Trading in Danger

by Elizabeth Moon

  “I could, but then if something happens to me—and it already has—you’re in trouble. Besides, if they are up to something, how hard would it be for them to get a voice pattern off me? They may already have one.” Ky shook her head. “No, we need a better way to check the integrity of the system. If you think of anything let me know. Otherwise, keep very close watch. I don’t actually expect trouble this shift—if Kristoffson does something, I think it’ll be in the next day or so, not now. But I don’t want to be caught off guard.”

  If only they had weapons, real weapons. She asked Mehar to show her how to shoot the pistol bow. “We’ll start the easy way,” Mehar said, piling pillows behind her practice target. “I used to shoot down in the cargo hold, but this will do. Here—”

  It was absurdly easy; Mehar loaded the four-bolt reserve with the color-tipped practice bolts, put a bolt in the groove and pulled back the cocking lever before she handed it to Ky. “Point and click,” Mehar said. Ky pulled the trigger and the little bow went thip very quietly and across the compartment a bolt stood out of the target. Ky pulled the lever again, and shot again. That bolt buried itself in one of the pillows.

  “No recoil,” Ky said. “I compensated for something that wasn’t there.”

  “Again,” Mehar said. “Be sure the prod’s horizontal.”

  Ky shot again, and again, and when she had shot all five bolts, she looked at the pattern. Nothing to be proud of, at that distance, but four of the bolts were in the target. Mehar pulled them out.

  “I always load in the same color sequence,” Mehar said. “That way I can easily tell which one went where.”

  “What’s the maximum range on this thing?” Ky asked.

  “Depends if you want to puncture something or just kiss it. And of course what gravity you’re working in. For target shooting, twenty meters is about the limit. Outdoors, you can treat it like artillery—point it up in the air—and get somewhat more distance, but no accuracy. Pistol bows don’t have a lot of draw weight, so they can’t give much velocity.”

  “What I want to do is look dangerous,” Ky said. She hoped looking dangerous would be enough. She had reloaded, and now aimed and fired again, as fast as she could throw the cocking lever. “How was that?”

  “Pretty good. I might be a hair faster but not much. The best you can hope for with this one is a shot every couple of seconds. You can see why they aren’t military weapons for anything but very specialized uses. Slow rate of fire and lousy penetration.” Mehar grinned as Ky loaded and shot again. “You have a knack for this, Captain.”

  “Target practice with pistols,” Ky said. “This is more sensitive to tilt, though.”

  “Yes. At short ranges there’s more loft than with most firearms—that’s due to the slower speed of the bolt—so if you tilt it, it really goes off to the side. Some of us use an offset grip to help out on that, because the natural thing is to hold the hand slightly tilted. The long crossbows are easier to keep level because of the longer stock.”

  Ky looked at the weapon in her hand. “They just don’t look very dangerous,” Ky said. “And what we need is the appearance of danger, more than the danger itself.”

  “I dunno,” Mehar said. “A lot of people associate these with spy stories, where they’re usually carried by the bad guys and the bolts are always tipped with something poisonous or corrosive.” She pulled out another pack of bolts. “And these can kill, at close range. I use the marker-tips for shipboard practice, but I have the competition bolts with me.”

  Ky looked at the short, stout bolts and touched the conical steel tips. “Sharp enough. What will it go through?”

  “Not military armor, of course. I’ve never tried it on law-enforcement vests, so I don’t know—rumor says it depends on whether they use the kind that sense impact velocity or not. But it goes right through clothes. And of course skin.”

  “Wish it looked nastier,” Ky said. “My feeling is, these are too slow and we have too few of them to fight off an actual mutiny, but if we can startle or cow the instigators—”

  “Well, I do have a pack of broadpoints.” Mehar dug deeper into her kit. “Here.” She handed over the pack of bolts tipped with what looked to Ky like archaeological exhibits—jagged, many-pointed.

  “These look dangerous, all right,” Ky said. She touched the points lightly. “Did you ever use those, Mehar?”

  “Used to do a little pot-hunting back home.” Mehar shook her head. “Thing is, Captain, none of this has the stopping power of firearms, but pain has a stopping power of its own. Less, when someone’s really engaged in a fight, but if they’re still standing there making threats . . .”

  “I hope we don’t have to use them.”

  Nonetheless, she practiced until—down the longest length of a passage afforded—she could group the five marker bolts in the innermost ring of the target. It would have been fun to have something like this back on Corleigh when she was a kid, instead of the toy longbows that invariably got caught in the undergrowth of the tik plantations where she and her brothers had played. She could have sneaked up on them, left colored dots on their jackets.

  She pulled her mind back to the present. This was not a game. If she had to use the weapon, it would be for real. She hoped the presence of the mercenary ships—that obvious threat—would keep her passengers from trying anything.

  Ky glared at the scan screens. For tactical situations, she’d been taught, the basic scans were almost useless because of long and varying scan delays. Glennys Jones didn’t mount any of the equipment that would have let her keep track of where the warships were in anything approaching real time, nor did the ship have the advanced AI to integrate all the data and present a combined plot. It was reasonably good at noticing when things changed, and excellent in the things any cargo ship needed, such as micromillimeter accuracy when docking.

  How, she wondered, had the early space travelers ever managed to get from one planet to another in the same system?

  Sometime ago—she wasn’t even sure how long—one of the warships had been near Secundus and now (if her antiquated system had identified it correctly) it was near Prime. The other one was a long way away from either.

  “I’ll bet it was an ISC probe,” she heard Lee say. He and Zelda had been arguing over the temporary appearance of something small and distant, which Ky herself would ordinarily have considered a system glitch. She had seen it only on the recording, where it looked too small to be any kind of ship.

  On the fourth day, she had another message from the mercenaries.

  “Captain Vatta, we’re leaving the system for a few days. The situation is complex; we need to communicate with the ISC about the ansible destruction. We expect to be back in ample time to pick up the passengers on day ten—”

  “Leaving—” Ky’s stomach clenched. She had trusted them . . . she had depended on them, on the threat of their weaponry.

  “Yes. Just continue as you are; we will inform Vatta Transport and your passengers’ parent companies of your safety via ISC contacts once we’re in a system with functional ansibles. You’re not having any problems, are you? Everyone behaving? Environmental system coping?”

  “So far.” Should she tell them about her concerns? Or would that be seen as immature, weak, panicky?

  “Good. We expect to be back in just a few days, as I said . . .”

  A faint hissing interrupted; she knew what that meant. The warships were outbound fast, possibly already microjumping toward safe long-jump parameters. And expectations, in deep space travel, still outran performance . . . they might be back, or they might not, if they—and she—were unlucky.

  Still . . . they were in a relatively safe situation. If the mercs did not return, she could get her ship back to Sabine Prime, or close enough for Sabine’s emergency service ships to come remove the passengers.

  So . . . why did she feel as if someone had just poured a jug of ice water down her spine?

  Less than an hour later, Captain Luc
as called her from the passengers’ quarters. “We want to talk to you,” he said. “All us captains.”

  The ice-water trickle turned to a torrent. “What’s the problem?” she asked.

  “We know the mercs have left. Now’s our chance to get back to our ships, get on our way. You can take us back . . .”

  “No,” Ky said.

  “You didn’t know they’d left?”

  “I knew,” she said. “They’re coming back.”

  “I doubt it,” Lucas said. “They’ve probably stripped the cargo off our ships and made off with it, damned pirates that they are.”

  “They’re coming back,” Ky said. She wished she was entirely sure.

  “You don’t know that!” Kristoffson interrupted. “You can’t possibly be sure! You have an obligation to take care of us—moral and legal, under the Code. They aren’t here; they don’t have a gun pointed at you; you have no excuse for holding us against our will.”

  That might be true, technically, but Ky was not going to give in to Kristoffson. “You’re passengers in a time of war,” she said. “It’s your duty—”

  “Oh, stuff some figs!” Lucas said. In the corner of the screen, Paison’s mouth quirked. “It’s not a war if one of the armies runs away . . .”

  “And just how did you know the mercenaries had left?” Ky asked.

  They looked at each other first, then back at the vid pickup. “It’s our . . . er . . . implants,” said Jemin. He was not the one Ky expected to answer. Kristoffson glared at him, but Jemin didn’t wilt. “We could pick up signals . . .”

  If they could pick up scan signals, or communications signals, on their implants . . . they might be able to contact ships without her knowledge. Ky shivered, and hoped it hadn’t shown.

  “I can’t get you out of the system,” she said firmly. “Our FTL drive isn’t working. As for returning you to your ships, I don’t have enough fuel for the insystem drive to do that.” She did have enough to get them to Prime, but that did not fulfill her contract. Nor was Prime safe.

  Their voices clashed: disbelief, anger, determination to override her. Ky tapped the mike, and they quieted. “Believe it or not, as you choose,” she said. “But the fact is, I’m not jumping you out of this system because I can’t. And I’m not wasting what insystem fuel I have running around trying to take you all back to your ships. We’re just going to ride this out for the next five or six days until the mercs come back.”

  “You’re scared,” Kristoffson said. His voice dripped scorn. “You’re just too young, and too scared, to understand that this is our one opportunity . . . Whatever happens now, Vatta, it’s your fault.”

  The vid clicked off, from their end. Ky stared at the blank screen thoughtfully, then called Gary Tobai and explained the situation. “I don’t know the range and capabilities of their implants,” she said finally. “But we must—somehow—secure the ship’s control systems.”

  “Right,” he said. He sounded tired and grim both. “Quincy’s got all the engineering personnel on six-on, six-off; we’re doing our best, but—you know, from inside those cargo holds, they don’t have far to go to access the linkages with hardware, and that doesn’t even address wireless attacks from their implants.”

  “Yeah, I know. Do your best—and I know you already are.” Ky signed off, yawning. She’d had little enough sleep herself, in the past several days, and now she would get less. She should take a nap now, because whatever the other captains thought they would do, they probably wouldn’t do it yet . . . she hoped.

  That nap turned into several hours of deep sleep, from which she awoke to a faint vibration . . . the insystem drive. She surged out of her bed, yanking on her uniform, even as the alarm sounded in her cabin.

  “Captain!”

  “I’m awake—coming—” In the passage, Li and Garlan, both looking scared, stared at her. “Get Hospedin,” Ky snapped. “Drive’s on. I want it off.”

  On the bridge, Riel and Sheryl were busy at their boards. “Drive just came on, Captain,” Riel said over his shoulder. “Full boost. I can’t get it off.”

  “And I can’t get anywhere with the nav board,” Sheryl said.

  “I told Li to get Hospedin,” Ky said. “He’s a drives man; maybe he can get it off.”

  “What do you think—”

  “They got control somehow,” Ky said. “Got into the ship’s systems—probably one of the places Gary and Quincy were worried about.” And if they had control of the drives and navigation controls, they also could unlock the cargo holds . . . they could be anywhere on the ship. She flicked on the monitors that should show the holds. One was blank, not even flickering; the other showed a hold mostly empty, with a clot of bodies crowding the hatch to the maintenance passage.

  “Mehar,” Ky said into the intercom. “To the bridge on the double. Bring the stuff. Off-duty crew, to the bridge.” How had she been stupid enough not to keep one of the pistol bows in her cabin? Was it the injury or something else, that she kept missing things?

  “Here, Captain . . .” Mehar, breathless, held out the bow Ky had practiced with and kept the other. Ky looked; Mehar had already loaded the magazine with the broadpoints.

  “They’re in the maintenance passage,” Ky said. “I can’t see anything in the monitor for number two. But they’ve got the hatch open from number one. I’m sure they’re headed for the bridge . . . Ah, Quincy. There’s not much chance—” Any, actually, but it was worth trying. “—that we can reach the mercenaries now, but send a message—let someone know we’ve got a problem. Everyone else, defend the bridge. They can’t come at you all at once.”

  She had to go. She had to get down the passage before they got to the branch, where they could split up and come at her from more than one direction. “Garlan, Beeah—come with Mehar and me.” Down past the galley, locking the galley hatch after Garlan and Beeah had acquired cutlery, closing and locking the rec area’s secondary hatch.

  She heard them before she saw them, thanks to the curvature of the passage. Shuffling feet, muttering voices. Her heart pounded; she could feel the surge of excitement through her body as she had before hand-to-hand competitions at the Academy.

  And there they were. Five meters away, maybe four . . . she expected Kristoffson, and he was there . . . behind Paison and Paison’s mate, who had a prisoner . . . a hostage.

  Gary Tobai, his arms twisted behind him, the mate’s arm around Gary’s neck with a small but wicked knife laid to it.

  Surprise stopped her so fast that Garlan bumped into her from behind. Paison? He grinned at her surprise, clearly delighted.

  “It’s time to let more experienced officers take over,” he said in the same pleasant baritone, reasonable and smooth as chocolate custard.

  “You . . .” Ky heard herself say. She clamped her jaw once more.

  He shook his head. “You’re too young, my dear. Too easy . . . Jake and I knew exactly how to handle you. He can’t do fatherly . . .” Kristoffson grumbled something, and Paison shrugged. “Doesn’t matter. We have control of the drives, of the navigation settings, your communications . . .”

  She was aware of everything . . . the shine of their eyeballs, the sound of their breathing, the slight increased warmth from so many bodies jammed so close into the passage, the smell of their excitement. Paison, Paison’s mate, Kristoffson . . . not the other captains . . . no, there was Opunts, toward the back, looking just as expressionless as ever. Her gaze came back to those in front, and for the first time she met Gary Tobai’s eyes . . . gray, slightly faded . . . his expression strained. His mouth moved . . .

  “Let him go,” Ky said.

  “Hand us your captain’s wands,” Paison said. “Then we’ll see. You’re just bluffing—you don’t have the experience to handle this.”

  Paison’s mate had Gary for a shield. Paison’s mate had a knife to Gary’s throat, Gary’s own little black folding knife.

  Back at the Academy, they’d all seen the famous list of standard
things not to do in a crisis, taken from entertainment vids in which the plot depended on both hero and villain doing something stupid. Going out alone in the dark on a sudden hunch . . . walking into the dark alley instead of waiting for backup . . . dropping his weapon because his sidekick/sweetheart/child/parent was held by the bad guys who threatened the death of the hostage.

  It had seemed so obvious then, when “sucks to be you” meant the screen death of an actor, the death of a character in a book. So obvious that the sidekick who said “Go on!” or “Run!” or “Never mind me!” was also a hero, and the Hero with the capital H should acknowledge that and blow the bad guys away even if his friend/lover/child/parent died. Not waste the sacrifice.

  It was a lot less obvious when the face staring into hers was one she’d known for years, and very well since the start of this voyage. The man who was supposed to be taking care of her, the man she respected and . . . yes . . . loved. She had the pistol bow, yes, but . . . she wasn’t a storycube hero, she wasn’t even a soldier. She was just . . .

  “Don’t do it, Ky,” Gary said. “Don’t let them get the ship—” The mate’s arm tightened; she could see Gary struggling for breath.

  “Oh, my soul,” Paison said, “what thriller do you think you’re playing in, old man?” He rolled his eyes.

  Ky pulled the trigger at that instant of inattention; the saw-edged bolt buried itself in his throat. Paison jerked in reaction, then slumped; a burst of glee hot as lightning shot through her head. She saw the mate’s arm move, a red spurt from Gary’s neck. She yanked the cocking lever as the next bolt came up, frantic to get a shot off, to save Gary. The mate lunged; her shot missed his face; her next bounced off his chest as he dropped Gary and rushed her, knife extended. Ky twisted, recocked and shot again, at an awkward angle . . . he was only an arm’s reach away. The broadpoint sliced his throat from side to side, and bloody air whooshed out, spraying her. He slumped into the bulkhead, twitching. Ky pulled the cocking lever again. Only two bolts left . . .

  “Don’t move!” Ky yelled at the rest of the mutineers, and indeed they seemed frozen, eyes wide and mouths open in shock. Paison was dead or dying; she didn’t care about that, but Gary . . . his blood ran over the deck; the smell turned her stomach.