Engaging the Enemy (40 page)

“I don't intend to do that, either.”

“Did it load the connection codes into your implant? That would be in a subfolder under ISC…”

“Yes,” Ky said.

“You're the honest sort who wouldn't use them to make free calls, but again, if you're ever stuck…those codes will work via any ansible interface.” He stretched. “Well, I'll be on my way. I don't suppose you'd let me demonstrate my respect and affection—”

“No,” Ky said. “But thank you for asking.”

“You are a cruel and heartless woman,” Rafe said. “But someday…” And with that he was gone.

T
wo days later,
Sharra's Gift
docked at Cascadia Station and Captain Argelos called Ky. “We need to talk; where can we meet?”

“My ship's secure,” Ky said. “You'll have noticed it has a new name…
Vanguard.
”

“Good. I'll be there in less than an hour.”

Ky ordered in refreshments and told her security crew what she wanted. When Argelos arrived, she let Martin meet him at dockside and escort him to her office.

“Things went very sour at Sallyon after your cousin left,” Argelos said, even before sitting down. “Quite a few Bissonet ships have shown up there since you left. Merchanters, private yachts, one Bissonet Space Agency ship, a couple of privateers, each with worse news than the last.” Argelos drained his mug. “Idiots at Sallyon still don't want trouble, they say, but unarmed traders started pulling out right after you left, and that's continued. Does the Moscoe Confederation know about your ideas?”

“No,” Ky said. “I've had other problems here. A former Vatta employee turns out to have been one of Osman's spies and he tried to compromise my identity.”

“Ah. But you've got that straightened out, I see.”

“Yes.” She wasn't going to explain further. She still had complications from that to clear up. “I plan to tell them about my plans, though, so I don't get in the kind of trouble Sallyon gave me.”

“Good. Thing is, I think you're right. We've got to have some kind of interstellar force. It's clear from Dan's report—sorry, Dan Pettygrew, captain of one of the Bissonet privateers that made it out in one piece; I've known Dan for years—that the pirates have at least sixty, maybe more, ships. That civilian ship's scans didn't show all of them, by any means. They simply swamped Bissonet's defenses, which assumed attacking forces of no more than four or five ships at once. Like most systems.”

“If that was a Bissonet privateer, why didn't he fight?” Ky asked.

“Against a force of sixty ships, when Bissonet had only ten ships in the system? It would've been suicide. Anyway, Dan agrees that we need to combine, as many of the privateers as we can and any other force that wants to join. I told him about you, and that makes three of us…”

“I see. Are there any others?”

“Dan says there was another Bissonet privateer, someone I've never met, who was close to jumping out as the raiders came in. That's the other one who showed up, a woman named Andreson who's been a privateer for years and started trying to gather a force to liberate Bissonet. The Sallyon Port Authority threw her out, just like they did you.”

“Is she coming here?”

“No. She's taken two other Bissonet ships to a system a jump away from Sallyon. I have the coordinates. Says she's interested in talking to you and joining forces with anyone who'll fight the invaders. She thinks Slotter Key privateers would make good allies, and your name impressed her. She knows Bissonet can't do it alone, not now.” He poured himself another glass and took a drink. “But the thing is, she's going to expect to be running things. I know you've got a military background. As far as I know, Bissonet didn't give its privateers any special training so we don't know what she really knows about space warfare, in terms of handling formations. She says she does.”

“Anyone else?” Ky asked.

“There's a Captain Zavala, from over in the Loma Linda Cluster, registered out of Ciudad,” Argelos said. “He knows that fellow I told you about before, Ortiz. And there's a ship from Urgayin, but I'm not sure about that one. Urgayin has a bad reputation…of course, so do we. But still—”

Ky queried her implant. Vatta did not have a direct trade route with Urgayin; the implant notation was Dangerous: pirates masquerading as privateers. “Did they go with Andreson to the rendezvous?”

“As far as I know, yes. Andreson said to meet there; everyone was leaving Sallyon at random intervals to avoid port authority suspicion. I left first, to come find you and see if you were interested.”

“Are you?”

He drained half his glass before answering. “Yes…and no. I mean, you made sense, and you're from Slotter Key. And you're a Vatta. All that means something to me. Obviously, though, we need more ships and people involved, and we can't gather Slotter Key privateers with the ansibles down. I'm just not sure about Andreson. She's likely to give you trouble, for one thing.”

“Why?”

“Like I said, she expects to command, and she's going to think you're a rival.”

“If she's more experienced—”

“She's older than you, more years as a captain and a privateer. But when I asked her if she'd ever commanded in a multiship engagement, she got huffy. Said she knew more about space combat than any half-baked youngster.”

Anger washed over her; Ky barely managed a level tone. “I'm not exactly half-baked—”

“I know that. But her age, her experience…and she claims she and her companion ship took out two pirates on the way out of Bissonet.” He tilted his head. “Going to fight her for it?”

“Not now,” Ky said. “It's more important to get an intersystem alliance than who commands it. I'll at least talk to her.” She had to start somewhere, and five more ships plus a prickly commander was better than just Argelos.

“I'll stick with you, then,” Argelos said. “The odds are better with more of us than with me going out alone. I don't want to be solo against a fleet of pirates.” He took another sip. “You seemed to think you had some sort of plan, back on Sallyon. Was that all youthful enthusiasm?”

“Plans depend on resources,” Ky said. “I have to have numbers to put in the boxes. A plan for eight ships isn't like a plan for eighty.”

“I can see that. But still—some kind of overall organization?”

“Definitely,” Ky said. “What I know is Slotter Key's Spaceforce model; I've tried expanding it for multisystem use, but I'm sure there'll have to be adjustments. Still, we need a command structure, a support structure, all that kind of thing. And we must have someone in command who has experience in multiship engagements.”

He grinned. “I was hoping you'd say that. It's not that I think this is just a Slotter Key problem that has to have a Slotter Key solution, but I don't want to find myself on the tag end of a gaggle of privateers commanded by someone who has no qualifications other than the number of ships he brought to the party. After all, my authorization is from Slotter Key.”

“How many privateers have fought in groups?” Ky asked.

“Not many,” Argelos said. “I've worked with another Slotter Key privateer a few times—we'd set up a trap—but nothing more than that. Sergei Morales, out of the Loma Linda group, he was telling me once about putting all the Loma Linda privateers together for a few operations. But he told me that in a bar on Placitas when he was more than a little drunk.”

“Ideally, we need a commander who's done multiship combat before,” Ky said. “A merc, in fact. They're the ones with the experience.”

“Mercs don't work with privateers,” Argelos reminded her. “At least, the good ones don't.”

“True,” Ky said. “At least, not often. But they fight each other, and they know what we don't about full-scale warfare. I had the theory in the Academy, but I haven't actually done it.”

“Wait—you had mercs with you when you took this ship, didn't you?”

“Not to take this ship,” Ky said. “They cleaned up Osman's allies, two other ships.”

“They didn't capture this ship for you?”

“No. I…er…did that myself.”

He looked at her with a new expression. “Really. So that talk about you killing Osman wasn't just random rockfall? You actually fought him off and killed him? Yourself?”

“Yes,” Ky said. Tension skewed her voice; she fought it down. “It was…very personal. He wanted this ship; he wanted me dead. I didn't have experienced soldiers…I had to do it myself. As I did at Sabine. If you heard about that.”

“Only rumors,” Argelos said. “You will forgive me, I hope, if I discounted them as mere rumors. A young woman your age—and you don't look—”

“Spaceforce-trained,” Ky said.

“Yes, but…forgive me again, but didn't it bother you?”

“Of course it bothered me!” Ky looked him in the eye. “I threw up; I cried. But it had to be done.”

Argelos shifted in his seat. “Yes. Well. You look so…so young, and Vatta doesn't have the reputation of breeding soldiers. I should have known, I suppose. When you talked about privateers combining, I assumed…but never mind. You're tougher than you look, clearly. So what kind of organization did you envision?”

“Like this,” Ky said. She called up the files she'd been working on. “Initially, I don't expect to get much if any support from system governments. I'd hoped we would—but Sallyon showed that most will be slow to respond. So we have to arrange our own supply and support bases. That's when I started thinking of ways to incorporate experienced mercs.”

He looked at the charts, then at her. “You've really thought this through. My Spaceforce adviser should see this. Would you let him?”

“Only if he agrees to secrecy,” Ky said. “I'm still wondering if he's the one who tipped off the Sallyon administration that we were discussing joint operations.”

“It's possible, I suppose,” Argelos said. He looked at the charts again. “I notice you don't have numbers in some of these boxes.”

“I don't know the armaments the pirates carry. Do you?”

“Some of them, certainly.”

“Good; you can help me fill in the blanks.” Ky looked up to find Argelos looking alarmed. “You said you'd be with me,” she said. “What's the problem?”

“It's my adviser. He thinks we should just head back to Slotter Key—”

“If your adviser is against this, what will you do?”

“I…don't know. He's young, as I said. I wouldn't have gone against Berman's advice—the adviser I had before—but I'm not sure of this one. If he comes up with what I consider valid objections, then—” He shrugged and spread his hands.

“I can't tell you more of what I know if you're not with me—with us,” Ky said.

He looked at her in silence for a long moment, then nodded. “I'm with you. At least as far as contacting other privateers and trying to form a joint force of some kind. I do think you should consider working with the Bissonet privateers. Dan's solid—like I said, I've known him for years. If we decide it's not a good deal, we can always leave.”

“So where is the meeting place?”

“Corson's Roads; it's a smallish place, mostly a repair facility set up a long time ago when FTL engines needed tuning more frequently. We've both been there before. He'll bring the other Bissonets, if they show up at Sallyon.”

“How far?”

“One jump from here, too. It's relatively convenient to Sallyon, Cascadia, Bissonet, and Bernhardt.”

“The pirates wouldn't have it staked out?”

“They might, but it's a dwindling economy since the long haulers took over. Not much to rob.”

Ky considered. Bissonet's privateers would have a personal and urgent interest in defeating the pirates, which meant they'd probably welcome any assistance, but for the same reasons might want to run the show for Bissonet's purposes, not the benefit of all.

“I'll go there,” she said. “Tell me more about the people you think we'll be meeting.”

On the voyage to Corson's Roads, she scheduled more weapons drills. Ky didn't take the time to drop out of FTL and blow up a few rocks, as they had on previous runs, but she and her new weapons officer made up scenarios that gave the batteries practice in loading various munitions and responding to emergency situations. Jessy turned out to be wickedly inventive with such scenarios. On one of Ky's tours through the ship, she overheard the battery crews commenting on this in one of the servicing compartments.

“Just one drill after another.” Graydon, number three battery, sounded annoyed.

“Better this than no drills.” That was Jon Gannett.

“Not saying it isn't. But I'll bet we're fitter than any of those other crews.”

“Fitter than the pirates, is what we need to be,” Pod Gannett said. “I had a word with that Argelos' number one gunner, back on Cascadia. They don't drill but once in ten days, and they know when.”

“Captain's smarter'n that,” Graydon said. “Can't say I like having my rest shift busted up, but at least it feels like a real fightin' ship. She may be young, but she knows what she's doin', I'm thinkin'.”

Ky backed up twenty steps and made an intentional noise, When she walked into the compartment, five of them were bent over a missile, apparently calibrating the targeting computer. “Good work on that last drill,” she said. They had, in fact, exceeded the parameters she'd set by 10 percent.