by Marque
“Good,” Ky said. “So we’re good to go, then.” Mehar and Toby hadn’t said anything, but the drives boards were all green. Quincy, back on Gary Tobai, had said things about idiots who went off to strange ships with greenies for Engineering crew, but she was still recovering from her blast injuries, and Ky wasn’t about to put additional strain on her. Quincy had finally subsided when Ky pointed out that Stella, as a completely inexperienced captain, needed the best engineer on Gary Tobai .
The Mackensee boarders had already tested the communications, ignoring the box they didn’t recognize, which Ky knew was the ship-mounted ansible. Now she called up Johannson.
“We’re ready to go as soon as your people are back aboard your ship,” she said. “We’ll be rejoining the convoy after jump, correct?”
“Correct. If your navigator is at the board, I’ll transmit the coordinates—”
“Go ahead,” Ky said, nodding at Sheryl.
“We’re on our way,” the merc escort said. “See you somewhere else, and good luck with this thing.”
“We’ll be fine,” Ky said, with more confidence than she actually felt.
At last they were on the move. On Osman’s excellent military-grade scans, Gary Tobai boosted for jump ahead of them, crawling along at less than half the acceleration Fair Kaleen could offer. Ky was not about to go off and leave her first command, though. Behind them, the Mackensee ship loafed along, keeping watch behind, weapons live. Ky kept Kaleen’s locked down. In those hours, Ky’s implant explored the ship and her data banks, easily circumventing Osman’s security routines: at root, the ship was Vatta, purpose-built for Vatta, and her deepest levels of programming gave anyone with the Vatta command dataset complete access to anything added later. Ky was able to tell Martin exactly where physical traps were located, and how to disarm them.
The cargo holds with the weapons held ample munitions for them, Ky found. In fact, the modifications Osman had made to the ship cut down her cargo capacity to just over half again as much as Gary Tobai’s . . . she would be uneconomical as a pure trader without ripping out all the changes. But as a privateer . . . she was perfect, except that the universe knew her as a pirate. She needed a new name, a new ship chip, an identity unsullied by Osman’s years of criminal activity.
And what was in the other holds would easily pay for that new identity . . . the cream of a half dozen piracies, at least. Osman had kept all the compact, highly valuable prizes: luxury items such as jewelry, art, bioassays, implants—implants taken from “interesting” prisoners. Some had been downloaded into his own ship’s computer, and some awaited that treatment. He had reloaded salable data onto data cubes; a good part of his profit for the past dozen standard years had been from the sale of proprietary information gained from such implants, she found when she looked at his records. Pirate he might be, but he kept financial records like any other businessman. He also had a store of ship-mounted ansibles for sale to potential allies in the war against ISC.
Ky mused on this as Rafe went to work on the shipboard ansible console. Should she tell him about the others? No harm, probably.
“There’s about a dozen of these things in the hold,” she said conversationally. Rafe looked at her.
“Like this?”
“Yes. According to his internal records, he used to have more, but sold some. Do you need to know to whom?”
“I suppose I should,” Rafe said. “But that cat’s well out of the bag by now. I told them two years ago . . . but they wouldn’t listen.” He turned back to his work. “By the way, do you think Osman was the only reason Vatta was attacked? Was he just working out his grudge while helping his allies?”
“I’m not sure,” Ky said. “If they were looking to make an example of a shipping firm to put pressure on the others—which is what some of the other captains at Lastway thought—then Vatta is reasonably conspicuous and has supported ISC’s continuing monopoly in the past. Osman could have been a blessing to them, with his inside information and his personal interest in seeing Vatta suffer.”
“There are other systems that don’t like Slotter Key flags in general,” Rafe said. “I don’t suppose you know this, but Slotter Key runs privateers.”
Her own letter of marque seemed to be burning a hole in her uniform—she was very glad Rafe was looking at the console’s internal bits, and not at her. “I had heard something,” she said. “I wasn’t sure whether to believe it.”
“Oh, it’s true. Cheaper than enlarging their Spaceforce, I suppose. Privateers support themselves. From our end, we never knew Vatta to be involved in that, but this ship . . . your corporate headquarters disavowed it, but I did sometimes wonder.”
“You . . . knew about Osman before I did?” And you didn’t warn me? she wanted to add but didn’t.
“Not for sure,” Rafe said. “And if you were making rendezvous with the family privateer, I wanted to know more about it.” Now he did look over his shoulder at her. “Don’t look at me like that, Captain. It doesn’t violate our partnership—check the terms—and I warned you as soon as I knew for certain something was bent.”
Small comfort. She tried to think of something to say, but at that moment, Sheryl announced that they were entering countdown for endim transition.
“All stations, secure for FTL,” Ky said, instead of any of the lame comments she’d thought of. “Section seals locked.” Rafe got off the deck and strapped himself into one of the spare seats on the bridge, while the others acknowledged. Ky’s stomach knotted. How would the Kaleen handle transition with that crudely repaired air lock? At least, if it blew, only the passage behind it would lose air.
Fair Kaleenslipped through the transition as easily as Ky herself would have walked through a doorway . . . of course, a pirate would keep his ship perfectly tuned. After a brief hour and twelve minutes of FTL flight, during which Ky thought of all the things that might have gone wrong with Gary Tobai and then what might go wrong if any of them reentered normal space at the wrong relative vee, the ship dropped out as smoothly as she’d gone in. Ahead of them, Gary Tobai appeared as their scan cleared, and behind them the Mackensee ship dropped out still at the same interval.
“Brilliant job, Lee and Sheryl,” Ky said. She felt a wave of relief. There on longscan were the other Mackensee ship and the rest of the convoy. No unknown ships in the system. Here, the ansible wasn’t working, but Rafe would fix that. She reversed the compartment lockdown.
“Ten hours to rendezvous with convoy,” Johannson said.
Ten hours. She could not stay awake another ten hours. Who could?
“Toby, come to the bridge, please.” Toby of the inexhaustible energy. On their present course, with no changes to be made, he could surely keep watch while the rest of them recovered.
“Commander, most of my crew’s dead on their feet. I’m going to put us down, and leave one on watch.”
“Good idea. Call if you need anything.”
Toby, with Rascal bouncing at his heels, came onto the bridge. “Yes, Captain?”
“You have the bridge, Toby.” No need to ask if he was alert enough; his eyes sparkled with delight. “See, I told you you’d make captain someday.”
“Yes, Captain! I’ll call right away if anything happens.”
“You do that,” Ky said, and clambered up, stiff in every muscle and joint. Martin had checked out enough of the crew quarters that they could each have a private cabin, though at the moment she was sure she could sleep on the deck in a pile with twenty others.
The captain’s cabin was half again as large as hers on Gary Tobai . Osman favored black and gray with red accents; the cabin had an odd smell, which she supposed was essence of Osman. Ky kicked herself for not having thought to have the ’fresher cycle on during those hours on the bridge. She pulled everything off the bed—she was not going to sleep on his sheets. In a locker, she found another set—synthsilk, in black, shiny and slippery. At least they didn’t smell like Osman. She threw the other bedclothes in the c
leaning bin, turned the cabin ventilation to high, propped the hatch open, and was asleep before she thought to turn out the light.
She woke briefly once, as the light went off, then again when Toby’s voice announced that it was time, the time she’d said, but if she wanted to sleep longer everything was fine.
“I’m up,” she said. “I’ll shower.”
In Osman’s private bath—which deserved the name, having a tub as well as shower—she found the kind of mess she’d expected from the first, though most of it was due to the tumbling in zero-G. Smears of green and yellow and pink goo streaked the black marble walls and floor. She took one look and dialed the cleaner bots into action. While waiting for them to get the broken glass off the deck, she rummaged again through the lockers in his cabin. Clothes . . . he certainly liked black. And silk. Silk shirts, blousy silk pants. Shore rig: Vatta uniforms, including an old one worn thin. What must be costumes suitable for different worlds, various colors and styles. Underwear—it was a moment before she realized that the underwear could not all be his . . . it was a collection, male and female styles in various sizes, and all of it . . . she shuddered, and put the entire contents into the recycler. Maybe it would have been evidence, but she didn’t want to share space with it, even behind a closed door. In one drawer, she found other evidence of his proclivities: restraints, masks, items she almost understood and didn’t want to. She opened only one of the zippered leather cases; the array of tools horrified her, and she left the rest untouched.
She found clean towels, black but smelling of nothing but soap, just as the bots announced the bathroom was safe. Her implant informed her that the black marble wasn’t really marble, but a tunable crystal; Ky changed it to frosted white. Now she could feel clean . . . maybe. The shower worked as well as her own back on Gary Tobai, and she took extra time to comb her hair in front of Osman’s—her—mirror. That, too, was a tunable crystal; she changed the lower two-thirds to frosted white rather than reflective.
One by one her rested crew came back to the bridge or their stations.
“Could we redecorate the cabins?” Sheryl asked her.
“What, the gruesome murals bothered you?” Rafe asked.
“Rafe,” Ky said. Then, to Sheryl, “Of course. It’s our ship now. Osman’s cabin was pretty grim—were the others bad, too?”
“Let’s just say that Scovald’s famous mural of the invasion of Bettany does nothing for my dream life,” Sheryl said. “Not even when the previous occupant has added his own commentary and sketches to the original. And it smelled like that kind of person had been living in it.”
“Not nice people at all,” Rafe said. “I found what I thought was a simple one, plain walls with just a few pinups easy to ignore, but the instant I lay down on the bunk, the sound system came on. It left me in no doubt that whoever had that cabin was someone I do not want to know except over a weapon.” At Ky’s look he nodded. “Gone now. Flushed it. I figure you have enough on these people without that recording, and it was the only way to get it to shut up without dismantling the bunk. Which I was too tired to do.”
“I put some things in the recycler myself,” Ky said. “And I’m tempted to flush the bedding, too.”
“Oh yes,” Lee said. “In fact, I did. I’m not sure any cleaning cycle would take care of what was on those sheets.”
“Well, on our next long cycle with nothing much to do, we’ll get all that cleaned away. There’s plenty of crew space; we won’t be bored next transit.”
“I suppose disgust is better than boredom,” Sheryl said. “And it’s better than excitement, too,” she added. “I’ll get on it; there’s nothing for me to do before rendezvous. Unless you’re hungry and want a meal.”
Hands went up.
“I just hope I don’t find Selenki worms or something in the galley,” Sheryl said as she left the bridge.
Within the hour, she reappeared with trays; the smell of fresh-baked bread preceded her. “The galley’s fine,” she said. “And the supplies are . . . what I suppose pirates can afford. Prepacked from Escalion Catering, their gold-standard rations. I had to bake the bread, that was all. This is like that stuff the luxury liner had, remember?”
It seemed a lifetime ago that there’d been a fuss over gold-eye raspberries. “Yes,” Ky said, around a mouthful of warm fresh bread spread with something sweet and crunchy.
“I suppose we should share this with the others,” Lee said, smearing his bread with a different spread, this one a rich purple.
“Already done,” Sheryl said. “I called ’em. That silence you hear is people eating rather than talking.” She started on her own meal, and silence covered the bridge, too, for a few minutes.
“Better than Aunt Gracie’s fruitcake,” Ky said, when she came up for air. She had not realized how hungry she was. “We can save it for another emergency.”
“Which I hope doesn’t come too soon,” Lee said, stretching. “Ah . . . that’s good.”
As soon as they were close enough, Gloucester sent a pod to pick up Rafe so he could work on the system ansible. While he was gone, Johannson called Ky.
“We have another problem,” he said. “It’s your ISC agent, so called.”
“Rafe? What now?”
“We’ve been running analyses of events since we left Lastway. It looks to us that Mister Whoever-he-really-is has to be the one who set up that trap. We’re going to bring him back here when he’s done with this ansible, and have a look at his implant.”
“You can’t think that,” Ky said. “He’s been fixing ansibles—he led us to the ISC conspirators at Lastway.”
“It’s not unknown for conspirators to sacrifice some of their people for long-term gain,” Johannson said. “To gain your confidence, to gain ours—”
“And then he helped us survive the attack,” Ky said.
“You say . . . I’m not sure you’re competent to judge that, Captain Vatta. How else could Osman have known which system we’d be in? Nobody at Lastway knew that. How else could he have contacted his allies so easily? I believe Rafe is—or was—associated with ISC in some sensitive position, but the evidence is clear that he’s using some kind of clandestine communications device.”
“You can’t just invade his implant,” Ky said, all too aware that they could do just that. “He’s my crew; he’s under my protection.”
“I’m afraid we must disagree on that, Captain Vatta. Your safety, and the safety of others in the convoy, is our primary mission. We believe he compromises that safety. I appreciate your sense of honor where your crew are concerned, but we can’t risk it. We don’t intend to harm him; we’ll just check out his implant—”
Rafe would suicide first. Ky knew that, even though he’d never said it in so many words. He was not about to let anyone get access to his implant, or to that implant-mounted ansible. Yet she knew that telling Johannson that Rafe would suicide might convince him all the more that Rafe was one of the villains. After all, would an honest man commit suicide just to conceal the fact that he was honest?
“Rafe has told me things about his background,” Ky said, trying to think what argument might work. “There is . . . sensitive material, things that I agree should not be widely known.”
“We aren’t planning to publish it, Captain Vatta. Just find out if he’s part of the conspiracy. If you wish, I can promise to wipe the record, provided he’s innocent.”
What would he consider innocence? A bad boy, a remittance man, a rogue company spy masquerading as a petty criminal—a smuggler, a gambler, whatever else Rafe had used for cover? Hardly.
“Do you think I’m part of the conspiracy, Commander?”
“You?” That had clearly stopped his train of thought. “No, of course not. Young, inexperienced, foolhardy perhaps . . . but not a conspirator.”
“Fine. Then perhaps you will let me examine Rafe’s implant, rather than your people.” If Rafe would let her.
Johannson looked flustered. “Captain Vatta . . .
I don’t mean to belittle your integrity, but . . . you’re a young woman, and this Rafe is a good-looking man.”
“Oh, for goodness’ sake!” Ky said, falling back on one of Aunt Gracie’s expressions. “I am not a silly teenager, Commander. Yes, Rafe is handsome. So is my pilot. So is one of my junior engineering techs. I’m not romantically involved with any of them.”
“You have no . . . attraction to him at all?”
“Of course not,” Ky said. “He’s too old for me, and anyway he’s not my type.”
“Well . . . I’ll talk to the captain.”
Minutes went by. Lee glanced at her. “Handsome, am I?”
“You know you are,” Ky said. “In a rugged, sturdy kind of way.”
Lee grinned. “And which adventure vid are you quoting from?”
“None that I remember,” Ky said. “Though I watched plenty of them in my school days. But I’m sorry, Lee, you just don’t do anything for me otherwise.”
“Nor expected to,” Lee said. “I’m even older than Rafe.” He sobered. “You know, though, some of us did worry. Stella was certainly smitten.”
“I am not Stella,” Ky said. “And Stella’s over it, she told me.”
“Maybe,” Lee said. “But he is a charmer, when he’s not being an arrogant, sarcastic—”
“He likes to tease,” Ky said. “Get a rise out of people, if he can.”
“You’re defending him?”
“Against what Mackensee suspects, yes. You were there; you know how he was in the crisis. If he’d wanted us to lose to Osman, he could have done us a lot of damage.”
“Captain Vatta—” Johannson was back onscreen. “Are you willing to come aboard the Gloucester when we bring your man in for questioning?”
“Absolutely,” Ky said.
“No promises, but the captain’s willing to hear your argument.”
“Thank you,” Ky said. “You’ll send a pod?”
“For you, we send the pinnace,” Johannson said, smiling. It seemed to have no edge to it, but Ky wondered.
Rafe was under guard in sick bay, strapped into a recliner, when Ky, Johannson, and Captain Pensig came in. He looked pale and stubborn.
