Command Decision

by Elizabeth Moon

  “You bought them? Ky, how could you! That’s illegal—and horrible!”

  “Not as horrible as what they faced. Bought them and freed them, of course. But that’s part of my cash-flow problem. I’m guessing Gretna’s economy tanked when the ansibles went out and trade dropped. Whatever the reason, they’ve gone rogue: they take your money, then try to take your ship and sell you for slaves.”

  “You’re serious…”

  “Very. Anyway, they wouldn’t even let the refugees have food and air. I forced the Gretnans to provide the necessities, but I couldn’t leave the refugees there. So we escorted them here; they said Polson and Adelaide had been trading partners before. Adelaide Group’s not on our routes now, but they seem to be good people, so if someone has a hole in the schedule—”

  “What do they have to trade?”

  “Mostly low-grav manufacturies. Pharma and things like that. Oh, and humod adaptive devices; most of them are serious humods, engineered for low-grav and rapid-change environments; they need assistive devices to function well in what we call normal.”

  “I’ll look into it,” Stella said. “Can you zip me their directory?”

  “Right away,” Ky said. She called it up and sent the compressed version on sub-audio. “How’s Toby?” she asked.

  “Toby’s fine. In fact, Toby’s a raving genius. You won’t believe what he’s come up with.”

  “He’s trained Rascal to do ansible repairs?”

  Stella snorted. “Not quite. Better. He’s making more of that very interesting cargo we found—”

  “The shipboard—”

  “Yes,” Stella cut in. Ky could hear the irritation in her voice. But it wasn’t a secret; the pirates at least knew about shipboard ansibles. Before Ky could say more, Stella went on. “He’s already made one, and he’s made some…improvements. Apparently all that time he spent with Rafe, he was soaking up everything Rafe told him. That, and native ability. We can certainly market these, if ISC doesn’t stop us.”

  “Or use them as our competitive edge,” Ky said. She hoped Stella wouldn’t give it all away before they made a profit off it, if Toby really had pulled it off.

  “Or use them as our competitive edge, yes,” Stella said. “Rascal, by the way, has earned his keep for the rest of his life…Toby’s education is taken care of already, and Rascal’s picture’s all over the place. Apparently he’s superfertile with the local female dogs, and they’ve confirmed pregnancy in one hundred percent of the inseminations.”

  Ky laughed. “I realize this helps our bottom line, but there’s something just a little ridiculous about being saved from financial ruin by a scruffy little dog we pulled out of a trash bin.”

  “Well, you saved the scruffy little dog,” Stella said. “Remember all those fairy tales in our children’s books, when the hero was the one who helped the little animal stuck in a trap or whatever?”

  Ky started to say that real life wasn’t a fairy tale, but refrained. Maybe it was, after all.

  “So,” Stella went on. “Tell me what’s going on with you, besides rescuing some refugees.”

  “It’s been…interesting,” Ky said. “We now have a fleet. Well, a small fleet. Multisystem, since Vanguard’s now Cascadian registry; there’s also one Slotter Key privateer, and one Bissonet former space militia. What he’s told me is that while Bissonet always claimed they didn’t have privateers, they actually did. They called them militia, though, and their trading capacity was limited.”

  “Yes, but what happened? You and that Argelos fellow left Cascadia together—”

  “Right. Well, you remember that Bissonet was taken—”

  “I know that—”

  “Argelos had located three Bissonet ships together. They had heard about my idea of combining forces, and they wanted to try it. Originally we had three of them, Argelos and me, a ship from Ciudad, and one from Urgayin, I think it was. We went to an empty system to do some training, which made sense—”

  “You were commanding, right?”

  “No.” Ky sighed. This was going to be difficult. “There were three Bissonet ships, remember? Their senior officer insisted that command belonged with the greatest contribution—in other words, she wanted it. And I agreed, because I cared more about the idea than about the power.”

  “Mistake, was it?”

  “Yes. She may’ve been good before—one of the other ships claimed she was—but she just didn’t know how to command this kind of group. She alienated the man from Ciudad. One of the ships didn’t show up—and it turned out to have been a plant, someone working as an agent of the pirates. He told them where we were. Didn’t know that at the time, of course. I was worried, but she wasn’t. Short form is, they ambushed us, and she didn’t have a clue how to get anyone out alive. I’d been discussing it with Argelos, just in case—and we lost the battle but three ships came out whole: mine, Argelos’, and one of the Bissonet ships, commanded by a man named Pettygrew.”

  “Ky…I don’t know how to ask this, but…are you sure you know what you’re doing?”

  “I got three ships out alive when they all thought they were doomed. My tactics. My commands.” Ky’s throat tightened, thinking of those she hadn’t been able to save, and Captain Zavala’s courage in coming back to warn them all.

  “I believe you. I just…people are going to die, Ky, because of commands you give. Are you ready for that?”

  “It’s already happened,” Ky said. “And I’ll never be ready, and I am ready now.”

  “All right. I’m still terrified, you know. You’re the only real Vatta of our generation left, that I know of.”

  “You are as real a Vatta as I am,” Ky said. “And this would be a lot easier if I’d been Osman’s daughter, wouldn’t it? It fits better.”

  Stella’s voice trembled a little. “Yes…and I guess I have to get over it.”

  “I guess you do.” Time to get back to realities. “I tapped out the Vatta accounts at Gretna; in fact, Crown & Spears gave me a line of credit so the authorities couldn’t claim I hadn’t paid all the fees they added on at the last moment. I resupplied there, before they tried to get it all back, and we need repairs soon, for the damage done there. You’ll have to start linking accounts again.”

  “Well, if Adelaide Group is as useful as you’re saying, I can extend a route there—maybe Gary Tobai. Can you establish a corporate account there before you leave?”

  “I set up one for our fleet,” Ky said. “I’ll have Adelaide Central Bank send you the account information and let them know you want one for Vatta Transport.”

  “You could contact me using our…uh…family code.”

  That had to mean by the shipboard ansibles. “Oh. You’re right.” How to tell Stella that she’d made changes to the shipboard ansibles, that the original settings would be known to the pirates? “I didn’t want to use a channel the pirates might pick up on; we modified ours to use different ones, but yours isn’t.”

  “Toby thought of that, too. He said it was something you’d need. Wonder if we have the same new channels…”

  How to convey them without risking discovery? Were the pirates monitoring routine ansible transmissions? Or those to a Vatta family member? Ky rummaged through her implant looking for some concealing data that Stella might also have. “Stella, your implant has the list of family birthdays and ceremonies, doesn’t it?”

  “Yes, why?”

  “That channel thing…your mother’s, month and day; my oldest brother’s year and day.”

  “Oh! Yes. I’ll tell Toby and see if those are the same, and if not, I’m sure he can modify it to fit.” A pause, then: “Ky, I’m really relieved to hear from you…I know I behaved badly before you left Cascadia, and then I thought maybe you were throwing yourself into danger because of that—”

  “No, Stella, please—it wasn’t that.”

  “We’re just—there’s so few of us left. And I know I’m doing the right thing with the company, but…Toby is just not en
ough, if you know what I mean.”

  “Me, too,” Ky said. “Stella, I meant what I said then. To me, you’re always family. Always. It doesn’t matter how far apart we are.”

  “Well, before I start sniffling like a kid,” Stella said, “I think we should end this conversation. I’ll contact you in a few days, if I don’t hear from you first, to let you know what I can send. It’s such a relief to have real, functioning ansible service!”

  “That it is,” Ky said. “Later, then.”

  She arrived on the bridge in time to see the entire bridge crew staring at the external vid monitor. “What in the world is that?” Hugh asked, staring at the screen, where a steel-blue ship with a bright gold stripe down its long axis and some kind of curly gold lettering on the bow was easing toward its docking space. “I’d say a yacht, but it’s too big for that.”

  Ky looked at the message marker coming up on the armrest of her command chair, tapped for access, and grinned.

  “It’s the Courageous, and its captain says they’re Ransome’s Rangers,” she said. “The other two are the Furious and the Glorious. They want to join up with us.” She put up the video they were sending. On the bridge of a ship—presumably the same one—several officers in light-blue-and-gold uniforms with white facings stood watching over the instruments; crew in light blue shipsuits scurried about busily.

  “They look like an operetta chorus,” Hugh said. “One of those old revivals with the brave young soldier and the pretty dancing girl the prince falls in love with.”

  “They are a bit gaudy,” Ky said. “On the other hand, they are ships. We don’t have anything that size or that speed. They’ve got excellent scan—light on weapons, as you’d expect…”

  “Do you really think all of them together could take down one pirate?”

  “Possibly,” Ky said. “At the least, they might make a pirate die laughing.”

  “You’re actually thinking of signing them on?”

  “Not necessarily.” From the data they’d sent, she couldn’t tell if it was a joke or a serious offer. “I will talk to their commander. Apparently he’s filthy rich and organized this bunch all by himself. That alone makes me suspicious, but on the other hand, Vatta used to have dozens of ships and we weren’t pirates.”

  “No, and you weren’t dressed up like stage performers and pretending to be pirate hunters, either.”

  “I’m just going to talk to them, Hugh. Promise.”

  “Well, be careful. You’re taking security, right?”

  “Of course.”

  Their commander was as handsome as his screen image, though his coloring reminded Ky unpleasantly of Gretna. But Theodore Albert Driscoll Ransome was as cheerful and open as the Gretnans had been dour and sly. Tall, his shock of honey-colored hair flopping over one side of his forehead, he moved as flamboyantly as he spoke.

  “Captain Vatta! In reality as I live! What an honor to meet the hero of Sabine!” He flung out an arm and bowed low.

  Ky had to think hard to figure out what he meant; Sabine was many crises back in her personal accounting. “Oh, that,” she said finally.

  “Your modesty becomes you, but I insist, it is an honor to meet you at last.” He gave a half shrug, and his captain’s cape swirled out dramatically. “Together, we shall do wonders; together we shall free the universe of this scourge of pirates.”

  Together, Ky thought, they could sound like a primary school play.

  “We have a long way to go,” she said. It sounded flat after the man’s flowery language, but she couldn’t match his tone even if she’d wanted to. “Are you prepared to stay the distance?”

  “Oh, death and glory by all means,” he said, grinning. “Trumpets shall sound and if we fall maidens will throw roses on our graves—”

  “If we fail, those maidens will be dead or slaves,” Ky said. “This is not an operetta.”

  He blinked. “Well…of course. I understand that. It’s only…there’s no harm in…in seeing ourselves as heroes, don’t you think?”

  “There’s no harm in it as long as it doesn’t affect performance,” Ky said.

  “Oh, no danger there. No danger at all. My people are more efficient in pursuit of honor than anything else. I chose them for that.”

  Could anything so handsome, so decorative, so…so enthusiastic…possibly be useful? Ky wondered. Behind her, Martin stirred; she knew without asking what he was thinking of this…popinjay would probably be the kindest term he’d come up with.

  “Tell me something about your experience,” Ky said.

  He smiled broadly and settled himself on the edge of his seat, like a dragonfly about to take off again any moment. “It all started with Grumnos. You won’t know Grumnos. It’s a moon of one of our gas giants in my home system, and about a century ago the prisoners—it’d been used as convict exile—overthrew the guards and wardens, stole some supply ships, and began preying on commerce in our system. It was more of a nuisance at first—they’d just hold up a ship for ransom, or steal some food, and the government decided that putting it down would cost too much.” He gave a dramatic shrug.

  “But then it got worse, as rascals always do if you don’t nip them in the bud, and about five years ago some of us decided to take care of it ourselves. My friend André and I bought a couple of ships—my Glorious and his Triumphant—hired some mercs for crew, and by the time we were done…well…” he dusted his hands. “No more pirates on Grumnos. And it was a ripping good sport, hunting pirates, we decided. André and I set up the Rangers and invited our friends to fit out their own ships and join us. Our government agreed to pay us a bounty for every pirate ship destroyed. For a while, we had very few outland pirates—I imagine they heard about us…” He smirked; Ky wanted to laugh but didn’t. “But then some nasty types showed up, first one and then two. We fought them off, not without casualties. Poor André was killed when a beam took his ship, but I am assured he would have had time to feel nothing, not that fear ever touched that noble heart. But then…then it was I heard about the vast pirate horde assailing distant systems, and it seemed to me the best way to protect my own was to meet them there, at a distance, and with allies whose courage and honor matched our own. I believe you, my lady—Captain Vatta—are such an ally, one I would be proud to die with—”

  “I would rather they die,” Ky said. “But I thank you for the compliment.”

  “Our ships are small, but our hearts are great,” he went on, gesturing magnificently; Ky still could not think of anything but the more melodramatic stage productions. “You and I together—against the foe!” He looked at her then as if he expected applause for the rhetoric and delivery.

  Would he and his ships be any use at all? Surely some use—even if only as scouts or messengers—but what a risk if he proved not to be honest.

  “I’m somewhat concerned about the lightness of your ordnance,” Ky said. “We expect to be up against groups of the enemy. When you and…er…André fought the pirates, were you using multiship tactics, or…?”

  “Well, we did read about standard tactics, of course,” Ransome said. His voice sounded calmer now, as if—having delivered his set speeches—he was actually capable of normal conversation. “But as you say, our ships are small—what some space navies called escort size, as you noticed. We don’t mount as much ordnance as the standard tactics called for, so we pretty much had to make it up. Our speed’s an advantage, and our smaller size means we can do microjumps in and out of FTL closer to large masses than bigger ships. I’ve installed the best available navigational computers, and our drives—insystem and FTL both—are top of the line, of course.”

  “I’m sure,” Ky said. She wasn’t, not until she’d seen the specs. Top of the line in one system might be mediocre in another. “How did you see your contribution to our organization?” she asked.

  “Oh, we don’t expect to be part of the regular fleet,” he said. “We’re more suited to independent action, I would think. Can’t expect my people t
o knuckle under to an outsider, y’know.”

  That didn’t sound good. “You would need to train with us to be much use,” Ky said. “Wouldn’t want to be running into each other, fouling each other’s shots, that sort of thing.”

  “Quite,” he said. “I do understand that. I was thinking, size of our ships and all, we could be useful as couriers, as scouts, and in cutting-out expeditions.” That was a term Ky had never seen applied to space warfare. The rest was along the lines she’d already thought of.

  “Tell you what,” she said. “You need to meet my other captains, and I need to meet some more of your people. What you’re offering sounds very generous, but you know how it is—people are either going to get along, or not.”

  “How about a dinner?” he asked. “Or a party?”

  “I think we captains should meet first. A quiet dinner, perhaps.”

  “That would be great…I could host…no, you probably want something on neutral ground, don’t you?”

  “Adelaide Station has several good restaurants in the standard-gravity sections, and there’s always the Captains’ Guild,” Ky said. “We can reserve a private room—”

  “Splendid! I’ll tell my fellows. This evening, or is that too soon?”

  “Let me check with Captain Argelos and Captain Pettygrew,” Ky said. “If their schedules allow, this evening would be fine.”

  CHAPTER

  TEN

  Ransome’s fellow captains—introduced by Ransome as Dennis Malachi Quartermaine St. Cyrien commanding the Furious and Allan Desmond Joachim Baskerville commanding the Courageous and—were cut from the same cloth as Ransome, though not quite as flamboyant. All three showed up in formal uniforms, the captains’ capes of silk that gave them a fine flair as they moved. They, too, had wealthy families, which came as no surprise. Ky felt old and staid beside them; Argelos and Pettygrew looked like she felt.

  “You should’ve seen him at school,” said St. Cyrien. “I remember when we were taking that history class—he took it into his head to learn the fighting styles of every period—”