No one was sitting at the comdesk board when she got there; with the captain onstation and on the way to the ship, that made sense. They were all busy trying to get the ship loaded.
Ky sat down and inserted her command wand, then entered the string of codes for intersystem ansible access. Whatever had a hair up the rear of the Captains’ Guild wouldn’t affect access from the ship; by law and treaty, all ships were guaranteed such access. While she waited for the connection, she flicked on the nearspace advisory channel.
“—an emergency like this,” she heard. “Unprecedented, we simply have no idea what will happen now …”
That did not sound good. Ky queried her implant, realizing that it had been more silent than usual since she’d entered the diplomatic shuttle. She’d assumed the shuttle had security masks in place, but that shouldn’t have been a problem on the orbital station. The implant fizzed the way it did when it needed an adjustment, then produced a warning symbol, followed by what was obviously an official announcement.
Due to conditions beyond our control, public access to channels is restricted until further notice. We apologize for any inconvenience. Stay tuned for more information as it becomes available. Thank you … Due to conditions beyond our control …
Ky damped the implant and looked at the display on the comdesk. The intersystem access telltale still glowed red, and as she watched it began to blink. After a long moment, it went dark.
“No one ever thought anything like this could happen,” someone on the nearspace advisory channel was saying. “Attack on intersystem ansibles is just … just unthinkable.”
Not really. Ky remembered one of the lectures in Strategic Analysis, in which a discussion of the consequences of successful interdiction of intersystem communication had delved into the reasons someone might do it and the consequences thereof, economic, political, and military. It had happened—far away, and decades past, and those responsible were no longer alive—but it had happened. So some people had thought of it, and presumably also whoever had—her mind came back from that moment of shocklike drift. No ansible meant no message to Vatta Transport, Ltd., and thus no funds, and thus … no repairs for getting her ship safely out of this system before whoever had taken out the ansible decided to attack the orbital station.
A variety of epithets ran through her mind as she felt the goose bumps rise on her skin. This was not a training simulation, a classroom exercise. She was sitting on an unspaceworthy ship at a space station orbiting a world at war, and one side or the other had just demonstrated the ability to mount an attack in space, at the same time neatly cutting off this system from real-time communication with the rest of the universe.
She called up the station display of ship status. The good news was that the display still worked, and purported to be up-to-date. The bad news … ships were already signing up for departure queues, and one—Susie G—had just executed an unapproved emergency disconnect. She didn’t bother to put her name in the queue; Glennys Jones wasn’t going anywhere without her drive repair. She tried for a video access, and to her surprise was able to see a typical newcaster talking away in front of an image of explosion. She turned up the sound on that.
“—No one is believed to have survived the explosion of either ansible platform; the death toll is estimated to be at least seven hundred fifty and could be several times that. InterStellar Communications local office has no comment at this time—” ISC, the monopoly which controlled both communications and financial ansibles across hundreds of systems, would make someone wish they hadn’t done it … They had fought some succesful limited wars to keep local governments from taking over ansible linkages. That response would come far too late to help her, Ky knew. “—Sabine system is now cut off from regular communication with the rest of the universe,” the announcer said. “No word yet that anyone has claimed responsibility, but Sabine Prime’s Solar Royal has accused Secundus rebels.”
At least they had already loaded the supplies for the trip back to Belinta. Ky suspected that prices were going to skyrocket in the next few hours.
She heard someone running along the passage to the bridge; Gary Tobai and Riel Amat burst in. “Ky—Captain—you’re here! You know what’s happened?”
“Some idiot blew the ansibles, yes,” Ky said. “And no, our transfer didn’t come through. It must’ve happened while I was in transit. We’re stuck here on a vulnerable station with a malfunctioning drive. At least we have food, right?”
“Right, Captain. Supplies all loaded. But the drives—”
“I know. And I can’t call home—I could have, if the stupid Captains’ Guild hadn’t refused my credit rating, but they did, and eight hours makes a difference.” Eight hours ago, when the ansible was still working, when those people were still alive … Ky pushed that thought away. “So—what do we have, if anything?”
“Insystem’s still fine, so far as I know. But the deepspace is gone—not just the sealed part, but there’s cavitation damage in the linkage—”
“I know,” Ky said.
“And if we try to use it, there’s no telling where we might end up.”
“I understand,” Ky said. “But if the insystem drive is okay, we could get away from this station, which I do not doubt is going to be attacked …”
Amat frowned. “It’s a long way to anywhere else … where would we go?”
“I don’t know. Yet. How are we doing on cargo loading, Gary?”
“It’s coming. Sixty-five percent at the moment. We’d left open space for drives access for repairs—if we block that up—”
Then a repair crew, if she could find one, and if they would extend credit, wouldn’t be able to get at the drives. But the ship without drives was nothing but a target. But the ship without cargo was useless …
Too many variables, too many conflicting priorities.
“How about the four I sent up?” Ky said. “Are they any use?”
“Oh, yes. Good workers, all of them. If we just had the drive in order—”
“Understood.” Ky tried to make her brain work faster. It had to work faster; she had to find a solution to this. And the logical thing to do was try to find a repair yard. “I’m going to see what I can do about the drive problem. I’ll switch our contract to Vatta Limited, and see if that shakes ’em loose, though with war breaking out and the ansibles gone, who knows? See if that drives tech thinks he can install parts if I can just get the parts. We could stand off somewhere on insystem drive, and install the stuff ourselves, maybe.” And if he left her alone for a few minutes, she might be able to think clearly.
She called up the station directory and found the orbital offices of six firms with orbital yards. Helmsward Yard, Ltd., Sabine Systems, and Artco Yards all had a Superior rating, but Helmsward had already turned her down for financing. She doubted they would reconsider her application if she now claimed to be operating under Vatta’s umbrella. In fact, in light of the ansible attack, they might think she was trying to misrepresent herself if she changed her story. When she checked the status of the others, Artco had relisted itself Unavailable. She called Sabine Systems, and a nervous-sounding voice on the other end said their chief engineer would have to get back to her.
That left Colley & Co. and Bartlin Brothers, rated Acceptable in the guide, and RealValue Repairs, unrated. She tried Bartlin Brothers; no one answered. Colley & Co.’s com was answered by a man who was both out of breath and annoyed. “Are you kidding?” he said, when she started to say her ship needed repairs, and then he hung up.
Gravity, her father had said, ensures that stuff rolls downhill until it hits bottom, and some psychic gravity was definitely at work here. RealValue Repairs sounded like the kind of place only the desperate approached. The kind of place where they removed parts from the previous repair job, cleaned and polished them, put them in fresh containers, and sold them as new. Where they had more experience in faking and cheating than actually repairing.
But what choice did she have?
Quincy’s call from the drives bay gave her an excuse not to call them. “If you can get us a sealed unit and about ten meters of good-quality liner, we might get this done ourselves,” she said. “It’ll take us longer than a proper yard, but it’s doable.”
The first good news. Things got bad until they started getting better …
“I’ll see what I can do,” Ky said. Maybe RealValue would sell the parts. Quincy should be able to tell if the sealed unit was really sealed, and there had to be some kind of function test she could apply, short of going into FTL flight … and liner, that was a visual test. She knew how to do that herself. And maybe there were other suppliers … She queried her implant.
The comboard flashed red and a message came up on the screen: ALL SHIP TO STATION COMMUNICATIONS SUSPENDED EXCEPT TRAFFIC CONTROL TO SPACECRAFT. Great. Just great. Now she would have to leave the ship to get any more supplies.
No. She would send someone. She was the captain; she was responsible for them all. She would not leave the ship now, of all times. She called Quincy again.
“I need you to go onstation and find us that sealed unit,” she said. “They’ve cut off ship to station communication, except for official contacts. I can’t even get a list of suppliers, but I do have one contact name from before: RealValue Repairs. I don’t want to leave the ship myself—”
“Quite right,” Quincy said. “And I shouldn’t either. I’ll send one of the junior engineering crew. You do know RealValue has a bad rep.”
“I suspected it; they’re unlisted. But all the others have shut up business—I can’t get through. We can sit here with nothing, or try to get permission to leave the station and go crawling off on insystem—which means we’d have to crawl back in a few weeks—or we find someone to sell us the sealed unit and some liner material. And RealValue is the only name I have.”
“I have a couple others, not repair places but suppliers,” Quincy said. “I’ll send Beeah. You’ll need to give him the financing options.”
The financing options, which consisted primarily of begging someone to trust that Ky was really Vatta Transport, Ltd.
“Of course,” Ky said. “Send him up and I’ll give him the works.” Since the station/ship commercial channels weren’t working, Ky printed out a hardcopy of her master’s license, her ID, and a statement on the Vatta Transport, Ltd., letterhead which authorized Beeah Chok, engineering second, to make binding legal contracts contingent on her signature.
Beeah showed up on the bridge in a crisp-jacketed Vatta Transport uniform completly unlike his usual working coverall. “Quincy said I had to look official, Captain,” he said. “With trouble on the docks, I don’t want to get taken in for something. Quincy gave me the shopping list—what else do I need?”
“This,” Ky said. “Vatta Transport, Ltd., authorization to purchase, my authorization … and don’t worry about getting the best price. Pick up whatever news you can, and make it snappy. Someone’s going to close down this station soon, one way or the other …”
“Attack a station?” Beeah said, his eyebrows going up.
“Someone attacked ansibles,” Ky said. “I expect an attack here; I would have broken us loose already if we had a working FTL drive.”
“Right,” Beeah said.
“Check the dockside intercom on your way off our patch,” Ky said. “If anything happens, I want to be sure we have that much linkage.”
“Will do,” Beeah said.
She watched him on the monitors as he went; at dockside, he picked up the microphone and spoke.
“You hear me, Captain?”
“Loud and clear, Beeah. What can you see from there?”
“Not much. A lot of empty dockside. Looks like they may’ve closed the big hatches between here and Y-Zone, with just the personnel locks between. That may be why the ship-to-station ordinary linkages are down. That was all optics, probably. See you later, Captain.”
Ky watched him go, chewing her lip. It wasn’t safe. Nothing was safe, right now. ISC would have noticed immediately when their ansibles went down; they would respond, but who knew how long that would take? She and the Glennys Jones and all her crew could disappear into this war, and nobody would ever know what had happened. Her family would wonder …
But they would know, she realized in the next instant. Vatta Transport, Ltd., used the same ISC ansibles as anyone else; Vatta ships had a regular schedule through Sabine. The Sabine ansible would be monitored by someone at Vatta’s home offices, and they might even know already she was here, if that monitoring included a list of ships currently at Sabine’s orbital station.
She hoped it didn’t. She hoped very much her father didn’t know that she was a long way from where she was supposed to be, in a developing war zone, and out of ansible contact.
The board meeting opened on time, for a wonder. The media ruckus downstairs had almost delayed the arrival of Ky’s father, but he had time for a half cup of coffee before strolling, elaborately casual, down to the boardroom with his brother.
“Not yet,” Gerard Vatta, Ky’s father, said. “We shouldn’t hear anything now until the first stop.” He raked his hand through his thinning hair. He didn’t need to say more; Stavros knew the plan.
“It’s a shame,” Stavros said. “She was doing so well.”
“Yes. And thanks again, by the way, for being available for a pickup.”
“Of course.”
“And don’t think I don’t know you’re biting your tongue not to mention Stella.”
“Much as I love Stella, I’m not having to bite my tongue, Gerry. She and Ky are nothing alike. Stella is eighty-seven percent feeling. We should’ve tweaked that in the embryo, but you know how it is …”
“I do indeed. Thanks anyway, and for handling the press so far.” Gerard clapped his brother on the shoulder, and let him enter the boardroom first. Almost everyone there was family but, even in the family, etiquette demanded that the CEO enter before the CFO.
“How much is all this going to cost us?” one of the nonfamily asked. Stavros paused, on his way to his chair, and glanced at the man, and then at Gerard.
“No reason it should cost us anything,” Gerard said. “People aren’t going to give their cargo shipments to someone else because my daughter blundered with another military cadet.”
“But our military support contracts?”
“I have been assured that they are not in jeopardy. Ky wasn’t pilfering from cargo locks, after all; she just fell for a pitiful story from a handsome lad, as girls have done for thousands of years. The military understand that. Now if we tried to send classified cargo by a ship she commanded right now, they might raise their brows. But we aren’t, so there’s no problem.”
“All that publicity—”
“Is focused on a possible love affair … It will die down.”
“But if your daughter talks to the press—”
Gerard cocked his head at the man. “Jas, do you really think we haven’t thought of all that in the past five days? I assure you, Kylara is not about to talk to any press, and they are unlikely to locate her.” It was bad luck to claim an absolute, but by now she should be well out of reach of any Slotter Key news agency. Even within the company, only a few knew which Vatta was aboard the Glennys Jones.
Eventually, the news agencies figured that out, too, and the press of eager reporters at the Vatta offices dwindled, finally disappearing after juicier game. Gerard no longer saw even mid-news “updates” on the mess. He congratulated himself—by the time Ky got back, the whole thing would have died down completely.
When the arrival report came from Belinta, he breathed a sigh of relief. Just as planned, nothing had happened. That wouldn’t last, if he knew his daughter, but she had weathered the first voyage. Gary Tobai’s report suggested she had done all the predictable things, and made the right adjustments. After all, what did Vatta really need with a military connection in the family? They were all basically traders, not warriors. Ky was cut out to be a trader captain, and now she was on the right path.
A few days later, the next message from Gary brought a grin to his face, and he called Stavros’ office.
“Well, she took the bait,” Stavros said.
“Vatta to the core,” Gerard said. “I take it you got the tightbeam from Quincy or Gary.”
“Both. You can practically hear their gleeful cackling.”
“What kind of scheme has she cooked up? They didn’t send me the details.”
“I’ll send it to you, but it’s classic trader. A bit risky financially—she’s agreed to go on spec, buy the cargo, and trust the buyer to pay up on delivery. On the other hand, the customer’s a government bureau, the parameters of acceptable cargo are clearly defined, and the Slotter Key consul told her they were good for it. The profit from this will cover some of the repairs … If she scraps that ship, I’ll be very surprised.”
“I hope we gave her a big enough letter of credit,” Gerard said.
“It never hurts to have to scrimp a bit,” Stavros said. “Remember our first venture?”
“Of course …” It had been wilder than this, and they’d nearly lost the ship, playing tag with a planetary militia they hadn’t known about, but it had, in the end, paid for the repairs on Matilda C.
“She’ll do fine. The ship’s sound enough for that much, anyway. If something major doesn’t go wrong—and if it does, I’m sure she’ll have the sense to get in contact.”
“I hope so.”
“And if she doesn’t, the others will.”
“I wonder when she’ll break out the fruitcake,” Gerard said. Theirs hadn’t been fruitcake by Auntie Grace, but sausage by Uncle Evers. Hard as a rock—they’d actually bashed one would-be sneak thief with it—and deemed inedible by all but the starving.
“I’d like a picture when she does,” Stavros said. “She really hates that stuff.”
“It is vile,” Gerard said. He shook his head. “The things we do to our younglings.”
Time passed. Gerard tried not to fret. Ky would be making a sensible, reasonable passage to Sabine, which was the closest source of ag equipment. Or she had chosen another place, for a good reason. She would not report in when she arrived, because she would not want to tell headquarters she was playing a lone game. He remembered what that felt like—going out of bounds for the first time, being alone—with a ship full of crew—where no one in the family knew the location. Heady excitement, stomach-churning responsibility. And he’d had Stavros along.
She had good crew along. He knew that. They would take care of her, and she was not an idiot anyway. She might make a profit or not, but she would be fine. He would not, absolutely not, spy on her via the Sabine ansible. He could of course ask someone to get the list of ships in system, but that was … not fair. You gave the young ones rope to see how far they could swing … You did not hover, or it wasn’t a real test. They needed to know later that they really had been out there on their own.
“Gerry, have you seen this?” That was Stavros, leaning on the doorframe, waving a printout of something.
“Probably not,” Gerard said. “Though I’m not sure what it is …”
“News bulletin from Sabine system,” Stavros said.
Gerard’s heart stopped; his vision blurred. “Ky—”
“Gerry! No! I’m sorry—there’s nothing—but there’s political trouble. I’m wondering if we should break cover and order her out.”
Vision came back, red-hazed, and Gerard drew a shuddering breath. “She’s … not …?”
“No. But Prime and Secundus are moving toward war this time, apparently. It’s a slice off the WarWatch page, and they’re pretty solid …”
He knew that. But now he had to know more.
“Who’s on watch?” he asked.
“I already checked. The ship’s there, at the station. Captain Vatta is planetside, has been several days. She’ll be at the Captains’ Guild, no doubt. I haven’t made a call yet, but I was wondering …”
“Let’s see.” Gerard could focus his eyes now, and he scanned the news item quickly. Probability high, with an analysis of forces on both sides sufficient to worry about. “Secundus is crazy,” he said. “If this is all they’ve got.”
“They’ve got those shipkillers,” Stavros pointed out. “And speculation that at least four of them could take out an orbital station.”
“Um. What’s the projected timeline … Yes, I think we should get her out of there. How can we … oh, I know. Ky knows we have an ansible watch, and a news item like this would be reason to check and see if any Vatta ships are in the area. If we send it to the Captains’ Guild for ‘Any Vatta Transport, Ltd., captain’ she won’t know we know where she is.”
“Good. I’ll do it, general alert. We need to put out the word to our regular route captains as well.” Stavros got the blank look common to those accessing multiple implant links at once, and then smiled. “Done. We should have acknowledgment in a few hours. It’ll be interesting to see what she does.”
Less than an hour later, Gerard’s implant shrilled at him the news that the Sabine system ansibles were out, presumed destroyed. He stared out his office window at the evening, the city lights beginning to twinkle through the dusk. Without thinking about it, he found himself staring far across the city to the Academy, visible only as a gap in the regular lines of light. If that miserable lying little fox of a Miznarii had caused his daughter to end up dead in a war … He shook himself. That was no way to think, not now.
“Gerry.” Stavros had come to his door. “Are you all right?”
Gerard tried to laugh; it came out a croak. “I’m … not,” he said. “If Ky—”
“She’s not Stella,” Stavros said, coming into the office. “Stella wouldn’t make it. Ky—I’d bet on Ky. She’s smart, she’s got some military training, enough to recognize the signs—”
“What if they blew the station at the same time as the ansibles?” Gerard said.
“She was on the planet, she’ll be fine,” Stavros said.
“No …” Gerard worked through it as he spoke. “If she sees trouble coming, she’ll go back to her ship. She’ll try to get it away. But there wasn’t time—we had that report the ship was docked only a few hours ago.” He could not help but picture the station exploding, the ships docked there flung wide, losing atmosphere through the docking tubes, other explosions, Ky’s body flung into space, her last agonized breath a cry for help that never came.
“And maybe she’s fine,” Stavros said. “We can’t know until ISC gets ansibles up and running, so the best we can do is stay sane until she shows up wondering why we worried. Say she did go back to the ship. She knows trouble’s coming; she buttons the ship up; she asks permission to undock; she breaks away if she has to. She’s smart, Gerry. She’ll survive.”
She’s not your daughter, Gerard wanted to say, but this was his brother, who had already been remarkably forbearing. And it was all the comfort he had, or was going to get, until the ansibles were back up.
“We’d better not tell the others,” Gerard said.
“You’re right about that,” Stavros said. He sighed. “It was easier in the olden times, when our ancestors believed there were magical beings in the sky who could intervene. Our modern religions are fine for destressing from the everyday, but it would be nice to have a real lightning-throwing god to pray to about now.”
Gerard laughed, and his laugh was almost normal.
After Beeah left, Ky tried to think what to do next. What if someone attacked the station while they were docked—would the station have any warning? Would they share such warnings with the ships? Her mind worked through possibilities with excruciating slowness, though she noticed that the chronometer was clicking over slowly, too. Station attacked, station blown, decompression—
Of course. Right now the ship shared atmosphere with the station, part of their allotment of station resources as covered by the daily dock charges. Station air, station water. But that meant if the station lost atmosphere, so would they.
So the first thing was to button up. It would take longer for Beeah to get back aboard, and cargo to load, but she could worry about that later.
She called down to drives, where Quincy was presumably still working with her subordinates to plan the quick replacement of the sealed unit.
“Yes, Captain?” Quincy didn’t sound scared. Ky hoped she herself didn’t.
“Just in case, I want to button the ship up. Beeah’s off ship, but the dockside intercom works; we checked it.”
“Good thinking, Captain,” Quincy said. “I should have thought of that. I’ll be right up to give you a hand.”
In the next few minutes, system by system, they shut off all the connections to the stations but the communication lines and the docking grapples. Air, water, cargo bay hatches … all sealed. Ky watched the shipboard systems come online, one by one, looking for signs of anything wrong. All the telltales stayed green as they should. Their reserve water tanks were full, their growth chambers properly stocked and balanced.
Suddenly the comdesk lit: incoming call from the stationmaster, with visual. A stocky man in uniform glared from the screen. “Glennys Jones: report status to Stationmaster.”
“Captain Vatta, Glennys Jones, status docked.”
“Our sensors indicate you’ve closed hatches and withdrawn from station circulation: explain.”
“Concern for safety,” Ky said. “If there’s an attack on this station—”
“You have data suggesting an attack on this station?”
“The ansibles were attacked,” Ky said. “Someone has the capacity and willingness to attack space targets. This is a big one. If the station loses air, I don’t want to lose mine.”
“Oh. Well, we understand you have a crewman on the station, is that correct?”
“Yes, it is. Beeah Chok, engineering second; he’s on an errand for me.”
“What kind of errand?”
“We need some equipment,” Ky said. “I sent him to purchase it.”
“He should return to your ship. Station Security will inform him.” The signal clicked off. Ky stared at the blank, silent screen.
“This isn’t good,” Amat said, coming onto the bridge and settling in the pilot’s seat.
“I know that,” Ky said. She glanced at him; his face was set. “You were in the space force, Riel—any advice?”
“Not a lot of options here, Captain. Glad you came back up when you did.”
“Maybe Beeah will have good news for us,” Ky said. She didn’t believe it, but she could hope.