Engaging the Enemy Read online

  “I’m working on that,” Martin said. “But we’re going to need more crew.”

  “I’ll list positions open—what do you think we need?”

  “Osman was overcrewed, but then he needed muscle. So will we, if you’re going active as a privateer. We need backups for every department: Pilot, Navigation, Engineering, Environmental. Enough cargo hands for any actual trading you want to do. And people to operate the weapons systems. Think a Spaceforce ship.”

  “People who know weapons systems are the most likely to be bad guys,” Ky said.

  Martin rubbed his nose. “Not necessarily. Take me—there are reasons besides incompetence or treachery for someone not to get along in a regular military. But yeah, you want to be careful.” His voice lowered. “What about Toby? Are you going to keep him as crew? The kid’s talented, but—”

  “But he’s too young for a fighting ship. You’re right, Martin, but I don’t know where to send him—or how—that he’d be safer than with us. But thanks for reminding me. I’m sure we can get him more educational modules here. And maybe a tutor.”

  “He doesn’t need a tutor to learn,” Martin said. “Just the modules; he’s a self-starter. Someone his own age would be a help, though I’m not suggesting taking on another kid.” His forehead creased. “And…um…what about Rafe?”

  “Rafe’s not exactly regular crew,” Ky said. “I think of him as an ally, though.”

  “Maybe,” Martin said. “And maybe not. You still have him under partnership bond?”

  “Something like that,” Ky said. The leverage that her knowledge of his cranial ansible gave her was more than a partnership bond, she hoped, but she wasn’t going to tell Martin about it.

  “Well…I wouldn’t necessarily trust him when it came to hiring people.”

  “No,” Ky said. “I’m not planning to. But if he thinks someone’s not trustworthy, that’s worth consideration.”

  _______

  When Ky left the ship to go to the bank and the ISC branch office, she was surprised to find a small crowd just outside Fair Kaleen’s private dockspace offering themselves as potential crew, as trading partners, as local guides.

  “I’ve never been this popular,” Ky murmured aside to Rafe as they headed from dockside to the local ISC office. Behind her, Martin and Lee formed her rear guard; she was glad to have the extra muscle. Her skin felt tight all over; she made herself breathe slowly. Either an attack would come or it wouldn’t.

  “Get used to it,” Rafe said. “It’s that command presence you have sticking out all over.”

  “I do not.”

  “You do. And it’s not even in full bloom yet, which frankly scares me silly. Of course, it may also be that they suspect what your cargo’s worth.”

  “Do you think any of them know about the…um…things?”

  “The—” Rafe gave her a horrified look. “You mean the…er…ship things?” Clearly he wasn’t going to name them out on the concourse. “Ky—Captain—you mustn’t sell those! It could destabilize—”

  “I haven’t decided to sell them,” Ky said. “The databases, though…” Osman’s illicit cargo would bring more profit than milk replacement powder.

  “You might want to let me check around,” Rafe said. “I’m likelier to find useful contacts than you are.”

  “You’ve been here before?”

  “No. But some of what I imported to Allray came via Rosvirein. I knew someone here at one time, but I don’t know if she’s still here.”

  “Find out,” Ky said. “I have no experience at all selling that kind of thing.”

  Counting the Engen currency at Crown & Spears took only moments as the counting machines whirred; Ky signed the papers and put the adjusted total in the ship’s account. From there, she prepaid the air fees; in twelve hours or so they would have all the compartments back to full pressure. From Crown & Spears to the ISC offices was only a short stroll.

  The ISC entrance was tiled in the gold-gray-and-blue color scheme of ISC. Gray-uniformed ISC guards stood either side of the doorway. One of them moved forward as Ky and her group approached.

  “Do you have an appointment?” he asked.

  “No,” Ky said. “I wanted to speak to your local system manager—does that require an appointment?”

  “In present conditions, yes,” the guard said. “Most business may be conducted by wire, and the site contains current status of ansible function as we know it.”

  “I have information pertinent to your operations,” Ky said, carefully not looking at Rafe.

  “May I have your name, please?” the guard said. “I will inquire…”

  Ky handed over her identification.

  “Are you the same Vatta who was at Sabine?” he asked, his voice a trifle warmer.

  “Yes,” Ky said.

  “Just a moment.” He went back to the doorway and turned his back while the other guard stared past them with a bored expression that Ky knew masked complete alertness.

  They were ushered in very shortly, to meet a grave older woman shorter than Ky, her black hair streaked with silver.

  “Captain Vatta, what a pleasure. We heard about your exploits in the Sabine System.” The woman extended a hand. “I’m Station Manager Selkirk.”

  “Thank you,” Ky said, shaking hands. “I believe I have information useful to ISC, this time concerning ansible malfunctions.”

  “Ah. We should go to my office…perhaps your…people…might wait here; I will send someone with refreshments.”

  “I’d like Rafe to come along,” Ky said. “He’s got more technical expertise than I have.”

  “Does he?” murmured Selkirk. “Then by all means…” She glanced around. “We need two chairs, and light refreshments in the lobby.” Ky saw no device, but almost immediately a door opened at the end of the counter and a man pushed out a dolly holding two chairs. From a door at the other end of the counter came a man with a tray. The chairs were placed, the flowers on one of the small tables moved to the next, and the tray set on the table. Martin and Lee sat down at Ky’s gesture, though Martin didn’t look happy about it.

  “This way,” Selkirk said. A door opened in the right-hand wall, and Selkirk led Ky and Rafe into a carpeted hallway; a guard stood by the door they had just passed through. Ky’s skin tingled. Selkirk’s office, when they reached it, was a corner office with a window overlooking a garden that wrapped around the corner. “It’s part of the security,” Selkirk said, gesturing at the window. “We need the airspace between us and our neighbors. My security chief wanted to make it all smooth cerroplast, but this way we get an oxygen credit and it costs us less, even counting in the gardener’s salary.”

  “And it’s beautiful,” Ky said. The garden had real trees screening the neighboring walls, as well as a water feature complete with waterfall and decorative bridge.

  “Yes,” Selkirk said. “But enough of that. What brings you to us and what information do you think you have?”

  “I was on Belinta when the ansibles failed,” Ky said. “In fact, I was in contact with my home office on Slotter Key at the exact moment; at first I didn’t know if it was a problem in local equipment at either end or an ansible problem.” She paused, but Selkirk merely nodded. “It soon became obvious that Belinta’s ansible was out; by the time I reached Lastway, I knew that several others were. We found uncrewed ansibles with their mailboxes stuffed, nothing moving in any directions.”

  “Ah…” Selkirk’s expression brightened. “That entire sector’s still out of touch. We’ve had only one emergency ship in there, and it reported that it’ll be months before we get all the units back up.”

  “At Lastway,” Ky said, “we found something else. The Lastway ansible appeared to be working—”

  “It never went out,” Selkirk said. “We don’t get direct messages from there much, but we do get relays.”

  “The station manager was bent,” Ky said. “He was passing some messages and sequestering others—”

>   “Are you sure?”

  “Yes.” Rafe spoke for the first time. “Captain, may I speak frankly to Manager Selkirk?”

  “Of course,” Ky said.

  He stood; Ky saw the woman tense as he approached her desk. “Don’t worry, ma’am; I merely want to show you a code that Captain Vatta does not know.” He wrote on the notepad on her desk, then stepped back and sat down, avoiding Ky’s gaze.

  Selkirk stared at what he had written; Ky wished for the ability to look down from the ceiling. Then Selkirk’s head came up; her face had paled. “You are—”

  “You will want to check that,” Rafe said. “Against your books.”

  Her fingers raced over the plate on her desk; she focused on some display Ky could not see as her brow furrowed. When she looked up again, she looked more worried than pleased. “It matches. This is…a surprise. Does your—the captain know anything?”

  “She is aware that I’m a covert agent for ISC, yes,” Rafe said. “What more she knows, or has surmised, you would have to ask her. I owe her my life; I was over at Allray when this mess started; it is thanks to her that I am this close to headquarters.”

  Selkirk transferred her gaze to Ky. “Captain, you astonish me.”

  “More to the point,” Rafe said, “I have technical data you need, including a report on the situation at Lastway when we left there. It may bear on the relationship between the attacks on our ansible system and Captain Vatta’s family and home world.” He glanced at Ky. “Some of this should be transmitted back to Nexus Two as quickly as possible. Is your link there still reliable?”

  “Yes,” Selkirk said. “We lost ansible service here for only six standard days. We had contact with ISC headquarters before that, and that link functioned as soon as we were back up.”

  “The locals claim they fixed the ansibles here, instead of an ISC repair crew,” Ky said. “Is that true?”

  Selkirk flushed. “You have to understand Rosvirein culture, Captain Vatta. They’re a very proud, impatient people and they do have considerable technical expertise. I was told, when I was assigned to this post, that it was advisable to allow their crews to assist ours in case of technical difficulties before calling for a repair crew.”

  “That would be a yes,” Rafe said. “And was the problem found to be in the interface circuitry in the spatial…er…area?” He glanced at Ky and away.

  “Yes,” Selkirk said, folding her hands.

  “I suggest that the decision to allow Rosvirein crews unsupervised access to the ansibles should be reconsidered. I’m not prepared, at this time, to recommend action against them, but some emotional conflict is better than compromised communications.”

  “I see,” Selkirk said. She glanced at Ky again. “Captain, I mean no insult, but would it be possible to discuss proprietary matters with your crewman alone?”

  “He’s not my crew,” Ky said. “He’s your agent. Would you prefer that I leave now—in fact, I have nothing more to contribute on my own—or that Rafe come back later?”

  “The matter may be urgent.”

  “Then I’ll take my leave,” Ky said. She could not help feeling a little annoyed, but she didn’t have to show it. And after all she had plenty of other work to do. “Meet me later, Rafe,” she said. “Shall I leave you an escort?”

  He grimaced. “I think I can take care of myself, Captain, thanks all the same.”

  Ky wondered if he would tell Selkirk about the shipboard ansibles. She hoped not. She didn’t want to turn them over to the ISC.

  She picked up Martin and Lee on her way out.

  “Rafe’s staying?” Martin sounded wary.

  “He is ISC, after all,” Ky said. She still felt twitchy out in the open, even though she saw nothing more menacing than a uniformed woman shepherding a line of children whose voices would have pierced armorplate.

  “He’s trouble,” Martin said. “You know what I feel about trusting him, Captain.”

  “Only half as far as I can throw him,” Ky said. “But that’s a tidy distance.”

  Martin snorted and shook his head. “Captain, sometimes you’re funny. So is he coming back?”

  “I hope so,” Ky said. “He says he has that contact here for trading some of Osman’s less legal cargo. But in the meantime, let’s look at getting some good crew aboard. We’re all overworked at the moment. With all due respect to Lee, we need another pilot, at least, maybe two. Engineering—we need to replace Toby, let him go to school—” If they ever found a safe place for him, that was.

  “Weapons crews,” Martin said, as they turned into the docking bay entrance.

  “I’ve never hired weapons crews,” Ky said. “I don’t even know what to look for. We could get along just with regular ship crews—maybe they could learn—”

  “We could, except that we’re an armed vessel,” Martin said. “If you’re not armed, you might or might not be attacked, but if you’re armed, and can’t use your weapons, you’re an exceptional prize for those who can take you. We’ve been lucky so far, but we can’t count on being lucky.”

  “Luck follows preparation,” Ky said, quoting from a lecture at the Academy. “I know, but—”

  “You can’t just bluff everyone,” Martin said. His brow furrowed. “Captain, if you want to disarm the ship, that’s one thing, but—”

  “I get your point,” Ky said. “We have weapons; we need weapons crews. I just…this is where I would be looking to plant agents aboard other ships, if I were the pirates.”

  “Sure they would, so we have to be careful. I’m not expert in weapons, Captain, but you said before you think I can spot rotten apples. Trust me for that.”

  Ky nodded. “I do trust you, Martin, and you have experience. What about working with Rafe on this?”

  As usual when Rafe was mentioned, Martin’s expression soured. Well, he has experience with rotten apples, I’ll say that for him. But I just said—”

  “I know. But on this I think he’s trustworthy. If he’s with us he won’t want to be killed by having approved the wrong crew. Now—do you have any idea how many we’ll need just to fight the ship?” How much would it cost, how much cubage would be needed to supply that many people?

  “We have eight missile batteries—we’ll need a crew for each. Spaceforce had what they called a team for every two batteries, eight to a team. So we’d need four teams of eight, that’s thirty-two. Two beam weapons, those can be controlled by one board on the bridge. You do need someone expert on that, and then one or two senior weapons masters to coordinate. Say thirty-six, all told.”

  “Plus what we need for regular crew.” Ky shook her head. “We’d better sell off a lot of our cargo; I’m guessing that weapons-qualified crew won’t come cheap, and I want good ones.”

  _______

  Rafe reappeared a few hours later, with the news that he had found his former contact. “You’ll have to come with me,” he said. “She won’t deal through me; she wants to meet you. But I’ll be armed. You can bring someone else, too, if you want. I’d suggest not Martin—he’s too obviously military.”

  “Lee?” Ky said to her pilot. “Want to come along?”

  He grinned happily. “Sure, Captain; I’ve nothing else to do in port.” As before, he had outfitted himself from Osman’s store of personal weapons until he fairly bristled. Rafe cocked an eye, clearly amused; his own weapons were, like Ky’s, concealed.

  Rafe’s contact met them in a dingy storefront a quarter of the way around the station. She was a hard-faced woman with streaks of burgundy and green in her gray hair. She had a yellow ribbon tied around the left sleeve of her gray jacket, and two green ones tied around the right. Signals of some kind, Ky was sure.

  “I dealt with Osman,” she said, when Rafe introduced them. “You have the same kind of merchandise?”

  “I have the same merchandise,” Ky said. “Osman’s dead. I took his ship.”

  “So he said.” She jerked her head at Rafe, then looked Ky up and down. “You hardly look
tough enough to take on Osman.”

  “Both of us Vattas,” Ky said. That got a wry grin in response. They dickered briefly, but the woman wanted Osman’s merchandise and eventually agreed to pay what she would have paid Osman.

  Ky told herself that the goods Amy was buying—the contents of cranial implants transferred to other media—had already been taken from their owners, and the owners were dead. She told herself that repeatedly, but her stomach churned all the way back to the ship.

  In the next days, Ky was glad that Martin had taken over the hiring of the fighting crew. She had enough to do with rest of the cargo—deciding which to sell and where—and interviewing regular ship crew. As the list filled, she realized that Osman’s crew had been none too large for this ship in its fighting configuration. She felt uncomfortable with so many strangers coming aboard, but there was no alternative.

  In civilian tradeships, the senior engineer often functioned as the captain’s second, but this would not work in a privateer. On Spaceforce vessels, the distinction between officer and enlisted was clear, as was the chain of command, but she had no idea how other privateers handled the interesting problem of blending the two functions.

  She was still puzzling over this when Martin brought back the first of his finds for her approval: an entire weapons team.

  “They were part of a small mercenary company—Calvert’s Company—and then the commander died. They didn’t like his successor, so they left. They’re all one family and they want to be hired as a unit. I looked up Calvert’s and it was legit. Small, but good. When Ben Calvert died, his junior commanders—a nephew and a longtime friend—squabbled over who’d take over, and one of ’em died in a training accident, so called. This team walked, along with about a third of the rest.”

  “What are they like?”

  “Solid, I’d say. They claim combat experience with Calvert’s, and familiarity with the kind of weapons we have. You want to see them?”

  “Of course.” Ky wondered what she could discern that Martin couldn’t. She looked over their files while Martin went to fetch them. Jon, the oldest, was over fifty; the youngest were twenty. Five of the eight were sibs; the other three were first cousins. It reminded her of Vatta.