“Our FTL’s a Rollings F-230,” she said. “It’s needing replacement of the sealed unit, and possibly more.”
His face sharpened. “If the sealed unit goes bad in a Series F,” he said, “you’re looking at cavitation damage in the main chamber as well. The back-buffer wasn’t nearly as good in that series . . .”
That was what Quincy was afraid of, she knew. “We’re looking into it,” she said. She glanced at the last man, who spoke up without waiting for her to ask.
“Caleb Skeldon, Captain. Cargo specialist. Mostly I’ve been in charge of refrigerated holds, and I have only three years onboard experience, eight months of that on Apple Blossom Song. Before that I worked for a downside shipping firm, warehouse inventory and maintenance.”
All very straightforward, as were they all. Ky saw nothing in their faces or demeanor that rang warning bells. She ignored the fact that Skeldon looked to be about her own age, and had chiseled features, wavy blond hair, and a dimple. Aside from the light hair, he could have been Hal’s brother. That was irrelevant. She was an officer, after all, and his looks meant nothing to her. What mattered was that these four were Slotter Key citizens in a jam . . . The little voice in her head that said Here you go again, leaping to rescue could surely be ignored this time. She was doing a good deed, that was all. And at the request of the consul. No one could disapprove of that.
“Well,” she said, sitting back. “Let me tell you about me and my ship, and then if you want to come with us, we’ll talk to that clerk about arranging your transport up.” They nodded; Skeldon opened his mouth as if to speak, but subsided at a glare from Li. “I’m one of the Vatta family,” she said, “but I’m here on a private contract, not a family contract. The ship’s old, but until the problem on the trip here from Belinta, she seemed sound. And we’re having that repaired.” She hoped. “Our contract calls for us to deliver a cargo of agricultural machinery to Belinta; we’ll leave as soon as the cargo’s loaded and repairs are finished. It’s a several-week trip. Our crew capacity is twenty, and our environmental system could handle twice that number easily. At the moment, we have ten crew aboard. Any questions?”
Li spoke for them all. “When may we go up, Captain?”
“Let me ask that clerk,” Ky said.
Zar must have been listening in, because he had all the preliminaries taken care of. “This afternoon’s shuttle is all booked, Captain, but I have them listed on tomorrow morning’s, on the embassy account.”
“Good,” Ky said.
“And I can cut you a check for their share of mess expense from here to Belinta, also on the embassy account. Standard government reimbursement. I’d suggest you purchase supplies quickly; the situation’s getting nastier by the minute.”
“Right,” Ky said. “Can they stay in the embassy until the shuttle leaves?”
Zar nodded. “It would be advisable. They’ve been in transient housing—you have anything back there? If so, I’ll send a uniformed runner for it.”
“We didn’t want to leave anything, the way things were,” Li said. “Our duffel’s with us.”
“Good,” Zar said. “I’m afraid the accommodations aren’t great—you’ll have to share space with the embassy’s guard detachment, and we’ve cancelled all leave and liberty. Captain, if you’ll come this way—and Li, I’ll send someone to take you to the guard quarters shortly.”
“Thank you, Captain Vatta,” Li said. “We hoped—and of course Vatta . . .”
“Come on, Captain,” Zar said.
“We’ll have them escorted to the shuttle station tomorrow,” Zar said when they got into the next room. “Shouldn’t be any trouble, I hope. It’s a big help, your taking them off our hands like this. We really don’t have room here to shelter them; we’ve got a half-dozen merchant families, resident here for years, who are coming in tomorrow for the duration, plus the children of a dozen more, and we’re going to be crowded. We’re setting up dormitories upstairs . . .” He shook his head. “But that’s not your affair. Let’s see about that check—wait, here’s the schedule of standard payments. If you need to file a protest . . .”
Ky’s implant compared the cost of standard rations from a chandler at the orbital station to the reimbursement.
“No, that’s fine,” she said. “Do you have a comset I can use to contact my ship and let them know what’s coming?”
“Of course, Captain Vatta. Secure set, right over here—” A cabinet in the corner of the room. While Zar began the surprisingly lengthy process of transferring embassy funds to her account, she contacted Riel Amat on board ship, and explained the situation, sending along the personnel files, and told him to go on and order supplies.
“Are you sure about this, Captain?” Amat asked. “Four strangers? And with a war starting?”
“The embassy vouched for them; it was an official request. They were stranded because of a quarantine matter—their ship wouldn’t wait. And now they’re subject to conscription, the consul said. Gary said we’d need help reconfiguring those machines to get into our holds. The embassy’s paying their mess expenses—”
“But no passage fee?”
“No. And yes, I know we need the money. But they’re our people, Riel.”
“I hope so,” he said. His lips were tight. She wondered if he thought he should be in command.
“Besides, Dad always said the government reimbursement schedules were generous. There’ll be a little left over after you order the supplies.”
“I hope that, too. All right—I’ll place the order right away. Four additional. When are you coming back up?”
“When I arrange financing for the repairs. Let me speak to Quincy—” Riel cut Quincy into the circuit, and Ky spoke to her. “What’s your estimate now, anyway?”
“I can tell you more in another twenty-four hours. Teardown’s slow on this old girl. Last people who put ’er together meant her to stay that way. Listen, Captain, if there’s war brewing you’d best come back up here—it may be time to contact Vatta headquarters and arrange repairs through them. I know this wasn’t your assigned mission, but—”
She could just imagine her father’s reaction. “I’ll see what I can do here,” she said. “You don’t have the full specs on the repair yet anyway. I’ll be careful.” She signed off before either could say more, and came out of the booth. Zar handed her a hardcopy of the transfer; her implant agreed that the money was in the ship’s account. Maybe this was a sign that things would now go right.
“I’m sorry, Captain Vatta, but it’s against our policy to extend credit to independent captains for major repairs.” The Helmsward Yard had seemed the perfect combination of quality and value for their repairs. Until she said she needed to arrange financing.
“But I’m not an independent—I’m part of Vatta Transport, Ltd.”
“But your application states that you are incurring this risk as an individual . . .” The finance officer looked at her from under bushy gray brows. “Are you representing Vatta Transport, Ltd., or yourself?” It was clear he wasn’t entirely sure of her identity at this point.
Ky tried not to glare. “I am Kylara Vatta; my father is CFO of Vatta Ltd. But this particular venture is my idea—”
“In other words, you are applying as an individual, and it is as an individual that I must reluctantly refuse your application,” the finance officer said. “I have no doubt that you have your own reasons for doing this, but we simply do not extend credit to individuals.”
“But my family—”
“Is not in the contract, Captain. No, I’m sorry, we simply cannot do it. Good day.”
It was not a good day. It had not been a good day since Quincy had called down to report that the misbehaving drive had cavitation scars “you could put a fist into.” Now it was more than squeezing out the fifty thousand credits for the sealed unit; this was going to take big money. It had become even less of a good day when the Captains’ Guild inquired delicately just how long Captain Vatta meant
to stay and when Captain Vatta would like to settle her bill and with what. Ky reminded the desk clerk that Vatta Transport, Ltd.’s account was, in all stations, classified 5A, and thus had no limit, and found that the concern arose because she was not on the list sent to them yearly of expected Vatta arrivals. They agreed to retract their request when she was able to prove who she was, but the argument frayed her patience. It was clear from the streets that the threat of war had frayed everyone’s patience.
And now this. She walked out of the office with as much grace as she could muster and wondered what now. Her escort fell in beside her without a word. He had already suggested that she stay in the Captains’ Guild or return to her ship—for her own safety—and she had already refused. She had a contract . . . She now had the merchandise to fulfill that contract, but . . . she didn’t have enough money to repair the ship. She could get the merchandise—but then she couldn’t get it back to Belinta. Or she could get the ship repaired enough to make it back, without the merchandise.
It was like those logic problems in children’s activity cubes, where a problem seemed impossible unless you looked at it in a very different way.
Ship or merchandise? Impossible, which meant it had to be the wrong question. She could not—would not—renege on her deal with the Belinta Economic Development Bureau. That would foul the family name even though she had taken on the contract as an individual. Vatta would come through; Vatta had to come through. So there had to be some way to get the merchandise and the repair; she just hadn’t thought of it yet.
The obvious thing was to call home—tell Vatta Transport, Ltd., what the problem was. They would bail her out; she knew that. But it would be, if not a black mark, a gray one. She had not followed the plan laid out for her, and even if Gary and Quincy had made it clear no one really expected her to take the ship tamely to Lastway, her decisions had led to a problem. A problem involving cash flow, which was . . . embarrassing. She hadn’t overspent an allowance since she was nine and bought all that candy for visiting cousins.
She really wanted to find a better way. There wasn’t a better way. If she didn’t want to renege on the contract and she didn’t want to risk spreading herself and her crew in a fine dust somewhere in deepspace, she had to have more money and no one, on the brink of a war, was going to lend it to an independent.
Back at the Captains’ Guild she ignored the desk staff and went up to her room. Best get it over with. She set up the room’s secure comdesk for an intersystem call and waited for the access light to go green. While she waited—on these smaller worlds, it could take a few minutes—she kicked off her shoes and hung her dress cape in the closet. The room seemed stuffy after the crisp air outside, but the windows didn’t open. Shrugging, she sat on the end of the bed and massaged her feet, with one eye on the comdesk. The little voice in her head ran through all the things her father might say and the tone of voice he might use, and she carried on a long imaginary conversation defending her actions so far.
The light was still red. Had she set up the call wrong? She reached out for the hardcopy sheet of directions to check that just as the local system rang. It shouldn’t do that. No local call should come in while the comdesk was set up for intersystem access, even if it was on standby. She picked up the handset anyway.
“Yes?”
“Captain Vatta, our board shows that you are attempting to place an intersystem call . . .” The voice on the other end did not identify itself.
“Yes, I am,” she said. “Who is this?”
“We require an additional credit deposit for intersystem calls,” the voice said. “Please make arrangements with the desk staff—”
“My credit here is 5A,” Ky said, trying for icy. “That is supposed to cover all services . . .”
“We have no prior record of your account,” the voice said. “Vatta Transport, Ltd., has a 5A account, but you—”
“We went over this already,” Ky said. “I am Kylara Vatta; my father is Gerard Vatta, CFO of Vatta Transport. You’ve already verified my identification . . .”
“But you are here as an independent,” the voice said. “We have received information from Helmsward Yard to that effect . . . I’m afraid we cannot consider your account covered by Vatta Transport, Ltd.’s credit rating. We will expect you to settle your account another way. And in the meantime . . .”
Rage brought her up off the bed, almost to tiptoe; she clamped her jaw on the words she wanted to say, starting with whatever sneak at Helmsward Yard had called the Captains’ Guild and continuing with the ancestry, present attributes, and probable postlife destination of the person on the line.
“How unfortunate,” she managed at last, in a flat voice. “Since I was in the process of calling home to instruct my father that I would need more funds to secure an investment opportunity. However, I don’t need your equipment to make that call. Excuse me.” She signed off the comdesk, jammed her feet into her shoes, and reached for her cape. She could use the embassy link to the ship, and the ship had its own intersystem link capacity if the consul didn’t feel like trusting her for an intersystem call.
As she stalked past the front desk, the clerk tried to catch her eye; she ignored him and nodded to her escort. “We’re going to the embassy, then back here,” she told him. In the lobby, several captains were gathered around a vidscreen; she saw a swaying mass and smoke rising above it.
Away from the Captains’ Guild, anger drained away as she walked. They were pinheads, and they would regret being pinheads someday, but right now she had to contact her father and arrange a funds transfer. It didn’t matter if she was embarrassed at having to ask. All that really mattered was getting herself and her ship and crew to a safe place. Already things were worse on the street; her escort looked worried as they were jostled by hurrying pedestrians.
“Captain, we should take transport on the way back,” he said, as they neared the embassy.
“Agreed,” Ky said. She had never been in a war, though she’d heard stories, but she could feel the mood of the street.
The guards at the embassy entrance checked her ID carefully, then let her through; a different desk clerk checked them again.
“You were here yesterday,” he said, after consulting a log.
“Yes. But today I need to make an intersystem call to my family, back on Slotter Key.”
“I’m sorry, Captain, but we’re sending out only diplomatic signals now.”
“I suppose I’ll have to go up to the station and link in via my ship then,” Ky said.
“The Captains’ Guild has a secure uplink,” he said.
“But the Captains’ Guild is being sticky about my credit,” she said, wondering if the embassy could help.
“About Vatta credit?” he asked, brows raised.
“Yes. Even though I’m the CFO’s daughter and fly the Vatta flag, because I’m on an independent contract they’re acting as if Vatta won’t cover the bill. I don’t suppose you can get it across to them?”
“Oh, dear,” he said. “This is not a good time, Captain; Secundus has threatened to blockade Prime. My advice to you is to get yourself up to your ship and out in space as fast as you can. Call from there, if you have the time—”
Ky felt cold all over. If the planet were blockaded . . .
Her implant pinged her. Tobai reporting that the ag machinery had arrived, and the four strays. That was something. But she could not be stuck down here while her ship, cargo, and crew were up there and needed her.
“We could get you onto a diplomatic shuttle to the station,” he said, interrupting her thoughts.
“Thank you,” she said. “When—”
“It leaves in a little less than two hours,” he said. “The next would be tomorrow morning. I know all the commercial shuttles are full. Rats and sinking ships, et cetera.”
“Which bay?” Ky asked.
“Twelve. You’ll need your IDs; I’ll put your name on the list—” He did so as she watched. “Transport fr
om here to the ’port takes at least forty minutes.”
“I have to pick up my duffel at the Captains’ Guild . . .”
“Best hurry,” he said.
Ky’s escort had caught a short-haul transport; it took them fifteen minutes to get back to the Captains’ Guild. Ky hurried upstairs, stuffed her things into the duffel, checked her account, retrieved the signed agreement from last night about her credit, and went back downstairs. Before the desk manager could open his mouth, she spoke.
“I am checking out. I have your signed agreement from yesterday that you will charge the Vatta Transport account; here is the authorization code again, and the account number. I want a receipt.”
“But—”
“Now,” Ky said. She had no idea what, besides frustration, was in her voice, but he backed up a step.
“Yes, Captain Vatta.” He glanced at the data sheets she’d laid before him, and printed out a hardcopy of the receipt, Charged to Vatta Transport, Ltd. on the last line. “I’ll need your signature . . .”
Ky scrawled Kylara Vatta, Captain, Vatta Transport, Ltd. on the yellow copy and handed it back.
“Have a good trip,” he said as she turned away. In the lobby, the same cluster of captains was still watching the vidscreen, now showing someone with a strange hat talking at the camera.
Her escort had another transport waiting. “You don’t have to come,” Ky said.
“I do,” he said. “I’m not letting you go alone, not in this. It’s my duty.”
“Very well. Let’s go.”
Traffic to the shuttle port was slow and heavy, but they arrived in time. Ky signed off the escort’s time card at the entrance to Bay Twelve, and slung her duffel over her shoulder. The guards at the gates were thorough with their ID check—as she expected—but she made it onto the shuttle in plenty of time to find a seat and belt in. Like the Vatta private shuttle, the diplomatic shuttle had separate compartments for VIPs and the ravening hordes. Unlike the Vatta shuttles, captains of ships did not count as VIPs, and Ky found herself wedged into a narrow seat between two other Slotter Key citizens who had decided to leave.