Marque and Reprisal (14 page)

True, they had been trying to kill her—all the ones she had killed—but they were still people, and Sapphic Cyclans considered killing people as primal dissonance. Her failure to visualize the Cycle proved they were right, at least as far as the use of that guided meditation went.

“Jim’s sleeping,” Quincy said, when she asked about him. “And we’ve got these for him.” Standard spacer shore rig for those not fashion-conscious, blue trousers and a belted tunic in shades of tan with brown trim on sleeves and neck that would pass unnoticed on every station in the quadrant. “Kind of dull, but we thought just not wearing dull green would be a shock.” She grinned.

“Good idea,” Ky said.

“Are you all right, Captain?”

“I’m fine. Well, I have bruised elbows, but it’s not serious.” With a wave, Ky headed upship.

On the bridge, Sheryl sat watch. “I won’t have to go out for anything, will I?” she asked. She looked as tense as Ky felt.

“No, of course not.”

“Good. Lee half wants to, I think. He thinks all this is exciting.” Her tone said she thought Lee was crazy.

“You don’t,” Ky said.

“No. I—I know I’m the only navigator you’ve got, Captain, and I like you, but if I weren’t scared to set foot off the ship, I’d ask to separate. I just want a nice safe berth on a nice safe ship.”

Some people just were not cut out for adventure, Ky thought, and then wondered why she herself was. “Sheryl, if there’s another ship in that needs a navigator—or whose navigator wants some excitement—I’d say take the chance. But I’m not sure there are going to be many nice safe ships for a while now. Sure, Vatta’s being attacked at the moment. But there are other wealthy cargo lines out there, and unless we find out who’s doing this and stop them, everyone’s at risk.”

“I suppose,” Sheryl said. She sighed. “I just… my stomach gets all knotted up and I can’t sleep.”

“I know the feeling,” Ky said.

“Yes, but you are actually doing things; people have tried to kill you. I haven’t been hurt at all yet, and I’m this scared. I’m just sitting here…” Her voice trailed away.

That could be fixed. “Sheryl, sitting here alone will just make it worse. So I’m relieving you of bridge duty, starting now. Just a second—” She called the other sections, and found that Alene could indeed use more help with cargo shifting. “You’re now a cargo handler. Not dockside—just shifting things inside the ship. No more risk than up here, and you’ll be busy and with others.”

For an instant Sheryl looked annoyed—a navigator doing physical work?—then she smiled. “Maybe that’ll keep my mind off it,” she said.

“Hope so,” Ky said. “Now scat. I need to make some calls.” What she’d told Sheryl was perfectly true. Once the attackers finished mopping up Vatta resources, they would turn on others. If she could get some support from other traders—or even information—she would no longer be fighting this war alone.

Sixteen interstellar ships besides her own were docked at Lastway at the moment. Three were corporate: Pavrati’s
Emerald Sky
—she wasn’t going to try to talk with
them
. Mellin & Company’s
Sunburst
. She didn’t know much about Mellin & Company, except that they traded into the next quadrant. Outbound’s
Ringwalker
. Outbound typically hauled supplies for start-ups, the basics for terraforming and initial colony construction. The rest were listed as independents, from a huge bulk carrier
Orlando’s Song
to little
Lacewing,
with even less cubage (but better engines) than
Gary Tobai
. Ky started at the head of the list, excluding Pavrati, and worked her way down in the order given.

“This is Captain Vatta,” she began, when
Sunburst
answered and her call had been transferred to Captain Sunder. “I’m wondering if you have any information about these attacks on trading vessels—”

“On Vatta vessels,” he corrected. Onscreen he was clearly a humod, though she didn’t recognize the function of some of his physical characteristics. Why the sagittal ridge, for instance? The large bulge on his left forearm? And were those functional gills on his neck? “I have heard nothing about attacks on other registrations.”

“That’s reassuring for now,” Ky said. “But I presume that when whoever it is finishes with Vatta they will start on someone else. Do you have any concerns about that?”

“If I did, I would not share them with you,” he said. “Your luck is down; I do not want to be contaminated.” And he shut off communication.

“Well, thank you very much,” Ky snarled to the blank screen.

With minor variations, this was the response she got from all of them. They all worried; they all recognized that whoever was attacking Vatta might shift to another target. None of them thought allying with Vatta would improve their chances. Nor were they making any effort to cooperate with each other—at least none they would admit to a pariah like her.

“Shortsighted idiots,” Ky muttered to herself. “They’ll end up in my fix soon enough if they don’t start thinking ahead.”

“Talking to yourself?” Lee, yawning, came onto the bridge. “Where’s Sheryl?”

“I sent her down to work cargo; she was getting twitchy up here by herself.”

“If you want privacy, I can go fix us something to eat,” Lee said. “It’s my turn for galley duty anyway.”

“Good idea,” Ky said. “Though I don’t know what I need privacy for, since none of the other captains will talk to me about the situation. Some offer sympathy, at least, but they’re afraid we’ll infect them with our bad luck.”

“You could try telling them that you are the very embodiment of good luck,” Lee said. “Look how many attempts on your life you’ve survived.”

Ky laughed. “I don’t think that’s the sort of good luck they’d appreciate,” she said. “But yes, I’m hungry.”

When he brought in a tray for her, he said, “Quincy said to remind you about that package, the one that came while you were out. She put it in your cabin; did you see it?”

“No,” Ky said. Hunger beat curiosity for the moment. “I’ll look at it after I eat.” She worked her way through a bowl of Lee’s spicy meat-and-vegetable concoction, then went down the passage and retrieved the package. She recognized MacRobert’s handwriting. Probably another spaceship model, and what would this one have as a little surprise? She took a bite of the custard Lee had brought for dessert before she put her thumb on the integral scanner. The top layer of wrapping opened along a flat seam and rolled back. Underneath was another layer of wrapping.

She opened that and found a thick padded folder with the seal of the Slotter Key Diplomatic Service embossed on it instead of the box of model spaceship parts she expected.

“What’s that?” Lee asked.

“I have no idea,” Ky said, running her fingers over the seal. She opened it. Behind a clear plastic protective cover lay a document with the State Seal at the top, and blocks of dense printing. She started reading. What—? It couldn’t be what it looked like. She put it down and rummaged in the depths of the package. An envelope, with a letter from MacRobert.

“No, this isn’t another spaceship model,” the letter began:

So, fine, MacRobert suspected she was a killer at heart… then her mind really registered
privateer
. “Pirates in traders’ clothing,” as one of her instructors had called them… Was MacRobert trolling through the cadets at Spaceforce Academy, looking for potential pirates?

“You always were a bit too independent for Spaceforce,” the letter continued:

Ky looked back at the letter. In archaic and complicated language, it authorized her, Kylara Evangeline Dominique Vatta, to seek out and impede, harrass, annoy, frustrate, confiscate, attack, and destroy any and all enemies of Slotter Key wheresoever she might find them, in space or in dock, by any means whatsoever that lay within her power, and further instructed officers of Slotter Key, diplomatic, military, and “affiliated,” whatever that was, to assist her in these endeavors.

Along with stunned astonishment, she was aware of feelings she could not entirely approve. Excitement. Anticipation. Glee.

“It’s… interesting,” she said to Lee, after a long breath. Should she tell him? Why not, after all. In the unlikely event she ever used it, she’d need a pilot. “Our government wants me to turn pirate.”

“What?”

“Privateer, actually. This—” She tapped the padded folder. “—is a letter of marque. We studied this kind of thing in school; I had no idea anyone actually did this. Now, not centuries ago somewhere else. It’s… license to do just about anything.”

“To anyone…?”

“No, to the enemies of Slotter Key, which this other letter states they can’t identify at the moment. It must’ve been sent—” She looked again at the letter and its date. “Yes. Before the attacks on Vatta started, and before we became
persona non grata
to the Slotter Key government. Which may make this null and void, though I don’t know…”

“Only if they formally rescind it, I’d think,” Lee said. “Not that I’m an expert, either, but surely they’d have to give you notice.”

“And they can’t,” Ky said. “Because their ansible’s blocked.”

To her surprise, Lee looked more excited than afraid. “We aren’t exactly privateer material, though, are we? Did they send you money for a better ship?”

“Not unless it’s hidden in the deodorant I’m supposed to order from a grocer. Why—do you like the idea?”

He didn’t answer that directly, but asked, “So… are you going to do it?”

Her earlier objections to turning pirate came to mind, but—what choice did she have now?

“I’m going to see what’s in the deodorant, anyway,” Ky said. “For the rest, I don’t know.”

“If we had the right ship, it could be fun,” Lee said. Then, at her look, he pulled his face into a frown. “Difficult and dangerous, I know. Not fun in the usual sense, but—more fun than just driving a tradeship back and forth.”

“You were wasted in commercial shipping,” Ky said.

“You, too, Captain.”

“I don’t know… not being shot at for weeks at a time is beginning to look better and better.”

Lee shook his head. “You’d get tired of it.”

“Maybe. Sheryl and Alene and Ted wouldn’t. They hate the excitement, as you call it.”

“Maybe they’ll find another ship. If any ship is safe.”

She looked up Buchert Brothers in the directory. “Restaurant and ship supply, variety and quality at a reasonable price.” That’s what they all said. The list of products looked normal: bulk and packaged staples, brand-name and “private-label” goods, everything from cleaning supplies to “fresh tank-grown fish, alive until harvested.” She compared prices with two other suppliers—about the same. A quick look at their supply situation… she entered an order for cleaning supplies, protein powder in five-kilogram containers, a dozen sets of assorted processor flavors, a set of oven trays, and the specified “odor barriers.”

A few hours later, uncrating the order in the cargo hold, Ky found herself staring at a shape she knew very well. Here was the other—and more expensive—version of the mines she had put a hold on. Smaller, a little lighter, these contained the most sophisticated electronic attack available. Properly set and delivered, they could disable an entire ship’s systems without causing significant structural damage. An excellent choice for piracy—privateering—and she now had six of them.

“My, my, my,” Martin said. “Someone likes you.”

“They did, but I think they don’t now,” Ky said.

“Care to explain?”

“A letter of marque,” Ky said. “The package came while we were otherwise occupied, though at the moment I can’t recall if it was the puppy or the assassins. Anyway, it was signed and authorized well before the attacks on Vatta, and before the government chose to ignore us.”

“Very handy,” Martin said.

Ky closed the crate again. “Put this where we can get at it quickly,” she told Alene. “We’re going to need it once we’re back out there.”

“What is it?” Alene asked.

“Something I’ll tell you all about once we’re in a secure location,” Ky said. Six mines. And she had fifteen with conventional explosives on hold at MilMart. As soon as she had enough money in the account, she’d put a deposit on them.

Toby Randolph Lee Vatta slouched on the hard bunk in the cell. He hadn’t done anything wrong, but here he was in jail. Without any way to communicate to the family, and no explanation why he couldn’t call them.

“Here you are,” one of the guards said. “Lunchtime.” This was the nicest one, Toby thought. He looked like he’d be a good older brother or father or something. For someone who wasn’t a prisoner.

“Thanks,” Toby said, as the guard put the tray on the table.

The guard cocked his head. “You aren’t hungry again?”

“Not really…”

“Thinking about your family?”

“Yes.” How could he not?
Ellis Fabery,
blown up in dock, with casualties in the thousands because it had taken out a whole sector. Half the crew was Vatta-born, from captain to cargomaster. And Toby hadn’t been aboard to be killed, because he had been rewarded for his spit-clean record the first six months of his apprentice voyage. His cousin Dex, the captain, had let him off the ship to run a simple errand.
Take this message over to the bank, bring back the return message, don’t dawdle on the way, act like a grown-up.
So he’d been four sectors away, cooling his heels in the bank manager’s waiting room, when the ship blew and the chair shuddered beneath him, and all the intersection seals locked down. When his implant had stabbed him with the burst of static. Sole survivor, so far as they knew. Underaged. Potential target of assassins.

“Nobody likes jail,” the guard said. He sat down on the other end of Toby’s bunk. “But it’s for your own safety.”

They had explained that before, as if he was too stupid to understand the first time. He understood. He just could not figure out a way to deal with it. In all his life he had never been alone among strangers, completely separated from his family or friends.

“I know you’re doing your best,” Toby said. Always be polite to strangers; always be polite to law enforcement. “I just… I just don’t get hungry.” He smiled. “I’m not exercising enough, I guess.”

“You’re losing weight,” the guard said. “We don’t want you to fade away by the time some family show up.”

“They’re coming?” Toby asked. Hope surged; his heart pounded.

“I’m sure they will,” the guard said.

“But you don’t know…”

“No.” The guard sighed. “Look, son. Communications are down everywhere. We sent word; we don’t know if it got through before the ansibles quit working. ISC will fix them eventually, and then someone will come. We just don’t know when. Allray’s a little off the main lines.”

Allray had seemed exotic once. Allray Station had a live display of its indigenous life-forms, the smaller ones. Toby had seen the online pictures; he wanted to see a hextan and a hexbear in real life. Dex had promised him a free afternoon, if all went well, and Anders, in Engineering, had promised to take him to Allray’s open market as well as the life-forms display.

Now all he saw of Allray was this cell and the rooms visible from it. He had a vid setup, and the guards brought him entertainment cubes, but they wouldn’t give him a live outside data line. There were only so many hours of the day he could stand to watch episodes of
Lang’s Gang, Beyond the Law, Ghost Ships
… He’d never noticed before, but now every explosion, battle, and fight reminded him of his loss. He didn’t complain. What else was there to do? He’d asked about student programs, hoping to bury himself in math homework problems, but it turned out that he was several levels beyond the highest they kept onstation. His big sister Erin had always told him he was too smart for his own good, but he hadn’t imagined the result of racing through his schoolwork would be boredom in a jail cell when he’d done nothing wrong.

“Forensic’s through with their… with the… uh… remains,” the guard said. “Do you have… do you know… what they’d want?”

He hadn’t ever thought, in his darkest adolescent humors, that he’d have to arrange the funerals of his family and other shipmates. The lump in his throat was too big; he couldn’t speak. He shook his head.

“You don’t have any religion or anything?”

The family altar, back home, and the deities he’d been taught to name, now seemed as meaningless as a plastic cube. What good had it done Cousin Dex to adhere to the standards of ethics? What good had it done Hallie and Prin and Veeah to observe the Days of Silence? They were dead, dead for no reason but malice, and no god they prayed to had kept them safe. He could not explain this to the guard, however friendly. He shrugged, instead, blinking back tears.

“I guess we can keep ’em in the freezer awhile longer,” the man said. He sighed, heavily, and stood up. “Son, you’re going to have to talk sometime, to someone. Are you sure there’s nothing more we can do to help? We’re not your enemies, you know.”

“I know,” Toby said. His voice rasped; it wanted to shake, and only by sounding angry could he control it at all.

The guard left. The smell of food permeated the cell; it made him sick, yet his hunger gnawed at him. Could he eat any of it? Two bites of bread, and he wanted to throw up. He lay back on the bunk, covering his face with his arm. When the guard came back to remove the tray, Toby had curled to face the wall, with the blanket pulled over his head.

Stella Maria Celeste Vatta Constantin looked around Allray with wary interest. Thanks to the mess that had made her the laughingstock of the family and the bad example held up to youngsters, she had never taken the usual apprentice voyage offplanet. She had traveled, of course, but when she was older, and always with a mission in view. Allray might have looked exotic when she was fourteen, but not now she was thirty. It looked scuffed and tawdry instead; she was too old to mistake scuffed and tawdry for exotic. Traveling under her married name, as she was, she raised no comment in the Customs line. It was one of the things she enjoyed about traveling: no one associated the given name
Stella
with
idiot stupid enough to give family access codes to her first lover.

The captain of the ISC courier had given her the bad news about
Ellis Fabery
as soon as they downjumped into Allray space, but he had no details. Stella’s own implant did not have a complete crew list; the
Ellis
had changed out crew at the beginning of the standard year, and the old list would not be accurate.

She made her way to the station police. They would surely know who had been killed on the ship.

“You’re a relative?” the desk clerk said. Stella smiled.

“I need to speak to the officer in charge,” she said. “I carry credentials from the family, permission to arrange for disposition of remains.”

“But what about the boy?”

“Boy?”

“The kid—someone needs to take him.”

“I was not informed of any boy,” Stella said, rummaging rapidly through her implant’s file of Vatta younglings. Apprentice age… Keth? Preston? Toby? Gio? “How old is he?”

“He’s fourteen. The only one left. Toby, he says his name is. I guess, if you’re the family’s representative, you’ll have to take him.”

All she needed was a fourteen-year-old boy tagging along on this mission. She couldn’t say that, though, not to a desk clerk.

“Your officer in charge?” she said again.

“Ah. Right. I’ll get him.”

The shape under the blanket looked too small to be a fourteen-year-old.

“He hasn’t been eating well,” the guard said. Stella glanced at the tray, which looked untouched, cold, and unappetizing.

“I can see that.”

“We’ve tried—I’ve tried myself—but he won’t open up at all.”

And no wonder, Stella thought. “Toby,” she said softly. “Toby, wake up.”

The blanket twitched, then stilled. “Toby,” Stella said again. “Time to go…”

The blanket twitched, then he poked out a thin face, eyes dangerously intense. “Who… who are you?”

“Stella Constantin. I’ve come to settle things here. You can come with me.”

Suspicion hardened his expression. “How’d I know you’re not one of them?”

“She’s not, lad. We checked,” the guard said. But Toby’s eyes never left hers.

Stella sighed. “Toby, did you ever hear of Stavros’ idiot daughter Stella, the idiot who gave the family codes to her lover?”

His brows went up. “You’re—?”

“That Stella, yes. But even I didn’t stay an idiot forever. Let’s get you out of here, shall we?”

He unrolled the blanket and sat up unsteadily. “I—I don’t feel well.”

“You haven’t eaten enough to keep a mouse alive, is what I hear—and what that tray looks like. Don’t faint on me, Toby; we don’t have time for that.”

“Ma’am,” the guard said, in a worried voice.

“You can eat the roll,” Stella said, ignoring the guard. “Here—” She broke it in half, spread jam on it, and handed it to Toby. “Eat it.”

He stared at her for a moment, then took the roll and bit into it.

“Toby, I want to get you off this station before someone finds both of us. I have taken care of everything else—” She saw his jaw stop moving as he took that in, and then resume chewing. “I have your personal belongings, and I brought you something to wear other than jail garb or Vatta uniform. You’ll travel as my son.”

“I—you aren’t old enough!”

“I will look old enough, don’t worry. Finish that roll, and another.” She turned to the guard. “Can you get us a couple of hot sandwiches, maybe?”

“Of course,” he said.

When he was gone, Toby said, “Where are we going?”

Stella raised her brows. He had not said
Where are you taking me
… he was starting to engage. Promising. “I don’t want to tell you here,” she said. “These people have done a good thing in protecting you, but I’m not sure their records are as secure as they think.”

He had wolfed down another roll already and was looking at the rest of the tray, despite the layer of congealed fat on the blob that might be meat.

“Don’t,” Stella said. “If you haven’t been eating, let your stomach get used to the rolls first.”

“But you asked for hot sandwiches.”

“I asked for time alone, but in different words,” Stella said.

He looked at her curiously. “You’re—not like… like the captain.”

“No. I’m not. I’m not a spacer. I’m administration—” When she was anything. When she was not just “that idiot Stella,” the permanent example of what could go wrong. The petty little position she’d held until her pregnancy was only “administration” to someone aboard a ship. What she’d done since, no one knew about.

“But to lie…”

“Misdirect,” Stella said. “Similar, but different.”

“I don’t think it’s right to lie,” he said.

“I don’t think it’s right to end up dead just because it’s convenient for someone else,” Stella said. “Now—can you stand up yet?”

He could, just, though he wavered a bit. Stella handed him the sack. “Put those on. I’ll turn my back.”

“You’re not going to leave?”

That terrified modesty—she remembered that, from her own adolescence. “No,” she said, turning her back. “I’m not. I’m also not interested in your skinny little body, except in keeping it alive. Change.”

Behind her, the indignant rustles of an annoyed teen. Good. It would keep him from fainting, if he was angry enough with her. She focused her attention outward. The guard should be back by now. Why wasn’t he? Why wasn’t anyone coming? Why wasn’t she hearing the routine noises that she had hardly noticed coming in? She queried her implant just as it pinged her, warning of chemical contamination. She held her breath, reached into her pocket, slapped a full-face membrane onto herself, then pulled out another and whirled to see Toby opening his mouth to gasp.

“
No!
” she said, and tossed the mask. Thank all the gods, the boy had been properly trained—he knew what it was, didn’t breathe until he had it on. His new outfit—the one-piece gray suit—was half fastened. He fumbled at the closure, and then picked up the jacket, eyes wide.

“Can you use a weapon?” Stella asked. He shook his head. “Stay behind me then,” she said. She drew her own. For all the good that would do if their enemies had the weapons she suspected.

Out in the corridor, nothing stirred. She saw, just at the corner, the guard who should have brought sandwiches—and there were the sandwiches, on the floor beside his outstretched hand. The other way… deeper into the jail… she paused a moment to slip a highly illegal dataprobe into the ’port on the wall, at the guard’s duty station, and suck out the plans for the police station. Every space on a station had at least two exits. This one had four: the main one to the passage, two rear entrances, and one to the side, through a smaller office.

No time to ponder; she led Toby to the right, toward the cellblock rear exit. If the enemies trusted their gas, they might not have someone outside, or he might be careless.

The outer door was locked, of course. She had expected that. Toby’s eyes widened farther when she pulled her tools from her pocket. Picking locks both mechanical and electronic wasn’t the usual skill set of a Vatta daughter, but Stella had seen no reason not to learn from later acquaintances—or to tell her father all she’d learned.

Outside, the passage appeared to be a service corridor, set with trash containers neatly labeled with the type of trash each should contain. To the right, she saw the open back door of what, by the smell, was a café of some kind, its BIOLOGICALS trash bin overflowing. She remembered that Huntari Café had been next to the police station… probably a favorite hangout of the police, and thus not a good back door to enter. Farther down, a bakery and a greengrocer… she hurried Toby that way.

“Can we take off—?” he began.

“No,” Stella said over her shoulder. “We may not have any warning next time.”

She turned back in time to see someone glance down the passage and quickly turn away. Not good. They were opposite Murchison Books and Antiquities, whose bin contained packing materials. The door seemed ajar. Stella yanked; it came open. She pushed Toby in, slid in herself, pulled it closed, and leaned on the locking bar until it caught firmly.

They were in a cluttered back room with more packing materials and open containers piled on a cluttered desk and on the floor. A closed door in front of them suggested that the actual shop lay beyond. To the right, a narrow staircase rose toward the ceiling where another door was labeled PRIVATE. Stella heard nothing from any direction; she boosted her implant’s sensitivity and heard something from outside—footsteps, probably—and the rise and fall of voices from the other side of the closed door. Two voices? Three? She could not make out what they were saying.