“Haul ’em all,” Ky said. “Somewhere in there might be a clue to what exactly is going on.”
Ship chatter rose around them as the Lastway ISC operation opened the equivalent of vast ears and tongue and began responding to everyone. Evidently Vatta messages hadn’t been the only ones sequestered.
“Hailing Vatta ship Gary Tobai,” came from Tendel on Lacewing. “What happened to the ansible? We’ve got a mass of backfile messages.”
“Seems to be working better,” Ky said. “That’s all I know. We picked up eight blocks ourselves.”
“Coincidence bothers me, Captain Vatta.” Tendel’s narrow scarred face tightened. “I prefer no coincidences.”
“Seems a good one, to me,” Ky said. “We leave, things get better. Might mean less trouble ahead.”
“And maybe I don’t need convoy protection.”
“Maybe not. But you signed a contract.”
“So I did. Well, people always said trading with a Vatta you had to watch your credit balance. I wonder if this is happening everywhere or just here?”
“Time will tell,” Ky said.
Ten minutes. Twenty. Ky forced herself not to pace back and forth.
The secure line blinked again. She picked it up. “Yes?”
“Team’s out safely, including your man. Genius with the com stuff, our fellas say. Everyone’s on course; the squad’ll be picked up by our courier.”
Ky went to tell Stella that Rafe was safe. She took along the eight blocks of back messages; some were sure to be proprietary information, and she couldn’t ask anyone else on the ship to go through them.
“How are they sorted?” Stella asked.
“By date, I think,” Ky said. “I haven’t really looked yet, but isn’t that how backfiles are usually organized?”
“We can hope,” Stella said. “Have a spare reader?”
“Use this one,” Ky said, nodding to her desk. “We can isolate it from the rest of the ship.”
“Oh. Of course.” Stella loaded the first cube. “Mmm. I haven’t done the dating conversions yet, but I think this is from before the trouble started, which would mean the ISC manager here was fiddling with Vatta data in preparation . . . let me see . . .” She pointed to the screen. “Just the kind of routine notice Vatta HQ sends—sent—every five days to all ports. Corporate news update: no hint of trouble.”
Ky looked at the bulletin, its format familiar to her for years, the linked VT in blue and red, the summary of tons shipped, percent on-time deliveries, percent expedited-shipment bonuses earned, lists of retirements, promotions, new assignments. Her own name leapt out at her: the change in ship name from Glynnis Jones to Gary Tobai as the result of “uncontrolled conditions,” the successful delivery to Belinta, and her promotion from contingent captain to list captain. Had it been her status as contingent captain that had convinced Furman he could order her around in the Sabine mess?
“Successful delivery at Belinta: it must’ve been posted just as I arrived, because trouble started shortly after that. I got a ping from my ship about trouble, and was on an ansible uplink to Vatta headquarters when I lost the connection. That’s when things got really interesting, because a team of assassins came into the Captains’ Guild—”
“You didn’t tell me this before!” Stella said, wide-eyed.
“And we’ve had how much time to chat?” Ky said. “Anyway . . . it’ll be in my log, the universal date. Let me check.” She pulled out the notebook. “Here—”
“You keep a paper log?”
“Yeah. Anyway, it’s . . . 13.34.75. What’s the date on that message?”
“It’s 13.32.75. Where would you have been then?”
Ky paged back. “Unloading cargo, Belinta Station. After that I went downplanet hunting cargo; we were headed for Leonora but had another several cubic meters of space. I was trying to come up with enough to finance a refit of the ship; she’d been destined for scrap, originally, but the hull is sound and I thought maybe I could save it.”
“I don’t have a paper log,” Stella went on. “It’s in my implant.” She tapped her head. “Universal time, also 13.34. Odd, really. Even with ansible transmission, how did they set up almost simultaneous attacks light-years apart? Unless they used all local talent . . . ship schedules just aren’t that precise.”
“We had a course on interstellar terrorism,” Ky said. “A large enough organization, with enough financial support, and enough lead time . . . and we don’t know how many planned attacks didn’t go off on schedule, because the ansibles went down.”
“Did all ansible traffic at Belinta go down when you were cut off?”
“No. At least, no one said anything. The Slotter Key consul on Belinta told me the Slotter Key ansibles were down, but when we left, Belinta’s seemed to be working fine. It was such a low-traffic system I’m not sure anyone would’ve noticed.”
“Did you call out on it?”
“No, I didn’t. I figured the bad guys knew exactly where we were, and we should get into space, go somewhere else, try to outflank them.”
“I still can’t figure out why anyone would want to do it,” Stella said. “Okay, attack the monopoly, I can see that, but why disrupt all communications? Why not just display the ability and bargain from there?”
“If we knew that, we might know why Vatta was chosen as another target,” Ky said. “Did those ISC couriers tell you that ISC ships were being hit?”
“No—but then they didn’t tell me much. Not even the route we were taking.”
“Which suggests to me they were worried about attack,” Ky said. “I hope Rafe can pry more information out of the local ansible before we clear space. Something about all this just doesn’t make sense. Why Vatta? We’re—we were—important on Slotter Key, and we’re a major shipper, but we’re not the only major shipper, and Pavrati hasn’t been hit that we know of.”
“But we are, after the Sabine thing, known as a friend of ISC,” Stella said. “Even before that, corporately, we’ve supported them in discussions with other shippers. And our unarmed ships travel on scheduled routes, making them easier to find than ISC couriers, which don’t.”
“Point.” Ky rubbed her face. “So if I hadn’t been so prominent at Sabine . . . if I hadn’t been so obviously in tight with ISC . . . maybe none of this would have happened.”
Stella touched her arm. “Ky, I don’t think it’s your fault. No one back home even hinted it was your fault.”
“They didn’t have time, did they?” Ky said.
“A few could have, but they didn’t. You can’t blame yourself . . .”
“Oh, yes, I can,” Ky said. “I certainly can—and I do, in part. I know it’s not all my fault, but I didn’t make things better. Hindsight’s no good if you don’t use it.”
“I just don’t want you taking all the responsibility—”
“Not all. Just some. A mistake I don’t intend to make again.” Though how she was to avoid it, she had no idea. Wars are won by those who make the fewest mistakes, one of her instructors had insisted.
Stella looked at her with an odd expression. “Ky . . . is that coming out of your military training, or have you really changed that much?”
“Changed?”
“Well . . . I don’t want to insult you or anything, but back when you were a kid—before you went off to the Academy—I thought of you as kind of a dreamy, impractical sort. You’d come out of it to do something hopelessly romantic, like champion some natural-born loser . . . we were always hearing about your lost pups.”
Ky felt her neck getting hot. “Hard to lose a family identity even when it doesn’t fit,” she said. “You should know about that.”
Stella’s face hardened. “True enough. But you were different.”
“Was I?” Ky turned away. “They even had me convinced that I was too softhearted and softheaded. If everyone tells you . . . what did they tell you, Stella, that led you to that first mess?”
Stella’s eyes widen
ed in shock, then she looked thoughtful. “I suppose . . . everyone always made a big thing out of how pretty I was. Jo was the smart one, Benji and Tak were the strong athletic ones, and I was . . . Oh look at Stella, isn’t she adorable and Good grief, Stefan, you’ll have to use a cannon to keep the boys off her. I couldn’t outscore Jo—she’s—she was—brilliant, and I never wanted to outsweat Benji and Tak.” She paused. “So . . . are you telling me you aren’t softhearted and an easy mark for stray pups? When we have a literal stray pup on this very ship?”
Ky snorted. “Puddles isn’t my fault. Oh, I suppose I could’ve let the locals kill the beast, but they annoyed me.”
“You saved the dog to spite the Garda?” Stella said, brows arched.
“More or less, yes. And it might prove useful yet. The vet’s assistant said this breed makes good watchdogs.”
“I suppose, if you have foot-tall assassins, it might be of some use,” Stella said. “But otherwise?”
Was this the time to confess to a family member her self-discovery at the moment of killing Paison? No. Stella would be spooked, and she needed Stella’s support . . .“I’m not just an idealistic nice girl,” Ky said. Her voice sounded rough to her own ears. “Any more than you’re just a sexy pushover for handsome men.”
“Thank you for that,” Stella said, in a voice that could have been expressing either anger or amusement. “So we’re both renegades, are we? The surviving senior family members, barring Aunt Gracie, who is a renegade in her own way?”
“I suspect,” Ky said, her good humor restored, “that Vattas have always harbored a fair number of renegades. Do we even know how our great-great-great-grandfather obtained his first ship?”
“I do,” said Stella. “It’s in my secured files. And I’m afraid you’re right—he was not entirely respectable.” She shrugged.
“Was he a privateer?” Ky asked.
“Privateer? Maybe. Definitely a raider of some kind, at least for a while. Why?”
“Remember that letter of marque? I was thinking maybe it runs in the family.”
“But you didn’t ask for it; you aren’t using it.”
“Yet,” Ky said, as she got up to leave. Stella stared.
Down in Engineering, Ky found Quincy hunched over a screen, reading through the installation instructions again. Toby sat on the deck, with Puddles upside down in his lap; the pup looked ridiculous, kicking one stubby leg as the boy stroked his belly. Jim, across the compartment, leaned on an upright, scowling.
“How’s it going?” Ky asked.
“It would be going fine if that idiot dog hadn’t eaten a corner out of one of the cartons so we didn’t have all the connectors . . . we spent hours hunting and we’re still missing one. I think I can cobble something together. I hope.” Quincy gave the pup a poisonous look; Toby hunched over it protectively.
“You aren’t going to space it, are you, Captain?” Toby asked.
“No, of course not,” Ky said. “But we probably need to confine it somehow out of the way.”
“Not in a shipping carton,” Quincy said. “It eats them. And then throws up.”
“I told you—” Jim began, but Quincy silenced him with a gesture.
“Jim thinks if we give the pup the run of the ship, it will learn where everything is and be less trouble,” she said. “I think it would be disastrous. As with that carton. I can just imagine us arriving someplace—wherever we’re going—and finding that our salable cargo has been converted into dog messes.”
“Dogs can be . . . er . . . trained, can’t they?” Ky asked. Her family had never kept dogs. Cats, horses, birds, and some of the small arboreal creatures, mingas, but not dogs. She’d had friends with dogs, and those dogs didn’t seem to be much trouble. They made their messes outside. Of course, here outside was a hostile environment. “Didn’t we pick up some supplies from the vet?”
“And a book on training,” Jim said, nodding. “They can be trained to use a box or something. But it takes time.”
“You’ve trained a dog?” Ky asked.
“Not myself, but I’ve watched an uncle.”
Ky was about to say It’s your dog; you found it when she glanced again at Toby. The look he gave her said more than words. “Toby,” she said instead. “You’re caught up on your classwork, aren’t you?”
“Yes, Captain.”
“Quincy, how many hours a day do you need Toby’s help?”
Quincy pursed her lips. “Right now? Not at all, really . . . systems are all green, and the rest of this setup is software alignment. Why?”
“Because I need him to do something else. Toby, that pup’s your responsibility: I want you to keep it out of trouble, train it, take care of him. I know Jim found it—” She glanced at Jim. “—but, Toby, you’ve had a dog before, and Jim has other duties. If you need help, ask for it, but primarily I want this to be your job. Is that fair?”
His face lit from within for the first time since he’d come aboard. “Yes, Captain! I—I’ll make sure he’s not in the way.”
“I’m sure you’ll take care of him,” Ky said. She felt a pang of guilt. The boy had been through horrendous stresses, and she’d spent how much time making sure he was doing all right? Next to none. “I hope he turns out to be a good little watchdog for our dock area, on stations where dogs are allowed. Be sure to keep me informed how he’s coming along.”
“Captain, could I change his name?”
“His name?”
“Puddles just isn’t . . . a good name for him.”
“What would you name him?”
Toby glanced at Quincy. “How about Rascal?”
“Sounds good to me,” Ky said. “Now get Rascal out from under Quincy’s feet so she can get on with her work.”
“Yes, ma’am.” The boy scrambled up, all ungainly legs it seemed, and headed for his cabin with Rascal—now awake and wiggling wildly—in his grip.
When he was out of sight, Quincy cocked her head at Ky. “That was well done, Captain. Annoying as I find that animal, he’ll be good for Toby.”
“And you won’t be distracted while finishing the installation,” Ky said.
“I certainly hope not,” Quincy said.
CHAPTER
SEVENTEEN
The convoy moved out on a slow arc. No incoming ships had been detected for days, but Mackensee had still advised a careful approach to the jump points. “If there’s trouble, that’s where it will be,” Johannson said. “Ships going for a jump point are usually at max delta vee; they can’t maneuver, and they offer an easy shot. What you want to do is go in slow, in formation, looking tough and preserving your ability to maneuver.” Behind them, another ship left Lastway, but on a vector that gave no concern; it looked to be headed for a different jump point.
Stella, working through the accumulated messages, found that the Lastway ISC manager had been holding up Vatta messages there—or some Vatta messages at least—since the last scheduled Vatta departure, some eight standard months before.
“If any Vatta ship had come through, they’d have been told there was nothing pending,” Stella told Ky. They were working in Ky’s cabin, and the remnants of a hasty meal were stacked on the end of the worktable. “You should have had all this when you arrived. Most of it’s not that important: updates on prices, margins, that kind of thing. The five-day bulletins I’ve put into the database for pattern analysis. Nothing’s shown up yet. I can’t figure out what good it would do to keep a Vatta ship at Lastway out of the Vatta loop, though. When were you originally supposed to arrive at Lastway? Did you have scheduled deliveries?”
“No, nothing with a late penalty, but we did have a tentative schedule. Let me see . . .” Ky called it up. “That’s interesting—we were originally scheduled to reach Lastway a day or so before the attacks on Vatta started.”
“So you’d have been there, incommunicado, rather than on a live ansible hookup to Slotter Key. Easy meat—no warning. I wonder if they specifically sucked off Vatta m
essages at the other stations where Vatta was hit?”
“Still doesn’t tell us why Vatta was a target,” Ky said.
“No, but it’s clear the plot was laid before you even went to Sabine,” Stella pointed out. “Then they had to rush assassins to Belinta, or find local talent, before you got back.” She sat back. “What would you have done, Ky, if you’d come out in Belinta local space and been told of the attacks? Would you have docked at Belinta?”
“I don’t know,” Ky said. “I never thought of that . . . I might have docked at their station, to complete delivery, but I wouldn’t have gone onplanet.”
“They must have been frantic,” Stella said. “Scrambling to adjust to your movements, knowing that you were the most dangerous Vatta to leave alive . . .”
“Me?” Ky had not considered she might be considered a special threat.
“You. Of course. Not just your military training, and your relationship to your father, but what you’d shown you could do at Sabine. Now . . . I would wager some of Aunt Grace’s diamonds that you are well above their threat recognition level.”
Ky felt a surge of satisfaction. “I hope so,” she said. “Let them worry.” It was ridiculous, in a way. She still had only the one small, slow, unarmed ship; Mackensee would desert her as soon as they had instructions from their headquarters; the other traders in the convoy were her putative allies only so long as they had Mackensee protection. Even so, imagining an enemy being afraid of her felt good.
“And now that you’re officially a privateer, that’s even more reason for them to worry.”
Ky looked at Stella, startled. “I’m not really. You know that.”
“Remember what the mercs told you?” Stella’s perfect brows arched. “Possession of the letter, whether you use it or not, constitutes presumption of intent.”
“But our enemies won’t know about that,” Ky said. “Will they? And I don’t see that it makes much difference. For all the license the letter gives me to cause mayhem, there’s not much mayhem I can cause with this ship. I’m sure they know about this ship.” She pushed aside the existence of those mines in the cargo holds. “For now, I’m just a trader captain; I’m not ready to hunt anyone down.”
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