Ky knew that the rescue operation would be neither simple nor quick, but she had not expected to spend another three days nibbling minimal rations. A ship had to match course with theirs; they had to contrive a way to move people and equipment between the ships. And worst of all was the slow, inefficient spelling out of every communication with the beacon. She had the crew taking turns at the improvised transmitter, but they all had painful backs and shoulders by now.
“Send one person with transmitter,” she spelled out, after being told that the chase ship was only nine hours away.
“Not top priority,” she was told. “What’s the condition of your passengers?”
Hungry, weak, cranky. What did they expect?
“Capable of half hour EVA in pressure suit?”
No, of course not. They’d been too hungry for too long. She sent No and wished she had a code for an exclamation point. Finally she had the message they were all longing for. Prepare to receive relief party with medical assistance and rations …
* * *
This whole thing of standing around waiting for boarding parties was getting old. Ky knew she should be grateful for the rescue, but what she felt was not gratitude. She tried to tell herself it was just the natural effect of fatigue and hunger, perfectly ordinary physical causes for irritability, but she knew it went deeper than that. She had set off on what could have been a boring routine trip or a grand adventure, and here she was being rescued like some twit in a story who hadn’t had the sense to stay out of trouble. She snarled mentally at the little voice that said, Well, did you? Conscience was a wonderful thing except at times like this.
When the knock came on the outer hull, she operated the exterior hatch—by now it worked smoothly—and was surprised to see that the pressure indicator dropped only slightly. The two people who came into the chamber wore only light pressure suits, hoods pushed back. One of them was Master Sergeant Pitt. She opened the inner hatch at Pitt’s signal. The mercenaries? Why the mercenaries? She’d expected a civilian rescue team.
“We’ve got a transfer launch tubed to your hatch, Captain Vatta,” Pitt said without preamble. “Should make it easier. Permission to come aboard?”
Ky did not point out that they already were aboard, and nodded. Pitt came into the little antechamber.
“We’ve got rations enough to last you until we reach the orbital station,” Pitt said. “Anyone’s in bad enough shape, we can take them now. How are they doing?”
“The live ones are fine,” Ky said.
“Some of them died … How did that happen?” Pitt’s expression didn’t change but her tone flattened.
“I guess they didn’t tell you,” Ky said. Why not? she wondered. What was ISC up to? “The captain and first officer of Marie, and the captain of the Empress Rose, were involved in piracy—and working with whoever blew the ansible platforms. They tried to mutiny when you folks left the system. That’s why we’ve got the wrong beacon ID and that’s how our insystem drive went off.”
Pitt’s mouth twitched. “And here I thought you’d decided to head for home on your own. Here—let’s get the com tech and transmitter aboard, while you tell me—” She signaled, and a man carrying an equipment case edged past them. “To the bridge with him?”
“Sure,” Ky said.
“So, how did they manage that?” Pitt asked. It took Ky a moment to realize what she was talking about.
“Tapped into the ship’s data lines and subverted the AI. I’d been afraid of something like that, but we didn’t have any way to secure the system against people who knew what they were doing. Too many of them, too few of us, and no real way to isolate them from everything.”
“I suppose this is payback for the trouble the first time,” Pitt said thoughtfully.
“Huh?”
“ISC must’ve told our commander all that, but nobody told me. Command wasn’t overly thrilled with me for mishandling that first boarding; this must be their idea of a joke.”
Ky hadn’t thought of it that way.
“So, what did you do?” Pitt asked.
“When the ship took off suddenly? Well—I had to stop the mutiny. Paison—Marie’s captain—had a member of my crew hostage and was threatening to kill him unless I surrendered the ship to him.”
“ ’Course you wouldn’t do that,” Pitt said. Her certainty surprised Ky.
“I didn’t, but why are you so sure?”
“You’re not the type. Military-trained, even though you hadn’t seen action—you wouldn’t fall for that. How many did you lose?”
“Only the one,” Ky said. Only the one, but someone she’d known off and on, and her father’s chosen baby-sitter. “I—had only the pistol bows, Mehar’s target kit. I’d been practicing, just in case. Paison and his mate and a few others had knives; the mate had Gary … they had a mob behind them. So I shot them.” Suddenly she wanted to tell Pitt all about it, get a veteran’s response to it. She must not. “They killed Gary; I killed the leaders; the rest weren’t that eager.”
“Good job, Captain,” Pitt said. “Now—let’s get the rations aboard, eh?”
“Why is Mackensee doing this?” Ky asked.
“ISC,” Pitt said. “Proof of good faith. They still aren’t convinced we had nothing to do with the ansible attack, even with what you said. Or so they say. I think they’re just being punitive, myself. But nobody argues with ISC.”
That was true. Ky dragged her mind away from that and back to the immediate problems. “What about those rations, then?”
“Right, Captain.” Pitt muttered into her shoulder mike and said, “If you’ll go on to the galley, and have someone ready to direct stowage, I’ll stay here and direct the transfer.”
Up in the crew rec space, her crew waited, all but the two on the bridge. They stared at her as she came in, not saying anything.
“It’s all right,” Ky said. “They’re about to transfer rations over to us, and we can start feeding right away. Li, you’re in charge of stowage of the rations.”
The first person in, however, was not carrying ration packs but a bright orange medical kit. “I need to assess physical condition,” he said. “And advise you on refeeding schedules to minimize problems. Do you have records of how much and what you were feeding?”
“Yes—but why do we need that?”
“Because refeeding after prolonged starvation or below-subsistence feeding can be tricky. I’ll need to check everyone individually for metabolic variations, and then make out a program. If we’re lucky we’ll only have two or three main groups to worry with. Spacers come from so many different places, though, with so many different metabolic quirks …”
“You can’t ask people to starve another day or so while you work this out,” Ky said. She could feel her neck getting hot.
“No, of course not,” he agreed. “But the first refeeding must be small and bland. Small meals and frequent is the best for everyone; the details do matter, especially in the next week, and especially since your environmental system is operating near its limits. The last thing you need is two dozen bouts of diarrhea.” Beyond him, troopers were bringing in dollies of ration packs. Ky could hear Li directing them where to put things in storage.
“That’s certainly true,” she said. “But what can I have the crew fix now, right away? We have forty-odd very hungry passengers.”
“I’ll check your crew first, and then them. Let’s start with you. Planet of origin?”
“Slotter Key—I’m fine, you don’t have to worry about me—”
“If the captain goes down, the ship goes down. Put your finger in this.” He held out a fat cylinder with a hole in one end, studded with buttons. Ky put her finger in. “Ah. You last ate when? And what?”
Ky had to think hard to remember, and told him. He touched a button on the side of the fat cylinder, then two others.
“Here’s yours, and I’m perfectly serious. For best recovery and performance in the meantime, you need to adhere to this schedule. Now, right now, one bread ration and one fruit pack. The rest I’ll upload to your system storage.”
“But—”
“That’s your hunger arguing with me.” He turned to the file of people moving the ration packs. “Bring me one of those.” At once, one of the men brought over a flat brown package. The medic ran his finger along a ridge on top; the package folded back. Inside were smaller packets, each with a picture label. Ky stared.
“We had to rip those things open with kitchen knives, and it was a job,” she said. “Nobody told us—”
“Sorry. Here.” He rummaged in the pack and brought out a sealed packet with a picture of fruit on one side, and another with a picture of a round, flat object colored brown and cream. “Take these and eat them now, right this minute.”
Clearly this nut wasn’t going to let her alone until she did, and she had a lot to do. “All right,” Ky said, and opened the packets. She didn’t feel that hungry, but she bit off a piece of the breadlike thing and squirted some of the semiliquid fruit onto the rest of the bread. It was vaguely sweet and definitely tart. At least it wasn’t Aunt Gracie Lane’s fruitcake. She finished the bread, onto which she’d squeezed the last of the fruit mush.
In the meantime, the medic had grabbed one after another of her crew, insisting that they, too, insert their fingers into his device. He came back to her. “The same thing, in two hours. I’ll still be here then, and I’ll check on you. Now—I need to see the passengers.”
Bemused, but already feeling more alert, Ky led him down to the holds and introduced him. Her heart twisted at the sight of the hollow-eyed, listless men and women who lay on their pallets. The medic checked them one by one, and behind him came troopers carrying ration packs, from which they dispensed as he ordered. For these, more malnourished than her crew, squeeze packs of liquid. “They can have one every hour at first,” he said to Ky. “These are also loaded with micronutrients. And then after the first twenty-four hours, anyone who’s not having gut problems can move up to the phase two rations, which includes solids. I’d expect by the third or fourth day to move them to phase three. It could have been much worse—I’ve seen it much worse. You made a good decision, back when you cut the rations early on.”
Soon the medic was finished with his assessment; Ky headed back to the bridge. There, the new communications gear had been installed, including a viewscreen that took up half the space between her chair and the pilot’s. She finally had ordinary voice contact with the outside world. After days of spelling each message out laboriously, that was a relief, even with a Mackensee trooper standing by the com console to emphasize that the equipment belonged to them.
“Colonel Kalin wants you to call,” the trooper said as Ky came onto the bridge.
“Are the system ansibles up?” Ky asked.
“I don’t know. The Colonel—”
“Wants me to call. I understand.” She eyed him, and decided that trying to claim the overriding authority of a ship’s captain would probably not work. She would find out the most the fastest by cooperating. “Do you know the channel?”
“Yes, Captain. It’s preentered. All the captain needs to do is press that button—” The trooper pointed.
Ky pressed the button, and other telltales turned yellow, then green. In moments a man’s face took shape on the viewscreen. He wore the Mackensee uniform and metal shapes whose significance she did not know on his shoulders and lapels. Gray hair cut close, a broad face, green eyes.
“I’m Colonel Eustace Kalin,” he said. “I’m in command of the local Mackensee forces. You’re Captain Vatta, is that right?”
“Yes, I’m Captain Vatta,” Ky said.
“Captain, we have business to discuss, which would best be discussed face-to-face. I’d like you to come aboard—”
Ky shook her head. “Colonel, this is my ship, and the captain does not leave the ship—not willingly that is—while in transit.”
His brows went up. “You regret our giving you emergency medical care?”
“Not at all, Colonel,” Ky said. “I’m glad you did, and grateful for your surgeons’ skill. But now I am healthy. My place is here, aboard my ship, until we are safely docked somewhere. My second-in-command was killed when some of the … the passengers … attempted to take over the ship.”
“I see,” he said. “In that case … we have been asked by the ISC to tow your ship back to orbit near Sabine Prime. I understand that you have no onboard power?”
“That’s correct,” Ky said. “The individuals who attempted to gain control of the ship caused the drive to malfunction, and we are out of fuel. However, I am not willing to have this ship treated as a derelict and subject to wreckers’ law.”
“What would you do if we didn’t tow you back?” he asked. “You have no FTL drive; you have no working insystem drive … Were you planning to get out and paddle? Do you really think you’re in a position to make conditions?”
“All situations are negotiable,” Ky said, quoting her father. “I could, for instance, hire you myself to tow us back.”
He laughed. “You don’t scare easily, Captain Vatta. All right. With your permission and not under wreckers’ law, making no claim on hull or cargo other than that which we contracted with you to carry, will you permit us to tow you back to Sabine Prime near-orbit where we can carry on this discussion in a less public venue?”
“Thank you,” Ky said. “I accept your offer of transport.”
“What we need to do then is let your engineering staff talk to my engineering staff about where to grapple on.” He shook his head slightly. “I’m beginning to believe what Master Sergeant Pitt and Major Harris said about you, Captain Vatta.”
She had no idea what they’d said—what she remembered best were their comments on young women who harbored rescue fantasies and were too susceptible to young men. But the Colonel almost sounded approving, like the Academy Commandant on a good day.
Three hours later, the Glennys Jones was snugged up to the flank of a Mackensee warship, and Quincy and her Mackensee counterpart were deep in conversation with hull schematics. A score of pressure-suited troopers were going over the outside of the hull under their direction, applying some kind of test equipment to various points. Ky didn’t have a clue what that meant. The medic had been back to the bridge to remind her to eat her bread and fruit mush. He reported that the passengers were all doing well, sucking down the liquid food packets as fast as they were allowed.
Ky finally went to bed when she couldn’t stop yawning, only to wake a few hours later when her stomach lurched sideways and then up. She called the bridge.
“Just an adjustment to the artificial gravity,” Garlan said. “We had a little trouble synching our AG to the warship’s when they tried a microjump with us attached. But that bled off a lot of speed.”
“What about our hull strength?”
“That’s fine, Captain. There’s no strain on the linkage, it was just the delta vee surge of the double endim transition. Since you’re awake, they wanted to know if they could do it again, to save time on the way back.”
“Let me check with the passengers,” Ky said. She struggled up, splashed water on her face, and called down to the holds. The medic answered. “How are they doing?” she asked.
“That gravity surge didn’t help,” he said. “Their guts aren’t that stable yet. What happened?”
“Microjump by your ship. They want to do it again.”
“Tell ’em to wait twelve hours,” he said.
Ky called back to the bridge, and relayed that. Then she sagged against the headboard of her bunk. She was awake, tired, frustrated, and worried.
Twelve hours and fourteen minutes later, the ship seemed to lurch again. This time Ky had been able to warn everyone it was coming, and the medic reported that the passengers had come through without incident. Some of them were now eating bland solids. She had been given permission to try a proper breakfast, which tasted delicious.
They came out of that microjump in close orbit around Sabine Prime. Ky looked at the scan when the screens cleared and felt her stomach clench on the breakfast it had earlier accepted. Prime’s orbital station held several civilian ships, including Vatta Transport, Ltd.’s Katrine Lamont.
“What—” She swallowed an epithet. “What is that doing there?”
“I don’t know,” Lee said. “Last I heard, the Kat was over on the Beulah Road route.”
“I knew they’d have heard,” Ky said. “But I didn’t think they’d be crazy enough to send a ship in.”
“Next scheduled carrier?”
“Not likely. When we were here before I looked that up, and it was four months off the Elaine of Gault. It only feels like four months.”
The com tech waved at her. “Captain, you’ve incoming traffic—”
“Right.” She sat down in her seat and prepared to grill the colonel to find out what he knew. But the face that came up was not Colonel Kalin. The dour, lined face looking back at her belonged to the captain of Katrine Lamont. She knew it all too well. When she’d been an apprentice, shipped out to experience the wonders of space and get her mind off what her mother called “that military nonsense,” Josiah Furman had been the captain of that ship, taking obvious pleasure in putting a Vatta youngling to the nastiest and more boring chores. She’d come back more determined than ever not to be stuck in ordinary civilian transport.
She couldn’t think of anyone—barring her mother—she wanted to see less.
“You’ve made a fine mess of things,” he said. “You weren’t supposed to be anywhere near Sabine … but then you never did follow orders.”
That was unfair, she had followed many orders, many stupid orders, many boring orders. She had followed most orders, including his. She tried not to see the expression on the Mackensee com tech’s face, just as the com tech was very obviously trying not to look at her.
“What did you think you were doing?” he went on, not waiting for an answer, as if he were her actual parent. “First, you make an idiot of yourself at the Academy, and then you can’t even carry out a simple, uncomplicated voyage without getting the entire company in an uproar. Do you have any idea the profits you’re costing us by this?”
It was a pause, if not the pause she wanted. “Trade and profit,” Ky said, fighting to keep her voice even. “Vatta captains are expected to take advantage of opportunities—”
“Experienced captains,” he said. “Captains who know what they’re doing. You—I got pulled off my route, with loss of early-delivery bonuses, just because you couldn’t do what you were told and deliver that useless excuse for a ship to the wrecking yard. Because of you,” he said, and glared at her.
She was tired, hungry, grieving, and this was totally unfair. All those emotions tangled in her throat, and she could say nothing. Had her father told Furman to scold her this way? He hadn’t scolded her about the Academy … Was he angry now?
“My father—,” she finally said.
“Your father told me to come pick up the pieces and be sure you were safe. Pulled me right off my route, told me to skip two destinations. So I have to divert, load up your cargo, load your crew, haul your cargo to Belinta, that armpit of the region, before I can get back to my route, and take you home. My customers will be upset—”
“You can’t do that,” Ky said.
“I don’t want to, but your father said—”
“I mean, you can’t take our cargo to Belinta. We have cargo there, in storage, for Leonora and Lastway.”
“Then it will have to stay there. I am not going to Leonora and Lastway, and neither are you. I’ve seen the reports—Glennys Jones will never make it out of the system. I’ll sell it for scrap here—”
“You will do no such thing,” Ky said. Her jumbled emotions had settled with anger on top, and at that moment she felt she could leap across space and remove his head without a weapon. “With repairs—simple repairs—this ship is quite capable of taking cargo to Belinta and beyond, and that is what I will do. I am in command of this ship, not you.” That last came out weaker than she meant.
“You’re under tow,” Furman said. “You can’t even dock with the station—which, by the way, I understand you left illegally, without permission. Your ID beacon is transmitting the wrong data. They won’t let you dock.” He smirked. On his big, heavy face it looked particularly disgusting.
Ky hadn’t thought of that complication. The moment in which she had elected emergency undock over the possibility of being blown up with the station seemed years in the past. Had it only been a few hands of days?
“It was an emergency situation,” Ky said. “Other ships also broke loose—”
“But not Vatta ships,” he said. “You’ve damaged our reputation, you’ve cost us millions, and now you make excuses—enough of this. Your father sent me out here to take care of things, and that’s what I’m going to do. I’ll sell the ship for scrap, transport your cargo to Belinta and your crew back to a nexus where you can catch a passenger ship home. Get your things and be ready to leave in—”
Ky stabbed at the board and cut the connection before what she thought emerged from her mouth. Her vision hazed.
“That was interesting,” Lee said softly. “He seems to think you’re still a schoolgirl …”
“Apparently,” Ky said. She tried to control her breathing, her face, her voice. It would have been so satisfying to throw something breakable at something immovable.
“Who is that?” asked the Mackensee com tech.
Ky took a deep breath. “He was captain on the ship where I served my junior apprenticeship,” she said. “We did not get along. To be fair, at thirteen I was the typical adolescent brat, and the youngest of my family. I’d been sent off because my parents thought I was spoiled, and they were right. But he … did not help.”
“And they sent him to help you now?” The tech’s face expressed unexpected sympathy.
“Probably he was closest,” Ky said. She hoped that was it. She hoped it wasn’t an unsubtle message from her father that she had screwed up yet again, and worse. “Look,” she said to the tech. “I really need to talk to home—to headquarters—about this. Is there any chance of getting an ansible linkup?”
“Not for another couple of days, they tell me,” the tech said. “What do you think, this guy’s going beyond his orders?”
“I hope so,” Ky said. “And I hope he’s wrong about the station refusing dockage. We have to get in there for resupply and repair.”
“I reckon ISC will have something to say about that,” the tech said.
“ISC—why?”
“When someone messes up their ansibles, they usually hang around and pretty much run things until they find out who did it and punish them. And didn’t you find that out?”
“I found out some,” Ky said cautiously. “Not everything.”
“So ISC ought to be grateful to you,” the tech said. “If they want you to get docking access, you will, whatever poison puss says.”
“I hope so,” Ky said. She sighed. “I wish—” But she couldn’t say that aloud, not in front of her crew or these military types. She wished she was military, where everything was cut-and-dried, open and obvious, simple. Well, except for people like Mandy Rocher. Her mind insisted on dragging up every person she’d found to have hidden motives. “I need to check on something,” she said instead. “If he calls back, don’t accept it.”
“What should I tell him?”
“Tell him I’m not discussing company business over an open line,” Ky said, wishing she’d thought to say that earlier. She left the bridge and went to talk to the passengers. They were feeling well enough to complain about the delay in returning them to their ships.
“I can’t do anything about that,” Ky said. “You know I have no shuttles, and we have no independent power. At least we have adequate food now.”
“That’s all very well, but what about my ship?” one of the captains said. “Is it still in the system? Are my crew all right?”
“I’ll find out,” Ky said, and dashed back to the bridge. With the exception of Empress Rose, all the ships were still in the Sabine system, and crews reported nothing but minor injuries or illnesses. She reported that to her passengers and explained that no, she could not provide them all a secure comlink to their ships, since ISC now controlled all communications and hadn’t put a high priority on their needs.
She went through the protocols to request a link to Sabine Station, and to her surprise was put through to the acting stationmaster. This individual wore the gray ISC uniform with the silver lightning flash and introduced himself.
“Ah, Captain Vatta. I understand that you undocked against orders.”
“Yes,” Ky said. “Emergency situation.”
“Quite. Sabine system imposes a fine of five thousand credits for improper undock, and you have an outstanding ship balance due of 2345 credits for docking services.” He looked down at something on his desk, then back up. “A counterclaim for failure to recognize a legitimate emergency and facilitate ship’s withdrawal from danger will be entertained by the interim authority.”
“The interim authority?” Ky was still wondering where she could scrape up another 7345 credits.
He grinned at her. “That’s us, Captain Vatta. Should you make such a counterclaim, including, for instance, Sabine Station’s failure to complete your refueling and to allow you timely access to repair and replacement parts, it is likely that your debt would be reduced to zero and docking permission could be given in accordance with Sabine law.” His grin widened. “We prefer to make use of local law whenever possible.”
Ky blinked. “I suppose … I should make a counterclaim, then.”
“I would recommend it, yes. Your ship suffered damage, did it not, as a result of this station’s negligence and lack of cooperation?”
“Er … yes.”
“ISC has never favored frivolous suits, so unreasonable requests for damages might prejudice your case, but since your ship was preemptively interned for use as a hostage carrier, in large part because you had no functioning deepspace drive and an incomplete fuel load on insystem, I suggest a computation of what it would take to restore your functionality.”
Ky just managed not to gape. Surely they were aware that the ship was old and had more wrong with it than one missing drive component.
“I can’t of course name a figure—that would be unfair of me, in my capacity as interim stationmaster. I must be impartial—”
If this was impartial, she didn’t want to see partial—at least not unless it was on her side.
“But any material damages could be named. Should they not be upheld by a later court, at least you would have some recompense, I’m certain.”
Getting docking privileges alone would be worth it, Ky thought. She collected her scattered thoughts. “With permission, Stationmaster, I’ll be back with you shortly. I want to prepare an accurate statement.”
“Very good, Captain Vatta,” he said. The flicker of his eyelid was not quite a wink. “With respect, I suggest you not wait overlong. Soon our tugs and shuttles will be busy here. Oh, and the fee for towing you into a docking slot will be eight hundred fifty, as usual.”
“Back in one,” Ky said. She looked around at her bridge crew. “Did the rest of you hear what I heard? Was he really telling us to make out an expense account and blame Sabine Station for the past couple of weeks?”
“Sounds like it to me,” Quincy said. “And he’s right. The station should have facilitated our repairs, or at least sold us the sealed unit. There was no rational reason to think we’d take it to the Secundus rebels or the mercs. And they should have given ships permission for emergency undock, all of ’em. Much more dangerous for the station if ships were there if the station was attacked.”
“I’m tempted to just ask for what our back charges are,” Ky said. “That way we can’t be excessive.”
“No!” Quincy said. “Ky—Captain—that’s not the way to think. Let me work on it. We had a lot of damage. There’s two of our crew dead—one of them was an idiot, true, but the other wasn’t. We had all that work to do in the cargo holds, modifying them for emergency quarters—that used up a lot of our reserve parts stock. And some of that will have to be torn out to make room for cargo. Then there’s our cargo, floating around out there—”
“Unless Furman grabbed it already,” Ky said bitterly.
“Wherever it is, it’s not in our holds,” Quincy said. “And we’ve got to retrieve it, unload the other stuff, and reload the holds. That’s several days—docking fees for those days shouldn’t be due from us, because it’s not our fault. Nor should replacement parts, nor the labor cost to reconfigure the holds. The sealed unit was already damaged when we came in; I wouldn’t gig ’em for that. But the beacon damage, and the control systems—that’s going to take a complete purge to get it fixed.”
The amount Quincy came up with after a few minutes seemed huge to Ky, but she transmitted it to the Sabine stationmaster’s office anyway.