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  “I’m looking for a great crop this year,” a rancher put in. “I was expecting to use it to trade with some of the mining planets out there. Am I going to have it taxed away so someone can feed Navy mouths that don’t contribute nothing?”

  “May I point out,” a woman in a bright red business suit interjected, “that the security thugs the Navy just intercepted would have confiscated most of your crop, and you wouldn’t have seen a pfennig for it.”

  “Being robbed for my own good is just as much robbery as when the Empress does it,” the rancher shot back.

  “About those security thugs we seem to have acquired. Are any of them good for a day’s work?” another rancher drawled.

  Vicky took that question. “The Navy will do a security check and interview each, ah, detainee. They’ll cull out the worst cases, but I suspect a lot of them were just looking for a job when they found that one. We haven’t had any trouble with them so far.”

  “Kind of docile little doggies, huh?” the optimistic rancher said.

  “A greenhorn ain’t no good on a working ranch,” the other spat. “They’re more trouble than they’re worth.”

  “Well, Slim, I got land I could open up if I had some cowpunchers and plowboys. If you don’t want any of them, I’ll take your share.”

  “Who said I didn’t want ’em? I got land to open up, too.”

  “Gentlemen,” Mannie said, “the Empress’s foul deeds can open up many opportunities for us. I think we’re up to them. Still, the only thing that she seems willing to drop in our lap is a bunch of thugs to take us down. If we’re to have something to face her next move, we need our own reserve fleet.”

  “Okay, tell me this,” came from the banker. “How come we need all these extra ships? That nasty battleship the Grand Duchess has was good enough to handle things. Why can’t it stay parked in orbit while we lay up these other ships? Yes, I see that we don’t want them laid off where they can be turned against us, but why do we need them all crewed and fixed up?”

  Mannie glanced at Vicky.

  “As I mentioned,” Vicky said, “I’m headed for Brunswick with a convoy of freighters to open trade with them. The last time I rode a cruiser, it got shot up bad. My Navy superiors want me in something a bit more powerful. They still haven’t fixed the last ship that I got busted up.”

  Vicky’s offhanded delivery of that line drew a chuckle from many.

  “Anyway, when I leave for Brunswick, the Retribution goes with me. Possibly, I’ll also take one of the battlecruisers as well as a couple of cruisers. There’s also a convoy leaving for Metzburg. It will need an escort, too.”

  “Can’t any of those other planets pay for some ships?” came from the banker.

  “No doubt, I will broach that topic with Brunswick. It is quite possible that they will want to keep a couple of ships in their system for their own protection.” Vicky grinned at Mannie. “I see no reason why St. Petersburg should be the only planet with its very own division in the reserve fleet.”

  Now the debate began in earnest, with a lot of people talking and few listening. At first, this experience in participatory decision making was a bit frightening to Vicky. Mannie kept a restraining hand on her arm. Anytime she started to open her mouth, the pressure would grow.

  For a reason she was never quite sure of, she let him keep her quiet.

  No, he kept her listening. Slowly, through the din of so much talk, she began to make out the thread of where the talk was leading. There were a few wanting to debate whether or not to accept the ships. However, most of the talk now was how to manage a fleet, to feed it, pay for its upkeep, and spread its costs to other planets.

  Since this was what Vicky really wanted to hear, she found it easier to listen. After a while, Mannie took his hand off her arm and gave her a smile.

  It was a nice smile. She’d have to see about getting more smiles like that from him.

  CHAPTER 11

  THE meeting broke for lunch when stomachs began to rumble louder than the babble. Everyone adjourned to a restaurant across the street that had a back room reserved for them. It was simple fare of various sausages served with a variety of potato salads and sauerkraut. The beer was excellent, but Vicky hardly touched it.

  Or her food.

  Her table had six chairs. One each for her and Mannie, the commander and Mr. Smith. A succession of people dropped into the two empty chairs and asked Vicky a lot of questions, starting with how the invasion had been stopped. She and Mannie told it as humorously as possible without making too light of how badly it could have gone.

  The next-most-frequent question was when she’d be leaving for Brunswick and what she’d be taking. Vicky was not about to give away operational details but left it at the Retribution and maybe a few cruisers.

  “Any chance Brunswick will chip in for operations and maintenance of those ships?” came on the heels of that answer.

  “We’re swapping their goods for our goods,” Mannie pointed out. “It’s kind of hard to put an excise tax on barter goods that will support the ships convoying the stuff.”

  “I never realized how much easier things were with real money,” was the usual answer to that, even from bankers.

  The lunch hour was almost over when the mayors for the three other major cities on St. Petersburg took over the two chairs and pulled up a third.

  “We really need to know what this St. Petersburg Reserve Fleet is going to look like and what it’s going to be up to.”

  “Can I ask why?” Vicky said.

  “We need to figure out how to pay for it. To do that, we have to know what part of it to charge off to the trade side and what will be devoted to keeping the Empress out of our hair. We’re getting gripes from those who don’t see themselves getting all that much from the trading business. ‘Why should I pay for convoys?’ So, what’s the story?”

  “You know, of course, that any answer I give you today may change tomorrow if more refugee ships show up. It could get a whole lot worse if we have a shoot-out. You know how the Kamchatka’s repairs have gone.”

  That got winces from the three. Make that four. Mannie didn’t look any too happy to be footing the bill for another major ship repair job.

  “She warned us that we were dealing with a moving target,” Kiev’s mayor pointed out.

  “Have you ever tried to get a project through the finance committee with a price tag marked ‘to be determined later’?” the mayor of St. Pete grumbled.

  “I don’t think a revolution is something you do to a plan or a budget,” Mannie pointed out.

  “That might explain why so few of them succeed,” the mayor of Moskva grouched.

  “No doubt we must try to win all our victories with a few words that induce heart attacks in our attackers,” Mannie muttered softly, so everyone could hear.

  That drew a few dry chuckles.

  “If we could only be so lucky,” Vicky admitted.

  “So how many ships do we have, Your Grace? How many of them will be in trade and how many standing guard in our sky?” the mayor of St. Pete demanded. “And yes, I know that there is such a thing as security, but I also know that I cannot ask people to write checks without telling them something. This is not the palace where Harry demands and everyone says, ‘But of course, Your Imperial Ass.’”

  “No offense intended, Your Grace,” Kiev’s mayor put in.

  “None taken,” Vicky allowed. “Maybe I should have asked Kris Longknife how this democracy thing worked. It seems that I am going to experience it or something like it, no?”

  “Or something like it,” Mannie allowed.

  Vicky tapped her commlink. “Admiral, I am talking to several mayors who are trying to draw up a budget for the St. Petersburg Division of the Greenfeld Imperial Navy Reserve Fleet.”

  “The what?”

  “Please don’t ask me to repeat it,” Vicky said. “That is what we’re calling the refugees presently under your command. The people down here need to have s
omething with their name on it if they are to foot the bill for it.”

  “Oh. I guess that sounds logical,” the admiral admitted.

  “To work up their tax accounts, they need to have a rough guestimate of which ships will be escorting trade convoys and which will be allocated to the direct defense of their system against things like the Empress just sent our way.”

  “Your Grace, I’m not even sure what ships I have now. Do you know what shape the old Kasimov and Yamal are in? When will I get the Attacker and Kamchatka back available to answer bells? You might as well ask me how many angels can dance on the head of a pin.”

  “If you can’t tell us something,” Mannie said, “your budget may very well be the number of angels that can dance on that pinhead.”

  “Your Grace, this is starting to feel dangerously like Longknife democracy.”

  “Admiral, I could not agree with you more. Shall we just call off whatever it is that we are doing and present ourselves to the Empress for whatever she might wish to do with us?”

  There was a long pause.

  “Some bean counter in the Navy who never held a command once told me that the true power in the Navy lay in the hands of the man who held the purse strings. I am beginning to see his point.”

  “Admiral, I, like you and these sincere men of government, are taking this journey one step at a time. I have no idea where we will end up. I do know where the Empress wants us. I do not want to go there. Shall we do what we can today and worry about tomorrow when it comes? Who knows, we might not live long enough to worry about it.”

  “Well, the Lord High Commissioner could have taken your advice. I was just informed that he succumbed to his blackened heart. I am told that several of his subordinates were amazed to find that he indeed had one. I have been talking to them. He appears to have had few friends.”

  “It’s amazing how few friends losers have,” Vicky said.

  “Something I must remember,” the admiral admitted. “Now, about your ships. I propose to keep the Scourge pierside here while the Retribution is on convoy duty with you, Your Grace. Count one battleship for trade and one for defense. I propose to send the Stalker with you and the Slinger with the next convoy to Metzburg. It is possible that she might stay there. It is possible that you may find Brunswick interested in keeping the Stalker. Only time will tell.”

  The admiral paused for a moment. “We have ten heavy cruisers: one damaged and in the yard. Five are old, one of which is already in dockyard hands, and the others may follow. Of the four new cruisers, I propose to send two with you and two to Metzburg. The one light cruiser, Rostock, will likely go with you to test the jumps, so I imagine that puts her on trade.

  “Now, about those merchant cruisers. We have five. The two we recently converted and are now squawking like heavies. I propose to use them for local trade, escorting freighters out to our nearby planets. May I point out that the Navy colony on Port Royal has not seen a freighter or any supplies in three months. I have quite a long list of goods they want. I hope we can get a shipment out to them before too much longer.

  “The three ships, the Germanica, Europa, and Constantinia, if I may return them to their proud old names, are way underarmed. There are some 6-inch lasers due up here soon from the shop in Sevastopol that we think should be added to them. It will be a small matter to upgun them. They could use an extra reactor, but we can put that off until we have more time. I’d keep them in system although if more trade blossoms, we might see them escorting convoys.

  “Does that answer your questions?”

  “Ah, how much will it cost to keep those ships in service?” the mayor of St. Pete asked.

  “Oh, for crying out loud,” the admiral exploded. “Why didn’t you start with that?”

  “We didn’t know we should have,” Mannie said. “Remember, this is new to all of us.”

  “Can you tell us what it takes to feed your crews?” Vicky said. “Then you might give us an idea of what spare parts a ship runs through in a month. I think most taxes will be paid in kind.”

  “Let me have my bean counter get back to your bean counter,” the admiral said. From their end, it sounded like his commlink got thrown against a bulkhead.

  “We really have no idea what we’re doing, moment to moment?” the mayor of Kiev asked.

  “I seem to have missed the course in rebellion when I was at college,” Mannie said.

  “I suspect we all did,” Vicky admitted.

  “We want to know the things that are important,” Mannie went on, “but just what is important to us is hard to figure out. What an admiral needs to know and what a mayor or banker or industrialist needs are different, aren’t they?”

  “And don’t forget the rancher or farmer,” Vicky put in. “If the Navy doesn’t eat, you won’t have many Sailors for your ships. Of course, if you don’t have lightbulbs or spare parts for lasers or reactors, you won’t have a warship for very long either.”

  “And we have to do it without any real tax system in place,” Mannie said. “We can’t just tell those people to give us this part of their paycheck, then tell these others to give us a widget or a steak for this much tax money. I knew I should have been a house painter. I was a very good house painter working my way through college. Maybe I could get my old job back.”

  “Sorry, Mannie,” the mayor of Moskva said, “I think we’re all locked into our jobs until we either win or they hang us.”

  Mannie looked sad.

  Vicky tried on her most vacant grin. “Look on the bright side, guys. If we all hang together, it will be one hell of a date.”

  “Only if you go up the scaffold stairs first. And in a short dress,” Mannie suggested.

  “No doubt, my stepmother would be only too happy to oblige you,” Vicky said, then put her most impish look on her face. “But I live by the old saying, no noose is good noose.”

  That got a groan from the mayors, who went back to their own groups. With hardly a silent moment, the group reconvened in the conference hall. Gradually, as the afternoon shadows grew longer, the venting became less and the practical suggestions bubbled their way to the surface.

  “Yes, we need a committee to see that the fleet gets fed.”

  “And one to see they get spare parts.”

  “Do we lump spare parts in with the major overhauling of the older cruisers and arming of the merchant ships? Shouldn’t that be a separate account?”

  “Do we really need to put a lot of money into those old ships? Who decides if a wreck of a ship gets rebuilt or just junked for parts?”

  A lot of people ended up looking blankly at each other.

  Mannie stood up. “Ladies and gentlemen, I think we’re asking the wrong questions. Rather than asking what gets done, we need to be talking about how it gets done and who does it. As I see it, we need a Navy Committee to see that all of these questions get answered. Within that committee, I see a couple of subcommittees to tackle most of those questions specifically. Do you see where I’m going?”

  “Kind of,” the mayor of St. Pete said.

  “But we need a Finance Committee,” a banker said, “unless you’re going to let the Navy Committee raise taxes, and let’s make no mistake about it, we are talking taxes here.”

  “Svin, we’ve been paying taxes all our lives,” a farm representative said. “Now at least I can see where my taxes are going and decide for myself if it’s worth it, and from what I just saw up there in space, Navy ships parked on our space station are worth a whole lot more than some extra marble on a palace on Greenfeld.”

  Vicky could see the shape of how these matters would end, but she had to sit through another two hours as the haggling turned to this specific or that general question, which committee or subcommittee could decide what and what would be referred to this, the committee of the whole.

  Her bottom could not take much more. When someone moved to adjourn and meet again in a week, Vicky could only hope that she’d be in some faraway place even
if she was outnumbered and fighting for her life.

  “I have reserved a suite for you at the Imperial Hotel across the street,” Mannie whispered. “What do you say we adjourn to there and order room service?”

  “I hope it has a hot tub because my tushy needs a nice soak,” Vicky said, and gave Mannie a smile that she hoped promised more.

  CHAPTER 12

  BY the time Vicky left the conference that evening, there was a Marine security detachment waiting for her. The captain in charge listened to Mannie’s security detail’s advice, formed an outer perimeter, and shared the inner circle with the local detail.

  They stopped traffic but no bullets on their way to the Imperial. Vicky discovered that Mannie had not only reserved the Imperial Suite, but he’d also ordered ahead for a light dinner. Room service was waiting for them.

  Vicky, Mannie, the commander, and the spy settled down to dinner around an elegant table that could have easily served double their number.

  “I hope I never have to go through a day like this one again,” the commander grumbled as he served himself an Oriental salad.

  “Democracy is certainly messy,” Mr. Smith said as he buttered a roll. “However, it is surprisingly strong and resilient at times.”

  “You like the way they do things in Longknife space,” the commander spat.

  “I like the way people tend to their own knitting,” he said, taking a nibble. “For example, the Army looks to its duty. Navy officers fight their ships. Farmers raise the food to feed them. Ranchers raise their beef. And conducting them all in their own expertise are elected officials who can do nothing that they do,” he said, bowing sardonically at Mannie, “but, if they do their jobs well, they all can do their jobs smoothly.”

  The commander “harrumphed” at that.

  “You doubt me. Consider, for a moment that Admiral von Mittleburg found himself with all those extra mouths to feed and a few dented ships to repair. How successful do you think he’d be if he dispatched a battalion of Marines to Sevastopol with orders to collect enough food to feed his hungry crews for a month? How would it work if he sent down a Navy detachment to rummage through the shops of St. Pete and find the odd part the fleet required?”