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  “We accept your word, Your Grace, and we will be ready for the next delivery, won’t we?” he said, eyeing his own.

  The men of business did not argue with the elected representative of their workers.

  The rest of the agenda was handled without Vicky saying a word.

  The room was taking on the air of finishing up early and on a happy note, when Mannie leaned forward. “There is an extra item I have to add to our agenda. I only found out about it an hour before we were scheduled to start.”

  “Can’t it wait for next time?” the mayor of St. Pete asked.

  “I’m afraid not. I beg your indulgence. Your Grace, will you share the two messages you received? I’m sorry, when did you say you got them?”

  “This morning, about four hours ago,” she told the gathering.

  “You see, this really is something we couldn’t plan for,” Mannie said.

  “And won’t delay?” came again.

  “I think you’ll understand once you see it. Your Grace.”

  “Computer, please play the first message for these people.”

  The computer synced with the table’s computer and both of the landscapes in the wall murals suddenly changed into screens, showing the Emperor as he ordered Vicky home.

  A puzzled “Oh,” seemed to be the general reply.

  “You will, of course, go,” the mayor of Moskva said.

  “One moment before we get to that,” Mannie said. “The second message, Your Grace.”

  Vicky played the Empress’s message into a deadly silent room.

  “Oh,” said the Kiev mayor when that tirade was done. “I guess she is not happy that her last bunch of assassins failed to kill you.”

  “Or that I stopped two shiploads of security types from landing on Presov and taking over the crystal-mining operations. Or should I say, taking them back over.”

  Vicky watched as the men and women, elected officials, bankers, and industrialists eyed each other in silence.

  She cast Mannie a quick glance, but he was busy studying the others in the room. Are you going to leave me hanging out here to dry? Why haven’t you jumped to my defense?

  If this is democracy, then Kris Longknife can have it.

  Still, Vicky kept her mouth shut.

  These people didn’t need to be reminded of what she’d done for them. They didn’t need to be told what would likely lie ahead for her if she went back to Greenfeld. Stepmommy dearest had done a very good job of laying that on the line.

  What is going through your minds?

  Vicky had a pretty good idea of the answer to that question.

  Just what good is this Grand Duchess to me? Can I take care of me and mine without her? What will it cost to save her life? Can I afford it?

  What will the price of a civil war be? What will the price of just laying down and taking it be?

  Mannie let those in the room do their own thinking. He made no effort to rush them. Neither did he step away from his place at her right hand.

  “Well, that’s not going to happen,” the mayor of St. Pete finally said.

  “No way,” said the mayor of Moskva, after taking the census of those closest to him.

  “She tried it before, and we damn well stopped that crazy bitch from killing our Grand Duchess,” said Kiev’s mayor.

  “Then we stand united on this,” Mannie said.

  “Yeah,” a manager drawled. “I guess we do. Assuming you can come up with a plan that isn’t suicide.”

  On that note, the room turned to attacking this entirely new problem.

  CHAPTER 3

  “YOUR Grace,” Mannie said, turning to Vicky. “You’ve known about this for a bit more than the rest of us. What are your thoughts about a draft action plan?”

  Vicky noted how Mannie deftly handled the turnover to her. He was asking her for a “draft” action plan. She would propose. They would dispose. She’d heard that was how it was done in a democracy. At least for the moment, she would go along with it.

  “Thank you, Mr. Mayor,” Vicky said. “I would like to thank all of you for considering my problem. No doubt, it will prove to be a most interesting challenge,” she added dryly.

  That got a chuckle from most in the room. Not all. Several intense men were leaning forward, serious to the point of deadly.

  “His Imperial Majesty has requested and required me to return to the palace. Not to do so would be stupid, suicide, and treason. Therefore, my next message to him must be one of compliance. Or at least expressing the greatest desire to comply.”

  “Expressing it,” one of the deadly serious men echoed. “Expressing one thing but doing another. How will you manage that?”

  Vicky smiled slyly. “As you may have heard, there was an attack on my person. I managed to rescue myself, with a lot of help from all of you, but I did wander, shall we say, in the wilderness, for a day or so. My tender feet, as befit a Grand Duchess, were subject to rough treatment by rocks and thorns. My delicate skin was assaulted by bugs and all sorts of sharp denizens of nature. I might even have taken an infection or contracted something worse out in the wild.”

  “I take it that you propose to answer your father, our Emperor,” Mannie said, “from a hospital bed? In intensive care, no doubt.”

  “No doubt,” Vicky readily agreed.

  “A good opening gambit,” the deadly serious man agreed. “Some might point out that our peripatetic Grand Duchess has been seen at Presov and Metzburg since the attack.”

  “Someone might,” Vicky said, “but one of the pains of travel among the stars is that dates can get so very confusing for people who live on one planet and never set foot off it. If I say I am sick from this dastardly attack by men only just arrived from Greenfeld, then it will be easy for others to assume some date has slipped. At least my father, Your Emperor, can easily persuade himself. No doubt my blackhearted stepmum, Your Empress, will do her best to correct him.

  “With any luck, that will only add to the confusion,” Vicky added.

  “That may buy us time,” another serious type said. “What will we use that time for?”

  “During my recent visit to Metzburg, whenever it was, I suggested to them that they arm any available merchant hull with 6-inch lasers and good fire control systems. I also suggested they might put many of their unemployed to use in forestry work, under the guidance of retired military men who might also teach them, while working in the great outdoors, the more basic points of light infantry tactics. Such skills in the proper use of firearms might come in very handy if you suddenly found yourself in need of repelling lightly armed security personnel who were interested in anything but securing the peace.”

  “So you’ve got Metzburg doing pretty much what we’re doing,” the first serious type observed. “Where will Metzburg get these retired military types to help them train their, ah, irregular guardsmen?”

  “The same place you are getting your training officers and NCOs,” Vicky said.

  “But our training cadre are taken from active duty Marines.”

  “Active duty, retired,” Vicky said, diffidently, “no need to put too fine a point on it.”

  “Oh,” one serious type said.

  “Oooh,” said the other. “Just how much is the Navy in on this?”

  Vicky let that trial balloon float around the room for a long moment before she shot it down. Sort of. “I would not know,” she said, as innocently as she had managed when she was five and caught with her hand in the cookie jar. “I do not speak for the Navy. As a Grand Duchess, I do what I am able. As a lieutenant commander, I do what I am told. I do my best to keep my different roles straight and not confuse them.”

  “I imagine that you do,” said the first serious man.

  “I think I get your meaning. For the moment,” the second one added.

  The two serious types glanced around the room, polling others of their mind-set, then the first turned back to Vicky.

  “When I first heard that you had landed h
ere, I strongly suspected you had come to start some sort of rebellion. I considered Mannie a fool, maybe a lovestruck fool, for letting you survive the drop. However, over time, you convinced me that you really were intent on doing good deeds. Was I as foolish as Mannie here?”

  Vicky eyed Mannie. Lovestruck fool? He was managing not to meet her gaze. Vicky turned back to her inquisitor. She was getting rather good at answering inquisitors.

  “I had no thought of rebellion when I landed on that day, not so long ago. You may find it hard to believe, but I love my father. My first choice was, and will always be, to remain loyal to him. You, the people of St. Petersburg, allowed me to do what I wanted to do. Save two planets. Save their people. You have seen my stepmother’s answer to those deeds. She tried to kill me and now threatens to kill me if I don’t docilely place my head under her axe.

  “What I intended to do that day is one thing. What I find myself having to do today is another.”

  “And what you will do tomorrow may well be another,” one of the intent men said. “Tell me, young woman, if it will save your neck, will you sacrifice the lives of all those in this room?”

  Vicky gnawed her lower lip. That had to be the question foremost in every mind around the table. She chose her words carefully.

  “Today, I plan to respond to my father’s summons with a message asking for delay. Soon, I intend to lead a trade convoy to Brunswick to open trade between them and you. When I return, I will examine all my options to see what I do next. What I will not do, not then, not ever, is to break faith with those who today swear on their honor to stand with me against the evil that the Empress and her family have brought to this, our beloved Greenfeld. I will fight them until their evil is banished from our lands or until I am dead. This I swear. This faith I will not break.”

  “Will we swear this with her?” Mannie asked.

  “I will swear it,” Kiev’s mayor said, shooting to his feet.

  “I will swear it,” said the Kiev delegation as they followed him to his feet.

  Even as they pushed their chairs back, others from other city delegations were shouting, “I swear it,” and standing with them.

  Around the room, the collection of serious men were eyeing their enthusiastic brothers and sisters towering above them, and polling themselves. Then, the two who had questioned Vicky got slowly to their feet. The others followed their lead.

  “This we swear,” they said, and someone began a cheer, and soon the entire room was cheering.

  Vicky slowly came to her feet as the room quieted.

  She let her eyes rove the room, blinking back moisture that threatened to fog her vision. “You have sworn with me, and now I swear with you. I will see a new dawn for Greenfeld, or I will die in its attempt.”

  CHAPTER 4

  “DADDY, I just got your message. I can’t believe anyone would tell you I am not your most loyal subject,” were the first words Vicky spoke to the message recorder.

  It had taken three hours to get her ready for the camera.

  The hospital where Doc Maggie had worked was only a short drive from the conference room. The rest of the time had been spent getting her camera-ready.

  Her left leg, the one closest to the camera, was in an open sling. The foot dangling from the sling was about twice as big as normal and purple, with yellow pus draining down. That had been thanks to a makeup artist that Mannie just happened to know.

  This rather lovely makeup artist reminded Mannie that it had been a while since he dropped by the studio, and the other girls missed him.

  Maybe Mannie’s not the monk I took him for.

  After spraying on an underlayer of sunburn, the artist helped Kit and Kat get the scratches and bug bites back onto every inch of her exposed skin . . . quite a bit of exposed skin that Daddy would, no doubt, enjoy looking at once more.

  Two young doctors, obviously attracted by all the lovely women, turned up and added medical advice on just how bad infected bites and other insect activity could get.

  They produced horrible pictures in vivid color.

  Vicky ended up looking horrid.

  The girls loved it.

  Mannie looked on, grinning. “I have never seen a woman quite as ugly as you.”

  “Is that an offer to take me to dinner?” Vicky cooed.

  “After you wash all that off, maybe,” he answered.

  “Oh, but shouldn’t I be seen in public to strengthen my story?”

  “We need to do something about her vocal cords,” the makeup artist observed professionally. “If she’s supposed to be dehydrated and sick, we can’t have her sounding like she’s ready to seduce the mayor, now can we?”

  “Definitely not,” Mr. Smith agreed, though Kit and Kat were clearly undecided.

  As the scribe arrived with the camera, the movie magician had Vicky breathe in something from a can.

  “That tastes horrible,” Vicky growled, but her voice came out cracking and just as horrible to hear as she was to look at.

  “Now it’s showtime,” the makeup artist said, and stepped back, out of sight.

  Vicky adjusted her body in bed and her mind to corkscrew. “Daddy, I just got your message. I can’t believe anyone would tell you I am not your most loyal subject,”

  She paused to fall back in her bed, gasping for breath. The scribe took the time to play the camera over her body, moving slowly over every ugly cut, bruise, and bite before ending at her pus-oozing toes.

  “I will come as soon as I can,” Vicky got out as she struggled up a bit on one elbow. “I will answer every slander.”

  Again, she collapsed back onto her pillow. The scribe brought the recorder in close to her bare chest, her breasts now covered with light patches of bandages with truly ugly green and yellow ichor leaking through.

  No nipple slip today, girl.

  “I would come immediately, but I was kidnapped last week. They stripped me naked and left me chained to a bed in a hut back in the woods to die of thirst.”

  The camera swung to cover her hands and the truly appalling gashes on her wrists.

  “Daddy, I’m a Peterwald. I escaped and trekked through the woods until they found me, but it was horrible. The rocks cut my feet, and they got infected. There were bugs and brambles and all sorts of things that got at me.”

  Vicky collapsed again into her bed, gasping for breath.

  “I don’t understand. The men who did this. They had just arrived from Greenfeld. Why would someone come out from Greenfeld to try to kill me?

  “I am getting better, but they tell me that I can’t fly in a shuttle yet. Here, let my doctor explain.”

  A mature doctor, not one of the kids that had helped get Vicky ready for the camera, now came to stand in front of Vicky and deliver a report. They’d made him go through his spiel four different times before he got it right.

  “My father does not understand technical,” Vicky had warned him after his first two tries. “You can include a full medical write-up for any doctor he brings in to check on this, but your report to him has to be aimed at a fourth-grade science level.”

  His next two tries were better. This, his fifth, was great.

  “Your Imperial Majesty, the Grand Duchess has suffered major contusions and cuts, both to her wrists and ankles in her escape from her restraints and to her feet during her walk out. Most of them have become infected. I do not think the restraints were very clean.

  “Here on St. Petersburg, we have several insects that bury their eggs inside other animals for them to incubate. When hatched, the larvae eat their way out of their victim. In the event of a high-gee shuttle launch, there is the chance of these eggs being sucked into the bloodstream and carried deep into the body. Larvae eating at heart or lung tissue would be fatal.

  “Besides that, we need to care for the blood infection from her foot injuries. I’m afraid I cannot certify the Grand Duchess for flight. I do not know when I will be able to. We are still searching her body for bug bites and larvae infe
stations. She is a fighter, but all of this is taking a toll on her.

  “I will attach my complete report for your own doctors to examine.”

  The scribe cut the recording.

  “You will give me that report?” he asked the doctor.

  “I should have it ready for you in an hour. We’re pulling the photos and tests from other patients’ files and making sure they all fit smoothly into the Grand Duchess’s medical report.”

  The scribe grinned. He would be affixing his seal attesting to the truth of everything within. This one was young, and quite excited to be involved in pulling the wool over the reviled Peterwald’s eyes.

  And doing it for a Peterwald at that.

  “If we’re done here, can you clean me up?” Vicky said, getting her foot down out of the sling, before pulling herself up.

  “Oh, please,” Mannie said, covering his eyes from a view that might have been vile except she was now flashing him quite a bit of her lady parts.

  “Excuse me,” the commander said, in a voice that froze Vicky’s blood. “I think we have a problem.”

  “What kind of problem, and can someone give me something to make my voice sound right.”

  “It will wear off in an hour,” the makeup artist said, helpfully.

  Vicky scowled, but turned her full attention to the commander.

  “Three cruisers and three large attack transports just jumped into the system. They are setting a point seven five gee course for St. Petersburg and refusing to answer our hails.”

  “I think we have a problem,” Vicky agreed. “I need this room,” was pure Grand Duchess. “Kit, Kat, let’s clean me up and get me back in uniform. Commander, have a shuttle waiting for me as soon as I am ready.”

  “I’m going with you,” Mannie said. “You may need some local political cover for what comes next.”

  “Thank you, Mayor,” Vicky said. “Now, folks, clear out. I need to clean up.”

  CHAPTER 5

  VICKY had her shuttle dock directly on the Retribution. She apparently was expected. Admiral von Mittleburg met her at the door of her quarters with Captain Etterlin of the battleship in tow.