Free Rebel by Mike Shepherd

home, and continued, “Instead, we have acquired the invasion fleet. Some ten thousand thugs willneed employment that doesn’t involve swaggering around with guns. However, we have a problem.
    “The Empress is thinking about St. Petersburg. You may be far from Greenfeld, but you are, no doubt, in every waking thought of the blackhearted Empress. That could be a problem. However, what might otherwise have been a problem now appears to be a gift.”
    Several heads snapped around to give her some really strange looks.
    “The Imperium, be it my father or my stepmother, has been ordering battleships and battlecruisers to be scrapped in midlife. Strange how they are soon showing up in different hands doing their best to pirate merchant ships going about their proper business of carrying trade between planets. The Navy has fought and captured those ships. Now, captains with orders to sail their ships to the scrap heap have strong suspicions that what is left of the Navy will all too soon be facing those guns crewed by pirates.”
    Vicky relaxed back in her seat, but she chipped her next words from hard flint. “Several of those captains have chosen to sail here and place themselves at our disposal. I now lay before you a proposal that you accept their service in our mutual defense and do what we can to feed their crews and maintain their ships.”
    Vicky paused to see how that idea went over. It hung there in the air, neither accepted nor rejected. “Not too long ago, there would have been no way for St. Petersburg to maintain a fleet of battleships. You, however, have recently upgraded the docks on your station. Now you have the choice of maintaining them or not. A few weeks ago, you did not have the heavy industry to repair such ships. Now, with newly arrived fabricators from Metzburg, you do.”
    Vicky let her eyes rove those seated around the table. “You have made the decisions that have led you to this moment. Will you now make the decision that you can, not just for yourselves, but for your children?”
    It was Mannie who broke the silence she left her listeners frozen in.
    “We have a proposal before us to accept the services of the offered ships. Need I say, some were actually captured. It isproposed that we create the St. Petersburg Division of the Greenfeld Imperial Navy Reserve Fleet. I motion that we open the floor for discussion.”
    “St. Petersburg Division of the Greenfeld Imperial Navy Reserve Fleet, you say, Mannie?” the mayor of Kiev said. “That’s quite a mouthful. Did you just come up with it, or did Her Grace, here, help you?”
    Mannie grinned. “That name is my very own creation. Me being a loyal subject of the Emperor, I don’t want anyone to get the idea that we aren’t just as loyal.”
    “Whatever you call it,” a banker midway down the table put in, “it’s going to cost. And it’s going to take scarce resources I’m not so sure we have. Food, for one thing.”
    “I’m looking for a great crop this year,” a rancher put in. “I was expecting to use it to trade with some of the mining planets out there. Am I going to have it taxed away so someone can feed Navy mouths that don’t contribute nothing?”
    “May I point out,” a woman in a bright red business suit interjected, “that the security thugs the Navy just intercepted would have confiscated most of your crop, and you wouldn’t have seen a pfennig for it.”
    “Being robbed for my own good is just as much robbery as when the Empress does it,” the rancher shot back.
    “About those security thugs we seem to have acquired. Are any of them good for a day’s work?” another rancher drawled.
    Vicky took that question. “The Navy will do a security check and interview each, ah, detainee. They’ll cull out the worst cases, but I suspect a lot of them were just looking for a job when they found that one. We haven’t had any trouble with them so far.”
    “Kind of docile little doggies, huh?” the optimistic rancher