Vicky Peterwald: Survivor (Vicky Peterwald Series Book 2) (5 page)

T
HE
Grand Duchess Vicky Peterwald found herself seated not at the head of the table, or its foot. Instead, she was directed to a chair in the middle of the table.

It took her about two seconds to figure out why.

The guy with the big belly was seated directly across from her. The skeptical rancher was at her right elbow. Just about everyone Vicky would count as not yet sold on her idea was in the nine seats within easy listening of her.

Mannie was at the head of the table, barely within earshot. At the foot was the other rancher. The commander was at his right elbow.

Dinner was served, but it quickly became clear that Vicky was the main dish everyone was interested in.

“When did you meet your stepmom for the first time?” Big Belly asked.

Vicky took a moment to think. “I don’t remember ever meeting her before I was summoned home to offer my fealty. That was when I wanted to chase after Kris Longknife and her Fleet of Discovery. I’d expected more questions from Dad about where Kris was going and the royal city charter I’d signed off on with Mannie, but Dad just kind of waved his
hand, and I was out the door a-running and not looking back. Foolish me.”

“Was that when the assassination attempts started?” The question came from Mary. She’d been seated at Mannie’s left elbow. Apparently, she wasn’t someone Vicky needed to sell.

“That’s hard to answer. Kris Longknife figured the first assassination attempt was aimed at her. I later met a guy who assured me I was the target. Who knows? Then bombs started going off on the
Fury
, and there was no question someone didn’t like me.”

Vicky paused to raise a finger to her lips and appeared to think. “I wonder who?”

The entire table enjoyed the laugh.

“You were summoned home to Greenfeld after that Discovery debacle. How did you manage to get away from that cesspit?” Mary asked.

Vicky’s face must have showed the pain because the laughter ended abruptly.

“I almost didn’t. And it cost a good Marine, my escort and guard, his life,” was all Vicky managed as her throat tightened up.

The room fell even quieter.

“You’re tough on men, huh?” Mary said.

“I seem to be,” Vicky admitted.

“I’m still here,” the commander said, raising a glass in salute to Vicky from where he sat.

Vicky awarded him a smile as she raised her glass to him.

The rancher didn’t let that go on for too long.

“Tell me. You say you’ve seen what’s happening on the planets out between us and Greenfeld. Can all the stuff we’ve got to spare add up to spit in the bucket for them?”

Vicky nodded at the question. “It’s hard to tell. A lot of famines start when there’s
almost
enough food. When the first panic hits, hoarding starts, and food that might help a lot winds up in the storehouses of a few. If we eliminate the panic, maybe . . .” Vicky trailed off. She had no ironclad guarantee to offer.

The questions ranged across a gamut of interests. A younger woman wanted to know just how daring the fashions were at the Imperial court this year. Vicky supplied a “Very daring,” and tried to dodge away.

Big Belly didn’t allow the dodge. “Strange. The Empress pretty much makes the calls for all fashions in that madhouse. You’d think, what with her belly swelling, she’d want all the pretty young things covering up, wearing something like a balloon. Very strange that she’s got them all parading around as eye candy for her husband.”

“I kind of had the same question when I was at court,” Vicky admitted.

“It’s almost as if someone is setting someone up to be caught in the wrong bed by a jealous husband,” opined the industrialist.

“What could a jealous husband do if he found his wife under the Emperor?” a woman asked. “He’d have to just close the door and pretend he never saw what he saw.”

“Your husband might,” the rancher said, “but someone with a temper might not do the smart thing.”

“I don’t know if you just insulted me or praised my husband,” she said.

“I ain’t exactly sure which I just did either,” the rancher said, as the room laughed.

Which left Vicky wondering just how stupid her dad was.

That got interrupted by a question about the Fleet of Discovery. “Were you all ready to cut bait and run for home when you spotted that monster ship?” came from the young businesswoman to Vicky’s left.

“I think everybody was,” Vicky said. “Before Kris Longknife disagreed.”

“I saw that first news conference you made,” Mary said. “My compliments on how well you pulled off that dress.”

“She didn’t pull it off. Somehow she managed to keep it on. At least most of it,” came from someone down the table, who appeared to be having trouble holding his liquor.

“Are you asking if I really think Kris Longknife seduced the admirals?” Vicky said, stripping the matter bare.

“You seemed to hint strongly at that,” Mannie said.

“I wish I hadn’t,” Vicky said, and found herself using her fork to move early potatoes around her plate beside her untouched steak.

“I was there,” Vicky finally said. “Kris Longknife was on her flagship, the
Wasp
. The other admirals were on their flagships as well. The decision to run turned into a determination
to fight without anyone’s leaving their ship. All she had was words, and she turned us all from cringing cowards into Sailors demanding the first place in the battle line. I don’t know how she did it, but she did.”

Vicky put her fork down. “I wish I’d played the record of that council of war instead of playing games.”

“Why’d you do it then?” Mannie asked.

Vicky shrugged. “I was a long way from home. I didn’t have any idea that Imperial ships were out there hunting for me. I had no idea how many assassins were lurking for me on the long trip home. I had a problem staying alive, and I made a bad choice.”

“We all do that, sometimes,” Mary offered softly.

Vicky looked up. “Now is not a time to make another one. People are going to die. People
are
dying. I hope we’ll make the right choice this time.”

Dinner broke up shortly thereafter. Mannie excused himself, saying he needed to stay for further discussions, discussions to which Vicky apparently was not invited.

The commander escorted Vicky to the six cars that would caravan her back to town.

In a moment, all six of them roared into the darkness.

V
ICKY
settled into the plush leather seats of the limo. She was cold.

She pulled her legs up and wrapped her arms around them. She was colder still.

Commander Schlieffen took off the wool uniform coat of his dress greens and wrapped it around her. Her teeth began to chatter.

“Will you hold me,” Vicky said, and didn’t care about the pleading in her voice.

Gerrit slid close to her and put his arms around her. Softly, he tried rubbing her arms. Her teeth kept chattering, but it didn’t seem to get worse.

Vicky spread her body out on the seat. He settled between her and the cold night air and cuddled close.

She began to feel warm again.

“Thank you. I don’t know what’s come over me,” she said.

“Shock. You were under one hell of a lot of pressure.”

“It was a dinner, for Christ sake.”

“You were selling them on saving thousands, maybe millions of lives.”

“Kris Longknife sold people on saving a planet. I try to
save a couple of thousand and come down with the shakes. And I don’t even know if I sold anything to anyone.”

“You sold me on flying a wreck of a shuttle down here to give you a chance to make your pitch.”

“You said flying it was no trouble,” Vicky shot back.

“You knew I was lying through my teeth.”

Vicky had to admit she had. “You flew a shuttle and walked out to face them. I get taken to supper and have to answer a few questions, and I’m shaking like a leaf.”

A particularly bad shiver rocked her body.

“You’re too hard on yourself,” Gerrit said. “And you don’t know how tight that man, what’s-his-name, is with the princess?”

“Jack,” Vicky provided.

“You don’t know how tight Jack had to hold her to get her through the shakes after it all.”

Vicky considered that idea. She shook her head. “They aren’t that close.”

“I’m glad we’re this close,” Gerrit said, and tightened his hold on her.

Vicky caught sight of a red glare through the car window.

Then her world exploded.

T
HE
rocket-propelled grenade must have had a double charge.

The first explosion threw the car into the air.

The second explosion shot a stream of molten metal through the cabin, wiping out the wall between Vicky and the driver. His body burst into flames

He died before he had a chance to scream.

Commander Gerrit Schlieffen’s body protected Vicky from the spatter. He uttered one sharp cry of pain before he locked his mouth shut.

Then the car hit the ground and bounced.

Gerrit was thrown off Vicky and against the shattered partition.

He groaned and seemed to lose consciousness.

Vicky knew his back wasn’t right, and his left leg was bent all wrong.

The Grand Duchess once again found herself struggling with a safety belt. It came free just as the car settled to the earth with a groan.

Then the automatic weapons fire started. Lots of people were emptying their magazine at something.

In Vicky’s personal case, bullets slammed into the armored
glass above her head. It held—for the moment, but it was bending in, and large cracks were showing.

Very soon, someone would be firing an automatic weapon through that window.

Vicky was unarmed. Maybe Princess Kris Longknife could hide an automatic under her simple black dress, but this Grand Duchess hadn’t.

With one glance, she spotted Gerrit’s automatic in a shoulder holster. It was in her hand a second later.

About then, the armored window gave up its pretenses and fell at her feet.

Outside, in the night, a man in a black mask and black clothing struggled to pull an emptied magazine from his assault rifle and load another.

As taught by Gunny, Vicky aimed the automatic with both hands. She leveled it at the gunner’s face and fired once. She brought the weapon down from its recoil and fired a second time.

Both took the attacker in the face.

It was hard to tell with the mask, but he seemed very surprised to be shot.

That was okay. Vicky was quite surprised, too. For someone who had been shivering only a minute ago, she was holding her weapon quite steady.

Now there was more automatic weapons fire. The reloading must have been completed.

Vicky waited, her own automatic aimed at the empty window.

But now the noise of the night was changing. While most of the shooting before had been on full automatic, suddenly there was another brand of shooter out there. Now a single shot, followed quickly by a second joined the fusillade. There were more of those quick, staccato shots and less of the fully automatic riffs.

Then, for one wonderful moment, there was total silence.

Gerrit groaned. His head lolled on his neck.

“I need a medic,” Vicky yelled.

“Medic needed.” “Medic” was passed up some line.

Vicky didn’t know whether other people needed medics or if that was just her request being passed along. She was not willing to wait in line tonight.

“This is the Grand Duchess, and my protection needs a medic. Now!”

A woman in the dark green uniform that Vicky had seen patrolling around the estate appeared in the blasted window. Her rifle was held high and aimed at the sky.

“The medic’s coming.” Her eyes took in the commander. “Oh shit. We need more than a medic. Sergeant. Get a medevac headed this way. Now!”

T
HAT
night would forever be a blur in Vicky’s memory.

Medics arrived and cautiously surveyed Gerrit’s injuries. Their faces showed more concern than Vicky wanted to see.

A helicopter beat its way into the field on one side of the ambush site. The assailants had fired the rocket from the trees on the other side. They’d launched their assault from there, too.

Maybe they’d thought they could complete their slaughter before the gun trucks trailing a mile behind the convoy arrived.

Or maybe they didn’t know about the reinforcements.

Either way, all eight of the gunners died on the spot. So did way too many in the escort cars.

Colonel Mary White braked to a halt just as the chopper arrived.

She surveyed the wreckage of the failed attack and shook her head.

“They should have rocketed the passenger compartments. They went for the agents and drivers instead. I think they wanted to survive this night,” she spat as it began to rain.

The colonel turned to Vicky. “So you lived, and a lot of good men and women died.”

“It happens that way too often around me,” Vicky bit out.

A moment later, the medics began extracting Gerrit from the limo. “Don’t bend the back,” was whispered softly.

“Bend the leg if you have to, but not the back.”

Now Vicky found herself shivering.

A medic brought a thermal blanket to her and offered to take away the blood-splattered uniform coat. Vicky pulled it closer.

The blanket went over it.

The chopper lifted with Vicky and Gerrit aboard, along with two horribly burned agents who were still breathing.

One died screaming halfway to the hospital.

Vicky trailed Gerrit into the emergency room as far as they would let her. When they shunted her aside, she took a chair in the waiting room, staring blankly at the door Gerrit had disappeared through.

She didn’t notice the guards until a woman with captain’s bars gently lifted the automatic out of the pocket Vicky had stuffed it in when she began to feel safe.

The captain clicked the safety on, then handed the weapon off to a police officer.

“Is that evidence?” Vicky asked dully. Her brain didn’t seem to be engaged in anything. Anything but watching the door with Gerrit behind it that never opened.

“I’ve been told there will be a hearing,” the police officer replied. “Not to establish any guilt, Your Honor, but to figure out how we screwed this one up so bad.”

“I paid a visit. Someone tried to kill me. Good people died in my place,” Vicky muttered, distracted only a bit from her vigil. “That’s the way it always happens.”

“Yes, ma’am,” the police officer said.

The captain brought Vicky a cup of warm coffee. Black, sugared sweet and strong. “The colonel says you didn’t eat much dinner.”

Vicky sipped the hot liquid and winced at its taste. Under the captain’s eyes, she took another sip. “I talked a lot. Grand Duchesses seem to do that a lot.”

“All of them?” the captain asked.

Vicky shrugged. “I don’t know. I’ve never met another Grand Duchess. Now of princesses, I know at least one. She talks way too much as well.”

Vicky considered what she’d said for a moment, then added, “Only she talks better. People do what she talks them into.”

“Hmm,” the captain said, and settled into watchful silence beside Vicky.

Time passed. Maybe Vicky dozed. Maybe she didn’t but stayed in a haze somewhere between asleep and awake.

She did notice that somehow the room had sprouted a forest of armed men and women. Uniformed police. Agents who had the hard look of men who defended people with their lives and had close friends who had lost their lives to that duty. Military police.

Vicky had to visit the restroom. Six women escorted her in and waited while she did what she could.

As Vicky settled back into her chair, a chair that was in the same place as the one she had left but seemed to have been replaced with one a lot more comfortable, she turned to the captain.

“Guards guarding the guards?”

“No one should have known where you went last night. At least, no one who wasn’t with you. Someone leaked. Now we don’t trust anyone.”

“Sorry about that. It’s the money. My loving stepmama really wants me dead.”

“All the way out here? Hell, lady, when did you arrive?” the captain asked.

“Yesterday afternoon?” Vicky guessed. “Don’t take it too bad. The money is hanging out there all the time. Local players spot me and see lots and lots of commas in their next paycheck.”

Vicky paused. She knew her thinking was muzzy. “I think all that keeps me alive is that they jump at the chance and don’t really staff it out.”

The captain’s face was grim. “There might be some truth in that. This is our first major assassination attempt since we set ourselves up to run our own show. You talk like it’s something that happens to you every day.”

Vicky found herself laughing. It was dry and half-insane. “At the palace, we had four in one day. Maybe it was three. I forget.”

“How do you stay sane?”

“Am I?” Vicky answered the question with one of her own.

After that, Vicky must have fallen asleep. Her next recollection was waking up with her head on the captain’s shoulder and drool dripping from her mouth onto the poor woman’s uniform.

Vicky sat up straight and tried to wipe the woman’s shoulder clean. It looked better after a few swipes.

Glancing around, Vicky asked, “How long was I out?”

“Almost three hours. They’ve got a bed ready for you.”

“Thank them, but no thanks. Was there any report on Ger . . . the commander?”

“No one’s come out that door,” the captain said.

“Well, seeing how we’ve slept together,” Vicky said, “I’m Vicky, sometimes called Victoria, the Imperial Grand Duchess of Peterwald.”

“I’m Captain Inez Torrago. Rangers. Your Honor.”

“It’s Your Grace the first time you address me. Ma’am or Commander after that. I wish we could have met under better circumstances,” Vicky said, and stood, stretched, and marched for the door.

The Ranger captain followed.

Vicky pushed the door open and took a peek. Medical gear. Lots of it.

And a nurse who immediately headed for her in full and high dudgeon.

“You can’t be here.”

“I’m the Grand Duchess Victoria Peterwald.”

“I don’t care if you’re Mary, Queen of Scots. You’re not hurt and not medical staff. Get back on the other side of the door before I bust your head.”

“I’m game,” Vicky said.

“Head trauma goes to another unit. You can’t get in here that easy.”

“What does it take to get in here?”

“I’ll see if one of the doctors can spare you a moment. Now get back where you belong.”

Since the nurse was now nose to nose with Vicky and looked mean enough to break a head or three, Vicky retreated.

“Would you have defended me from a head-breaking?” Vicky asked the captain as she withdrew back to her chair.

“Interesting question,” the captain said, apparently giving it
serious thought. “I’m not sure whether my duty would be to help her bust you one or defend you. I think I’d have tossed a coin on that one.”

“Heads you bust me, and the coin has two heads?”

“Something like that. We haven’t had that many Imperials out this far lately. Kind of hard to figure out how to treat one of them just now.” The words were hard, but the hint of a smile softened them.

Vicky settled back in her chair. “I’m properly put in my place. Damn, how busted up was Gerrit? How long can it take?”

The captain offered no answer. Vicky hadn’t expected one.

Her own conclusions were bad and getting worse.

Damn, if he hadn’t been taking care of my shivers, he’d have had his seat belt on.

Another hour passed at a glacier’s pace. The captain sent a uniform out for sandwiches. Vicky played with the ham and cheese on rye more than she ate it.

Then the doors opened, and a woman in scrubs came out.

Somewhere Vicky had heard a Navy corpsman say that they always sent a woman doc to deliver the hard news.

Vicky stood and prepared to hear the worst.