“You’re a trader with two hired warships,” Stella pointed out. “That takes you out of the just-a-trader class right there. You had your mercs go in and kill some crooked ISC employees, and even though that was done with ISC authorization via Rafe, it was still done by your orders.”
Put that way, the raid on the ISC office did sound like the sort of thing privateers were reputed to do.
“Legally, I’m not sure,” Stella went on. “If you hold this commission from Slotter Key, does that mean that anyone contracting with you—for military services anyway—is actually working for Slotter Key?”
Ky stared at her. “That can’t be right.” Dim memories of military law classes cluttered her mind. But they had never studied the legal ramifications of letters of marque, she was sure. “It’s not exactly a commission, anyway. They’re not paying me anything, and they’re not giving me specific orders. I can just trade if I want to . . .”
“But you don’t want to,” Stella said. “You want to protect and help family members, and you want to find out who attacked us, and you want to take them out. That’s what you said.”
“Yes . . .”
“I see conflicts of interest, Ky. Mind you, I’m completely in favor of rebuilding Vatta as a trading empire. Locating, helping, protecting our remaining family. Destruction to our enemies, all that. But when I consider this thing—” She nodded at the folder. “—I see problems you may not have considered. You have to decide whether you’re fighting for Vatta or Slotter Key, for instance.”
“Both,” Ky said. “The ISC thing affects both, surely.”
“It does now,” Stella agreed. “In the long run, though, those are two different interests, and you need to know which has priority. So do I.”
“You?”
“I am carrying your father’s implant, remember? The Vatta command dataset. If you consider the recovery of Vatta your first priority, then you are the right person to take possession of it. But if you rank Slotter Key’s interests above Vatta? Then I’m not sure.”
“I suppose you’re glad now that I haven’t put it in,” Ky said, astonishment and confusion putting an edge on her voice.
“Yes,” Stella said calmly. She sat back, folding her arms. “Until I knew about the letter of marque, I had no doubts. Now I do. My interest is entirely family, I assure you. I still believe, like Aunt Gracie, that you are the one person who can help Vatta survive, if it can be done at all. It will take all your ability, though, Ky. If Vatta is not your top priority, we’re doomed.”
“I saw this letter as giving me a better chance to save Vatta,” Ky said slowly. “Not a conflict of interest at all.”
“A tool?”
“Yes. I’ve always thought the interests of Vatta and Slotter Key ran together. Whatever I needed to do to help Vatta would in some way help Slotter Key.” Even as she said it, she realized how naïve it sounded. Certainly the government of Slotter Key had decided that its interests were separate from Vatta’s.
“For now, that may work,” Stella said. “Someday, though, those interests will be in conflict. You need to decide now which has priority, before you have to make that decision in a crisis.”
Quincy’s call to announce that the defensive suite installation was complete came as welcome interruption.
“You managed it without Toby’s help,” Ky said, half joking. Quincy didn’t laugh.
“The boy’s very smart,” she said. “Good with his hands, too. He was helping—it was that dratted dog. But yes, we’ve got it in. Whether or not it works . . .”
“I’ll tell our escort, and then we’ll test it,” Ky said. She called the bridge and had Lee contact Johannson.
“He says go ahead,” Lee said a few minutes later. “They’ll observe with their scans and let us know if it looks right from the outside.”
“Do the honors, Quincy,” Ky said. Quincy started the initiation sequence, and the defensive suite’s control board lit up, segment after segment showing green telltales.
“This over here is the active shield function,” Quincy said, pointing. “And this is the electronic countermeasures, here.”
“They say the shields are up and look good,” Lee reported from the bridge. “No gaps spotted, but they want me to roll her once to be sure they’ve scanned the entire hull.”
“Go ahead,” Ky said. “Can they tell anything about the ECM stuff?”
Another pause, then Lee said, “No, they say not without launching something at us, and they’d rather not.”
“I feel the same way,” Ky said. “We’ll have to take that part on trust, then. How about power consumption, Quincy?”
“Right on target,” Quincy said. “Our insystem has plenty of reserve power; it’s speed we can’t get out of her.”
“Good job, Quincy,” Ky said. “You and your crew should take a couple of shifts off, except for the usual.”
“Thanks, Captain, we’ll do that. This is a new one for me. Now, can I tell Martin to restow the cargo?”
“Yes—or rather, I’ll speak to him. I think we should keep access open to as much of this as possible, for repair in case of damage.”
“I thought the whole point of this was to prevent any damage,” Quincy said. “You aren’t planning to get into a space battle, are you?”
“Not if I can help it,” Ky said. “But dangerous times . . . it’s just a precaution.”
Martin and Alene had spent the time it took to install the defensive suite working out the most efficient way to restow the cargo. Ky looked at their figures, and agreed with Martin that the “odor barrier” crates should be readily accessible. She hoped they’d never need those mines, but if they did she wanted them easy to find and use.
Rafe returned to the ship shortly before the transition into FTL flight. Ky and Johannson had agreed that they should first check on an automated ansible in the next system over. The convoy captains accepted the course without comment, except to point out that there was no profit where there could be no trade. Mackensee personnel locked in the jump coordinates in the nav computers of all ships—someone could change it, but that would both break the contract and alert them that the ship was probably part of the conspiracy. Jump insertion went smoothly; they had planned a 13.2-hour jump to the neighborhood of the nearest automated ansible platform.
“I suppose you want me to check out the ansible itself?” Rafe asked. Ky nodded. “And how are you going to explain that one to the ship crews?”
“Your expertise in communications,” Ky said. “They know about some of that already.”
“Yes, but . . . last time it was just a simple file switch, or close enough they believed it was. This time, I have to get in there and muck with the hardware and the software. All of it proprietary, and how would even a renegade Vatta know that?”
“I’m sure you can come up with something,” Ky said.
He gave her a dark look, then shook his head. “You really are a piece of work, Ky—Captain. You should have been born into a pirate family, not a nice staid bunch of law-abiding traders.”
“As staid as the Dunbargers?” Ky asked.
“A hit, a palpable hit. All right, let’s see. After being booted out of the bosom of your family—our family—I managed to sucker ISC into hiring me for a time, then quit in disgust because they expected me to keep regular hours.” His face settled into a sullen expression that went perfectly with not wanting to work regular hours. “How’s that?”
“That works,” Ky said.
Within hours, that ansible’s message bins were unblocked, and contact restored with Lastway and other working ansibles.
“An easy fix,” Rafe said when he came back aboard. “Just as I said before, it’s a form of sabotage that’s quick, requires no special equipment, and is easy to reverse. Unfortunately, it’s difficult to make impossible, so if the raiders come back, they can undo my fix quickly.”
“Would ISC reimburse you for fixing this, if they knew about it?” Ky asked.
&
nbsp; “You want a bonus?”
“I’m thinking of the others in the convoy,” Ky said. “If there’s some profit in stopping to fix ansibles, they’ll be more willing to do more of them.”
“Ah. There might be, but I can’t promise. And calling from here would reveal where we are, which I’d consider a danger.”
“Raiders could follow us by the restoration of access, couldn’t they?”
“Yes . . . but we might be an ordinary ISC repair crew, too.”
Ky discussed their next destination with her Mackensee liaison. “We’d prefer to clear ansibles between Lastway and our home base,” Johannson said. “Of course, that’s subject to your priorities as long as we’re working for you, but there are several automated ansibles along the way, and some excellent market worlds for the others.”
“Let’s talk to them all,” Ky said. In conference, the other captains agreed.
In the next system, they found not only an automated and nonfunctional ansible, but also a civilian ship whose beacon carried the familiar Vatta tag, moving slowly along far from the ansible, as if transferring between jump points.
“She’s a Vatta ship,” Ky said. “We can’t ignore a Vatta ship.”
“Her beacon says she’s a Vatta ship,” Johannson said. “We could say we were, oh, Fitch’s Rangers . . . would that make us Fitch’s Rangers?”
“You have a database of ship registries,” Ky said. “What does her beacon ID say?”
“It agrees with the call signal, but that’s just common sense. That doesn’t mean she’s a Vatta ship, or commanded by a legitimate family member. What does your implant—oh, that’s right, you don’t have one.” This time the disapproval in his voice was clear.
“I’ll check with Stella,” Ky said. “She probably has the complete list.”
“She’d better. You hired us to protect you and the others in this convoy. All my instincts say that there’s something wrong here . . . it’s the classic pirate trick . . .”
“It’s one ship and she doesn’t scan armed,” Ky said. “You have two armed vessels . . .”
“Captain Vatta, you may have almost graduated from a military academy, and I will grant that you performed well under pressure at Sabine, but you do not know diddly-squat about threat analysis in real life. What if that ship is mined? What if that ship is stuffed with biologicals that could kill us all? I do not have a full hazmat team aboard, and I do not want to die—or see my people die—because I walked into a trap.”
Ky bit back the angry retort she wanted to make. “I appreciate your concern,” she said instead. “I have no intention of asking your people to risk themselves. But as you recall, contacting and aiding other Vatta family members is high on my priority list. I’ll go myself.”
“Stopping at all is risking us. Doing anything but going back into jump is risking us.” He wiped his forehead, though he wasn’t sweating. “Look . . . you’re making the classic mistake that bold youngsters make. You overvalue your own resources and you don’t see all the problems. Did you ever read that old chestnut about the young officer trying to interdict a river crossing?”
“The Defense of Duffer’s Drift,” Ky said.
“Yes. The problem is, you don’t get do-overs, in dreams or otherwise. Maybe the farm family really is loyal—but you can’t take the chance. Maybe this ship really is your family’s, and everyone on her is loyal and honest—but you can’t take the chance.”
“Actually I can,” Ky said. “But I see that I can’t ask you to. So you carry on to the next jump point, and I’ll match courses and see what’s what.”
“You have lost your mind,” Johannson said. “We can’t let you do that; we’ve contracted to protect you.”
Ky choked back the You can’t stop me that came automatically and said instead, “Look. We want to unblock this ansible. We’ll just put Rafe on it, get that job done, and give this other ship a call, see what she does, all right?”
“You’re making a mistake.”
“Maybe. But it was in my mission priorities.”
“I know that, but—” A deep sigh. “All right, here’s what we’ll do. We’ll support through the ansible repair. Then we’ll escort the convoy just outside the system and stand by in case of trouble. With an open ansible and only a few hours’ transit time, we should be close enough.”
“Fine,” Ky said.
When she called the crew together to tell them what was going on, Martin looked grave. “I have to say I agree with the mercs,” he said. “If you’ll take my advice—”
“Not if it means running away without finding out if a Vatta ship needs our help.”
“That wasn’t it. But have the defensive suite on, and keep the drives warm, even if you decide to match courses. Someone alert at the scans around the clock. And a plan for what to do if we’re attacked. Boarded.”
“A plan—”
“Who goes where and does what. That kind of thing.”
“Is this something you—”
“Ma’am, my expertise is in security, not full-out combat. I can suggest some things, but whether they’d work, I don’t know. And as for ship-to-ship combat, I can’t help you.”
“Get your suggestions in order, then,” Ky said. She had thought of a sudden attack, the ship being blown, but . . . boarded? Maybe she should still take Johannson’s advice and run for the jump point. But that left a Vatta ship here alone, a Vatta crew who might even, if they’d been in FTL space on a long jump, have no warning that they were in danger. “It’s going to take us several days to get closer to her.”
Martin nodded.
Fair Kaleen had the Vatta blue-and-red logo on the hull, but she looked battered by years of space debris. No weapons showed on the defensive suite’s analysis screen. Her crew had given no sign that they were aware of other ships in the same system, which was sloppy at best. Ky pursed her lips. Ships of that class were brought in for cleaning and repair every two years, at which time the logo was freshly painted. Ordinary light shielding protected it for that interval.
“Stella?”
“Don’t look at me. I’m not ship crew.”
“Quincy, I’m going to transfer an external feed to your board,” Ky said. “What do you think?”
“Fair Kaleen . . . haven’t crossed paths with that one in decades,” Quincy said. “She’s one of ours, right enough, but I don’t know what route she’s on. Looks a bit battered; that logo should’ve been touched up before now.”
“Well,” Ky said, and sat motionless, trying to think things through. Fair Kaleen had been a Vatta ship, might be one now, should be one again, since Vatta needed every ship it could muster. If someone else had taken a Vatta ship—one of her ships, she caught herself thinking—she could take it back. “Let’s give her a call,” she said, and nodded to Lee.
Fair Kaleen answered the hail with commendable promptness, and in moments her captain was online. Osman Vatta, his broadcast ID stated; stocky and dark, his black hair liberally salted with gray, he looked at Ky with an expression she could not quite interpret. “Whose are you?” he asked.
“Whose?”
“Whose kid. I’m sorry, you’re a captain, but to me, you’re a kid. I was just wondering whose.”
“Gerard’s,” Ky said. When he still looked blank, she added, “Gerard Avondetta Vatta . . .”
“Oh . . . old Moneybags Gerry.” He gave a harsh snort of laughter. “Gods, girl, you don’t look anything like Gerry. Luckily.”
Very few people, most of them now dead, had called her father Gerry. And she didn’t like his laugh.
“Don’t look at me like that,” he said, sobering. “I didn’t mean to make fun of him, but . . . he always was a bit stuffy. So, he sent you out to straighten out this mess, eh?”
“Mess?” Ky said. Something was very wrong, but she couldn’t figure out what.
“This whole thing with the banks,” Osman said. “Credit and all. I mean, he is chief high financial muckety-muck, so it makes sens
e that you being his daughter—”
He didn’t know. He didn’t know or he was a far better faker than she thought he was. “That’s the ansibles,” Ky said. “When ISC gets them back up—”
“Not what my fella back on Harmon told me. Said someone was going after Vatta, and our credit was shot.”
“Did your fella describe what going after meant?”
“Said someone had taken potshots at Vatta ships. Made me nervous, that did.” Nervous was not the word Ky would have chosen to describe his expression. Tense. Alert. But nervous?
She should tell him, but she was reluctant and didn’t understand why.
“Look, as you’re old Gerry’s kid—daughter, I mean—you can clear up the financial end, can’t you? Talk to the bankers and such? I have a load of cargo, good stuff, too—”
“Where was it bound? What route are you on?”
His gaze wavered. “Um . . . well, you know, I’m kind of independent. Experience . . . family connections . . .”
“Been a while since you came in for refit, hasn’t it?” Ky said, forcing sympathy into her tone.
“Oh, the ship’s fine. No problems there. It’s just . . . I can’t draw on company funds, they tell me, on account of whatever this mess is.”
Stranger and stranger. Not all Vatta captains were on fixed routes, but most of them were: profit lay in reliability. Senior captains vied for the most profitable routes, wanted the least variance in their schedules. And while this man looked like a Vatta, they weren’t the only family in the known universe with those features, that coloring. He had shown some knowledge of her family, but only what an outsider could have picked up from public sources. He had cargo . . . he could sell the cargo, set up a ship account . . . she’d done that.
Ky touched the control requesting an emergency interruption. Almost immediately, a red light flashed on her board, winking urgently.
She looked down, then back up at the com screen. “Excuse me, I’ve got a problem here—I’ll be right back.” She cut the connection, and opened the internal com. “Anyone get anything on this one?”
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