Trading in Danger

by Elizabeth Moon

  “You murderer!” Kristoffson found his voice. “Come on, all of you—get her!” He stepped forward, fists clenched. Ky pulled the trigger as she heard a twang of another string from behind her; her bolt and Mehar’s both caught Kristoffson, one in the neck and one in the chest. He coughed blood and collapsed, gargling. Again that jolt of glee.

  “Put your hands on your heads,” Ky said. To her own surprise, her voice didn’t tremble; it sounded flat and menacing to her own ears. Slowly the others moved to obey. “Sit down where you are, and don’t move.” They sat. They looked frightened; she could sense that the urge to rush her had vanished.

  “Aren’t you going to do something for them?” someone asked from near the back.

  “They’re dead,” Ky said. She was sure Paison was, less sure of the others, but without advanced trauma care they would certainly die. “You are alive, and you will stay that way if you do exactly what you’re told. Mehar—”

  “Yes, Captain.”

  “Cover them.” Mehar had her own bow; Ky reloaded and handed the bow back; someone took it from her hand. She moved forward, hoping against hope that Gary Tobai had survived. He lay mostly on his back, on top of Paison, his neck twisted and blood flowing from under it.

  Under her hand, his pulse wavered; he was breathing, but barely. She had no idea what to do. “Gary . . . can you hear me?”

  His eyelids fluttered, his gray lips twitched: no more.

  “Is he alive?” asked one of the mutineers. “I was a medic—”

  “You!” Ky glared at him. “You’re the reason he’s dying.”

  “But maybe we can save him—”

  “As if I’d trust you.” But who else did she have? Nobody who really knew trauma care at this level. She didn’t even know a safe way to move him to the medbox. She glared at the man again, savagely pleased that he paled a little. “All right. You come here—no one else move.”

  “Sandoval, Empress Rose, chief steward,” the man said, scrambling forward on hands and knees. “All stewards have basic first-response skills; chief stewards are all certified in advanced precare. Let me—” His hand reached out, checked Gary’s pulse, his fingers next to Ky’s. He shook his head. “I don’t think—” He turned Gary’s head slightly, exposing a gaping wound. Even as they watched, the flow of blood slackened; under Ky’s fingers, the pulse stilled. A last feeble movement of air warmed Ky’s hand.

  “He’s gone,” Ky said. The steward nodded.

  “I’m sorry. Without a trauma team, even a medbox can’t help.”

  A vast, empty space opened in Ky’s head; she had never seen someone she knew die before; she had no way to identify what she felt, only that it was completely different from what she felt about Paison and his mate.

  And she had no time. “Get back with the others,” she said to the steward. She would deal with her feelings later. Now she had a ship to save. She pushed herself to her feet.

  With Paison, his mate, and Kristoffson dead, the others seemed meeker. Ky didn’t trust that; she wasn’t in the mood to trust anyone about anything. But she didn’t have dozens of separate cells to isolate them in, or the means to create such, or the crew to take care of the prisoners’ basic needs. What threat would prevent another attempt to take over her ship?

  Decompression would. The fact that it would certainly kill the innocent as well as the guilty didn’t bother her at the moment.

  “Here’s the situation,” Ky began, rocking from heel to toe in front of the assembled passengers. “None of us asked for this; it was forced on all of us. We should have been allies. You chose instead to consider me and my crew as your enemies; those of you who didn’t back this mutiny at least did nothing to stop it. In the process you killed a dear friend of mine. A man who had worked hard to convert the cargo holds into something more comfortable for you.” She paused, and they said nothing. Wise of them.

  “I don’t trust you anymore,” Ky said. “Under the law, we’re in deep- space and you know what that means. I’m the captain and you tried to mutiny. I could kill you all and though your employers might grumble, they know they wouldn’t have a case in court.”

  “They said it’d be easy.” That was a stocky man in the front row. One of the Empress Rose crew again.

  “Oh, really?” That was all Ky could think of to say.

  “Yes.” The man glanced back over his shoulder then looked again at her. “Said we outnumbered the crew, and the only hope of survival was to take over from you, ’cause you were too young and inexperienced and just sitting out here with the drive off nobody’d ever find us again. We’d end up starving and you were too stupid to know it and too scared of the mercs to do anything even if you did know.”

  “And you believed that,” Ky said.

  “Well . . . yes. There’s more of us. You’d be scared, he said.”

  Ky bit down on her temper. “And what do you think now?”

  “Didn’t work, did it? You just killed ’em in cold blood.”

  “Not cold blood,” Ky said. “Paison and the rest of you were attacking me, my crew, my ship. But yes, I killed them, and I will kill anyone who tries the same thing again. Do you believe me?”

  “Yes,” he said, and heads nodded.

  “Good,” Ky said. “Keep believing it, because the first time you act like you don’t, I’ll space the lot of you. I intend to keep my crew, my ship, and myself alive and if that takes killing all of you, I won’t hesitate.”

  Some looked scared; some looked glum; none looked defiant.

  “Now—keeping your hands on your heads, back on your feet, and walk, do not run, back to the cargo compartments. When you get there, you will sit down in rows facing the bulkheads.” They had to be able to search those compartments, undo whatever taps the mutineers had put into the ship’s own system. She turned to her crew. “Beeah, you, Mehar, Hospedin, and Ted take them there. I’m going to get someone to clean up this mess—” She pointed at the bodies.

  She stood there as the crowd shuffled away, as Mehar, Beeah, and the others stepped carefully past and herded the mutineers back to their space. Her knees sagged; she couldn’t even lean on the bulkheads, spattered as they were with blood still wet, and the smell . . . She staggered back up the passage and made it as far as the galley before she threw up. Killer. She felt shamed and sick and horribly excited all at once.

  “Ky?” That was Quincy. “What’s happened—I can’t find Gary—”

  “Gary’s—” Ky bent over the sink again, trying to rid herself of the guilt.

  “Is he hurt?”

  “He’s dead, Quincy.” Ky gulped a mouthful of water, washed her mouth out. “They had him—” Her vision blurred, and she braced herself against the counter. “Sorry . . . we have organic debris . . . need to get it cleaned up. Don’t send Alene.” Bad enough for the rest of them, but Alene worked with Gary—had worked with Gary—every day.

  “I’ll . . . get to work,” Quincy said.

  Ky washed her face and looked down at her uniform. Blood, some still glistening. She could feel it drying on her face. She would have to change. She had work to do . . . she had a ship to run. She had no time to spend on sorting out feelings.

  As if from a distance, she heard MacRobert’s voice, back when she was a cadet. “Just do it.”

  All right. She straightened, shook her head, pushed her hair back. Just do it. No excuses, no apologies . . . she went back out to the passage where the stench met her before she came in sight of the mess. Two of the crew, Lee and Seth, were standing with buckets and mops, looking sick. The bodies hadn’t been moved.

  “What are we going to do with ’em?” Lee asked, gesturing.

  A good question. She wasn’t about to put those bodies in with food in the cooler and freezer, but they couldn’t be left here.

  “Space ’em,” she said. “We don’t have storage. I’ll document identity, and then we’ll put ’em in the escape hatch and open it.” The thought of kneeling beside them with the recorder, docum
enting prints and ID implants and so on sickened her, but it had to be done. She deserved to do it, after that surge of glee.

  “All of them?” Lee asked, looking at Gary’s body.

  “No,” Ky said, shaking herself out of that. “Of course not Gary . . . we’ll find room in the freezer for him. But the others. Get a small dolly from Alene, but don’t let her come up here and see this. When you’ve dumped them, ask Mitt what he wants to use to clean the mess. I’ve got to get it off me—” She paused. No, better do the ID first, while she was still dirty. She went back to the galley, washed her hands and face, put on gloves from beneath the sink, and looked up the protocols for “Death in Transit, Accidental, Victim, Certifying identity of” in the Code, which was the closest category she could find.

  Then, when she had the information safely coded, she helped push the dolly down the corridor, helped pile the three bodies in the emergency access against the outside, pushed the controls to open the outer lock.

  She felt better when the corpses were safely out in space, where they could do her no harm. Slightly better. She had Mitt shut off the showers to the passengers so that she could shower long enough to get really clean and run her uniform through the ’fresher. And still the shock, the grief she had no time to deal with hovered somewhere in the near distance, waiting to pounce when her attention wavered.

  She would not let it waver.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Mackensee Military Assistance Corporation had shifted to a more familiar civilian style of corporate organization; clients seemed reassured to find out that MMAC had a business-suited CEO and CFO instead of a commander in uniform. So did the many civilian employees who kept MMAC’s central office working smoothly. Its city offices, two floors of the Sugareen Tower West, reflected the profitability of the business, from the polished marble paneling to the hand-woven Ismarin rugs and the leather-upholstered furniture. Pictures on the wall of the reception area were originals, exotic game animals and wilderness scenes, suggesting adventure without hinting at violence. All scenes of soldiers in uniform, or combat machinery, were elsewhere in the private offices of executives or in the conference rooms.

  The current CEO, despite his elegant suiting, had been one of the four field commanders until five years before, when Old John Mackensee himself picked him for what they called “taking point with the clients.” Three years at a regional support headquarters, with TDY to the city offices, where the civvie staff got used to the quiet, almost cherubic redhead. A year as understudy to Stammie Virsh, who was as craggy as a storycube general.

  And now Arlen Becker had the watch, and one of his operations had disappeared when the Sabine ansibles went down. Old John had been on the horn within an hour; Old John missed nothing.

  “I don’t have to tell you we didn’t do it,” he’d said.

  “Tessan has a good record,” Old John had said. “But ISC is going to be all over us when they figure out who’s there.”

  “We could volunteer that,” Arlen said.

  “Breach of confidentiality,” Old John said.

  So Arlen sat on it, carrying on the day-to-day work of the corporation, which kept him busy even when there wasn’t a crisis. MMAC owned more than military matériel, and employed more than mercs. He was expecting the call that finally came from ISC, though not the rank of the individual who showed up in person in his outer office, demanding to see him.

  “She says she’s a special adviser to the chairman of the ISC board,” his secretary murmured into his implant.

  “What do we have to clear?” Arlen asked.

  “You have that regional sales conference.” Boring, and he was just there to put pressure on the vice presidents.

  “I won’t go—they can gossip among themselves. What else?”

  The list flashed on the implant visual. Nothing that couldn’t be shifted a few hours . . .

  “Send her in.” Arlen glanced around his office—immaculate as always—and set the perimeter safeties. ISC was rumored to employ assassins, but only as a last resort. He didn’t think they’d try one for a first contact, but no reason to be stupidly complacent.

  ISC’s special adviser to the chairman was a short, dark-haired woman with a silver streak over the crown of her head. She wore a slightly crinkled dusty rose linen dress, shoes he recognized as stylish and expensive, and carried an old-fashioned ladies’ briefcase in tooled and beaded leather, a pattern of cabbage roses in soft pinks against maroon leather. Rings glittered on her hands; her earrings looked like natural emeralds; they matched her eyes. Her glance around his office missed nothing, he was sure.

  He came around his desk, and she offered her hand; he shook it. Small, but firm and cool. She had the calluses of someone who had used a small firearm on a regular basis for a long time.

  “Perhaps you’d like to sit here?” he asked, waving her to the cluster of chairs and low couch near a coffee table.

  “First, I’d like a straight answer to one question,” she said, not moving. It was absurd; she barely came up to his chest, and yet he had the feeling that he was the schoolboy and she was the teacher.

  “Certainly,” he said, inclining his head.

  “Were you hired to blow up the communications and financial ansibles in Sabine system?”

  “No,” Arlen said. “No one asked us to, and if they had we would not have taken the contract.”

  “Did you blow them up by accident?”

  “To my knowledge, we did not blow them up at all,” Arlen said. “And that’s two questions.”

  “So it is,” she said, and moved to the seating area. She chose the seat Arlen would have chosen in her position, and set her briefcase on the low table. As she reached for the clasps, she said, “Why don’t you sit down, General? This is going to take a while.”

  He was almost amused at her effrontery; he sat down anyway, and said, “I’m not a general anymore, you know.”

  “Oh, but you are,” she said. She opened the briefcase flat; one side held a compact portable miniansible; the other a rack of data cubes. “Generals don’t quit being generals when they put on business suits. You commanded the third in the Wallensee affair, the Jerai border war, and the defense of Caris. Quite able as field commander though I have to wonder why you didn’t make use of your amphibious capabilities on Jerai . . . On paper it looks like you could have flanked the enemy . . .”

  He could feel his neck getting hot; this would not do. In his mildest voice, he said, “Are you a military historian, ma’am?”

  “Good heavens, no. A military analyst. Quite different function. No one in their right mind would let me near students.”

  Despite himself, he was intrigued. “You know my background, ma’am—what’s yours?”

  “Backwater world, nasty little cultural conflict. My side won or I wouldn’t be here.”

  “You . . . were involved?”

  “Community defense,” she said. Her eyes twinkled suddenly; her smile was wickedly pleased. “Come now, General, you didn’t think ISC would send someone to talk to you who wasn’t a combat veteran, did you?”

  “You?” He could not get past the fact that she was a plump little middle-aged woman in a crinkled linen dress and fashionable shoes. A pink dress, for the gods’ sake.

  Her brows rose. “I’m sorry, General, to upset your stereotypes of military women, but on my homeworld, we’re all short and if we aren’t starved we put meat on our bones. True, I was only in the local militia for three years, but I can assure you I have been shot at and returned fire. My boss felt you deserved to have someone listen to you who understood your problems.”

  “I . . . see.” He shook his head slightly. “I’m sorry—I just—”

  “You come from a world where the average height is almost twenty centimeters taller than the average on my world,” she said briskly. “I understand that. Now—I am recording—” She did not ask permission, he noted, and he doubted that the office’s security systems were interfering with the record
er. “You say that you weren’t hired to blow the ansibles, and you have no information suggesting that your force blew them—is that correct?”

  “Yes,” he said.

  “Excellent. Care to tell me why you didn’t inform ISC of that at once when you heard the ansibles were blown, and you knew you had a force insystem?”

  “Client confidentiality,” he said.

  “Right,” she said. “So—when did you find out?”

  “The . . . relay ship, outside the system, reported losing contact. That was”—he queried his implant—”Thirteen forty-two hours, UTC, on Central 346. The relay ship was on a two-hour schedule, though. We heard from other sources that the actual time of ansible loss was . . .”

  “Twelve oh-two hours. Yes. You have documentation of the relay ship’s notification?”

  “Yes, but—”

  “We may need to see it later. Now—this was not a full-scale operation, is that right?”

  “Right. Advisory, with a five thousand man support team.”

  “John Calvin Tessan your onsite commander?”

  “Er . . . yes.” How did she know that?

  “Your organization, and your field commanders, all have acceptable ratings with ISC,” she said. “And I presume you wish to keep that rating . . .”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “We’re going to have to ask you to post a bond, I’m afraid,” she said in a tone that carried no regret whatsoever. “Even though you have an acceptable rating, even though we have no evidence yet that your personnel were responsible, they are onsite with weapons capable of taking out two ansibles.”

  “A bond?”

  “It’s an unusual situation, you see.” She paused, rubbed the tip of one carefully polished pink fingernail along the edge of her briefcase. “It’s been six years since anyone last intentionally destroyed an ISC ansible. Political group on Neumann’s, you may recall. We dealt with them.”