Trading in Danger (31 page)

Ky considered. “The ISC will have figured it out on their own. Still, we can tell them what we suspect.” She scribbled out another message and sent it down for the others to transmit. Her stomach growled again. With the ISC in the system, she was reasonably sure they wouldn’t be left to starve, but she still had a shipful of passengers and not enough food.

“Another arrival, if it is an arrival.” That one was clearly a down-jump transition, the scan blurry and finally steadying to show the now-familiar Mackensee beacons.

He was in the shower when his skullphone went off. Gerard Vatta turned off the water and answered; it had to be high priority.

“Gerry, we located your daughter Ky, and she’s alive.”

He almost fainted, leaned on the shower wall, and blinked hard to steady his vision.

“She’s had some problems; we don’t know the whole story yet, but she’s fine and the ship’s still whole. I’m sure you’ll want to send someone—have you already ordered a ship in?”

“Yes… Furman with
Katrine Lamont
is closest. He’ll be there in a day or so, if I’ve got the jump span right. Are the ansibles back up?”

“No, and won’t be for days. Whoever blew them did a thorough job. We’ll put in narrow-channel emergencies, but only for official use—at least we’ve got more bandwidth than pinbeams now, but not much. Look, it’s irregular, but will you accept a credit line for her until your ship gets there? We’ve frozen monetary transfers in and out of the system, and between planets for the present. We can have our lawyers talk to yours tomorrow, but I thought you’d want to know now.”

“Thanks, yes, I will accept it. Whatever she needs, Vatta will stand for it.”

He had to tell the rest of the family. He turned the water back on, finished his shower, and came light-footed out to dress. Myris, sipping breakfast tea, turned at his footsteps. “You heard something? Something about Ky?”

“She’s alive. All I know for now, but it’s enough.”

“Stavros?”

“Doesn’t know yet. I’m about to call.” Normally he hated using the skullphone for calls out; he swore it made his sinuses buzz. But this was special.

Ky knew that the rescue operation would be neither simple nor quick, but she had not expected to spend another three days nibbling minimal rations. A ship had to match course with theirs; they had to contrive a way to move people and equipment between the ships. And worst of all was the slow, inefficient spelling out of every communication with the beacon. She had the crew taking turns at the improvised transmitter, but they all had painful backs and shoulders by now.

“Send one person with transmitter,” she spelled out, after being told that the chase ship was only nine hours away.

“Not top priority,” she was told. “What’s the condition of your passengers?”

Hungry, weak, cranky. What did they expect?

“Capable of half hour EVA in pressure suit?”

No, of course not. They’d been too hungry for too long. She sent
No
and wished she had a code for an exclamation point. Finally she had the message they were all longing for. Prepare to receive relief party with medical assistance and rations…

This whole thing of standing around waiting for boarding parties was getting old. Ky knew she should be grateful for the rescue, but what she felt was not gratitude. She tried to tell herself it was just the natural effect of fatigue and hunger, perfectly ordinary physical causes for irritability, but she knew it went deeper than that. She had set off on what could have been a boring routine trip or a grand adventure, and here she was being rescued like some twit in a story who hadn’t had the sense to stay out of trouble. She snarled mentally at the little voice that said,
Well, did you?
Conscience was a wonderful thing except at times like this.

When the knock came on the outer hull, she operated the exterior hatch—by now it worked smoothly—and was surprised to see that the pressure indicator dropped only slightly. The two people who came into the chamber wore only light pressure suits, hoods pushed back. One of them was Master Sergeant Pitt. She opened the inner hatch at Pitt’s signal. The mercenaries? Why the mercenaries? She’d expected a civilian rescue team.

“We’ve got a transfer launch tubed to your hatch, Captain Vatta,” Pitt said without preamble. “Should make it easier. Permission to come aboard?”

Ky did not point out that they already were aboard, and nodded. Pitt came into the little antechamber.

“We’ve got rations enough to last you until we reach the orbital station,” Pitt said. “Anyone’s in bad enough shape, we can take them now. How are they doing?”

“The live ones are fine,” Ky said.

“Some of them died… How did that happen?” Pitt’s expression didn’t change but her tone flattened.

“I guess they didn’t tell you,” Ky said. Why not? she wondered. What was ISC up to? “The captain and first officer of
Marie
, and the captain of the
Empress Rose
, were involved in piracy—and working with whoever blew the ansible platforms. They tried to mutiny when you folks left the system. That’s why we’ve got the wrong beacon ID and that’s how our insystem drive went off.”

Pitt’s mouth twitched. “And here I thought you’d decided to head for home on your own. Here—let’s get the com tech and transmitter aboard, while you tell me—” She signaled, and a man carrying an equipment case edged past them. “To the bridge with him?”

“Sure,” Ky said.

“So, how did they manage that?” Pitt asked. It took Ky a moment to realize what she was talking about.

“Tapped into the ship’s data lines and subverted the AI. I’d been afraid of something like that, but we didn’t have any way to secure the system against people who knew what they were doing. Too many of them, too few of us, and no real way to isolate them from everything.”

“I suppose this is payback for the trouble the first time,” Pitt said thoughtfully.

“Huh?”

“ISC must’ve told our commander all that, but nobody told me. Command wasn’t overly thrilled with me for mishandling that first boarding; this must be their idea of a joke.”

Ky hadn’t thought of it that way.

“So, what did you do?” Pitt asked.

“When the ship took off suddenly? Well—I had to stop the mutiny. Paison—
Marie
’s captain—had a member of my crew hostage and was threatening to kill him unless I surrendered the ship to him.”

“’Course you wouldn’t do that,” Pitt said. Her certainty surprised Ky.

“I didn’t, but why are you so sure?”

“You’re not the type. Military-trained, even though you hadn’t seen action—you wouldn’t fall for that. How many did you lose?”

“Only the one,” Ky said. Only the one, but someone she’d known off and on, and her father’s chosen baby-sitter. “I—had only the pistol bows, Mehar’s target kit. I’d been practicing, just in case. Paison and his mate and a few others had knives; the mate had Gary… they had a mob behind them. So I shot them.” Suddenly she wanted to tell Pitt all about it, get a veteran’s response to it. She must not. “They killed Gary; I killed the leaders; the rest weren’t that eager.”

“Good job, Captain,” Pitt said. “Now—let’s get the rations aboard, eh?”

“Why is Mackensee doing this?” Ky asked.

“ISC,” Pitt said. “Proof of good faith. They still aren’t convinced we had nothing to do with the ansible attack, even with what you said. Or so they say. I think they’re just being punitive, myself. But nobody argues with ISC.”

That was true. Ky dragged her mind away from that and back to the immediate problems. “What about those rations, then?”

“Right, Captain.” Pitt muttered into her shoulder mike and said, “If you’ll go on to the galley, and have someone ready to direct stowage, I’ll stay here and direct the transfer.”

Up in the crew rec space, her crew waited, all but the two on the bridge. They stared at her as she came in, not saying anything.

“It’s all right,” Ky said. “They’re about to transfer rations over to us, and we can start feeding right away. Li, you’re in charge of stowage of the rations.”

The first person in, however, was not carrying ration packs but a bright orange medical kit. “I need to assess physical condition,” he said. “And advise you on refeeding schedules to minimize problems. Do you have records of how much and what you were feeding?”

“Yes—but why do we need that?”

“Because refeeding after prolonged starvation or below-subsistence feeding can be tricky. I’ll need to check everyone individually for metabolic variations, and then make out a program. If we’re lucky we’ll only have two or three main groups to worry with. Spacers come from so many different places, though, with so many different metabolic quirks…”

“You can’t ask people to starve another day or so while you work this out,” Ky said. She could feel her neck getting hot.

“No, of course not,” he agreed. “But the first refeeding must be small and bland. Small meals and frequent is the best for everyone; the details do matter, especially in the next week, and especially since your environmental system is operating near its limits. The last thing you need is two dozen bouts of diarrhea.” Beyond him, troopers were bringing in dollies of ration packs. Ky could hear Li directing them where to put things in storage.

“That’s certainly true,” she said. “But what can I have the crew fix now, right away? We have forty-odd very hungry passengers.”

“I’ll check your crew first, and then them. Let’s start with you. Planet of origin?”

“Slotter Key—I’m fine, you don’t have to worry about me—”

“If the captain goes down, the ship goes down. Put your finger in this.” He held out a fat cylinder with a hole in one end, studded with buttons. Ky put her finger in. “Ah. You last ate when? And what?”

Ky had to think hard to remember, and told him. He touched a button on the side of the fat cylinder, then two others.

“Here’s yours, and I’m perfectly serious. For best recovery and performance in the meantime, you need to adhere to this schedule. Now, right now, one bread ration and one fruit pack. The rest I’ll upload to your system storage.”

“But—”

“That’s your hunger arguing with me.” He turned to the file of people moving the ration packs. “Bring me one of those.” At once, one of the men brought over a flat brown package. The medic ran his finger along a ridge on top; the package folded back. Inside were smaller packets, each with a picture label. Ky stared.

“We had to rip those things open with kitchen knives, and it was a job,” she said. “Nobody told us—”

“Sorry. Here.” He rummaged in the pack and brought out a sealed packet with a picture of fruit on one side, and another with a picture of a round, flat object colored brown and cream. “Take these and eat them now, right this minute.”

Clearly this nut wasn’t going to let her alone until she did, and she had a lot to do. “All right,” Ky said, and opened the packets. She didn’t feel that hungry, but she bit off a piece of the breadlike thing and squirted some of the semiliquid fruit onto the rest of the bread. It was vaguely sweet and definitely tart. At least it wasn’t Aunt Gracie Lane’s fruitcake. She finished the bread, onto which she’d squeezed the last of the fruit mush.

In the meantime, the medic had grabbed one after another of her crew, insisting that they, too, insert their fingers into his device. He came back to her. “The same thing, in two hours. I’ll still be here then, and I’ll check on you. Now—I need to see the passengers.”

Bemused, but already feeling more alert, Ky led him down to the holds and introduced him. Her heart twisted at the sight of the hollow-eyed, listless men and women who lay on their pallets. The medic checked them one by one, and behind him came troopers carrying ration packs, from which they dispensed as he ordered. For these, more malnourished than her crew, squeeze packs of liquid. “They can have one every hour at first,” he said to Ky. “These are also loaded with micronutrients. And then after the first twenty-four hours, anyone who’s not having gut problems can move up to the phase two rations, which includes solids. I’d expect by the third or fourth day to move them to phase three. It could have been much worse—I’ve seen it much worse. You made a good decision, back when you cut the rations early on.”

Soon the medic was finished with his assessment; Ky headed back to the bridge. There, the new communications gear had been installed, including a viewscreen that took up half the space between her chair and the pilot’s. She finally had ordinary voice contact with the outside world. After days of spelling each message out laboriously, that was a relief, even with a Mackensee trooper standing by the com console to emphasize that the equipment belonged to them.

“Colonel Kalin wants you to call,” the trooper said as Ky came onto the bridge.

“Are the system ansibles up?” Ky asked.

“I don’t know. The Colonel—”

“Wants me to call. I understand.” She eyed him, and decided that trying to claim the overriding authority of a ship’s captain would probably not work. She would find out the most the fastest by cooperating. “Do you know the channel?”

“Yes, Captain. It’s preentered. All the captain needs to do is press that button—” The trooper pointed.

Ky pressed the button, and other telltales turned yellow, then green. In moments a man’s face took shape on the viewscreen. He wore the Mackensee uniform and metal shapes whose significance she did not know on his shoulders and lapels. Gray hair cut close, a broad face, green eyes.

“I’m Colonel Eustace Kalin,” he said. “I’m in command of the local Mackensee forces. You’re Captain Vatta, is that right?”

“Yes, I’m Captain Vatta,” Ky said.

“Captain, we have business to discuss, which would best be discussed face-to-face. I’d like you to come aboard—”

Ky shook her head. “Colonel, this is my ship, and the captain does not leave the ship—not willingly that is—while in transit.”

His brows went up. “You regret our giving you emergency medical care?”

“Not at all, Colonel,” Ky said. “I’m glad you did, and grateful for your surgeons’ skill. But now I am healthy. My place is here, aboard my ship, until we are safely docked somewhere. My second-in-command was killed when some of the… the passengers… attempted to take over the ship.”

“I see,” he said. “In that case… we have been asked by the ISC to tow your ship back to orbit near Sabine Prime. I understand that you have no onboard power?”

“That’s correct,” Ky said. “The individuals who attempted to gain control of the ship caused the drive to malfunction, and we are out of fuel. However, I am not willing to have this ship treated as a derelict and subject to wreckers’ law.”

“What would you do if we
didn’t
tow you back?” he asked. “You have no FTL drive; you have no working insystem drive… Were you planning to get out and paddle? Do you really think you’re in a position to make conditions?”

“All situations are negotiable,” Ky said, quoting her father. “I could, for instance, hire you myself to tow us back.”

He laughed. “You don’t scare easily, Captain Vatta. All right. With your permission and not under wreckers’ law, making no claim on hull or cargo other than that which we contracted with you to carry, will you permit us to tow you back to Sabine Prime near-orbit where we can carry on this discussion in a less public venue?”

“Thank you,” Ky said. “I accept your offer of transport.”

“What we need to do then is let your engineering staff talk to my engineering staff about where to grapple on.” He shook his head slightly. “I’m beginning to believe what Master Sergeant Pitt and Major Harris said about you, Captain Vatta.”

She had no idea what they’d said—what she remembered best were their comments on young women who harbored rescue fantasies and were too susceptible to young men. But the Colonel almost sounded approving, like the Academy Commandant on a good day.

Three hours later, the
Glennys Jones
was snugged up to the flank of a Mackensee warship, and Quincy and her Mackensee counterpart were deep in conversation with hull schematics. A score of pressure-suited troopers were going over the outside of the hull under their direction, applying some kind of test equipment to various points. Ky didn’t have a clue what that meant. The medic had been back to the bridge to remind her to eat her bread and fruit mush. He reported that the passengers were all doing well, sucking down the liquid food packets as fast as they were allowed.