Victory Conditions Page 16

  “Yup. Your suit locker’s by the hatch.”

  Ky suited up, wondering who had moved her personal suit from her former quarters, then eased into the command seat.

  “Let your arms lie naturally on the armrests,” Dowitch said. He touched the controls of a remote; the chair seemed to squirm under Ky, gently lifting, falling, nudging…“How’s that?”

  “Very comfortable,” Ky said.

  “Setting one,” he said. The seat quit moving. “That’s your default. Now look to the right. Good—and to the left. Now pretend you see something right in front that you want to point out—yes, just that much movement. Now I’m going to unlock it again. Lean back—you’re tired; there’s a break in the battle, and you need to relax, shift, unkink your muscles, but you’re not sleeping—yes.”

  Ky leaned back, stretching her legs out a little; the seat moved, supporting her, easing her back.

  “I’m going to start the massage function,” he said. “You tell me how much is too much—”

  In another five minutes, he had the seat’s support functions set for her.

  “Now the displays. I know you’ll practice, but I want to take you through them first. Left hand, thumb knob: that’s your translucency. Right hand, thumb knob, lift and lower the canopy when it’s not automatic. If it won’t open, there’s a reason: don’t fight it.” He waited until she nodded, then went on. “Now: lower the canopy.”

  Ky lowered it; in front of her, a dark field, like space itself. She thumbed the left-hand control, and it faded until it was wholly translucent; she could see Dowitch watching her.

  “How’s the sound?” he asked. It sounded as if he were inside the shield; she said so. “Good. Your scans can be chosen as the primary data from any of the stations, or as an integrated view of all of them. I’ve put a simulation in the CCC scan units, so we don’t panic Station Security by setting off live scan this close. Scan controls are left hand, communications are right hand. You have armrest controls, but you can also choose point, touch, or gaze direction.”

  In front of her, hanging in the air, miniature scan screens came up. Ky switched from one mode to another. She could enlarge any screen; she could combine screens. In the simulation, the familiar acceleration cones—orange for approaching, blue for receding—showed ships in motion. She hunted through control hierarchies and found how to mark ship icons as enemy, unknown, friend.

  “How much of this can be controlled by my implant?” she asked.

  “Probably all of it,” he said. “We just need to get your implant and this set of subroutines melded. Now—if you find the visual background confusing, try reducing the translucency.”

  Ky thumbed the control again, and the canopy slowly darkened; the displays seemed brighter now, and she could still see Dowitch—she continued until the displays seemed to hang in space as vast as that between stars.

  “Sound still good?” he asked.

  “Fine,” Ky said. “I’ve never seen anything this elaborate—”

  “The command chair’s based on what they use at Moray,” he said. “You’ve got direct feeds for communication—we’re still figuring out how to connect the onboard ansible, though. It’s easy in the other ships, but here we want to tie it in to the one on the bridge but have independent use optional.”

  “Have you asked Toby?”

  “Your cousin’s ward? No…I thought he was still supposed to be restricted.”

  “I can spring him—and he knows everything about ansible hookups.”

  “Fine…but for now let’s go over the safety features.” Dowitch explained the conditions under which the CCC would close automatically from the rest of the ship, and when the command seat would seal. Temperature, pressure, acceleration, atmosphere: some of those, Ky realized, would not be met unless Vanguard blew. She was not going to think about that.

  Back out of the command seat’s enclosure, Ky called Stella and told her they needed someone—Toby, for preference—right away, to link the onboard ansible.

  “And while I have you—what about ansibles for spares, and to take to Moray?”

  “You’d have to clear that with Moscoe Defense,” Stella said. “We’re putting them in as fast as we can.” She started explaining more than Ky wanted to hear about the difficulties involved in tooling up for a completely new product and maintaining quality control as production scaled up through set points that required unit expansion. Ky tried to listen patiently, but finally interrupted.

  “Bottom line, how many units can we have?”

  “I just told you,” Stella said. “It depends on Moscoe Defense.”

  At least there Ky dealt with someone who didn’t want to explain everything, who had answers.

  “Ansible units for Moray?” he said. “Sure—that’s been dealt with at the policy level. Moray asked for a demo model but will purchase enough for their new-built ships, and pay in ships. It’s lucky your Slotter Key contingent are privateers; they have more cargo capacity. For safety, we’d prefer to ship no more than five per vessel.”

  “You’re sending that many?” Ky asked. “What about technicians to install them?”

  “Oh, there’s a manual now, standard format training materials. Anyone who can install a standard comunit can do it. We’re providing technical assistance as each is installed, and after that each ship’s communications specialist will be able to help install others at Moray. All you have to do is give the orders.”

  After the struggle to keep her few ships supplied, this seemed unreal…surely it wouldn’t continue. The rest of supply—food, munitions, water, cultures for environmental chambers—went almost as smoothly, but only because, Ky suspected, her newly commissioned Supply Division used the same tactics as they had in their privateer days. Gordon Martin, on Vanguard, had counterparts on all the other privateer ships and on the Cascadian ships committed to their fleet. Martin had not wanted to command Supply; a Cascadian officer, Commander Michel Moscoe-Corian, held that post, and supplies poured onto the docks in what Ky considered astonishing profusion.

  “How are we paying for all this?” she asked him one day.

  “Paying?” he said. One of his bushy eyebrows rose, and a sly grin crooked the corner of his mouth. “Did you think you were supposed to pay for something?”

  Ky grinned back. “Are you trying to give us a bad rep, Commander?”

  “No, ma’am. Never that. But when Moscoe Defense tells me to be sure the ships are fully supplied—well, I’m just following orders, see? They didn’t give me a budget, exactly.”

  “A free hand, then?” Ky asked.

  “Not exactly,” he said. “More like—prove it’s necessary. Anything doubtful, get approval for. Now—just between you and me—I might not have the same definition of doubtful they do. And they know you’re not trained by them—and over half your ships aren’t ours, so we don’t necessarily know what they need.”

  “Did you ever consider privateering?” Ky asked.

  “Me? My family would have had a fit,” he said. “And this way there’s no question about the legality of what I’m doing.”

  Ky laughed. “It would be rude to suggest anything else, wouldn’t it?”

  “Yes, Admiral, it would. I’m glad you recognize that, because I would hate to see such a fine officer err in matters of professional courtesy.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind,” Ky said. “I’m supposed to meet a Major Anson in about an hour, something about personnel transfers—”

  “Bobby Anson? You’ll like him. You need more crew, don’t you?”

  “Yes.” She had been short of crew even before reaching Cascadia, where several more of the civilians on Sharra’s Gift and Vanguard had asked to leave. With need for a fleet staff and crew in the CCC, she’d had to ask Moscoe Defense to help.

  “He’ll do you right. People are clamoring for a chance to be on your ship.”

  “I want to talk to my mother,” Zori said to Stella during breakfast, the day after Ky’s visit. She had
wakened with that thought foremost. Whatever her mother said to her, she herself had to try to make up for years of neglect.

  “Are you sure?” Stella asked.

  “Yes. What Ky said—it’s not all about me. I’m hurting her more by not seeing her.” Zori took a swallow of juice. “I didn’t think of that. Is she at our—the house?”

  “No, she’s staying at Sprucewood; it’s in the directory.” Stella looked as if she wanted to say more but hesitated. Then she went on. “She’s been talking to her relatives, Zori, and she’s had some disappointments. She wanted to move back downplanet—”

  “Where the family estate is,” Zori said, nodding. She looked at Toby. “I don’t want to—I don’t want to leave Toby.”

  “I don’t think you need to worry about it,” Stella said. “She’ll tell you, I’m sure, but her family’s being difficult. Something about your father and the estates.” She glanced at the clock. “I’ve got to get to the office; feel free to invite her over here.”

  Zori stared at the contact number a long time before calling.

  “Zori, I don’t blame you.” Her mother wore a simple blue dress and no jewelry.

  “I blame myself. I should have seen…I should have known…”

  “And then he would have hurt you. Zori, you were a tiny child…it was better as it was.”

  “I can’t believe that. You were hurt—”

  “You don’t want to believe that. Zori, listen to me. This was not the worst life, and you can have a better one. Maybe with Toby, maybe with someone else. You deserve it.”

  “And what about you? I should take care of you—”

  “No.” Her mother shook her head. “I am an adult. It’s my job to take care of myself. I’ll be fine—”

  “You won’t…what will you do?”

  Her mother laughed, a genuine laugh. “For one thing, I won’t let you run my life…Zori, relax. Please. It’s true that my family are angry with me right now, and they don’t want me back home—back onplanet. But I still have some resources. I’ll get by, and you’ll finish school—”

  “You should move in here,” Zori said. “Stella would let you—”

  “No, you should move in with me,” her mother said. “Not because I want to keep you away from Toby—he is indeed a very nice boy, quite suitable—but because you and I are a family, all we have left of what we had. Yet we don’t know each other that well, and we need to.”

  Zori thought about it. “Would we go back to the house?”

  “No. Never. That life is over. I’ve had all your things moved into storage; we can rent an apartment—”

  She didn’t want to move. She wanted to stay near Toby forever. She liked Stella. But it was hard, too, living in the same apartment and yet not ever doing any of the things they weren’t supposed to do. And Stella probably wanted her to move out…

  “I won’t force you, Zori, but I think it would help you. And me.”

  “I think so, too,” Zori said. She reached out, and her mother was there, holding her, both of them crying a little, but more in relief than pain.

  Stella, at the office, stared at her comunit and bit her lip. Zori was talking to her mother. She, Stella, was not talking to her own mother. She had to. She knew she had to. The white-hot rage she’d felt when she’d first learned of her true parentage had long since died down to a sullen glow.

  But that still left the dilemma. How honest could she be with a woman who had not been honest with her? She no longer wanted to hurt Helen, but healing the breach between them would require honesty from both of them. Could Helen stand that?

  She checked the time zone for Vatta headquarters on Slotter Key. Early evening now. Helen might be out to dinner, or shopping or…home.

  She could not let Zori outdo her in courage. She opened a circuit to the system ansible and placed the call.

  As the work on Vanguard neared completion, Ky’s days grew ever busier. She needed to be in at least three places at once; she wanted to get the ships that were spaceworthy into training, she had to be available for conferences with Moray and Moscoe government officials, and she was sure that the admiral’s presence would speed work on Vanguard. Argelos and Pettygrew, because they had been in combat using the shipboard ansibles, took over much of the training. Ky had daily reports, and logged in by ansible whenever she could, but she knew she needed experience in commanding from the CCC. Yet she could not spare the time to be ferried to and from the dockyard to sit in the command seat while the others worked on their assignments.

  Finally, Vanguard came back to Cascadia. Ky moved her gear back aboard. Her formerly spacious quarters were now the size of the captain’s cabin on Gary Tobai, but she didn’t care about that. She wanted to run an exercise from the CCC as soon as possible. Though Turek had not sent another broadcast, she knew his next attack could not be far away.

  “Those ships at Moray will be within days of completion by the time we can get there,” Ky said to her assembled captains, some on Cascadia Station and some attending by ansible. “We can’t afford more than two days of exercises; they’ll be intense. We can sleep in FTL.” A few groans, but no real resistance. In the presence of Cascadian ships and officers, the privateers had become competitive ship handlers, determined to show that privateers weren’t sloppy merchanters. She passed out the updated information she had on Moray’s own defense system, the basic tactics used, the contact codes they’d been given. Moray Defense used clusters: two maniples per cluster, a cluster per sector, scattered around the system and dependent on the system ansible for rapid communication. “Moscoe’s given us the entire Sector Twelve to play in; we’ll rendezvous there at 1800.”

  “Today?” Coufal asked.

  “Today,” Ky said. It was 1400. “Dismissed.”

  She was as exhausted as the others when she finally gave the order to form up for jump to Moray System. But in those two days she had come to feel that the forty-six ships under her command were functioning as a fighting unit, even the transports. Moray’s last report before they entered FTL was that construction proceeded normally and no threat showed.

  “A lot can happen in twenty days,” Hugh Pritang said.

  “We’re as ready as we can be,” Ky said.

  CHAPTER

  TEN

  Moray System, Tobados Yards: Military Division

  Lozar Phittanji, Assembler Third on the second shift of number thirty dock, headed home at the end of the shift with nothing more on his mind than whether Jari, his wife, had brought home a fish for the betrothal feast. Though he would never rise above Assembler Third—as a devout Miznarii, he refused to consider a cranial implant, and more senior grades required implants—he had a comfortable life, especially now that ship orders were up.

  Besides, he had that small but very welcome stipend from the Faithful, making the betrothal feast possible. And for nothing, really—for nothing but attaching a few tiny datadots to each ship he worked on.

  “It is nothing harmful,” the Amadh of their local congregation had told him. “It will only tell Miznarii who have a little reader that the ship was partly built by Miznarii, that’s all. You can see for yourself.”

  Lozar had taken the reader he was offered and passed it over the dot, and the message came up—the quotation from the Book that ordered the people to use their own brains and not partake of machinery, and the words “This vessel contains work made by the mind and hand of True Humans, the Faithful.”

  So Lozar had attached many such dots to the ships he’d worked on without anyone noticing: one near the main hatch, one near the bridge. Yes, it was against the rules to attach any extraneous materials to the ship, but what harm could it do? Even if the infidels had readers and found the dots, even if they determined who had placed them, his conscience was clear.

  “Hey, Lozar, wait up!” Lozar glanced back. Gerry and David, both on his shift but non-Miznarii, were almost jogging toward him. Though they were senior, thanks to their disgusting implants, he had come t
o consider them friends.

  “Didn’t I hear you say your daughter’s betrothal dinner was tonight?” Gerry asked.

  “Man, you can’t face something like that right after work. C’mon. We’ll stand you a round at the Rigger’s Friend. Least we can do.” David patted Lozar’s shoulder.

  “But Jari told me to come straight home—”

  “Wives always do,” David said. “Bet you she doesn’t really expect it, though. Mine never did. You’re facing the in-laws, right? You need a little fortification. Jari doesn’t really want you around when she’s putting the final touches to the dinner. What time is it for, anyway?”

  “Twenty hundred…later than usual because it’s formal…”

  “Then you have plenty of time.” David hung an arm across Lozar’s shoulders. “And I promise, we’ll see you get home in time to change and all that.”

  Despite David’s assurance, Lozar left the Rigger’s Friend so late that he had to take the shorter back way through a service corridor—not strictly legal—and Jari glared when he came in.

  She was not nearly as annoyed as the substitute candy salesman at the cart parked in D-ring, Corridor 34—on the direct route between Lozar’s work site and his apartment, the route he took almost every night.

  Paddy Kendelmann looked at the daily statistics with half a mind on his son’s school performance. He’d paid for the enhanced student module for the boy’s implant, but Paul still struggled with math, and the teacher talked about special testing and learning disabilities. Lisa had been furious, blaming the teacher and Paddy alternately. If only he’d been put in the other class; if only Paddy had bought that enhanced module the year before…

  Now, that was odd. He pushed aside the problem of Paul’s math performance and squinted at the readout, where Dispatch had flagged certain entries. On a station this size, twenty deaths in a standard day, plus or minus three, was about right. Most were natural or accidental, the causes obvious: the very old, the sick, the accidents that will happen anytime serious construction work is going on, the occasional drunken brawl or domestic dispute ending in death-by-intent, though not nearly the level it used to be.