Vicky Peterwald: Target (25 page)

V
ICKY
waited until he was yawning and Poznan was well in the rearview mirror before offering to take the watch. They had just flipped the ship to decelerate toward the next jump, still six hours out. The fuel tanks were holding steady, showing no more drop than what one and a half gees should show.

Gerrit yawned again and allowed that she could stand an underway watch, what with nothing happening or due to happen. When he required her to swear a blood oath that she would wake him before they got to the next jump, she did.

If she did what she planned to, he wouldn’t get any sleep between here and the next jump anyway.

She managed not to smile at that thought.

She waited for him to go below, then set a timer. She waited for fifteen minutes and then waited another five as she checked to make sure they had the system to themselves before unbuckling her restraints and beginning to strip out of what little he’d allowed her to wear on Poznan.

Barefoot, and bare everywhere else, she tiptoed down the central circular staircase to the bedroom. The door was open.

She crept in.

And found him laid out on the bed wide-awake, with his hands behind his head. Not a stitch on him and his pole waving at her with every beat of his heart. And it was beating quite fast from the way it throbbed.

“What took you so long?” he asked.

“Don’t you get up,” she ordered.

“But I am up already,” was full of a proud grin.

“Yes, I noticed,” she said as she pranced to the bed, spread his legs wide, and plopped down between them.

And gave him a couple of good licks.

“You don’t want to do that too much,” he said.

“Oh, you’d rather I did this,” she said, letting her fingers trace up one inner thigh, then make a circle around his balls before tracing their way down to his knees, which, no doubt, would have been entirely too weak to support him if he hadn’t been lying flat on his back.

“Oh,” was all she got out of him for her effort.

“Or I could do some of this. Starting at his head, the little one, she lightly traced her way down to his balls, cuddled them nicely. Her fingers danced along the space between his legs, stopping just short of what lay there.

“What are you doing, woman?” had a certain strangled nature to the question.

“Getting even with you for saying all the things you said on Poznan.”

“But I had to play to the audience we had. I don’t talk like that when it’s just you and me.”

“I should say not. If you talked like that, I’d lay you out and do even worse to you.”

“Worse?”

She went back to licking his hardness while letting her fingers lightly wander all around.

“You keep that up, and I won’t have anything for you to enjoy later.”

“Try the multiplication tables. I’m told they are very steadying.”

“I’m doing them in my head. You’re much more powerful than they are.”

“Hmm. How about squaring the numbers?”

“I’ll try.”

“Out loud.”

“Two times two is four. Three times three is, ah, six. I mean nine.” Vicky was quite proud of herself for that one. She’d found a very nice button on him. She pushed it several times. Not one right after another, but wandered around it a while in between each punch. Usually when he was trying to get the answer out.

He got a lot of answers wrong.

At the square of twenty-six, he gave up and made a grab for her.

She danced away from the bed. “No you don’t. Girls rule tonight. You just lie there like a bump on a log. You must have had some girls that did just that.”

“Never. I assure you, no girl has ever just lain there like a bumpy log for me.” There was that leer again.

“After last night, I can believe you. But back down you go. No treat if you’re a bad little doggy.”

“Are we going to do it that way again tonight?”

“I’m thinking that I might try something more familiar.”

He lay back and invited her to climb atop him.

“You not afraid of me?” she asked.

“Not in the slightest. Well, yes, I’m afraid of you. Every man is a bit afraid of women. But you’re so different. So hard to understand. And yes, you’re trained to be dangerous beyond all your fair side of the species, but I’ve come to trust you with my life.”

She strode back to the bed and slowly mounted him. He was very ready for her, and she found that she was so slippery she had trouble getting him in the right place. Worse, he kept slipping up on purpose to do wonderful things to her that made her weak in the knees.

Finally, she got him where she wanted him.

Slowly, she got a steady rhythm going.

And he ruined it by slipping a finger down to in between her legs, finding that delightful button there, and doing wicked things to her sense of timing and everything else.

“You are mean,” she sputtered, flustered. “You won’t let me do to you all the things I want to.”

“But I’m just a guy who likes doing wonderful things to you.”

Vicky tried to keep control for a moment longer. She brought her hands up to caress her breasts, and then pinched her nipples until they stood up hard and proud.

But Gerrit kept doing what he was doing and, with a cry, she was undone.

She collapsed on top of him. In a blink he had one of her breasts in his mouth, suckling it. Then the other.

Now it was him driving hard into her, setting his own pace, first fast, then furious. Her skin began to tingle with electricity as his rhythm drove her to new heights of sensation. As his strokes grew more forceful, more penetrating, she clutched him close until they both cried out at the same moment in their pleasure. Once, twice, three times, he seemed to pierce her to the heart. Exhausted, she collapsed into his arms.

“Now, Your Grace,” he whispered in her ear, “I most certainly feel properly punished.”

“Good,” she said, and closed her legs to hold him captive.

V
ICKY
came awake to the ship’s announcing, “Thirty minutes to jump. Wake up, you sleepyheads! Thirty minutes to jump. Wake up, you sleepyheads!”

On the ninth or fifteenth repeat, she turned to Gerrit. “When did you program that?”

“When you hit the head just before I started yawning.”

“You malicious, devious . . .”

“Guy who plans ahead.”

“Yes. That, too.”

“Well, get yourself into whatever you intend to wear. I intend for you to watch me like a hawk on my shoulder as I go through this jump. The next one is yours.”

“One jump I watch you, then I have to do it myself?”

“They’re easy. The computer does all the work.”

“Yeah, right,” Vicky said, pulling on her bra and slipping into panties that were more of a distraction than nothing would have been. She followed Gerrit up to the cockpit and settled into her seat. Immediately, she checked her own board. “We still have this system all to ourselves. Not a ship anywhere. How can a planet survive with no commerce?”

“Would you like my analysis of the situation?” her computer asked.

Vicky found Gerrit eyeing her like she had two heads.

“Why yes, Computer, I would like to hear your analysis of the situation on Poznan. How did you come by this analysis?”

“As I told you before, the net on the station was easy to hack into. I also tracked most of the communications while we have been in system. Almost none of it is encrypted. From all I captured, I was able to construct an analysis of the situation there that is ninety-eight point six-four percent probable.”

“Very good, Computer. I approve of your initiative. However, in the future, please ask my permission before you do such an analysis. In some places, the communications tracking that you did would land me in jail.”

“Oh, I would not wish such an outcome for you, ma’am. Yes, I will be more careful in the future and ask your approval before I do such a thing.”

“Good. Now, Computer, what is your analysis?”

“All major industries on Poznan have closed down for lack of spare parts or critical feedstock that can only come from off planet. The planet managed to pay its taxes for last year only by being stripped of its gold reserve. With no further hard currency to support trade, it collapsed. Some small, cottage-type industry is still working. There are a few small machine shops, and some tiny foundries that are only using local raw materials. These local enterprises are keeping some locally manufactured equipment up and running, such as farm rolling stock and the like. However, most of what is needed for a modern economy is either closed down or falling apart.”

As the computer paused in its analysis, Vicky and Gerrit traded raised eyebrows. He spoke next.

“Computer, what impact is this having on the local population?”

“May I answer his question, ma’am?”

“Yes. Always, please.”

“The farms have become less productive. Their production is down below fifty percent of five years ago. Many people have and are fleeing from the cities to the countryside. The first wave of flight was able to find jobs on the farms. With equipment failing, many farmers were falling back on human labor. However, the farms could only support so many workers. The later waves were met with armed guards telling them to move on and threatening to shoot anyone who raided the farms for food.”

“I guess that’s understandable,” Vicky said, and did not like the taste of the words in her mouth.

“A church is now arranging for passage of people through the farm belts and into the hinterlands beyond. They will collect refugees and convoy them out.”

“Convoy?” Vicky said. “Do they have trucks to carry them?”

“No, ma’am. They all have to walk: men, women, children, and the elderly. I do not have a word for a large group of walking people accompanied by good-hearted people who arrange for their passage. Are you aware of such a word?”

“I’d say pilgrimage,” Gerrit said, “but the word’s inadequate to cover this tragedy.”

Vicky nodded. Then found she had a question. “How are the people managing when they are dropped off outside the farmlands?”

“There are few reports from there. The people are falling back on gathering what food they can find. Some of the farm seeds have been carried on the wind into the unseeded area. Other land has been converted into forest, and there is some gathering of nuts and berries. It appears that some of the indigenous seeds and fruits are edible if prepared properly. However, the land is being stripped of food close in, and people have to walk farther and farther to find anything edible. There are rumors of lawlessness breaking out among the vagrants, as they are being called.”

“The population is crashing,” Gerrit said. “It’s only a matter of time before those that have any strength or access to guns decide that they will not leave the cities. Then they’ll demand that the farmers turn over their food at gunpoint.”

“And what happens after that?”

“Anarchy, murder, total collapse,” the Navy commander said through tight lips.

“We can’t let that happen,” Vicky said.

“How are we going to stop it?” came hard from the Navy man.

“Maybe the money we paid the station with will start something?” Vicky thought out loud.

“Assuming there isn’t a tax farmer who sucks it up and uses it to get off planet.”

“I would have thought any tax farmer would already have left,” Vicky said, “what with food being so scarce.”

“No matter how bad the famine, there are always the few who manage to stay fat,” Gerrit growled.

That left Vicky with little to say.

They were coming up on the jump, so both of them concentrated on the instruments. Gerrit was right, the computers and sensors did most of the work. Gerrit did have to adjust at the last minute for some wandering by the jump point. Still, he only had to goose the engine for a small bit to push them through the jump.

He did warn Vicky, standing behind him holding on to his seat, not to move so much as a muscle. He had the ship steady and wanted to keep it that way.

Vicky held her breath for the last few seconds and didn’t even wiggle her toes.

They found themselves in a new system.

Tests showed they’d jumped fifteen light-years. This system held a small colony on the fifth planet, Presov. Vicky had her computer gain access to its net. The story was sadly the same, only in this case, the colony had a shorter distance to crash since it was just getting started.

The crystal mines that had been the main reason for its colonization were still working, and a ship did come by every three months for its produce, but it was not bringing products for the colony, just taking, claiming that they owed too much on their debt to pay for any imports.

This was strangling the colony, and mining production was dropping as people spent more and more time in the search for food.

“My estimate is that there will not be enough crystal production to pay for the ship’s stop next time,” Vicky’s computer concluded.

“So they will abandon those workers to survive as best they can,” Vicky said.

“Assuming they can survive at all,” Gerrit pointed out.

“Yes,” Vicky said, and sighed. “Isn’t there anything we can do about all this?”

“Computer,” Gerrit asked, “is there any mention of the situation on these two planets in the records back on Greenfeld?”

“The only reference I can find in the data I accessed on Greenfeld about these two planets is that they are in arrears on their taxes, Poznan four quarters, Presov six.”

“They are behind on their taxes, and that’s all the Empire cares about,” Gerrit growled.

Vicky found herself shaking her head. “A Marine general dies under questioning, and the Imperial Guard tries to goad the Marines into a fight over his still-warm body. Two planets are only months, if not weeks away from anarchy, murder, and maybe even cannibalism, but all the palace notices is that they are behind in their taxes. This has got to stop.”

“And who’s going to make them?” Gerrit asked.

“Nobody,” Vicky admitted bleakly, and the breath left her body. “Nobody.”

“Or maybe you, huh?”

Vicky felt herself fill with impotent rage.

Rage she was used to. Impotence, not so much.

“Gerrit, what can I do?” she snapped. “I’m running for my life. I don’t know if I’m going to find a place to hide or if I’m going to be one of those refugees, hopefully somewhere in the backcountry of St. Petersburg, but still grubbing in the dirt for my next meal.”

“Is that the way a Grand Duchess ends?”

Vicky’s next breath escaped her in a bitter laugh. “Those were just words my dad spoke when he had no one but me to pin his hope on for the next generation. Now he’s got a son coming along and a witch for a wife who’s only too happy to rule over the wreckage she and her family are making of everything my ancestors tried to make of Greenfeld.”

“Maybe when those monstrous aliens you and Kris Longknife discovered show up, they’ll ignore planets with only a few naked savages on them. Who knows, it might work to save humanity,” Gerrit muttered.

Vicky glanced at her board. “We have this system to ourselves. No ships. I need a shower.” And she headed below.

Gerrit joined her as soon as he got the ship headed for the next jump at 1.3 gees. Vicky took him, still wet from the shower. She took him with barbaric lust, as if she was already dirty and starving and hoped that if she slacked his needs, he might share the raw, still-bleeding results of his hunt.

And Vicky hated herself for what she did. For who she was. And for what she could never do for the people that looked to her for, just possibly, their only salvation.