit said.

  “She can always lose ze wrap or, better yet, wrap it around a nice man and tow him to our boudoir.”

  “Right by the Marines on guard outside our door,” Vicky pointed out.

  “Give us a call. We can have the Marines distracted thoroughly before you get here,” Kit said.

  With a sigh for old times, Vicky wrapped the cloth of gold around her shoulders, covered herself to Navy standards, and let herself out.

  Dinner was a delight: a roomful of men playing court to her was something Vicky enjoyed. Captain Bolesław invited the skippers from his own squadron and Rachinsky’s as well as Major Burke, whose POW status went unremarked upon.

  Vicky listened as old stories and old jokes were trotted out and presented for her entertainment. How these men had survived the Academy and their time as junior officers to arrive at a captaincy and command had to be proof that miracles still occurred.

  Major Burke had just finished a story of a training march that went horribly wrong when the digital compass led them deep into a swamp and they had to be helicoptered out one by one when Captain Rachinsky raised a glass in toast to Vicky.

  “And how, Your Grace, will we get out of this swamp we are marching into, eyes front?”

  The room quickly became very silent.

  “Admiral Krätz taught me that any leader taking his country to war should have an end strategy,” Vicky answered.

  “Admiral Krätz was a very wise man,” Captain Bolesław said, raising a glass in memory. “Many of us still have his boot mark on our rear ends.”

  “Hear, hear,” brought several raised glasses.

  Vicky raised her glass. “No doubt it will never wear off my rear end, either.”

  That drew several raised eyebrows but chuckles all around.

  “So, your end strategy,” Captain Rachinsky said, not letting Vicky evade.

  The Grand Duchess took a deep breath and let it out. “There is no doubt in my mind that the civil war, just begun today, will end with either me or the Empress dead. Bloody purges will begin immediately thereafter as the winning side assures that there will be no further misbehavior from the losing one.”

  The room was back to silence. Dead silence.

  “At least she’s honest, Ališ,” Rachinsky said.

  “That’s why I’m with her, Engle,” Bolesław said. “She’s honest. She’s got guts, and she’ll listen to you. She let me fight our battle today without once joggling my elbow. Can you say the same for your Count of Clown?”

  “He had his hand jammed up my ass, playing me for a puppet the whole show. You saw how he didn’t let me get in a word edgewise before he ordered a cavalry charge. A horse charge, for God’s sake! After you showed us just how outgunned we were, he had to order us to wheel around and come right back. Damn!”

  “Engle, why didn’t you go to battle revolutions before that first shoot? I thought you were better than that. You forget Tactics 101?”

  “What could I do, Ališ. He and his guys were prancing around the bridge looking over everyone’s shoulders, laughing up their sleeves at us in our high-gee stations as sissies. If I went to battle revolutions, it would be a mess. And yes, my friend, I was kind of counting on you to go easy on us. I figured to go easy on you, but my God, man, you went balls to the wall, if you’ll excuse me, ma’am.”

  “I’m Navy, too,” Vicky said.

  “Yes, so I hear. Anyway, you were all over the place, and my Guns was having the devil’s own time laying a laser on you.”

  “I had the Grand Duchess on board. You, old buddy, had that political commissar at your elbow, or, as you so gently put it, up your ass. I couldn’t count on you going as easy on me as I went on you.”

  “You call that easy? I’ve got holes two and a half meters thick in the armor on my bow. Four of them.”

  “I only gave you an eight-gun salvo to punch those holes. If it had come to a fight for the station, you’d have gotten a full sixteen-gun broadside.”

  “You’d have punched through, and I’d be tasting cold space instead of this fine wine,” the opposing captain said, and took a sip.

  “But how does this end? Do we want the Empress dead? That sounds more like a goal than a plan,” the captain defeated this day bore in.

  Vicky nodded. “Most civil wars have a pause once the first shot is fired as the two sides shake down and lines are drawn. I figure it will be a month or so before we know exactly where the lines are. Then we’ll know how we get to Greenfeld and they how they’ll get to St. Petersburg.”

  “Hmm,” Captain Rachinsky said, staring deep into his glass. “Any chance we could help a few of those planets make up their mind?”

  “You have any ground forces?”

  The Reprisal’s skipper eyed Major Burke. The Marine just shook his head.

  “Well,” went on the twice-turned officer, “you could put a few battleships in a planet’s sky and threaten to slag them from orbit. That ought to get a quick surrender.”

  The whole room held its breath. Vicky might be new at this business, but she remembered that planets had suffered such destruction until a treaty had decreed that any planet that lost the high ground above it had the right and obligation to surrender. Would the Empress’s bullyboys follow that ancient treaty?

  “I have no stomach for fulfilling the challenge if the Empress’s henchmen refuse the locals an opportunity to surrender,” Vicky said bluntly. “Worse, I fear that if we once use that option, it will put thoughts in the blackhearted Empress’s mind. Knowing her attitude toward me, I suspect that she’ll think it good policy to slag a few planets just to encourage the others to come running to her.”

  “I fear you’re right,” Captain Bolesław said. Murmurs around the table supported him.

  “Thi
s is going to be an ugly war,” Captain Rachinsky said, draining his glass and reaching to refill it from the decanter.

  “Civil wars often are,” Vicky said. “You want to crawl under a rock?”

  “I chose this profession,” Captain Rachinsky said, “though even I’ll admit that the long peace made it easy for me to ignore the bloody side of it. But what about our Sailors belowdecks? Most of them signed on for a couple of years to get money to buy a farm on an outlying planet or earn an apprenticeship in a good craft. How are they going to take to the sudden discovery that they could be up to their ears in blood?”

  Now it was Captain Bolesław who put down his wineglass. “That, gentlemen, will be up to us. Are we fighting just because we chose the profession of the sword and our number came up, or are we fighting to end this bloody tyranny that’s blighting our beloved Greenfeld? We can’t lead good men into battle if we don’t believe it’s worth fighting and dying for.”

  Captain Bolesław raised his glass. “Gentlemen, I give you one hell of a leadership challenge. Here’s to leading our fine Sailors and Marines from the front into one damn complex fight.”

  “Hear, hear!” came as eight captains and one Grand Duchess drained their glasses.

  CHAPTER 25

  ON the station, work proceeded in haste, with unloading and reloading the freighters. The Revenge, now back under its name of Ferocity, was gently tugged into a repair dock and its armor patched. It was found to be the least damaged battleship. The Koln also got first call at the body and fender shop.

  It was nice to have a station that had full-service docks for heavy warships. It made Vicky look forward to the day when St. Petersburg would have the same.

  Meanwhile, the Retribution licked its minor wounds and made itself fit for duty while all six ships not in dock hands stood watch for any incoming hostiles. None came.

  Vicky spent much of her time dirtside, waving at people who wanted to see the person in whose name the Security Consultants had been defeated. There had been incidents of rape and robbery on the station while the redcoats controlled it. Word had flown quickly through Brunswick’s grapevine of what they could expect when the Security hoodlums landed.

  That Vicky had stopped it was cause for celebration.

  Vicky did her best to have Inez at her elbow as often as possible. The Ranger captain had done more than Vicky to end it, and Inez would be the one left here to get defenses in place on Brunswick. The people should see her.

  But by the same fact of her getting a defense up, she was busy. Inez made a few appearances when Vicky really twisted her arm, but mostly, it was Vicky who waved the flag and took the adulation and allegiance of the people.

  The powers that be were another matter entirely.

  Those Vicky had met with the first day were there to wine and dine her most evenings, opening their circle wider, bringing in second-tier industrial, financial, and political officials. As Vicky had concluded, Wilhelm Welf was just a figurehead. Her concern was that most of the appointed politicals were little more than straw men as well. That was what her father liked. “The business of this Empire is business,” he’d proudly say.

  However, Mannie had given Vicky a much wider education on what the political brought to the table. She had learned from her readings in the Fury’s library that absolute power corrupted absolutely. Now she was watching as the Empress and her family used the absolute power the Empire afforded business to reach out and gather all to themselves.

  Kris Longknife had persuaded Vicky to give Sevastopol an Imperial City Charter. Mannie had used it to blend the people, the money, and industry, along with the elected officials, into something that Vicky was finding worth having. Metzburg and Brunswick appeared to have had no such need to balance anything. Admittedly, its people of wealth were scared that the Empress intended to gut and roast them for dinner. Still, Vicky had no idea how these new planets would fare once she helped them get on their feet.

  Vicky weighed what she had seen on the new planets and what she knew of on St. Petersburg. Would fear be enough to motivate everyone to balance their interests with everyone else they shared this planet with? Would the hope of their future hold them together once stepmama was no longer out to rip them to shreds?

  If they couldn’t, this rebellion might just be the first of many to come.

  I need some quiet time to think. This rebellion thing is nowhere as easy as some people thought when they offered me an old flag to wave.

  However, Vicky’s contemplation came to a roaring halt as her limo did the same. Vicky couldn’t remember ever having been stuck in traffic before, at least not in Greenfeld space. Traffic jams were something for Longknife folk to get stuck in.

  Vicky glanced around. Traffic was stopped on her side of the street, and almost none was coming down the other side.

  “Driver,” Vicky said with an annoyed half wave, “pull over and let’s jump to the head of this line.”

  The agent riding shotgun next to the driver spoke on his commlink, then shook his head. “The traffic supervisors don’t recommend that, Your Grace. Some gathering of old ladies has gotten out of hand, and the biddies are blocking the road. He suggests you go around.”

  Vicky scowled. “Old ladies are blocking the road?”

  “Something like that,” the security agent agreed.

  “How often does that happen around here?” the commander asked.

  The agent looked pained. “I don’t think it ever has.”

  “Let’s get out of here, or we will be late,” Vicky said. Several long-term trade agreements had been settled and they wanted her there to sign them, along with the locals and the trade delegates from St. Petersburg. It would not do to keep important people waiting.

  The cars ahead and behind Vicky’s limo completed a simultaneous U-turn and gunned down the opposite side of the street just as several others drivers got the same idea. They flinched out of the way of Vicky’s cavalcade.

  Despite the delay, Vicky was right on time.

  However, the meeting had taken a decided turn from its agenda.

  Captain Torrago was beside the man at the head of the table, and there were major thunderclouds hanging over them.

  CHAPTER 26

  “YOUR Grace, I’m so glad you are here. Maybe you can make this young woman understand that when her betters give her an order, it is to be obeyed.”

  “Yes, Your Grace,” Inez bit out. “Would you please tell this . . . man . . .” seemed to replace some other preferred word, “that Rangers do not shoot down unarmed women and children in the street.”

  “They are troublemakers. Rabble-rousers,” the man corrected.

  “They never would have done this if we still had State Security,” one older man at midtable grumbled. “People knew their place.”

  “And what might that place be?” Vicky asked breezily as she made her way as unthreateningly as possible to the head of the table.

  I wondered what this rebellion was all about. I suspect I’m about to discover that rebellion is many things to many people. No need to spook these folks any sooner than I have to. No doubt they’re sure they have all the answers.

  If I’ve learned anything, it’s that no one does, not even little old me.

  Once Vicky was at the head of the table, she stepped between the Ranger captain and the spokesman for the powers that be on Brunswick.

  “What seems to be happening that’s got you all upset?” she asked, keeping it as open-ended as possible.

  “We have a rebellion,” the chief citizen of Brunswick said evenly, all unction and oil to his Grand Duchess.

  “I know,” Vicky said, offhandedly. “I seem to have been on the receiving end of its first shots.” She smiled her most encouraging Grand Duchess smile.

  “Not our rebellion, their rebellion,” the grump at midtable growled.

  “Ah,” Vicky said, making to appear enlightened. “So it all centers on the pronoun, does it.”

  “Don’t be silly, gir
l,” snapped the grouch. “Jansik, set her straight.”

  “I will, Wallace, if you give me a chance.” The man at the head of the table turned his bright and winning smile on Vicky. “We have a problem with hooligans and troublemakers blocking traffic, destroying private property, and causing mischief. I asked the young woman you suggested be the chief of our defense forces to deploy her troops to support our small force of traffic supervisors. She refused. Would you please tell her to comply with my order?”

  Vicky turned to Inez and raised a questioning eyebrow. No doubt there was more to this story than one side.

  “He ordered me to machine-gun the protestors,” the Ranger snapped.

  “That’s what State Security would have done,” Wallace said, getting his oar in the troubled waters.

  “Please, Wallace, let the Grand Duchess handle this,” said Jansik.

  “Okay, okay, I’m just saying,” said Wallace as he waved away the head of the table.

  “Your Grace,” Jansik said.

  “Captain?” Vicky said.

  “Ma’am, I’ve recruited some of my best trainees from those projects. I’ve had two weeks to train them. Many of them have just begun the weapons phase of their training, and this man wants me to order them to shoot down their mothers and grandmothers, their kid brothers and girlfriends!”

  That got Vicky’s attention. “Who are these people in the street?”

  “No one,” Jansik assured her back.

  Vicky ignored him and kept her attention on Inez. Here was a woman she’d trusted with her life.

  “Your Grace, the protestors are the women from the projects. That’s where the workers live. The folks that still have jobs. The place is a mess. No running water. Little heat, and these guys raised the rent last month while cutting their husbands’ pay for the third time this year. Vicky, the women are protesting because they can’t take it anymore.”

  Vicky listened to Inez with two sets of ears.

  One, her father the Emperor’s ear, heard what Jansik expected her to hear. Hooligans were making trouble and needed to be taught a lesson. State Security should machine-gun them down. That would teach the likes of such people to accept what they got from their betters.