Engaging the Enemy Read online

  A list of system rules came up on screen. Armed ships were welcome, but if their weapons went live they would be fired upon by Rosvirein Peace Force. Military personnel must declare their organization and current contracts, if any. Privateers must declare any letters of marque currently in force and provide a facsimile of such documents. Pirates were advised that any `attempts at piracy insystem would be severely dealt with. Patrons were welcome to carry whatever personal arms they wished onstation, but were held responsible for any damage caused to persons or property. Registered bounty hunters could locate and identify fugitives, but not capture or kill them.

  The last line read: “Be advised, the death penalty is frequently imposed and we do not have an appellate court system.”

  “It may not keep us alive, but anyone who attacks us will be taken down,” Rafe said, reading that. “Cold comfort, though. And did you notice, their ansible’s live. The bad guys have been here, if they aren’t here now.”

  “So we can expect attacks.” She would have to have security if she left the ship; that meant Martin and Rafe.

  “Maybe not. If Osman was the real push behind the attacks on Vatta, the other bad guys may not care. And if you act like you think he was the real cause, and they don’t have other reasons, they’ll be glad to let things lie.”

  “That’s so reassuring,” Ky said, for want of anything better. A trickle of sweat ran down her backbone.

  “It could be,” Rafe said. He eyed her. “Nervous, Captain?”

  “A little, yes,” Ky said. “Can you find out through these which ansibles are functional?”

  “I can if they have a list up,” Rafe said. He sat down at the console and queried the local ansible. “Ah. Repairs have been made to thirty-seven percent of the ansibles originally down, but some of those aren’t considered stable. Slotter Key’s still not up. Garth-Lindheimer is; it just came back online eight days ago. I’m not sure I find that good.”

  “Why not? I can contact Stella if she’s still there.”

  “It strikes me as suspicious that an ansible starts working just after we leave a system…at least, when I had nothing to do with it. Either a legitimate ISC repair crew showed up there, or…or something.”

  Ky felt a cold chill. She hadn’t wanted to leave Stella back at Garth-Lindheimer; if something happened to her cousin or that ship, it would be Ky’s fault.

  “Stella’s smart,” Rafe said, answering her unspoken fear. “She’s been in tight places before. And she’s less confrontational than you are.”

  “Confrontational…”

  “It’s the military training, I suspect. Meet trouble head-on.”

  Ky thought of explaining that sound military theory was against direct confrontation if sneakier maneuvers were available, but thought better of it. She did have a history that suggested confrontation, even though she hadn’t meant to take that route. And experience was teaching her that getting into arguments with Rafe rarely accomplished anything but raising her heart rate.

  _______

  Rosvirein’s Customs and Immigration looked over the facsimile of Ky’s letter of marque with what looked like practiced boredom. “Slotter Key, right. Here’s the rules for privateers. You can’t take ships in this system unless you assign half the prize to us prior to the attempt. If you fail to take the ship you indicate, you still owe us half the prize value as assessed prior to. However, you are welcome to gather information and guess where your target ships are going next and attack them there. Onstation, we don’t want trouble. Or, we don’t want trouble that interferes with trade. We’re a free-trade system. No limitations on merchandise categories.”

  “I’m here to trade,” Ky said. “No targets in sight, and I don’t want trouble, either.”

  “That’s what they all say,” the officer said, grinning. “Trade’s reasonably active now, but we’ve had reports of unidentified ships bouncing in and out of the system, and with that and all those ansibles down, some of the traders are talking about traveling in convoys. Not that I’m brokering or anything, but if you’re in the escort business as well as trade, you’ll probably find someone interested.”

  “I’ll think about it,” Ky said. Thinking about it was all she could do, until she had the whole ship aired up and weapons crews to operate the weapons. First she had to sell some of her cargo so she could hire people, and even before that she had to avoid being killed. Tempting as it was to think that Osman’s death ended the threat to Vatta, it could be fatal to make that assumption. Especially on a station with Rosvirein’s reputation.

  With Martin and Rafe along, and her own personal weapon loaded and handy in its holster, she set out for the Captains’ Guild.

  The concourse bustled, as busy as Lastway’s and subtly more varied. Dress ranged from plain shipsuits to elaborate costumes Ky would have expected at a formal diplomatic affair. Visible personal arms included swords, firearms, shocksticks. Local security, just as obvious, wore full battledress, faceplates up, carried combat-quality firearms, and walked in pairs.

  Ky watched a group of women, all in lush blue velvet pantsuits, lace ruffles at wrists and throat, lace headdresses, stroll along looking at shop windows. They turned in, finally, at a display of custom electronics. Out of a grocer’s came a woman in a blue uniform dress and white headdress, shepherding a line of small children, each clutching a fruit of some kind. A humod with four forearms, two hands carrying books, one a briefcase, and one rummaging in the briefcase…another with a floret of tentacles on one shoulder, all rolled into a compact mass; the other arm appeared normal.

  The Captains’ Guild onstation looked like any upper-level spacer bar, with its protective doorman. Ky checked in, listing Fair Kaleen as having cargo to sell, crew vacancies, and no firm destination.

  “The status boards are in there, the bar’s over there, and we have three private meeting rooms, if you need them,” the clerk said, pointing in various directions after she’d finished signing in. “We don’t see Vatta captains in here that often.”

  “The ansible problem has a lot of people off route,” Ky said.

  “We’ve heard. Luckily we’ve got our own techs. Annoys ISC that we don’t call them every time a blip happens, but we’re not stuck like the rest of the tame sheep who depend on ISC for everything. Slotter Key’s your headquarters, right? And its ansible’s still out. Guess you people are on your own now, no one to tell you what to do.”

  “Something like that,” Ky said. She didn’t look at Rafe; she could imagine what he was thinking. She looked at the status board. Ten ships in dock, counting hers. Those docked when she arrived insystem had left, except for two. She’d already noticed that Bal’s Tiger and Ratany had been there a long time. Captains R. Taylor and G. Pinwin. Awaiting cargo, according to the Captains’ Guild board. Others had come and gone, finding cargo. Something to be wary of, no doubt. Still, she could use more crew, and ships that stayed too long in one place often had crew who wanted to move on.

  “The local market’s hot for custom and specialized electronics right now,” the clerk went on. “Woven fabrics is cold—the local system produces and exports excellent natural-fiber fabric. Foodstuffs, unless you’ve got something really exotic, are also cold. Munitions always have a hot market here. Fine arts—it depends. High-end furnishings are the same.”

  “Thank you,” Ky said.

  “And since you’re looking for crew, or you have something specific in mind, I might know a connection…”

  “I’ll need to consider our cargo in light of what you’ve told me,” Ky said. She wasn’t about to give this one information he could sell on.

  Her first priority was resupply anyway, and that meant she needed quick cash. The ship’s limited hydroponics space hadn’t begun to replace the air lost to space when the air lock blew out, and she wanted those now airless cargo spaces aired up so they could be inspected and the reserves replaced. Rosvirein’s air charges were high, but not impossibly so. She would contact Crown & Spears first,
see about accessing the corporate accounts, and if that proved impossible then she’d sell something—anything—to pay for air.

  The man assigned to watch a particular scattered remnant of the Vatta family wished the assassins would hurry up. A pleasant hill-country job, practically a vacation, he’d been told. Sweet summer breezes, beautiful flowers everywhere, a paradise. People paid good money to spend part of the summer up here in the hills, he’d been told.

  People were crazy. He had never been so bored and so miserable. The house and gardens had an efficient alarm system—sensible enough, with all the attacks on Vattas—so he had to stay at a distance, hiding hour after hour in the lee of a rocky outcrop. The camping outfit he’d rented back in the city turned out to be useless, a bright-colored tent he dared not use, a portable chemical toilet that clogged up the second day, and foodpaks that tasted like hay and sawdust. He had been rained on, sunburned, bitten and stung by more nasty small creatures than he’d known existed, and all to watch a grieving widow, her orphaned grandchildren, and a dotty old lady.

  Grace Lane Vatta may have been a war hero once—he had found reference to her guerrilla activity—but now she was a dotty old lady who didn’t appear outside until after supper, when she tottered around the orchard and garden in typical old-lady clothes: big hat, saggy skirts down to her ankles, long sleeves, a fuzzy shawl around her shoulders, and sensible shoes. The middle-aged widow looked almost as frumpy as she followed two young children around. Her grandchildren, they were supposed to be. The children were children, vacation-grubby.

  Their routine didn’t vary. The children played outside in the morning, sometimes riding two sluggish ponies around and around a paddock just beyond the garden. Their grandmother was always nearby. Afternoons, everyone was indoors, and other than the after-dinner stroll, they were inside in the evening, lights out shortly after dark. They’d had no visitors other than the grocer’s van, no excursions in the ten too-long days he’d been watching. Why be rich, if it meant living such boring lives? At least they would be easy targets for the assassins, if the assassins ever showed up.

  He had dismissed the assistant who covered the night watch, because these people went to bed shortly after dark and slept all night. He could use the extra money, to make up for his own miserable working conditions and the cost of the hard bunk at the hostel where he slept, since he couldn’t stay in the tent.

  His head hurt and the light stabbed his eyes painfully. He ached. He was sure he was coming down with something. His right leg had a big swollen pink patch on it, and he had another on his right side, just above belt level. He’d pulled horrid little bugs off him in both places; they’d been attached firmly. Probably sucking his blood. His back itched, no matter how much he scratched at it with a stick. He needed a doctor.

  He tried to contact his backup, but got no answer. He couldn’t reach his employer, either. Easy to imagine the man relaxing in a seaside café back in the capital, cool and comfortable, safely away from biting bugs and the wonders of nature, probably taking a long lunch hour with some beautiful girl.

  In late morning, he gave up in disgust after finding three more of the flat, blue-black bloodsuckers crawling on his clothes. The old lady wasn’t going anywhere, and he had to get something to keep them off, as well as medicine for his aching head. He struggled up, stiffer and more miserable than ever, and made his way up to the mail road, carefully keeping out of sight of the house windows in the distance. He paid no attention to the ponies whose ears were pricked as they watched, the vultures whose monotonous soaring above the rock outcrop ended as they rose on thermals and went looking for something else dead or dying. He caught the local van to town and asked directions to the clinic.

  He planned to be back in a few hours, but once the emergency clinic medic saw the red circles and heard about the bloodsucking bugs, he found himself whisked into bed with IVs attached. The medic had plucked two more of the things from his back. “You’re not going anywhere,” a doctor said firmly. “You’ve got bluetick fever, no doubt about it. I can’t believe you didn’t come in as soon as you found the first one attached. Didn’t you pay any attention to the warnings about blueticks? You were lying on the ground, weren’t you? It’s the same every summer; you city people come up here and ignore precautions, and then when you get sick you want an instant cure.”

  Her voice made his head hurt worse. “I have to get back…,” he said.

  “Well, there’s no instant cure for bluetick fever, young man,” she said. “You’re going to have a very unpleasant eight to ten days, but at least you won’t die of it. If you hadn’t come in today…” The doctor shook her head and walked out. He wanted to get up, insist on leaving, but the pain in his head redoubled and he couldn’t move.

  _______

  An early-afternoon thunderstorm grumbled its way along the slope beyond the river, cooling the muggy air as it blocked the sun. Grace Lane Vatta, dressed in worn but impeccably tailored fishing clothes, rod and creel in hand, waders slung over her shoulder, paused in the gateway between the gardens and the near paddock to watch the storm and the pleasant sweep of land between the house and the water meadows below. The mail road, higher up the slope, carried the right amount of traffic for the time of day. Behind her, the house dozed, quiet at this hour since Helen insisted on the grandchildren—Jo’s orphans—taking naps so that she could rest.

  Nothing moved in the grass that should not move; nothing interfered with the grass’s response to wind. She had checked that from an upper window, but she made no rash assumptions. The children’s ponies loafed in the shade of a tree, switching their tails idly, proof that no one lurked near the paddock. Those greedyguts would be trying to beg a treat if anyone were near. The vultures that had circled and swooped low over a stony outcrop every day were high up this afternoon, riding the storm’s thermals. They had moved away in late morning. Whatever had piqued their interest the past week was gone. Grace hadn’t bothered to check; animals were always getting sick or dying, and vultures always found them. Blueticks were abundant near that outcrop, even more so after she’d collected a jarful from a farm dog down the way and put them in the handiest place for a spy to lie watching.

  The storm continued to move toward the lake and the hills beyond. Grace took a last quick look around and moved out across the paddock. Both ponies lifted their heads—food?—and one turned around and took a few steps, but she continued steadily, and the ponies both stayed in the shade. She climbed the stile at the far side, and eased down the steeper slope of head-high brambles and gorse, following one of the many sheep paths. From above, an aerial observer would have seen the logic in her twisting progress; no one would want to struggle through the dense thorny growth. Grace, armed as always with a variety of useful tools, would have done so if necessary, but in this instance the sunken sheep path served her well. No one was likely to spot her even if they knew where to look.

  When she came to the river, she spent a moment in the fringe of willows, looking upstream and down. MacRobert, she knew from several days of observation, preferred to fish the lower reach of his cottage’s permit range in the morning, and the upper reach in the afternoon. She had watched, from across the river in a hide she had made herself, arriving before dawn each day and staying hidden until dusk. Long experience in the country had provided her with effective repellent, a small but efficient waste-disposal unit, a compact solar-powered foodbox. She had taken wicked delight in imagining the watcher assigned the house lying among the rocks, miserable and with any luck being bitten by blueticks, while she had a comfortable seat. She didn’t know if MacRobert knew she was there—if he was as good as she hoped, he would—but she had wanted to ensure that no one else was watching him. So far it looked good.

  She sat on a flat rock to put on her waders, custom-made for her years before and repaired regularly, and looked at the river. No change in level from the day before. Upstream, a narrower, rougher section, water tumbling over rocks, but here by the flat r
ock the river ran deceptively smooth, its glassy surface concealing its speed. Downstream, it curved left around a point, a cluster of older, taller trees, and just before that curve, on the far side, an old snag had created the perfect hiding place for a fish.

  Grace stood up, stomping her feet in the waders, making sure she was secure, then picked up her creel and slung it from its shoulder strap. A last pat of pockets, ensuring that each held what it should. She looked again at the water, the angle of light, the cloud of insects hovering, rising, hovering above the water…time to choose the first fly. In the difficult years after the war, when she had struggled with memories and emotions she must hide—when she had faced the threat of permanent confinement in an asylum—she had learned to tie her own flies, a task that demanded concentration on the immediate, a task that looked harmless.

  She chose her favorite, old and frayed as it was, tied it on, and moved out into the water, feeling her way into its flow. Gravel under her feet, the push of current on her legs, the pressure of water flattening the waders against her feet. The water’s surface, smooth or rough, bulging here and hollowed there, revealed its bed. She cast, the line flying from the tip of the rod in easy arcs, and her fly, light as air, rested on the water, moved with the water into position.

  A swirl, a glimpse of something, and her fly disappeared. She felt that first faint resistance, resisted the urge to jerk back—then delicately, delicately, drew the line in…and set the hook in one quick move. The fish shot forward, raising a welt in the water; Grace grinned. It was headed downstream, just as she’d hoped, and she let out line before resisting. It jumped then, an arc of silver striped with red, and shot upstream. Grace argued, through the line. Not that way…this way. The fish turned downstream again; Grace again gave it more room, following along the bank.

  She knew the man was there, where she had expected him, as he had expected her. Still, she played the fish, and he played the courteous fisherman who yields to someone with one on the line. She was sure there were no watchers, but if there were, they would see only what anyone would expect to see. At last she had it in the shallows, almost in reach of her net, a huge trout for this water, fifty centimeters at least.