Rebel (19 page)

It was clear to her what they had to do. Still, no one at the table could find their way clear to get off their rear ends and start making things happen. Thus, Vicky did her best to sit placidly as her tush began to ache and her patience grew shorter while all those around her yapped their way through more long-winded dithering.

She was thinking of leaving. It was good she stayed.

Half a dozen commlinks started flashing at the same time.

“There have been shots fired at Greenfeld Plaza,” shouted the young woman who seemed to know more about what was going on than anyone else in the room, or knew it faster. She jumped to her feet.

“Calm down,” Vicky ordered in the command voice Admiral Krätz had taught her.

As the admiral had promised his budding JO, people did calm down . . . or at least grow silent. She could almost hear the admiral’s words. “People who know nothing are easily
dominated by anyone who acts like they know what they are doing.”

Vicky’s own computer was passing along Inez’s report directly.

M
Y SNIPER HAS TAKEN DOWN ONE PERSON WITH A MACHINE PISTOL.
T
HERE IS NO EVIDENCE OF ANY OTHER SHOOTER.
S
EVERAL OF MY RECRUITS ARE RACING TO RECOVER THE WEAPON AND RENDER ANY AID NEEDED TO THE GUNMAN.

“Captain, could you please repeat your report to those still in this meeting with me,” Vicky ordered.

The Ranger did.

“But, I am told there were several shots fired,” Jansik snapped.

“Sir, I am at the scene of the shooting, and my Ranger sniper needed just one shot to put an end to this noise. You are misinformed,” was Inez’s reply.

That drew quizzical looks Vicky’s way. “One Ranger, one target, one round,” she said with finality.

That seemed to settle the matter.

“My response team has arrived where the shooter is down,” Inez said, updating her report. “We have the weapon in custody. It is a State Security special. We are identifying the gunman. He is Ivan Hollerman, a shop foreman with Galactic Assemblers Limited. He’s still breathing.”

A siren could be heard in the background.

“Do you locals have anyone you want to take custody of him?” Inez asked.

Vicky just raised an eyebrow.

Instead of an answer, Jansik growled, “You sent your woman to provide guns at the protest?”

“Yes, I did,” Vicky snapped back. “And if I hadn’t, you’d have blood in the streets and trouble beyond your worst nightmares. Who owns GAL?”

Eyes around the table turned to grumpy.

“Don’t look at me. I didn’t order that guy to do anything. I’ve been here all the time.” Which said nothing. Vicky had no problems communicating on net while her behind grew more and more pained in meetings. Still, Wallace
might
be that old-fashioned.

“I think we ought to be grateful to that Ranger for saving
us from riots aimed at us for something we had nothing to do with,” the young man said.

Slowly, heads nodded.

“Well, maybe you’re right, Steve,” Jansik finally mumbled. “Still, we should know what’s happening here.”

“Clearly, you did not,” Vicky pointed out.

Jansik forbore any further response.

“May I repeat, is there any sort of police I can turn this fellow over to for questioning, assuming he lives?” Inez snapped on net.

“Our traffic supervisors have been stepping up their game,” the young Steve answered.

“You’ve been waltzing around with no one to handle domestic disputes, bank robberies, anything outside the law?” Vicky found herself saying.

Grumpy scowled. Jansik shrugged. Steve provided the answer. “You didn’t want State Security involved in such matters,” he pointed out. “There were local ways of handling things in the projects, or so I’m told. As for major crimes, we don’t seem to have any.”

“People, on St. Petersburg they have their crime families that handle the usual vices. They paid off State Security and ended up allied with the mayors when Security went away. Who’s running your black market, prostitution, what have you?”

Those around the table just looked at each other.

Vicky shook her head. “You’ve been skating on thin ice, sure that you’re running things, and you don’t know half of what’s going on five floors below your penthouses.”

Nobody said anything.

“Well, folks, I’ll tell you what I’m going to do. Kris Longknife, that Wardhaven princess, once talked me into giving the cities of St. Petersburg their own Imperial City Charters. They empowered them to elect mayors and establish city governance that held up during the hard times we’ve been having. Computer, shoot these fine folks the contents of one of those charters and the regulations Sevastopol is operating under. The coordination between cities is still kind of loosey-goosey. I suggest you look into something like that.”

Vicky let that sink in. “Now, about your protestors. Captain, how’s it going?”

“They all ducked when my sniper took out the gunner. Now they’re milling about. I think the rumor mill is going crazy, what with a shot fired and an ambulance making its way through the crowded streets. It’s not for me to tell anyone in your pay grade what to do, but I’d get someone out here to talk to these folks real quick if I were in your boots,” the Ranger said.

“The gal has a point,” Steve said.

“Who owns the projects these people are so upset about, and who employs their husbands and has been cutting their pay?” Vicky asked.

No surprise, grumpy slowly raised his hand, but then so did Jansik, and Steve as well.

“Boys,” Vicky said, “have I got a deal for you. Trade is open. You’re back in business. What do you say that you rescind those pay cuts and housing increases? People don’t fight for the people that do them dirty. From the looks of matters here, you’re just one blowup from everything coming down around your heads.”

“We’ve liked to think of ourselves as the ones in charge, making things happen our way,” Steve said, his eyes roving around the room. Many met him. Others still scowled at where this was leading.

“I’m willing to cut the rent back to what it was and restore pay to where it was last year. The rest of you will have to decide for yourselves.”

“If you do that, kid, how can we not follow?” Grumpy growled.

“Yeah, I see your problem, Wallace, but I see my problem as more pressing. The Grand Duchess here is right. We’ve managed to slide by on a pretty slick deal. Slick for us; not so slick for everyone else. If we don’t change the tune, I see us having to pay a pretty angry piper. Just how did your foreman get his hands on that machine pistol?”

“I have no idea,” Wallace insisted, almost believably.

“That may be true, but if there’s a black market in slightly used State Security machine pistols, I think we need to have ourselves some real soldiers with real weapons and training able to take down a problem in a crowd with one shot.”

Finally, the people around the table were working their way toward an agreement.

The Ranger hurried them on. “Well, if you folks can find
your way clear to some agreement, I suggest you get some folks out here to talk to this bunch. My reading of them is these cows are getting real antsy. One hint of another lightning strike, and there’s gonna be a stampede.”

Vicky stood and headed for the door. It was a short moment before Jansik, Wallace, and Steve joined her. On their heels followed the rest of the room.

CHAPTER 28

D
ECISIONS
were finalized in Vicky’s limo on the drive over to Greenfeld Plaza. No surprise; Steve did most of the talking. The two older men usually were content to grunt unhappy agreement. The one time they got vocal was when Steve suggested that the crowd be invited to nominate a committee to present their grievances.

“We’re raising their pay and lowering their rent. What more do they need?” grumbled the grouch.

“Do you remember when you were invited to first sit in on the business round table?” Steve said. “I do. I can’t tell you how it made me feel. You must have felt it back when.”

“I remember,” grouch admitted. “I’m not that old.”

“Well, we need to know more about what’s happening. Happening for real. I agree with the Grand Duchess. Someone is running our black market. Someone opened that gun locker. Unless we want that someone to be heading up our round table, we need to play catch-up, and we need more eyes and ears to do it with. Am I not right, Your Grace?”

Vicky thought back on all she’d learned from Mannie in the last months. All she’d experienced as both the gracious Grand Duchess on St. Petersburg and driving efforts to feed
Poznan and get trade going with Metzburg. “Managing a planet is not something one man can do,” she said slowly. “I think the mess my father, the Emperor, is making of the Empire is very telling. I’m not suggesting that we want to go all Longknife with elections every day or such, but we do need to let the people who know how to run things do their jobs.”

“And how do we do that?” Jansik asked, not quite in full snide.

“When I figure it out, you’ll be the first I tell,” Vicky said.

They were at the plaza. Several Rangers and traffic supervisors helped walk the limo through the crowd. It wasn’t a problem. At seeing Vicky, her name swept through the crowd. People fell back while others hurried closer. It made for a jam, but a bubble formed around the car, and they were halfway to the inevitable statue of one of Vicky’s grand- or great-grandfathers when the car could go no farther.

So Vicky got out and walked. She shook offered hands, and the jam of people seemed to open before her. Or maybe it was the Marines in their green-and-black uniforms. Where they came from, Vicky had no idea but, she was pretty sure she owed their skipper a thank-you.

Steve fell in beside Vicky, shaking hands as well. Jansik and Grumpy were more reticent, but one way or another, they all found themselves on the marble platform before the statue.

Kat produced a bullhorn from somewhere, and Vicky shouted, “Hello.”

A long, shouted “Hello” rolled back at her.

“Thank you for letting me visit,” Vicky said next.

From a knot of mothers and grandmothers who seemed to have a secure place right in front of her came a “Thank you for coming,” that turned into a ragged but powerful response from the crowd.

“It was my honor, and that of the Navy,” Vicky continued, “to secure the space above your head. You are now safe from without.”

The crowd quieted as Vicky talked.

“The question before you is what to do now.”

“Yes,” came right back from the group of women at her feet.

“I have someone who wants to talk to you. Will you listen to him?”

The rumble from the women was none too sure, but Vicky
handed over the bullhorn, and Steve began to speak. He played his cards right; he started by praising Vicky and the Navy that came with her. A quick nod to the reopening of trade and more jobs led quickly to announcing the cancellation of the pay cuts. That drew cheers, especially from the back of the crowd. There were more men there. No doubt, absenteeism was high today.

The return to lower rents and a promise to improve the quality of the apartments sent the women into cheers. More of them cheered when Steve handed the bullhorn to Jansik and Wallace, who announced, if less enthusiastically, that they would be doing the same.

The crowd was in a happy mood when Steve got the bullhorn back and played his final card. “I and my friends need to know more about what is happening here, in Laatzen and all the cities of Brunswick. You know a lot about what I don’t. Could you nominate a committee to work with us to see that things go better?”

“Why not elect them,” came from a gray-haired granny at their feet. That was promptly seconded by several other old gray heads.

“Maybe we will,” Steve allowed. “But we need to start with something, and we need to start right now. I’ll be back at my office in an hour. If you can get someone to speak for you, I’ll meet with them then.”

“How will you know that someone who shows up is someone this bunch of yahoos wants?” Grumpy put in as soon as the bullhorn was off.

“I won’t, unless they toss that someone out of my office,” Steve said.

“Better you start this than me,” Jansik muttered.

One or the other of them had summoned a car to get them out of there. They went.

Vicky and Steve hung around, shaking hands and exchanging a few good words with those who wanted to get something off their chest immediately. When one old fellow began a long-winded harangue, two of the grandmothers edged him off until he was talking to two strapping boys who nodded agreement but kept him moving away from Vicky.

That Kat was helping might have added to their speed of departure.

It was a long hour before Vicky and Steve were back in her borrowed limo and driving slowly through a thinning crowd.

“That went better than I’d expected,” Steve allowed.

“I’m always surprised when it does. So far it always has. Sooner or later, my luck’s going to run out.”

“That gas attack at Kiev didn’t go all that well,” the commander allowed.

“Huh?” Steve asked.

“A long story. Let’s save it for another time,” Vicky said.

“Hmm. Interesting, I offer them a committee, and someone wants an election right off the cuff. I wonder where that came from?”

“You say the projects handle their own problems.”

“So I’ve been told,” Steve admitted.

“And how do those who handle those problems get their authority?” Vicky asked.

“I don’t know.”

“You might want to find out,” Vicky suggested. “I suspect you’ll be dealing with them when you get back to your office. And if this really does go into an election for a committee or more, you may find that getting up there and being the face of the round table puts you in places you never thought of.”

“Those old farts would never let someone as young as me lead them,” Steve said.