Rebel (36 page)

Vicky took a deep breath and let it out. “I’m willing to wait if you are. You be careful.”

“
Me
be careful?” Mannie said. “
You’re
the gal that needs to ride around in a great big battleship. A battleship headed for a great big battle. What have I got to worry about?”

Vicky covered the few steps that separated them and wrapped him in her arms so fast that he seemed taken by surprise. “Don’t you know, you’ve gotten too close to me? My stepmother hates me. If she can’t get to me, who do you think she’ll kill?”

“Oh,” escaped as if by surprise. “I never thought of that.”

“Well, think about it, you lovable lunkhead.” Vicky squeezed him tight. Now his arms were around her, gently rubbing her back.

“I’ll make you a deal,” he finally said.

“Yes?”

“I’ll increase my security team and be as careful as I know how to be, and you be as careful as you can be in the coming fight.”

Vicky found his words absurd. Not that he’d increase his security. She was glad of that. No. How was she to keep herself any safer when battleships started blowing up? She opened her mouth anyway. “Yes. You take better care of yourself, and I’ll eat my vegetables and do everything I can to make myself safer when the lasers start buzzing.” Despite herself, a soft chuckle escaped her.

“Good,” Mannie said, and, reaching down, raised her chin up to face him. With one hand so deliciously firm on the back of her neck, and the other caressing her chin, he kissed her. Vicky had locked lips with guys before. Lots of times. This wasn’t like one of those.

This kiss started softly, gently, just a brush of his lips on hers. She opened for him, and his kiss became more demanding, more urgent. She met him demand for demand, urge for urge. Vicky’s knees began to go weak, and the thought of falling back on the couch and wrapping her legs around Mannie was galloping to the forefront of her mind when Mannie broke away from her lips, breathing hard.

“Thank you,” he said, breathlessly.

“For what?” Vicky said, and found she was just as breathless.

“For letting me give you a warrior’s send-off. For giving me a warrior’s send-off. For letting me know what I want to come back to. I don’t know what all, but I liked it.”

“I loved it.” Vicky paused, gathered up her courage and went on. “I love you, Mannie. You take care to be here when I get back.”

“Oh, I will, trust me. And you take care of yourself, love.”

“Love?”

“Yes, love of my life. I can’t see living my life without you,” Mannie said as he opened the door.

Together, not arm in arm, Vicky walked with Mannie to catch his shuttle down.

CHAPTER 50

N
EXT
morning, after breakfast, Vicky joined Admiral von Mittleburg, make that Vice Admiral von Mittleburg, for a review of threats and progress. These meetings had become a standard part of their morning.

As Vicky arrived, the admiral was receiving congratulations all around, which he was happily sharing with Rear Admiral Bolesław, who sported new shoulder boards.

“Atten hut,” was announced as Vicky entered. She looked around, puzzled by the action.

“Are you going to stand us down, Vice Admiral, Your Grace?” Vice Admiral von Mittleburg said, a tight but huge smile on his face. “And, Your Grace, you are out of uniform.”

“As you were,” Vicky said, trying not to sound too timid. “I haven’t received any
written
orders to change my uniform.”

“Rear Admiral Bolesław, if you will bring me the orders from my desk,” von Mittleburg said, and a message flimsy, along with a pair of shoulder boards appropriate for a vice admiral, were soon in his hands.

“Your Grace, if you will step forward.”

Vicky found herself battling an attack of vertigo, but she did manage to step forward.

“Report yourself, Commander,” Vice Admiral von Mittleburg had to remind her.

Saluting, she snappily announced, “Victoria Peterwald, reporting, sir.”

“This is the last time I will return your salute,” the admiral said, returning that honor.

He looked at her, almost like Vicky thought a proud father might look at his daughter. There was much more pride in his eyes than Vicky had ever seen in her own father’s. “When you arrived here, Your Grace, I didn’t know what to do with you. I foresaw all kinds of trouble. I never would have thought that you would pull off the things that you have. Save planets. Maybe save our beloved Greenfeld. You have earned this promotion differently from any officer I know of, but you have earned it as well, if not better than most. With your permission, Your Grace.”

“Permission granted,” Vicky said, voice steady. Somewhere during the admiral’s words, Vicky had found something deep inside herself. Call it her center. Gone was the scared, insecure little girl who was overjoyed just to receive a new dress. She’d survived kidnapping, attempted murder, and rape. She’d somehow managed to talk bankers and businessmen and politicians into her own wild scheme that had saved the lives of hundreds of thousands, if not millions. She was preparing to fight a battle, and her victory just might turn on a crazy idea that she had come up with herself.

Kris Longknife, thank you for all the help, but next time we meet, we meet as equals.

The room broke into applause as Admiral von Mittleburg finished removing her second lieutenant commander’s shoulder board and affixed the one with the broad stripe of a flag officer and the two narrower ones of a vice admiral. She saluted him again, or maybe he saluted her. It was hard to tell.

“For what it is worth, gentlemen,” Vice Admiral von Mittleburg said, “her promotion was cut a few seconds ahead of mine, so if there is any question as to who is senior officer present, it is Her Grace. Let there be no doubt about that.”

The “Yes, sir,” from all present was solid though there might have been some puzzlement around the edges. Exactly how this would all play out, no doubt, would be a matter of some concern among the captains. Vicky had no doubt. When
it was time to say ship right, ship left, it would be Vice Admiral von Mittleburg giving the orders.

“Now, Your Grace, gentlemen, if you will all take your seats, I think there are a few things of interest this morning. Commander Blue.”

Commander? There must be a lot of promotions going around.

Sure enough, the lead of the sensor team was now a division head sporting the two stripes and one half stripe of a lieutenant commander.

I’ll have to give him a set of my old shoulder boards. He and his crew did a lot to earn me my new ones.

“The good news is that two battleships and four destroyers jumped into the system about fifteen minutes ago. They are old tubs, the
Krasnoyarsk
and the
Karelia
, but they were of the first class to sport 16-inch lasers, so they will, no doubt, be a grateful addition to the Grand Duchess’s fleet here. That is, after they get some yard time.”

The yard superintendent glanced at his commlink. “We’re receiving a long list of equipment that needs replacing. No doubt, the mayor of Sevastopol will be making a trip up to look it over.”

Vicky neither blushed nor ducked her head. She glanced around the room; heads nodded with concern, but none wagged in her direction.

They better not. I’m being a good girl, and I hate it!

Admiral von Mittleburg nodded. “It would appear that our Empress is losing the race to get reinforcements here.”

The nods now were accompanied by happy smiles. Nobody likes being outnumbered. With fourteen battleships to the Butcher’s nineteen, the odds were a whole lot better. Even assuming the square root of each force, it was less than two to one, well below the critical three to one that a good commander might hope for to assure victory.

“In the other direction,” Commander Blue continued, “the Butcher continues to send his ships out for a bit of shore leave. It hardly takes a genius to figure out that he won’t be attacking while a quarter of his forces and invasion fleet are off somewhere spending time learning to walk again.”

Again, heads nodded.

Vicky was not so sure. Sooner or later, the Empress was
going to hear that her personally chosen Butcher was fiddling while Vicky and her rebellious friends were burning them all along their flanks.

But matters held together as one week stretched into two. Work on the final refitting of the
Trouncer
and the
Ravager
continued, with the yard workers sure they’d have them ready tomorrow. And then tomorrow. And then tomorrow again.

Vicky kept her mouth shut and let Admiral von Mittleburg take the yard superintendent for a walk. A long walk.

The refitting of the
Sachsen
and
Baden
started out fine, then got worse. Every time a new piece of equipment was installed, something beside it broke, or spinning up the new gear blew out something further down the line. Dirtside, the fabs worked around the clock trying to fabricate on their night shift what had shattered into a dozen pieces on the yard’s morning shift. Tension rose as frustration added to fear of what was going on somewhere else in the Empire.

Good news came back from Bayern and Metzburg. They had broken through the Empress’s crust defense into “the chewy middle,” as some wag put it. Every week, two or three more planets were coming over to Vicky’s flag. That assumed their change of allegiance was sincere and not because rebel battleships were in their sky and rebel troopers walked their streets.

Vicky did not like what she was hearing through back channels. Some of the families she’d met with on Metzburg were seeing that their corporate holdings were returned to their uncles and brothers, sisters and aunts. If there was truth to some of the dark rumors Vicky heard, not all of the holders of those properties were the thugs who had stolen them. Properties had often changed hands; sometimes several times. Were the holders of the deeds who got rousted out of them just as undeserving as those who stole it in the first place?

This rebellion needed to get over, and soon, so that some semblance of normal and proper comity before law could be returned to Greenfeld.

Assuming it ever had such a foundation,
Vicky thought bitterly.

The four battleships that had been so long in the yard began to cast off their moorings and make slow cruises around the moon and back, even as the
Krasnoyarsk
and
Karelia
slipped
into their places. Unfortunately, the four returned with long lists of things that hadn’t survived even that gentle voyage.

Once again, Mannie was called up to get the fabs working faster than any sane man had a right to expect. Still, the workers on the planet below did what they had to do.

Then everything changed. The Empress threw them a curveball.

CHAPTER 51

T
HE
day started so nicely. At the morning staff meeting, Commander Blue advised them that the Butcher of Dresden’s latest liberty party should be coming back that evening. The next batch of warships, the last to finally get time dirtside, had eagerly boosted out of orbit and were already making a good gee and a half toward the jump.

“When do you expect the swap out to take place?” Admiral von Mittleburg asked.

“Of late, the returning party has only gotten through the jump an hour or so before the next ships jump out. This time, the next leave party looks like a bunch of eager beavers that can’t wait. I would be surprised if they didn’t jump out before the next batch get here.”

“Too bad we can’t do a bit of damage to them while they’re at half strength,” Admiral Bolesław suggested through a wolfish grin. “It would be nice to see how many of them we could cut out while they were missing half their fleet.”

“It would be nice, but I see no way for us to do that before they could concentrate again. Too bad you didn’t think about that idea a week ago.”

“We didn’t have fourteen battleships a week ago,” Admiral Bolesław pointed out.

“True,” seemed to finish it.

It had to, the room had taken on a deathly pall.

Commander Blue had his right hand to his earbud and was slowly raising his left. “We’re getting a message from the
Halum
. Those ships we expected back from liberty later today are jumping into the Butcher’s system
now
. They’ve got a good thirty thousand klicks on them coming through the jump.”

“Somebody is in an all-fired hurry to get to their own funeral,” Bolesław said.

“There are more ships coming back than went out,” Blue said.

To Vicky’s surprise, Vice Admiral von Mittleburg muttered a word she would not have expected to hear above the mess deck. Every eye was on Commander Blue.

“Trailing the returning liberty party through the jumps are the
Empress’s Attacker
,
Empress’s Striker
,
Pursuer
,
Beater
,
Ferocity
,
Shooter
,
Scourge
,
Annihilator
,
Conquest
,
Wolf
,
Lion
,
Sword
,
Mace
,
Lance
,
Javelin
,
Battleaxe
,
Dirk
,
Spear
. Now we’re into cruisers. In the middle of them there’s a huge space liner, the
Golden Empress
. No number to that one.”

“Could the bitch have come here herself?” Vicky asked, expecting no answer.