Command Decision (4 page)

Thirteen days later, Stella looked around Vatta Transport’s new offices, redecorated in Vatta colors and fully furnished. Crown & Spears had been willing to advance the money on the expectation of her receiving Furman’s accounts within fifteen days and the arrival of
Marcus Selene
. The offices were in an unfashionable quarter of Cascadia Station, toward the tip of one branch, but the rent per square meter was only 65 percent of that near the trunk. Besides, their business was shipping, and dockside was across the way.

“This is where you’ll be,” she said to the receptionist she’d hired for the front office. “We’re just moving in—it’s a little rough, but I assure you the security measures are first-rate.”

“It looks lovely,” the girl—young woman—said. Gillian Astin, Stella reminded herself. Native of Cascadia, just out of business school, up on the station for the first time. She looked too young, but her voice was brisk and she seemed to have confidence. “I look forward to serving you…I’m sorry, but I don’t know what terms of address are correct for someone from Slotter Key.”

“I’m living here now,” Stella said. “Whatever’s appropriate here—
Sera,
isn’t it?”

“Yes, Sera Vatta.” Gillian grinned. “This is so exciting. Mum and Dad never thought I’d get a job offplanet; they kidded me when I signed with the agency.”

“Well, here’s your desk. Let me know if there’s anything else you need,” Stella said. “I’ll be in back—I’ve got a ship on approach and I need to talk with the captain.”

“Thank you, Sera,” Gillian said. The comunit on her desk buzzed. Stella paused in the door to see how she handled it. Gillian slipped the earbug in and said, “Good morning, Vatta Transport, Ltd. How may I help you?” She didn’t sound like a child then. Stella slipped through into her own office.

Her father’s office had been huge in comparison, furnished with antiques and artwork. Hers barely had room for a simple desk, a chair for a visitor, a credenza holding her comunit, cube reader, and—hidden inside—some supplies. The other door led to a narrow corridor, off which were the supply room and the toilets. Across that, a larger room where Toby could work. It had been the workshop of the small electronics repair firm and still had workbenches and shelving.

“Sera Vatta?” Gillian was at the door. “General Sales’ local supervisor, Ser Sagata, would like to speak with you regarding the cargo coming in on
Marcus Selene
. May I tell him you will take his call?”

“Yes, thank you, Gillian,” Stella said. Her stomach tightened. Now it began. Silly of her—it had begun long before—but now, in a real office, she felt a difference.

“Ser Sagata,” she said, flicking on her comunit. “How may I help you?”

They exchanged the elaborate courtesies Cascadian custom dictated, and Stella assured him that the ship on its way in did indeed carry cargo consigned to General Sales. She gave him the invoice numbers as well.

“And our next departure will be three days after
Marcus Selene
arrives—the route is up on our site. If you have outbound cargo—”

“You will keep the same schedule?” He sounded surprised, and almost immediately apologized. “I’m sorry, Sera Vatta; that sounds as if I did not trust you, and I intended no insult…”

“No offense taken,” Stella said. “I quite understand. But yes, I intend to keep the same schedule, and in fact expand it as other Vatta ships come in. Cascadia has ample resources of trained ship crews; it will make a fine hub.”

“I see.” A long pause, then, “Yes, I believe we will have cargo ready for shipping by then. I’ll get back with you shortly. Thank you for your service, Sera.”

“Thank you for your custom, Ser Sagata.” That had gone well. Stella let out a breath then went back to the front office. “Gillian, we’re going to have an order for outgoing cargo. I may not be here when it comes in; please route it to my deskcomp, sorted by destination.”

“Yes, Sera Vatta,” Gillian said. “I was just thinking…do you want me to contact the other recipients of inbound cargo that their shipments are onboard?”

“Good idea,” Stella said. “I’ll send that file to your deskcomp, with the invoice numbers. Don’t tell them the cargo contents, though. Just the numbers. And let them know that the departure schedule and route are up on our site, for their convenience. Maybe we’ll get some more orders.”

By the time Toby arrived that afternoon with a float pallet of his supplies, Vatta Transport had contracts pending with five different shippers for
Katrine Lamont
’s departure. Stella called Captain Orem.

“We have shippers,” she said. “Do you think we should put up the available cubage on our site?”

“Absolutely,” Orem said. “The Captains’ Guild will display it for us, as well as the Shipping Combine. I can do that for you, with an automatic update as new cargo comes in.” He paused. “Uh…I haven’t thanked you, really, for the chance you’ve given me…you know, after I lost my own ship, I never thought I’d have a command again. And here I am on one of Vatta’s top ships—better than anything I ever had before—”

“Please,” Stella said. “Don’t. I needed a captain; you needed a ship. It worked for both of us. I’m sure you can handle the
Kat
and the trade responsibilities.”

“I had to say it,” he said. He looked ten years younger now. “But for the moment—trade and profit.”

“Trade and profit,” Stella agreed.

From across the corridor, she heard thumps and bangs as Toby settled his things into the shelves. She went to look. “I brought it here, Cousin Stella,” he said. “Under all the other boxes, so no one would see.” In one corner, the plain gray box that Ky had given her, the portable ansible. Next to it, something roughly the same size and shape, but without the gray skin.

“That’s the…”

“Yeah. What I’m working on. Not finished yet, though. It’s still going to draw a fair bit of power—can we afford it?”

“Yes,” Stella said, hoping “a fair bit of power” would fit into the budget. They had to try; this project was too important to fail because of a few credits.

“Can I sleep here?” Toby asked. “It’d save time going back and forth. And I wouldn’t need a security escort as many hours.”

“There’s no food here,” Stella pointed out. “And I want you in bed at a decent hour. For school. Don’t worry about the escort charges.”

“Excuse me, Sera, but there’s an urgent message for you,” Gillian said. Her gaze slid past Stella to linger on Toby.

That could be a complication. “From whom?” Stella asked.

“Sorry, Sera. From Crown & Spears.”

“Your account has been credited with the sums formerly credited to the late Captain Furman,” the Crown & Spears manager said when Stella picked up the call. “Would you prefer to have these funds in hand or pay off the advance at this time? Crown & Spears has no problem with continuing the advance on the same terms.” Exorbitant terms, to Stella.

“I think not,” she said. “It was an unsecured loan before; now I could secure it, if I chose.”

“Well, I’m sure something could be arranged,” the manager said. “For a valued customer such as Vatta Transport…”

After the first few hectic weeks, as she dealt with
Marcus Selene
’s arrival, the departure of
Katrine Lamont,
the departure of
Marcus Selene,
customer inquiries, the sale of unconsigned cargo, and all the other minutiae of running a transport and trade company, Stella realized she had not thought about her own parentage, or Ky’s adventures, for days. Whether Ky was alive or not, she herself was finding her identity as Vatta CEO more comfortable with every passing day. Vatta ships carried full loads of cargo, even
Gary Tobai,
for which she’d won a contract to carry cargo between Moscoe Confederation orbital stations. Vatta customers stopped by the office to chat and inquire when she would have more frequent departures. Another Vatta ship had reported in via ansible; its captain accepted her authority. Income still lagged behind expenses—not counting the contributions of Toby’s dog Rascal, whose breeding fees kept them solvent—but it trended upward.

She had found an intellectual property lawyer who agreed to take up a patent search to see how much of the portable ansible technology was already controlled by ISC. Toby’s school had called once, to congratulate her on his behavior (“We usually have much more trouble with students not from our system; he is an exceptionally polite boy, and we are delighted that you chose to have him attend classes instead of home tutoring”), and his marks in the first reporting period had been superb.

Startling, amusing even, that her family identity as “that idiot Stella” had concealed such abilities, even from her. Nobody here knew about the gardener’s son or the family codes. Nobody here knew that Jo was—had been—the brains of the family, and her brothers had been brilliant in their way, while she was only a pretty face, “that idiot Stella.” Nobody here seemed to care about her parentage, though as the result of a court case, it was in the public records. All that mattered to the Cascadians was her demeanor and her competence. Courtesy had always come easily for her; she found their social rules easy to follow. She’d never fully believed in that competence, but now she saw the proof of it every day, in the respect others gave her, in the contracts and the income. Trade and profit indeed.

She wished she could tell Aunt Grace, but the Slotter Key ansible remained stubbornly out of order, like so many others. Someday Vatta ships would carry Vatta ansibles, and she could send one back to Slotter Key—she surprised herself again by thinking of the name, and not “home.”

“Sera Vatta?” Gillian tapped on her door.

“Yes?” Stella pushed all other thoughts aside. Business first, reveries later. Or never. She felt ready for whatever came through the door.

CHAPTER

THREE

Aboard Vanguard,
in FTL flight

Once, a routine transition into FTL space had meant safety to Ky Vatta. That mysterious and undefined continuum in which the ship now existed had meant time to think, time to plan, time to interact with her crew in an untouchable capsule. She could not be interrupted from outside; she did not have to cope with outside.

What she’d known of earlier civilizations—pre-space and early-expansion—and their obsession with the vastness of space, the smallness of planets, had always amused her. She had grown up in a spacefaring civilization, embedded in a family whose fortunes came from traveling the spaceways; she had been in deep space herself at thirteen. Space was no bigger than the ship you were in. So many days in FTL from here to there, so many days or weeks from a jump point to a station…the rest of it didn’t matter, really.

Now, for the first time, she felt it, that old awe at the size of the universe. Not days from system to system, but years of light burrowing through endless darkness. Though the ship’s systems held the temperature at a steady setting, varying it slightly, intentionally, as the shifts changed, she herself felt cold, chilled by unwelcome knowledge.

Out there somewhere, beyond her knowledge as beyond her reach, were the pirates—the more-than-pirates now—who wanted to destroy all the comfortable assumptions of her life. Her life and the lives of everyone she’d known. The lives of billions of men and women and children who went to work, ate meals, went to school, played games, made plans based on the certainty that tomorrow would be like today.

She felt glued to the certainty—this unwelcome certainty—that they were wrong, pinned to that knowledge of imminent disruption, unable to think or move. She knew—she told herself repeatedly—that this FTL flight gave her respite in which to think, in which to prove that the bold boast she’d made a few days before came from some hidden core of ability, of moral strength. Her crew kept looking at her, giving her little grins and nods.

But for now she was paralyzed, mentally and almost physically, going through the motions of being the bold brave captain she knew they needed.

She had come on the bridge as usual, to take the first-shift report, and now she frowned at the data scrolling past on the screen as if she could do more than stare at the words and numbers. What did it all mean, anyway? This ship, the two others, even the pirates in their hordes, were just grains of dust in a vast universe that didn’t care…

She glanced up as someone moved suddenly and saw Lee, her senior pilot, turn to Hugh Pritang, her executive officer. Lee’s voice was strained, completely unlike his usual casual drawl. “Please—I have to go now—”

“What’s the problem?” Hugh asked. He was facing away from Lee, entering something in the log. Ky glanced at Lee, whose face was a strange shade of gray-green.

Lee doubled over and spewed onto the deck, noisily. Hugh looked over, stiffened, and then caught sight of Ky. “Captain—” Then, “Mr. Quidlen—what’s wrong?”

“He’s sick,” Ky said. She realized how unnecessary that was. She pulled a towel out of the dispenser by the hatch and stepped forward. “Lee? Can you talk?”

He shook his head and heaved again; the sour stench almost turned Ky’s stomach. Hugh took the towel from her and bent down.

“I—I feel sick, too,” her weapons officer, Theo Dannon, said.

“Leave the bridge,” Ky said. It was probably just the smell, she thought, but Dannon also had an unhealthy greenish look around the mouth. She bent down to look more closely at Lee; his eyes were closed and his breathing was harsh. “We’ve been isolated on this ship too long for it to be any communicable illness,” she said over her shoulder. “It’s got to be food poisoning or something.” She felt a stab of guilt; she hadn’t inspected the galley the day before.

“I—feel really bad,” Lee muttered, eyes still closed.

“Help me get him to a medbox,” Ky said. Did medboxes deal with food poisoning? She had no idea. She felt stupid suddenly; she was planning to fight a war and she hadn’t hired any medical personnel…it would take more than medboxes. She remembered the vast medical bay on the Mackensee ship that had treated her. Her mind seemed to wake suddenly from the daze of the past shifts. Later she could think how to increase their medical capability. Now…

“I can do that,” Hugh said. He looked around the bridge. “One of us needs to be here.”

Ky nodded. In FTL flight, nothing ever happened, but still a senior officer should be on the bridge. Especially if this was more than some random virus.

“And I’ll send one of the techs up to clean up, in case it’s infectious. Don’t get contaminated. Captain.” Ky nodded as Hugh hauled Lee up and got a shoulder under his arm. Lee was just able to shamble along as Hugh moved aft.

Ky turned up the bridge ventilation and queried the food storage units. All the readouts were in range—coolers and freezers all at the correct temperature. She had come through the galley already, without formally inspecting it; it had looked clean and tidy, as usual. Surely no one had cooked for the others without washing hands; everyone had that much sense. In minutes one of the environmental techs—not Twigg, but Bannin—showed up in protective gear with a wet vac. “There’s another two sick, Captain,” he said to Ky. “That’s four so far. We don’t know what it is yet, but we’ll run it through the analyzers and see.”

Four down within a half hour…not just some isolated bug Lee’d been harboring since their last time on a station. Possibilities sprang up like weeds: something they’d missed when clearing the ship of Osman’s traps, something planted by the agent who’d joined the ship as a cargo handler and then died, sabotage by someone now in the crew. “Anything odd in the environmental cultures?”

“No, ma’am. At least, all the readouts are nominal, though we’ll run a check of them. And we’re not consuming anything ship-made anyway.”

She’d known that. She’d spent the money to purchase high-quality rations, and they still had some of Osman’s left as well. Osman’s. Had he sabotaged random packs of his own rations for some reason? “Take samples of all the surfaces in the galley, any opened ration containers, everything in the cooler—”

“Yes, Captain. Mr. Pritang’s told us that; Mr. Gulandar has people on it, and Mr. Pritang is asking everyone what they ate or drank in the last two days.”

Bannin finished sucking up the mess, then sprayed with cleanser and vacuumed again, finally applying a decontaminating spray. “Just let that dry, Captain. It’ll stay there twelve hours or more, and then we’ll come give it another spray and vacuum. After that, it’ll be safe for normal cleaning.”

“Thanks,” Ky said. “You will let me know what it is…”

“Of course, ma’am. As soon as we know.”

Four so far. If it was something in the food, was it something in Osman’s food supply? In what she’d bought? And was it intentional or accidental? And why weren’t they all sick? They were all eating out of the same food supply; they rotated cooking duties, but—she called up the roster for galley work. If it was unclean pots or dishes, she would have someone’s guts for garters.

Within a few hours, as Ky paced the bridge deck and thought of more and more items to test—from shampoo to cough lozenges—another five had come down with whatever it was: vomiting, abdominal pain, diarrhea, weakness that might be from the symptoms or from the cause. The cooking utensils and dishes showed nothing; there was nothing harmful in the water supply.

“Nothing shows up on the chem scan,” Environmental Tech Twigg told her. “It’s not any contact or residual poison in our database. It’s got to be contaminated food—if it were the water, everyone would be down with it.”

Ky went herself, when Hugh took over the bridge again, to inspect the latrines, the showers, the galley, the cutlery and dishes. She remembered that she had brought aboard dishes touched—if only briefly—by someone who wanted to send a coded message, a microdot, to someone on her ship. Both men had died…had they also left a persistent toxin on the dishes? She and her crew had eaten dozens of meals off those dishes since, with no harmful effects, and the dishes had been washed repeatedly. Why now?

Nine sick…but as hours passed and no one else came down with the mysterious disease, Ky concentrated on finding out what those nine had eaten or drunk that no one else had consumed. She had no qualified epidemiologist in the crew, not even a medic, but the environmental department, none of whom had gotten sick, dug through the trash that hadn’t yet gone to the recycler, testing everything.

Meanwhile, Hugh and Gordon went through the crew list asking questions: who ate what at which meal, between meals, who had seen someone else eating, and so on. Even though no more crew came down with the mysterious illness, Ky pressed them to keep asking, keep searching for a cause.

Finally, Lee came out of a medbox able to answer questions. Ky went down immediately to find out what he knew.

“We had a little celebration the other night,” Lee said. “Nothing big…just a box of sweet-snacks from stores, and some—” He paused.

“What?” Ky said.

“I’m trying to remember. Oh, yes…there was this jar somebody had in his personals. Stuff his grandmother made, he said. It had gotten knocked around somehow, and leaked a bit, so he offered it to the party; he didn’t want to let it sit around unsealed in case it spoiled—” He frowned. “You don’t suppose that could have been what did it? How could it spoil in just a few days?”

“What was it?” Ky asked, trying for patience. “Animal, vegetable, mineral? Liquid, solid?”

“I don’t really know,” Lee said. “I guess it did…sort of have a kind of…well…it smelled a bit alcoholic, but it also had a strong smell of fruit, and then kind of a fishy smell, too. But it was really good spread on those crackers. I can’t believe that’s what made us sick, though. He said they stored it in crocks back home.”

“Who?” Ky said, suppressing an urge to shake the answer out of him.

“Uh…Jemison, starboard aft battery.”

Jemison was still in a medbox; the readout said he would be out in another four hours.

“Not everyone in starboard aft is sick,” Ky said. “Who else was at this party? Did everybody eat some?”

The party, it turned out, had involved much of the crew, who dropped in and out as they had time. Lee wasn’t sure who had been there, or not, before he came and after he left. Jemison’s contribution was only that single small jar of the stuff—whatever it had been—and only a few of the crew had had a chance at it.

Unfortunately, the jar and any remnants of its contents had gone into the recycler, and Environmental had no way to tell which of the stomach contents vacuumed up were responsible.

“The only bacterial and viral signatures we have on file relate to our own cultures,” Bannin told Ky. “I’m sorry, Captain…”

“Not your fault,” Ky said. “We need to get a medical database that goes beyond the medboxes.” Whatever its cause and despite the guilt she felt over having insufficient medical resources aboard, her earlier lassitude had vanished. She put those needs on her list for the next station. How much did it cost to maintain a medical team? No matter—they needed one, and she’d have to fund it somehow.

At the start of the next shift, most of the sick were out of the medboxes and clearly recovering. Her spirits rose further; when Hugh came up to her on the bridge, she felt capable of dealing with whatever was coming next.

“Captain, could I speak to you privately?” Hugh looked more serious than usual.

“Of course,” Ky said. She led the way off the bridge to her quarters.

“I’m concerned about some of the crew,” Hugh said. “I know they’ve been with you a long time…”

“You’re talking about the crew from my old ship?”

“Yes. Although there’s also a potential problem with some of the crew you hired later. I don’t know if you’re aware of it, but you’ve created a situation in which the ship crew is entirely civilian in background and attitude—except for me as your exec—and the fighting crew is entirely military.”

Ky scowled. “I’m not sure I follow—why is this a problem?”

“Attitude, mostly. This latest incident is an example of what can go wrong.”

“The probable cause came in with one of the fighting crew,” Ky said. “And he wasn’t immune to it.”

“True. The problem spreads…look, just let me explain.” Ky nodded, and he went on. “Take your pilots, for instance. Lee, your senior pilot, is a highly skilled technician in his field, and you have used him as one of your personal guards at times. I know he has adequate weapons skills, and he takes pride in that assignment.”

“So? He and the others performed well in that fight with Osman—”

“Yes. But in fact it required nothing of him but acting the part of a traitor, if I understood you rightly. He has never had military training. He is an amateur, at both security functions and at combat. He follows your orders—you are the captain and he’s known you for some time—but I sense a certain resentment to orders I’ve given. Not disobedience—he’s too good a man for that—but he always wants an explanation, or even just to discuss what should get simple obedience.”