“It’s fine,” Ky said. “Thank you.” She was annoyed with herself that she hadn’t thanked him before.
“Quite all right. It was orders, after all.”
“Thank you anyway,” Ky said firmly. She was in the right about this, at least. “Clearly you—and others in this place—saved my life.”
“You’re welcome,” he said, shrugging as if the thanks made him uncomfortable. “Corporal Conas will take you to see the major,” the man said.
Corporal Conas was waiting, armed. Ky wondered what they thought she could do, that they needed to give her an armed escort, but she walked forward when he gestured.
The major—Harris, his name was—sat behind a desk in a tiny office so bare and tidy that Ky wondered if it was a real working office, or just a place chosen to interview hapless civilians. He did not smile but introduced himself.
“Captain Vatta, we have a problem.”
She knew she had a problem, but not any problem they shared.
“What is that, sir?” The sir came out automatically.
“You’re aware that someone blew the system ansibles . . .”
Someone implied that it wasn’t the mercenaries . . . “Yes . . . ,” Ky said.
“We didn’t do it. We don’t blow ansibles; we don’t want trouble with the ISC any more than anyone else does. Overcharging monopolistic pirates they may be, but what they do is essential, and what they do to people who bother their ansibles is . . . exorbitant.” He paused.
“I see,” Ky said.
“Naturally, everyone thinks we did it,” the major went on. “Warships appear; the ansible platforms blow. Obvious. I’m sure by now the ISC has figured out where we are, and is thinking the same obvious thing. The only party who won’t believe we did it is the party who actually did it, and so far no one has claimed responsibility. It would be far handier if the mercenaries were to blame.”
“I see,” Ky said again. She did, in a way. She had wondered about that; she remembered wondering about that. Why would mercenaries, who depended on ansible communications as much as anyone else, risk the serious and permanent annoyance of the ISC? Control of ansibles was one thing; destruction entirely another.
“We have, besides the operation we were hired to perform, several other tasks now facing us: we need to clear ourselves with the ISC before they come barreling in here and blow us up on spec, and we need to house hostages safely in the meantime, lest we incur judgment for their fates as well. We had hoped to use your ship, the smallest, as a courier to the ISC, but I understand that you have no FTL capability.”
“Right,” Ky said. “And we also have a commitment to deliver agricultural machinery, now in our holds, to Belinta.”
“Neither of which is possible without an FTL drive, isn’t that correct?”
“That is correct, yes, sir.” Ky took a deep breath. “Major Harris, if I may ask, would it be possible to obtain a sealed unit from the repair yards on Sabine Prime’s orbital station?”
“Not now or in the immediate future,” Major Harris said. He did not explain why, and Ky was reluctant to ask. He cocked an eyebrow at her. “You are not acting like most civilian captains, Captain Vatta—most of them try to bluster and scold and command me to do what they want.”
“It’s my first voyage, Major,” she said.
“Um. I suspect it’s more than that. What are you, Slotter Key space service operating undercover?”
Ky felt her eyes widen. “Me? No, sir.”
“You’re very free with your sirs, Captain Vatta. I don’t mind it, but it’s . . . reminiscent of a discipline I’d expect to know better than you. Master Sergeant Pitt remarked on your demeanor as well.”
“Sergeant Pitt?”
“She’s the one who broke your neck, and then called the medics. Not your average civ, she said about you. More like an officer candidate.” He looked at Ky a long moment. “You have something to say, Captain Vatta?”
“Not really, no.” She left the sir off with an effort. “You have an extracted pattern from me and I don’t doubt there was some interrogation while I was in the medbox.”
“And that, too, is not something I would expect a young and inexperienced civ trader to know.” He leaned back, hands behind his head. “Look here, Captain Vatta. It is not our practice to harm neutral civilians, which you clearly are. But we have a proposition for you—a proposition that could work to your advantage later. I am not going to offer that possibility to someone who won’t come straight with me.”
Ky thought about it. It was only her embarrassment, after all; there was no strategic value in his knowing that she had been kicked out of the Academy. “All right,” she said. “I was kicked out of the Slotter Key space academy in my last year.”
“I see.” It was his turn for that noncommital comment. When she said nothing more, he said, “Why?” after waiting a few moments.
“I trusted someone—a junior cadet—and tried to help him out. He lied to me. He just wanted to make trouble for the government, and my ‘help’ gave him that opportunity. It embarrassed the admiral, and . . .” She spread her hands. “I was the handy sacrifice.”
“That’s two young men you’ve trusted unwisely,” the major said. “If I were you, I’d stop doing that.”
Mild as the rebuke was, Ky felt her face going hot. It wasn’t fair; she hadn’t “trusted” Skeldon. She struggled with her emotions. The major went on.
“Just a bit of advice I’d give any young officer. Everyone makes mistakes. But not the same ones over and over.”
“I don’t even like them,” Ky muttered. The major grinned.
“Young men in general, or these young men?”
“These—but they seem so . . . so helpless, sometimes.”
Major Harris laughed aloud, and Ky glared at him. “Sorry,” he said. “But the first thing mercenaries lose is the rescue fantasy thing. My advice is, the next time you see someone you think you need to rescue, walk quickly away on the far side of the street.” Then he sobered. “But that’s not important—it’s your life and not mine, even if it did nearly get you killed and did actually end your military career. What I have to propose now affects both of us.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
Ky felt the rise in tension. “And what is that?” she asked.
He looked at her a moment, and then nodded. “All right. We had hoped to use your ship as a courier to the ISC, but since you have no FTL drive, we can’t. However, we need a place to stash some neutral civilians who might otherwise give us problems. Your ship is more than adequate for that task. The only problem is that some of them are older than you, and—at least in their own estimation—rank higher. We would prefer to have civilians under civilian command—saves us work, and prevents certain kinds of problems—but that will depend on you. We would, essentially, like to hire Vatta Transport to transport—temporarily and in this system—some passengers. For that service, we are prepared to pay standard per diem for an expected duration of that transport.” He glanced down at his desk display. “If our calculations are correct, that would come to something in the neighborhood of two hundred fifty thousand credits.”
Two hundred fifty thousand credits. That would repay the loan on Sabine Prime and finance the repairs to the FTL drive as well . . .
She tried not to smile. “You do realize we have limited quarters for additional personnel,” she said. “How many were you anticipating?”
“Your environmental system will handle a total of seventy, isn’t that correct?”
“Seventy! Yes, though that’s right at redline. Fifty-five’s the rated limit. But we don’t have the space—”
“You have cargo holds—aired up, I’m informed. We’d supply some amenities—pallets and blankets—”
“My cargo holds are stuffed full of cargo,” Ky said. “On contract to the Economic Development Bureau on Belinta.”
“They’d have to be emptied—or at least enough to accommodate fifty additional passengers. With you
r present crew that keeps you under the redline.”
“Just barely,” Ky said. “And we can’t just dump cargo—we have a contract. You understand contracts—” She could not believe she was arguing with a man who had her completely at his mercy, but Vatta stubbornness held her spine stiff.
“Indeed we do undertand contracts, Captain Vatta—it is in pursuit of our own contract obligations that we find ourselves in need of your ship. For which we are willing to pay reasonable fees. Do you understand necessity?”
She did. “Yes,” she said, admitting it. “But that cargo—”
“It’s your customer’s money,” Major Harris said. “Surely there’s insurance?”
“Actually, no,” Ky said. “They had an earlier shipment which was lost—by another carrier. Their insurance is not willing to pay on that, because the cargo completely disappeared. They hired me to bring them another, but insisted it be on spec.”
“So—it’s your money in your holds?”
“Yes.”
He stared at his desk display, lips folded under. When he looked up, Ky thought she saw the ghost of a smile in the crinkles by his eyes. “All right, Captain, here’s our best offer. We’ll have people help you net your cargo, and put a homer tag on it, so you can pick it up later. In fact, we’ll help you load it later. And we’ll pay the full per diem for those passengers. If you command. Otherwise, we’ll have to put a military crew aboard, intern your crew, and you—we’d just keep you here—until this is over, and where will your cargo be then?”
Trade and profit . . . “Very well,” Ky said. “I accept your offer.”
Now he did smile. “Captain Vatta, I predict you are destined to have an interesting life. We’ll have that contract ready in hardcopy in a minute or so, and then, if you’re ready, we’ll return you to your ship.”
“I’m ready,” she said.
“And thank you for not asking more details of our operation,” he said as he stood up. “It shows uncommon . . . discretion.”
“I’m trying to learn, Major,” Ky said, as demurely as she could.
He shook his head at her. “Slotter Key should have hung the other fellow out to dry, not you, Captain. They don’t know what they’re missing. Though your commanders might have had ulcers . . .” He reached out his hand and Ky shook it. “Now, let’s get over to Legal and get that contract signed and sealed, shall we?”
The ship’s legal offices consisted of a warren of little rooms and one large conference room with a big table. Here Ky and the major waited—she noticed that one armed guard still trailed them, but stayed outside the door here—until another officer came in.
“I hate these subordinate contracts,” he said as he came through the door. “Always a mess, always so many exclusionary clauses . . .”
“Senior Lieutenant Mason, this is Captain Vatta,” Major Harris said.
“Captain Vatta,” the man said, extending a damp hand to be shaken. “Now, I understand you’re from Slotter Key?”
“Yes, that’s right.”
“Signatories to the TriSystem revision of the Interstellar Uniform Commercial Code?”
“Yes,” Ky said.
“Well, that simplifies things. Now—do you want to read this yourself or shall I explain it?”
“I’ll read it,” Ky said.
“Since you have no legal representation, I am bound to assist you in understanding anything that might be unclear—”
“Thank you,” Ky said, reaching for the sheaf of hardcopies. He released them with seeming reluctance, and she opened the folder. Familiar terms stared back at her. Consignor, consignee, liability for this and that . . . she read through, carefully, mindful of lessons learned in the family, that it’s the clause you skip over that destroys your profit when you don’t fulfill it. When she looked up, she said, “I don’t see anything about immunity in case of untoward circumstances not resulting from the negligence of Vatta Transport.”
“They’ll be on your ship, under your control,” the lawyer said. “What else—”
“Natural causes,” Ky said. “And it’s a war zone; I’m not going to have Vatta Transport held liable for stray shots, or capture by the other side.”
The lawyer gave the major a long look, and then said, “All right . . . we’ll change it. Won’t take a moment,” and reached for the papers. Ky handed back the one involving carrier liability and held onto the others. He glowered, but walked out with the one sheet.
“Lawyers,” Major Harris said. “They always try something—of course, that’s why we pay them.”
“True,” Ky said. “Our company legal staff’s the same.”
“They taught you well,” Major Harris said. “Though we don’t intend to have any accidents and blow you away . . .”
“Good,” Ky said. They sat in almost-companionable silence until the lawyer came back, with a new page fourteen that included the missing clause. Ky read it, inserted it, and nodded. “All right—I’m ready to sign.”
Major Harris signed for the Mackensee Military Assistance Corporation, and she signed for Vatta Transport, Ltd. The lawyer signed a line that specified the contract had been prepared in accordance with the Trisystem Universal Commercial Code. Then Major Harris stood up. “Let’s get you back to your ship,” he said. “Your passengers will start arriving in about six hours. I’m sending a working party and nets to help with your cargo.”
The trip back to Glennys Jones went swiftly. Ky and the members of the working party all wore pressure suits—there was still no way aboard except the little escape vacuum lock—and she sat webbed to the bulkhead in the back of one of the warship’s assault shuttles, lurching to and fro with the abrupt changes of acceleration required by a rapid transit.
Ky went first through the lock, with two others, and on the inside a guard in armor waved her on up the passage. She drew a long breath; her ship still smelled like her ship, like home. She came out of the passage to find another guard, this one not in armor. This was a lean woman with close-cropped gray hair and PITT stenciled on her uniform. “You can take your pressure suit off here,” the guard said. Ky stripped out of the suit, and the guard’s eyes widened. “Captain Vatta—you look great.”
“Excuse me?”
“Sorry—you probably don’t remember. I’m Master Sergeant Pitt, and I’m the one who knocked you down harder than I meant to.”
“That’s all right,” Ky said. “And by the way, thanks for calling in the medics.” She suspected that for all the fine phrases in the Mackensee advertising, standard operating procedure would have been to finish her off.
Pitt shook her head. “Right thing to do. Anyway, they said you were coming back today; I’m glad to see you looking so well.”
“How are my crew?” Ky asked.
“Fine. They’ve all been very sensible, and very worried about you.”
“We now have a contract with Mackensee,” Ky said. She pulled her copy out of her uniform jacket. “Have they told you?”
“Yup. We’re to help unload as many cargo holds as you say we need to, net and beacon the cargo, and then help you through loading passengers. It’s your ship, Captain. You tell us what we need to do, and we’ll do it. For my sins, I’m your liaison.”
“Right, then. First thing, I want to let the crew know I’m back, and functional. Next, we’ll get Mitt’s assessment of the environmental system, and Gary’s assessment of cargo—he’ll know the easiest and fastest way to unload stuff.”
“They’re waiting in the rec area,” Pitt said, nodding forward. “I’ll just stay here and organize the working party. They’ll need to stay in pressure suits.”
Ky went forward to the rec area. Her crew were scattered around the tables, consuming some meal—she realized she was not oriented to ship’s time and didn’t know which it was—and talking quietly. No guard stood over them. That much was good. She wondered what to say, but then Quincy looked up and saw her.
“Ky—Captain! How are you?”
?
??Fine,” Ky said. “I don’t have an implant, though. What I do have is a contract.”
“A contract!” Quincy looked almost angry. “We thought you were dying—”
“Luckily not, though it was apparently a near thing. I’ve got my medical record with me, if anyone’s that curious. I’d just as soon not look—what they told me was scary enough.”
“But—what do you mean by a contract?”
“Mackensee has hired Vatta Transport to care for some neutral civilian passengers while we’re stuck here in this system. I know”—Ky held up her hand to forestall objections— “I know we don’t have cabin space or comfortable facilities. I know all that. We’re going to net our cargo and put it out with a beacon, to pick up later, and bed passengers in the cargo holds. Mitt, first thing, is our environmental system holding nominal in all ways?”
“Yes, Captain.”
“Good, because we’ll be stressing it. They’re sending us fifty, and they’ll be here in about five hours. Gary, what’s the easiest hold to unload that will hold fifty people for some days—room for pallets and some exercise space?”
“Standard configuration . . . not stacking bunks, just pallets? And we don’t have that many pallets—”
“They’re coming, too. Wait—I’ll get Master Sergeant Pitt.” Pitt would know how much space to calculate, she was sure. Pitt did, and in minutes Gary had figured out the simplest way to unload cargo and take on passengers.
That was the last quick and simple action of a day that had started in sick bay and showed no signs of ending. The holds’ pumps sucked out the air, leaving them ready for opening the cargo hatches to vacuum. Then the unloading began, with Gary Tobai handing out labels to stick on each part of the load, and on each netful. When they had the holds empty, the nets stuffed with equipment, they had only an hour to prepare the holds for their passengers.
Close the big hatches, release the air in the tanks . . . airing up was one thing, but warming up quite another. The mercenaries’ work crew, laying out bedrolls on the decking, positioning the portable toilets, showers, sinks, left puffs of breath smoke behind them. No time to hook up the plumbing, though all the equipment was positioned where it would be most convenient to the ship’s existing lines. At least water wouldn’t be a problem, with their existing stores and recycling.