Rebel by Mike Shepherd Read Free Book Online Page B

main screen.
    “Hello, Staale. I hoped to meet you in better times.”
    “Hello, Admiral von Mittleburg. Are these not the best of times?”
    “My lasers are charged and yours are not.”
    “As I have told those with me, I see no reason to charge my lasers. Should I?”
    “Time will tell.”
    A new window opened on the forward screen to show a red-faced balding man with three chins. “Charge your guns, Captain. Charge them, damn you! I have ordered you to power up, and you keep refusing.”
    “And I have told you time and time again, Lord High Commissioner for Safety,” Captain Sandback said, as if to a tiresome child, “that it would be suicide for us to come in here threatening to fire on the Retribution . This must be worked out. To use force is only to commit suicide for all of us.”
    “We have the right,” the red-faced man shouted.
    “You are interfering with the free trade guaranteed by the Empire between planets of the Imperium,” Mannie said, tossing his oar into the troubled waters. “Boarding free-trading freighters of St. Petersburg is tantamount to piracy.”
    “We did it to protect them,” was smooth as oil on silk . . . and just about as worthless.
    “A Navy cruiser was escorting them. I saw no threat to them,” Mannie spat back. “Unless, of course, the threat was you.”
    “I am the Lord High Commissioner for Safety on St. Petersburg. I have a warrant signed from the hand of the Empress.”
    “But not the Emperor,” Mannie pointed out.
    “They are one and the same,” had a lot of bluster behind it.
    “We have received no such Imperial Proclamation to that effect,” Mannie pointed out.
    “Maybe I’m carrying it.” The Lord High Commissioner seemed suddenly less sure. “What I do know is that I am backed up by three regiments of security specialists, and I will assure that St. Petersburg remains safe and law-abiding.”
    The commissioner’s eyes seemed to narrow. “Oh, I see that you have the Grand Duchess Victoria aboard. Good. We understood that her safety was in some question. You will immediately transfer her to my ship for her own safety.”
    “Strange,” Vicky said, “it was the people of St. Petersburg who secured the safety of my person. It was recent arrivals from Greenfeld who did me harm.”
    “Canards, no doubt. Lies and damn lies to cover up the danger you are truly in.”
    “Little man, I am on a battleship of the Imperial Navy. I doubt I could be more safe.”
    “Nevertheless, you will obey my order and report immediately to the Golden Empress 1 for safekeeping.”
    “Or tight imprisonment?”
    “Do not risk the ire of the Empress.”
    Vicky half laughed. “Sorry, little man. I have risked her ire and dodged her assassins ever since she became pregnant, and I became one too many people between her child and the throne.”
    “Is that the way the wind blows?” Captain Sandback said.
    “I’m afraid it is, Staale,” Admiral von Mittleburg answered. “The Navy has protected Her Grace through over a dozen assassination attempts, most of which could be traced back to the palace. There is no chance that I would turn her over to someone holding a warrant from the Empress’s own hand.”
    “I believe I begin to understand better many of the things I have been told or overheard. Admiral, my squadron will stand down. Mr. Lord High Commissioner, this is between you and the, ah, people you say you have come to protect.”
    “I’ll have your head for this. I have three regiments, over ten thousand men at my beck and call.” The red in his face was reaching new heights. In any cartoon character, this would have anticipated a truly glorious explosion. All Vicky could hope for was a heart attack.
    “Yes, good High Commissioner,” Captain Sandback said, so very evenly, “but you are there, and I am several thousand kilometers of vacuum removed from your guns. If I was not worried about sending the wrong message to my old friend, Admiral von Mittleburg, I