Command Decision (18 page)

Ky intended to call Stella when she got back to the ship, but the temporal chart revealed that local time on Cascadia Station was 0200; that gave her an excuse to delay another few hours until first-shift, the usual business day. In the meantime, she noted that Cascadia’s searchable directory gave both home and office numbers for Stella Vatta; Vatta Transport, Ltd. was listed as well. To save money, she chose the audio-only option.

“Vatta Transport, how may I help you?” said a pleasant voice.

“Ansible call for Stella Vatta from Kylara Vatta,” Ky said.

“Just a moment…” A soft tone replaced the receptionist’s voice, and then Stella’s voice came through.

“Ky! Where are you? Are you all right? What happened? Why aren’t you full-band?” Stella sounded as much annoyed as worried.

“I’m in Adelaide Group,” Ky said. “It’s a long story, but I’m fine, just somewhat short of funds. How are you? And Toby?”

“Things are going well,” Stella said, more calmly. “I’ve established a new headquarters office; we have five ships, now, counting
Gary Tobai,
which I have out on contract doing insystem runs here. The
Kat
was able to make contact with our ship on the Garth-Lindheimer run; they’ve accepted me as CEO, for now, and they’ll be contacting all the Vatta ships they cross paths with. It looks like the most damage to Vatta was within five jumps of Slotter Key.”

“That’s good, I guess,” Ky said. “Of course, most of us
were
within five jumps of Slotter Key.”

“We’re not making a profit yet,” Stella said. “Not from shipping, at least. But it’s not a gaping wound in the accounts, either. So what are you doing way over in the Adelaide Group? What happened with those people you were going to…see?” The pause was significant.

“It’s a long story, not all good, but I’m alive and the ship is whole. I’m traveling now with two other warships,
Sharra’s Gift
from Slotter Key and
Bassoon
from Bissonet; we escorted a shipload of refugees from Polson here.”

“Refugees? From what?”

“Attack on Polson,” Ky said. “Oh, and don’t let any of our ships go to Gretna.”

A pause while Stella accessed her implant. “Why not? Mildly shady, is what I have in my file. Check all bills, inspect all replacement parts.”

“They’ve gone from mildly shady to inshore piracy and trafficking in human lives,” Ky said. “I bought eighteen indentured workers—”

“You
bought
them? Ky, how could you! That’s illegal—and horrible!”

“Not as horrible as what they faced. Bought them and freed them, of course. But that’s part of my cash-flow problem. I’m guessing Gretna’s economy tanked when the ansibles went out and trade dropped. Whatever the reason, they’ve gone rogue: they take your money, then try to take your ship and sell you for slaves.”

“You’re serious…”

“Very. Anyway, they wouldn’t even let the refugees have food and air. I forced the Gretnans to provide the necessities, but I couldn’t leave the refugees there. So we escorted them here; they said Polson and Adelaide had been trading partners before. Adelaide Group’s not on our routes now, but they seem to be good people, so if someone has a hole in the schedule—”

“What do they have to trade?”

“Mostly low-grav manufacturies. Pharma and things like that. Oh, and humod adaptive devices; most of them are serious humods, engineered for low-grav and rapid-change environments; they need assistive devices to function well in what we call normal.”

“I’ll look into it,” Stella said. “Can you zip me their directory?”

“Right away,” Ky said. She called it up and sent the compressed version on sub-audio. “How’s Toby?” she asked.

“Toby’s fine. In fact, Toby’s a raving genius. You won’t believe what he’s come up with.”

“He’s trained Rascal to do ansible repairs?”

Stella snorted. “Not quite. Better. He’s making more of that very interesting cargo we found—”

“The shipboard—”

“Yes,” Stella cut in. Ky could hear the irritation in her voice. But it wasn’t a secret; the pirates at least knew about shipboard ansibles. Before Ky could say more, Stella went on. “He’s already made one, and he’s made some…improvements. Apparently all that time he spent with Rafe, he was soaking up everything Rafe told him. That, and native ability. We can certainly market these, if ISC doesn’t stop us.”

“Or use them as our competitive edge,” Ky said. She hoped Stella wouldn’t give it all away before they made a profit off it, if Toby really had pulled it off.

“Or use them as our competitive edge, yes,” Stella said. “Rascal, by the way, has earned his keep for the rest of his life…Toby’s education is taken care of already, and Rascal’s picture’s all over the place. Apparently he’s superfertile with the local female dogs, and they’ve confirmed pregnancy in one hundred percent of the inseminations.”

Ky laughed. “I realize this helps our bottom line, but there’s something just a little ridiculous about being saved from financial ruin by a scruffy little dog we pulled out of a trash bin.”

“Well, you saved the scruffy little dog,” Stella said. “Remember all those fairy tales in our children’s books, when the hero was the one who helped the little animal stuck in a trap or whatever?”

Ky started to say that real life wasn’t a fairy tale, but refrained. Maybe it was, after all.

“So,” Stella went on. “Tell me what’s going on with you, besides rescuing some refugees.”

“It’s been…interesting,” Ky said. “We now have a fleet. Well, a small fleet. Multisystem, since
Vanguard
’s now Cascadian registry; there’s also one Slotter Key privateer, and one Bissonet former space militia. What he’s told me is that while Bissonet always claimed they didn’t have privateers, they actually did. They called them militia, though, and their trading capacity was limited.”

“Yes, but what happened? You and that Argelos fellow left Cascadia together—”

“Right. Well, you remember that Bissonet was taken—”

“I know that—”

“Argelos had located three Bissonet ships together. They had heard about my idea of combining forces, and they wanted to try it. Originally we had three of them, Argelos and me, a ship from Ciudad, and one from Urgayin, I think it was. We went to an empty system to do some training, which made sense—”

“You were commanding, right?”

“No.” Ky sighed. This was going to be difficult. “There were three
Bissonet
ships, remember? Their senior officer insisted that command belonged with the greatest contribution—in other words, she wanted it. And I agreed, because I cared more about the idea than about the power.”

“Mistake, was it?”

“Yes. She may’ve been good before—one of the other ships claimed she was—but she just didn’t know how to command this kind of group. She alienated the man from Ciudad. One of the ships didn’t show up—and it turned out to have been a plant, someone working as an agent of the pirates. He told them where we were. Didn’t know that at the time, of course. I was worried, but she wasn’t. Short form is, they ambushed us, and she didn’t have a clue how to get anyone out alive. I’d been discussing it with Argelos, just in case—and we lost the battle but three ships came out whole: mine, Argelos’, and one of the Bissonet ships, commanded by a man named Pettygrew.”

“Ky…I don’t know how to ask this, but…are you sure you know what you’re doing?”

“I got three ships out alive when they all thought they were doomed. My tactics. My commands.” Ky’s throat tightened, thinking of those she hadn’t been able to save, and Captain Zavala’s courage in coming back to warn them all.

“I believe you. I just…people are going to die, Ky, because of commands you give. Are you ready for that?”

“It’s already happened,” Ky said. “And I’ll never be ready, and I am ready now.”

“All right. I’m still terrified, you know. You’re the only real Vatta of our generation left, that I know of.”

“You are as real a Vatta as I am,” Ky said. “And this would be a lot easier if I’d been Osman’s daughter, wouldn’t it? It fits better.”

Stella’s voice trembled a little. “Yes…and I guess I have to get over it.”

“I guess you do.” Time to get back to realities. “I tapped out the Vatta accounts at Gretna; in fact, Crown & Spears gave me a line of credit so the authorities couldn’t claim I hadn’t paid all the fees they added on at the last moment. I resupplied there, before they tried to get it all back, and we need repairs soon, for the damage done there. You’ll have to start linking accounts again.”

“Well, if Adelaide Group is as useful as you’re saying, I can extend a route there—maybe
Gary Tobai
. Can you establish a corporate account there before you leave?”

“I set up one for our fleet,” Ky said. “I’ll have Adelaide Central Bank send you the account information and let them know you want one for Vatta Transport.”

“You could contact me using our…uh…family code.”

That had to mean by the shipboard ansibles. “Oh. You’re right.” How to tell Stella that she’d made changes to the shipboard ansibles, that the original settings would be known to the pirates? “I didn’t want to use a channel the pirates might pick up on; we modified ours to use different ones, but yours isn’t.”

“Toby thought of that, too. He said it was something you’d need. Wonder if we have the same new channels…”

How to convey them without risking discovery? Were the pirates monitoring routine ansible transmissions? Or those to a Vatta family member? Ky rummaged through her implant looking for some concealing data that Stella might also have. “Stella, your implant has the list of family birthdays and ceremonies, doesn’t it?”

“Yes, why?”

“That channel thing…your mother’s, month and day; my oldest brother’s year and day.”

“Oh! Yes. I’ll tell Toby and see if those are the same, and if not, I’m sure he can modify it to fit.” A pause, then: “Ky, I’m really relieved to hear from you…I know I behaved badly before you left Cascadia, and then I thought maybe you were throwing yourself into danger because of that—”

“No, Stella, please—it wasn’t that.”

“We’re just—there’s so few of us left. And I know I’m doing the right thing with the company, but…Toby is just not enough, if you know what I mean.”

“Me, too,” Ky said. “Stella, I meant what I said then. To me, you’re always family. Always. It doesn’t matter how far apart we are.”

“Well, before I start sniffling like a kid,” Stella said, “I think we should end this conversation. I’ll contact you in a few days, if I don’t hear from you first, to let you know what I can send. It’s such a relief to have real, functioning ansible service!”

“That it is,” Ky said. “Later, then.”

She arrived on the bridge in time to see the entire bridge crew staring at the external vid monitor. “What in the world is that?” Hugh asked, staring at the screen, where a steel-blue ship with a bright gold stripe down its long axis and some kind of curly gold lettering on the bow was easing toward its docking space. “I’d say a yacht, but it’s too big for that.”

Ky looked at the message marker coming up on the armrest of her command chair, tapped for access, and grinned.

“It’s the
Courageous,
and its captain says they’re Ransome’s Rangers,” she said. “The other two are the
Furious
and the
Glorious
. They want to join up with us.” She put up the video they were sending. On the bridge of a ship—presumably the same one—several officers in light-blue-and-gold uniforms with white facings stood watching over the instruments; crew in light blue shipsuits scurried about busily.

“They look like an operetta chorus,” Hugh said. “One of those old revivals with the brave young soldier and the pretty dancing girl the prince falls in love with.”

“They are a bit gaudy,” Ky said. “On the other hand, they are ships. We don’t have anything that size or that speed. They’ve got excellent scan—light on weapons, as you’d expect…”

“Do you really think all of them together could take down one pirate?”

“Possibly,” Ky said. “At the least, they might make a pirate die laughing.”

“You’re actually thinking of signing them on?”

“Not necessarily.” From the data they’d sent, she couldn’t tell if it was a joke or a serious offer. “I will talk to their commander. Apparently he’s filthy rich and organized this bunch all by himself. That alone makes me suspicious, but on the other hand, Vatta used to have dozens of ships and
we
weren’t pirates.”