Command Decision

by Elizabeth Moon

  “Did he kill them?”

  “The girl, certainly not. He was only about seven; she was older, and she contracted whitefever while off at camp one summer. The parents…I never looked into it, tell you the truth. It was an accident, is what the report says. He went to work for ISC shortly after that.”

  “When I was a child,” Rafe said, “I remember meeting him at the office. My father wasn’t CEO yet; he was somewhere far up in the hierarchy, though I don’t recall what. Lew was his personal assistant. When I got out of that place—” He still hated to say the name. “—when I went to college, Lew used to come talk to me. My father was so angry, he said. He tried to give me advice.”

  “And he ended up a senior vice president, in line for the top job,” Gary said. “Very convenient, having the CEO’s son disgraced and out of the picture.”

  “I can’t believe—”

  “Oh, come on, Rafe. Surely you don’t have any lingering pockets of naïveté. Yes, there are exceptionally talented orphans who pull themselves up by their bootstraps and rise like oil above the common water. But in our culture? Where everyone knows that birth matters, especially in the upper echelons?”

  “I never heard anything against him,” Rafe said. “He had that smooth polish all successful climbers have, but that means nothing.”

  “What I find interesting,” Gary said, “is that I can’t find any flecks on the gloss. Other than a daughter with psychological problems, that is. Was that you, by the way?”

  “Me? No, I had nothing to do with her. I suppose he wanted me kept away as a bad influence.”

  “Or because you might notice things,” Gary said. “She has never…what is the phrase?…lived up to her potential.”

  “What does this have to do with…?”

  “With your family? Little. With Parmina’s…a lot, I suspect. There’s also his wife. Good family—a social climb for him, but he was already well up in the company at that point, and obviously on his way. As a girl, a lively girl, not exactly wild but definitely headstrong. Finished university and graduate school, was headed, her family thought, for a career in genetic engineering. And then she fell in love with Parmina and married and…her older brother says the lights went out. She’s a social paragon now. She hardly sees her own family.”

  “So you think he’s the villain.”

  “My research shows the man is ruthless in business, seriously into micromanagement and control, and a master planner. There certainly could be someone else—perhaps someone who wanted to detach your father from Parmina—but Parmina has all the characteristics necessary to pull something like this. If he thought your father was softening toward you, might bring you home and install you in Parmina’s place—”

  “That wouldn’t happen,” Rafe said.

  “It’s what he thinks, not the reality, that drives him,” Gary said. “So my point is, I don’t want to transport you directly to your parents, not this instant. We need to be sure the op wasn’t compromised at all; we need to keep all the clients safe. Can you be patient a little longer?”

  Rafe struggled for a moment, then managed a tight smile. “I am patience on a tombstone,” he said.

  “As long as it’s the right person under the tombstone,” Gary said.

  CHAPTER

  NINE

  Aboard Vanguard,

  Adelaide Group

  Adelaide Group, when they reached it, lay beyond the usual trade routes Vatta serviced. Its ansibles were functioning, shortening the response time of the local officials and giving Ky access to a business directory for the various settlements. She was startled to find that Crown & Spears had no branch here; she had grown up believing that Crown & Spears was everywhere, like photons and gravity. She looked at the list of other financial institutions and wondered which to choose. Perhaps the locals could give her some advice.

  Unlike the other systems Ky had visited, here humans lived only in space, on huge stations positioned near the ring system of a gas giant. Humans was a term of choice in this case, as most were humods whose modifications suited such a life: geeners, in fact, who had been genetically engineered for it from conception—which was entirely artificial. The first face Ky saw on the com screen bulged with what she hoped were implants, the nose was a spongy-looking blob, and the two eyes did not match. She hoped she didn’t look as startled as she felt.

  Yet their response to the plight of Dryas’ passengers was as warmly human as Gretna’s had been cold and inhumane.

  “Of course they can come,” the system Traffic Officer told Ky. “We’ve been trading with Polson for over a century. It may be hard for them at first—I’ll talk to our medical people, but I’m thinking they’d be best on Tria—it’s the station where most lowmod visitors prefer to stay. Give me a few hours and I’ll have the Tria Council give you a call.”

  Ky would not have considered the Polson humods “lowmod,” but to other humods maybe they were. She could imagine what the Gretnans would have thought of Adelaide’s citizens.

  Tria’s Councilor Malroy was just as cordial when she called. “We have plenty of room; we’ll just shift some of our people to Qadro.”

  “That’s not a problem?”

  “No—we have plenty of room and we enjoy moving; it’s bred in us. But tell me—we’ve never heard of the SDR,” Malroy said. “Who are you—some kind of mercenaries?”

  “No—we’re not for hire,” Ky said. “We’re part of a military force—Space Defense Force—made up of units from worlds that understand the threat is greater than any one system can handle. This particular unit has ships carrying three flags, as our beacons show.”

  “Ah. We’re a bit off the beaten path; we don’t hear much. Is the threat really that great? Do you know if any other systems have been attacked?”

  “Bissonet fell to these people,” Ky said. “Polson as well. Slotter Key was attacked but—at last report—still holding.” She was not going to explain all that had happened at Slotter Key. “The Moscoe Confederation—you may have known of Cascadia?—hasn’t been attacked yet. But the ansible service—”

  “—is down in many places. Yes. We thought maybe it was a natural phenomenon—some kind of flare or something.”

  “No, it’s definitely sabotage, probably by the same group that attacked Bissonet and Slotter Key, though we can’t prove it yet. Our unit’s main mission—besides fighting the pirates anyplace we find them—is to recruit additional systems to support the SDF. It’s going to take a lot of resources to defeat them; they have a solid head start.”

  “We don’t have a space navy, per se,” Malroy said. “A lot of our people have private vehicles…we have small insystem search and rescue craft, and some traffic patrol craft, but we haven’t had to worry about piracy much…nothing beyond the occasional single idiot who thinks he can rob our miners.” From her tone, she thought of pirates as dull-witted ruffians.

  “I’m afraid all civilized people are going to find a reason to worry soon,” Ky said. “This is no ordinary pirate.”

  “I don’t know how we’d find and train a real deep-space warship,” Malroy said. “I suppose we’ll need to hire someone…you’re not for hire, you say, but if you know how we could…what we could do…”

  Go back ten years, twenty years, and start over… but saying that wouldn’t help. “You might contact other governments, the ones you can reach,” Ky said. “Talk to them, find out what they’re doing.”

  With that conversation over, Ky considered whether—no, when—to call Stella. Stella would be worrying, wondering what had happened since Ky had left Cascadia. When Ky checked the calendar, she was shocked…115 days? A lot had happened, but it hadn’t seemed that long. Stella might even think Ky was dead, and she’d probably be as angry about the delay as relieved that Ky was in good health. What had she been doing? Was Vatta Transport making any money yet?

  That thought led to the state of their supplies, and Ky decided to wait until she had a shopping list before contacting Stella.
A few days’ more worry surely wouldn’t make Stella’s reaction worse. In the few days before they docked at Tria, Ky put together a list of everything her group needed.

  “We’ve got to do something about that air lock damage,” Hugh said. “Engineering say they can’t do a permanent fix themselves—I see there’s a repair yard listed here.”

  Another money sink, Ky thought. And how long would it take? With no Crown & Spears branch here, with no large stash of valuables…should she try to sell off one of the shipboard ansibles? If only she hadn’t been in such a hurry to get away, she might have figured out a way to make the Gretnans pay for the damage they’d done. She’d gotten supplies for the refugees out of them; she could have gotten some sort of reparations. But at the time she’d been so disgusted and angry…

  “Contact the others, put together a package, and get estimates, including scheduling,” she told Hugh. “With the system ansible working, I can contact Stella. Maybe she can help.”

  He was back all too soon. As Ky had feared, the estimate for repairing all three ships was more than she had. “They gave us a good deal,” Hugh said. “In consideration of our good works, apparently, they cut ten percent off the original.”

  “I just don’t have it,” Ky said. No conceivable value of the remaining diamond stash would cover this and the other things they needed. Repairs would have to wait. Her engineers said the patches were holding…they could hold a little longer.

  A few days after docking at Tria, Ky was still juggling figures when Malroy called her again. “We have talked more to Dryas’ captain and we have thought about what you said. Though we have no warships to contribute, we know that fleets need supply and other types of ships. We could contribute such a ship—in fact, Dryas’ captain would like to give you Dryas.”

  Dryas would be filthy, Ky knew, and need a crew, and anyway the refugees needed something to offer in exchange for the help they were getting from Adelaide. What she really wanted was help with the repairs. But a ship was a ship. Maybe she could sell it to pay for repairs, though it didn’t seem likely that Adelaide Group had a large market for ships. Maybe Stella would want to take it for Vatta Transport and pay for some of the repairs in return…

  Before she could answer, Malroy went on. “We would clean the ship and provision it for you. Dryas’ captain said he would be willing to command, if you were willing to have him. And some of our people have already volunteered for crew.”

  “That is most kind,” Ky said, with an internal sigh. She couldn’t sell the ship off if they were doing so much to make it useful for her. “We could definitely use a supply ship, and though I worried about finding a crew, you have solved that problem, too.”

  “It is no more than your actions deserve,” Malroy said. “We were shocked at the perfidy of Gretna Station. We have traded there in the past with no problems, but we will not trade there again.”

  The other captains were less pleased about the new ship than Ky expected. “We’ll have to protect it,” Argelos said. “It will slow us down.”

  “I don’t think so,” Ky said. “It should make resupply faster. We can send one escort in with it, fill it up, and then transfer goods at safe distances from stations—or in empty systems.”

  “Maybe,” Pettygrew said. “But how will we know none of the crew are Turek’s agents? Are you going to vet them all?”

  “I’m going to have my security check, yes,” Ky said. “We do have to assume that not all volunteers are safe. I understand that.”

  “Would you like the use of my adviser as well?” Argelos asked. “I don’t know who you have, what their background is.”

  “A former Slotter Key military man with security experience,” Ky said. “Backed up by my second in command—you’ve met him—who has mercenary experience closer to this sector. But if your adviser finally wants to let me know who he is…”

  “He’s not eager for that, but he wants to be in on any security screening.”

  “And I would like to contribute someone as well,” Pettygrew said. “I believe that we, being from Bissonet, may have some very useful background.”

  “There is the matter of courtesy,” Ky said. “We should be tactful in our investigation. But I believe the locals will understand the need for our caution.”

  Ky explained their concerns to Malroy, who nodded. “Of course, after the terrible events, you would want to be sure you had no vermin in your system. We will make available space and clerical support, if you need it, for your investigation. Can you give me a list of personnel who will be involved? And you yourself, I would like to meet hand-to-hand.”

  “Of course, though I can leave the ship only briefly,” Ky said.

  Malroy was a cheery, round-faced individual with the usual microgravity humodifications: lower limbs ending in branched tentacles, upper limbs divided at the elbow with one pair of hands and another set of tentacles, these specialized for sensation of chemicals, magnetic fields, and other useful bits. In addition, she had an artificial “eye” in her forehead and a cranial crest suggesting a larger and more elaborate implant than those Ky was used to. She met Ky in a lounge designed for transients who were comfortable in higher gravities: though it was less than Ky was used to, she did not bounce off the floor with every step, and her clothes hung where they were supposed to without tugging on the adhesive tabs.

  With Malroy was Captain Partsin of Dryas. He still looked gaunt, but less so than he had onscreen when they left Gretna. He strode forward to clasp her hands in his. “My dear Captain Vatta…we had always heard of the honorable Vatta Transport, but truly I never expected that I and so many others would owe our lives to your courage and generosity. My own ship is small, a very tiny gift to repay that generosity, and I would hope that it will enable you to win this war against the pirates. You have my thanks and the thanks of our remaining people. I understand your need to question some of them who wish to serve as crew, but I hope you will understand that they do not have all the documentation that they should, because of the conditions under which we evacuated. Those of my crew I can personally vouch for.”

  “Thank you,” Ky said. “You are certainly more than generous, and I do understand about evacuees…though you know why we must be careful. My second in command, Hugh Pritang, and Gordon Martin, my security chief, will be joined by the security officers of our other ships.” She gestured Hugh and Martin forward. “I believe the others will be here shortly. You had an office or other space?” She glanced at Malroy.

  “Yes. Would you prefer to wait for the others or come with me now? It is in the same gravity as this.”

  “I should return to my ship,” Ky said. “With all respect, with Hugh here, the captain needs to be aboard.”

  “Of course.”

  On the way, Ky stopped in at the local bank Malroy recommended to inquire about financial transfers.

  “We have a relationship with Crown & Spears, of course,” the manager said. “We respect them highly, and we will be pleased to handle any funds transfers from or to them. The financial ansible here has had no problems in the last twenty years—before that, you’d have to ask my predecessor.”

  “My cousin is CEO of Vatta Transport,” Ky said. “I know our routes never extended this far, but I hope you’ve heard—”

  “Certainly, certainly. Well, I hope to be hearing from you soon, Captain Vatta.”

  Ky intended to call Stella when she got back to the ship, but the temporal chart revealed that local time on Cascadia Station was 0200; that gave her an excuse to delay another few hours until first-shift, the usual business day. In the meantime, she noted that Cascadia’s searchable directory gave both home and office numbers for Stella Vatta; Vatta Transport, Ltd. was listed as well. To save money, she chose the audio-only option.

  “Vatta Transport, how may I help you?” said a pleasant voice.

  “Ansible call for Stella Vatta from Kylara Vatta,” Ky said.

  “Just a moment…” A soft tone replaced the reception
ist’s voice, and then Stella’s voice came through.

  “Ky! Where are you? Are you all right? What happened? Why aren’t you full-band?” Stella sounded as much annoyed as worried.

  “I’m in Adelaide Group,” Ky said. “It’s a long story, but I’m fine, just somewhat short of funds. How are you? And Toby?”

  “Things are going well,” Stella said, more calmly. “I’ve established a new headquarters office; we have five ships, now, counting Gary Tobai, which I have out on contract doing insystem runs here. The Kat was able to make contact with our ship on the Garth-Lindheimer run; they’ve accepted me as CEO, for now, and they’ll be contacting all the Vatta ships they cross paths with. It looks like the most damage to Vatta was within five jumps of Slotter Key.”

  “That’s good, I guess,” Ky said. “Of course, most of us were within five jumps of Slotter Key.”

  “We’re not making a profit yet,” Stella said. “Not from shipping, at least. But it’s not a gaping wound in the accounts, either. So what are you doing way over in the Adelaide Group? What happened with those people you were going to…see?” The pause was significant.

  “It’s a long story, not all good, but I’m alive and the ship is whole. I’m traveling now with two other warships, Sharra’s Gift from Slotter Key and Bassoon from Bissonet; we escorted a shipload of refugees from Polson here.”

  “Refugees? From what?”

  “Attack on Polson,” Ky said. “Oh, and don’t let any of our ships go to Gretna.”

  A pause while Stella accessed her implant. “Why not? Mildly shady, is what I have in my file. Check all bills, inspect all replacement parts.”

  “They’ve gone from mildly shady to inshore piracy and trafficking in human lives,” Ky said. “I bought eighteen indentured workers—”