Marque and Reprisal

by Elizabeth Moon

When he brought in a tray for her, he said, “Quincy said to remind you about that package, the one that came while you were out. She put it in your cabin; did you see it?”

  “No,” Ky said. Hunger beat curiosity for the moment. “I’ll look at it after I eat.” She worked her way through a bowl of Lee’s spicy meat-and-vegetable concoction, then went down the passage and retrieved the package. She recognized MacRobert’s handwriting. Probably another spaceship model, and what would this one have as a little surprise? She took a bite of the custard Lee had brought for dessert before she put her thumb on the integral scanner. The top layer of wrapping opened along a flat seam and rolled back. Underneath was another layer of wrapping.

  She opened that and found a thick padded folder with the seal of the Slotter Key Diplomatic Service embossed on it instead of the box of model spaceship parts she expected.

  “What’s that?” Lee asked.

  “I have no idea,” Ky said, running her fingers over the seal. She opened it. Behind a clear plastic protective cover lay a document with the State Seal at the top, and blocks of dense printing. She started reading. What—? It couldn’t be what it looked like. She put it down and rummaged in the depths of the package. An envelope, with a letter from MacRobert.

  “No, this isn’t another spaceship model,” the letter began:

  Your family said you’d show up at Lastway eventually, so this was sent by hand to a trusted local agent. Trouble’s brewing. Don’t know how bad it is, but there’s things you need to know. First off, Spaceforce is only a small part of Slotter Key’s space defense. The other part is contracted out to private concerns—what you’d call privateers. Your actions at Sabine show that you have, as I always thought, the right mix of attitude and ability.

  So, fine, MacRobert suspected she was a killer at heart . . . then her mind really registered privateer. “Pirates in traders’ clothing,” as one of her instructors had called them . . . Was MacRobert trolling through the cadets at Spaceforce Academy, looking for potential pirates?

  “You always were a bit too independent for Spaceforce,” the letter continued:

  That fancy folder from the diplomatic service is a letter of marque, authorizing you to act on behalf of Slotter Key to do harm to our enemies, to attack and seize ships and cargo. At your discretion, and using your own best judgment. You’re supposed to keep the letter handy to show when called for. You’ll notice that it could be mounted on your bulkhead with the handy bracket on the back of the frame. It’s not worth the antique materials it’s written on when it comes to stopping return fire and it’s recognized as a legitimate charter or commission only in the jurisdictions listed at the bottom. Be sure to read that, or you could get interned in a very boring jail somewhere. You won’t be able to do much in that little tub, so I suggest you get yourself a better ship as soon as you can.

  In the meantime, be sure you order galley supplies from Buchert Brothers and specify the following under “odor barriers”: MASKEM 315–2337, six units. Someone will call and ask if that is the correct code, and you’ll say yes. When the delivery arrives, be sure to open that container in a secure location. You’ll recognize the contents. Right now that’s all the help we can give you.

  You’ll want to know who Slotter Key’s enemies are . . . I can’t tell you that right now. We know something’s wrong at ISC, more than what happened at Sabine, and there are other indications that something big is coming. Use your best judgment. The Commandant sends his respects.

  Ky looked back at the letter. In archaic and complicated language, it authorized her, Kylara Evangeline Dominique Vatta, to seek out and impede, harrass, annoy, frustrate, confiscate, attack, and destroy any and all enemies of Slotter Key wheresoever she might find them, in space or in dock, by any means whatsoever that lay within her power, and further instructed officers of Slotter Key, diplomatic, military, and “affiliated,” whatever that was, to assist her in these endeavors.

  Along with stunned astonishment, she was aware of feelings she could not entirely approve. Excitement. Anticipation. Glee.

  “It’s . . . interesting,” she said to Lee, after a long breath. Should she tell him? Why not, after all. In the unlikely event she ever used it, she’d need a pilot. “Our government wants me to turn pirate.”

  “What?”

  “Privateer, actually. This—” She tapped the padded folder. “—is a letter of marque. We studied this kind of thing in school; I had no idea anyone actually did this. Now, not centuries ago somewhere else. It’s . . . license to do just about anything.”

  “To anyone . . . ?”

  “No, to the enemies of Slotter Key, which this other letter states they can’t identify at the moment. It must’ve been sent—” She looked again at the letter and its date. “Yes. Before the attacks on Vatta started, and before we became persona non grata to the Slotter Key government. Which may make this null and void, though I don’t know . . .”

  “Only if they formally rescind it, I’d think,” Lee said. “Not that I’m an expert, either, but surely they’d have to give you notice.”

  “And they can’t,” Ky said. “Because their ansible’s blocked.”

  To her surprise, Lee looked more excited than afraid. “We aren’t exactly privateer material, though, are we? Did they send you money for a better ship?”

  “Not unless it’s hidden in the deodorant I’m supposed to order from a grocer. Why—do you like the idea?”

  He didn’t answer that directly, but asked, “So . . . are you going to do it?”

  Her earlier objections to turning pirate came to mind, but—what choice did she have now?

  “I’m going to see what’s in the deodorant, anyway,” Ky said. “For the rest, I don’t know.”

  “If we had the right ship, it could be fun,” Lee said. Then, at her look, he pulled his face into a frown. “Difficult and dangerous, I know. Not fun in the usual sense, but—more fun than just driving a tradeship back and forth.”

  “You were wasted in commercial shipping,” Ky said.

  “You, too, Captain.”

  “I don’t know . . . not being shot at for weeks at a time is beginning to look better and better.”

  Lee shook his head. “You’d get tired of it.”

  “Maybe. Sheryl and Alene and Ted wouldn’t. They hate the excitement, as you call it.”

  “Maybe they’ll find another ship. If any ship is safe.”

  She looked up Buchert Brothers in the directory. “Restaurant and ship supply, variety and quality at a reasonable price.” That’s what they all said. The list of products looked normal: bulk and packaged staples, brand-name and “private-label” goods, everything from cleaning supplies to “fresh tank-grown fish, alive until harvested.” She compared prices with two other suppliers—about the same. A quick look at their supply situation . . . she entered an order for cleaning supplies, protein powder in five-kilogram containers, a dozen sets of assorted processor flavors, a set of oven trays, and the specified “odor barriers.”

  A few hours later, uncrating the order in the cargo hold, Ky found herself staring at a shape she knew very well. Here was the other—and more expensive—version of the mines she had put a hold on. Smaller, a little lighter, these contained the most sophisticated electronic attack available. Properly set and delivered, they could disable an entire ship’s systems without causing significant structural damage. An excellent choice for piracy—privateering—and she now had six of them.

  “My, my, my,” Martin said. “Someone likes you.”

  “They did, but I think they don’t now,” Ky said.

  “Care to explain?”

  “A letter of marque,” Ky said. “The package came while we were otherwise occupied, though at the moment I can’t recall if it was the puppy or the assassins. Anyway, it was signed and authorized well before the attacks on Vatta, and before the government chose to ignore us.”

  “Very handy,” Martin said.

  Ky closed the crate again. “Put this
where we can get at it quickly,” she told Alene. “We’re going to need it once we’re back out there.”

  “What is it?” Alene asked.

  “Something I’ll tell you all about once we’re in a secure location,” Ky said. Six mines. And she had fifteen with conventional explosives on hold at MilMart. As soon as she had enough money in the account, she’d put a deposit on them.

  CHAPTER

  NINE

  Toby Randolph Lee Vatta slouched on the hard bunk in the cell. He hadn’t done anything wrong, but here he was in jail. Without any way to communicate to the family, and no explanation why he couldn’t call them.

  “Here you are,” one of the guards said. “Lunchtime.” This was the nicest one, Toby thought. He looked like he’d be a good older brother or father or something. For someone who wasn’t a prisoner.

  “Thanks,” Toby said, as the guard put the tray on the table.

  The guard cocked his head. “You aren’t hungry again?”

  “Not really . . .”

  “Thinking about your family?”

  “Yes.” How could he not? Ellis Fabery, blown up in dock, with casualties in the thousands because it had taken out a whole sector. Half the crew was Vatta-born, from captain to cargomaster. And Toby hadn’t been aboard to be killed, because he had been rewarded for his spit-clean record the first six months of his apprentice voyage. His cousin Dex, the captain, had let him off the ship to run a simple errand. Take this message over to the bank, bring back the return message, don’t dawdle on the way, act like a grown-up. So he’d been four sectors away, cooling his heels in the bank manager’s waiting room, when the ship blew and the chair shuddered beneath him, and all the intersection seals locked down. When his implant had stabbed him with the burst of static. Sole survivor, so far as they knew. Underaged. Potential target of assassins.

  “Nobody likes jail,” the guard said. He sat down on the other end of Toby’s bunk. “But it’s for your own safety.”

  They had explained that before, as if he was too stupid to understand the first time. He understood. He just could not figure out a way to deal with it. In all his life he had never been alone among strangers, completely separated from his family or friends.

  “I know you’re doing your best,” Toby said. Always be polite to strangers; always be polite to law enforcement. “I just . . . I just don’t get hungry.” He smiled. “I’m not exercising enough, I guess.”

  “You’re losing weight,” the guard said. “We don’t want you to fade away by the time some family show up.”

  “They’re coming?” Toby asked. Hope surged; his heart pounded.

  “I’m sure they will,” the guard said.

  “But you don’t know . . .”

  “No.” The guard sighed. “Look, son. Communications are down everywhere. We sent word; we don’t know if it got through before the ansibles quit working. ISC will fix them eventually, and then someone will come. We just don’t know when. Allray’s a little off the main lines.”

  Allray had seemed exotic once. Allray Station had a live display of its indigenous life-forms, the smaller ones. Toby had seen the online pictures; he wanted to see a hextan and a hexbear in real life. Dex had promised him a free afternoon, if all went well, and Anders, in Engineering, had promised to take him to Allray’s open market as well as the life-forms display.

  Now all he saw of Allray was this cell and the rooms visible from it. He had a vid setup, and the guards brought him entertainment cubes, but they wouldn’t give him a live outside data line. There were only so many hours of the day he could stand to watch episodes of Lang’s Gang, Beyond the Law, Ghost Ships . . . He’d never noticed before, but now every explosion, battle, and fight reminded him of his loss. He didn’t complain. What else was there to do? He’d asked about student programs, hoping to bury himself in math homework problems, but it turned out that he was several levels beyond the highest they kept onstation. His big sister Erin had always told him he was too smart for his own good, but he hadn’t imagined the result of racing through his schoolwork would be boredom in a jail cell when he’d done nothing wrong.

  “Forensic’s through with their . . . with the . . . uh . . . remains,” the guard said. “Do you have . . . do you know . . . what they’d want?”

  He hadn’t ever thought, in his darkest adolescent humors, that he’d have to arrange the funerals of his family and other shipmates. The lump in his throat was too big; he couldn’t speak. He shook his head.

  “You don’t have any religion or anything?”

  The family altar, back home, and the deities he’d been taught to name, now seemed as meaningless as a plastic cube. What good had it done Cousin Dex to adhere to the standards of ethics? What good had it done Hallie and Prin and Veeah to observe the Days of Silence? They were dead, dead for no reason but malice, and no god they prayed to had kept them safe. He could not explain this to the guard, however friendly. He shrugged, instead, blinking back tears.

  “I guess we can keep ’em in the freezer awhile longer,” the man said. He sighed, heavily, and stood up. “Son, you’re going to have to talk sometime, to someone. Are you sure there’s nothing more we can do to help? We’re not your enemies, you know.”

  “I know,” Toby said. His voice rasped; it wanted to shake, and only by sounding angry could he control it at all.

  The guard left. The smell of food permeated the cell; it made him sick, yet his hunger gnawed at him. Could he eat any of it? Two bites of bread, and he wanted to throw up. He lay back on the bunk, covering his face with his arm. When the guard came back to remove the tray, Toby had curled to face the wall, with the blanket pulled over his head.

  Stella Maria Celeste Vatta Constantin looked around Allray with wary interest. Thanks to the mess that had made her the laughingstock of the family and the bad example held up to youngsters, she had never taken the usual apprentice voyage offplanet. She had traveled, of course, but when she was older, and always with a mission in view. Allray might have looked exotic when she was fourteen, but not now she was thirty. It looked scuffed and tawdry instead; she was too old to mistake scuffed and tawdry for exotic. Traveling under her married name, as she was, she raised no comment in the Customs line. It was one of the things she enjoyed about traveling: no one associated the given name Stella with idiot stupid enough to give family access codes to her first lover.

  The captain of the ISC courier had given her the bad news about Ellis Fabery as soon as they downjumped into Allray space, but he had no details. Stella’s own implant did not have a complete crew list; the Ellis had changed out crew at the beginning of the standard year, and the old list would not be accurate.

  She made her way to the station police. They would surely know who had been killed on the ship.

  “You’re a relative?” the desk clerk said. Stella smiled.

  “I need to speak to the officer in charge,” she said. “I carry credentials from the family, permission to arrange for disposition of remains.”

  “But what about the boy?”

  “Boy?”

  “The kid—someone needs to take him.”

  “I was not informed of any boy,” Stella said, rummaging rapidly through her implant’s file of Vatta younglings. Apprentice age . . . Keth? Preston? Toby? Gio? “How old is he?”

  “He’s fourteen. The only one left. Toby, he says his name is. I guess, if you’re the family’s representative, you’ll have to take him.”

  All she needed was a fourteen-year-old boy tagging along on this mission. She couldn’t say that, though, not to a desk clerk.

  “Your officer in charge?” she said again.

  “Ah. Right. I’ll get him.”

  The shape under the blanket looked too small to be a fourteen-year-old.

  “He hasn’t been eating well,” the guard said. Stella glanced at the tray, which looked untouched, cold, and unappetizing.

  “I can see that.”

  “We’ve tried—I’ve tried myself—but he won�
�t open up at all.”

  And no wonder, Stella thought. “Toby,” she said softly. “Toby, wake up.”

  The blanket twitched, then stilled. “Toby,” Stella said again. “Time to go . . .”

  The blanket twitched, then he poked out a thin face, eyes dangerously intense. “Who . . . who are you?”

  “Stella Constantin. I’ve come to settle things here. You can come with me.”

  Suspicion hardened his expression. “How’d I know you’re not one of them?”

  “She’s not, lad. We checked,” the guard said. But Toby’s eyes never left hers.

  Stella sighed. “Toby, did you ever hear of Stavros’ idiot daughter Stella, the idiot who gave the family codes to her lover?”

  His brows went up. “You’re—?”

  “That Stella, yes. But even I didn’t stay an idiot forever. Let’s get you out of here, shall we?”

  He unrolled the blanket and sat up unsteadily. “I—I don’t feel well.”

  “You haven’t eaten enough to keep a mouse alive, is what I hear—and what that tray looks like. Don’t faint on me, Toby; we don’t have time for that.”

  “Ma’am,” the guard said, in a worried voice.

  “You can eat the roll,” Stella said, ignoring the guard. “Here—” She broke it in half, spread jam on it, and handed it to Toby. “Eat it.”

  He stared at her for a moment, then took the roll and bit into it.

  “Toby, I want to get you off this station before someone finds both of us. I have taken care of everything else—” She saw his jaw stop moving as he took that in, and then resume chewing. “I have your personal belongings, and I brought you something to wear other than jail garb or Vatta uniform. You’ll travel as my son.”

  “I—you aren’t old enough!”

  “I will look old enough, don’t worry. Finish that roll, and another.” She turned to the guard. “Can you get us a couple of hot sandwiches, maybe?”

  “Of course,” he said.

  When he was gone, Toby said, “Where are we going?”

  Stella raised her brows. He had not said Where are you taking me . . . he was starting to engage. Promising. “I don’t want to tell you here,” she said. “These people have done a good thing in protecting you, but I’m not sure their records are as secure as they think.”