Vicky Peterwald: Survivor (Vicky Peterwald Series Book 2) (28 page)

“We certainly think so,” Mannie assured Vicky.

The helicopter did indeed land atop the Cosmopolitan, and it was just a one-floor drop to her rooms.

Kit and Kat were already there, making sure the room was secure, laying out towels for her bath and checking out the doctor who had been waiting to examine Vicky.

Before Vicky could do anything, though, she had to lift Kit and Kat off their knees at her feet.

“We cannot express our embarrassment at our failure,” Kat said.

“We should have been prepared for a gas attack,” Kit added.

“No. It was not your fault,” Vicky said, raising them back to their feet. “I made the mistake of being predictable. Kiev was the only city I hadn’t covered. I always hit the harvest festivals, and I stayed too long at the carnival. It was as much my fault as anyone’s.”

“If I may interrupt these penitents,” Mannie said, interrupting, “Vicky, you had never gone down a carnie line like that. The people who actually did the takedown had used others to
track you during the day. We never had a chance to see their faces in the crowd twice. There was no warning at all.”

He shrugged. “They were good. From what I’m told from our examination of the bodies, none of the actual kidnappers were from here.”

That gave Vicky pause. “There’s so little traffic, how’d the Empress manage to ship her assassins in?”

“Little traffic is not zero traffic. We are looking into things and should know more by tomorrow. Now, if all is forgiven, can the doctor debug, delouse, and descratch the Grand Duchess?”

“Can you, indeed, descratch me?”

“No,” the female doctor said, “but I can at least make you feel better. Now, who gets to stay for my examination?”

Vicky shooed Mannie out. No doubt by now he had seen all of her that there was to see, but familiarity bred contempt, and she wanted his memories to be of her vivaciously naked, not bitten, splotched, and scratched.

The doctor checked Vicky out thoroughly. When Vicky tried to refuse the rape kit, the doctor balked. “Were you unconscious for a part of your abduction?”

Vicky allowed that she had been.

“Then we check everything,” the doctor snapped.

As it turned out, Vicky was right, she had not been raped. Considering what she did to her last rapist, no wonder Stepmommy was now giving more definite instructions on that matter.

Before the doctor finished, Kit and Kat were running Vicky’s bathwater. That turned out to be providential. When Kit began to add oils and herbs, the doctor again put her foot down.

“Plain water until these scratches and bug bites heal. You will put these ointments on her cuts, abrasions, and the bleeding bug bites. I suggest you get her some silk pajamas to cover the ointment, or she’s going to smear it all over her bed.”

“I’ll be careful,” Vicky said.

From the looks she was getting from the two seductive assassins, they were already thinking up ways to include Mannie in their discreet play so as not to smear her medicated wounds.

The doctor must have mistaken the two for Vicky’s nurses because she showed them how to dress her wounds and handed
off Vicky’s medications. “Her temperature is slightly elevated. Make sure she takes these on the prescribed schedule. Water. No milk.”

“We will make sure she does,” the two said as one.

They ordered in the prescribed silk pajamas while Vicky wallowed in the tub. It felt so good to get clean. She had the girls scrub her down twice and didn’t complain when some of her sores bled. Or when some of their scrubbing got more than personal.

Dried off, the two of them insisted on sharing the duty of “greasing her,” as Vicky put it.

Mannie passed the pajamas through the bathroom door and informed them that dinner was waiting.

Dinner was by candlelight. It was also delicious. Kiev was famous for its fisheries, and Vicky found herself enjoying every different kind of shrimp that had been imported from old Earth and adapted well to the clear waters off the coast. There were also steamed oysters. Mannie would have passed on the offer, but Vicky insisted they were delicious.

Kit’s and Kat’s eyes gleamed with expectation.

As soon as dinner was removed, Mannie made to remove himself as well, but Vicky held lightly to his elbow. “It has been rough. I would very much like not to sleep alone. If you could just hold me?”

“I believe that can be arranged,” he said, softly.

Vicky shooed an incredulous Kit and Kat out to sleep in the sitting room and took Mannie to her bed.

He held her very close until she dozed off.

He was still holding her when she came awake in the night, screaming.

And he held her close, soothing her like a child, until she could again lose herself in troubled sleep.

B
REAKFAST
was again served in the room. It came earlier than Vicky wanted, but it was accompanied by a fresh uniform. This time dinner dress blues. Somehow, in the search for her, her Order of St. Christopher, Star Leaper, had turned up as well as her computer.

“A minor member of the troop that snatched you snagged the medal and your computer. He had no idea what they would be worth, but he figured to make a little extra on the side.”

Mannie shook his head and laughed. For this, it was unusually harsh. “The first pawnbroker he showed it to called us before the guy was out of his store. He didn’t know much about the computer, but he’d seen the medallion on you in the news vids. We had the fool, and your computer and Order in hand, likely before they had you tied down to that bed.”

“A lot of people were looking out for me?” Vicky said with amazement, tasting the words as much as saying them. She suspected it had been a long time since anyone looked out for a Peterwald. Likely well
before
the pope got himself an army.

“Since you’ve woken me at this absurd hour and are plying me with coffee, I deduce, even in my befogged brain, that something is going on today.”

“Yes,” Mannie said, with more enthusiasm than this hour deserved. “You are scheduled to meet with the Kiev City Council. They want to personally apologize for what happened to you in their city.”

“That shouldn’t take so very long,” Vicky said, taking a sip of her coffee. Today it was dark and bitter. She liked it that way on certain occasions.

Like today, the first day of her life to be spent plotting the downfall of an Empress.

The first day of many.

Stupid woman to not just want me dead but the entire Empire on its knees before her.

Not going to happen.

“I’m afraid it won’t be that simple,” Mannie said, interrupting Vicky’s reflections. “They’ve reserved the city auditorium for the meeting. It holds five thousand, and I understand there’s talk of moving it to the city stadium, so they can fit in another fifteen thousand.”

“They want twenty thousand people to watch them apologize!”

“No, twenty thousand people want to personally make their apologies to you.”

Vicky found herself wondering if she’d traded one form of torture for another. “Will it involve shaking all twenty thousand hands?” she asked, raising a limp, bitten, scraped, and thorn-slashed paw.

“I think their applause will do,” Mannie said.

Upon second reflection, Vicky decided today was bound to be better than the last one. She’d have clothes to wear and, no question about it, Mannie at her elbow.

Breakfast was cut short, so Kit and Kat could put Vicky through an abbreviated shower before greasing her down with the prescribed ointments and sliding her into her dress blues.

The drive to the stadium was blessedly short. However, the short walk from the car to the stage door on her scratched and blistered feet was barely endurable. Vicky was discovering that she needed a lot more rest before all the aches and strains would leave her alone.

She was still unprepared for what met her.

The applause as Vicky was ushered to center stage was
thunderous. Vicky took it all in with unprepared eyes and found herself weeping like a beauty-pageant winner.

Fortunately for her, she got to sit down while Kiev’s mayor opened the proceedings. He made his apology brief. There was no doubt it was from the heart; tears streamed down his cheeks as he spoke.

Then it was Vicky’s turn to accept the expression of regret. The applause this time as Mannie helped her up to the microphone rolled over her and would not quit.

Vicky stood there, wiping away tears and smiling, then wiping away more tears and smiling some more. Flowers fell at her feet. Not only bouquets of roses but small offerings of garden flowers and wildflowers, many brought up to the stage by little girls who attempted curtsies that would never make it at court but were surpassingly cute.

Vicky felt the applause hammer at her heart. She let it in. Never had she felt such feelings of approval. Such value. Such love.

“Thank you,” she said, and found she’d only managed to whisper it into the mic.

“Thank you,” this time came out loud, but was lost in the wash of applause.

She took several deep breaths. They were filled with the sweet air perfumed by the flowers and the roar of the people of Kiev.

From deep in her chest, she brought up the voice Admiral Krätz had forced her to find. The voice of command. This time her “Thank you,” was just as loud as the applause.

It did not stop it. It rolled on and on, drowning her in its thanks that she was still alive.

Now two young people were ushered onto the stage. Vicky smiled as she recognized the girl even without her huge pink bear. Today, the two youths held flowers. They were simple bouquets of the kind a young boy might cut illicitly from a neighbor’s garden so he could give his girl her first bouquet.

Vicky accepted the flowers and hugged the two kids, squishing the flowers between them. No doubt, her dress blues now showed streaks from yellow and lavender pollen.

The two children stepped back. The boy did a bow. The girl’s attempt at a curtsy might have ended with her sprawled
on the floor, but her brother spotted the impending disaster and grabbed her arm.

Vicky laughed. It was possibly the most heartfelt and joyous laugh of her many years of laughing on cue.

The applause showed no signs of abating. Vicky wondered how any pair of hands could keep this up.

Mannie stepped up to the microphone. “Her Grace has words she wants to share with you. Would you like to hear them?”

The clapping was replaced by a roar of “Yes,” and, slowly, silence elbowed its way into the stadium.

Vicky found herself wiping away more tears before twenty thousand pairs of expectant eyes. She swallowed the emotions in her throat and spoke.

“I want to thank you for all that you have done to secure my safety,” she said. No need for an Imperial and impersonal we. These words were personal, between herself and twenty thousand of her very best friends.

The applause leapt out again, pouncing on the silence and banishing it. Vicky smiled into it, wiped tears again and waited for her next opening.

The applause this time wound down before it became embarrassing.

“I know that many of you were involved in breaking the chains that held me captive. I thank you from the bottom of my heart.”

It was some time before she could go on. Again, she had to wipe away tears.

“I know that no citizen of Kiev had anything to do with my abduction, and I want you all to know that I will always hold the people of Kiev close in my heart.”

The applause exploded, spiked by whistles and cheers. There were shouts of “Yes” in the roar, as well as “Thank you” and “Our Grand Duchess,” or maybe it was “Our Generous Duchess.” Vicky couldn’t make the words out clearly.

It didn’t matter. These people were special to her, and she would remain special to them. Vicky waved. Standing before her, people waved back. Men and women threw kisses, and she blew them kisses in return.

The mayor of Kiev came to lead her away, and the cheering rose to impossibly new levels. Now Vicky did find she had
hands to shake and hugs to exchange. The Kiev City Council was thirty strong, and each was there to say a few words of personal apology and offer the Grand Duchess best wishes in the future.

Offstage, there was a lineup of stagehands who wanted to offer their own heartfelt wishes that she might never come into such danger as she had now been delivered from.

Only then was Vicky able to make her exit, leaning heavily on Mannie’s arm.

“I’m exhausted,” she confessed.

“Great approval can be just as taxing as great censure,” Sevastopol’s mayor observed.

“It is, however, a whole lot more fun,” Vicky said, allowing him a warm smile as he handed her into the limo that would take her to the spaceport.

Inside, the jump seats were taken by Kit and Kat, each close to a window. Between them was Commander Boch, looking very much like a man with a report to make.

Vicky settled deeply into the leather of her seat, allowed herself two deep breaths, finished with an exhausted sigh, and faced the commander.

“What can you tell me that you didn’t know last night?”

“Quite a bit, Your Grace. There are people in custody who are talking so fast we don’t have time to ask them questions. I can’t tell if their verbosity is the residue of State Security’s reputation or the sea change that has come over this planet’s attitude toward the Peterwalds. Or maybe just one Peterwald,” he ventured.

“It might be,” Mannie added, “that our local organized crime has turned its organizing force toward the safety of the Grand Duchess.”

“You know your organized crime?” Vicky asked.

“Certainly. They paid their tithe to State Security and did what we needed them to do. Some were just petty criminals, smugglers, black marketeers, the things that made a failing economy work. Others were less socially acceptable but met the appetites of the less virtuous.”

“And this went on under State Security’s nose?” Vicky demanded.

“Here and everywhere else, I suspect.”

Vicky pondered that for a moment. “I never heard that from my father. I wonder if he knew. Which makes me wonder if State Security’s private machinations were only minor games compared to what the Empress’s family has now started.”

Mannie said nothing but raised a quizzical eyebrow.

“Kris Longknife once challenged me on who was really running this Empire. I assured her it was my father. It seems I may have been a bit naive.”

“We tell our young about a world we want them to believe in,” Mannie said. “As grown-ups, we live in a world devoid of such illusions.”

“So it seems. I’ll think about all this when I have a spare moment. For now, Commander, what can you tell me about the plot that left me cuffed to a bed and dying of thirst?”

“You were correct yesterday to raise the question of how your attackers got on this planet, what with trade so limited and traffic between planets near nonexistent. We showed the pictures of the dead bodies around the station, and a tramp freighter’s captain immediately identified them as the passengers he landed here a week ago.”

“He was hired to bring them. Didn’t that raise any questions?”

“Actually, the captain made the jump from Hobarton to here hoping to get a cargo of crystal assemblies he could sell on Metzburg. He’d heard we had crystal to sell. The ‘lawyers’”—a sour twist Commander Boch made as he spoke the word put it in quotes—“said they had been retained by the home offices to aid the defendants of the Mine Manager’s Co-op of Presov.”

“Were they?” Vicky asked.

“Initially, it appeared so. They immediately dropped down and met with the defendants. Only later did we check on how that meeting went.”

“And it went . . . ?” Mannie asked.

“Not well. They presented credentials introducing themselves as lawyers and told Mr. Adaman and his associates they were here for them, but, as the conversation went on, they seemed to lack any sort of grounding in the law. The Co-op had already retained some local lawyers here. The managers had been talking about their expectations of an Imperial
pardon, but they also have heard tales of loyal servants hung out to dry. Anyway, our local lawyers listened to this new delivery and suggested to Mr. Adaman that he might want to continue to retain lawyers who understood the local law.”

“Local law,” Vicky said. “I wasn’t aware that Imperial law was given to local accents.”

“It may have just been our lawyers’ way of suggesting that this new bunch didn’t know their briefs from boxers.”

It took Vicky a moment to catch the joke. It took the commander a bit longer to allow a smile. Kit and Kat totally missed it, but then, they were intent on what was going on around the limo. Vicky had a large escort this trip: Marine, police, Rangers. Still, her own assassins were taking no chances.

“So, what did our lawless lawyers do after talking with their so-called clients?” Vicky asked.

“They seemed to have disappeared. No net presence. We would not know where they booked rooms if the hotel manager hadn’t come forward when you became the leading news topic. He recalled their rental of two black SUVs. This ability of strangers to drop out of sight is troubling,” the commander admitted.

“Kris Longknife had problems with these types as well. Even her magnificent Nelly at times couldn’t get through their jamming.”

“More of what your Mr. Smith is trying to get a handle on,” the commander said.

Mannie’s eyebrows went up.

“We’ll talk about it later,” Vicky said. “Maybe.”

“They hired local help from the crime syndicates to track you,” the commander continued. “All of their contacts are now talking to us. The big picture we are putting together is telling, but the individuals knew next to nothing about what they were doing or why.”

“Is this leading us anywhere?” Vicky asked, seeing a lot of data but not much information.

“Sadly, no,” the commander admitted. “We did recover nano cameras. Several, from the room you were, ah, detained in. No one in the Navy has ever seen the likes of them. We started trying to examine one, and it went poof. As did the second. We are holding the other three for the return of Mr. Smith.”

“Damn. I hate playing second fiddle in a tech duet,” Vicky said.

The commander allowed a pained response. “It seems we are caught in just such a predicament. However, that crew from the Mining Management Co-op has decided that they have gotten all the help they are likely to get from their higher-ups and are singing like a bunch of choirboys.”

“Is the song worth listening to?” Vicky asked.

“Most of it we already know. One thing attracted my attention. The top managers were bribed for the last couple of years not to increase production but to cause it to plummet.”

“Restrict the amount of crystal coming to market?” Mannie almost sounded incredulous.

“Exactly. The Imperial economy needed more crystal. Someone was paying the producers to see that less was available for sale.”