Vicky Peterwald: Target (9 page)

B
AYERN
was a lovely planet from orbit, all green and blue and tan, except for the white fluffy clouds and snowcapped mountains. On the ground, it only got lovelier. The center of human settlement around München was almost quaint in its rolling farmland and stone or wooden one- and two-story buildings.

The shuttle port was nestled among the green fields with only a long, low terminal standing beside the runway and small apron. The shuttle rolled up to the terminal and stopped. No one made to exit.

Why became clear in a moment.

The aft ramp lowered to the apron, admitting air strong with the scent of spring rebirth. An honor detail approached and slowly, lovingly, removed the flag-draped coffin, and, at a funeral pace, moved it to a horse-drawn gun carriage.

Only when it was lashed in place and surrounded by both the honor guard and mourners, did the passengers of the shuttle begin to silently exit the craft from the forward hatch.

Vicky was the last to leave, not due to any traditional precedents of the Navy but because the chief of staff had the aisle seat and refused to budge. Vicky soon found out why.

When she finally did exit the shuttle, she drew stares like a bride might who came naked to her wedding.

She easily recognized those surrounding Admiral Gort’s flag-draped coffin. His son, an ensign, was a younger image of him. His retired father in an admiral’s uniform that still fit, was an older version that the admiral had not lived long enough to fulfill.

Dominating them all was an even older rendering, the grandfather still resplendent in a uniform with Iteeche War ribbons.

There was, of course, the grieving widow in black.

And from that tight-knit family came enough glares that if eyes could truly kill, they would be sharing a huge bounty from Vicky’s stepmom.

For the forty-eleventh time, Vicky rolled her shoulders back and said a grateful prayer to anyone listening that looks could not kill. Her question as to whether or not she was to join the funeral group was answered by the chief of staff placing a demanding hand on her elbow and directing her toward a small sedan.

She went where he directed.

The four-door sedan presented a problem for Vicky . . . or maybe a test. The front had room for two: the driver and a seat the chief of staff was clearly taking. That left the backseat to Vicky and her team. It would be a tight fit for Vicky, Mr. Smith, Kit, and Kat. There was no question about room for the lieutenant and the chief or their box of sensors.

No other car was close at hand; all those at the shuttle field were quickly filling with the funeral party.

“This is an exercise best left to the class,” Vicky could hear Admiral Krätz saying. She was in a Navy town. If they wanted her alive, she would stay alive. If they wanted her dead, she would die. Did she need to take her sworn defenders with her?

“Kit, Kat, you stay here with the lieutenant and the chief.” When they opened their mouths to protest, Vicky added softly, “We are surrounded by the Navy here. Do you really think anyone would harm me?”

The veiled looks both shot her told her “yes,” but they stepped away when she made it clear she wanted them to go.

“A wise choice,” Mr. Smith whispered as he held the door open for her. As for the chief of staff, he had already settled himself in the front seat and sat, back straight, eyes forward.

As soon as Mr. Smith closed the door behind him, and before he could get his seat belt in place, the sedan took off, but at a sedate pace. Indeed, they joined the tail end of the funeral cortege. The driver even turned on the car’s lights.

That was the way it stayed until the first stoplight. There, the motorcycle escort halted traffic so the procession could go through the red light. However, Vicky’s car turned right, doused its lights, and took off at only a bit faster speed wherever it was taking her.

They passed a mixture of cows, horses, and sheep grazing on grass impossibly green. They passed crops and vineyards in a crazy patchwork-quilt arrangement that would make any agribusiness specialist shudder at the inefficiencies. Though most of the farms were worked with modern equipment, Vicky passed one team of horses plowing a field. There an old man handled the plow while a pair of youngsters scattered seed behind him.

They seemed to be enjoying themselves. Likely that was the main product of their labors, because a flock of birds followed the kids. No, an even younger child galloping along behind the birds, sending them aloft at her hoots.

“Looks like fun,” Vicky muttered.

“Hot work and lots of it,” the chief of staff answered. “My grandpa used to borrow a pair of horses for at least one of our fields. He insisted we know what it was like to do it the old-fashioned way. When I was a teenager, I used to think that he and grandma would sneak out at nights to perform their own fertility rites. Never caught them at it, though my sister insisted she had.”

“The old-fashioned ways,” Vicky said. “Is that a part of what makes the Navy Navy?”

“Maybe. Who’s to know? We have plenty of thirty-year men who started life in the slums of big planet cities. When they come here, they say it’s like coming home to a place they’ve always known but never been,” the captain said with a far-seeing smile on his face.

The road they took wound its way along a tree-lined creek beside rolling fields. They turned off onto a dirt road lined with trees on each side and a white fence. At the end of the road was a farmyard with three barns. Two of them were for equipment and animals.

The third was for people.

The chief of staff led Vicky through two large doors into a central hall that would serve for dances or large meetings. It was empty at the moment. Closed doors led to rooms in the right and left wing of the barn, as well as stairs that led up to a long balcony running down both sides to rooms upstairs. The captain guided Vicky to a room in the back that, from the smell of it, had been put to use baking pies earlier that morning. It had two large stoves and four sinks.

It also sported a long dinner table.

At the moment, twenty old men and four women sat along it. At its foot, a single chair was open. The chief of staff motioned Vicky to it before turning to take a stool for himself at what looked like a breakfast nook.

Mr. Smith went with him without needing to be told.

Vicky studied her twenty-four . . . what should she think of them as? Judges? Jurors? Not executioners. The captain would do that for them. Maybe even Mr. Smith if they bid high enough.

Or not. Very likely, if they agreed to let Mr. Smith live and collect Vicky’s loving stepmom’s reward, he would do the dirty work for them.

Vicky had a sudden sick feeling in the pit of her stomach as she fully tasted just how close to death she was.

But she’d been living on borrowed time, really, since her father remarried.

Well, girl, nothing’s changed today. Get on with it.

The twenty-four . . . whatevers . . . ranged in age from about fifty to over a hundred. It was hard to tell, what with rejuvenation therapy so common these days. What they all shared were backs ramrod straight, even the women who she supposed were wives. The men mostly sported the short-cut gray hair of their profession. The women’s hair was uniformly pulled back tightly into buns.

It was the eyes that held Vicky. Sharp. Clear. Intelligent. They took her in, weighed her . . . and told her not a thing of their judgment.

Vicky thanked any god paying attention that she’d spent her last few years under Navy discipline. She held their gaze without flinching, met it with a bland Navy face, and continued her own assessment.

These were Admiral Krätz and Admiral Gort’s peers. She had earned the respect of those two, and she could earn the respect of these.

If they gave her half a chance.

The silence in the room stretched long.

Vicky chose to take the initiative in shattering it. She cleared her throat.

“I am Victoria Peterwald, and I need your help to stay alive.”

The room stayed just as silent after she finished.

The elderly man at the head of the table finally said, “How is it that you, Lieutenant, are alive, and all others who went out to the stars with you are dead?”

Oh, that,
Vicky thought with a sigh. C
OMPUTER, CAN YOU FIND A SCREEN IN THIS BARN?

T
HERE IS ONE BEHIND YOU,
her computer answered.

Vicky turned in her seat. There was what looked like a large oil painting of a field at harvesttime behind her. “Computer, please display the battle report.”

The bucolic scene blinked away. The huge mother ship now filled it.

Behind Vicky, the room was suitably impressed. Then the Hellburners did their thing, and the watchers were even more impressed. They were again impressed as the damaged base ship and the surviving ships began to tear into the battle fleet.

That was quickly replaced with the scene of one corvette doing its best to hold the jump. It blew one emerging ship after another, but it died in the end.

“In order to avoid assassin or assassins unknown on the
Fury
, I was on Kris Longknife’s flagship
Wasp
when the battle took place. As you would expect of a Longknife, she managed to escape the massacre of her subordinate ships, and me with her. That, ladies and gentlemen, is why I am here and not dead like so many others.”

“An answer that has the grace of honesty, if not wisdom,” replied a woman seated halfway down the table. “Be warned, young Peterwald, not all of those assembled here share your family’s visceral distaste for the Longknifes. Some of us fought beside them in long-ago wars and have more respect for their professional skills and courage than is usually recognized in the palace.”

“Having spent so much time of late with Kris Longknife,” Vicky was quick to add, “I can understand how people not handicapped by an upbringing in the palace might find it easy to respect her skill and courage.”

“So, having shown us that you are alive and our children are not, through no fault . . .
or
skill . . . of your own, why are you here?” the woman continued.

So, apparently, this woman was to be Vicky’s inquisitor. Vicky looked her in the eye.

“Admiral Gort, before he was murdered by my stepmother’s hired assassin, told me that he, or should I say, the Navy, had three choices to make concerning me. Officially, the orders were to return me as quickly as possible to the palace. However, there were two, shall we say, unofficial options.

“My stepmother offered a rather large sum of money to assure that I did not return alive. Just how I was to die was left up to the Navy to decide just so long as I wasn’t breathing when my body arrived at the palace. The other option open to the Navy was to provide my still-breathing body to a party or parties unknown. They, I strongly suspect, wanted me as a standard-bearer to raise the flag of rebellion. To rally all of my father’s Empire around me and against him.”

Vicky paused to look around the table. “Do I have the three basic outcomes out on the table? I haven’t been able to think up a fourth, but I’m only an inexperienced lieutenant. I don’t have your years of lived experience to draw on. And, clearly, I’m not likely to have a chance to gain those years of experience under at least one, if not all, of these options.”

A mild chuckle surfaced around the table. The woman questioning Vicky was not amused. “Your humility tastes feigned, young woman. But yes, I do believe that you have laid all our options on the table. Go on. Which do you think we should take advantage of?”

What she said in the next few moments would decide whether Vicky kept on living or vanished beneath some manure pile in this pastoral paradise.

“I think you and the Navy have decided that you don’t much care for any of the three options on the table. If you wanted me dead, I would not have survived the first hour aboard the
Stalker
. Admiral Gort would have had my head on a platter. Period. End of discussion.”

Vicky surveyed the table. She saw no surprises.

“If you wanted me waving the flag of rebellion, again, Admiral Gort would have delivered me, hog-tied and gagged, to the conspirators, and I would never have known what hit me until it was too late.”

Another glance around the table told Vicky that not everyone listening was impressed with her ability to figure out what was going on around her.

Too smart can get me just as dead as too dumb.

Vicky hurried on to the last option.

“Dropping me off at the palace seems like the default option, but it has its problems as well. Alone in the palace, I can wind up just as dead. I can also be suborned into someone else’s conspiracy, which the Navy might or might not like. Lastly, I could somehow manage to stay alive and even advance my pawnship to Imperial queen. If I did that without your help, would you really like the results?”

Vicky only paused for a second for them to consider what she said before going on.

“That is why Admiral Gort risked taking me into the full extent of the boiling cauldron that is politics in our beloved Greenfeld. Was I too dumb to figure out all the dangers ahead of me? Even if I was smart enough, was I too smart for my own good? Would I consent to be the Navy’s willing pawn? And when I’m no longer a pawn, would I likely be a good ally for the Navy or would I be a poisoned, self-centered bitch from hell like my dearly beloved stepmom?”

Vicky paused to glance around the table. “How am I doing?”

“Well. Maybe too well,” the old woman observed dryly.

“Yes, I know. It’s a very narrow line I walk between the graves on either side of me.”

“Do I pity her more than I pity us?” someone asked along the table.

The question drew muttered agreement, but no clear course of action sprang from it.

Vicky took a deep breath and went on. “I was born to the palace. It raised me, in the words of Admiral Gort, to use needlepoint and the Kama Sutra for both defense and offense. I will never get the stink and poison of that upbringing out of my hair, no matter how much ship’s water I wash in.”