Marque and Reprisal (29 page)

Sincerity flowed out of him like water out of a spring. Ky could not believe he was anything but a rogue coming around… except for the bitter memory of another sincere, pleading voice, Mandy Rocher and his problem that had become her disgrace.

“I can’t figure out why,” Ky said, talking just to keep the talk going, trying to think behind the chatter. “Why would someone—anyone—take after Vatta Transport? We’ve got a better record of service than, say, Pavrati.”

“Oh, lass. We’re rich, that’s why. The rich are always a target—”

“Not that rich,” Ky said. “I can imagine an envious minor shipping firm resenting us, but it would hardly have the resources to attack us so widely.”

“Well, no,” he said. “But this attack on the ansibles… Vatta’s always supported ISC’s monopoly on ansible services. Could be it’s our allies got us in trouble. Or it could be part of the humod base-stock controversy.”

“What?” Was this just a distraction, thrown out to make her lose track of his argument?

“There’s growing friction, you know, between the base-stock worlds that want to preserve what they call human nature, and the humods. From the base-stock point of view, we’re all humods because we have implants. Makes us mech deviants. I don’t suppose you’ve run into many base-stockers.”

“Only the Miznarii,” Ky said. “Back home.”

“Good grief, are they still around?” He sounded genuinely surprised. “I’d have thought they’d died out long ago; went in for natural childbirth, I thought it was. I meant places like Allgreen and Purity—they’re not on regular Vatta routes, but I’ve traded there. Took me for a criminal, they did, at first. No one has cranial implants, not even fertility mods. One of my old crew was a four-arm, genetic, and Immigration Control wouldn’t even let him off the ship at the station. You’d have thought he’d been able to spit sperm straight into their precious daughters—sorry, did that shock you?”

She had to do better with her face. “I’m shocked that anyone would refuse entry to someone just because they had four arms,” she said. Would he believe that?

“Oh, good,” he said. “I remember Gerry was something of a prude and I should have thought before saying anything, but I’m glad you’re old enough not to flinch at a little physical reality.” His laugh grated. Ky smiled, but followed him into this side topic as if really interested.

“So, do the people on Purity avoid all medical care?”

“No, but they’re strict about its limits. No genetic modifications, and no modifications that enhance normal human ability beyond a half sig above the mean. Of course that means their mean intelligence is well below that of most of us, but they get along reasonably well on their own world.”

“Are they Miznarii?”

“No, no. They’re evangelical Hurists, whatever that is. Doesn’t help them any in business dealings, I can tell you that.” He laughed again, with a wink that invited Ky into his scam, whatever it was. She wanted to wipe the screen, but knew better. “It’s the weirdest combination of paranoia and gullibility you’ve ever seen. They’re terrified of some outsider cheating them, but they make it so obvious what they’re afraid of that it’s easy to make whatever profit you want by just doing something else and pretending fear of their suspicion.”

So the rogue hadn’t reformed. “So you prefer humod planets?”

“Well, not the extremes. It’s like some of them make themselves ugly on purpose, y’know? But a lot of ’em are just like real people, only with extra. Pretty much think like us.” He peered at the screen. “You do have an implant, right?”

“Of course,” Ky said, as if offended. “Got it at seven, like everyone else.”

“So you have a current Vatta update? Because I haven’t updated in a while, been out of touch y’see.”

“Not really current,” Ky said. “I was on my way back, actually.” He couldn’t know anything different, unless he was as bent as she suspected, and then it didn’t matter. “As you probably guessed, this was my first trip, so I’m just a probationary captain, as it were. Only the most basic dataset. When I got home, I was going to get the full one, but—things happened.”

“I see.” He looked down a moment then suddenly back up, with a sharp glance that seemed intended to startle. Then his face softened again. “Well, we shall do well enough, I guess. Youth and enthusiasm, age and experience… we’ll be partners, shall we?”

“But we are already family,” Ky said, as if puzzled. She had been half expecting this offer, or demand. “Isn’t it forbidden to make private contracts of partnership within Vatta?”

His brows went up. “What, you think I want to cheat you?”

“No, not that.” Worse than that, but she had had four years—almost four years—in which to learn that earnest and tedious explanation of well-known rules had its uses. “But Dad said nobody should make private contracts because we should all be working for the benefit of Vatta as a whole. Private deals, he said, were like stealing from the company. And I want to save Vatta.”

Now his expression shifted to benign amusement. “I forgot,” he said. “You are Gerry’s daughter; of course you would be a stickler for all the rules. But my dear, this is an extraordinary situation. We may be the only surviving Vattas—or do you know of others?”

Ky felt a chill roll down her back. She was not about to reveal the existence of Stella or Toby. “You’re the first Vatta ship I’ve met since this happened,” she said.

“And I suppose, for your first voyage, they stuffed the ship with faithful old retainers rather than family members, eh?” he asked.

“Pretty much,” Ky said. “I hired a couple myself along the way.”

“So, under the circumstances, we should cooperate and be partners—fine, if you don’t want to enter a formal partnership, I understand that, given your father—but we can do better together than either of us alone.”

That was true, if partners were true to their defined mutual goal. Otherwise, one could gut the other even more neatly than a stranger. Ky was tempted to refuse and depart, trusting her new defensive suite to handle anything he was likely to have aboard, but what if he knew more about the conspiracy and the attacks on Vatta than he’d yet revealed?

“Where are you going next?” Ky asked, deliberately furrowing her brow. “I don’t know if we can—”

“Look,” he said, exuding a fatherly concern that bordered on sickening. “I’ll go with you, wherever you go; I can help keep you safe.” He paused for her reaction; apparently she had not hidden it well enough. “I’m sure you’re brave and resourceful; Vatta doesn’t breed idiots or cowards. But you need someone to watch your back. I won’t even pull seniority.” Onscreen he shrugged, spreading his hands. “You’re Gerry’s daughter; he was our CFO. You can take over, if you want. I just don’t want to see us die out because we couldn’t work together for mutual profit.”

He wanted her more than she wanted him. Why? And how had he known that her father was Vatta Ltd.’s CFO, if he’d been gone so many years? Unless he was legitimate in some covert way, as Rafe claimed to be with ISC.

“I suppose,” Ky said. “Look—why don’t you send me your cargo info, and I’ll compare it with what we’ve got and decide where to go next.”

“We share,” he said. “You send me yours, too.”

“Fine,” Ky said. “I’ll get my cargomaster to port it over for you.” He would learn nothing from their cargo list except that they’d bought low and hoped to sell high. He would certainly not learn about the mines she had aboard, either kind.

He thinks I’ve got a probationary captain’s implant, with incomplete data—nothing he needs to upload to his implant, for instance.” Ky sipped a mug of nutrient-boosted tea while she waited for Osman to send her his cargo list.

“I’d be a lot happier if you had an implant at all,” Martin said. “And the Vatta command set would give you everything you need.”

“Certainly would make my head an attractive target, wouldn’t it?” Ky said. “If he thinks I’m ignorant, inexperienced, idealistic, and rule-bound, I’m the perfect front person for him. A dupe he can enjoy duping for a long time before he finds it convenient to kill me.”

“You do realize he’ll try.” It was not a question in tone, only in Martin’s expression.

“Of course,” Ky said. “I don’t expect anything less. But he will find me tougher to kill once he’s thoroughly convinced how simple it will be.”

“You continue to surprise me,” Rafe murmured.

“Good,” Ky said. “Since you’re the best model I have for how Osman Vatta thinks—he’s supposedly got a history rather like yours.”

He blinked at her. “You really think I’m that bad? I swear, I never put pressure on the unwilling to have sex.”

Stella shifted in her seat. He looked sideways at her.

“I haven’t forgotten that lime,” Ky said. The others looked at her oddly; Rafe ducked his head.

“That was only… an invitation. Not pressure.”

“Quite true,” Ky said. “And if I thought you were that bad you would not be alive on this ship.”

“I shall watch my step,” he said, with a demureness that lay uneasily, like thin silk over a steel blade.

“Nonetheless,” Ky said. “Rafe is my only current contact with the kind of life we think Osman’s been leading. So when I try out ideas on him, his reaction may help me predict Osman’s.”

“As long as you don’t get us confused,” Rafe said.

“I assure you,” Ky said, “I can keep you separate in my mind, even without an implant.”

Suddenly Rafe’s eyes opened wide. “Ky—Captain—call the mercs. Now.”

“What? Why?”

“Just do it,” he said. No longer languid, he sat upright, alert.

“Our whole plan is to let him think we’re alone, harmless, helpless, in this system. If I call—”

“If you don’t call,” Rafe said, “you won’t have the chance. He has an ansible on that ship. He’s one of them.”

“How do you know? And why now?”

“I know,” Rafe said through clenched teeth. “Don’t ask more—I know. He’s not just Vatta’s rotten egg; he’s deeply involved, and he’s using his shipboard ansible to call in your enemies.”

“I think he wants to toy with me longer,” Ky said. “And I still want to know how—”

“For the time it takes them to get here, maybe. Then he’ll betray you, and there won’t be time for talk. How far away are the mercs?”

“Next ansible over, I hope,” Ky said. “But how do you know he’s got one?”

“Captain… let’s go to your cabin.”

“What?”

“I need to speak to you privately,” Rafe said. He was still tense, pale, his eyes locked on hers.

“If you must,” Ky said. She looked at the others. “Call me if anything changes. Make sure everything’s ready.”

“Always,” Quincy said.

Ky led the way to her cabin; Rafe followed her and shut the hatch without asking her.

“What is this about?” Ky asked. “You’re—”

“Just listen,” Rafe said. “I—there’s another new tech I didn’t tell you about.”

“You have a shipboard ansible of your own?” she said. “Or some way to detect ansible activity?”

He tapped his head. “I have one here. Miniaturized, implantable. The power system’s not adequate, so I need to hook into an exterior power source or link to an existing, working ansible.”

Ky blinked. “You have an ansible in your
head
?”

“Yes. Small, underpowered, but nonetheless workable. Experimental tech, of course. So far as I know the only working model; I got it direct from the lab. You must not tell anyone…”

“I won’t,” Ky said. She was still fascinated. “So that’s how you know he has a shipboard one? How do you know he doesn’t have an implant like you?”

“They smell different,” Rafe said. At her expression he sighed, shook his head. “They had to hook up a lot of weird connections to make it work at all. Humans have a lot of olfactory receptors we don’t really use, apparently tied to the biochemistry of the planet we originated on; they tied the detector function to that. It’s supposed to let me know when I’m in range and could tap power from an ansible, but my brain insists on giving me smells.”

“I hope they’re pleasant,” Ky said. She could not help staring at his skull, every angle she could see. It could not be possible to fit an ansible in there; most of the ones she’d seen—the outsides anyway—were the size of a small ship.

“
Memorable
is the word I’d choose,” Rafe said. “Whatever on our home planet smelled like that must not have been good for us. At any rate, I know he has a shipboard ansible and that he’s just activated it. Now will you please call the mercs on the system ansible before he blows it or something?”

“You think he’d blow it?”

“He wouldn’t want you calling for help, now would he?”

“I wonder why he doesn’t just use the system ansible, now that we’ve got it unplugged.”

“Because he knows we’d notice that, and he thinks his shipboard ansible can’t be detected. That alone should tell you he’s up to no good.”

“Oh. Right.”

On the bridge, Ky began the setup for an ansible connection and turned on the shipwide intercom. “We have a situation,” she said. “Quincy, bring the defensive suite active. Our friend over there is contacting someone, we don’t know who. Probably not someone we want to know.” The ansible connection winked green, and she entered the Mackensee codes she’d been given. The lightlag to the system ansible seemed interminable; she watched the chronometer ticking off the seconds… outbound signal… inbound signal…

“Trouble, Captain Vatta?” Johannson must’ve been sitting beside the com shack. Ky had never appreciated instantaneous communication so much.

“Possibly,” Ky said. “The ship was Vatta, and the captain… a Vatta troublemaker, apparently. It’s not a threat, but he’s just made an ansible call.”

“Can your agent strip it?”

“No.”

“Advise you go to max power and head for jump point,” Johannson said.

“Right into whoever’s coming in?” Ky asked. “And our insystem’s slow, if you recall.”

“The idea is that they blow by you while they’re still having downjump turbulence fouling their scans. Shortens your vulnerability, though there is a risk. As I said before.”

“And you?”

“We do have responsibilities to the rest of the convoy,” Johannson said. “But I’ll see what I can do.”

Was he really going to leave them hanging out here alone? Or had that been a message designed to confuse an eavesdropper? Ky hoped it was the latter, but he certainly wasn’t going to share his plans over an open ansible connection. That made sense, but it didn’t make Ky happy. She looked at Lee, whose expression was more alert than anxious.

“You heard the man,” she said. “Aim us at the jump point, and pour on the power. Not emergency max—we can’t outrun much of anything, but we can open distance.”

She called back to
Fair Kaleen
. “Ah… we’re outbound, and I’ve decided on a destination,”

“Wait a minute… that’s sudden. What happened?”

“It was what you said about the humod issue. It just occurred to me that the right market for a third of my cargo is one of the humod worlds. Look at the list. With the ansible here working again, I was able to get a little market data—we’re off for Garth. Coming?”

“But wait—girl—I mean, Captain, sorry—you don’t want to go to Garth—”

“I don’t? Why?”

“Well, just slow down there and we’ll talk about it. You don’t just make decisions on the first bit of info you get off a public board. How do you know it’s accurate?”

“Look,” Ky said, finding it easy to simulate impatience. “We hung around in this system a lot longer than we meant to, waiting for you to match courses and then chatting. No disrespect to an elder Vatta, but if we’re going to rebuild the company, we can’t do it by sitting out here telling family stories. We need to be trading. I may be young and ignorant, but I know that much.”

“Of course we need to be trading,” Osman said. “But rushing into things can get you in worse trouble. How do you know the folks after Vatta won’t be waiting for you in Garth?”

Because they’re on the way here
was on the tip of Ky’s tongue, but she said instead, “I don’t. But the only way to find out is to go there. I have some specialized electronics that will suit their humod market… just lying around, they were, and I got them at a good price.”

“But—”

“So are you coming, or shall we meet later somewhere else?” She had half an eye on the ship’s nearscan, which showed the range between them widening more slowly than she’d like.

“I’ll… I’ll have to get my insystem drive up. I’ll follow you.”

“Fine,” Ky said, and flicked off the link.

He’d track her vector and report it, though if the allies he’d called were already in jump, it wouldn’t help them. “Rafe,” she said.

“Yes.” He was close behind her.

“Is there any way at all that ships can communicate between each other while in FTL space?”

“No. Not that I know of, anyway. The advanced tech on the pin ansibles allows a ship in FTL to contact a fixed ansible platform, that’s all.”

“Good.” She flicked on the shipwide com and explained the situation. “What we’re doing is running for the jump point. As soon as we can jump safely, we will. We don’t know where Osman’s allies are, or how fast they can get here. We are fairly sure he has no weapons capable of damaging us, so we’re not in immediate danger.”

“What if they get here before we can jump?” Lee asked. “We’re at least eighteen hours from the jump point. Are the mercs coming?”

“The mercs are not telling me or anyone else what they plan to do, but I’m hoping they’re on their way. We’ll deal with the other if it happens.”

“Why did you even go talk to that old idiot?” Jim asked. He must have been near the Engineering com station. “Wouldn’t it have been smarter to ignore him, like the mercs said?”

“Jim!” Quincy muttered.

“The only way to find out if he was legitimate or not was to talk to him,” Ky said. They were all probably thinking the same thing, but lacked Jim’s brashness.

“But Quincy told you shifts ago. And she told us about him—”

“
Jim!
” Ky could imagine Quincy trying to push Jim aside and shut him up.

“I just don’t get it. We could’ve been halfway to somewhere else by now—”

Ky’s temper boiled over. “You could be all the way to somewhere else in about two minutes… there’s an air lock.” Silence, complete, throughout the ship.

“’M sorry,” Jim muttered finally.

“Good,” Ky said. “Whether I made a mistake or not by talking to Osman will be clear in a day or so. In the meantime, we can increase our chances of survival by anticipating the bad guys and thinking of ways to make their task harder.”

“We could put out a message on the ansible,” Rafe said. “We’ve cleared several along our back route… it will go somewhere, even if it isn’t picked up for a while. All stations, all recipients. Tell them about dear old Uncle Osman… or Cousin Osman, or whatever he is.”

“Good idea,” Ky said. “You draft the message, then let me see it before you send it.”

“Do we have any ship weapons?” Rafe asked.

“Not offensive weapons. Or rather, we have the popgun equivalent that all the ships carry now. It wouldn’t penetrate his ship.”

“He may or may not know that.”

“He’s boosting,” Lee said. “But he’s not going to keep up with us.”

“He wants a safe distance,” Ky said, thinking aloud. “He’s got the power to overtake us, but he won’t. His scan trace will point to us but keep him out of trouble.” Which meant he was expecting help, though she didn’t say that.

“He thinks,” Rafe said. Ky glanced at him. His expression was feral.

“Aren’t you supposed to be drafting that letter?”

“I have; I’ve forwarded it to your desk.”

Ky managed not to snarl. Of course, he had an implant. He could do that while she was limited to indirect input. If only she’d been near a real clinic where they could test and see if it was safe to put an implant in, she could have had the basic module. “Don’t be smug,” she said. “You and your implant.” She opened the file on her desk. The letter looked perfectly straightforward; she hoped it was. She opened a query link to the system ansible… almost two minutes to contact.

“You’re close to that six months you mentioned,” Rafe said. “You could put one in now.”

“No med tech,” Ky said, watching the winking light that indicated the message was en route to the ansible. She wasn’t about to wait for confirmation that the ansible was ready to receive.

“True, but it’s possible to put them in without. I have. Changing implants is sometimes very useful.”

“Risky.”

“Not really. You can get a headache, and you can be disoriented for a few hours. I try to do it overnight—lie down, pull one, and insert the other. You do have to know sterile technique.”

“Which I don’t,” Ky said. “So I’ll wait, thank you.”

“I do know sterile technique,” Rafe said. “If it would improve our chances of survival, I’d be glad to help.”

He would be glad to get his hands on the Vatta command database, however briefly. She could only deal with one trickster at a time, and Osman was the immediate threat. “I think not,” Ky said. “It can’t make this ship faster or add weaponry. For plain maneuver, the brain I have will work just fine.” She hoped. A command implant would give her faster control of ship systems; it might even work with
Fair Kaleen
’s systems…

“Glad to hear it,” Rafe said. “Is there any other assistance I can offer?”

“Don’t know yet,” Ky said. “I’ll let you know if I think of something.” She turned to Lee. “Do you know the nearest mapped jump point?”

“It’s the one the mercs went to. There’s another, a half point farther.”