Engaging the Enemy (29 page)

“I will suggest to the stationmaster that he ask her,” the monitor said.

Ky wondered, for the first time in years, what had happened to the bracelet.

Stella bit her lip as she stared at the blank screen. Ky could be just as irritating as ever. Once she made up her mind she was impossible to reason with. She glanced over at Orem.

“What do you think?”

“She's very…determined, your cousin,” he said.

“You don't think she's right, do you?”

“Ma'am, it's not for me to say. We've discussed this before. If this Gammis Turek fellow has indeed taken over a whole system at Bissonet, that argues for a lot of resources. It will take a lot of resources to fight him off. It wasn't very tactful of her to talk to other captains back at Sallyon without talking to their government first, though.”

Stella seized on that word. “She's not tactful,” she said. “Ky never has been. She got angry with me one time when she was nine or ten, something like that. I'd blamed her for getting me in trouble—and probably not entirely fairly—but she threw back at me a gift I'd given her, called me a liar, and wouldn't talk to me for the rest of the summer, which luckily was almost over. I tried to apologize but she stayed in a huff.” She had also, Stella thought with a guilty twinge, kept Stella's secrets faithfully, angry as she was.

“Hot-tempered, then?”

“Yes. Impatient, impetuous, and very sure she's right.”

“What are you going to do now?” he asked. His calm tone soothed her taut nerves; clearly he thought she knew or would think of something to control her wild cousin.

“I'm going to call Captain Furman,” she said. She was sure Ky would consider that disloyal, but as long as Ky wasn't putting Vatta first, she was the disloyal one and Stella alone was faithful to the family. Recalling Ky to her family duty was
her
family duty, and it didn't matter that she'd be talking to someone Ky loathed.

Stella had never actually met Captain Furman; her implant had a summary of his personnel file and his image. His narrow face stared out at her coldly, thin lips folded tight. No one, she reminded herself, looked their best in an official identification portrait, but he didn't meet her standards of handsome.

When she placed the call, his communications tech, a round-faced woman about Stella's age, answered. “Captain Vatta? Which Captain Vatta?”

“I'm Stella Vatta,” she said. “Stavros Vatta's daughter. I need to speak to Captain Furman.”

“I'm afraid that's not possible,” the comtech said. “He's eating now.”

Stella felt a trickle of anger. That was not the way to speak to the daughter of Vatta's former CEO, even if the CEO was dead. “And I'm acting CEO of Vatta Transport,” she said. The woman's eyes widened. “I'm certain that Captain Furman will want to speak to me. Now.”

“Oh…oh…yes. Mmm…I'll send someone.” She turned away from the screen and muttered something Stella couldn't quite hear.

“And while you're at it,” Stella said, “do you have any Vatta family members aboard?”

“Ummm…I don't think so…” The woman was obviously upset, but surely she'd know the names of crewmembers. The
Katrine
was big, but most of that size was cargo capacity; her crew numbers shouldn't be over forty, and probably less than that.

Stella queried her implant quickly. Yes, the usual crew for this size ship was thirty-four to thirty-eight. “Would you check, please,” she said, making it more order than request.

“Yes…er…Captain Vatta.” She saw the woman look down as if scanning a reader. “Er…no, Captain Vatta, we have no Vatta family members aboard at this time.”

That was unfortunate. She had hoped for additional allies to put pressure on Ky. It was a little odd, too, since most Vatta ships did have Vatta family members. Not all were captains; they might be found in almost any of the ship departments, though perhaps with a preponderance in Cargo. She queried her implant again. While she did not have the full command set that Ky had received from her father, she had loaded the most current list of family members and their ship assignments. Odd indeed. Maynard Vatta and Baslin Vatta should have been on this ship.

She opened her mouth to ask the communications tech when the tech's face was abruptly replaced by that of Captain Furman. A very angry Captain Furman.

“Whatever you're playing at, it won't work, young woman!” he said, looking down at something below screen level. “And trying to intimidate my crew won't work, either. As soon as I dock, your entire fabrication will come apart!” He looked up, then, and the angry flush blanched to a sickly pale. “You're not—they said Captain Vatta—”

“I'm Stella Vatta,” Stella said. “I did tell your comtech that. Who did you think it was?”

He took a long breath; normal color seeped back into his face. “Stella…not Chairman Vatta's daughter? I didn't know you were ship-qualified.”

He had not answered her question, but she would pursue that later. “Yes, Captain Furman, I'm Stavros Vatta's daughter, and presently acting CEO of Vatta Transport.” She watched that sink in; his expression hardened, sour as a plateful of pickles. “Now, whom were you ranting at?”

He took a visible deep breath. “There's a renegade docked at the station, pretending to be a Vatta family member,” he said. “If you
are
who you say you are, you know about Osman Vatta—”

“Yes,” Stella said. “My father and uncle threw him out of the family decades ago; he stole a ship—”

“Quite. And turned pirate. That very ship is now docked at Cascadia Station. There's a woman who claims to be Kylara Vatta—I suppose she'd be your cousin, if she were alive—but is almost certainly one of Osman's by-blows. I don't know where Osman is, but when the authorities take her into custody I'm sure they will find out.”

“Osman's…by-blows?”

“The man was notorious,” Furman said, his upper lip curling a little. Despite her plan to get his cooperation in talking sense into Ky, Stella found herself disliking him already. “He was a sexual predator who left illegitimate children everywhere he went.”

“And you know this how?” Stella asked silkily.

“I was supposed to look for the…er…orphans and bring them back to your father, if I found any. There was some kind of scheme to adopt them into Vatta families. Waste of my time, but I do my duty no matter how ridiculous it is. And that was the second most ridiculous thing I ever had to do for Vatta Transport.”

“Did you find any?” Stella asked.

“No. I know some were found, but not by me. Wasted time checking orphanages, foster homes—”

She was not surprised he had found none. Would anyone want to turn over a child to this sour, rigid person even with the promise of a better home far away?

“What was the most ridiculous thing?” Stella asked.

His face darkened again. “Sending me to Sabine to rescue Kylara Vatta. Not only was there no need, but the…she…refused to let me help. I was perfectly willing to take her and her crew aboard and sell the ship for scrap—but away she went, disobedient as always, and then of course she died.” He said that in a tone that bordered on satisfaction.

A
n icy chill ran down Stella's back; she struggled not to show her sudden unease. “What makes you sure she died? That this person is an imposter?” Her voice had gone up a tone; she took a long breath.

“She made herself a target,” he said. “I suspect the attacks on Vatta were revenge for what she did at Sabine—did you know she actually killed two men? Herself? And got a valuable Vatta employee killed in the process? And she was in an old, slow, unarmed ship, and now this person claiming to be Kylara Vatta shows up in a fast armed merchanter that I know belonged to a renegade, Osman. How likely is that? There's a superficial resemblance, I'll admit—they're both young women, dark-haired, rather dusky—” He hitched his chin up and down, as if to show off his own pink complexion and pale eyes. “—but there's no way Kylara Vatta could have defeated Osman and captured his ship. She was only a—a—provisional captain, after all.”

Warning bells clamored in Stella's mind. If only she weren't in Ky's old ship, something Furman hadn't seemed to notice yet, but he would. She wanted to let him think she believed him, that Ky was dead, that the person now aboard Osman's ship wasn't Ky, because every instinct told her Furman knew more than he should—no successful trader could be as stupid as he sounded. But before he figured it out, before he became suspicious of her, she had to tell him.

“Captain Furman,” she said, putting all her charm into her voice, “I appreciate your concern, but I must tell you that I'm convinced my cousin is alive…I don't believe you can have noticed the ship I'm in—”

“Er…what?”

“It was Ky's ship, the one she renamed for Gary Tobai. She asked me to take it over for her when she transferred to Osman's ship.”

He did pale a shade. “What! Impossible.”

“True, though. Look at the Traffic Control ID codes if you don't believe me.”

He glanced down, then stared at her a moment, jaw hanging, before he spoke. “But where did you—are you in league with her? Are you another of Osman's bastards?”

Stella snorted. “Hardly, Captain Furman. You should know better than that. Surely you've seen pictures of me. This is not a face easy to fake.”

Now he flushed. “Er…no. I don't suppose it is, but…but I don't understand.”

Was he entirely witless? Stella felt a flush of sympathy for Ky, and then stuffed it away. “Ky is not dead, Captain Furman. We met on Lastway Station, where she had taken this ship, and traveled together. We…er…ran into Osman…”

“Where?” Now his brows contracted, his gaze intent.

“I have no idea,” Stella said. “I suppose it's in the log somewhere, but I haven't looked it up.” She did not want to tell him the whole story, especially not here and now. “Ky did end up with his ship, and that is Ky docked at Cascadia Station.”

“Are you sure?” he asked.

“You think I wouldn't know my own cousin?”

“You hadn't seen her in some time, had you? Small changes—I mean—how do you know the person you met at Lastway really was your cousin?”

“It seemed the reasonable explanation,” Stella said. “She was in the right ship…”

“Yes, but—” He scowled, then brightened. “Suppose she had been killed wherever she was going when she left Sabine, and someone had taken the ship, someone who looked like her at least a little, and then that someone fooled you, and the meeting with Osman's ship was planned. I'll wager you never saw Osman, now, did you?”

A man welded to a pet theory, Stella thought, could bend the raw iron of facts into very fantastical shapes. “Well, no,” Stella said. Not alive and in person, anyway. “I suppose,” she said, to see how much rope he would take, “it could have happened that way. But it certainly seems like Ky.”

“I mean, you have little ship experience, isn't that true?”

It had been true, but she had now amassed almost a half year of ship time and she'd paid attention. Still, let him think what he would. “Yes,” she said. “This is my first experience of real ship duty.”

“I can help you,” he said. His voice acquired a fruity false sweetness. “I can protect you from this imposter. I'm willing to do that, but I'm not willing to pretend that this person is really a legitimate heir to Vatta.”

“I see,” Stella said. She did not think it would be wise to ask him where the two Vatta family members were who should have been on his ship. Family instincts were ringing alarm bells.

“As far as I know,” he went on, “I'm the only surviving senior captain, and if you're trying to reconstitute Vatta Transport, you need me.”

“It's my belief that we need all our ships, Captain Furman,” Stella said.

“Yes, but they're mostly destroyed, aren't they? Now, if I can get that imposter out of Osman's ship, and take it over in your name, that should be worth something, shouldn't it?”

“I'm not sure that will be necessary,” Stella said, glad for the years of practice that kept her voice smooth when a flare of white rage almost blanked her vision. The nerve of the man. He thought he could take over Vatta, did he? He had probably intended to wait out the statutory limit of his contract and then declare himself the new head of Vatta, at least in this area. Now he thought he could evict Ky from her ship on specious grounds, present it to Stella as a gift, and…what? Insist on a partnership, at the least. The way he had looked at her, he might want more than that.

“Well, no, the
Katrine
should be sufficient for a welcome,” he said. His smile made Stella want to smack his face. Sixteen days before she'd be close enough…she wanted to smack his face now. “But Osman's ship would be a great addition to our fleet.”

“It's encouraging to see you identifying so closely with Vatta Transport,” Stella said.

“I have given my whole life to Vatta Transport,” Furman said. He seemed to literally swell with pride. “We—you and I—could bring it back from this disaster.”

“I certainly couldn't do it alone,” Stella murmured. She looked at him under her eyelashes, gauging his response. Yes. He was just as susceptible as most men.

“So…you'll work with me?”

“I do have the advantage of the Vatta name,” Stella said.

“Yes, of course. I understand. And I expect you have useful knowledge I don't have…corporate accounts and things like that.”

As if she'd give him that information. Stella forced a smile. “I have quite a bit of data, yes. I don't want to share it over a public link, however. Why don't you just go on and dock, and we'll talk it over when I arrive?”

“Not try to seize Osman's ship?”

“No, I don't think so. I think it's a situation where the Vatta name may be more useful with the authorities. More persuasive.”

“Well…” He was clearly reluctant, but finally nodded. “Well, then, I'll just keep you informed, shall I? At least the authorities aren't going to let that imposter depart.”

“If it is an imposter,” Stella said. “I'm still not entirely convinced.”

“I'm sure of it,” he said, as if that should convince her. “There's absolutely no doubt in my mind.”

Only, thought Stella, because his very small mind was full of his own conceit. “Then we'll talk tomorrow,” she said. “Same time.” And cut the connection.

“That guy's a crook!” her pilot said. “You don't believe a word he said, do you?”

Stella looked at her. “What makes you think that?”

“His eyes, the way he changed color like a mating stripe-tail, the tone of voice—couldn't you tell?”

“I am not,” Stella said, “disposed to believe everything dear Captain Furman says. On the other hand, it suits my purposes for dear Captain Furman to think I believe him. You will kindly not trouble the poor man's mind with any confusion on that issue.”

“Don't blow your cover, you mean?” The pilot's brows went up.

“Something like that,” Stella said.

It was most annoying. She'd had such hopes of Furman, had seen him as an ally to force Ky to see reason and give up the nonsense about a space navy. She'd assumed that Furman, like her own shipmaster, would be at worst stolid but still a faithful Vatta employee, reliably hers to command. Now she had another person she couldn't trust in a position where she couldn't afford error. A greedy, ambitious, self-serving man, and someone who might be connected to both Osman and the conspiracy.

Not for the first time, Stella wished that Rafe had been on her ship instead of with Ky. He could have sorted out Furman, finding out more about the man than the man knew about himself. He was even closer: once Furman docked, Rafe should be able to deploy his considerable resources. But she would have to go through Ky to contact Rafe. Would Ky cooperate? She wasn't at all sure.

Over the hours between that call and the next, waking and sleeping, Stella puzzled over Furman. Why had he been so sure Ky was dead? Wishful thinking, perhaps? They'd never gotten along. Or had he known she was a target for assassination? Had someone told him she was dead, and if so, who? Why was he so sure Osman had children? Had he known Osman?

Could it possibly be true…could this Ky possibly be a substitution for the real Ky—and if so, to what purpose? More ruin of Vatta? Something else? She was sure she knew her cousin…and yet, Ky had done things, things that bothered her, that did not fit the Ky she'd grown up with.

When she woke and could not go back to sleep, she checked the crew schedule and found that Quincy was on duty. Quincy had been with Ky from the time she came aboard; she would know.

“Of course it's Ky,” Quincy said. “Furman's an idiot; that's the stupidest theory I ever heard.”

“There's no time a substitution could have been made?”

“How?” Quincy asked. “Spaceforce Academy would have checked her identity when she went in. She came aboard from a Vatta shuttle, straight from her father's house. I'll admit she walked some little distance through the station, but never out of sight of monitors.”

“All the same,” Stella said. “It's not that I trust Furman—I don't—but a fool may still know water flows downhill. What if he's right about this one thing?”

“Ask her about something only the two of you know,” Quincy said. “A substitute can only know things that others know as well.”

Stella wasn't so sure. What could she and Ky alone know? Perhaps there had been some secret in their childhood, but she couldn't think of anything that other relatives hadn't also known, could have talked about casually sometime in the years in between. The gaggle of cousins vacationing together had always been in one another's pockets. “What we need is a good genetic scan,” Stella said. “That would establish her identity for certain, but we need reference scans that are back on Slotter Key.”

“It's Furman's identity I'd be more worried about,” Quincy said. “How do we even know he's who he says he is?”

That hadn't occurred to her. Furman as an idiot or a traitor, yes, but a Furman who wasn't Furman? “Ky is sure he's Furman,” she said, realizing as she said it how foolish that was.

Quincy pointed out the obvious. “If you're not sure she's Ky, why would you take her word on Furman's identity?”

Stella scrubbed at her face with her hands. “At least they're not in this together…I hate this. Why can't Ky be reasonable?”

Ky wondered if Stella would contact Furman behind her back. Stella had been trained to be sneaky; of course she would. The one thing she could count on, though, was that Stella knew she, Ky, was not an imposter. She might be angry, she might think Ky was an idiot, but she would never think Ky wasn't Ky. Maybe she could get that through Furman's head.

With Furman only a day from docking, Ky wondered how she could penetrate his security. He thought she—the real Ky Vatta—was dead. Why did he think that? Had he known about the attacks on Vatta? Was he part of the attacks on Vatta? She wanted to believe that, but she knew her long-held dislike of him might be clouding her judgment. Or perhaps he wanted to discredit her simply to strengthen his own claim, as a senior Vatta captain, to speak for Vatta, to gain unquestioned access to Vatta accounts. Perhaps in the apparent collapse of Vatta's trade empire, he'd hoped to start his own, using the ship he had and any accounts he could plunder.

Or he could be honest and mistaken, her conscience reminded her. “I don't think so,” Ky said aloud, without thinking.

“What?” Martin was staring at her, and she realized that she'd come out with that in the middle of a meal, with a forkful of something she hadn't really tasted halfway to her mouth.

“I was thinking about Furman,” she said.

“Motives,” Rafe said, with a sidelong glance at Martin. She wished he wouldn't do that. He could not resist being, or seeming to be, that fraction ahead of Martin. This time he was right, but she wasn't going to tell him so.