Engaging the Enemy (31 page)

Furman continued to accumulate good reports and promotions to increasingly lucrative routes. His on-time and early-delivery record was the best in the company; he had received commendations and bonuses. Then, less than a standard year ago, he had been sent to Sabine to find and assist Ky. Immediately after that, he had been transferred to this route, on the far side of Vatta's operating territory.

Stella paused again. Something was wrong. Why would such a good employee, so diligent, so valuable to the company, so well compensated, be transferred here? He wouldn't ask for such a transfer; it was against the pattern she saw in his record, the pattern of cautious but determined ambition. He must have done something, and logically that something involved Ky. He'd known her before; she hadn't liked him. Perhaps the dislike was mutual? But surely he wouldn't have said anything about it, even if it was. He was mature, experienced, socially adept as any trader must be; such a man would not risk his career to complain about his employer's daughter. What could have happened? Had Ky complained about him to her father?

Nothing showed up in the files that her implant carried. She racked her own memory of that period. She'd been away on company business; she hadn't even known Ky was in the Sabine system until after the ansibles were back up, and Ky was on her way somewhere else. Her father had given no details, beyond the fact that Ky had been there, had been injured but was now fine, and the crisis was over. Nothing about Furman, nothing at all.

That in itself was strange. Usually he told her family news right away. She'd known the same day when Ky left the Academy; he'd told her everything he knew, or found out, in the days after Ky left on her voyage. That's why she'd written the note, in a flush of sympathy, imagining how the perfect daughter, the one always in control, must feel such a disgrace. Why hadn't her father told her about Furman being sent to help Ky, and what went wrong, and that Furman had been transferred to another route?

Had it been to protect Ky? Had Ky complained for no reason, slandered Furman? Furman could indeed be irritating; she'd seen that for herself, but she could not imagine anything he could have done to deserve being yanked off one of the best routes in the Vatta system and sent to another, as far from headquarters as possible.

She wondered if Ky would tell her the truth about it, if asked. Then she remembered that Quincy had been aboard at the time.

“Furman was furious,” Quincy said when asked what had happened. “He was angry about being pulled off his route to come to Sabine, that I could understand. But he started scolding the captain as if she were a naughty child, instead of a grown woman who had done very well in a difficult and dangerous situation.”

“Scolded her…you're sure he did, and that wasn't just her interpretation?”

“I'm sure,” Quincy said. “I wasn't on the bridge to hear it, but Lee was, and the Mackensee communications tech they had aboard. Furman laid into her in a white fury, told her she had ruined the company's reputation and cost it millions, and so forth and so on. He wanted her to let him sell off the ship for scrap—”

“This ship?”

“This ship, yes. We needed repairs, true enough, but it wasn't beyond repair, as you can see. Ky had cargo to take to Belinta, and cargo at Belinta bound for the next stops, but Furman wanted her to come aboard with the crew, and he'd pick up and deliver the Belinta cargo.”

“Is that what she was supposed to do?”

“No. Not according to the sealed message her father sent with Furman. Furman was just there to render aid. It was his idea to take over and treat her like an idiot. Ky wouldn't put up with it, naturally. She told us all what he wanted and what she was going to do instead, and offered to let any of the crew who wanted leave with Furman.”

“So…did she complain to her father about Furman? Is that why he's out here, and not on the Beulah Road route?”

Quincy shook her head. “She couldn't have complained if she'd wanted to; remember, the Sabine ansible platforms had been blown up. ISC brought in repair crews, but no private ansible communications were permitted; we left before the repairs were done.”

“It just doesn't sound like Furman, from his record,” Stella said. “I don't understand—”

“He's got something of a reputation,” Quincy said. “He's a good captain, right enough: a stickler for safety, for efficiency. Excellent on-time delivery stats. But he can be a petty tyrant with his crew, especially the lower grades. Mostly he's just kind of prissy, but every once in a while he blows up. You know he courted a Vatta girl once, years back…”

“What?” That was the last thing she'd expected to hear.

“Oh, yes. Up-and-coming young captain, rapid promotions for efficiency. Met—what was her name? I can't quite remember. Harmon's oldest daughter—”

“Mellicent,” Stella said. “What year was it?”

“Let me think. It's twenty years ago, about, but I'm not sure. Anyway, he asked permission to court her—he didn't grow up on Slotter Key, you can tell—and her father said yes, but he thought she might already have formed an attachment. As polite a warning as he could give, but Furman didn't understand it. Mellicent was a typical Vatta, headstrong and impatient. She had that intense, energetic kind of dark beauty, nothing at all like you, but attractive to a lot of men. Furman sent her a careful progression of gifts: the birthday card, then the flowers, then the box of candy, and so forth. Everything perfectly conventional and respectful. Then he began to ask her out. She went with him to a provincial fair, but he got sick on one of the carnival rides. After that, she always had an excuse, but he still didn't take the hint.”

“I never imagined Furman as a suitor,” Stella said. “Ambitious, wasn't he?”

“I don't know,” Quincy said. “Vatta girls have to marry outside the family, after all, and a loyal, efficient, up-and-coming captain isn't that bad a choice. Other captains had taken her out. Of course, they took her dancing and sky-sailing and reef-diving, not to a poky agricultural fair.”

“So she didn't encourage him.”

“No. In fact, he came back from a voyage to find she'd married in the meantime, not a word to him about it.”

Stella checked the date of Mellicent's marriage in her files. About a year after that mysterious symbol in Furman's personnel record. Did it mark the start of his unsuccessful courtship? “How did you know all this?” she asked.

Quincy gave a small snort. “That kind of thing travels faster than light. Employees marrying into the family was nothing new, but it was always good for gossip. Besides, while Furman was a good captain, he wasn't that popular.”

“A reason for him to be bitter…I wonder why he stayed with the company. A man of his qualifications could find a place somewhere else.”

“Yes, but we do—did—have one of the most generous compensation packages in the industry. You know Vatta's never had a problem hiring away from other firms; people want to work for Vatta. Wanted to.”

“I suppose. I wonder if he took against Ky because of that. Mellicent was dark; Ky is dark.”

“Maybe. I think he's just one of those sour people who would rather complain than change things.”

“But then, if Ky didn't complain to her father, why was Furman transferred?”

“My guess is that he said something to her father, something her father took amiss. I don't know, though. It's all guesswork, and we'll never know unless Furman tells us.”

“Which is about as likely as time running backward,” Stella said. It sounded as if Furman was an unlikely ally, though. If he blamed Ky for his transfer, then maybe that's why he was trying to discredit her, claim she was an imposter. “Did Osman have any children that you know of?” she asked Quincy.

“Children? Not that I ever heard of. Why?”

“This claim Furman's making that Ky isn't our Ky, that she's one of Osman's children and her appearance with his ship is part of some plot of Osman's—it doesn't sound like the sort of thing he'd have the wits to invent, if it was known Osman had none. You never heard any rumors of anything like that?”

“Nothing,” Quincy said. “Osman was a sexual predator; everyone who came near him knew that much. But that doesn't mean he had children, or children he'd acknowledge.”

Stella didn't mention the information in the family files. “If you didn't know, I wonder how Furman heard about them.”

Quincy looked thoughtful. “That's…an interesting question. Assuming there are any such children. And even if they're not, why would he pick on that explanation for Ky faking an identity?”

“It makes me wonder if Furman had any dealings with Osman,” Stella said. “The Beulah Road route…I think I'd better look that up.”

“You don't think there's any truth in it…”

“Of course not,” Stella said. “Ky is entirely too irritating to be anyone but herself.”

The Beulah Road route as outlined in the Vatta Transport Manual was a five-stop circuit, named for the first system after its intersection with the Congrove. Beulah Road, Planters Rest, Arlene, Hope Landing, New Jamaica. One intermediate jump point between Beulah Road and Planters Rest, two between Planters Rest and Arlene, two again between Arlene and Hope Landing, three between New Jamaica and Beulah Road. The standard time en route, per section, compared with Furman's reported times was…very interesting.

Furman made up one day on the Beulah Road–Planters Rest leg; he had been in a day early 95 percent of the time for the past ten standard years. Well-organized ships could do that, with fine-tuning of the drives and a little higher fuel consumption to allow a faster run-in and thus require more deceleration near their goal. He spent that extra day in port, keeping precisely to Vatta's timetable so that shippers could rely on him. His times on the second and third legs were very good indeed, indicative of an efficiently run ship; he rarely made up a complete day unless he had an early-delivery bonus pending. Then he might show up two or even three days early. But on the fourth leg, with three intermediate jump points to traverse, each requiring a slowdown to drop in and out, he seemed to go faster instead. He arrived at New Jamaica an average of four days early.

Stella stared at the navigation manual until she was cross-eyed, then called in her pilot.

“I'm trying to figure out how a ship goes faster than the listed travel times on green-keyed mapped routes. Much faster.”

“That's easy.” The pilot gave her a challenging look. “They're not using the green routes.”

“Excuse me?”

“They're using the yellows,” the pilot said.

“But that's illegal,” Stella said, and got another look much like the first.

“Yeah, and it's dangerous, which bothers most people more,” the pilot said. “I won't do it, even for a bonus. What routes are we talking about?”

Stella pushed over the reader. “How could I figure out what routes he was using instead of the ones he should've been using?”

“One of your other ships, eh? Let's see. That hull…that drive…no way he could be making up time like that on green routes.”

“Why would he do it?”

“Speed pays. Faster delivery, early-delivery bonuses, no overtime charges. Stupid, because eventually you'll run into something…not all the yellows are yellow for the same reason, you know.”

Stella didn't know. “Explain, please,” she said.

The pilot was still looking at the reader, her fingers flickering over the controls. “Some of the jump points are yellow because they're unstable—they wobble around, they change focus, that kind of thing. Some are too close to a large mass. You may get by with a yacht or something, but not with a big freighter. Some systems are inherently dangerous, lots of rocks loose in the system. Some, there's concern about the stability of a star; wouldn't want to be translating through there just as it went blooey. And some, it's unfriendly natives. The people don't like travelers, or they like them in the wrong way.”

“Pirates?”

“Could be. Nearby systems report problems to the Pilots' Guild, and they classify them as green or yellow. We pilots prefer to err on the side of caution, so probably some yellows aren't that unsafe, but I'm not trying them.” She nodded at the reader screen. “Aha. Look at this.”

The figures meant nothing to Stella until the pilot explained. “My guess is he's running yellow routes the whole way.”

“But he's not coming in that early on the second and third legs.”

“That's because he's spending time off the clock,” the pilot said. “Somewhere on those legs, my guess is, he's meeting someone at one of these four jump points. Probably BV-328, RV-43, or GV-16, since they're all in uninhabited systems. BV-24's inhabited; if they hung around there longer than necessary, someone might notice.”

“Meeting someone.”

“Yes. I don't know who this is you're checking up on, but if it's an employee I'd say check the balance sheets. They're jumping slow, hanging around, meeting someone, maybe exchanging cargo, maybe just information.”

“Is this something a ship captain could do without the crew's knowledge? Without at least the pilot knowing?”

“Not unless the pilot was knocked out and locked in a closet. The rest of the crew…I don't know. If they think it's supposed to take six days of FTL flight with a jump-point transition in the middle and it takes six days of FTL flight with a jump-point transition in the middle, they might not.”

Furman's counterpart, running the same route backward, had never matched Furman's times. Why hadn't someone at headquarters noticed? Missing cargo would've been noticed; shippers had never complained of shortages in consigned cargo. Private cargo, then? Crew allotments? That would require crew complicity. Stella called up the records. He'd had the same senior crew for years, and the number of Vatta family members in the crew had dropped steadily.