Vicky Peterwald: Target by Mike Shepherd

Admiral Gort had not been far wrong that her palace education had been limited to little of any significance. Yes, she’d picked up on those wonderful things girls would do with boys, but that had hardly been part of her official education. Of intrigue, however, she’d taken the graduate course.
    All that had ended when she shipped out to the fleet.
    Admiral Krätz had high expectations for her. And Kris Longknife’s critique of Vicky’s own efforts to kill the Wardhaven princess had been nothing short of brutal. Vicky had been left enraged at both the admiral and the princess.
    And had to admit that both of them were right.
    She was competent at nothing that didn’t involve lying flat on her back. Or standing. Or kneeling, or one of several dozen variations on the same theme.
    If she wanted to be anything but a bed partner for someone her father foisted her off on, she needed to learn, and learn quickly.
    Under Admiral Krätz, Vicky began to learn. More accurately, she began to learn how to learn. It had been a tough apprenticeship under the old admiral, but she had served it.
    More importantly, she had survived it and gotten to watch one Kris Longknife and see how she not only survived but thrived in this poisoned environment that was part Navy, part political theater . . . and all kinds of dangerous.
    Self-examination done in full, Vicky applied herself to learning more about her native land than she had ever thought it was possible to know.
    Mr. Smith helped. He showed her how to get the most out of her new tool. He also showed her how to turn off the vacuum option on her computer to avoid accidentally sucking up more data than was offered.
    More importantly, he showed her how to make sure when she was raiding a database that she left no footprints behind . . . of any kind. But that was only the beginning.
    Vicky needed to know the lay of the land she was returning to. She needed to know who was doing what to whom and if not why, then at least how. She had lived at the center of power all her life.
    And walked through it childishly ignorant of all that went on around her.
    Today, she lost her innocence and learned the truth, as much as it could be known on a world like Greenfeld, where lies masqueraded as truth and reality was done with smoke and mirrors.
    By lunch, she felt the need to take a shower. Even as she toweled off, she did not feel clean.
    So much of what she’d been told had been a lie. So much of what she knew was not only wrong, but dead wrong. Her own mother, whom Vicky had been told died giving birth to her, had survived to nurse her.
    And died a year later in an “accident” that most likely wasn’t.
    Exactly what it was, not even the Navy knew. Maybe her father had grown tired of the woman and arranged her death. Maybe she had gotten crosswise with a powerful clique in the palace, and they had arranged for her demise. If that was the case, her father had not cared enough about the mother of his children to push for a more thorough investigation.
    Vicky wanted to vomit.
    Kris Longknife had warned her that growing up was hard and frequently full of disillusionment. Kris claimed that she was learning a lot about the seedy underbelly of the Longknifes.
    Had she found anything in her past to match what Vicky was finding?
    Among all the other trash, it came as hardly a surprise to discover that the present Peterwald fortune had indeed sprung from investments in illegal drugs, pirates, and slavers.
    No wonder Admiral Krätz had taken such a delight in bringing down the nest of drug lords, slavers, and pirates at Port Royal. Vicky remembered that Kris had mentioned that something like the drug plantations on Port Royal was central to the Peterwald past. Vicky had insisted it wasn’t, and Kris had backed away.
    Now Vicky smiled. So Kris was the one-eyed king, but she’d been smart enough to refuse to fight the willingly blind.
    How could I have been so dumb!
    How could I have been anything