Command Decision (6 page)

“Yes,” Ky said, grinning. “You do. And I know, and he knows, that it’s not really insubordination, that desire to understand his reasoning…I suspect you’re picking his brain, actually, storing away how he thinks so you can use it if you ever need it. But what do you think it looks like to the military crew? Like, for instance, my weapons officer?”

Lee grimaced. “Like I’m a snotty civilian who won’t take orders without a lengthy explanation, I’m guessing.”

“Something like that, yes,” Ky said. She said nothing more, waiting. If he could reason it out on his own…

“So…what you want me to do is just…follow orders, and if I want to know why and wherefore…ask him later, if he’s not busy?”

“That would be perfect,” Ky said.

Lee thought that over; she could practically see the gears meshing. “And you think,” he said finally, “that if I adapt without an argument, the others will fall in line?”

“I think it would be easier for them,” Ky said. “You’ve got a lot of influence, and rightly so. If you had gone in the military, they’d have recognized your leadership potential.”

“Do pilots have a rank, in the military?”

“Why? Is there someone you want to pull rank on?”

“No,” Lee said. This time he did run his hand through his hair. “I just…if I’m going to have to learn all that military stuff, procedures and whatnot, I don’t want to be just that civvie pilot who’s finally gotten some sense.”

“Lee, you could never be that, not in my eyes,” Ky said firmly. “But yes, military pilots have rank, and I’ll tell you what—you get through a training period, and I’ll pin those—” Her mind raced. They still didn’t have uniforms, or rank insignia. “—those whatever we decide on, when we buy them, on your shoulders myself, at a formal ceremony. You and all the rest. Deal?”

He grinned. “Captain, I don’t think military commanders make deals. I thought only traders made deals.”

“As Vatta and as your captain, I make deals if I want to,” Ky said. “And that’s a promise.”

“Deal,” Lee said, nodding. “Er…yes, ma’am, Captain.”

After some thought and discussion with Hugh, Ky assigned Gordon Martin as the civilian crew’s trainer. “You did a good job with Jim,” she told him.

“I’ve barely got Jim up to decent civ,” Martin grumbled. “And now I’m supposed to get him to actual soldiering?”

“You’ve done better than that, and you know it. Thing is, the civilian crew know you from way back; they trust you. They’ll take things from you that they might not from, say, Jon Gannett. At least it’ll be an easier beginning.”

“This has the potential to be a rolling doughnut,” Martin said.

“I know. But it’s worth a try.”

“So am I working with all of them, or just the ones who want to stay?”

“All of them for now. Just in case we run into something when we drop out of FTL.”

“Right. Makes sense. How many hours a day? You know, in real training—”

“You’d have them clock-round. Yes. But they’re still ship crew, with real duties. Let’s start with four hours and see where that gets us.”

Nothing more was said for a few days, and Ky got no hints from the crew as she made her rounds through the ship. On the bridge, Lee seemed to be working well with Hugh, giving crisp “Yes, sir” and “No, sir” to orders. Gordon’s first five-day report, a brief one-page summary, indicated no significant problems.

The very next day, Ky was walking the ship as she did every first-shift, just passing the portside aft battery, when she heard a comment from someone in the aft environmental chamber, inboard. “—didn’t sign up for this,” the voice was saying. “If I’d known I was getting shanghaied—”

“They told you it was a privateer, didn’t they? They told me—”

“Yeah, but a privateer’s like a pirate—no rules, no saluting, none of this military stuff—just, you know, adventure and a share of the loot—”

“You’ve never been on a privateer before, have you?”

“Uh—no, but I thought—”

“You thought! You should’ve asked somebody who had—”

Ky decided to let them work it out for themselves, but she made a note to herself that Environmental Technician Twigg should be herded into Stella’s end of things as soon as possible.

CHAPTER

FOUR

W
hen
Vanguard
dropped out of FTL in the empty system that had been their next programmed jump point, Ky immediately contacted the other two ships and explained the change of plans.

“So—we’re not going to Ciudad?” Captain Argelos of
Sharra’s Gift
asked. He looked confused, and Ky didn’t blame him. She had been so certain that’s where they should go, before that jump.

Ky shook her head. “No. Not at first, anyway. We need allies; telling them that one of their ships has been destroyed and we couldn’t save any of the crew is not the way to get help.”

Argelos nodded. “That makes sense. But what are we going to do, just the three of us…do you really think we can accomplish anything?”

“I should try to find others from Bissonet,” Pettygrew said.
Bassoon
’s captain looked hollow-eyed, as if he’d lost kilos of weight while they were in FTL flight. “I can’t just ignore what happened…”

“Turek didn’t start with the resources he had now,” Ky said. “We can do a lot with three good ships, and we’ll have more once we have something to show others. Dan”—she used Pettygrew’s given name for the first time—“I can’t stop you if you want to leave, but consider—it’s a big universe, and you have no idea where other Bissonet ships might be. Please consider staying with us for now—we can help you, and you can certainly help us.”

“I don’t know what’s happening,” Pettygrew said. “Back home—I don’t want to think about it, but—”

“I don’t know what’s happening back at Slotter Key, either,” Ky said. “And I know my family’s mostly dead.”

Pettygrew looked down, then nodded slowly. “All right. If you think we can do anything—”

“We did. We blew away some of their ships. We damaged others. Now—” Now, before anyone had too long to think, she had to get them busy about something they could do. “—I need to know your munitions status.”

Pettygrew grimaced. “I threw everything I had, short of the galley sink. That’s another thing; I can’t fight without replacements—”

“And you?” Ky turned to Argelos.

He shrugged. “The same. No, I think I ended up with five missiles in reserve. And what I had in trade goods might buy another ten, at a cut-rate weapons shop. If the ansibles were up—”

“If the ansibles were up, we’d all have less trouble,” Ky said. “We’re low, too. So the first thing to do is resupply. I have funds—for now. We need to find a place, come in looking strong but not threatening—”

“That’s a neat trick,” Pettygrew said.

“—and see what we can pick up,” Ky said, without answering that. “I’ve been searching the catalogs—Vatta catalogs—and there’s a system near here that’s listed as having a major outlet for munitions at good prices; they have manufacturers in the system. Even bigger than MilMart at Lastway, it looks like. Vatta picked up cargo there before—in the old days.”

“Exactly the sort of place the pirates would be hanging out, I’d think,” Argelos said.

“Quite possibly, and if so, we’re in trouble. I’m sure they’ll have agents there, at least. I’ll admit that the Vatta database has warnings posted about it. Some fraud in the repair shops, for instance, selling old parts for new, that kind of thing. But it’s likely to have what we need, and it’s only one jump away. We’ve got experienced weapons crew who can detect substandard munitions.”

They both nodded. “So where is this gun shop?” Argelos asked.

“One jump, five days.” Ky hesitated. “Another thing—these shipboard ansibles are making communications much easier, but we know the pirates have them—we need to find a way to protect our messages.”

“Scramble ’em?” Pettygrew said. “That’s easy enough.”

“But it lets the pirates know someone else is using the tech,” Ky said. “I’d rather they didn’t know that…though the ones who got away back there may have noticed. Do you have any technical wizards who might be able to add a channel or whatever, something the pirates won’t know exists?”

“Dozi,” Pettygrew said, before Argelos could say anything. “Dozi Lattin. She might be able to—she’s been tinkering around with ours, very carefully.”

“Nobody on my ship,” Argelos said.

“That’s good news, Dan,” Ky said to Pettygrew. “If we can detect their transmissions, but they can’t detect ours, we’ll have a communications advantage even if we can’t understand anything they’re saying. It’s definitely worthwhile hanging about here for a few days while your tech works on the problem. She should be able to give us a yea-or-nay in two days, right?”

“I’ll ask her,” Pettygrew said.

“Full scans, power up, and ready to jump out if trouble arrives,” Ky said. “We can risk spacing at a half light-second, so we can use conventional tight-beam until we get the new channels on the ansibles.” She wondered whether to talk to the other captains about Hugh’s recommendation that they train all the crew in military skills, but decided to wait for more secure communications, if they could get them.

She considered contacting Stella to let her know the ship was still intact, but decided it was too risky. So far, no one but she herself knew that Stella had one of the small ansible units; if the pirates realized that one unit was on a planet or station, they might attack it—and she would not be there to protect Stella and Toby. Best to wait until she could use a system ansible, where her signal would be drowned in a million others. She didn’t analyze the surge of relief that decision gave her.

Dozi Lattin’s solution, as she explained the next day to Ky over the reconfigured system, was “not elegant at all, but it works.” Between Lattin’s Bissonet accent, much thicker than Pettygrew’s, her rapid delivery, and the technical complexity of the explanation, Ky soon felt drowned in detail.

“So—the short of it is, you’ve modified the system so the pirates won’t detect it? And it still works?”

“Yah,” Lattin said. Onscreen she was a thin, unkempt woman whose jacket pockets bulged with data wands. She pulled one out. “It’s all on here; your communications staff can have a copy when we get somewhere we can pass information hard. They don’t want to be just following directions forever. And I’ll be working on a better—”

“That’s great, Dozi,” Pettygrew said. He winked at Ky, the first humor she’d seen from him. “But I need to talk to Captain Vatta. Later, eh?”

Lattin smiled and ducked away from the screen; Ky was not surprised to see that she almost ran into someone coming onto Pettygrew’s bridge. Typical tech, that, striding along with head down, concentrating on anything but her surroundings.

“Now what?” Pettygrew asked.

“Now we can make our final plans, how we want to come in. I’ll send your nav computer the coordinates of our next stop,” Ky said. “On the new channel—” She pointed to her com officer, and the data went out. Argelos’ face appeared on the screen, now split to show both the other captains.

“Got it,” Argelos said, a split second before Pettygrew.

“Gretna…,” Pettygrew said, frowning slightly. “It doesn’t have the best reputation with Bissonet traders.”

“Dodgy repairs? That’s all my company notes say.”

“They never did sign off on the full Commercial Code,” Pettygrew said. “They pad their station bills, too, according to my database.”

“A lot of places do that,” Argelos said. “My implant does have a yellow flag, but it’s limited to several repair facilities and a caution about certain subsections of contracts related to the Commercial Code. But three armed ships like ours—unless we find a whole pirate fleet there, we should be able to handle anything we find.”

“So how do we announce ourselves?” Ky asked. “We have three different flags, and we are all armed. Suppose they take us for pirates?”

“You want us to decide on an organizational name now?” Pettygrew asked.

“It might be wise,” Ky said.

“I think we should wait until we have a chance to acquire some insignia,” Pettygrew said. “Like this, with our ships bearing different flags on their IDs, our crews in different uniforms, no way to prove we do belong together, other than circumstance, I don’t think we’d have much credibility.”

Argelos nodded. “He’s right, Captain Vatta. I think we’d do better to come in as a group hanging together for security, which is really what we are at this point. We can certainly talk about what we want to call ourselves, and maybe pick up uniforms or patches or whatever at Gretna, but I don’t see that we can afford to look ridiculous right from the start.”

“I see your point,” Ky said. “But let’s take a few hours to talk over what we are, so we can gather the materials we need with the least waste of time.”

“We need an organization with a name. We’re not going to get anywhere as an association of privateers. Something solid, respectable. Something-something Defense, Force or Fleet or—”

“Spaceforce,” Argelos said.

“United Planets Spaceforce? Needs to be something that makes a good acronym.”

“Or very dull, and we let any nicknames take care of themselves.”

“Space Service?”

“Combined…united…space service?”

“There’s always Space Patrol…” Everyone groaned. In all the years, however calculated, of human presence in space, no one had ever called a military organization “Space Patrol,” which was inextricably associated with bad children’s programming. “Space Rangers?”

“Special ops name, Rangers,” Hugh said. “We need a name that implies a solid military force authorized by a legitimate government.”

“Which we don’t have.”

“Details.” Hugh grinned. “It doesn’t matter, really. Who’s to know?”

“So we just do it,” Ky said. “Space Defense Force, how’s that?”

“Sounds good to me,” Argelos said. Pettygrew nodded.

“So…we become the first flight, or squadron, or something, of the SDF?”

“Not first anything,” Hugh said. “We want the opposition to think there’s more of us, including some they don’t know about. Pick another number, not too high.”

“Third?” Ky said.

“Third Fleet…,” Hugh said slowly. “About right. When we have four fleets, we can always shift ourselves to first, if that matters.”

She could see the others trying it out mentally. Finally they all nodded.

“We need a design, a logo,” Argelos said. “I’ve got a junior engineer who’s talented that way.”

“How about a spiral galaxy with a formation of ships shooting a bad guy?” Pettygrew asked.

“Too complicated, but I like the galaxy. Implies more than one system.” Argelos squinted, thinking. “Galaxy and maybe the small formation of ships across it?”

“Fine,” Ky said. “Now: we need to get our ships marked with the joint-force logo. I’m not talking about re-registration—the original flags are fine—just an indication of our organization. Unit patches as well as ship patches.”

“Uniforms?”

“Not worth the expense right now, and to some extent the different uniforms reinforce the idea of a multisystem force.”

“If Gretna’s got munitions, they’re bound to have someone used to turning out military insignia,” Hugh said. “Even a rough sketch should be enough.”

Greater Gretna’s advertising started at the jump point:
WELCOME TO GRETNA
,
GUNS FOR THE GALAXY
! blared from the welcoming beacon as soon as they had cleared downjump scan turbulence.
ALWAYS A FAIR DEAL
!
A SAFE PORT IN ANY POLITICAL STORM
!
HONEST TRADERS WELCOME
;
TRAMPS AND LAYABOUTS STAY AWAY
!
YOU KNOW WHO YOU ARE
!