Engaging the Enemy Read online

  In the dark hours between midnight and dawn, the presidential palace was dark except for the duty rooms: communications, security. The President, in his comfortable bed, had finally fallen asleep; his wife, in the adjoining bedroom, snored loudly, but thick walls and doors muffled those annoying rasps and gurgles.

  He woke to the sound of a comunit chime, his heart pounding. Who would call at this hour? No calls should have been passed through; his valet should have woken him…his hand was scrabbling on the bedside console when he realized that it was his internal unit, his skullphone.

  “Look under your pillow,” a voice whispered. The line went dead.

  Every hair on his body stood up; he was drenched in cold sweat. There could be nothing under his pillow—he always turned his pillows before he went to sleep—but he could not ignore that voice. He turned on the light and lifted his pillow.

  The data chip, hardly larger than his thumbnail, gave him no clue. It was there, in that place where it could not be, a tiny, shiny, terrifying presence. He had a chip reader in his room, of course, but he felt a great reluctance to use it. What if this wasn’t really a data chip, but something else, something explosive? What if it was toxic and had already poisoned him? The sweat trickling down his sides stank…surely he didn’t smell that bad all the time.

  When he looked around the room, nothing else was out of place. He heard no sound he should not hear, but his heart was pounding so loudly that he could not be sure.

  He had to get hold of himself. He had to calm down and think. If he called in the security forces, they would wake up everyone, create a huge mess, and probably not find out anything useful. He knew who was behind this, whether it could be proven or not: Grace Vatta. The old hag was crazy; she’d been in a mental hospital at one time, and they should never have let her out. He just had to find a way to neutralize her.

  _______

  Gracie Lane Vatta smiled to herself as she watched sweat trickle down the President’s face, his ribs, his back. His security should have detected the tap into their own surveillance system years ago, but they hadn’t. Now, would he put that chip in the reader, or not? Would he call his security squad? She had plans for each possibility, plans he would find as unsettling as the chip under his pillow. No doubt he would have plans, too, when he calmed down. She knew he was smart enough to suspect her, but she was confident that her plans were better than his plans. She’d had longer to work on them.

  A telltale lit on her work board. With one eye on the screen showing the President, Gracie switched that channel to full recording and answered the call. “Found something,” a male voice said. Gracie ran the scan through her voice files and her mouth quirked. Master Sergeant MacRobert, Slotter Key Spaceforce Academy. Should she use his name and startle him?

  “Identify, please,” she said.

  “Spaceforce Academy,” he said. “I think you know who I am and I’d rather not have my name used. I hear you’re looking into the late unpleasantness. In detail.”

  “Yes.”

  “That Miznarii kid who got your youngster in trouble—”

  She repressed a gasp. “Yes?”

  “He had contact from someone who claimed to be a Vatta. Ever hear of someone named Osman?”

  “Osman Vatta, yes.” She remembered Osman all too well. She’d tried to convince the Vatta higher-ups at the time to have him killed, but she was fresh out of the asylum and that had led to threats of having her recommitted. If Osman was involved, that explained a lot. Osman had known about the bunkers under corporate headquarters, for instance.

  “He is a Vatta?” The voice—MacRobert, no doubt about it—sounded uncertain.

  “Unfortunately, yes. A most unpleasant piece of work, and long since kicked out, but a Vatta. So Osman paid the student to get Ky in trouble?”

  “What he said was that Osman was sympathetic to the Miznarii feelings about biomodification, and suggested that Ky, as a Vatta, would be more likely to help him get contact with a cleric so that he could tell his story.”

  “What is he, stupid? The boy, I mean.”

  “He’s not the brightest cadet we’ve ever had, but not actually stupid. Inexperienced. Quite genuinely religious, the fervent kind. Osman also told him that Ky wouldn’t get in trouble because she was a Vatta.”

  “So it wasn’t malicious on the boy’s part?”

  “Not against Ky, at least. He was shocked when she disappeared. He claimed she was the only person at the Academy who befriended him and was nice to him.”

  “How’d you find this out?”

  “He…er…didn’t graduate.” MacRobert’s voice was grim now. “No matter what was said, Ky was a popular cadet, and no one else was willing to put the time into this fellow she’d been tutoring. He was pretty much shunned. He…er…committed suicide.”

  “After telling you all this?”

  “No, after writing it all down, as a religious duty. Luckily I got hold of it before a Miznarii chaplain did. I…er…edited it a bit, but I made a copy. Thought you might want it.”

  “What I want is some idea of why you’re doing this,” Grace said. “I suspect you’re committing several breaches of regulations—”

  “Spaceforce didn’t do its job,” MacRobert said. “Somebody got to somebody, and I want to know who and how. I think you’re likelier to find out.”

  “We should meet,” Grace said.

  “No.”

  She had expected that and had her answer ready. “We need to talk longer and more openly than we can over any com line, no matter how secure. Either you trust me or you don’t.”

  A long pause; then: “Why should I trust you?”

  “For the same reason I should trust you,” Grace said. “We need each other; it would serve neither of us to harm the other. You care about Spaceforce—”

  “And Slotter Key,” he said quickly.

  “Fine. And so do I. Vatta and Slotter Key both.”

  “You’re on a no-contact list,” MacRobert said.

  “So are you: Vatta was told not to contact anyone at Spaceforce Academy.” Grace said. “Your point is? We need to meet. Do you ever get leave?”

  “In seventeen days,” he said. “Graduation’s over, there’s the cleanup period, then I get ten days before the new class arrives.”

  “What sport?” Grace said.

  “Sport?”

  She let her irritation hiss out on her breath. “Pick a sport,” she said. “Something you do anyway.”

  “Oh. Er…fishing. Up in the Samplin hills; I usually rent a cottage on one of the streams near Tera Lake.”

  “Fine,” Grace said. “Just do that. I prefer dry flies.”

  “I’m a wet-fly man myself,” he said.

  “Well, then. Until.” She closed the connection.

  On her visual, the President got up, went to the bathroom, came back with a glass of water, fumbled in a drawer, and unpeeled an orange pill. “Now that’s a mistake,” Grace murmured to herself. “You’re going to be drowsy in the morning…” He had left the chip under his pillow. Another mistake. If the drug made him forget it, and his house staff found it…she grinned, imagining the furor when Security got hold of it. She watched until he was clearly asleep, snoring, then played with the room’s surveillance equipment, inserting a shadowy figure that moved to and from the President’s bed from a closet. They’d find that on the daily review, and whoever was supposed to be monitoring the night shift would be in deep trouble.

  Then she reviewed the rental records of holiday cottages on likely fishing streams near Tera Lake, and found that MacRobert had booked through Murrian Holiday Rentals for the past twelve years. In their records, his first preference was Greyfalls, second was Over-brook, and the third was Greentop. All were on Middle Run. He had a current reservation for Greyfalls; the other two were also reserved already. The nearest available property was Brookings Manor, “a working farm with sizable residence suitable for bed-and-breakfast accommodations. Includes fishing rights on Middl
e Run within walking distance. Available for seasonal or long-term lease, or purchase.” It wasn’t a bad location at all, and it might serve displaced Vatta family members as an interim residence-headquarters.

  After some haggling with the Larger Properties section of Murrian Real Estate, Grace arranged a year’s lease in the name of Stavros’ widow, who had—understandably—gone back to using her maiden name. A widow and her relatives retiring to a remote country estate would raise no eyebrows. Helen was presently living in one of the Stamarkos homes; that couldn’t go on for too long anyway.

  It was so satisfying when one action solved more than one problem. Grace stretched and let herself drop into sleep for a short nap. The one good thing about being old was that she didn’t mind not sleeping through the night.

  Ky Vatta looked around the bridge of Fair Kaleen shortly before they were due to drop back into normal space in the Garth-Lindheimer System. Her crew had removed all the evidence of the pirates’ occupation except what had been locked away in case evidence was needed. The weeks in FTL flight had given them plenty of time to inventory cargo, purge and reinitialize the computers, and make her a healthy ship for decent crew to ship on. With a new paint job, Fair Kaleen could be the flagship of a new Vatta fleet, proof that Vatta Transport, Ltd., was still a going concern.

  Or she could be a privateer, proof that Vatta Transport, Ltd., was a going concern with teeth.

  When they emerged into the Garth-Lindheimer System, her ship’s excellent scan showed nothing suspicious in the system except that the system ansibles were not functioning. Without ansible function, they had no real-time communication with Garth-Lindheimer Traffic Control, so Ky entered their ship’s information in response to the automated beacon’s request. The convoy, as expected, had emerged ahead of her ship, with the Mackensee escorts positioned to guard either flank. She saw less traffic than expected, and all but two local. Those two carried normal beacon IDs; one had already jumped out by the time they received its signal.

  She hailed their escort. “When we dock, the other ships will owe me their percentage for safe transit. Under the circumstances, I could sign that over to you, if you’d like. Or have you made separate arrangements with them?”

  Lieutenant Commander Johannson shook his head. “No, Captain Vatta. They still have a contract with you, not with us. It’s a legal mess at the moment. Let’s keep it simple. They pay you, as they agreed. You pay us, as we agreed. Then we part company.” Forever, his tone implied.

  “I would be glad to supply a statement for your command, if it would help,” Ky said.

  “I’m afraid it wouldn’t,” Johannson said. “Any statement by you would be considered contaminated. We’ll just take our scolding when we do finally get home.”

  “I’m sorry we’ve been such a problem to you,” Ky said. She’d had leisure, during the long transit, to realize just how foolish she’d been, and how far the mercenaries had bent their rules to save her and her ship. Should she admit that? “You were right,” she said. “About the trap, about…everything. I can’t regret taking out Osman, but there must’ve been a less risky way to do it—”

  “I hope you keep that in mind the next time you’re in a tight spot,” Johannson said. His voice had warmed a trifle.

  “I will,” Ky said. “And I appreciate your standing by us and saving our skins.”

  “Some skins are worth saving,” Johannson said, and then cut the contact.

  Ky stared at the blank screen a moment. What was that about? Her skin? Vatta Transport’s? Then she shook her head and called Stella on Gary Tobai. “How do you like being a ship captain?”

  “I haven’t done anything fatal so far,” Stella said. “I think Quincy could run this ship herself, though I have been studying hard. But how are we going to dock without a pilot? I can’t bring her in, and Quincy says she can’t. She’s not a licensed pilot, and anyway she doesn’t know how.”

  That was a problem Ky hadn’t thought of. Legally, they should not approach within two kilometers of any facility without a licensed pilot aboard. Legally, every ship was supposed to have a licensed pilot aboard, too, but most orbital stations had a pilot service for those whose pilots were incapacitated for some reason. Still, that could be expensive, and it was also a route by which strangers could intrude. She would prefer not to trust a pilot she didn’t know.

  Ky glanced over at her own pilot. “Lee, how do you feel about a suited transfer back to the Gary to bring her into dock?”

  He grimaced. “I can…if that’s the only way. Maybe we’ll be lucky and this station will have a tug or pilot service.”

  “They list one,” Ky said. “But after that bonded security service guard tried to kill me, I’m not inclined to trust a commercial service.”

  “There’s a scooter down in number three hold,” Rafe said.

  “That’s better than swimming,” Lee said. “But you’d have to wait for me to come back out and bring you in—assuming you’re sending the Gary in first.”

  “I was planning to,” Ky said. “With us out here armed to the teeth, she’s less likely to run into trouble. I hope.”

  Next, Ky talked to the other captains in the convoy, explaining that her contract with Mackensee would end when they docked. “I will open a new account as soon as we’re close enough; you can pay into that.”

  “But we want to go on,” Captain Sindarin of Beauty of Bel said.

  “Then you’ll have to contract with Mackensee yourself,” Ky said. “They may be willing.”

  “Why did we stop out there and hang around for days?” asked Captain Tendel of Lacewing. “Mackensee wouldn’t tell us anything but that it was safer.”

  “Pirate in a system we came through,” Ky said. “With allies. They jumped you out of the system, went back and dealt with them.”

  “Oh. But you weren’t on scan…where were you?” That was Captain Harper, of My Bess.

  “Bait,” Ky said. “My choice. That’s where this ship came from.”

  “Oh. We thought maybe you’d picked up another convoy member. The beacon reads Vatta.” Captain Tendel, as always, looked as if she suspected Ky of something.

  “The pirate had stolen a Vatta ship,” Ky said. “They were operating under our name, illegally.”

  “So you’re taking the ship in for adjudication?”

  “I’m reclaiming stolen property,” Ky said. “And we can discuss this, if you wish, once we’re docked.”

  Harper nodded; Tendel just glared at Ky until the screen blanked.

  “That was interesting,” Rafe said from over her shoulder. “I wonder what Tendel has against you. You’ve got a bigger ship, maybe?”

  “Maybe. Doesn’t matter, really, as long as she pays her share.” Though the cargo on Fair Kaleen was valuable enough to cover the fee, if any of the convoy reneged on their payment. If anyone would buy suspect cargo off a former pirate ship…but of course they would. Osman had been making a living that way, and a good one, too.

  About a light-minute from the main station, a warning message met them. “All ships on approach. All ships on approach. Identify yourselves on Channel Eighteen. Report shipname, registry, ownership, organization, captain’s name, number of crew. Do not depart from present course without authorization: you are targeted.”

  “Friendly bunch,” Lee said.

  “Better than what we were told about Leonora,” Ky said. She entered the data for Fair Kaleen as if that ship had never been anything but a Vatta Transport ship. Her name matched her beacon chip, at least. Registry, Slotter Key. Ownership, Vatta Enterprises. Organization, Vatta Transport, Ltd. Captain, K. Vatta, crew of six.

  Shortly a message came back, voice only. Ky was not sure if it was a live person or computer-generated: “Ownership and captain do not match previous contact. This ship and captain of record are interdicted in this system. Explain.”

  She had not wanted to explain this over open airways. “Request secure link.”

  “Secure link available�
��” Status lights blinked, then steadied: lightlag plus a minute or two.

  “Go ahead, Captain Vatta,” a different voice said. “This is Port Security, and I’m Division Chief Edvarrin.” The blurred image on screen steadied to show a severe-faced woman in a green uniform with blue facings. Two rows of silver buttons ran down the front.

  “The person operating this ship was not a Vatta employee,” Ky said. “I understand you had issues with him?” She waited, watching the communications chronometer readout. Fifty-nine seconds for the message to go…fifty-nine for it to return…plus whatever time someone needed to frame a message.

  Question answered question. “Was he a Vatta family member or using a false name?”

  “By birth he was a Vatta, yes,” Ky said. “He had been expelled from the family years ago. He stole this ship and represented himself as being part of Vatta Transport when he wasn’t. Whatever he was doing, he did it for himself, not with any authorization from us.” Again the wait. She tried to anticipate the next question, be ready to answer quickly.

  “And your relationship to Vatta Transport’s corporate structure?”

  That was another sticky bit. How far had news of trouble with Vatta spread? “My father was chief financial officer,” Ky said. “Until his death.”

  “We can’t verify that with the ansibles down…”

  “You should have some records on Vatta Transport,” Ky said. “Are any of our ships there now?”

  “No. A Vatta ship departed some ten days before the ansibles went down. If you’re really Vatta, you should know what ships worked this route.”

  “A moment,” Ky said. She queried her implant, and her father’s data came up. Garth-Lindheimer lay on a lucrative trading circuit; Vatta had two ships constantly on the route. “Connie R., captained by Casamir Vatta, and Tregallat, captained by Benton Gallat.” She paused again. “Unless something messed up their schedule, the ship that departed before the ansibles went down should have been Connie R. Sometimes they do overtake each other.”