Trading in Danger (40 page)

She felt—except when she tried to feel guilty and bad—quite happy. Almost—though she knew this was dangerous—smugly happy. She had had a horrible few months, starting with that morning at the Academy, and yet here she was. People had tried to kill her. She had nearly died. And she was alive and they—at least some of them—were dead. Hal hated her—well, that solved any worry about whether she should ever try to contact him. Mandy Rocher… was a nasty little piece of work, and would get his comeuppance someday. She didn’t even care that she might not know about it when that happened.

They arrived in Belinta’s system four days ahead of schedule—that new FTL drive really was superior—and Ky checked in with the Belinta station. She expected a problem because of the beacon change.

“Vatta Transport
Gary Tobai
, Kylara Vatta commanding, request inbound vector to Belinta station.”

“
Gary Tobai
, approved vector relaying to your navigator… Captain Vatta, you have ansible messages in queue. Will you accept them now, or wait until your arrival?”

“I’ll wait,” she said. One would be her father, no doubt. She told herself she didn’t care what he said, but she knew she lied.

The ship eased in, day after day. Ky reassured the Economic Development Bureau that she had their ag equipment, every single tractor and implement that could be crammed into their cargo holds. She spoke to the Slotter Key consul in carefully guarded terms about the situation on Sabine, though with the ansibles back up—as the “stations available” list made clear—he could well find out for himself. She made contact with the ISC ship which was patrolling Belinta’s outer reaches and carefully did not ask if they thought Belinta’s ansible platform was at particular risk.

And finally they arrived, docking neatly at the station. Ky arranged for her escort to meet her at the station downside, and for a room at the Captains’ Guild. She planned to accept her ansible mail before talking to Customs, but Customs was already on the horn, demanding her presence. She put on her dress uniform and went out into the dockside area.

“Captain Vatta—it really is you.” Not just the Customs Inspector she’d met before, but two men in the uniform of the Economic Development Bureau.

“That’s right,” Ky said.

“You bought a new ship?”

“No—we ran into a bit of trouble at Sabine, and changed the ship ID chip.”

“You weren’t… doing anything illegal, were you?”

“Not at all,” Ky said. She realized suddenly that changing ship chips was the sort of thing pirates did in storycubes. “Someone broke into our beacon, stole the original ship chip, and we had to reregister under a new name. I have the paperwork.”

“Oh. Very well. And the inventory of the imports?”

“All here. As you’ll see, I bought you new equipment from FarmPower—”

“Why not used?”

“They aren’t selling used there anymore. They’ve got a war on; the used equipment is all gone. Anyway, all these machines were purchased new on Sabine; I have the inventories ready for you.”

“Then we can start unloading today—”

“Not until your payment clears,” Ky said.

The EDB representatives scowled at her. “You think we would cheat you?”

“Our contract calls for payment prior to offloading,” Ky said. “I’m sorry, but I’m required to adhere to the terms of the contract.”

“But we have to inspect it—”

“Of course,” Ky said. “I’ll escort you to the cargo bays…”

There was scarcely room to move in the cargo bays, with diassembled pieces of equipment stowed carefully to make the most use of the available cubage. Ky had to use a hardcopy of the inventory, but the EDB personnel had implants to compare the visible serial numbers.

“How long will it take to unload this?” one of them asked.

“I don’t know,” Ky said frankly. “My cargomaster was killed in the trouble over near Sabine—”

“Brawling in a bar,” said the other EDB man with a sneer.

“No,” Ky said. “Taken as hostage by a pirate who had been interned on my ship, and killed when I suppressed the mutiny. That’s why I renamed the ship for him. I consider him a hero.”

“Oh. Sorry.” A moment of embarrassed silence, then: “But how long did it take to load?”

“WithoutGary—three days. It was already disassembled, though…” She felt tired even before she started, but gave a quick and incomplete recital of what had happened, at least as far as the cargo was concerned.

“You mean it was out there in space, unprotected, for days and days?”

“It was in the same kind of vacuum it would have experienced in any cargo ship’s hold,” Ky said. “FarmPower assured me that there was no need to keep the holds aired up, or at livable temperature, during transport, and I also have their assurance that ambient radiation while outside the ship would not shorten the working life.” She was gladQuincyhad thought to ask for that. “Now, as soon as the credits are in my account, you can start unloading…”

They dithered another hour or so, but finally authorized the transfer of the agreed amount into her local account, payable without tax in credits. Ky handed over the inventory, toldQuincyto supervise the unloading crews, and at last had time to look at her accumulated messages.

As expected, there was one from her father. A full broadband audiovisual that must have cost… she didn’t want to think. She settled down in her cabin, braced for the worst.

“Kylara, I’m so sorry,” was the first thing she heard. Her eyes filled with tears, despite herself. Her father looked exhausted and distraught. “Furman is an idiot, and I wouldn’t have sent him if anyone else had been close enough. He was supposed to help you, not cause you more trouble. I’m sorryGarydied—I haven’t heard all about it yet, but I’m sure he died trying to help you in some way. I know you were injured… Ky, I hope you know that I—that Vatta—were trying to do everything we could to find you, help you, whatever happened. And all I know now is that you must be at Belinta, to have accessed this message—” His voice wavered, then steadied. “Ky, please call me. I’ve set up a prepaid call; you may not need that option, but just in case… please. Please call me. Anytime.”

Not the worst, then. Not angry, not like Furman. But—did she want to call home, like a teenager who’s gotten herself in a fix and has to call Daddy for help? She had coped with the fix—she had coped with death, with injury. She didn’t need him that way.

But he needed her. That tremor in his voice, those circles under his eyes, were not faked.

She went to the bridge and placed the call, using her own now-fatter account. This time the telltales switched promptly from standby to ready to searching to active connection. A brief delay, with a screen message of “reconnecting: mobile unit.” That meant he had the skullphone on.

He answered immediately; the visual was a bouncing green blur, what the skullphone’s visual pickup faced. “Yes?” His voice sounded annoyed; Ky flinched inwardly.

“Dad—it’sKy.”

A final blur, then motion stopped; the pickup stared at what she could now see was one of the back roads in a tik grove. “Ky! Are you all right?” Not annoyance now, but some combination of eagerness and pleading that saddened her.

“I’m fine, Dad. I’m at Belinta’s orbital station… you knew that, you left the message…” She was babbling, trying to give him time.

“Yes.” His breath huffed out; she could almost see his shoulders relax. “You made it… not that I didn’t think you would, but…”

Only a few weeks ago, it seemed, she had been glad to lean into him, feel his comforting arm around her. Now it felt awkward, and not only because he was light-years away. Other kinds of years away, maybe.

“I don’t know what you’ve heard about what happened,” Ky said.

“Not enough,” her father said. “Not nearly enough. I knew you’d gone rogue—Quincy’s probably told you by now we expected something like that on one of your early voyages…” It was not quite a question.

“Yes,” Ky said. “She and Gary—” Her throat closed; she swallowed and went on. “I knew on the way to Sabine. But they thought it was all right.”

“Of course,” her father said. “Trade and profit. I was glad for you; it meant—I thought—that you weren’t completely shattered by what the Academy did.”

“Well… the FTL sealed unit failed on downshift into Sabine—”

“It was supposed to be safe—Quincyswore that ship was safe enough for you—” His voice sounded angry again.

“Not her fault,” Ky said quickly. “Something she couldn’t anticipate. We think it’s because there was no cargo on the way to Sabine—we wanted maximum cubage for the pickup. Cargo mass had been damping what was going wrong. Captain’s decision.”

“All right,” he said.

“So then, I was having trouble getting financing for both the equipment and the repairs, and the political situation was getting worse. I was actually trying to call you when the ansibles went out.”

“You were… good girl!”

He hadn’t realized she’d do the sensible thing? He should have known that… She pushed from her mind the reluctance she’d had to call for help. “I’d have reached you, too, but the Captains’ Guild wouldn’t let me put the call through, because they wouldn’t charge the Vatta account.”

“What!”

“I’d done the Belinta deal as a private contract, not to risk Vatta Transport’s image if something went wrong. Besides, my instructions were to take the ship from Belinta to Leonora to Lastway. I didn’t know if—what would happen if—”

“We have the highest-rated category of account at the Captains’ Guild,” her father growled. “Damn them! They have no reason—didn’t you tell them who you were? Not that it should make a difference… Any Vatta captain should be able to—”

“Dad, I told them who I was, and it made no difference. But a war was starting. Maybe that was it…”

“They’ll hear from me—from us—,” her father said. She could hear his harsh breathing. Then it steadied. “Sorry,Ky.But when I think how scared I—we—were. If we’d gotten that message, at least I’d have known…”

“Well, the excitement all came later,” Ky said. Before he could reply, she told him what had come next—that she had broken the ship free of the station, moved away from the planet to await events, been hailed and then boarded by mercenaries. How much to tell about her injuries? As little as possible; she was fine. She talked quickly, keeping the recital “clean and lean” as she’d been taught at the Academy. The new contract, the arrival of hostages, the mercenaries’ departure, her decision to cut rations, the mutiny.

“That’s whenGarywas killed, right?” her father asked.

“Yes,” Ky said. She wanted—she didn’t want—to tell him the details. If she told it all, what would he think of her, his daughter, his own child who could stand by and see a friend killed, and then kill—not once but repeatedly—herself? She certainly couldn’t tell him about the discovery—at once terrifying and exhilarating—that she had
enjoyed
killing.

Into that pause he said, “It must have been hard,Ky.I’m sorry you had to face that kind of thing. I’m so glad you lived, that you saved the rest of your crew. I’m so proud of you…”

“Thank you,” Ky said. “I… can’t talk about it right now.”

“I understand,” he said at once. He didn’t understand. He couldn’t understand. She wondered suddenly if he—the big, warm, safe, father she had grown up with—had ever seen anyone die, had ever killed someone. He cleared his throat, signaling a determined change to another topic. “I have to ask—your Aunt Gracie Lane wants to know—if you’ve eaten all the fruitcakes yet.”

Fruitcakes. Aunt Gracie Lane must be the most single-minded person in the entire universe if she knew anything about what had happened and was worrying about those hideous fruitcakes.

“Two of them, Dad,” Ky said. “We shared them out during the—when we were stretching the food supply.”

“You still have the third? You know, it would make her really happy, and get her off my back, if I could assure her that you had finished all three. She keeps after me about it, telling me to remind you to serve them in thin, ladylike slices…”

Ky tried not to roll her eyes, hard as it was. Fruitcakes! “All right. Tell you what—we’ll have it today. As soon as the cargo’s offloaded, I’ll tell the crew we’re having a party and we’ll serve Aunt Gracie’s fruitcake.” Some of them actually liked the horrible stuff.

“Cut it yourself, she tells me,” her father said.

“All right, I’ll cut it myself. And I’m sending you a written report—about Gary’s funeral, and so on, and some paperwork on the contract…”

“That’s fine,” her father said. “Look—I can see by the status line that you’re making this call out of your own pocket, but remember that you’ve got a credit for a call to me anytime.”

“Yes, I will. Thank you.”

“And—when you know what your plans are—please let me know.”

Plans? She had no idea what her plans were; she had cargo for Leonora and Lastway, but most of it was spec.

“I’ll let you know,” she said. “Good-bye, Dad.”

“Farewell, Kylara. You’re always in our hearts.”

Traditional, and she was blinking back tears as she cut the connection.

So now what? The Belinta station cargo handlers were unloading. She could plan the party, and then, next dayshift, go planetside and see… what there was to see.

“It’s not that bad, Ky,” Quincy said, and Alene, Mehar, and Lee nodded. “I’ve always liked fruitcake.”

Ky shrugged. “All right. I wouldn’t make you eat it, but if you want to—and I did promise my father that we’d cut it today.”

She put the fruitcake—even heavier than the first two, she thought—on a cake plate, and got out the cake knife and cake fork, each embossed with the Vatta Transport seal. Before, they had just cut off hunks and weighed them… but now she put the fork into the cake and poked the tip of the knife in. Hard, dense, difficult… the blade slid down, reluctantly it seemed.

And stopped. Ky pressed harder. Nothing happened. She moved the blade over—had Aunt Gracie’s vision failed? Had she put in gravel instead of dried fruits and nuts?—and tried again. This time the tip of the blade wouldn’t go all the way in. Ky wiggled it around, and suddenly it sank to the plate. That slice worked; she moved over, away from the first attempt, and cut and removed a thin sliver, the thickness Auntie Grace would approve.