Marque and Reprisal (31 page)

The row of mines looked eerily like those laid out on the deck of her Academy class on defensive ordnance maintenance procedures. Then there had been only fifteen, one per study group of four, and those had been unarmed. Were these the same, only deadly? Or were they as useless as Osman said the defensive suite was? The bulbous forward end, with its navigational circuitry, and the plump cylinder holding the explosives behind—each, she was relieved to note, with the proper plastic guard inserted to prevent accidental detonation—the knurled section that could be unscrewed to allow a variety of propulsive and attitude adjustment components, depending on need. These came with the basics only: self-contained reaction engine and simplest of the attitude adjustment components. Ky had not been able to afford the extras. Still, a rock could destroy a spaceship if the product of mass and acceleration came to enough force; her instructors had been clear about that.

“Martin, how familiar are you with these things?”

He shook his head. “Sorry, ma’am, but it’s been years since I armed or disarmed one. I know what they are, but ordnance wasn’t ever my specialty.”

That was a disappointment. “You’d better go help reinstall the defensive suite, then,” she said. “I’ll work on these.”

Ky loaded the instruction tab into her hand display, and was reassured to find that what she thought she should do first was in fact what she should do first. She pulled out the bundle of safety cords that had come in the COMMAND PACKET carton, freed one, and slipped its magnetic clip into a slot on the detonation control panel before removing the plastic guard that had served the same function. Now that mine couldn’t detonate, no matter what mistakes she made during the examination and programming. She red-corded all of them first, then opened the navigational compartment of the first. Another glance at the instruction manual refreshed her memory; the mine’s innards still looked familiar, and all the parts that should be there, were… A purple-coated wire caught her eye. It should have been attached… there. She clipped it in place, and opened the next control panel. The same purple-coated wire to reattach. Very simple sabotage, easy to fix if you were looking for something wrong. Did that mean she was missing something subtler? She hoped not. She didn’t have time to disassemble each completely. Another look at the instruction manual. Attitude adjusters, main engine controls, each with one disabling wrong connection. She glanced at the chronometer. Ten minutes gone. Ten times twenty-one was two hundred ten minutes. Too long—she had to move faster. But carefully.

And how was she going to place them without Osman or his allies noticing? All very well to place what amounted to explosive rocks in the enemy’s path, but that required accuracy. If their drives were on, they’d be detected, could be avoided. She didn’t have enough to create a broad barrier behind the ship. She needed a way to get them away from her ship that Osman couldn’t detect…

She had four of them done when Lee called down from the bridge. “He’s hailing us again.”

“He can wait,” Ky said.

“He’s offering the crew their lives if we overpower you, and a reward if we deliver you alive.”

“So are you going to take it?” Ky asked.

Lee snorted. “Not me, Captain. I don’t believe him.”

“You don’t have to tell him that,” Ky said. “If he thinks he’s got a taker, he might tell his friends to hold their fire.”

“I thought of that, but I didn’t want to do it without asking.”

“Do it,” Ky said. “Every minute helps.” Even as she talked, her fingers raced over the tasks… open a hatch, find the loose connection, reattach, check that other components were normal, close and seal, open the next… “And if he closes in… maybe we get a new hull.”

“Suits?”

Ky paused, hands still for a moment. Their suits might save them… or condemn them to a slow death outside the ship. They’d be clumsier in suits… “Not quite yet,” she said. “But tell me if he closes, and be sure you don’t let him know you’re doing it.”

“Right, Captain. Uh… I’ll need another crewmember to act the part of mutineer. Who should I get? Rafe?”

“Not Rafe,” Ky said instantly. Osman would see Rafe for what he was, and while he might believe that Rafe would turn on her, he would not trust anything Rafe said. Her mind flicked through the personnel files. Alene? Sherry? Mitt? Beeah? No, Osman might recognize any longtime Vatta employee. Not Martin: he was too obviously military. “Jim,” she said. “You’ll have to explain it to him; I don’t have time.”

“Will do,” Lee said.

Ky went back to the mines, surprised to find that she was already on the sixth. Her mind wanted to wander off to the best deployment again, but she dragged it back. She must not make any mistakes here and now. Sixth, seventh, eighth…

Then Lee piped down to the nearest speaker the conversation he and Jim were having with Osman.

“…just disable her,” Osman said.

“You don’t understand.” Jim’s voice sounded tense, whiny with the Belintan nasal accent. “She’s
killed
mutineers before. She’s dangerous.”

“So am I,” said Osman. “If you don’t get control of that ship, I’ll have to destroy it. And you. Look—she suspected trouble before. She thinks she’s got a perfectly loyal crew now—”

“And most of ’em are, I’m sure,” Lee said. “I mean… she’s not bad, exactly…”

“Do they want to live or are they happy to die loyal?” Osman asked. “Ask them that. Not all of them. That old fool Quincy I’m sure would rather burn than betray a Vatta.” His voice had acquired a sneer. “But that’s the choice. Work with me, or die. And you don’t have much time… No, leave the connection live.”

He didn’t trust Lee and Jim, and no wonder.

“I can’t do that,” Lee said. “If she comes back to the bridge, she’ll notice… she told me not to answer.”

“Where is she now?”

“All over the damn ship,” Lee said. “She’s checking on everything, but I know she’ll come back in here—an’ anyway, we have to get some others. Two of us, me and Jim, we’re not enough. If that Quincy finds out—”

Ky was fascinated by Lee’s glibness. Either he had some experience she didn’t know about, or she had corrupted him in the past several months. She suspected both.

“How many do you think will join you?”

“Allie,” Jim said, speaking up. “She’s unhappy anyway; she doesn’t like that new cargomaster, she told me.”

“Mitt might join us,” Lee said. “And he’s good in a fight. Sheryl probably. Like you said, Cap’n, Quincy’s no use to us and she’s the one most likely to tell our captain.”

“You can have twenty minutes,” Osman said. “Then report back and tell me how it’s going.”

“What if she’s on the bridge?”

“If you’ve got four people and you can’t take down one, you’re useless,” Osman said.

“Right,” Lee said.

Ky finished the ninth mine, her mind now racing on the larger problem. Or was it a problem? Maybe it was an opportunity. He wanted to close and board… if she had a crew trained in EVA, she could send someone over to his ship with a mine when they were close enough. She didn’t have a crew trained in EVA. Besides, that would damage or destroy the hull she wanted, and would signal Osman’s allies that the mutiny was faked. If she could knock out his ship’s systems—she stopped moving, immobile for long seconds as her mind threw up yet another scenario. Pictures flickered through her mind, almost too fast to follow. Transfer tube. Air locks open. A blurred shape flying through the tube… not this mine, but one of the others, one of the EMP weapons MacRobert had sent her.

“Quincy. Martin.”

“Yes, Captain?”

“Do we have any kind of… of machine or something that can throw a… say… seventy-kilogram mass about a hundred, two hundred meters?”

“You mean like a hydraulic piston sort of thing? No.”

No. Not the answer she wanted, needed. Her mind threw up the picture of Mehar’s pistol bow. Made it bigger. Back in the dawn of time, people had used big machines of that type to throw rocks or something… but they didn’t have time to build one, and it would have to be wider than the escape passage anyway. Could some of the crew—all the crew—heave the thing down the passage fast enough? Almost certainly not.
Twang!
The sound of a packing cord coming loose made her jump. Then the plan appeared, bright and clear and complete in her mind.

“Quincy, how many packing cords would it take to accelerate that seventy-kilo mass?”

“Packing cords…
packing
cords!” Ky could see the engineering mind at work, as clearly as if Quincy’s implant were printing the figures on her forehead. “That’s the craziest—but—Alene! Sheryl! Get me all the packing cords you can grab—the priority on purple and green, three meters… you’ll want some way to fasten them…”

“Yes.” And some way to make sure the load was lined up with the internal and external hatches, and some way to be sure that Osman’s air lock was open, and some way to take advantage of the confusion that would result if this worked and to recover from the mess if it didn’t. But she felt a wave of confidence. It was a workable idea, the first she’d had, and from it flowed concatenated consequences—using Osman’s ship as a shield against his allies, once she gained control.

“Ma’am, that’s a very dangerous plan—” Martin began.

“We have a very dangerous situation,” Ky said. “As several people, including you, pointed out earlier. Have you got a better plan? If this works it will prevent a boarding situation.”

His plan if they were boarded had been complex, and she was not at all sure her crew could carry it out. Especially the last phase.

“I understand that, ma’am.”

“Oh, and Quincy—with just the EMP pulse aimed into his ship, estimate the damage to grapples, transfer tube, and our control systems…” She ripped open one of the cartons.

“Right,” Quincy said, sounding more cheerful. “And send Martin down here.”

Risks. If this failed, they might actually be captured. That must not happen. Toby must not fall into enemy hands, nor Stella, nor Quincy… nor she herself. She thought it would work—it should work, it certainly could work—but what if it didn’t? She called Toby, Stella, and Rafe to meet her in the rec area. They had a right to know the worst before the others. The final elements of Martin’s plan, the ones she hadn’t told them about before in case it never happened.

“The situation is… grave,” Ky said. Toby paled, but didn’t move. Stella, already paler by nature, sat as still.

“Hopeless?” Rafe asked.

“No. Not hopeless. Difficult, dangerous, tricky. Grave. But not ever hopeless.”

Rafe pursed his lips. “Sometimes, Captain Vatta, it is necessary to recognize when there are no viable alternatives.”

The formality alerted her. “You think there are not?”

“We’re outnumbered by larger, faster ships, several of them armed with ample weaponry to blow us away if the defensive suite doesn’t hold, and maybe even if it functions as advertised. Our enemies have proposed a plan that they claim will save some of the crew—do you believe that, by the way?”

“Of course not,” Ky said. “They have no interest in the crew’s lives. They assume I do.”

“And this plan involves letting this ship be boarded. So… it might be time to eat the bullet.”

“I think not,” Ky said. “I think it’s time to have our enemy eat the bullet. It’s just that ensuring it goes down their gullet is not going to be easy.”

“And the cost of error might not be a quick death,” Rafe said, holding her gaze.

“That at least lies within our power,” Ky said. She did not glance at Toby; she did not want to see that awareness enter his eyes. The pup moved suddenly, squirming out of Toby’s grip with a grunt; his claws clicked on the deck.

“Rascal!” said Toby in a tense voice.

“It’s all right,” Ky said, almost relieved by the interruption. “Rascal’s behavior is the least of our problems. I do feel it’s imperative that every crewmember have the capability to ensure a quick death…”

“You mean… suicide?” Toby asked.

She had to look at him now. His brow furrowed with the effort to act calm; his jaw was clamped, mouth in a firm line.

“Yes,” she said. “But only if it’s necessary, if the rest of this doesn’t work.”

“My… my family didn’t believe in suicide,” he said, looking down.

“Neither did mine,” Ky said. “For all the usual reasons. But Toby, if Osman captured you… it doesn’t bear thinking on.”

“I… don’t want to die.”

“Me, neither. I don’t intend to die, in fact. I intend to kill Osman, and my parents also taught me that killing people was wrong. But you’re signed to the contract as an adult, Toby. Adults sometimes have to do things they never thought they’d do. If you honestly can’t… well… we’ll take care of you.”

From his face, he understood that, too. “Can we kill them?”

“I think so. Or I’d blow this ship myself.”

“All right.” His face stiffened. Ky glanced at Rafe and Stella. “Don’t… I can do it myself, if I have to. Will it… hurt?”

“No,” Ky said. Honesty, brutal to the end, forced her to add, “Or at least, not as long as Osman would.” She handed out the packets.

Rascal was gnawing on her boot; she bent down and scooped him up. He wiggled furiously, managing to swipe his tongue over her chin before she was able to dump him back into Toby’s grip. “Here you go, Toby,” she said. She searched for something comforting to say and came up empty. What could you say, after telling a youngster he might have to kill himself? There was always the appeal to duty… and what teenager didn’t have secret fantasies of being the hero? “You take care of him, and do whatever Quincy asks. You’re clever—you may be the one who saves the ship.”

“Yes, Captain,” Toby said. He still looked scared, and no wonder, but his eyes also held a spark of interest beyond fear. “I’ll—I’ll try to help.”

“Toby, you’ve helped already. You’re going to make a fine captain someday.” If he lived. If any of them lived. If she had ships for him to captain. But that was her job.

Her father had once said that the easiest person to cheat was the person who expected to be cheated. She’d heard that repeatedly from others, as well, most recently from Osman himself. He would certainly expect tricks, but what tricks would he expect? That the mutiny was faked, that her crew would really resist? That she would find out? What would he consider clues that this was happening?