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slander.”
    Again, she collapsed back onto her pillow. The scribe brought the recorder in close to her bare chest, her breasts now covered with light patches of bandages with truly ugly green and yellow ichor leaking through.
    No nipple slip today, girl.
    “I would come immediately, but I was kidnapped last week. They stripped me naked and left me chained to a bed in a hut back in the woods to die of thirst.”
    The camera swung to cover her hands and the truly appalling gashes on her wrists.
    “Daddy, I’m a Peterwald. I escaped and trekked through the woods until they found me, but it was horrible. The rocks cut my feet, and they got infected. There were bugs and brambles and all sorts of things that got at me.”
    Vicky collapsed again into her bed, gasping for breath.
    “I don’t understand. The men who did this. They had just arrived from Greenfeld. Why would someone come out from Greenfeld to try to kill me?
    “I am getting better, but they tell me that I can’t fly in a shuttle yet. Here, let my doctor explain.”
    A mature doctor, not one of the kids that had helped get Vicky ready for the camera, now came to stand in front of Vicky and deliver a report. They’d made him go through his spiel four different times before he got it right.
    “My father does not understand technical,” Vicky had warned him after his first two tries. “You can include a full medical write-up for any doctor he brings in to check on this, but your report to him has to be aimed at a fourth-grade science level.”
    His next two tries were better. This, his fifth, was great.
    “Your Imperial Majesty, the Grand Duchess has suffered major contusions and cuts, both to her wrists and ankles in her escape from her restraints and to her feet during her walk out. Most of them have become infected. I do not think the restraints were very clean.
    “Here on St. Petersburg, we have several insects that bury their eggs inside other animals for them to incubate. When hatched, the larvae eat their way out of their victim. In the event of a high-gee shuttle launch, there is the chance of these eggs being sucked into the bloodstream and carried deep into the body. Larvae eating at heart or lung tissue would be fatal.
    “Besides that, we need to care for the blood infection from her foot injuries. I’m afraid I cannot certify the Grand Duchess for flight. I do not know when I will be able to. We are still searching her body for bug bites and larvae infestations. She is a fighter, but all of this is taking a toll on her.
    “I will attach my complete report for your own doctors to examine.”
    The scribe cut the recording.
    “You will give me that report?” he asked the doctor.
    “I should have it ready for you in an hour. We’re pulling the photos and tests from other patients’ files and making sure they all fit smoothly into the Grand Duchess’s medical report.”
    The scribe grinned. He would be affixing his seal attesting to the truth of everything within. This one was young, and quite excited to be involved in pulling the wool over the reviled Peterwald’s eyes.
    And doing it for a Peterwald at that.
    “If we’re done here, can you clean me up?” Vicky said, getting her foot down out of the sling, before pulling herself up.
    “Oh, please,” Mannie said, covering his eyes from a view that might have been vile except she was now flashing him quite a bit of her lady parts.
    “Excuse me,” the commander said, in a voice that froze Vicky’s blood. “I think we have a problem.”
    “What kind of problem, and can someone give me something to make my voice sound right.”
    “It will wear off in an hour,” the makeup artist said, helpfully.
    Vicky scowled, but turned her full attention to the commander.
    “Three cruisers and three large attack transports just jumped into the system. They are setting a point seven five gee course for St. Petersburg and refusing to answer our hails.”
    “I think we have a problem,” Vicky agreed.