Vicky Peterwald: Survivor (Vicky Peterwald Series Book 2)

PRAISE FOR THE KRIS LONGKNIFE NOVELS

“A whopping good read . . . Fast-paced, exciting, nicely detailed, with some innovative touches.”

—Elizabeth Moon, Nebula Award–winning author of
Crown of Renewal

“Shepherd delivers no shortage of military action, in space and on the ground. It’s cinematic, dramatic, and dynamic . . . [He also] demonstrates a knack for characterization, balancing serious moments with dry humor.”

—Tor.com

“Readers have come to depend on Mike Shepherd for fast-paced military science fiction bound to compelling story lines and adrenaline-pumping battles . . . Kris Longknife is a hero to the core.”

—
Fresh Fiction

“Fans of the Honor Harrington escapades will welcome the adventures of another strong female in outer space starring in a thrill-a-page military space opera . . . The audience will root for the determined, courageous, and endearing heroine as she displays intelligence and leadership during lethal confrontations.”

—
Alternative Worlds

“Mike Shepherd has written an action-packed, exciting space opera that starts at light speed and just keeps getting better. This is outer-space military science fiction at its adventurous best.”

—
Midwest Book Review

“I always look forward to installments in the Kris Longknife series because I know I’m guaranteed a good time with plenty of adventure . . . Military SF fans are bound to get a kick out of the series as a whole.”

—
SF Site

Ace Books by Mike Shepherd

KRIS LONGKNIFE: MUTINEER

KRIS LONGKNIFE: DESERTER

KRIS LONGKNIFE: DEFIANT

KRIS LONGKNIFE: RESOLUTE

KRIS LONGKNIFE: AUDACIOUS

KRIS LONGKNIFE: INTREPID

KRIS LONGKNIFE: UNDAUNTED

KRIS LONGKNIFE: REDOUBTABLE

KRIS LONGKNIFE: DARING

KRIS LONGKNIFE: FURIOUS

KRIS LONGKNIFE: DEFENDER

KRIS LONGKNIFE: TENACIOUS

TO DO OR DIE: A JUMP UNIVERSE NOVEL

VICKY PETERWALD: TARGET

VICKY PETERWALD: SURVIVOR

Specials

KRIS LONGKNIFE: TRAINING DAZE

KRIS LONGKNIFE: WELCOME HOME / GO AWAY

Writing as Mike Moscoe

THE FIRST CASUALTY: A JUMP UNIVERSE NOVEL

THE PRICE OF PEACE: A JUMP UNIVERSE NOVEL

THEY ALSO SERVE: A JUMP UNIVERSE NOVEL

An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC

375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014

VICKY PETERWALD: SURVIVOR

An Ace Book / published by arrangement with the author

Copyright © 2015 by Mike Moscoe.

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eBook ISBN: 978-1-101-61732-8

PUBLISHING HISTORY

Ace mass-market edition / June 2015

Cover illustration by Scott Grimando.

Cover design by Diana Kolsky.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

H
ER
Imperial Grace, the Grand Duchess, Lieutenant Commander Vicky Peterwald cinched in her five-point restraint harness as tight as she could. Beside her, the man sworn to protect her life with his own, Commander Gerrit Schlieffen, did the same. Only then did he begin to activate the myriad of controls and systems of the loaned shuttle.

Vicky was careful not to touch anything.

Kris Longknife could probably land the shuttle herself from orbit, while dodging lasers all the way down. Vicky winced; she’d been raised to be traded off for some advantageous marriage by her dad, the Emperor. Her training had consisted mainly of looking pretty while learning needlepoint and the Kama Sutra for both defense and offense.

In the world she’d been raised to expect, she would be back in the passenger compartment of the shuttle, seducing her husband into the five-hundred-mile-high club.

Today, Vicky’s partner would either dodge the threatened lasers aimed at them, or both of them would die.

And Vicky couldn’t do a damn thing about it.

Then again, if they survived the next couple of hours, Vicky
just might save a couple of planets in the Emperor’s crumbling Empire from economic collapse, starvation, and cannibalism.

Maybe.

If she was lucky, and could pull a political miracle out of thin air.

Too bad she had no idea how she might do that.

“You want to turn on the electronic-countermeasures suite?” Commander Schlieffen said.

Vicky looked at the collection of gauges, dials, and lights in front of her. Most were a duplicate of those in front of the pilot’s seat. There was a light gray panel identified as made by Singer. Vicky pointed at it.

“You mean this?”

“Yep. The admiral wasn’t kidding when he said he was giving us his most expendable shuttle. You need to warm up the ECM system if it’s going to do us any good in a few minutes.”

During her three years in the Imperial Greenfeld Navy, Vicky had learned to stand communications watches on the bridges of battleships. They usually had a couple of specialists standing the ECM watches. As a boot ensign, Vicky had rotated through one watch at the ECM station.

She hadn’t learned much.

However, as limited as her education was, she
could
recognize an on/off button. She pressed it. The lights on the gray board slowly flickered to life.

“That old system isn’t worth much,” the commander said, glancing from his own board. “Still, if you hold down the update button on the central screen, it might give you a tutorial.”

“Might?” Vicky said.

“Some versions did. Others were too old and too limited to store that in the system. Give it a try and see what happens.”

Vicky held the identified button down. The small central screen on the gray box began to scroll instructions. The Grand Duchess
had
learned to read. Today, what she read told her the system could identify threats that were in its database, prioritize them, and provide a limited amount of distraction.

“I wonder when the database was last updated?” Vicky asked.

“There should be an option in the menu for that.”

Vicky found the option and activated it.

The system went down.

She rebooted the light gray box and went to the update option again.

It went out to lunch . . . again.

The third time, it updated.

“This shuttle isn’t in very good shape,” she observed dryly.

“As the plane captain told me.”

Vicky raised an eyebrow. “This wreck has a plane captain?”

“Actually no,” the commander admitted, flipping a switch several times before the data strip above it came to life. “But a second class petty officer was told two hours ago that this wreck was his to captain. It’s in as good a shape as it is because he and the best half dozen Sailors he could lay his hands on spent their time getting it fit for a drop. He hopes.”

“I can only imagine what it must have looked like four hours ago,” Vicky said dryly.

The commander flipped a switch slowly, a half dozen times, frowned, and said, “I doubt it.”

Vicky was trying to get a report on the number of reloads of chaff the ECM system had. She’d interrogated it three times and gotten three different answers when the commander announced, “You better say any prayers you know. I’m about to activate the antimatter reactor.”

“Now I lay me down to sleep,” Vicky muttered.

“Is that the only prayer you know?”

“You may have noticed, we don’t do a lot of praying at the Imperial Palace.”

“Then I guess my ‘God help us’ will have to do.”

The commander threw a large double switch between them.

Nothing happened.

A few breathless seconds later, several strip gauges lit up, and lights began to dance up and down them.

“Is that good?” Vicky asked.

“You’re still here to ask,” the commander said. “It appears that either I, or my dear mother, still has some pull with the Big Man.”

“I suspect it’s your mother,” Vicky answered.

“No doubt.”

Together, they watched the gauges as their dance settled down to a placid wiggle in the green zones of all six strip gauges.

“I believe we’re ready to drop,” the commander said.

“I do have a meeting to attend with an old friend.”

“Assuming he doesn’t carry through with his threat to have us shot out of
his
sky. Do you affect all your old flames like that?”

“Most. You seem to be a nice exception to the rule.”

“Our relationship hardly has the blush off the rose,” the commander said.

“I hadn’t noticed any blushes on your part.”

“Or yours, Your Grace.”

“Shall we quit stalling and see if this contraption can get away from the station?”

“Why not? I don’t want to live forever.”

So saying, Commander Schlieffen reached above his head for the red bar with
RELEASE
in yellow letters and pulled it.

The shuttle did not depart the station with the grace of a falling angel. Instead, the aft tie-down released their rear to dangle. The spin of the station pressed them tight against their seats.

The commander yanked again, harder, on the release.

Reluctantly, their forward tie-down came loose. They drifted away from High St. Petersburg station with the deck canted down to the right.

“That wasn’t the best launch I ever made,” the commander observed, half to himself. “Nor was it the worst. Now, let’s go see if the mayor of Sevastopol really intends to kill us.”