"That is only one of the matters I am changing. You might want to step outside. Over the next few minutes, my battleships will be lasing certain tank and armored parks as well as motor pools used by the infamous Bowlingame security consultants. If you are close to anyplace where tanks are parked, I would suggest you move away. If you are close to a security specialist compound, you might want to do likewise. We will commence firing in five minutes.

  "Now, for those of you interested, here is some news to bring you up to date of what happened last night."

  "Captain, are you ready?"

  "Yes, Your Grace. I've already got it running."

  "Put my words and those videos in a loop for the next five minutes."

  "It's already running.”

  He kept running for the rest of the morning. It would take the stations that long to figure out how to cut back into their own take.

  Vicky was still standing on the observer deck when Admiral Bolesław pointed, "It should be right over there."

  A moment later, two blinding beams of light shot from the sky. There were several dozen explosions where the beams touched the earth. No doubt, some of the tanks were kept ready to move out.

  Thirty seconds later, another tank park got lazed, with more examples of secondary explosions. In the next two minutes four more tank assembly points were fried.

  When the next rays touched down, they were aiming for two different locations. One returned to the original area and resulted in a dozen or more explosions as the beams crossed over the landscape."

  Vicky glanced at the admiral. "We figured if we blew away their tanks, they didn’t need their ammo. We delayed hitting the munitions dumps to give people around them some warning."

  Vicky pursed her lower lip and nodded.

  The other light beam had come closer to the city. The bright red colors of the secondary explosions suggested that gas tanks were going off. Over the next five minutes, the beams moved around the city, taking out the motor park at one security specialist compound after another.

  Some smaller lasers, likely 5-inch secondary batteries, also lapped around the edges of those compounds, setting off secondary explosions.

  Again, Vicky glanced at her admiral.

  "They don't really need their armory and magazine, do they?"

  "I don't think so."

  "Shall we go, Your Grace?"

  "I can't think of anything more I'd rather do. Admiral set a fast course for Mannie and don't spare the reaction mass."

  Admiral Bolesław chuckled happily. "It will be my pleasure.

  23

  Vicky couldn't wait to get home to Mannie. As she saw it, honeymoon had the word moon in it, and the moon took twenty-eight days around old Earth to do its thing. She and Mannie had only had five days of their honeymoon.

  Mannie owed her another twenty-three days. Mannie and her half of the Empire.

  Still, when Admiral Bolesław brought her a course for home that took an indirect route, taking care to keep off any major routes and away from any large worlds, she had approved it.

  They'd kicked over a hornet's nest. It was best to let things settle down. She knew there was a fleet out there hunting for her fleet. It would be better if they did not meet until cooler heads had a chance to calm things down.

  In the meantime, she headed down to see her father in sick bay.

  She found him sleeping. He was plugged into all sorts of monitors and four different bags were dripping liquids into his arm.

  "How bad is he?" Vicky asked the senior medical officer. The man was at her side before she had a chance to sit down and take her father's hand in her own.

  "Your Grace, he is not well."

  "How not well?" Vicky asked.

  The commodore worried his lower lip before answering. "Your Grace, if you had not rescued him . . . if you had not gotten him up here into our care, I don't think he would have lasted more than a week. Definitely not more than a month."

  Vicky gave the doctor a hard look. "Explain yourself."

  "He is malnourished," he chief surgeon for the fleet said. "The three women you sent up here are also malnourished. The food they were provided gave them little real sustenance. For example, the rice that was their main starch was polished. Most of the nutrients had been leached out of it. The meat they got was full of bones and gristle. It did little more than add a bit of flavoring to their rice broth. Most of the other food they obtained was rotten, rat-gnawed or otherwise unusable. Someone wanted to starve those poor people to death."

  "So, we fatten them up," Vicky said.

  "It's not that easy, Your Grace. The quarters we found them in were cold, damp, and mold-ridden. Your father, the Emperor, and the three women cooks are suffering from several different bacterial, fungal, and viral infections. We're treating all of them with broad spectrum antivirals and antibiotics. They're very sick."

  "How sick?" Vicky snapped.

  "The three women began this ordeal with some cushion, I am told."

  "They were cooks. They liked what they cooked," Vicky said, wanting to smile fondly at their frequent brag, but she was not able to today.

  "Yes, so they are stronger. Your father, the Emperor, carried little extra weight; neither fat nor muscle."

  "He hated to exercise and claimed it was healthy to be skinny as a rail."

  "That didn't serve him well for this imposed fast and exposure."

  "Are you telling me that he could die?"

  "Yes, Your Grace. If we can't get control of the blood infection raging in his body or the pneumonia congesting his lungs, we could lose him."

  Vicky eyed her father, snoring slightly despite the oxygen being fed through his nose. "So, they may have killed him, but I've managed to have his death upon my head."

  "I'm sorry, Your Grace."

  Vicky stood. "Don't be sorry, be effective. My father must not die. Do you understand me. He must not."

  "We are doing all that modern medicine can do, Your Grace."

  "Then do more. This is a political imperative, Doctor. The Emperor cannot die here, with us.

  Feeling more vexed than relaxed, Vicky watched her father sleep for a few more minutes before going to the next room over where all three of her unofficial aunties were happily sharing a single room.

  While they were also hooked up to monitors, theirs chirped and beeped much more enthusiastically, and the hanging bottles were fewer.

  "Your Grace, thank you! Thank you! Thank you!" Iris said. Her words were quickly lost in a babble as Rena and Hilda joined in.

  "How is everything?" Vicky asked.

  "Well, if they'd just let us fix a meal, the food would at least be decent."

  "And these bedclothes!" Rena complained. "They don't have any back."

  "Oh, poo," Hilda said, "I'm warm and my tummy is half-full for the first time in too long, so, thank you, Vicky."

  "No. Thank you for sticking by my father. Did everyone run?"

  The three old women glanced around at each other. Iris took up the story.

  "Your father wasn't even back before they told us there was no money in the treasury. No money to pay anyone. The word flew through the palace around lunch time and before you knew it, everyone was grabbing anything they could and running out the door."

  "We grabbed some potatoes and canned meat," Rena said, "then had to lock ourselves in our rooms to keep everything in them from being stolen."

  "One young pup tried to grab the sack of flour and sugar I went out to forage for," Hilda said. "He didn't know I also had my favorite iron skillet. Not one of those wimpy aluminum things they use on those worthless electric burners," she spat the last word.

  "So, we collected all the food we could in our rooms," Iris said, "and waited to see what was going to happen. We knew your father was supposed to be coming back. I understand that when his light cruiser docked, there was no one to meet him. They didn't even want to give him a ride down the beanstalk. He had to hitch a ride from the terminal. Can you imagine that?"

  "Were you there when he got home?"

  "We didn't know anything, so we didn't know he was home until I ran into him, wandering the halls," Rena said.

  "I had some nice cookies for him, " Hilda said with a happy smile, then it soured. "Though I didn't have any milk to go with them."

  "I'm sure he loved your sugar cookies," Iris said.

  "He told you so," Rena added.

  "We scrounged up every last bit of food left in the kitchen," Iris said. "It kept us going for most of the first four months. Every couple of weeks, one of those Red Shirts would come by and check to make sure we were okay, they said. I think they were just looking to see if we'd died yet."

  "They started dropping off some food," Rena said.

  "Not much," Hilda added. "You know, it was so bad, I think they were collecting stuff that a grocery store had thrown out. If you ask me, it was. It was really bad."

  "Then the power went off."

  "The electric power, Iris?" Vicky asked.

  "Yes, Vicky, just the electric power. And it went off just as we were getting into the wintertime. We found some old moth-eaten curtains up in the attic of the old wing of the palace and we made a curtain between the rest of the kitchen and our gas stoves."

  "They didn't cut off the gas," Hilda said.

  "I think they'd forgotten about our old stoves," Rena put in.

  "So," Iris said. "We did our best to make it through the winter huddled down beside our stoves. Still, we had to be careful. Some people had taken to coming out here to look for things to steal, or a place to hide. We tried to stay quiet as church mice."

  "Well, you won't have to stay quiet as church mice where we're headed," Vicky told them.

  "Do you live in a palace?" Hilda asked, excitement in her eyes.

  Vicky shrugged. "I don't know if I'm going to have to live in a palace again, or maybe something smaller, but I will make sure that it has gas stoves and the best of food for you to cook for me and my husband."

  "Oh! You're married!" came from all three of them at once.

  "Yes, and we're headed for where I had to leave my husband to come visit Greenfeld. Now, I have a question. You say that some Red Shirts would come by and check on you?"

  "Yep," "Yes," and "Every two weeks or so."

  "Did an older man ever come with them? Someone plump and full of pomp and officiousness?"

  All three women shook their heads.

  "No, ma'am," Iris said. "They were all young guys full of piss and vinegar. Strutting around all self-important with their hands on their pistol holsters."

  Vicky scowled; there went the idea of having her parade her naked dukes by her friends to see if any of them had visited her dad in his distress. Apparently, they had left it to underlings to check up on how long the Emperor was going to take to die.

  A week into the voyage, the fleet surgeon sent up word that her father was awake and Vicky began to visit him in sick bay. At least she tried.

  Visits to her father did not fulfill any real need she had. He was tearfully grateful for her rescue and he said it over and over. When he wasn't crying, he was raging about the evil machinations of the Bowlingame family.

  Never, however, did he have a word for his participation in this mess. Never did he admit he had any fault. It was all "their" fault.

  Vicky found herself making excuses to cut her visits short. He'd beg her to stay, beg her to come back soon, but Vicky was remembering what she did not like about her father, and some of the things he'd done to her.

  Those memories she had kept locked away in the back of her brain, memories she did not want to allow out because they gnawed at her. As the voyage went on, she spent less and less time with her father.

  Admiral Bolesław found a counselor on the Victorious, and Vicky had him spend time with her father. The counselor arranged to visit at least once a day, sometimes more. Let him handle Father.

  Dad did want to visit the brig. He wanted to see the Grand Dukes and Duchesses and gloat that now he was the one on the outside in fine clothes and they were locked up naked.

  The counselor managed to forestall that visit until the last day of the voyage. Vicky did not review the brig footage of the visit in real time. She was afraid she might call up the brig and order her dad clapped in a cell.

  He's the Emperor. I can't treat him the way he deserves.

  She managed, just barely, not to usurp her father's throne right then and there when she watched the visit much later that night.

  24

  The second week of the voyage, there was no reason for Vicky to drop down to the brig and view her totally naked collection of brig inmates. However, since they had not even once checked on how bad her father had been doing in their "tender care," she could easily do them one better by paying them at least one visit.

  "Admiral on deck," a corporal announced as she called the guard detail to attention. A moment later a Gunny was at Vicky's other elbow.

  "Your Grace, how may we serve you?" he said crisply.

  "I'd like to review our dukes."

  "Well, ma'am, we got ourselves five of a kind." Gunny said, enjoying his joke.

  Vicky was buzzed through into the cells. Each cell was the same. Bars in front. Two slabs on opposite sides of the cell for the prisoners to sleep on. No pads to make that sleep any more comfortable. A commode with no seat.

  The quarters were not designed with creature comfort in mind, only security and what could be done to keep the prisoners from harming themselves.

  The first cell held the eldest surviving Bowlingame brother and his wife. He'd been found naked, sleeping with a young woman, she the same with a young man. When they saw Vicky, they immediately went into a kind of comedy routine as both tried to use the other to cover themselves. He wanted her in front of him. She wanted him in front of her.

  They settled with her turning her back to Vicky and him using her to cover his front. This was likely the first time in quite a few years that they'd been face-to-face naked.

  "You have no right to hold us," the Grand Duke bellowed.

  "You stole my father, your Emperor's, throne. I can do whatever I want with traitors."

  "Ha, is that what that old fool told you? He mortgaged his palace and I merely called in the note."

  "No doubt, you'll have a chance to argue your case in court."

  "In the meantime, can I at least have a prison suit? Aren't prisoners supposed to be issued some sort of prison garb?"

  "Yes, I think they usually are," Vicky said, turning to Gunny.

  "Your Grace, since all we usually get down here are Sailors and Marines, we let them stay in their uniform. We don't have any special prison garb."

  "Ah," Vicky said. "So, I guess they can't issue you prison jumpsuits."

  "Could I at least have some pants?"

  Vicky looked at him, thinking of how he'd starved and nearly frozen her father. He began to wilt.

  "No, I don't think so," she said, simply.

  She passed to the next cell. The second eldest Bowlingame brother was in it with his wife. Both were middle-aged, and it showed. He sat on one slab, his head in his hands. He did not look up when Vicky walked by. The wife was laid out flat on her back, her head toward the bars. She also showed no interest in what was happening.

  The middle cell held the middle brother and his wife. At the moment, he sat on the edge of one platform, scowling at the bars. She sat cross-legged in the opposite corner, her back to him. Both looked red and winded.

  "They just finished an argument," Gunny told Vicky.

  An argument was in full swing in the next cell. He sat on his bunk, she stormed up and down the cell berating him.

  "You said it was a sure thing! You said we'd have power and wealth beyond my imagination! Well, I never imagined this! Couldn't you pull your head out of your brother's ass long enough to look around? For Christ sake, Peterwalds? You tried to pull this over on the Peterwalds! I should never have married a worm like you! Mother said I was letting all your fine words blind me and Mother was right!"

  The man leapt up and threw himself at the bars. "You've got to get me out of here. This is cruel and inhumane punishment."

  "Actually, it's cruel and inhumane treatment of my guards, Your Grace," Gunny said.

  "Do you have to listen to this all the time?" Vicky asked him.

  "All day and much of the night. Personally, I don't know how she keeps it up. I would have thought she'd be hoarse by now."

  "Practice," the naked duke grumbled. "Lots and lots of practice."

  "Don't you go disrespecting me, you worm. I'm your wife."

  Vicky moved on to the last cell. The youngest brother was still well into middle age. At the moment, he was curled up on his slab in a fetal position. Again, his wife was haranguing him unmercifully. As Vicky came abreast of the cell, the woman hauled off and kicked the man, right in the kidney.

  From the looks of all the black and blue marks on the poor fellow, she'd hit him a lot.

  "Another constant source of noise?" Vicky asked.

  Gunny scratched his head. "If one's not going at it, then another one is. Saints preserve us when two of them start in on each other at the same time. Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, there have even been times when three are at it, not just screaming at each other, but at the ones up or down the cell block from them. I've had to put my guards on an hourly schedule so they can keep their sanity."

  Vicky looked around. She saw a door with a small glass window in it and a hole to slip things through.

  "What's that?"

  "Solitary confinement."

  "Anyone in there?"

  "No, Your Grace. You made a proclamation, no one in solitary confinement except under sever circumstances."

 

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