Free Vicky Peterwald: Survivor (Vicky Peterwald Series Book 2) by Mike Shepherd

for you two.”
    “I don’t know what else Gerrit told you, but I’m drawing a new line. You’ll have your quarters. I’ll have mine. I will make you no promises.”
    The grin was gone from Frank’s face. A look of puzzlement replaced it. Then enlightenment.
    “Ah, so it was that way.”
    “What way?”
    “I beg your pardon, ma’am. There were things that Gerrit got quiet about. Evasive. Him being very good at evasion, I didn’t figure out what they were. I think I’ve got a better understanding now.”
    He paused as if to choose his next words as carefully as one might choose a next step in a minefield.
    “Commander Schlieffen told me nothing about any personal relationship that he and you might have had. If you think that I accepted this job with any expectations of any relationship except a proper professional one, or that which a subject might have with his Grand Duchess, I wish to correct that now.”
    He eyed Vicky for a moment, then let his gaze fall to the seat between them.
    Good!
Vicky thought.
That’s cleared up.
    Probably.
    The rest of the drive was a silent one.

CHAPTER 18
    V ICKY had often joked that her education at the palace had included little beyond needlepoint and the Kama Sutra for both offense and defense. The joke had been bitter . . . and true.
    Hank had gotten all the business training from the time he was six. He’d learned the ins and outs of manufacturing, markets, and trade.
    Of course, then he’d gone to the Navy and gotten himself killed.
    Vicky had gone to the Navy with nothing much at all. Less than nothing. Admiral Krätz had made it clear to her that she had a lot of bad habits, and he intended for her to break them.
    After she got caught in a paint locker with a really cute ensign, the admiral had taken her out back for a tanning. His words, not hers, and brought back a young Vicky with a vow of chastity.
    She had managed to live with it about as long as the admiral managed to survive her.
    The Navy had taught her to stand a watch, shine her shoes, and do a decent job of analyzing a problem in gunnery.
    Unfortunately, the problems Vicky faced now had more to do with markets.
    Once again, she was learning.
    She had seen planets starving and come up with a solution not all that different from the times when she’d shared out stolen cookies with her five-year-old playmates. Of course, it had been a bit easier, then.
    Today, she sat down with people who saw a trading-and-marketing system that had choked up and needed to get moving again. They were older, but the hunger in their eyes wasn’t that much different from her five-year-old friends.
    “Those crystal miners,” a gruff fisherman said. “You can’t offer them survival biscuits. They risk their life to harvest that stuff. They know its worth. They’re gonna want fresh shrimp and lobster.”
    “Steaks, hams, and good frozen fruit and vegetables,” a rancher added.
    “Some of those miners follow religious dietary rules,” another put in. “I’ve got the mutton they’ll want.”
    “We’ll need a refrigerated cargo ship,” Mannie concluded. “Is there one laid up in orbit?”
    “Commander Boch, will you check on that?” Vicky said, glancing from her seat at the head of the table to where he sat behind her.
    “Already on it, Your Grace. The
Frozen Christmas Goose
has been laid up for three months. I’ve got a call in to its skipper to see if he can raise a crew and get his ship up and running in three weeks.”
    There was a beep. The commander glanced at his wrist unit. “He says, ‘Hell yes, or he’ll push the old girl out of orbit himself,’ Your Grace.”
    “I think we have the ship you want,” Vicky said.
    “There are three other refrigerated cargo ships trailing the station,” the commander added. “They’ve been parked longer. If the
Goose
won’t run, one of the others will.”
    “Good,” Mannie said. “Sevastopol is loading out most of the first fleet. If we make it happen, there