Trading in Danger (39 page)

The man lunged at her again, his weapon slashing at another of the chair legs. Ky squatted quickly, trying to come up inside its arc, but his weight overthrew her; she was flat on the floor, the legs of his chair caging her head for an instant, until he lost his balance and fell sideways, weapon arm outstretched.

Ky rolled toward him and got a hand on his wrist, but he was taller and heavier. She tried to tuck and kick him in the gut, but the chair got in the way. He leered at her, and started to roll up… when a booted foot landed hard on his hand.

“Let go,” said the voice.

“Go—” the man said, an anatomically impossible suggestion.

The tip of a very sharp blade came into view, beside the boot, resting on the skin of his hand. “You can let go, or I can cut your hand off your blade finger by finger,” the voice said. “Your choice.”

His hand loosened; someone reached down and removed the weapon, but the blade menacing his fingers never quivered.

“Captain Vatta,” the voice said. Ky looked up. She knew that face. Master Sergeant Pitt.

“Need a hand up?” Pitt asked.

“No, thanks,” Ky said. She scrambled up, put the damaged chair back where it had come from, and looked around for her crew. The fight was over. Six men lay or sat on the floor, some unconscious and some merely stunned; some of her crew were up, breathing hard, and two were still under the table.

“Sorry to interrupt your meal,” Pitt said, “but the dinner conversation seemed to be turning general.” Her eyes twinkled. Ky could not help grinning back.

“It wasn’t our plan,” she said. “We’d just had a funeral…”

“I heard,” Pitt said. “I’d have come if I could. We missed it by fifteen minutes. He was a good man.”

“He was indeed,” Ky said. Suddenly her bruises hurt, her head ached, and she wanted very much to sit down and go to sleep. Not much was left of their meal; the table looked as if someone had wallowed on it and maybe someone had.

Pitt looked down at the man who had attackedKy.“You’re off
Marie
, aren’t you?” she said. He spat in the direction of her boot but didn’t answer. “Not a good choice,” Pitt said. “
Marie
crew are supposed to be aboard, waiting for interrogation… I think we’ll do a little interrogation on my ship.” She looked at one of the other soldiers. “Jem—call the ship and get them to send a squad.”

More quickly than Ky would have imagined, a squad showed up to shackle the attackers and take them away. Pitt shook her head at the departing brawlers. “Not very good at it, that bunch. Nasty for someone with no training, but you, at least, knew what you were doing. Come on, let’s finish that funeral dinner. Charge the damage to
Marie
—I’ll back you on the damage report.”

Ky wasn’t sure she could eat anything but the bayhopper goulash was just as good the second time around, and the raw whiskey Pitt encouraged her to sip took the ache out of her body.

“You know, Captain, you’re really wasted on a merchanter,” Pitt said quietly. Ky wasn’t sure how she’d ended up sitting next to Pitt, between her and another mercenary. “I know, the Colonel said you have some kind of promise thing you have to do first, but… you belong with people like us, really, not with people like them—” Her gaze settled on the ones who had dived under the table.

“Not their fault,” Ky said. “They haven’t had the training.” Her blood warmed to the praise, though, and she felt again both the glee and the guilt as the fight replayed in her mind. Pitt, she realized, would not condemn her for what she’d felt when she killed Paison and his mate.

“True but… here’s something I don’t say often, and won’t say again. There’s some born to it, Captain, and you’re one of ’em. I don’t know what happened to get you out of that training, but you’re someone I’d be glad to serve with. And I can’t say more than that.”

“Thanks,” Ky said. She was aware of a floating disconnect between her brain and body, and hoped she wasn’t drunk. Very drunk.

“Cup of black coffee and a good big dessert will cure what ails you,” Pitt said. “We’ll just sit here and talk about nothing much, how’s that?” And for the next hour, Pitt told stories of the Mackensee Military Assistance Corporation, every one of which made Ky homesick for a community she hadn’t had yet. Ky could tell when the alcohol had mostly left her system; she blinked and the lights didn’t flicker. She thanked Pitt and led her crew back to the ship.

And she stared at thebattered circle that had been her class ring and felt nothing but vague anger.

FTL sealed unit’s in,” Quincy reported. “Custom Parts had an Ames & Handon 4311b in stock, and that’s better than the one we took out. I’ve checked all the calibration; it looks slick.”

“What’s the damage?” Ky asked.

“Only ten percent higher than before we left, and it’s higher quality. You want it, right?”

“Right,” Ky said. She watched the figuresQuincysent come up on her deskcomp. “And the liner?”

“Got that, too,”Quincysaid, with a hint of smugness. “How’s the relicensing coming along?”

“Paperwork and money,” Ky said. She had her deskcomp set to display the falling balance in their accounts… amazing how fast a lot of money could disappear. She not only had to pay for the registration and the custom ship chip, but for the database search which ensured that no one else had used the name Gary Tobai for a ship. She had to appear in person to take possession of the new ship chip for the beacon, and then spend a sweaty and uncomfortable half hour getting the beacon unit out, seating the new chip, and replacing the unit in its cramped space. A whole new beacon would have cost another 100,000 credits.

Meanwhile, she fended off suggestions from Captain Furman—more like orders than suggestions—that she allow him to audit her books, inspect her ship, check out her financial arrangments with the Sabine branch of Crown & Spears, make arrangements to have the ship scrapped…

“For the last time, no,” Ky said, hanging onto her temper by the merest fingernail. “I am not selling the ship for scrap here. I have a contract to deliver cargo to Belinta, and that’s where I’m going.”
And you can’t stop me
didn’t quite come out of her mouth.

“But your father—”

“Isn’t here. Doesn’t need to be here. And if he were here, he’d understand my position.”

“He’d understand Vatta Transport’s position. Damn it, Apprentice—”

Her temper snapped. “I’m not an apprentice, Captain Furman. I’m a captain the same as you are. Get that through your fat stupid head, once and for all—”

“You little—!”

She turned off the comunit, shocked at herself—had she really said that to Furman, senior captain of the Vatta fleet? It felt good; it shouldn’t feel good. At least he couldn’t ping her skullphone since she didn’t have an implant. She had the last word.

“How fast can we leave?” she asked Lee, who happened to be on the bridge just then.

“I’ll check, Captain,” he said. In a few moments,Quincyappeared on the bridge.

“You want to leave soon?”Quincyasked.

“Yes,” Ky said. “As soon as we can.”

“Get us clearance, and we’re out of here, ma’am. FTL’s in, all cavitation damage replaced, cargo loaded and balanced, inspace drive refueled, supplies aboard. Unless there’s some niggly paperwork holding us here—”

“There won’t be for long,” Ky said, feeling a wicked delight bubbling up inside her. They would be on their way, and Furman, she had no doubt, would be stuck where he was until it pleased ISC to let him depart. She called the stationmaster, and in less than two hours they had their clearance for departure. She declined a tug, and in another seventeen minutes forty-two seconds the
Gary Tobai
eased out of its docking bay, maneuvered carefully free of the station and all nearspace traffic, and set a course for the designated jump point.

The ship moved as ponderously as ever; she hadn’t had the money to upgrade the insystem drive. But it was her ship again, with no strangers aboard, no one giving her orders. On the communications board, messages from Furman stacked up—she could see the mounting numbers with their origin codes—but she didn’t care. He couldn’t actually do anything, not without getting permission from the ISC, and right now she had ISC on her side.

As for the military ships, they stayed in tight orbit around both planets. Her new scan showed ships out where the ansibles had been… ISC rebuilding its empire, no doubt.

They could stay there till they rotted, all of them, Sabines, mercenaries, ISC, and all, for all she cared. She was free of that. She grinned to herself. She stayed close to the bridge for the first couple of days, then turned it over to the pilots and navigator. If she was going to be a captain—the kind of captain she wanted to be—she needed to trust her people. And she needed to know a lot of things she still didn’t know, things a captain needed to know.

Without really thinking about it, she fell into a routine similar to that in the Academy, beginning every main shift with an hour of physical conditioning, and taking another exercise period midway through second shift. She had to be fit; she had to be ready for anything.

On the ninth day, they reached the jump point, and she was back on the bridge for endim transition. The ship barely shivered as the new FTL drive flung them into indetermination; all the telltales stabilized at once in the correct configuration. Quincy was on the bridge as well, running calibration estimates—a first run with a new drive always involved some tinkering and tweaking—but from the grin on her old face, all was going well.

As he’d requested, Gerard Vatta had a ping from the watch station as soon as the Sabine ansibles were back up. He beat Stavros to the communications center by a scant minute; he had just made the connection to the Sabine orbital station when he saw Stavros round the corner. His brother came to the boards and picked up his own headset link.

“This is Gerard Vatta,” he said to the com tech on the station. “Patch me through to the Vatta ship
Glennys Jones
, please.”

“No such ship is docked at the station,” the technician said. “A ship formerly known as the
Glennys Jones
, but reregistered under the Slotter Key flag as the
Gary Tobai
was docked here but is no longer here and is outside our range. It may already have left the system.”

The
Gary Tobai
… Ky would have named the ship for Gary only if Gary had died… and if Gary had died… he had died trying to save her. Gerry squeezed his eyes shut and offered a brief prayer, promising more later.

“The
Katrine Lamont
, then,” he said, hoping Furman was still in the system.

“Very good, sir,” the tech said.

“
Katrine Lamont
receiving call from Vatta HQ, Slotter Key,” the communications officer aboard the ship said, quite properly.

“This is Gerard Vatta; patch me through to Captain Furman.”

“Sir, it’s—it’s third watch…”

“And this is an interstellar call, priority. Wake him up.”

A faintly hissing silence, then: “Captain Furman here.”

“This is Gerry Vatta,” he said informally. “What’s the situation?” He heard Furman draw in a breath.

“The situation, sir, is that your idiot daughter has stolen a Vatta Transport ship and gone haring off into jumpspace—she says she’s on the way to Belinta to deliver a cargo, but for all I know she’s on her way to any place you can think of. She hasn’t learned one damn thing since she was—”

“Excuse me.” Gerard knew that he was being calm; he knew it by the whitening of his knuckles and the fact that he managed that courtesy rather than the bellow of rage he felt. “Did you just call my daughter an idiot and a thief, or perhaps I misunderstood your use of the words
idiot
and
stolen
…?”

An audible gulp. “Sir, I—I misspoke myself. The fact is, despite my attempts to make her see reason, she refused to come aboard this ship with her crew, let me sell off that old hulk for scrap, and bring her home.”

“I didn’t tell you to do that.” He was calm, he was very calm. That, no doubt, was why Stavros now had a firm hand on his shoulder, and why the techs in the communications center were staring at him wide-eyed. “I told you to give her every assistance, to make it clear that she was under Vatta protection.”

“You can’t protect someone who’s acting like an idiot!” Furman blurted. “I tried to talk sense into her—”

“That’s the second time you’ve called my daughter an idiot,” Gerard said. Again Furman gulped.

“I didn’t mean it like that—I just meant, impetuous, young, headstrong—”

“You should have known,” Gerard said. “You had her on her apprentice voyage—” From which she had come back even more determined to enter the Academy, he recalled. Furman had done nothing but drive her farther away back then. Gerard tried to stay calm. It wasn’t entirely Furman’s fault, but Furman was there, handy, and he wanted so much to tack someone’s hide to the wall. He took a deep breath, reminding himself of Furman’s years of exemplary service.

“You’re not blaming
me
, surely.” Furman’s voice sounded thick; was it sleepiness or anger? “I’m a senior captain in the Fleet; I disrupted my own important schedule to come get that—her—out of the mess she’d gotten herself into—”

Stavros’ hand tightened on Gerard’s arm; he realized that the wash of brightness across his vision was another wave of white-hot anger. “She did not get herself into a mess, Captain Furman,” he made himself say, rather than
You arrogant asshole, say one more word about my daughter and I’ll have you for breakfast…
“She happened to be in the system when a war started, and she survived until help arrived. I find that commendable. I would find that commendable even if you had done it.”

Something that might have been a splutter came into his headphone.

“I sent you to help her. Not scold her. Not order her around as if she were still a thirteen-year-old apprentice. Help her. And what you’ve done, apparently, is help her go off again, without my having a chance to talk to her, and you may have convinced her that she’s in trouble with me. Now you may be one of our senior captains, and you may have an important and lucrative route, but the fact is, Captain Furman, that you are still a Vatta Transport employee, and your job description does not include insulting my daughter…” He knew his voice had risen; he knew that Stavros had a hard grip on his arm, and the faces in the communications center were all shocked, and he should get hold of himself, calm down. “Damn it, man!” That was a shout, the shout that brought him back to himself, his voice all but gone. “If she…” If she didn’t come back, if she was lost because the drive failed, because she’d hurried the repair because of Furman, if she disappeared into the endless dark reaches of space…

“I’m sorry,” Furman said, a distant scratchy voice, irritating even in its submission. “I didn’t mean any harm, I just thought…”

“Just… don’t say anything,” Gerard said. He felt sick, all the energy of anger drained away, the emptiness of not knowing hollowing his heart. He had hoped… he had counted on talking to her himself, hearing her voice, proving—if only for the time the call lasted—that she was alive, that he had been told the truth.

“Do you want me to follow her to Belinta? Make sure she’s safe?”

Stavros took the headset from him before he could answer; Gerard leaned on the console with both hands, bracing himself upright, while Stavros’ calm voice told Furman what to do: clear up all Vatta accounts in Sabine, report in when he had done so, and then in all likelihood return to his usual route for the present.

Gerard blinked back the tears, tried not to sniff audibly at the congestion in his nose. He should be happy. She was alive. She had not let Furman bully her. She had gone off to do her duty, fulfill the contract, trade and profit, like a true Vatta. He could send a message by ansible to Belinta, telling her he was proud of her. He could reach her while she was there. It was all right now.

He could not believe it. He felt in his own heart the avalanche of disasters that had come to her, one after another, each one tearing her away from the family, rushing her away, out of control, to some disastrous ending. She would not come back. If he saw her again, she would be someone else, a stranger, not his daughter Kylara. A quick cascade of images raced through his mind: infant-toddler-child-preadolescent-teen-young woman. In the future? Nothing.

“Well.” That was Stavros, a warm hand once more on his shoulder. “She’s alive for sure, ourKy.”

Gerard couldn’t answer. He forced a deep breath, straightened. Communications techs busied themselves at their consoles, carefully ignoring the senior officers.

“You’ll want to leave a message at Belinta,” Stavros said. “Letter of credit as well?”

Would she think it was a bribe? Would she think that not leaving one was a ploy to make her come begging? Did she even need the money?

“Everyone needs money,” Stavros said. “Even when they have enough.”

“A message,” Gerard managed to say. “From me.” He took another breath, picked up a recording cube from the stack on the console. “I can do it, Stav. I’m fine now.” He took the cube into one of the booths they used when they weren’t rushing as he had been, and recorded a short, cordial message to be sent to Belinta and left it in the queue for her arrival.

The days wore on, marked only by ship’s time. Ky updated the captain’s log, scribbling in the margins the things she had not had time to put in before. It might be messy, but it would be complete as she saw it. Her log.

Some things, though, she did not want to put in. Her account of the mutiny was precise, detailed, and accurate so far as it went. It did not include her feelings. It particularly did not include that wholly unmentionable feeling of utter, absolute, complete glee that had taken over when she killed Paison, his mate, and Kristoffson. Oh, she’d thrown up after it was over—and she’d expected that; they’d been told in the Academy that most people did, after a first killing. But even so, even with the horror and revulsion, she’d been aware of something much worse going on underneath.

She had enjoyed it. She had enjoyed the crisis; she had enjoyed the need to make those snap decisions, take that immediate action.

And she had enjoyed killing.

That did not fit with any of her ideas about herself. Kylara the rescuer, yes. Kylara the brave defender, yes. But Kylara the happy killer? What kind of monster was she? And why didn’t she feel more like a monster? Was it true, as Master Sergeant Pitt and the Colonel had told her, that she was wasted in civilian life? Was she a born killer, and did that mean she should join up with other born killers? Should she join the mercenaries, where her violent tendencies would be under proper control?