Rebel (31 page)

“Maybe we can find a good plastic surgeon,” Vicky suggested.

“And hide that nice scar? How can she brag about taking a hit for you, Your Grace, if you make it disappear? Now she’ll be dropping her pants every chance she gets.”

“No doubt,” Vicky admitted.

“You want to see my scars?” Kit said, leering at Mannie.

“Maybe when we’re at the beach, and you gals are in skimpy bikinis,” the mayor allowed.

Kit shook her head. “Where did you find this man?” she asked Vicky.

“He found me,” Vicky allowed.

“Toss him back. He’s no fun.”

Vicky looked at Mannie and found herself smiling fondly. “No way. It took me forever to find a man like him.”

Mannie actually looked surprised by her answer. He settled back in his chair and proceeded to mull her words for a bit. She got a squeeze to her hand a moment later.

Vicky squeezed back.

“Admiral von Mittleburg asks if you are awake,” her computer said.

“Admiral, I am among the living,” Vicky allowed. The nurse entered with two breakfast plates. Vicky made a face. Her plate had a lot less food on it than Mannie’s. “Though I may starve to death on the chow they’re giving me.”

“Doctor’s orders,” the nurse said cheerfully, and bustled about, setting the tray on a table and rolling it over in front of Vicky. Mannie winked at Vicky, seeming to promise her some of the steak, eggs, and potatoes on his plate.

“Your, or Admiral Krätz’s idea, of swing ships along a beam works. We hardly had the old light cruisers
Halum
and
Ferwert
anchored fifty thousand klicks back from the jump when some longboat poked its nose through. They blew it away. Only a few moments ago, I learned that a destroyer had tried the same and been hit so hard it’s now rolling dead in space.”

“So the Butcher is getting no reports on what we’re doing?” Vicky asked.

“None.”

Vicky thought about that for a long moment, then asked her own question. “What’s taking him so long? Why hasn’t he come charging through the jump? I know I would have.”

“You would not have lost two battleships, then run away from the fight on the cruiser you were hiding your, ah, excuse me. Hiding in.”

“No, I would not have run away from a fight,” Vicky said with determination.

“But he did, and that’s no way to impress Navy officers, even those with machine guns at their heads. I imagine there’s a lot of talk going around that fleet about how and when to fight the next battle, and your poor Butcher is finding it hard to persuade everyone to do his bidding.”

Mannie looked perplexed. “He’s got machine guns aimed at their heads?”

“Yes. That worked for him the first time,” the admiral answered. “Now, imagine you’re holding that machine gun at some admiral’s head. Also imagine you lost a lot of friends who held machine guns at the heads of the officers Vicky and company blew away. Are you sure you want to do no different
than they did? Even thugs with machine guns want to live long enough to spend their paychecks.”

“Right,” Mannie said.

“I listen to my Navy officers,” Vicky said. “He shouted at his, then ran away when he got them in a mess. That doesn’t encourage anyone to follow him the next time.”

“Yes, Your Grace,” the admiral said. “Now, how are you coming along? I admit that I’m torn. If you’re down there when the Butcher sticks his nose through the jump, I get to fight my battle with you safe on the ground. No doubt, Admiral Lütz would like that.”

“No doubt,” Vicky said sourly.

“Yes,” the admiral said quite firmly.

“Any idea when our frightened bunny rabbit will bring his twitching nose through our jump?” Mannie asked.

“None whatsoever. You want to have Our Grace wave her bloody shirt some more?”

Mannie made a face, half worry, half regret, all pain. “I think I can persuade our mayors to skip parading Her Grace around the planet. This last hit was a bitter surprise to us.”

“I wanted to open trade,” Vicky said. “But now you never can tell what my stepmom will have hidden among the next cargo.”

“Sadly, true,” Mannie agreed.

“Are you suggesting that I take her up here and get her out of your hair?” Admiral von Mittleburg asked.

“As much as I love her smiling company, I’m afraid I am,” Mannie said.

Vicky allowed herself a plaintive sigh. “Visit me often?”

“You know I will, but you know it won’t be as often as either of us want.”

Vicky’s sigh this time was resigned.

“Get me some clothes,” she said. “I can recuperate on the station as well as I can here, and maybe on the station, I can use my pull to get some decent food.”

“No doubt our doctors will consider your rank when they fill out your meal card,” the admiral said.

“In a pig’s eye,” Vicky allowed, to much laughter. None of it was hers.

CHAPTER 44

V
ICKY
found her mind wandering as the shuttle took her up to the station. She had a problem.
How do I stop a whole lot of warships, way more than I have in my fleet?

Was the Butcher really prepared to slag a planet as well developed as St. Petersburg? Especially with all the empty planets out farther in the sector that could use its production?

The Empress’s family was crazy, but where money was concerned, they weren’t stupid. Or wasteful.

Vicky continued thinking and was ready to stand as an equal with her admirals by the time she landed on High St. Petersburg. Bandages and all, she marched into Admiral von Mittleburg’s day quarters.

No surprise, both admirals were there.

After a few moments spent inquiring on how she was feeling, the admirals seemed to expect her to sit in a corner and tend to her knitting.

“You mentioned yesterday that you were getting a whole lot of merchant ships being offered for arming as merchant cruisers.”

Von Mittleburg seemed surprised she remembered. Vice Admiral Lüth certainly was.

“Yes, we’re up to twenty-three ships, Your Grace. I don’t know where we’ll get enough lasers to arm them. Not in the time the Empress will grant us.”

“No doubt,” Lüth agreed.

“So we don’t put lasers on them,” Vicky said.

“What do we arm them with?” both admirals asked in two-part harmony.

“Rockets,” Vicky said. “I remember reading something about rockets in Kris Longknife’s file. Have either of you looked at her file?”

Von Mittleburg shook his head. Admiral Lüth looked like he’d swallowed something poisonous. “I know nothing about that Wardhaven princess except what I occasionally hear in the media. None of it is good.”

“Well, I did pay good money to get a copy of her file. It seems she managed to blow away six of our largest battleships,” Vicky pointed out, “with only twelve mosquito boats, a pair of destroyers, and whatever armed civilian ships she could lay her hands on or load up with what weapons she could beg, steal, or borrow. It was quite an accomplishment.”

“It was never proven that those were our battleships,” Admiral Lüth said sternly.

“Kris Longknife knows, and I know, who those ships came from, and you likely know in your heart of hearts why there are so many empty seats at Academy reunions the last few years.”

Vicky waved off any further discussion. “What is important to our situation is what Kris Longknife managed to lay her hands on. She loaded several freighters full of obsolete Army rockets and used them to, ah, what is the word?”

“Swarm,” her computer supplied.

“Right, swarm those battleships’ defenses. Admirals, do your battleships, cruisers, and destroyers have antimatter torpedoes?”

“Yes, but you can’t use them for much of anything,” Admiral Lüth pointed out. “Any warship worth its salt has secondary batteries to swat such torpedoes before they can do any damage. However, if a ship is seriously damaged, you can use them to finish it off if its captain won’t surrender.”

“That’s not going to be our problem. We need to slam those
ships and slam them good. We need our torpedoes to do serious damage.”

“That’s impossible,” Vice Admiral Lüth growled.

“What do you have in mind?” Rear Admiral von Mittleburg asked. And drew a dirty look from the senior admiral. If this kept up, Vicky might end up using her Grand Duchess card to have them swap jobs.

“First, computer, can you come up with some evasion plans that push our antimatter torpedoes to the maximum of their capabilities?”

“Yes, Your Grace.”

“Please begin calculating at least six of them immediately.”

“Processing.”

“Now, Admiral von Mittleburg, how many of those merchant ships can you arm?”

“Maybe half of them, Your Grace. We were already working on arming several liners. They make much more capable warships than the freighters. Not quite as good as a light cruiser, but not all that much below them.”

“And the rest?” Vicky asked.

The admiral shrugged. “We might turn some into raiders. The Empress’s pirates have been raising Cain with our trade. Why shouldn’t we issue a few letters of marque and see how they like it when the shoe’s on the other foot?”

“A good idea,” Vicky said, “but not this week. On the way up here, I had my computer search through some easy-to-build rockets with guidance systems that could be made from phones or game units. It found a few good ones. Computer, retrieve the rockets.”

Several rocket designs appeared on the nearest wall screen. “They’re fairly easy to build. The solid rocket motors can be poured to form and will allow for some hard acceleration. They can’t maneuver quite as hard as a standard Navy torpedo, but the aluminum powder in the fuel leaves an interesting smoke screen, making it easier for your smart rockets to home on the last known location of a target and only become a target when it breaks out of the smoke.”

“You can’t be serious?” Lüth demanded.

“I think she is,” von Mittleburg said, rubbing his chin thoughtfully. “I think she very definitely is.”

“We’ve got eight battleships. At last count, they had nine. Likely more by now. They outnumber us in cruisers and destroyers. We need something to give us an edge. Why not?”

“Because that plan is crazy,” Vice Admiral Lüth snapped.

“I do see some weakness,” Rear Admiral von Mittleburg said. “A merchant ship is no speedster, Your Grace. How will these swarm ships keep up with the fleet?”

“Here is where I hope to get help,” Vicky said.

“And your head examined,” Lüth suggested. “Both of you.”

Vicky and von Mittleburg exchanged glances that went right by Lüth.

“Merchant ships are usually heavily loaded,” Vicky said. “No owner wants to carry a lot of unused space around.”

“Right,” von Mittleburg said.

“So we don’t load the ship up anywhere close to its full load. Better yet, we whack off the bow, forward of the bridge, and only load rockets in the aft holds.”

“Cut them almost in half?” Admiral von Mittleburg sounded incredulous.

“We park the bows trailing the station and the owners can weld them back together once things are back to normal. For now, we save hull weight we don’t need and only load the top half of the aft holds, not the bottom.”

“One-quarter of what they normally carry, huh?”

“Something like that. We can do the hull separation in a slip and load as many rockets as St. Petersburg can ship up. We push through as many ships as we possibly can as fast as we can.”

Vice Admiral Lüth put his foot down, firmly. “I will not risk my battle squadron around anything so crazy as this idea.”

“Then I won’t ask you to,” Vicky said, bringing herself up to full Grand Duchess. “Admiral von Mittleburg, you may assume command of the St. Petersburg Reserve Battle Fleet. Admiral Lüth, you may assume command of the High St. Petersburg Station.”

“You can’t do that,” was Admiral Lüth’s sharp reply.

“Admiral Lüth, the Navy has charged me with raising this rebellion. They trusted me to decide what is and is not a manageable risk. I find your attitude toward the risks involved here way out of line. I’m offering you a place in our movement more in keeping with your tastes.”

“You can’t do this,” he repeated, only this time he was shouting. “I command Battle Squadron 22. Those are
my
ships.”

“No, sir, they are not. You received them from the hand of my father, the Emperor. Rather than surrender them when the Empress demanded it of you, you brought them to me, Grand Duchess Victoria of Greenfeld. Now I find that the rebellion is better served by their being led by Admiral von Mittleburg.”

“We’ll see about that.”

“Commander Boch,” Vicky said almost softly. All deadly.

“Yes, Your Grace.”

“You will call the Marine guards from outside, and you will escort Admiral Lüth to the brig. There you will see that he is comfortably detained while he awaits my pleasure. He will have no visitors. Understood?”

It finally dawned on Vice Admiral Lüth that Vicky meant exactly what she was saying and was about to do exactly what she said she would.

“Heinrich,” he said, pleading with Admiral von Mittleburg.

“Albert, it is not a bad plan she has come up with even if it is likely borrowed from that whore Kris Longknife.”

“But she’s just a girl,” Lüth half shouted, scowling at Vicky.

“That is wrong in so many ways,” von Mittleburg said, shaking his head. “Albert, it is better that you quit while you are behind. Commander, see to it that he is made comfortable.”

“Yes, sir,” Commander Boch said. “This way, sir.”

The vice admiral was still muttering under his breath as the commander led him out.

Vicky waited until the door was closed, then turned to Heinrich. “Did I do wrong there?”

Admiral von Mittleburg worried his lower lip. “You did what you had to do. Albert is a good man under normal conditions. What we have here is nothing like normal. You have imagination. Likely more than any of us old men who have come up doing what was done by those who came before us. I like your idea. We will have to work on it a bit.”