Trading in Danger (30 page)

“Is this one?” she asked, holding out the little cylinder.

Sawvert looked up. “Looks like it—let me see—” She took it, turned it, peered at the inscription. “Yup, that’s it. Where’d you find it?”

“In a model kit,” Ky said. She put the box down. “Either of you know what the rest of this stuff is?”

“Model kit!” Sawvert leaned over the box. “That’s nothing—nor that—but this—and this—and that bit there—all that’s the makings of a small pin-beacon. A shouter.” She pushed the parts around with her finger. “I don’t know if you’ve got all of it—are there any more pieces?”

“There were, but it was in the way when the mercs shot up my cabin.”

“I didn’t know about that,” Sawvert said.

“You weren’t aboard then,” Ky said. “Someone we’d picked up off the docks at Prime—someone from home—went crazy and tried to fight with the mercs. They shot him.” The less said about that, the better. “So—anything more we can use to fix
this
beacon?”

“Let’s just see what this piece does—if it works, the beacon should work. If it doesn’t, we have some more bits to try, at least.”

Reassembling the beacon took another two hours, but even before they closed the case, Lee reported from the bridge that their passive scan showed the beacon on.

“Only problem is, it’s not
our
ID,” he said.

“What do you mean, not our ID?”

“It says we’re the
Mist Harbor
, serial number XWT–34–693, out of Broadman’s Station. I’d guess that scumsucker changed the ID so when he put the part back in, no one would find us.”

“And nobody will recognize us for who we are, unless we can change it back.” Ky looked at Sawvert and Corson. “Can you change it back?”

“What he probably did,” Corson said, “was change out the chip. That’s what he did on the other—” He stopped; Ky suspected that her own face had the same expression as Sawvert’s, a mix of horror and fury. “It’s not my fault; I didn’t want to do it,” he said in a rush. “It was Paison—he was the captain, I had to—”

“Did you know he’d changed out the chip on this one?” Ky asked.

“No—I swear I didn’t. I didn’t even know he had one with him; I wouldn’t have thought he could, with the mercs just about pushing us out of our ship and into their shuttle.” He swallowed. “Do you have a spare ship chip? I can change it back.”

“I don’t know,” Ky said. She’d not ever thought about it. Beacons came with ships, already sealed…

“There’s a chip,” Sawvert said, pointing to a little piece in the box. “Where’d you get this, anyway?”

“I don’t know if it’s ours,” Ky said, about the chip. But if it came from MacRobert, what would it be? Maybe a generic Vatta ID? Maybe Slotter Key spaceforce? “In the meantime, Corson, since you seem to know so much about how Paison operated, what would he have done to our insystem drive?”

“I don’t know anything about drives,” Corson said. “I really don’t.”

“Even a fake ID ought to get someone’s attention,” Sawvert said. “And if I can fix your transmitter—”

“That would certainly help,” Ky said. “I’m not at all sure what this chip is—it was in this box of model parts, as you can see—so I’m reluctant to put it in. At least this way someone can get us on scan. Give us a way to talk to them, and we’ll be a lot better off.”

“Who is
Mist Harbor
?”

The chief scan tech on ISC’s bulbous command ship turned to look at the watch officer. “Dunno. Just showed up, but there’s no downjump signature.”

“Anything running around with no beacon is probably part of the problem,” the watch officer said. “We have a missing ship, and now we have an extra ship—let’s get a distance, heading, and mass reading on that, and see if it answers us. And if we have one ship that’s been running silent, there may be more. How’s the system catalog coming?”

“We have the data from Prime’s orbital station; we’re using that as baseline and plotting against it. So far no anomalies, but we’re only thirty-two percent complete. We wouldn’t have found this ship for another two or three hours. At a rough guess, it’s four to six light-minutes away, judging by signal strength.”

“Commit another two units and speed it up. Do you want
Ganges
to site some additional spindles for it?”

“That would help,” the scan chief said. “Real-time scans like that would cut it by half, anyway.”

“I’ll talk to ’em,” the watch officer said.

The scan chief turned back to his board, allocated two more computing units to the system catalog, and then increased the power on the active scan beam.

Two hours later, he knew that the
Mist Harbor
was in the same mass range as the missing
Glennys Jones
, that she was 6.1 light-minutes away, not under power, and did not answer a hail. The ISC specialty ship
Ganges
, having dropped four spindle-ansibles in remote reaches of the system, was able to get real-time data from them.

“That’s interesting,” the scan chief said. “Not only is
Mist Harbor
the same general size as our missing Vatta ship, but there are two other ships out there lying doggo. One’s here”—he pointed, as the watch officer came up beside him—”and one there. I do like that fine-resolution scan we added.”

“A year ago we wouldn’t have spotted them,” the watch officer agreed. “Nice work. I’ll pass the word up… wonder if that is the
Glennys Jones
and she was captured by the bad guys. Doesn’t look good for Vatta if that’s true.”

“Sir!” One of the junior techs waved for the chief’s attention. “
Mist Harbor
’s beacon has gone—no, there it is—look at it—”

The beacon icon blinked on and off, in a rhythm not quite regular.

“Power failure? Fuel expended?”

“No, sir. I’d bet my next raise it’s a signal code of some kind. There are dozens of those blinker codes on various planets. This one’s from—what did the registration say?”

“Assume it’s the Vatta ship, from Slotter Key. Can we translate it?”

“Without translating it, it’s got to mean that their transmission capability is gone, and they’re trying to signal… which still doesn’t tell us who’s in control.”

“At least whoever’s looking knows a ship is here,” Ky said. “They may not care about the
Mist Harbor
, but they’re bound to care that a ship appeared out of nowhere with no downjump turbulence. Someone will come investigate.”

“In time?” asked Corson. He looked pale.

“We may be very hungry, but we’ll be alive, I’m sure,” Ky said with more certainty than she felt. Her stomach growled.

“What if one of Paison’s ships gets to us first?” he asked.

“Why would they? ISC is here in force; their best move is to lie low or go away quickly.”

“They think Paison’s on this ship; he’s their commander. He’d be trying to rendezvous. When they don’t hear from him, they will come looking.”

“Honor among thieves, eh?” Ky shook her head. “I don’t believe it; I think they’ll run off or stay hidden.”

“You don’t understand how they work,” Corson said.

Ky cocked her head at him. “Are you going to explain, or just complain? Either get busy helping Sawvert fix the transmitter, or I’ll have you escorted back to the others.”

He looked scared, and bent to his work. But a half hour later, he shook his head. “Can’t be done,” he said.

“He’s right,” Sawvert said. “The problem here is mechanical as well as parts missing. Things have been bent, ripped—”

“So he didn’t plan on using our transmitter,” Ky said. “He was more interested in preventing any of us from calling for help. He did plan on using the beacon. How was he going to signal his other ships?” The answer came to her almost as she asked. “The ship chip change. The signal to his allies is the change in the beacon. They would figure that only he could get it back on, and changed to that ID. So basically—we’ve just been telling them to come and get us.”

“That’s what I meant,” Corson said. “They could be out there right now—”

“We’d see them on scan,” Ky said. “Wouldn’t we?”

“Not if their beacons are off,” Sawvert said. “Though if they’re close enough, we might get them on active. He probably left active scan working, for close maneuvering, and he probably also had a small transmitter on him, for the same purpose. Something that would work within a kilometer or so.”

Ky scrubbed at her head. “We need to let the ISC know who and where we are, and what’s happened. What if we switched the beacon on and off… they’d pay attention to that, surely?”

“So would Paison’s people,” Sawvert said.

“Yes. That’s a risk. But the way I see it, they’re going to be after us anyway. Quincy—”

“Yes, Captain.”

“How well do you know that old code they used in the war? And do you think anyone in the ISC knows it?”

“Probably,” Quincy said sourly. “ISC has a database and a half. But I don’t. Best thing is to just count out letters. They’ve got the processing power to decode something that simple.”

“Again, maybe too late for us. But at least someone will have the facts as we know them. And I can tell Dad to send someone to Belinta with our cargo.”

“Cargo! You’re worried about cargo at a time like this?” Corson looked shocked.

“It’s a contract,” Ky said. “Vatta honors contracts.” She could tell by his face that he had no comprehension at all, but her own crew nodded.

It was easier, this time, to crack the cover on the beacon unit, and this time Ky knew exactly which piece to jiggle to disable and enable the beacon. Unfortunately, that still meant wriggling into the cramped compartment in an awkward position that she knew would make her neck and back hurt: she wanted the beacon connected to its running power system. She tested it, sending the ages-old triple-three distress signal, which Lee easily picked up on their own scan equipment. In the meantime, Quincy had written down a simple letter-number list.

“It works in principle,” Ky said. “Now for a message.” She scribbled down the simplest thing she could: the ship’s name, her name, the number of personnel aboard. “Read that to me one letter at a time,” she said to Quincy. “Have Lee check that that’s what I actually send.”

It seemed to take a long time to work through that first simple message, and Ky realized that she should have had someone else do that while she composed a longer one with more details. She wriggled back out, and turned to Sawvert.

“Repeat that message, and I’ll be working on more.”

Back on the bridge, she glanced at the scan. An ISC beacon was closer now, but she had no way to tell how close. No odd beacons, so if Paison did have stealth ships in the system, they weren’t revealing themselves yet. Could ISC pick them up? She shook her head. She had a lot to tell the ISC or whoever got her message, and it needed to be concise and clear.

“
Glennys Jones
, Captain K. Vatta, boarded by members of the Mackensee Military Assistance Corporation, contracted with MMAC to care for passengers…” No, strike
passengers
. “… captains and senior officers of other civilian ships interned by MMAC.” What was most important? “Arly Paison, captain of
Marie
, mutinied, destroyed transmitter, damaged beacon, accused as pirate by former crew, stealth ships in system, involved in ansible attack. Jake Kristoffson, captain of
Empress Rose
, with Paison. One crew dead, three mutineers dead. Rations low. Insystem drive inoperable.”

She handed that to Quincy for Sawvert to transmit. Minutes passed; she watched as the outgoing message came up, letter by letter, on her desk. While it was still in progress, the first response came in.

“Ship with beacon
Mist Harbor
now claiming identity
Glennys Jones
: explain discrepancy in ship ID, passenger totals. Mackensee Military Assistance Corporation reported total personnel aboard plus three to your number.”

“I just answered that,” Ky said to the bridge crew. “What’s that put us, about six lights away?”

“Yup. But I think they’re closing. They’ve got something that can microjump.” Lee grinned back at her. “I think we might make it after all.”

“I wish I knew where Paison’s ships were,” Ky said. Then she went on with more information. A list of personnel aboard, and their original ship assignment. A brief statement of her own contracts with Belinta and the Mackensee Military Assistance Corporation. The course they’d been on when they dumped cargo; the beacon ID of that cargo. A more detailed accounting of events aboard, starting with their departure from Prime’s orbital station. She was uncomfortably aware that Paison’s ships could be listening in, and might choose to avenge the death of their boss. If Corson was telling the truth, something she wasn’t sure about.

More responses came in from the ISC ship, as they received the messages. Questions, mostly, many of them she could not answer. Who had Paison’s local system contacts been? She had no idea. How long had Paison been in the system? She didn’t know. How long had he and Kristoffson been connected? She didn’t know that, either. Did she know if the Imperial Spacelines was implicated in that connection? Of course she didn’t. Had she questioned everyone concerned? Had she had autopsies performed on the deceased crew and passengers?

“They’ll be asking if I filled out some form in quadruplicate next,” Ky said. “They should have a list from the mercenaries of who was put aboard, and already know that forensic pathologist is not one of the specialties listed. Of course we didn’t do autopsies. We know exactly what killed them. I killed them.”

That question didn’t show up for another hour, during which they asked a host of other questions Ky couldn’t answer. She hoped they’d start offering her some useful information soon, such as when they planned to intercept and remove her passengers, something like that.

“Wonder who that is,” Lee said. Ky looked at the longscan display, where two new beacons had lit up.

“That’s an odd place to downjump into,” Ky said. “What’s the downjump turbulence give us?”

“No downjump turbulence. It’s like he was running quiet, beacon off, and then turned it on.”

“Like us, in fact. And we know who else in the system can manipulate beacons.”

“Going to warn them?” Corson asked.