Marque and Reprisal (38 page)

“I just hope I don’t find Selenki worms or something in the galley,” Sheryl said as she left the bridge.

Within the hour, she reappeared with trays; the smell of fresh-baked bread preceded her. “The galley’s fine,” she said. “And the supplies are… what I suppose pirates can afford. Prepacked from Escalion Catering, their gold-standard rations. I had to bake the bread, that was all. This is like that stuff the luxury liner had, remember?”

It seemed a lifetime ago that there’d been a fuss over gold-eye raspberries. “Yes,” Ky said, around a mouthful of warm fresh bread spread with something sweet and crunchy.

“I suppose we should share this with the others,” Lee said, smearing his bread with a different spread, this one a rich purple.

“Already done,” Sheryl said. “I called ’em. That silence you hear is people eating rather than talking.” She started on her own meal, and silence covered the bridge, too, for a few minutes.

“Better than Aunt Gracie’s fruitcake,” Ky said, when she came up for air. She had not realized how hungry she was. “We can save it for another emergency.”

“Which I hope doesn’t come too soon,” Lee said, stretching. “Ah… that’s good.”

As soon as they were close enough,
Gloucester
sent a pod to pick up Rafe so he could work on the system ansible. While he was gone, Johannson called Ky.

“We have another problem,” he said. “It’s your ISC agent, so called.”

“Rafe? What now?”

“We’ve been running analyses of events since we left Lastway. It looks to us that Mister Whoever-he-really-is has to be the one who set up that trap. We’re going to bring him back here when he’s done with this ansible, and have a look at his implant.”

“You can’t think that,” Ky said. “He’s been fixing ansibles—he led us to the ISC conspirators at Lastway.”

“It’s not unknown for conspirators to sacrifice some of their people for long-term gain,” Johannson said. “To gain your confidence, to gain ours—”

“And then he helped us survive the attack,” Ky said.

“You say… I’m not sure you’re competent to judge that, Captain Vatta. How else could Osman have known which system we’d be in? Nobody at Lastway knew that. How else could he have contacted his allies so easily? I believe Rafe is—or was—associated with ISC in some sensitive position, but the evidence is clear that he’s using some kind of clandestine communications device.”

“You can’t just invade his implant,” Ky said, all too aware that they could do just that. “He’s my crew; he’s under my protection.”

“I’m afraid we must disagree on that, Captain Vatta. Your safety, and the safety of others in the convoy, is our primary mission. We believe he compromises that safety. I appreciate your sense of honor where your crew are concerned, but we can’t risk it. We don’t intend to harm him; we’ll just check out his implant—”

Rafe would suicide first. Ky knew that, even though he’d never said it in so many words. He was not about to let anyone get access to his implant, or to that implant-mounted ansible. Yet she knew that telling Johannson that Rafe would suicide might convince him all the more that Rafe was one of the villains. After all, would an honest man commit suicide just to conceal the fact that he was honest?

“Rafe has told me things about his background,” Ky said, trying to think what argument might work. “There is… sensitive material, things that I agree should not be widely known.”

“We aren’t planning to publish it, Captain Vatta. Just find out if he’s part of the conspiracy. If you wish, I can promise to wipe the record, provided he’s innocent.”

What would he consider innocence? A bad boy, a remittance man, a rogue company spy masquerading as a petty criminal—a smuggler, a gambler, whatever else Rafe had used for cover? Hardly.

“Do you think I’m part of the conspiracy, Commander?”

“You?” That had clearly stopped his train of thought. “No, of course not. Young, inexperienced, foolhardy perhaps… but not a conspirator.”

“Fine. Then perhaps you will let me examine Rafe’s implant, rather than your people.” If Rafe would let her.

Johannson looked flustered. “Captain Vatta… I don’t mean to belittle your integrity, but… you’re a young woman, and this Rafe is a good-looking man.”

“Oh, for goodness’ sake!” Ky said, falling back on one of Aunt Gracie’s expressions. “I am not a silly teenager, Commander. Yes, Rafe is handsome. So is my pilot. So is one of my junior engineering techs. I’m not romantically involved with any of them.”

“You have no… attraction to him at all?”

“Of course not,” Ky said. “He’s too old for me, and anyway he’s not my type.”

“Well… I’ll talk to the captain.”

Minutes went by. Lee glanced at her. “Handsome, am I?”

“You know you are,” Ky said. “In a rugged, sturdy kind of way.”

Lee grinned. “And which adventure vid are you quoting from?”

“None that I remember,” Ky said. “Though I watched plenty of them in my school days. But I’m sorry, Lee, you just don’t do anything for me otherwise.”

“Nor expected to,” Lee said. “I’m even older than Rafe.” He sobered. “You know, though, some of us did worry. Stella was certainly smitten.”

“I am not Stella,” Ky said. “And Stella’s over it, she told me.”

“Maybe,” Lee said. “But he is a charmer, when he’s not being an arrogant, sarcastic—”

“He likes to tease,” Ky said. “Get a rise out of people, if he can.”

“You’re defending him?”

“Against what Mackensee suspects, yes. You were there; you know how he was in the crisis. If he’d wanted us to lose to Osman, he could have done us a lot of damage.”

“Captain Vatta—” Johannson was back onscreen. “Are you willing to come aboard the
Gloucester
when we bring your man in for questioning?”

“Absolutely,” Ky said.

“No promises, but the captain’s willing to hear your argument.”

“Thank you,” Ky said. “You’ll send a pod?”

“For you, we send the pinnace,” Johannson said, smiling. It seemed to have no edge to it, but Ky wondered.

Rafe was under guard in sick bay, strapped into a recliner, when Ky, Johannson, and Captain Pensig came in. He looked pale and stubborn.

“Your captain argues for you,” Pensig said. “I’m not persuaded that a young female, even one with her background and experience, isn’t liable to influence from someone like you.” Someone like a mess to be scraped off one’s shoe, said his tone.

“I have no romantic interest in her,” Rafe said, not meeting Ky’s eyes. “She’s too young, too naïve, and entirely too priggish. And—no insult intended—she does not meet my standards of beauty.”

“You were aware of his opinion, Captain?” Pensig asked Ky.

Ky shrugged. “I told you already. Rafe’s not my type; I’m not his type. I respect his ability, which is considerable, and I’m convinced he’s been honest with me and true to our partnership agreement. But romance? No.”

“Our information from the Sabine incident suggests that you are susceptible to young men.”

Ky flushed. “He’s not a
young man
to me, Captain Pensig. And I would respectfully suggest that your report from Sabine was in error. The idiot that caused such trouble there was a new addition to my ship, a refugee of sorts.”

“He was in your cabin—”

Ky realized that this was being played out for Rafe’s benefit, as well, and that only increased her irritation. “He ran into my cabin without my knowledge,” she said. “Against my orders to stay in the rec area with the others. He’d never been in it before.” She let more of her anger show. “Whatever you think, Captain Pensig, I am not a hormonally dominated brainless twit who falls for every pretty face that comes along.”

“I didn’t suppose that,” he said. “But before I trust my ships and my responsibility to your interpretation of this man’s implant data, I want to be sure you will report it without bias.”

“If he is in fact collaborating with the people who killed my parents and my brothers and the rest of my family,” Ky said, “I will be glad to tell you.”

“Very well. Rafe Whoever-you-are, will you consent to having Captain Vatta connect implant to implant to determine if you are the traitor I suspect?”

“Yes,” Rafe said through set teeth. “On condition that she swear in front of you all not to reveal anything she finds in there that is not relevant to that one point.”

Captain Pensig glowered, but finally muttered. “All right with me.”

“I swear,” Ky said. She sat on the matching recliner and lay back.

One of the military medical techs pulled out a cable with identical plugs on both ends. “This won’t hurt,” said one of them, lifting her scalp flap and plugging the cable in. At first she felt nothing but a weird hum on that side of her head. Then the other technician made the connection with Rafe’s implant.

The sensory analogs of connection flooded her: smells, tastes, textures here and there on her body. Then she had control, a sense of some kind of pipeline… and she was in Rafe’s implant, faced with the hierarchal structure in his organization of his implant’s data. She could ask him for keys, but keys he gave her could be contaminated. She searched on keywords, values, and finally reached the area containing ISC-related information. Some subgroups were secured even against direct connection. Ky pushed harder.

At her touch, Rafe opened secured subgroups; Ky raced through them trying not to remember anything she saw that wasn’t relevant. She needed message logs, to prove he hadn’t been in secret contact with Osman and others. There… she reached into that area of the implant…

And time–space exploded around her. In her implant, the self-repairing modules scrambled to rearrange data, make new connections, build what was required.

Ky stiffened. Was it a brainworm? Was Rafe taking her over? Her vision clouded, and suddenly a strong, unpleasant stench seemed to rush up her nose and make her sneeze.

No… desecrations! Don’t do that!
That was Rafe, but not the Rafe in the recliner. This Rafe was in her head, in the implant. Direct contact through the cable?

No. Function transfer. Don’t tell.

Don’t tell what? She managed not to say that aloud, opened her eyes (when had she shut them?), and said the first thing that occurred to her. “He has some fairly disgusting porn tucked away in there.”

“Oh… not unexpected,” said Pensig. “What about ISC?”

Ky took a deep breath. “Well, he is one of their agents. No, he’s not a traitor. I got into his message logs for all forms of communication; he drafted everything in his implant. There’s no record at all of any communication with Osman, or to anyone we didn’t already know about, between my meeting him on Lastway and our meeting with Osman. He’s innocent—of that, anyway.”

“You’re quite sure?”

“Yes. What we think is that Osman and his allies have shipboard ansibles—”

“You think that’s more than a rumor?”

“I’m sure of it,” Ky said. “Now if you can have him returned to my ship, there’s something I’d like to discuss in private…”

“You still don’t trust him, then?”

“This is something that doesn’t concern him. Something between us—Vatta and Mackensee.”

“I can take a walk,” Rafe said, “If someone will release me.”

When he was released, Rafe asked directions to the bathroom, and left Ky alone with Pensig and Johannson.

“Rafe does not know about the letter of marque,” Ky said. “And I don’t intend to tell him anytime soon.”

“Ah,” Pensig said. “The letter of marque… you’re right, we do need to discuss that. This matter of the prize—or return of stolen property. You’ll take it to court, of course.”

“If I do,” Ky said. “it will be seized and sold for payment of debts—defaults on delivery and the like. Vatta needs that ship.”

“You’re planning to seize it without due process?”

“Not exactly,” Ky said. “I’m just planning to keep it out of the hands of the breakers.”

Pensig looked at her a long time before speaking, his lips folded tightly. “I’m trying to be fair,” he said finally. “You are young; you have been through a very difficult time. Nonetheless, I have stretched our regulations to their elastic limit and beyond. If you do not submit that ship and its title to proper adjudication, I will have to consider your acquiring it as an act of privateering, which with possession of a letter of marque clearly makes you a privateer. Someone we cannot have a contract with. I can take the rest of the convoy to the next system with a market, but my contract with you is null and void at this point.”

“You mean we can’t come along?”

“Oh, I suppose… I’m in enough trouble already… but we’re not bound to protect you.”

“Sorry,” Ky said.

“Oh, and you might want to change your ship’s name, so we don’t just blow you away on spec someday.”

Ky smiled and said, “So, you will transport us back to my ship, right?”

“As soon as possible,” Pensig said. “Immediately, in fact.”

Back on
Fair Kaleen,
Ky took Rafe to her cabin, past the appraising eyes of her bridge crew. “We have to talk,” she said. “What
was
that?”

“That, dear Captain, was my cranial ansible.”

“So how did it produce that bad smell in my nose?”

“A theoretical problem with the tech,” Rafe said. “The reason there was only ever one. With an implant-to-implant link, if the implant is advanced enough, the possibility existed that the ansible would replicate itself in the linked implant. We now know that’s possible.”

“You mean I—”

“Now have one, too. Yes.” He sighed. “I should have just blown my head off. I didn’t think the theory would hold in real life.”

“I wish you’d warned me,” Ky said.

“Thank you for not telling them,” Rafe said, not responding to her comment. “And by the way, I don’t really think you’re ugly, immature, and priggish. Nor do I think you have absolutely no feelings for me.”

“Trying it on, Rafe?”

He moved closer. “I think you’re a very accomplished liar, Captain Vatta.”

Her heart beat faster, but she kept her voice cool. “That’s for me to know and you to find out, Rafe.”

“And I intend to,” Rafe said, closing the distance.

Without thinking, Ky hooked a foot behind his leg, blocked his intended embrace, and shoved; he hit the floor hard and looked up at her, eyes wide, shocked out of his usual pose of amused superiority.