“Thanks,” Gerard said. “I owe you. And how is Denise doing at Solvena?”
“She’s making good grades, finally, but she’s changed her major three times in the last two years. If I understand their transcript system, the courses she’d passed might qualify her for assistant gerbil trainer in a zoo . . . Why is it, Gerry, that daughters invariably go after something either impractical or unsuited to their character? All my sons went straight into business, but Denise . . . it’s like she has a magnetic repulsion to anything that would do her some good.”
This begged for a similarly condescending comment about Ky, but Gerard could not make himself tell about Ky’s expulsion, not while she was in danger—if she was even still alive. “Daughters!” he said instead, in a tone he hoped sufficed. “You’re right about them.”
“I’ll do what I can, Gerry,” Parmina said, in a tone that signaled the end of the conversation. “But I can’t promise anything, you understand that.”
“I do, and thanks again. I appreciate your willingness to even listen to me.”
“Always,” Parmina said. “And the next time I’m out your way, I’ll be sure and stop by.”
The line closed to the standby buzz. Gerard turned off his desk unit and turned to face the window. Out there, the city lights, like stars . . . and somewhere his daughter. In here, the darkness and the waiting.
“I hate waiting,” he said aloud; the sound of his voice startled him, and he forced a chuckle. Time to go back to his city apartment and try to sleep. Tomorrow he was supposed to fly back to Corleigh and host the annual estate picnic. He wanted to commandeer the fastest courier ship Vatta had, and go find out if Ky was all right.
The ISC repair ship Cosmos, routinely assigned responsibility for ansible maintenance in Sector Five—twenty-three systems of which Sabine was one—had received the company’s current upload on military security. Every military organization known to be operating in Sector Five, with its current—or believed to be current—location and mission. ISC agents stationed on ansible platforms reported daily on military activity—among other things—which enabled repair ships like Cosmos to know what they might be getting into when they came to repair an ansible that went offline.
Jed Sinclair, senior analyst aboard the Cosmos, looked over the updates. Three such organizations had relevant notations and had not shown up on any ansible listing since the Sabine ansibles went out. Barkley’s Best, a fairly new organization, had taken its entire fleet and personnel into jumpspace from Matlock seventeen days before the Sabine ansibles went out. They were three mapped jump points from Sabine, though military vessels often used odd, indirect routes. Mackensee Military Assistance Corporation had dispatched two cruisers from its home base on Knifecroft; they jumped out of their system eight days before the Sabine ansibles went out. Gruin Colonies, Inc., had sent three ships out eleven days before the Sabine ansibles went out.
Jed thought about that. Gruin could almost certainly be taken off the list. Gruin used its security forces to put down riots and rebellion in its colonies; it had never—so far—attacked anyone else. Barkley’s and Mackensee were both straight-up mercenary forces, for hire to anyone. Worst case, they were both at Sabine.
He didn’t believe worst case. ISC’s tap on the financial ansible, which gave him information on funds transfers into and out of the system, suggested that Secundus didn’t have the resources to hire two different mercenary companies.
So, which was it and what difference did it make? He was pondering when new data popped up on his screen. Barkley’s had shown up on the Timodea ansible, apparently involved in the dispute over ownership of some uninhabitable but mineral-rich minor worlds.
Mackensee. They had a profile, and that profile . . . did not include blowing up ansibles. Interesting. ISC had fought some bloody engagements to convince everyone—planetary governments, system unions, space militias and mercenaries—that ansibles were not target opportunities. They had an unwritten but generally known policy that allowed combatants to fight over control of communications without actually damaging the ansibles or their platforms, with ISC committing to cooperation with the victor. Mackensee had acted correctly—from ISC’s point of view—in other wars it had fought. In fact, Mackensee had an “acceptable” rating on a scale where there were only two values and a large, wide, deadly line between them.
So what was its problem here? Who had forgotten the hard lesson taught last time? Who wanted to be down-rated, with all the consequences of that change? Had Mackensee blown the ansibles, or had someone else done it, to downgrade Mackensee or simply to get ISC attention?
And most important, what would happen if Cosmos jumped into the system and started working on replacement ansibles?
Jed forwarded his conclusions to the Cosmos captain and back to headquarters. Then he downloaded all the data ISC had on the Sabine system and started looking for a sneaky way in.
Master Sergeant Cally Ray Pitt, twenty-eight-year Mackensee veteran and fire team leader for the boarding party assigned to Glennys Jones, had loaded the trader’s crew stats into her implant. As always, the most dangerous time came first, when they had to depend on a civilian ship captain to be smart and steady. Most were. A few weren’t, a few panicked right at the moment of boarding and tried something stupid, and although Mackensee personnel were willing to blow away difficult neutral civilians, it was bad for business. So she always hoped that civilians would behave like good little civs, not get in the way, follow orders.
Glennys Jones, on exterior inspection, looked like the old tub she was . . . an antiquated and inefficient design, decked out in the colors of a famous and very respectable trading firm. Cally had seen Vatta ships before, rotund well-kept ships with neatly uniformed crew guarding the docking access. Not as good as military, by a light-year or so, but certainly a quality organization, as civ organizations went. So why were Vatta keeping this old scow, and why was it captained by a Vatta family member?
A very very young Vatta family member, in fact.
She watched the young Vatta captain carefully. The crew stats had told her age—which she’d assumed was a mistake until she saw the woman’s face. A young face, a young person’s racing but steady heartbeat, a young person’s lung capacity—her suit picked up the woman’s vital signs easily, as it would have detected the residual effects of longevity treatment. The woman was actually that young, and a captain of a seriously deficient little ship.
And not nearly scared enough. What did she know, that she wasn’t panicking? She should be terrified by the proximity of large, threatening, armed and armored soldiers, faceless—Cally knew the woman couldn’t see through the visor. She was scared, but she wasn’t panicked.
Cally tried to push her, teasing her about her age. The woman didn’t budge, emotionally. That said something. Few young civs had that kind of emotional discipline.
“Cally—talk to me—what’s happening?” That was Sid, back on Victor. They’d have a recorder running; she had the little eyeblink on her helmet; they’d see what she saw and hear what she heard. But Sid wanted her analysis as well, at least when nothing was—thankfully—happening.
“The captain’s young and there’s something—she’s not reacting like I expected.”
“Trouble?”
“None yet. She’s done everything I told her to, but—I dunno.”
“Bad feeling?”
“Not really. Just don’t understand something about her.”
“Go on, then. We’re on the ticker.”
They were on the ticker indeed. Some idiot—possibly their employers and possibly someone else—had blown both ansibles in this system, and ISC would be crawling all over this place sometime soon. Nobody wanted trouble with ISC. Gods grant they didn’t blame Mackensee . . .
They really, truly needed to let ISC know they hadn’t done it. They really, truly needed to know who had long-range missiles like that and the will to use them and how many were left. Meanwhile, she was stuck in the
narrow emergency evacuation passage of a ship older than her own grandmother, real time, following a captain who looked like a schoolgirl in Mama’s uniform, and if there was anything on this ship worth confiscating, she’d be very much surprised. With a schoolgirl captain, a girl whose every expression, every movement, communicated habitual honesty, if they said they had a holdful of tractors and cultivators and combines, they probably had exactly that.
She did not believe, however, that their FTL drive’s sealed unit was really totally blown. Not unless this fresh-faced schoolgirl was the family disgrace, and they’d sent her off in a derelict hoping it would come apart somewhere in jumpspace and rid them of a problem. She shook her head mentally—shaking her head inside the suit would create problems she didn’t want—at the memory of that face. First off, Vatta Transport didn’t have that kind of reputation. She’d shared drinks with some Vatta crew when they were on the same station, nothing going on. Vatta would fire incompetents, sure. Any company would. Vatta kids who weren’t good on ships were put to work onplanet. That was typical, too. They weren’t going to risk their profit margin by letting the bad eggs handle ships. But Vatta took care of its own. They wouldn’t send a whole crew off to die, just to rid themselves of a disgrace.
Besides—how could a nice girl like that be the family black sheep? Cally had long experience of family disgraces male and female; at least two thirds of the applicants for Mackensee were family disgraces. Sex, intoxicant addiction, dishonesty, theft, legal problems . . . This Vatta girl didn’t fit the profile. What it looked like, given the crew profile, was exactly what the girl had said. Supposed to be a milk run—new captain, experienced crew, see how she does, get all the new-captain jitters out of her, meanwhile not wasting an experienced captain’s time taking this wreck to the junkyard. Next time out she’d have a real ship, probably do a good job with it, for a civ.
Her bad luck at war caught up with her. But—given no problems—she’d be out of this in a month or so, heart whole and unscarred. Mackensee had no quarrel with Vatta Transport. Mackensee wanted no quarrel with Vatta Transport. Mackensee wanted no quarrel with anyone, just a straight contract and good credit.
And if there were problems, she would die, that nice girl, that daughter of the family with the experienced crew and the old tub of a ship. Cally thought of her own daughters, all but one safely far away on a world at peace, with steady jobs, and that one safely dead, victim of random violence while Cally’d been off on a mission.
There was always that possibility, for parents and for children, and Cally was mindful of it, as someone who had survived the years from recruit to master sergeant must be.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Ahead of her, the captain’s trim back moved through the escape access hatch into the ship’s regular passage—blessedly wider—and then toward the rec area where the crew had been told to assemble.
“Tell ’em to sit down on the deck, hands on knees,” Cally said.
The Vatta captain’s voice didn’t shake as she gave the order, even though her biostats were still showing elevated P & R—pulse and respiration. As Cally came into the rec room, the suit’s chemsniffer picked up aromatics it labeled fear—a lot of them, from a lot of people. She was doing a quick count, coming up one short, when the captain said, “Where’s Skeldon?”
Cally’s suit picked up the name, displayed a visual and a note from the crew manifest. Caleb Skeldon, age twenty-four Standard, sex male, height 197 cm, handsome as a storycube hero . . . definitely possible trouble. The suit labeled him threat.
“He was here a second ago,” an older man said. Gary Tobai, the suit matched face to crew manifest. Age seventy-four, sex male, loadmaster, expression worried, no chemscent of aggression. Not a threat. “I turned around, when you said sit down—he was right behind me . . .”
The captain’s chemscent shifted from fear to anger; the suit’s analysis shifted her icon from no threat to possible threat. “Blast it all—what’s he think he’s doing.” She raised her voice. “Skeldon—get back in here and sit down.”
No answer. Cally boosted the suit’s sensors. Down the passage, to port—in some compartment—breath sounds and something rasping on cloth. It would be below the captain’s hearing, but that didn’t mean she didn’t know. She could have set this up. Or it could be a young idiot.
The rest of her team was aboard, eight of them in all. Gil back at the lock, just in case. “Jeff, cover these. Mitch, Grady, Sheila, come with me.” Then, to the captain, “You’re going to lead us to the bridge, Captain, and I suggest you convince your crewman to surrender himself.”
The captain called again. No answer. From the way the others had obeyed her, it wasn’t that she was slack.
“Go on,” Cally said. The captain edged past the close-packed sitters to the passage beyond; Cally followed, weapon ready. “How long has Skeldon been on your crew?” she asked.
“A few days,” the captain said. Annoyance edged her voice. “Four Slotter Key spacers were stranded; the embassy asked us to get them out. He’s the youngest.” And the dumbest, was in the tone of voice.
That made sense. New crew, not yet used to this captain, and the right age to think he should be a hero. Though if the captain had tried to plan an ambush, he was the sort she’d use.
“He have a weapon?” Cally asked the captain.
“Not that he declared,” the captain said. “But then he didn’t tell me he wasn’t going to follow orders, either.” The tone was bitter. The back of her neck had reddened; she was a hot-reactor then. Flushed up when she got angry suddenly.
Cally’s suit picked up the sound of footsteps intended to be soundless. Whoever that was—Skeldon, for a bet—was in a compartment to port; when she boosted the IR sensitivity, she could see the hot footprints going in the hatch ahead of them, none coming back out.
“What’s the next compartment portside—on the left?” she asked. The suit didn’t show any hesitation, any telltales of recognition or readiness, in the captain’s posture or movement.
“My cabin,” the captain said. “Bridge is just ahead, on the right.”
“Stop,” Cally said. The captain stopped, and did not turn around. Another surprise. Most civs did automatically turn to face the person they were talking with. “Where could Skeldon go from where he was? Without our seeing him?”
“The galley, my cabin, the bridge. There’s a maintenance passage, that next hatch on the left, it’s the fast way aft past crew quarters to the hold control nexus.”
“And where do you think he went?”
“Maintenance passage would be my guess,” the captain said. “If he’s scared, trying to hide. The holds are aired up; he might try to get in there and hide. If he went to the bridge, Quincy’d send him back, but I can check—Quincy—did Skeldon come onto the bridge?”
“No, Captain. Is everything all right?” That voice came from a speaker mounted high on the bulkhead, but Cally’s suit also picked up the voice itself, coming from the open hatch to the bridge up forward.
“No. He skedaddled from the rec area, and the boarding party wants him back.”
“Can we turn the bridge monitors back on?” asked the voice from the bridge. “We could find—”
“No live scan,” Cally said. Live scan could give information as well as receive it. “What about your cabin?” she asked the captain.
This time the captain did turn around. “My cabin—why would he? It’s off-limits to crew anyway, and there’s no place to hide in there—it’s a dead end.”
All Cally’s experience told her the captain wasn’t lying. But the hot footprints went into the captain’s cabin. Protocol was, the ship’s captain led the way everywhere they went at first, and took the first shot if things went wrong. Protocol kept them alive—had kept her alive for twenty-eight years and she didn’t plan to die until enjoying a long and luxurious retirement. This captain didn’t deserve what was going to happen, but life wasn’t about what people deserved.
&nbs
p; “Well, then,” she said. “Let’s go check out your cabin. Need to see your logbook. We’ll deal with your crewman next.” In the team communication channel, she said, “He’s in the captain’s cabin; she may not know it. We’ll take ’em down as protocol; she’s mine. Grady, he’s yours.” Protocol didn’t require killing her; Cally would make that decision as the action unfolded.
The captain still had that slightly furrowed brow—not the dramatic furrows that meant acting, fake confusion, but the slight wrinkle of real thought. The flush of annoyance had faded—typical of the type, quick anger and quick recovery. She turned and went on up the passage, Cally right behind her, stepping on those hot footprints like she couldn’t see them—which she couldn’t, if she didn’t have IR boost implanted somewhere. Grady moved up beside Cally. As the captain slowed to turn into her cabin, Grady took a long step past her. The captain hesitated, glancing that way.
“Go on,” Cally said.
The captain shrugged, and stepped into her cabin; her head swung to the left as something caught her eye. If she’d known, she would have looked straight or to the other side—Cally had just time for that thought before the wild-eyed young hero leaped forward, shoving the captain aside and aiming a ridiculous little punk pistol at Cally. The round clicked on the field of her helmet even as Grady blew him down with a riot needler. The captain, unprepared for the shove, had stumbled and fallen sideways into the path of the damped round, which still had enough force to do damage; her arm was bleeding. Cally’s swing at the captain connected too late; the suit’s augmented strength gave it the force to fling the captain across the cabin into a locker. The captain made one short cry and then lay still.
From down the passage, loud voices. Of course. “Jeff, keep ’em quiet, keep ’em there. Skeldon attacked with a firearm—I don’t think they knew he had it. He’s dead. Captain’s injured, we’ll render first aid. Sheila, secure the bridge crew.” First thing, keep order. Next thing, did they have one deader or two?