The next morning, the day of Gary Tobai’s funeral, Ky awoke calm, surprising even herself.
The entire crew attended the funeral service; to Ky’s surprise, the consul also showed up, just as Ky pressed the button that signaled the start of their service.
“My duty,” he said. “You’re looking a bit peaked, Captain. Have you heard anything official from Vatta yet?”
“The ansibles aren’t repaired yet, are they?”
“Not yet, but we expect them up in a few days. Of course, I keep saying that, echoing ISC . . . just another few days now. But I’ll speak with you after the service.”
The service itself was properly Modulan, restrained and cozy at the same time. The recorded voice that read from the Book of Changes and paused for their responses had exactly the right blend of sincerity and calm. Ky eyed her crew; nobody burst into tears, nobody looked angry or otherwise upset. The graceful harmonies of Modulan funeral music concluded the service, and then they had ten minutes to socialize before they had to leave the chapel. Ky didn’t know what she felt. Her mind shied away from considering her feelings about Hal, and avoiding those feelings kept her safely remote from the ones about Gary or Skeldon. She concentrated on seeing that everyone else was taken care of. The consul had nothing more to say, really, and left before their time was up. When the warning light blinked, she ushered them all out, where they stood in the corridor as the mourners for the next funeral arrived.
“I know what we should do,” Beeah said. “We should go eat something onstation.”
“Where?” asked Lee.
“There’s this place—Tiny’s. Not expensive, close by. Unless the captain wants us back on the ship right away?” He looked at Ky. She had no more desire than the rest of them to go back aboard right now.
“No—you’re right—let’s go eat or something.” She hadn’t been on the station except in transit to and from the ship and the shuttle lounge, but Beeah would know where to go. “Lead the way,” she said.
Tiny’s Place was packed with spacers, civilian and mercenary. Ky flinched from the noise level, but it dropped noticeably when her crew came in. She wasn’t sure if that was a good sign or a bad sign. Two tables in the left back corner were empty and she headed for them. When the crew had settled in, Ky looked at the order display. Prices were listed in Sabine centas and universal credits—no longer one hundred centas to the credit; the Sabine currency was shaky, she realized. She’d been paid in credits; they could afford to eat just about anything they wanted.
“Get what you want,” she said. “It’s on me.” They nodded. Ky pressed the display to indicate all charges on one check, and added the table number of the other table as well. She looked at the menu, mostly shellfish or fish and vegetables in various combinations. Sabine’s brackish swamps produced tons of bayhopper and jitterlegs, genetically modified crayfish, the cheapest protein source on the planet. Ky chose a bayhopper goulash and hoped for the best. Her crew followed suit; nobody ventured to order the outrageously expensive cattlope grill.
It still felt odd to be here, in a place like Tiny’s—so obviously a spaceport dive. How many times in her life had she been in a dive? Only the once, tagging along with older cousins and scared she’d be reported to her parents. She looked around, and saw no other captains; she was glad she had folded her captain’s cape into its carrying pouch. There were men and women in shipsuits, casual station clothes, and—in the far corner—uniforms. Mackensee uniforms. She looked away. She wasn’t going to think about the Colonel’s offer, not now.
Their orders had been delivered, and she was just tasting her bayhopper goulash—quite good—when someone bumped hard into her chair. “You! What you doin’ in our place?”
Ky swallowed the lump of bayhopper and twisted her neck to look at the person behind her. “What—?” she started to ask when he grabbed her arm.
“Yer in our place—them’s our tables—dint they tell yer?” A group of large, rough-looking individuals now stood around her end of the table. Behind them, Ky saw the furtive movement of others slipping away, toward the door.
“No one mentioned,” Ky said. “But there are other empty tables.”
“Don’t want other tables. This’s ours, and that’n, too.”
The anger she’d been suppressing edged up her throat and into her voice. “Too bad,” she heard herself say. “We’re here for a funeral dinner, and that’s what we’re going to have. Sit someplace else.”
“You stupid bitch!” The man behind her yanked her chair back with her in it, and grabbed the front of her uniform, lifting her upright. She could smell the liquor on his breath; this wasn’t the first bar he’d visited that shift. “You think because you’re a damned officer you can come in and give orders to people who aren’t even your own crew—” His huge fist was drawn back, ready to pulp her face.
The anger surged through her, banishing any fear. Before he finished the speech she had slammed one hand into his throat, ducked away from the possible blow, and in the same movement put a knee where it could do the most good. He gasped, lost his grip, and she hit the floor, balanced and ready to spring back into action. She had wanted to hit someone for so long—a second man tried to grab her from behind; she rolled with the pull, cracking his shin with a heel and breaking another’s nose on the way past, just on spec.
“Ky, be care—” Quincy’s voice, now chopped off as the men tried to keep her crew from helping her. Ky reached over someone’s shoulder for a bowl of hot bayhopper goulash and flung it in the face of the man who had just pulled a knife, parrying his suddenly blind stab with the dish itself. She heard and felt her crew scrambling to get out of their chairs, heard the gasps and grunts and curses as the fight spread. As she’d discovered in contact games, she could be aware of the whole tangle of motion and for once she didn’t have to stick to any rules . . . She punched, rolled, kicked, spun, each time enjoying the solid thwack as her strike hit home. Some of her crew—Beeah not surprisingly, and Lee, and Quincy—turned out to be good at this, too. The others dove beneath the table.
The man who’d first grabbed her was back in play now, swinging one of the chairs—steel and plastic, not a storycube prop. Ky grabbed one for herself, and they clashed the legs, glaring at each other. If only she had a spear or something—no that was fictional. Then he pulled out something that looked like a cleaver on steroids. Where had he hidden that from station security? It whined through the air, and a leg of her chair hung from a ragged edge. Whatever it was would cut steel . . . He grinned.
“You’ll pay for that,” he said.
“I doubt it,” Ky said. She had no idea what to do to counter his attack, but she wasn’t going to go down without a fight.
At that moment, six bodies in military uniform entered the fray as a unit, just in Ky’s peripheral vision on the right.
“Advance,” said a dry voice that Ky almost recognized.
The man lunged at her again, his weapon slashing at another of the chair legs. Ky squatted quickly, trying to come up inside its arc, but his weight overthrew her; she was flat on the floor, the legs of his chair caging her head for an instant, until he lost his balance and fell sideways, weapon arm outstretched.
Ky rolled toward him and got a hand on his wrist, but he was taller and heavier. She tried to tuck and kick him in the gut, but the chair got in the way. He leered at her, and started to roll up . . . when a booted foot landed hard on his hand.
“Let go,” said the voice.
“Go—” the man said, an anatomically impossible suggestion.
The tip of a very sharp blade came into view, beside the boot, resting on the skin of his hand. “You can let go, or I can cut your hand off your blade finger by finger,” the voice said. “Your choice.”
His hand loosened; someone reached down and removed the weapon, but the blade menacing his fingers never quivered.
“Captain Vatta,” the voice said. Ky looked up. She knew that face. Master Sergeant Pitt.
&n
bsp; “Need a hand up?” Pitt asked.
“No, thanks,” Ky said. She scrambled up, put the damaged chair back where it had come from, and looked around for her crew. The fight was over. Six men lay or sat on the floor, some unconscious and some merely stunned; some of her crew were up, breathing hard, and two were still under the table.
“Sorry to interrupt your meal,” Pitt said, “but the dinner conversation seemed to be turning general.” Her eyes twinkled. Ky could not help grinning back.
“It wasn’t our plan,” she said. “We’d just had a funeral . . .”
“I heard,” Pitt said. “I’d have come if I could. We missed it by fifteen minutes. He was a good man.”
“He was indeed,” Ky said. Suddenly her bruises hurt, her head ached, and she wanted very much to sit down and go to sleep. Not much was left of their meal; the table looked as if someone had wallowed on it and maybe someone had.
Pitt looked down at the man who had attacked Ky. “You’re off Marie, aren’t you?” she said. He spat in the direction of her boot but didn’t answer. “Not a good choice,” Pitt said. “Marie crew are supposed to be aboard, waiting for interrogation . . . I think we’ll do a little interrogation on my ship.” She looked at one of the other soldiers. “Jem—call the ship and get them to send a squad.”
More quickly than Ky would have imagined, a squad showed up to shackle the attackers and take them away. Pitt shook her head at the departing brawlers. “Not very good at it, that bunch. Nasty for someone with no training, but you, at least, knew what you were doing. Come on, let’s finish that funeral dinner. Charge the damage to Marie—I’ll back you on the damage report.”
Ky wasn’t sure she could eat anything but the bayhopper goulash was just as good the second time around, and the raw whiskey Pitt encouraged her to sip took the ache out of her body.
“You know, Captain, you’re really wasted on a merchanter,” Pitt said quietly. Ky wasn’t sure how she’d ended up sitting next to Pitt, between her and another mercenary. “I know, the Colonel said you have some kind of promise thing you have to do first, but . . . you belong with people like us, really, not with people like them—” Her gaze settled on the ones who had dived under the table.
“Not their fault,” Ky said. “They haven’t had the training.” Her blood warmed to the praise, though, and she felt again both the glee and the guilt as the fight replayed in her mind. Pitt, she realized, would not condemn her for what she’d felt when she killed Paison and his mate.
“True but . . . here’s something I don’t say often, and won’t say again. There’s some born to it, Captain, and you’re one of ’em. I don’t know what happened to get you out of that training, but you’re someone I’d be glad to serve with. And I can’t say more than that.”
“Thanks,” Ky said. She was aware of a floating disconnect between her brain and body, and hoped she wasn’t drunk. Very drunk.
“Cup of black coffee and a good big dessert will cure what ails you,” Pitt said. “We’ll just sit here and talk about nothing much, how’s that?” And for the next hour, Pitt told stories of the Mackensee Military Assistance Corporation, every one of which made Ky homesick for a community she hadn’t had yet. Ky could tell when the alcohol had mostly left her system; she blinked and the lights didn’t flicker. She thanked Pitt and led her crew back to the ship.
And she stared at the battered circle that had been her class ring and felt nothing but vague anger.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
“FTL sealed unit’s in,” Quincy reported. “Custom Parts had an Ames & Handon 4311b in stock, and that’s better than the one we took out. I’ve checked all the calibration; it looks slick.”
“What’s the damage?” Ky asked.
“Only ten percent higher than before we left, and it’s higher quality. You want it, right?”
“Right,” Ky said. She watched the figures Quincy sent come up on her deskcomp. “And the liner?”
“Got that, too,” Quincy said, with a hint of smugness. “How’s the relicensing coming along?”
“Paperwork and money,” Ky said. She had her deskcomp set to display the falling balance in their accounts . . . amazing how fast a lot of money could disappear. She not only had to pay for the registration and the custom ship chip, but for the database search which ensured that no one else had used the name Gary Tobai for a ship. She had to appear in person to take possession of the new ship chip for the beacon, and then spend a sweaty and uncomfortable half hour getting the beacon unit out, seating the new chip, and replacing the unit in its cramped space. A whole new beacon would have cost another 100,000 credits.
Meanwhile, she fended off suggestions from Captain Furman—more like orders than suggestions—that she allow him to audit her books, inspect her ship, check out her financial arrangments with the Sabine branch of Crown & Spears, make arrangements to have the ship scrapped . . .
“For the last time, no,” Ky said, hanging onto her temper by the merest fingernail. “I am not selling the ship for scrap here. I have a contract to deliver cargo to Belinta, and that’s where I’m going.” And you can’t stop me didn’t quite come out of her mouth.
“But your father—”
“Isn’t here. Doesn’t need to be here. And if he were here, he’d understand my position.”
“He’d understand Vatta Transport’s position. Damn it, Apprentice—”
Her temper snapped. “I’m not an apprentice, Captain Furman. I’m a captain the same as you are. Get that through your fat stupid head, once and for all—”
“You little—!”
She turned off the comunit, shocked at herself—had she really said that to Furman, senior captain of the Vatta fleet? It felt good; it shouldn’t feel good. At least he couldn’t ping her skullphone since she didn’t have an implant. She had the last word.
“How fast can we leave?” she asked Lee, who happened to be on the bridge just then.
“I’ll check, Captain,” he said. In a few moments, Quincy appeared on the bridge.
“You want to leave soon?” Quincy asked.
“Yes,” Ky said. “As soon as we can.”
“Get us clearance, and we’re out of here, ma’am. FTL’s in, all cavitation damage replaced, cargo loaded and balanced, inspace drive refueled, supplies aboard. Unless there’s some niggly paperwork holding us here—”
“There won’t be for long,” Ky said, feeling a wicked delight bubbling up inside her. They would be on their way, and Furman, she had no doubt, would be stuck where he was until it pleased ISC to let him depart. She called the stationmaster, and in less than two hours they had their clearance for departure. She declined a tug, and in another seventeen minutes forty-two seconds the Gary Tobai eased out of its docking bay, maneuvered carefully free of the station and all nearspace traffic, and set a course for the designated jump point.
The ship moved as ponderously as ever; she hadn’t had the money to upgrade the insystem drive. But it was her ship again, with no strangers aboard, no one giving her orders. On the communications board, messages from Furman stacked up—she could see the mounting numbers with their origin codes—but she didn’t care. He couldn’t actually do anything, not without getting permission from the ISC, and right now she had ISC on her side.
As for the military ships, they stayed in tight orbit around both planets. Her new scan showed ships out where the ansibles had been . . . ISC rebuilding its empire, no doubt.
They could stay there till they rotted, all of them, Sabines, mercenaries, ISC, and all, for all she cared. She was free of that. She grinned to herself. She stayed close to the bridge for the first couple of days, then turned it over to the pilots and navigator. If she was going to be a captain—the kind of captain she wanted to be—she needed to trust her people. And she needed to know a lot of things she still didn’t know, things a captain needed to know.
Without really thinking about it, she fell into a routine similar to that in the Academy, beginning every main shift with a
n hour of physical conditioning, and taking another exercise period midway through second shift. She had to be fit; she had to be ready for anything.
On the ninth day, they reached the jump point, and she was back on the bridge for endim transition. The ship barely shivered as the new FTL drive flung them into indetermination; all the telltales stabilized at once in the correct configuration. Quincy was on the bridge as well, running calibration estimates—a first run with a new drive always involved some tinkering and tweaking—but from the grin on her old face, all was going well.
As he’d requested, Gerard Vatta had a ping from the watch station as soon as the Sabine ansibles were back up. He beat Stavros to the communications center by a scant minute; he had just made the connection to the Sabine orbital station when he saw Stavros round the corner. His brother came to the boards and picked up his own headset link.
“This is Gerard Vatta,” he said to the com tech on the station. “Patch me through to the Vatta ship Glennys Jones, please.”
“No such ship is docked at the station,” the technician said. “A ship formerly known as the Glennys Jones, but reregistered under the Slotter Key flag as the Gary Tobai was docked here but is no longer here and is outside our range. It may already have left the system.”
The Gary Tobai . . . Ky would have named the ship for Gary only if Gary had died . . . and if Gary had died . . . he had died trying to save her. Gerry squeezed his eyes shut and offered a brief prayer, promising more later.
“The Katrine Lamont, then,” he said, hoping Furman was still in the system.
“Very good, sir,” the tech said.
“Katrine Lamont receiving call from Vatta HQ, Slotter Key,” the communications officer aboard the ship said, quite properly.
“This is Gerard Vatta; patch me through to Captain Furman.”
“Sir, it’s—it’s third watch . . .”
“And this is an interstellar call, priority. Wake him up.”
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