Marque and Reprisal (24 page)

“I suppose not,” Filgrim said. Clearly he wished it had been.

“They were waiting for your crewmembers, Captain Vatta,” Grawn said. “For anyone coming out of your ship. Whether to kill them or simply cause you trouble, I don’t know. But the sooner you get offstation, the better.”

“Not without my crew,” Ky said.

“I can release them, if you’re really going,” Filgrim said. “This may not be your fault, exactly, but your presence certainly has caused trouble.”

“We’re going,” Ky said. “Though I don’t like being blamed for something I didn’t start.”

“We have an escort to take Captain Vatta and her crew back to the ship safely,” Grawn said. “So we will not need to call on your forces.”

“I don’t have spare men anyway,” Filgrim said. “Fine, then. Go.” He waved his hand. “All you ever bring is trouble anyway, you traders.”

Ky opened her mouth to say something, but Grawn shook his head at her, and she nodded instead. “I hope you have no more trouble,” she said.

Nothing disturbed their passage to the dock; Ky arrived just as the defensive suite was being delivered by Mackensee personnel.

“Jim, go let the medbox check you out; Mehar, stand by for the moment.” Jim, walking a little unsteadily, wandered up the access and into the ship, following the squad with the cartons and lifter.

“Any other supplies to come aboard?” asked Lt. Commander Johannson.

Ky looked at the status board just inside the docking tube. “No—we could squeeze on another five days’ rations, but that’s about it. We’ll undock within the hour. Is that fast enough?”

“I hope so.” He tapped the bulge in front of his ear. “Our people report unusual external activity—repair bugs, that kind of thing. Not right here, but enough of them that Traffic Control is expressing annoyance. I’d like you a solid ten kilometers offstation.”

Ky tapped her handcom. “Quincy—how soon can we undock?”

“Without blowing seals? We’ve got a place in the queue in fifty-eight minutes, with the tug
Missy Mae
. Insystem’s ready to warm up. Station seemed glad to have us going…”

“There’s a concern,” Ky said. “Ask Station if anyone else is in our way if we’re a little quicker; I’m on my way to the bridge. Bring the insystem drive to standby.” She turned to Johannson. “I’ll see what I can do—our slot is fifty-seven minutes.”

“Right.” He signaled to the Mackensee NCO in charge of the loading group. “We’ll get out of your way, but watch the area.” The squad that had delivered the packages came out the hatch on the double.

Ky looked at Martin, who was standing nearby. “Let’s start buttoning up, then.”

“Yes, Captain.”

On her way to the bridge, Ky felt her skin tightening; she could imagine one or more of the little one-person repair scooters easing up to the hull, planting mines. Her ears registered the pressure fluctuation as the hatch sealed. She passed the medbox alcove; Jim sat hunched over the diagnostic module, holding something to his face that she hoped would take care of his black eyes. Stella, in the galley, turned; Ky shook her head and went on to the bridge. Lee was talking to the station.

“—We’re small. We’ve undocked without a tug before.”

The face in the display had a sour look. “And we’ve had ships undock without a tug that put us at risk with reaction—”

“You won’t feel a thing,” Lee said.

“That’s what they all say,” the duty officer said. “
Just a little squirt, that’s all,
and we end up having to expend fuel to counter the rotational effects…”

“Well, if the tug can hurry it up—”

“They can’t. There’s a traffic jam up on Ring Five; some idiot kids decided to hold some kind of rally in repair scooters. Tug would have to risk collisions to come now. I don’t see why you can’t wait.”

Icy tingles ran down Ky’s spine. Someone wanted them delayed, still onstation when something went wrong.

“Captain Vatta here,” she said, silencing Lee, who had his mouth open to reply. “We have received a credible threat, involving those same repair scooters. What’s current traffic status on this ring?”

“Uh… there are a couple of nonscheduled scooters, probably just those kids—coming around Dock Four-B.”

A sector away. What was the maximum acceleration on those scooters? The only external scans she had were focal scans of a few hull locations, not wide-area.

“Sorry,” she said. “We’re departing now; we believe that those scooters may intend to plant mines on our hull.”

“But they’re just kids—”

“Maybe,” Ky said. To Lee, she said, “Shut down all external access, Lee.” To the duty officer, “We’re shutting off externals; we’ll be pulling out as soon as the boards go green. Slowly, I promise.”

“You Vatta…,” the man said. “If it weren’t for you—”

“I didn’t start this,” Ky said.

“Air’s clear. Water’s clear. External com’s clear—”

“Close curtain,” Ky said. Unlike their emergency undock from Sabine Prime, she was not going to cause any more damage than she could help. The ship, external attachments retracted, lay in the docking bay with no more physical connection to the station.

“Confirm curtain sealed,” the duty officer said. “Formal clearance…”

“Take us out, Lee,” Ky said.

“Maneuvering,” he said. The deck didn’t so much as quiver, but the instruments showed their relative motion. Ky said nothing. Again unlike their earlier emergency undock, they weren’t using the insystem drive, but the less powerful attitude controls. Ky switched on nearscan as soon as the nodes had cleared the station’s blanketing structure…

“There they are,” she said. Two tiny dots, just showing around the curve of the station. Their projected course took them directly to what had been
Gary Tobai
’s docking bay… as she watched, they angled outward.

“We’re not clear yet, Captain,” Lee said. His fingers twitched on the controls. One meter per second… and the acceleration was only 0.001 meter per.

“Insystem,” Ky said.

“Insystem hot,” Quincy said.

“We’re too close—we could give ’em a wobble,” Lee said.

“We’ll give them worse than that if we blow up this close,” Ky said. “I want the drive up… we’ll engage as late as we can, but no later.”

The tiny dots crawled nearer… they couldn’t go far, but they were faster than the ship.

“Minimum coming up,” Lee said.

“Rotate the ship parallel to the entire station axis,” Ky said. “We’ll do less damage that way…”

That took precious seconds, and the two tiny craft were within what Ky considered throwing distance when she said “Engage, one-quarter power.”

Gary Tobai
’s rotation and the shove of the insystem drive sent them off at a solid ten-meters-per-second acceleration; in the scan, the two dots crossed paths and curled around, trying to chase them, but they’d already opened a distance. Repair scooters, Ky knew, couldn’t top a ten-meters-per acceleration, and quickly used up fuel at that rate. One of them, though, closed distance. Not just your ordinary repair scooter, then.

“You’re being pursued,” the station duty officer said in a surprised tone.

“I noticed,” Ky said. “Half power,” she told Quincy. The ship opened the gap again. Something flashed in the scan behind them… the first dot vanished and the second boosted back toward the station. “You might want to intercept that one,” she said to the duty officer. “You might learn something to your advantage.”

“Uh… right.”

“Where do you want to go?” Lee asked.

“Right now, I just want enough distance to be safe,” Ky said. “Maybe ten kilometers—”

“
Gloucester to Gary Tobai.
”

“
Gary Tobai,
” Ky said. The screen flicked twice, then steadied on Captain Pensig’s face.

“Our scans report an explosion near your position. Any damage?”

“No—we’re fine.”

“We recommend you continue on present course for six hours, Captain Vatta.”

“But we—” Ky swallowed the rest of that. “Six hours, right.”

His face relaxed. “We’ll be in touch on a secured link, Captain.
Gloucester
will cover your retreat;
Scapa Flow
will remain onstation for the present.”

On her nearscans, the Mackensee ship’s trace edged out, carefully staying between them and the station.

“Station’s not mad at us,” Lee said. “Who do they think might take a potshot?”

“There’s a lot of spare armament,” Ky said. “Someone else could’ve made a critical purchase from MilMart, after all.”

“Mmm. So we’re not really safe until we clear the system, is that it?”

Ky thought about pointing out that they weren’t going to be safe anywhere, and decided against it. “Well… the farther away we are, the safer. It takes a lot of power to run one of the big beam weapons. Missiles, though… we’d better get our defensive suite up and running.” Ky turned to her com again and called Quincy. “How’s the installation coming?”

“Installation! I just got the last carton unclipped!”

“Well, chances are we’ll need it now or we won’t need it at all,” Ky said.

A silence on the other end, a mutter she couldn’t quite hear, then, “I am definitely retiring after this trip, Ky—Captain. I am too old for this. I’m supposed to fit these things in one-meter intervals—do you have any idea how much climbing that involves?” Quincy didn’t sound scared, just annoyed.

“Toby’s young and agile; so is Jim. Martin probably knows how to install that kind of thing. And maybe Rafe can help.”

“Rafe! You’d trust him with our defenses?”

“We need the suite installed and running, Quincy. Whatever it takes.”

“Right.”

Ky sat back, fingers drumming on the arm of her seat. They were alive, by the margin of a few seconds. They were back in space, where spacers belonged, and she had an ally now. Maybe more than one, if Rafe had been honest about his family name. She thought he was. But… alone, with two Mackensee ships, and a hole in the bottom of the budget… so they had provisions, but troops ate provisions as locusts ate grain fields. She would have to have money at the next place they stopped… she needed to spread the cost of all this… but how?

“Ky, have you eaten?” Stella, sandwich in hand, peered around the entrance to the bridge.

“Since when?” Ky asked.

“That’s an answer of sorts. I’ve made sandwiches; here’s one.” She handed in a plate piled with neatly cut triangles.

“You cook?” Ky said. She had not suspected Stella of any domestic skills.

Stella grimaced. “Sandwiches aren’t cooking, and I told you I could scramble eggs. I’ll just send some down to the others.”

“Good idea,” Ky said. Now that they were—well, not safe, but definitely safer—she was hungry. That snack intended for the visiting officers had never been delivered. She put the plate between herself and Lee; both of them ate in silence for several minutes.

Then Lee looked at her. “Do you think we’ll be attacked now?”

“I hope not,” Ky said. She put down the sandwich she was eating. “It’s all happened so fast… at least we have help this time. We can actually do something.”

He picked up another triangle of sandwich. “You have a plan, then.”

“I will soon,” Ky said. “Actually I have a plan now, and we’re succeeding in the first objective, which is staying alive, with mobility unimpaired.”

“And next?”

“Find and aid any family members we can, before they’re all killed. Figure out who’s doing this, and how to strike back. Same as I said in the first place.”

“And you trust the mercs?”

“They hold to contracts, the same as we do,” Ky said. “What happened last time wasn’t their fault, and we were paid well for our trouble.”

“Yes, but…” He chewed a moment in silence, then swallowed and went on. “Is there any chance we’ll get back to regular trading?”

“I don’t know,” Ky said. “Nobody’s going to be doing regular trading as long as the ansibles are down. If that’s taken care of, and as long as our enemies aren’t attacking us directly, we ought to be able to go back. It won’t be the same, of course, with all the damage Vatta’s sustained. We’ll have to rebuild the business.” Even as she said it, she wondered if it could be done at all. It had taken generations to build Vatta from that first ship to the shipping empire it had become. She cocked her head at Lee. “Why? Are you ready to go find another ship? Is adventure looking less attractive than a few days ago?”

He shook his head. “No, Captain. I’m just considering the ironies.”

“The ironies?”

“Yes. Your father picked me as junior pilot to Riel, as you know, on the basis of my safety record. My reputation in the trade was as a solid, serious young pilot with no wild tendencies. He didn’t know—because it would have done my application no good—that I had always wanted something more exciting than piloting a trader. But when my parents were killed, I needed to find a job quickly, and I was a year too young to qualify for military training. I thought it was a tragedy at the time and was prepared to be miserably bored for the next fifty or sixty years. I realized soon enough that even civilian piloting had some adventure in it, but it was still… missing something.”

“You still crave adventure?” Ky asked.

“Even after seeing it close up. Yes, Captain. If you decide not to go back to ordinary trading… don’t worry about me quitting, is what I mean. If you want me, that is.”

“You’re a good pilot, Lee; of course I want you on the ship. Let’s just not have too
much
adventure, all right?”

“It’s your call, Captain.” He grinned and finished another sandwich.

Ky was still thinking about the next step and the five beyond that. She needed money. Traders got money by trading or by providing a service. They’d sold all they had to sell. What service could she provide, as the target of malicious attack? What resources did she have? What she had to sell, Ky realized suddenly, was protection. As long as she had Mackensee, she had something other traders might want.

“Captain Vatta, this is Lt. Commander Johannson.”

“Captain Vatta here.”

“Our sources confirm destruction of one stolen repair bug, and the other has been taken into custody. I understand you may have some information on the ansible problems?”

“Yes,” she said. “We have an individual with considerable expertise in ISC internal affairs. At the moment he’s helping install the defensive suite we just loaded.”

“That takes precedence,” Johannson said. “But we’d like to talk to him.”

“I’ll let him know,” Ky said. “He’s not actually part of my crew; we have a partnership agreement at the moment. He helped my cousins get off Allray in one piece.”

“Ah.”

“Another thing,” Ky said. “If I’m reading our contract correctly, there’s nothing to prevent your escorting a few more trading ships, is there?”

“In convoy, you mean? We’d usually have more ships for that, but… you’re thinking of spreading the cost?”

“Yes, of course, but also establishing the legitimacy of Vatta Transport again. Right now the other trader captains don’t want to speak to me in case our problems are contagious. To get shipping contracts, we have to get some of that cleared off our reputation. If I can offer safe, or at least safer, transportation somewhere—anywhere—it should help.”