Command Decision

by Elizabeth Moon

  “A woman in my cage said they’d used gas on her ship,” said a woman at the back. “They piped it through the service umbilicals and put everyone to sleep—when they woke up, they were all caged.”

  “Any idea how long this has been going on?”

  “Just since the ansibles went down, is what I heard.” The first woman again. “I don’t think they could’ve gotten away with it before—people would have known.”

  “Thank you,” Ky said. “You’ve been most helpful. Let me assure you again that you are welcome, you are safe, and I consider you free men and women. And now I must return to the bridge.” To ensure that they were protected from chemical attacks through the umbilicals, among other things. She called down to Sam Gulandar and told him to take protective measures.

  “Put us on internal air supply only?” he asked. “That’ll cut our safe transit time when we leave.”

  “Better than letting them capture us,” Ky said. “I think we’re safe until they think we’ve spent all we can—but be alert.” Then she called the other captains, this time using the onboard ansible, and warned them.

  A few hours later, a port official insisted on talking to Ky; she sighed and made her way out to the dock. “You bought indentured workers and I don’t see them working!” he said. “What kind of scam are you running?”

  Ky raised her eyebrows. She had anticipated something like this. “They are handling cargo aboard, not the dockside transfers,” she said. “You didn’t want me to deprive your citizen-workers of their pay, did you?”

  His mouth opened and closed. “Oh. Well, yes, of course, you would still have to pay for dockside transfers…I suppose it makes sense.”

  “Believe me,” Ky said, “I intend to get my money’s worth out of those workers. We have a lot of load balancing to do, and my regular crew have their own duties.”

  “I see,” he said. “Well.” His pale eyes shifted back and forth, looking for anything he could complain about, but finding nothing. “All right, then,” he said. “As long as you pay all your fees on time.”

  “I fully intend to,” Ky said.

  Over the next three shifts, almost all the munitions and other supplies were delivered, and Ky watched the Vatta account at Crown & Spears carefully. Already they’d been hit with unexpected “special delivery” charges, and she didn’t want to hock one of the few remaining diamonds if she could help it.

  Finally, she thumbprinted the last charge slip; there were still a few credits in the account. Each ship still had a pallet or two of mixed goods to load, but the three captains had agreed to dismiss the local dockside workers as soon as the last order had arrived, not wanting to incur any more charges.

  “Can we be ready to leave in six hours?” Ky asked the other captains. “The sooner we’re out, the happier I’ll be. I’m switching to internal air supply immediately.”

  “We’ll be loaded in four,” Pettygrew said.

  “Three for me,” Argelos said.

  “Three to four for us,” Ky said. “I’ll contact the stationmaster about the departure queue. There’s been no traffic for days, and we’re already balanced—shouldn’t be a spin problem.”

  The stationmaster thought differently, no surprise there. “It is impossible. You must not jump the queue.”

  “What queue?” Ky asked. “There’s nothing on the boards.”

  “Not all flights are listed,” he said, his pale eyes narrowed. “It is none of your business what other flights are in the queue; you outlanders are always prying into the affairs of others. The earliest departure I can give you is…forty-seven hours. You are required to remain in your ship for the final twenty-five hours prior to departure, to allow us to verify that all debts have been paid and no crimes committed have yet to be discovered.”

  “I just paid the last bill,” Ky said, feeling her anger rise again. “And no one’s been committing crimes.”

  “Regulations,” the man said, sneering. “We’ve had experience with your kind. Sneaking around off the ships, crew buying personal items the captain claims not to know about. Do you want that departure time or not?”

  “Yes, thank you,” Ky said, through her teeth, and cut the connection as soon as he’d confirmed it.

  “These have to be the most paranoid people in the universe,” Hugh said when Ky had shut down the comlink and notified the other captains of their departure slot.

  “Or greedy,” Lee said. “This way, they get another two days’ docking fees and air tax out of us.”

  CHAPTER

  FIVE

  For the next forty-seven hours, Ky watched the dwindling credits in the Vatta account. If she had to sell that diamond, she would have to do it before the final twenty-five-hour restriction. With five hours to go, she called the Crown & Spears manager and asked his advice.

  “They might hit you with a final charge of several hundred credits per ship,” he said. “But if you’d like to arrange a line of credit—I really think you’re safer aboard ship, frankly—I know that Vatta Transport has been a Crown & Spears client for decades, and I am confident that your company will take care of it when the ansibles come back up.”

  “Thank you,” Ky said. Once, she would have expected such a courtesy, having seen how the Crown & Spears branch back home treated her father. Now she knew how much he risked, and not only with the Gretnans. “I’d very much appreciate it.”

  “My pleasure,” he said. “I will need your voiceprinted authorization—a moment while I access the form—” He read it to her, and she repeated the relevant authorization paragraph as he recorded her voice. “Now here’s what you’ll see when you access your account. The balance will drop, and show the overdraft, but we will honor the draw on the account from Gretnan sources. That way you’ll know how much you owe, should you come to a system with working ansibles before ours comes back online, and the Gretnans will not know how much your line of credit is.”

  She had to assume the Gretnans had a hook into financials somehow, because the balance continued to dwindle…paused at zero as the twenty-five-hour limit approached. Then—at thirty hours—another charge appeared and her balance dropped below zero. But her financial status report from the Gretna officials still showed green.

  Finally, at forty-six hours fifty minutes, the stationmaster announced they were clear for undock, and counted them down.

  Vanguard eased out of the docking bay, centimeter by careful centimeter. Ky knew that Argelos and Pettygrew were undocking at the same moment, as ordered.

  As the bow cleared the station’s hull, Ky let out the breath she’d been holding. “Well, that’s over with,” she said. “Go on and bring up longscan now.”

  “I wouldn’t be too sure,” Hugh said. He pointed to the forward scans, which had just come alive as they cleared the station. “Something’s going on—I didn’t think there was anything docked that close to us. Of course we weren’t allowed off the ship, and they could fox the data station communications sent us. And that ship with the Polson beacon is still out there, near-zero relative motion.”

  “It’s not my concern,” Ky said. “That one is—” A small ship, barely shuttle size, was pulling back from an adjoining docking bay on the station hull as well.

  Ky called the stationmaster. “We have traffic portside,” she said. “Warn them off.”

  “Not your business,” the stationmaster said.

  “Vanguard, I have a small craft approaching on my flank,” said Pettygrew in her other ear.

  “So do I,” said Argelos. “And I don’t like the look of it. We can’t kick up the drive until we’re a safe distance from the station.”

  Everything the indentured medical personnel had told her made it clear what was going on.

  “They’re going to try to board,” she said. “In a moment, they’ll claim—”

  A loud squawk on the official channel nearly deafened her. “Thieves!” said an angry voice. “Stop at once! All three of you! Shut down your engines. Prepare for boardin
g!”

  “Not in my lifetime,” Ky said to her bridge crew. “Do they really think they can take all three of us?” She touched the alarm that sent the ship to battle stations. “Prepare to repel boarders,” she said into the shipcom. “Unknown number, unknown tech at this time.” Then she called Argelos and Pettygrew. “We’re expecting an attempt to board; you’ll probably have them, too.”

  “I see them,” Argelos said. “I’ve got my people arming up now. Damned Fishies! Should’ve known they’d try something. I wish I knew how many…”

  “If that shuttle was full of them, quite a lot. They know how big our crews are, though they don’t know how well we’ll fight.”

  “We’re not in position to support one another,” Hugh pointed out. “We’re still too close to use the beam without risking backflash damage; we can’t use the missiles because they’re inside the auto-delay distance.”

  “To keep us from blowing a hole in ourselves, yes. And they know that, because they sold them to us. What do they have for close-in weapons?”

  “Well, they can’t use missiles, either, until we get farther out, and they won’t, if their shuttles are this close to us. They have the perimeter platforms—”

  “Light-hours away,” Ky said. “We’re in no immediate danger there. So how do they expect to attack us—with handguns?”

  “Tools from their repair facilities to breach the hull and put armed parties aboard. And we don’t have any weapons designed to repel them.”

  “That shuttle’s almost touching our hull,” Lee put in. “They’re evacuating…no, it’s an EVA crew. In armor.”

  “If we had rocks,” Ky said, “we could at least throw them. The next time I have money, I’m going to put something out there we can repel boarders with.”

  “They’ve got some kind of tools,” Lee said, over his shoulder. “Can’t tell what, exactly—”

  “They’ll be used to boarding hostile ships,” Hugh said. “But they’ll expect disorganized, incompetent resistance. May I suggest that the captain get into armor?”

  “I suggest everyone does,” Ky said. “They can’t get through the hull instantly…I hope…” She headed for her cabin, where she kept her personal armor. She and Hugh had made a plan for this situation, if it occurred, but they’d had no time to drill the crew in it. She suspected the others hadn’t, either. If everyone did what they were told, let the military crew handle it, casualties should be low—or even nonexistent, she hoped. And when it was over, and they were far enough away, she would enjoy blowing holes in Gretna Station…

  Over the ship com came Hugh’s steady voice: “Battle stations. Battle stations. Prepare for hostile boarding. Remember your assignments. Nonmilitary crew, take cover and stay at your assigned locations. Fighting crew, report now…”

  Ky’s implant gave her the crew reports: where they were, what weapons they had, what their sensors told them. She knew, through the implant’s connection to the ship, the instant an enemy hand touched the hull…and exactly what it was doing.

  “Emergency air locks are supposed to be easy to exit,” she muttered. “Not enter…” Vanguard’s hatch lock finally deformed and let go under the combined attack of vacuum torches and brute force. “And that’s an expensive repair. Damn them.” But the attack on the air lock had been only a decoy—on the far side of the ship, a cargo hold opened suddenly, and a string of space-armored bodies drifted into it. Some cargo loader had managed to get the hold lock code. If they had all of them, things could get very difficult very quickly; the boarders would enter behind the obvious defense positions based on air locks and crew passages. Ky wanted to race to the bridge, but Hugh had convinced her that she should stay here, in her office, until an invading force came close. Then…then she would find out if Osman’s deviousness actually worked.

  For the first time since taking his ship, Ky had reason to thank Osman for his piratical ways. The Gretnans had walked right past hiding places and the access hatches to secret passages, apparently in the belief that Vanguard was nothing more than the armed trader she seemed. Ky’s implant tapped into the onboard surveillance, and she followed the invaders’ progress to the bridge, the splitting off of smaller parties to take control of the missile batteries.

  She spared a quick thought for the other captains, who would have improvised something, she was sure, as she eeled forward in a conduit just big enough for her and its intended contents on the slick, silent platform meant for just such contingencies. Then she was behind the bridge overhead, looking out the carefully placed fish-eye lens that gave her a view of the whole space. Pilot, bridge officer, communications tech, all seated on the floor with their hands on their heads, while two of the enemy aimed weapons at them, and five more examined the controls, weapons slung. One of them was talking.

  “This way, we get the ships already loaded up, y’see. Make a fine addition to our fleet, they will, once we’ve washed out the stench of you Mudders. We’ll just put you in holding until another ship comes and takes you off our hands.”

  “What kind of ship?” Lee asked.

  Another unpleasant laugh. “A ship that trades in such as you. Well, them others. What’s a decent man like you doing hanging about with Mudders?”

  First things first. Choice of rounds…Ky decided on two solid rounds followed by frangibles with low-dispersal chemstun. Supposed to be low-dispersal: Ky put on the emergency filter mask anyway, and pulled out several more to toss down to her crew. It would be inconvenient to have reinforcements arrive…yet closing off the bridge physically would warn the enemy. But there was another way…through her implant, she slammed compartment hatches at a distance. Sure enough, one of the two guarding the prisoners moved to the bridge entrance and looked down the passage.

  “What was that?” asked one of the others.

  “Nothin’ I can see,” the guard said, shrugging. “Doors slamming…”

  “Doors don’t slam by themselves.”

  “Well, I didn’t see nobody. If there was somebody, I’d of seen ’em.”

  “Call Merin. See if he’s got anythin’.”

  The guard muttered something but spoke into a shoulder mike, then shook his head. “Nuthin’ from Merin. He says he’s got eight under guard just off the cargo hold.” Ky unlatched the little drop-hatch Osman had installed so conveniently near the fish-eye, and with two quick shots dropped the guard at the entrance and the one standing over her crewmembers. Then, as her implant shut the bridge hatch, she took out another two before they even turned around to see what happened, the frangible rounds bursting on impact, releasing the chemstun. Another one, close enough to be affected, slumped down. Before she could take aim on the last two, Lee had thrown himself toward the weapons the Gretnans had taken from them. He took out one. Hugh’s moddy arm melted the barrel of the last Gretnan’s weapon; the man dropped it and threw up his hand, shaking.

  “Don’t kill me! Don’t! Please—”

  Ky dropped the filter masks she had ready. “Mask up, folks. Supposed to be low-dispersal, but—”

  “Good timing, Captain,” Hugh said without looking up. With his other hand, he had already pulled a filter mask from his belt and slapped it to his face. Lee scooped up a mask for himself and tossed one to Theo Dannon. “What do you want done with this prisoner?”

  “It depends,” Ky said. “If he offers any resistance whatever, kill him. Otherwise, make sure he’s secured. I’ll be there in a moment.” Surely Osman had planned for the need to have the secret watcher actually arrive in person…there. Another drop-down hatch. Ky opened it and eased through, making sure she didn’t come in contact with the area in which the chemical should have stayed.

  The Gretnan, now with hands bound behind him, stared at her, wide-eyed with what looked like both fear and horror, flinching when she grinned at him.

  “You,” she said. “You’re alive only as long as you behave. Get that?”

  “I didn’t do nothin’. It’s not my fault…you’re all thieves anyway.
”

  “What?”

  “All your kind. You know. You come in and take stuff, you don’t work for it.”

  “I paid for it,” Ky said. “Perfectly good credits from Crown & Spears.”

  “But that’s not real work,” he said. “You just had them credits, and for all I know—what I think is—it was prob’ly stolen anyway. People like you don’t deserve money.”

  Lee cocked a fist, but Ky shook her head at him. “You don’t want his slime on your skin,” she said. The man spat. “I think you need to go to sleep awhile,” she said, switching to a trank round and shooting him in the buttock. In moments his head sagged and he fell onto his side.

  From the bridge to the captain’s cabin, their way was clear. Ky led them into the secret compartment and along between bulkheads, aft and down, as her implant forwarded data from the surveillance equipment.

  “Bad news from the others, Captain,” Hugh said in her skullphone. “Pettygrew says he’s making a fighting retreat, but he’s cut off from the bridge and from drives; apparently they’d gotten cargo hold codes for all the ships. Argelos still has control of drives, but not the bridge. They’ve taken casualties.”

  “So have we,” Ky said, looking down at the latest, the number two engineer, sprawled in a pool of blood and splattered flesh. The intruders here were all dead, but she had been just that instant too late for Foxeham, who hadn’t stayed in the hidey-hole he’d been assigned. Neither had Seeley. Just as Hugh had predicted, some of the civs hadn’t followed orders. “One dead, one wounded.” Seeley would recover, but right now he was in shock, partly from a shattered leg and partly from seeing Foxeham die in front of him. “But the drives are secure now. We’ve made contact with the aft batteries; we’re about to squeeze the bastards between us.”

  She left Twigg from Environmental with Seeley, with orders to stay put until someone came to help him get Seeley to sick bay. At least she had medical experts now; surely they had stayed where they were told. Now, with Lee at her shoulder, she moved back into the cover of Osman’s labyrinth. Just ahead, a cluster of intruders—the most heavily armed, since they had attacked the aft battery and armory—continued their attempt to break through the barricades her aft crew had thrown up. In addition to the chemical rounds for their light weapons, they had two cutters at work on the bulkhead aft of the battery hatch, trying to cut in behind the defenders.