Trading in Danger

by Elizabeth Moon

  Amat shifted in his seat; Ky glanced at him and found him looking at her with peculiar intensity.

  “What?”

  “Nothing, Captain. You’re making sense. Go on.”

  “What are you planning?” Quincy asked.

  “I don’t have a complete plan,” Ky admitted. “But the longer we stay here with our ship locked to the biggest remaining target in local space, the more likely we are to be hit. So the first thing is, we undock, with polite apologies to the station. Prep us for undock and insystem travel.”

  Quincy blinked, then nodded. “Right, Captain. But how are you going to contact the station, when they’re blocking contact?”

  “They’ll have receivers tuned for broadcast, I’m sure. Get us ready, that’s all. How long?”

  Quincy glanced at the bridge status boards, then at Gary. “Your cargo all locked down?”

  “Cargo secure,” Gary said. Ky could not tell from his expression what he felt about her orders.

  “Fifteen minutes, then. They’ll detect it in eight, Captain.”

  “Right.” Ky set an alarm for eight minutes and the other two left the bridge faster than they’d come. Time to address the rest of the crew. She cleared her throat, and thumbed the intercom.

  “Crew—this is Captain Vatta—” Her voice was steady, but it still felt odd to call herself Captain Vatta. “We are preparing for emergency undock. All sections report green status. Expect emergency undock in less than fifteen minutes. Warning count will be given starting two minutes before undock. Off-duty crew bunk down; this may be rough.”

  She heard footsteps in the passage, the rest of the bridge crew hurrying to their stations.

  “What happened, Captain?” Lee Quidlen slid into his seat, snatching at the restraints with a practiced hand, and logged in.

  “There’s a war starting,” she said. “You know about the ansibles being attacked. The station suspects that we might be bad guys, and won’t let us have the replacement sealed unit. Which leaves us a choice between sitting here like a target, or moving off and hoping no one blows us up . . .”

  Sheryl’s hair was wet and her skin glistened; she must have been in the shower. But she was in her seat in moments, calling up the ship’s navigation functions. “Got any idea where to go?”

  “Away from here or anyplace else someone would want to blow up,” Ky said. “But close enough we can get back if it turns out we have a chance to refit. We have to get repairs somewhere, but I’m sure ISC will be doing something about the ansible damage—”

  “Mmmph. So we just go out and try to find some nondescript system real estate for the duration?”

  “Lacking FTL drive or weaponry, yes.”

  “Sounds good to me.” Sheryl turned to her controls.

  “Lee, you take the undock; I’ll monitor drives and balance,” Riel said. Lee grunted acknowledgment. Ky glanced at the chronometer. Eleven minutes. Something hissed; she looked up and saw the bridge hatch sliding shut; then pressure pulsed at her ears; seals testing. The hatch slid open again.

  “Cargo green,” came Gary Tobai’s voice. Then, more softly, “Suggestion, Captain?”

  “Go ahead.”

  “Suits? Have ’em out?”

  Of course. “Captain to crew,” Ky said. “Suit up as duties allow, stay on ship atmosphere for now.” Her own suit, in its sealed pouch, was under the captain’s seat. She pulled it out, shook it loose of the pouch, then realized she was still in shore uniform.

  “I have to change,” she said to the back of Lee’s head. “Two minutes.”

  He nodded and she dashed to her cabin, blessing the daily routine of the Academy. Skinning out of shore clothes, a quick trip to the toilet, into formfitting shipsuit, into the pressure suit, back to the bridge.

  Slow. Two minutes, five seconds. Nine minutes to go.

  “Environmental green,” said Mitt Gossin from his control station. Ky acknowledged that, sank into her seat, and the safety harness slid out to enclose her in its protective webbing.

  “Crew quarters green.”

  “Seals green.” Now Glennys Jones was as safe from harm as it could be; it would take real weaponry to breach the hull, and anything that size would harm the station. It might even survive a hit on the station, depending on how close and how big. Still, it was attached to the target and not able to maneuver on its own.

  Brrrp. The alarm. Eight minutes.

  “Insystem drive initiation.” Quincy, sounding bored, which meant not bored at all. Nothing happened at first but a light blinking on the main board. Then the undertone, felt more than heard, of the insystem drive spinning up. The light flickered, then steadied: successful drive initiation. The station would detect that; what they would do about it remained unclear.

  “Umbilicals disengaged.” Clicks, thunks, hisses, as Glennys Jones’ attachments went from “sealed” to “retracted.”

  “Emergency disconnect boosters enabled.” Soundless, this: merely an electrical signal to the safety interlocks that prevented accidental discharge.

  Two minutes now. Ky reminded herself to breathe. Surely the stationmaster would make contact. They didn’t need the cable links; they had broadcast . . . and what would she say?

  “Pilot’s board green,” Lee said. “Emergency disconnect on your mark, Captain.”

  “Captain to crew, take stations for emergency undock maneuver, and report” Ky said. She watched the lights blink on, section by section reporting them secure.

  At sixty-seven seconds the comdesk lit up. “Stationmaster to Glennys Jones. What do you think you’re doing?”

  “Stationmaster, this is Captain Vatta commanding Glennys Jones . . . We are preparing to undock.” That was obvious. She watched the chronometer’s numbers tick over.

  “You don’t have permission. You don’t have clearance. There are other vessels in the vicinity . . .”

  “Then I suggest you provide information on their whereabouts and courses via Traffic Control, and restore communication with this vessel.”

  “You will stay where you are; you will cease and desist any attempt to undock; you will shut down your drive—”

  “We are going to undock,” Ky said. “It’s not safe to stay here, and you’ve cut us off from critical data.”

  “If you continue, we will consider that proof of hostile intent—your weapons—”

  “I register formal complaint, under Article 389.4 of the Intersteller Commercial Code,” Ky said. Invoking that article meant that automatic recording of her message would go into the most secure storage on the station, unalterable by the station staff. She wished she’d thought of it sooner. “Vatta Transport, Ltd., cargo ship Glennys Jones, outbound from Sabine Prime, with a cargo of agricultural equipment purchased from FarmPower, invoice number 893547699, on contract with Belinta Economic Development Bureau. This ship was refused access to critical ship components for repair on the grounds that it was in clandestine relationship with Sabine Secundus. This ship has just been accused by the stationmaster of carrying illicit weaponry. No prior inquiry was made, no investigation was pursued, and no official of the station contacted the captain to ascertain the truth. Now the stationmaster has stated that this ship’s undocking will be interpreted as a hostile act. This is in violation of the Commercial Code; Vatta Transport, Ltd., requests a formal inquiry into this matter at the earliest possible date. I formally deny the charges that have been made.”

  “You Slotter Key types are all pirates,” snarled the stationmaster. That, too, would go into the sealed record, and ought to make for an interesting hearing in a few years, whenever the circuit court got to it.

  Ky glanced over at Lee and held up her hands, folding down one finger at a time. At the last, he touched the controls for emergency disconnect boosters and Glennys Jones popped out of her docking slot like soap out of a wet hand. As they cleared the station’s hull, the scans came alive. They weren’t the only ones who’d left in a hurry. At least three shuttles were nuzzling the shuttle b
ays, and two more hung at a little distance, one of them fairly close to Glennys Jones. Larger ships were pulling Gs to get away. Ky said nothing; pilots didn’t need distractions in crowded space. She widened scan. The radiation signatures of the ansible explosions made two very bright flares on her scan, with the red icons that meant “Danger.” And something else.

  “That does it, Vatta,” said someone from the station. “You’ll never dock here again.”

  “That’s the truth,” Ky said, cold prickles racing each other up her spine. “You’ve got more problems than me . . . Check your deep scan.” Warships, two of them. Not with the Sabine Prime star-and-mountain icon, either. Sabine didn’t have much of a space navy anyway; they patrolled system space for pirates with stubby maneuverable little ships that mounted only a pair of ship-to-ship missiles. The ships on scan were much larger, and probably much better armed. They might be ISC come to find out what happened to their ansibles, but even ISC couldn’t get someone here that fast. Probably. Which meant they were most likely someone very nasty indeed. She glanced at Lee, who was clearly still concentrating on nearby traffic.

  Silence, anyway, from the station; that light disappeared from the board.

  “Riel,” Ky said. “We have a problem.”

  “Naw . . . Lee can clear that shuttle easily, doesn’t even need insystem . . .”

  “Deep scan. Warships. Get us away from the station, Riel. I’ll look for cover. Sheryl, you concentrate on avoiding collisions.”

  She had the nav charts up on her board now and tried to think like a cadet with a tac problem in class, and not a cargo captain in an unarmed ship in a war zone. What did the enemy know, and what did she know? The warships had no downjump haze around their icons; they had been in the system—she checked the backtrace—four hours. Jumped in at low relative vee above the ecliptic. Two small jumps to place them where they were, in the classic “attack and blockade a planet” configuration. They would have had time to locate and identify all the ships at the station, which meant that just putting a planet between them and Glennys Jones wouldn’t accomplish anything.

  The thing was . . . it wasn’t a tactical problem in class, it was real life. And she was a captain, with all a captain’s responsibilities . . . just not the kind of ship she’d ever thought of having. No weapons. Commercial-grade shielding only. A cloud of “if only” hovered over her: if only she’d just done the expected thing . . . if only she’d had the ship repaired at Belinta before coming here . . . if only she’d called home before the ansibles were blown . . .

  No time for that. Riel, after one startled glance at the deep scan, reached over and switched the insystem drive from standby to engage.

  “Lee, I’ll take over now. I can’t push the old lady up fast,” he said to Ky. “She’ll gut-choke on us. I’ll have to ease into it.”

  “Do what you can,” Ky said. Had those warships blown the ansibles? Her scan data weren’t good enough to backtrack the ships’ movements, but it was a reasonable guess. The station should be able to figure it out, if that did any good. Whose warships were they? Not Prime’s, and not Slotter Key’s . . . and anyone else probably wasn’t a friend.

  She had the comdesk open wide, ready to pick up anyone’s transmission . . . Something squealed, and a spike ran up the visual display.

  “What was that?” Lee asked.

  “Batch-pod,” Ky said. Military used them, to send messages out of a system with no ansible. Their endim transition produced a characteristic squeal and blip. So someone—probably the warships—had sent information to someone outside the system. More warships? Invaders? Not pirates; pirates didn’t have this kind of resource base. At least not near Slotter Key. Someone hired by Secundus, was the most likely answer. So—who were they talking to, with a batch-pod?

  She should have read up more on Sabine’s history and political setup. Hadn’t she heard the stories? Hadn’t she grown up knowing that a trader captain must know what was going on, or else?

  And now she was here and it wasn’t a story.

  Glennys Jones, easing up to her insystem cruising velocity at the modest acceleration her aging frame would endure, moved far more slowly than Ky wanted, opening distance from the station. Ky called up the supplementary military/mercenary database, searching for the icons the warships projected. There it was. Mackensee Military Assistance Corporation. The listing described it as “a consultancy service,” but farther in Ky found a paragraph describing “additional services which may extend to the provision of personnel and matériel when employer resources are insufficient to the accomplishment of specific goals outlined in the contract . . .”

  Mercenaries indeed. It was heartening to notice that the mercenaries stated as policy that they did not take contracts involving “actions defined as piracy under the Interstellar Uniform Commercial Code” but less heartening to note the exceptions from that code permitted “in time of war or insurrection.” Those exceptions permitted civilian ships to be boarded and inspected, though no personnel were supposed to be harmed and no cargo taken . . . though again with exceptions. “Except in cases where the civilian ships are deemed to be carrying matériel of military significance . . .”

  Matériel of military significance could be anything from medicine to weapons . . .

  But probably not tractors, disk cultivators, spring-tooth harrows, harvesting combines, Ky hoped.

  Reading further: the listing ended with a pious statement of belief in a deity Ky had never heard of, and the advice to potential customers to consider carefully whether they really had anything worth fighting over. “War is not a game,” the last paragraph read. “War is nasty, dirty, brutal; we hope that potential customers will find a way other than war to solve their problems. But if conflict is inevitable, then the least destructive approach is that which leads to a quick, decisive conclusion. In that case, our expertise may be of service.”

  As a Saphiric Cyclan trained in logic, Ky found this disclaimer both dishonest and funny. She could just imagine the up-rolled eyes and folded hands . . . with a third invisible hand held out for the payoff.

  She hoped that some of the listing was correct, though, because if these mercenaries really didn’t want trouble with all the commercial shipping concerns, they might well leave a Vatta ship alone. In that case . . . why had they blown the ansibles? Surely they would know that would bring the ISC after them?

  Unless . . . someone else had blown the ansibles? Someone who detected their approach and wanted to send an alarm message—but then, why not just send it, via ansible? Someone—perhaps their employers—who had the bright idea to interdict ansible communication in the simplest way.

  If Secundus had hired mercenaries to advise them or fight for them . . .

  “Attention all ships . . .” Her comdesk informed her that this was a recorded message, origin one of the warships. “All ships in Sabine system. For your own safety, it is imperative that you reply on receipt of this message, using standard UCC channel seventeen, with the following information: ship name, ship registry, ship owner, ship captain. In that order. This is Colonel John Calvin Tessan, Mackensee Military Assistance Corporation, in command of the Mackensee Engineer Battalion and Expeditionary Force.”

  The message repeated, clearly a recorded loop, and Ky stared across at Riel.

  “What’re you going to do, Captain?” he asked. She noticed, with a clarity that bothered her, that he looked scared.

  “What I’m told,” she said. “We have two very large warships insystem, and more possibly coming in. They could bat us into pieces without even trying. I don’t want them to try.” She set the com to channel seventeen, checked the setting once more, and transmitted, without comment, Glennys Jones, Slotter Key, Vatta Transport Limited, K. Vatta.

  A lightlag later, her board lit again and an unrecorded voice came out. “Vatta Transport ship Glennys Jones continue on present course; do not change course without direction.” The voice waited for no answer; the light went off.


  “Are we going to hit anything?” Ky asked. Sheryl shook her head. “No, Captain. We could do this for several days—maybe longer, I’ll have to look—as long as nobody runs into us.”

  “Then we’ll just keep on keeping on,” Ky said. For the time being, Glennys Jones had been dismissed as too little to matter, a nonproblem. She watched on deepscan, aware that other ships would have received that message at different times, thanks to their different distance from the warships. If they obeyed, they also would get orders—the same orders? Maybe, maybe not. At any rate, some of those ships would not get the first message for another hour or so, during which time nothing exciting should happen—she hoped.

  But in any event, time to address her crew. Ky took a deep breath, then another, and yawned once to open her throat. Never sound scared, never sound worried: that had been the advice of their second-year rhetoric instructor. Always prepare what you have to say. Have a point to make, and make it. Don’t ramble, don’t waffle.

  “I’m going to let the others know what’s going on,” she said to the bridge crew. They nodded. She turned the ship’s intercom back on. “This is the captain,” she said. “Here’s the situation. There are two warships insystem, mercenaries. I don’t know who hired them, but probably Secundus. They’ve asked all civilian ships to identify themselves; we have done so. We have been told to stay on our present course, which is what we’re doing. According to what I found in the database, their stated policy is not to confiscate commercial ships or their nonmilitary cargoes, or harm their crews.” Explaining the exceptions to this policy would only alarm them, Ky thought, so she didn’t.

  Civilian ships, small merchanters, did not have the clear rank structure Ky had been taught in the Academy. It had bothered her, the first few days, and then she had grown used to it. Now that lack bothered her again. She wanted to leave the bridge and walk around the ship, speaking reassuringly to her crew the way she was supposed to. But she had no exec to leave in charge even for a few minutes, and from the expression on Riel’s face, he wasn’t up to it.