Trading in Danger

by Elizabeth Moon

  Ky leaned forward. “Quincy . . . please. Don’t blame yourself. It was not your fault. You’ve been a wonderful resource, and of course I trust you. But if you want to go back, I’ll understand . . .”

  Quincy blinked back her tears and managed a shaky grin. “I thought I did . . . I really thought I did. I’ve never served with anyone who’s . . . who’s killed someone. At least that I knew about. It was . . . awful. Your face, when you came back to the bridge. But you know, Ky—and I’m calling you Ky in the person of that grandmother—I’ve decided I’d rather stick with you and find out what you’re going to do next. For one thing, I’d miss my shipmates, all of whom want to stay with you except Li, who says she’d rather go somewhere with Furman, if he’ll take her.”

  Ky’s throat closed; she swallowed the lump of emotion, and nodded. “Thank you . . . thank you, Grandma Quincy.”

  “And another thing . . . you’ve been through a lot—we all have, but you more, because of the injury. You haven’t been able to take it easy, as I’m sure you were advised to do by the medical people. Right?”

  “Yes . . .”

  “So I’m telling you, as the resident grandma, to start taking it easier. Yes, we have repairs to make, a cargo to load, a contract to fulfill. But I want to see you taking regular sleep shifts of adequate length, eating the proper foods, exercising, and letting your now-enlarged crew do its work. Clear?”

  “Yes, Grandma,” Ky said.

  “And expect emotional fallout . . . You’ve been holding yourself together, which we all needed. What you need now is a chance to let go. Don’t fight it too hard or too long.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Ky said again.

  “End of Grandma’s lecture,” Quincy said. She took a deep breath. “Good heavens, I can’t believe I’ve just been so dramatic. Now, Captain, Beeah has a list of suppliers and prices. I can review them for you, and let you rest, or you can review them, whichever. Keeping in mind the advice I just gave you . . .”

  “Quincy, I’d like you to review suppliers, prices, and our needs, and make it all come in under budget. Somehow. We’ll also need to resupply the galley—” At the look on Quincy’s face, Ky laughed. “All right, all right, Grandma already knows what to do with an egg. I’m going to go send that message to Captain Furman’s messenger, then take your advice and get more sleep. In fact, I may sleep until first shift tomorrow.”

  “Yes, Captain,” Quincy said.

  Sending the message took only moments; Ky didn’t wait for a reply, but went back to her cabin, stripped off her clothes, and fell into the bed without even updating her log. She woke slowly, rising gradually through layers of thought and memory and finally opened her eyes to see that she had, in fact, slept through the rest of second and all of third shift. She stretched, feeling a little stiff but really rested for the first time in . . . well, since she’d come back to the ship the day the ansibles were attacked.

  She rolled out of her bunk, showered, dressed, and came out into the corridor where the smell of cooking food drew her to the galley. Garlan was cooking breakfast.

  “Captain—you’re up.”

  “Finally,” Ky said. “You must have wondered if I’d sleep forever.”

  “You look better. What do you want for breakfast?”

  “Whatever that is—make some more of it. It smells like exactly what I want.”

  “Sure. Eggs and sausage, easy enough.”

  Ky ate a full plate of eggs, sausage, potatoes, a slice of fresh melon—she wondered what that had done to the budget—and considered her schedule. She still had to get that machinery back to the station and aboard, locate the parts, have them installed, find out how to get the right ship chip installed in the beacon, get Li transferred to the Katrine Lamont, see if ISC had any bandwidth for commercial messages yet so that she could let Belinta know their tractors were, in fact, coming . . . oh, and the mail from home. With the clarity of a full night’s sleep, she remembered that she was not supposed to put in an implant without a neuro evaluation, with the recommendation that it not be done for six months, so she didn’t have to decide right away whether or not to put in the implant her father had sent.

  When she came onto the bridge, Lee nodded to her. “Quincy’s put a stack of things on your deskcomp; you’ll need to sign off on the orders. Looks good, Captain; she found a supplier for everything we need. There’s not a current opening in any of the good refitting yards, but she says we can install the sealed unit ourselves. Insystem drive’s fuel price is up, but not impossibly high. She says everyone’s being cooperative, so we should hurry up and get out before they change their attitude.”

  “Good,” Ky said. She opened her desk. Sealed unit for FTL, yes. New liner to replace the old cavitation-damaged one. Replacement for communications transmitter. Upgrade for scan—upgrade for scan? She hadn’t asked for that . . . but she would like it if they could afford it. Beacon repair. Replacement ship chip . . . unavailable.

  The explanation made sense, though it was a pain. Under UCC regulations, no two ships could have the same identifier chip. Glennys Jones’ original chip couldn’t be turned in for a new chip, because it was somewhere in space, probably still in Paison’s pocket. Never mind that no one was going to find that chip . . . it had not been turned in, so a chip identifying the ship as Glennys Jones could not be issued, even with a replacement registration number. The Universal Commercial Code had very strict requirements; Slotter Key and Sabine Prime were both signatories to the agreements. The ship would have to be reregistered—most easily as out of Sabine Prime, with some difficulty out of Slotter Key, if the Slotter Key embassy would cooperate.

  All Vatta ships carried Slotter Key registry. Ky put in a call to the Slotter Key embassy, but it was nighttime there, and it would be hours before the consul saw it. And what would she do if he refused her request? What if Captain Furman got to him first?

  And what should she name the ship instead? Certainly not Mist Harbor. Finding a unique ship name wasn’t easy; the first eight or ten she tried in the database came up with the notation “unavailable: in service.” Was it even worth registering a ship that was going to be scrapped anyway?

  But it was not going to be scrapped anyway. And finally she thought of a name that no one would have used yet, a name she wanted to honor. She called Quincy on the intercom.

  “What?” Her chief engineer was clearly busy and not in the mood to chat.

  “We need a new ship name. What about the Gary Tobai?”

  A long silence. Then Quincy said, “That would do. Yeah. He’d like that.”

  Ky entered it in the database, and as she expected found no match. She put a reserve tag on it with a three-day permit—surely she’d hear in three days, and she could renew the hold if she had to.

  Two hours into day shift for the Slotter Key embassy—and well into second shift for Ky—she heard from the consul. “I hear you lost one of those people we sent you,” he said.

  “He disobeyed orders and did something stupid,” Ky said.

  “Why am I not surprised—the young blond one, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, you need to fill out some forms for us. The embassy has to report all injuries and deaths of Slotter Key citizens for the D & A report. I’ll have those sent up to you. What about funeral arrangements?”

  “He didn’t have anything on file with us, but one of the others told me he was a Modulan, so I thought we’d combine his service with the one for one of the other crew.”

  “Sounds good. I’ll notify the family that services were held . . . what date?”

  Ky looked at the calendar and answered in terms of the local calendar.

  “You’ll be in attendance?”

  “Of course.”

  “Good. I’ll tell them services were held with the captain in attendance. Remains?”

  “I have no idea. I was unconscious and in surgery at the time the remains were disposed of.”

  “Good enough. The rest of the fo
rms are coming up shortly. Now, what else?”

  “I have to reregister the ship,” Ky said. “Vatta ships all carry Slotter Key registry. Can we do that?”

  “We could,” he said, “if your senior captain in system, Captain Furman, hadn’t told me that your ship was up for scrap and Vatta would not sanction an offworld licensing fee.”

  “And how much would that be?” Ky asked.

  “You’re not going to like the answer,” he said.

  “Which is . . . ?”

  “It’s not worth it, really. Two hundred fifty thousand credits for a ship of that mass. You can get a perfectly viable Sabine registration for one hundred thousand—it’d be fifty thousand if you were a Sabine citizen. We charge that much for out-of-system registration just to discourage people . . .”

  Ky found her jaw on the floor and yanked it back up with an effort. “Two hundred fifty thousand for a ship chip and a piece of paper?”

  “And the honor of the Slotter Key government. Yes. I said it wasn’t worth it.”

  “It’s ridiculous. It’s outrageous.”

  “Yes, it is. But it’s what I have on my list, so it’s what I have to do. So let me know what you want . . .”

  Ky had no idea what reputation Sabine Prime ships had in the universe; she’d already discovered that Slotter Key might be a liability. Still, Slotter Key was her planet and her government and she felt uneasy about changing the registration to something else.

  The money problem still existed. She had the money for the sealed unit, for the fuel, for resupply of the galley, but she didn’t have a spare 100,000 credits, let alone 250,000, for the new license. Another thought occurred, almost as unsettling. She called up the Sabine registration database.

  Sure enough, to register the ship under the Sabine flag, it would have to undergo a full inspection and pass as sound. She called up those criteria for the ship’s size. As she’d expected the ship would not pass Sabine’s very stringent safety inspection, even with all repairs in place. She’d need to install a new communications system, new scans, a more powerful beacon . . . and the combined cost of these quickly surged past the cost of a Slotter Key registration. Slotter Key, on the other hand, required no inspection for offworld registrants.

  Ky scrubbed at her head with both hands. Back to square one, again. Money. It was always about the money.

  Back in her cabin, she noticed the stack of mail she’d laid aside the day before. She left Hal’s for last, hoping the hammering of her heart would slow before she got to it. Please, she thought, please let it be good. Aunt Grace wanted to know if she’d eaten the fruitcakes yet, and advised her to cut small, even slices if serving them to friends. Ky thought of the last fruitcake, now in the galley storage, and shook her head. It would be a long, long time before she cut into that one. She could still taste her share of the first two. Cousin Stella sent a brief note of condolence and the advice to “stick it out; everything passes.” MacRobert’s note advised her of a source for “equivalent model kits and replacement parts, of higher quality than that found in most toy stores.” Her eyebrows went up at that. She still wasn’t sure what Mac intended when he gave her a ship model with communications parts in it. Bond Tailoring had sent notice of a sale, now long past; she wondered why it had been forwarded until she saw her mother’s notation alongside one of the illustrated dresses: “It suits and they still have your measurements.”

  And now for Hal. The envelope enclosed some kind of box; she could see its outline. Had he sent a present? Her spirits rose; he had understood, he was still her friend, and maybe . . . She ripped open the envelope and tipped out a little brown-leather-covered box she recognized. Her heart stuttered. It couldn’t be . . . She opened it, half-hopeful and half-afraid. A heavy gold ring, the Academy class ring, its crest battered and scarred, almost unrecognizable. Someone had attacked it with a chisel. She plucked it from its slot and looked at the inscription. Kylara Evangeline Vatta, with a line gouged through it.

  Her vision blurred. He’d sent it back. He’d sent it back defaced.

  She clamped her jaw shut on the scream that wanted to come out; her stomach churned; she felt cold and sick and empty all at once. Memory threw up a vivid image of the day they’d exchanged their class rings, the day the rings had been handed out. It wasn’t like engagement rings; it had nothing to do with marriage—though, buried deep, she’d had a hope that marriage might come to them someday. It was about trust and honor, not money or sex, a ritual begun, their seniors had told them, before Slotter Key even had a Space Academy, transferred in by those who founded it. Few cadets exchanged class rings, but she and Hal had been so sure of each other, so sure of their abilities, so sure of their friendship . . .

  He had stood there, hazel eyes looking into hers. “It would be an honor, Cadet Vatta, to exchange this token with you—” He had asked; she had wanted to but waited, not willing to pressure him.

  “And it would be an honor for me,” she had said. Formally they had linked arms, and formally passed the boxes hand to hand, and she had considered herself the custodian of his honor as he was of hers. For all that the Academy did not list numerical rank, there were ways of knowing who was at the top, and they both knew they stood number one and number two, and had—sometimes alternating those positions—since their first year. She had taken it seriously, as she took everything seriously . . .

  And he had sent her ring back defaced, scarred, even her name scratched across. She did not need the letter to tell her what he now thought of her.

  Her hands were shaking. She dropped the ring onto her bunk and unfolded the letter that had come with the box. However bad it was, she had to read it. She had to know why, how he had come to hate her so much. She had understood he might have to cut all ties, never contact her again—she had not imagined that he would turn on her like this.

  “Ms. Vatta,” the letter began. Hot tears stung her eyes; she blinked them away, trying not to remember the sound of his voice calling her “Ky” and “Kylara” and once—just once—”Kylara-beshi.” The letter was . . . even worse than she could have imagined from seeing the ring. She had almost ruined his career, he said. Because he had trusted her, because he had believed her lies—”I never lied to you!” Ky burst out loud. “How could you—!” The cabin’s hard surfaces threw the sound back at her. She clamped her lips again and kept her eyes on the letter, reading every word, every word that stabbed her with unfair, untrue accusations. Disloyalty. Dishonesty. Deliberate attempts to sabotage not only his career, but the honor of the service. She had seen him angry before; she knew just how his face would harden, how the muscles along his jaw would swell, the veins throb . . . It was all too easy to see him writing this letter, nostrils flaring, breath coming fast. Hal’s outrage built, from the first cold, formal sentences following the salutation, through a series of increasingly angry dissections of every mistake she had made in the Academy, to a furious conclusion that accused her of seducing Mandy Rocher, an innocent youngster who would never have gotten in trouble if it had not been for her influence.

  She let the letter fall from her hand when she had read that last sentence instructing her not to attempt a reply; she felt strangely detached, a vast cold gulf inside her that had once been a warm friendship she’d believed would last forever. How could it disappear so completely, how could he change that much that fast? Had it ever been real, then? Probably not. Nothing real could change that fast, surely. He had liked her when they were the best of their year, because liking her enhanced him. But what she had felt—that warm attraction, that love—he had not felt.

  Every error of judgment she’d made about people rose up in memory . . . Time after time she had believed that someone needed help, or was friendly, and time after time . . . She fell from shock into a depthless black hole of misery.

  She was a fool, and so were those who had misidentified her problem. It wasn’t the lost puppies, the seemingly helpless whom she’d tried to help, who caused her the most trouble.
No, it was those who seemed sound and solid, the ones she had trusted because anyone would, the ones she’d considered allies, not victims. She hadn’t had rescue fantasies about Hal, or Paison. Anyone might have believed they were what they appeared. Yet Paison’s apparent goodwill and common sense had been as false as Hal’s apparent admiration and affection.

  People had died because of her naÏve stupid faith in someone not worth it. Slowly, anger seeped in to replace the shock and horror of Hal’s attack. Anger at those who had failed her, lied to her, fooled her. Anger at herself for believing them.

  She had told herself not to make that mistake again when she’d quit crying about missing her own birthday party. And—whatever her family said, however they had misunderstood her motives on other occasions—she had learned. When she looked at her own motives, case by case, she had barged in to help others only about as often as anyone decent did. Mostly she’d been asked to help because—with the family’s certainty that “helping others” was her favorite role, she was the one they turned to.

  That had to stop. If nothing else came out of Hal’s betrayal, she must somehow convince people—her family, others, herself—that she was who she was, and not who they thought she was.

  When she finally fell asleep, hours later, something new and hard had replaced both the cold emptiness and the hot anger.