“You’re scaring the hell out of me, Hiram,” she told him grimly.
“I know, but think about it. If you were the Dominion and wanted to attack Victoria, how would you go about it?” he asked.
Chapter 35
At the Royal Palace on Cornwall, Victorian Space
They walked slowly through the formal Palace garden, an incongruous pair. She was slender, almost elfin, with flowing raven hair and piercing green eyes. He was bald as a stone and looked to have been hewn from a block of wood. He trudged stolidly alongside her, hands behind his back, acutely conscious of the three guardsmen who trailed quietly in their wake.
“I fear I make your guards nervous, Your Grace,” he said dryly.
“It is their job to be nervous, Ambassador. They were born to it.”
He sighed. “I am not an ambassador, Your Grace.”
“True,” she conceded, “but it is more pleasing to call you ‘Ambassador’ than to call you a spy.”
“Perhaps it would please Her Grace to talk to our Ambassador rather than someone without any official standing.”
She ignored this. They continued walking.
“I am aware of your…arrangement with the Queen, Ambassador Jong.”
Jong shook his head. “I am a great admirer of the Queen, Your Grace, but I have no spec-”
She laughed without humor. “Ambassador Jong, please do not diminish the high regard I have for you by insulting my intelligence. One of the reasons why my mother has been able to deal so adroitly with our own bumbling, incompetent Foreign Office is because you have been feeding her critical information about the other Sectors, the Sultenic Empire, Arcadia, but in particular the Dominion of Unified Citizenry.”
Jong tried bluster. “Really, Your Grace, how could I possibly meet with the Queen of Victoria? Your security apparatus would not countenance-”
“Poor Sir Henry,” Princess Anne replied. “He will not be very happy if he learns what mother has been doing, will he?” Her voice hardened. “My mother is a monarch, Jong. She understands the use of power…and how to keep it. She knows that if she is to retain power, no one is ever to know everything she knows and does. Even Sir Henry is not exempt from that mandate.”
Jong said nothing. He marveled at her, so much like her mother. What she lacked in her mother’s experience, she made up for with sheer force of will.
She stopped and turned to him. “The Queen is ill, Ambassador Jong. Very ill. She is no longer ruling, no longer watching over the Foreign Office.” She combed her fingers through her hair, a gesture that endeared him and disturbed him at the same time. “I need to do that, but I can’t rely on reports from the Foreign Office alone. I think you understand that. I need you to help me as you’ve helped my mother.”
“And Sir Henry?” Jong asked, all pretense gone. “Sir Henry is not enamored with The Light. He will be reluctant to let you see me.”
“You managed to secretly see my mother all this time,” said the Princess. “You will do no less for me.”
Chapter 36
At the Wormhole from Gilead into Victoria
The courier drones emerged into Victorian space like a flock of sparrows, then broke into a dozen groups, each weaving for a moment to take star sightings and locate itself. First one, then ten, then a hundred and more all turned toward Cornwall and accelerated, each carrying the dying message of the Bawdy Bertha.
Just out of sensor range to the “south,” Admiral Kaeser’s Second Attack Fleet flew onward. It was still a full day’s flight from Cornwall.
On the far side of Victorian space, Admiral Mello’s First Attack Fleet, using transponders that identified them as a convoy of grain carriers from Cape Breton, passed Victorian Space Buoy #5 and plowed their way toward the Victorian home world.
Victoria slept.
Chapter 37
Leaving the Planet Cornwall for Space Station Atlas
On Cornwall, the Royal barge waited for the command to lift off with Princess Anne and Sir Henry, in route to Atlas Station.
“This is a bad time to leave Mother,” the Princess complained. “She’s not herself, she needs me. I shouldn’t be going off on a junket.”
“We’ll be back in three or four days,” Sir Henry lied soothingly. Princess Anne had a temper and he didn’t need that just now. “With the Second Fleet off to war, it is important that we have a Royal presence on the space stations to boost morale. Since Her Highness is indisposed, that means you.”
Anne’s eyes flashed. “The Queen is not ‘indisposed,’ Sir Henry, and you know it. She’s depressed, clinically depressed, and she needs care.”
“The Queen is getting the best care available, Princess. We need you here.”
The Princess looked at him, her eyes hard. “What I need, Sir Henry, is to keep an eye on those fools at the Foreign Office. That used to be Mother’s job, and she has not been doing it for the last year. They are so focused on the Tilleke that they have quite forgotten the Dominion of Unified Citizenry! Am I the only one who is bothered that the Dominions — the Dominions! — are suddenly our friends?”
Sir Henry sighed. “Really, Princess, would it not be best to leave that in the hands of the professionals at the Foreign Office-”
“Professional sycophants!” the Princess said scornfully. “All the real professional foreign officers were forced to retire and my Uncle replaced them with his cronies. They tell the Duke exactly what he wants to hear, and what he wants to hear is that Victoria is loved and respected by all because we are strong, beneficent and wise!”
Sir Henry winced inwardly. Queen Beatrice had made very few mistakes in her long reign, but appointing her younger brother to be head of the Foreign Office was one of them. “My Lady, this is not the time to dissect the Duke of Kent’s virtues. We need you at Atlas to-”
Princess Anne made a most un-princessly noise. “Don’t ‘My Lady’ me, Sir Henry, you’ve known me since I was in diapers and I know you too well to be charmed by pretty words and flattery.” She held up one finger. “First, Uncle Harold is a weak, arrogant, self-centered stupid man who thinks the Foreign Office is a plaything for his own personal amusement. I can forgive him for being self-centered, but I cannot tolerate him being a fool. What Mother was thinking of when she gave him the Foreign Office is beyond me.”
She held up a second finger. “Second, you keep telling me that we are going to Atlas, but in fact you’re taking me to the Home Fleet, are you not?” She looked at him coolly.
Sir Henry gazed coolly back at her. “And where did you hear that, Princess?”
“I may be young, Sir Henry, but I do have resources.”
But still young enough that you have not yet learned that you never disclose your assets if you don’t have to, he thought. Still, the little Princess obviously had a very well placed informant. That would bear thinking about.
He looked at his watch. “Princess, we have to go. I wouldn’t ask you if it were not of the utmost importance.”
Princess Anne looked at him unblinkingly for a long moment, then she gave the slightest nod. “Very well, Sir Henry, but soon, perhaps very soon, I may have questions for you that you will answer. Do you understand?”
Sir Henry hid a rueful smile. He bowed. “You are your mother’s daughter, Princess.”
Anne stood. “I am, indeed, Sir Henry. Best not to forget it.”
Chapter 38
In Victorian Space
The flock of drones flew on toward their destination, the Fleet base on the Atlas Space Station. Twenty of them had survived the rigors of the worm hole into Victorian space only to for fail for one reason or another. Their systems shut down and they went ballistic, to coast to eternity and beyond.