Marque and Reprisal (8 page)

“Missed one? I don’t think so. My intelligence reports that their CEO and CFO are both dead, and the entire second level of vice presidents—”

“You missed the old lady. She knows someone got to the government—”

Gammis laughed aloud this time. “Everyone knows someone got to the government. What of it? And what old lady? We have no profiles on old ladies—they can complain all they like.”

“She called me.”

“Oh, for—grow a spine, man. An old lady, some old dowager Vatta, without strength of arms or resources… she can whine all she wants. She is toothless.” Gammis closed the connection, shaking his head at the timidity of grounder politicians.

During the passage to Lastway, the crew seemed to adjust to the new situation and crewmembers, though not without some friction.

“He’s so… so military,” Quincy said to Ky some three days into the passage. “Everything spit and polish, all the time.” Ky didn’t have to ask for a name: Gordon Martin, of course. “I think he’s too hard on that boy,” Quincy continued.
That boy
being Jim Hakusar, who claimed to be twenty-three. “Yesterday he had him down on his hands and knees for hours, scrubbing, just because he had forgotten to shower.”

“It won’t hurt him,” Ky said. “Are you getting soft on Jim?”

“Not soft, no. I agree he needs training. But Martin—”

“He is military, Quincy, just out. It’s been his career. You can’t expect him to change overnight, and frankly I’m more comfortable having him in charge of Jim than if I had to supervise him.” Ky stretched. “Is he bothering you any other way? Martin, I mean?”

Quincy shook her head. “Not really. He doesn’t want us to use his given name—that’s kind of odd, we’re all used to first names—but he’s not ordering the rest of us around or anything.”

“Do you think Jim will ever make a spacer? Is he doing well in his studies?”

“Maybe, and not really. Martin thinks he’s not applying himself; I’m beginning to wonder if he has one of those learning things. I was asking him about his schooling and it didn’t sound like the Belinta primaries had any of the corrective software we use.”

“Do we have any of that kind of thing aboard?” The crew had a library for continuing education.

“I’ll look,” Quincy said. “Sorry—I hadn’t thought to check that out.”

“If we do, see if it’ll help him,” Ky said. “I saw those original test scores—he’s about as far down the scale as you can go. If he’s going to be with us, he needs to be more than a drudge.”

Alene had accepted Martin as the new cargomaster—she’d already told Ky she didn’t really want the job herself—but she, too, found him rigid at times. “He wants a full inspection every day,” she said. “Gary never did that, and he had years of experience.”

“He might do it now, under these circumstances,” Ky said. “Martin’s got the background in security as well as supply; he wants to keep us safe.”

“I’m all for safe,” Alene said. “And I don’t mind the extra work, really. With Jim doing most of the scut work, there’s little enough for a cargo second to do en route. It’s just… his manner, I guess.”

“Is he rude?”

“No. But I can see him stopping himself from ordering me around the way he does Jim.”

“Give him time,” Ky said. “At least he’s trying to stop himself.”

As for the stowaway, Ky had little to do with him. She noticed that his shaggy hair had changed to a short bristle, and his face was always smooth, his slouching posture more upright, his expression less foolish and more alert. He always seemed to be busy; the galley and toilets gleamed, the decks were always swept. Every five days, she asked Martin for a progress report, and learned that “the recruit” was making progress, albeit slowly.

“It’d go faster in a real basic training course,” Martin said. He sat upright, as always, and Ky found herself resisting the urge to sit at attention herself. “Here on the ship, with no other recruits to measure himself against, he can fool himself, think he’s working as hard as he can. You remember that yourself, I expect, from your Academy days.”

“Indeed yes,” Ky said. Competition, as well as the staff, had fueled much of her hard work.

“And I do realize we’re civilians, not military. It’s just that boys like this need the discipline, or they’ll never give up their evasions. They always have excuses; they always have tricks to avoid the work. They’re not bad, exactly, but they’re thick-skinned as well as thickheaded. That learning software your chief engineer found is helping, though.”

“If you can make a decent, competent spacer out of him, that will satisfy me,” Ky said. “Just don’t break anything we need later.”

Martin laughed. “I’ll take care of him. Without breakage, I promise you. Another thing, though.” No laughter now; his expression hardened again. “We need to consider security issues for when we dock somewhere. I’ve been through the procedures manual you’ve got, and it’s totally inadequate. We’re lucky we didn’t have an entire crew of stowaways and a kiloton of weaponry aboard. This thing of trusting local police—”

“I’m sure you already have ideas on that,” Ky said. “Do you have them ready to present?”

“As a matter of fact—” He brought out several large sheets of hardcopy. “I could put this on a cube, if you want, but sometimes it’s easier to see in this format. We can cobble together some of our existing equipment for part of it, but we’re going to need better sensors, and many more of them.”

Ky looked at the diagrams. “You’re talking military-grade coverage, aren’t you?”

He nodded. “From the little we know, things are coming unstuck in several places, and we may come out of FTL in a war zone. Civvie stuff to ward off the casual sneak thief just won’t do. Now, I’ve looked into the cargo manifests—that stuff we can’t deliver to Leonora includes components we could turn into the basic net I’m talking about.”

“We can’t breach cargo seals,” Ky said. “It’s against policy, not to mention law.”

He grimaced. “Policy… is for the last war but one, ma’am. Leonora won’t let us deliver, didn’t you say? So their cargo’s forfeit, isn’t it?”

“Not exactly,” Ky said. “In something like this, it would go before a magistrate to determine whether we could sell the cargo and put the money in escrow for the original consignors, or whether we could sell the cargo and keep the profit. Nothing in the law as I understand it allows us to break the seals and use the cargo for our own purposes.”

“We’re not going to be hauled away to jail if we’re in pieces because someone got to the ship,” Martin said.

“True, but—how much can you do without using the Leonora cargo?”

“Depends on what resources you authorize from engineering stores.”

“Let’s look at this again,” Ky said, leaning over the diagram. “Hm. Motion sensors, infrared—”

“Ma’am, I know you have some military training, but how much was specific to security concerns?”

“Not much,” Ky said. “I couldn’t help noticing how different it was, when we were taken to training venues, but we didn’t have it in class. That was coming later, once we were commissioned, they said.”

“Well, here’s the short and dirty. To keep a ship like this, and a crew this size, reasonably safe in the kind of situation we’re talking about, you need three things. Hardware—the sensors deployed in appropriate locations. Software set up to interpret input correctly. And procedures that everyone follows. I don’t mean any insult by it, but this is not a military crew. Your people aren’t used to discipline, other than doing their jobs, isn’t that right?”

“Right,” Ky said.

“I’ve been paying attention, listening to them talk about how they spend their time when a ship’s in dock. They walk in and out, go visit a station bar or café, go run errands, do some shopping—”

“Yes, that’s normal,” Ky agreed. “And?”

“Well, ma’am, seems to me normal just went out the door and didn’t look back. Somebody’s trying to kill you and destroy your ship. That means we—you—can’t be having any of that casual strolling around. I can make up some of the deficiencies with hardware and software—if I get enough of it—but you also need to set up procedures for how people behave on the next place we dock.”

“Procedures restricting their movements, you mean.”

“Movement, communications, everything. It’s not going to be easy; they’ll think they’re being careful when they’re leaving holes in your security I could walk a whole platoon through.”

“If that’s the hardest job, I think we should start with that part,” Ky said.

“What weapons do you have aboard?”

“Mehar’s two pistol bows and some knives,” Ky said. “And whatever that is you carry.”

“This?” He opened his tunic and pulled out a matte-black handgun, laying it on the table without, Ky noted, ever allowing the muzzle to point toward her. “Eleven millimeter, Standard Arms; manufactured on Slotter Key under license from Bascome. Same as our utility issue, but this one’s custom.” He cocked his head at her. “You don’t have a weapon? I expected you would.”

“I was rushed off Slotter Key in a hurry,” Ky said. “At the time, a weapon was the last thing in my mind. After Sabine, though—”

“I heard you killed two of them,” Martin said. “Mind telling me how you did it without a gun?”

“Crossbow,” Ky said. “Mehar’s pistol bow, in fact. The mutineers had knives, no firearms; the mercs had made sure of that.”

“Ah. Not a bad ship weapon, a bow. Not enough penetrance to damage a hull or even a bulkhead. But I would recommend, ma’am, that you arm yourself as soon as you can.”

“Lastway’s bound to have weapons shops,” Ky said.

“I could pick up something for you,” he offered. “Safer for you.”

“No, thanks. If I’m going to shoot it, I want to choose it,” Ky said. His brows went up, and she went on. “I did learn to shoot, you know. As a girl back home, as well as Academy training. Now, if you’ll draft some procedures for me, we can go over them and start training the crew.”

“Right away, ma’am. And given the lack of arms, I think I’ll add some basics in unarmed fighting techniques. Some of them might get it.” He nodded and left the compartment.

Down transition at Lastway went smoothly enough; Sheryl had dropped them in farther from the planet than usual, with as little relative vee as possible. Scan cleared in a few minutes, and Ky checked the Lastway ansibles, querying for “current sectorwide commercial news.” She didn’t expect much, but a large download came into the bin a half hour later.

COMMUNICATIONS BLOCKAGE STILL THREATENS COMMERCE was one headline. According to that article, ansibles had gone down in a number of systems within a few hours, disrupting not only communications but also trade. Several planets—Leonora was listed—had closed their systems to outside traffic. ISC had begun repairs at both the hub and periphery of its systems simultaneously, and Lastway now had unimpeded communications with two other systems. ISC wasn’t saying what it had found, just that “work is in progress to restore clear, reliable communication as quickly as possible.” Slotter Key was one of the systems listed as “still not open,” as were Belinta and Leonora.

Ky flicked through the list, and the next headline stopped her breath in her chest. VATTA EMPIRE FALLS. She scrolled down.

Ky stared at that a long moment. Corleigh bombed? The house she’d grown up in… that garden, that pool, the cool tiled terraces, the comfortable rooms… gone? Her family… her busy, bustling mother? Her brothers, her cousins, her
father
?

It couldn’t be. They couldn’t be dead. It had to be a mistake. It made no sense anyway. Why would anyone attack Vatta like that? They had no enemies—commercial rivals, but not enemies. Her breath came short. She tried to find out more, but the writer preferred to speculate on the effect of Vatta’s disintegration on the price of shipping and the fortunes of rival firms.

Two others stories mentioned attacks on Vatta Transport, one from Highdare, a system near the sector hub, and one from ISC sources. More ships had been attacked onstation, and two Vatta ships were overdue at their next port. Insurance carriers had dropped Vatta as too risky; shippers were avoiding Vatta because of the lack of insurance. ISC issued a statement disclaiming responsibility for the attacks on Vatta:

Ky stared at that. So someone else had thought this might result from her actions in the Sabine System? And then had discarded that idea? Were they right, or were her fears right? Was it her fault? For a moment, the invented mental images of destruction she hadn’t seen swamped her mind… the house burning, the office exploding, the warehouses and processing plants aflame… family members whose faces she would never see again…

No. That wasn’t going to help her get her cargo sold, her crew and ship safely in and out of Lastway space. They might be alive, some of them at least. She had to think that way; imagining the worst would paralyze her.

She scanned the rest of the download, concentrating on the here and now. She shunted prices to Martin and Alene in Cargo and Quincy in Engineering.

Two hours later, Lastway Traffic Control inquired if they were in transit or on approach.

“Approach,” Ky said.

“Be advised, Vatta ships are under special advisory concern,” Traffic Control said.

“Explain,” Ky said.

“How long have you been in transit?” came the answer.

Ky gave the date in universal.

“Ah. So you aren’t aware of the situation?”

“What situation?” Ky asked. What would they say? What would they do?

“Vatta Transport, Ltd., has been subject of some form of attack, and we have been informed that upon docking, all prior insurance coverage for Vatta hulls is canceled. Vatta personnel are considered to be at risk, and Vatta family members at special risk. Lastway Militia Services disclaims responsibility for their safety, and recommends extreme caution and additional private security—”

“Any Vatta hulls presently docked?” Ky asked.

“No. Yours is the first into our space since all this blew up.” Traffic Control heaved an audible sigh. “Whatever did you people do, and who did you annoy?”