“Toby’s getting settled,” she said. “This is Jim, one of my crew, late of Belinta.”

“Belinta!” Rafe said in the tone of that mudball.

“What’s wrong with Belinta?” asked Jim, scowling.

“You wanted to leave,” Ky pointed out. Then she shook her head at Rafe. “Don’t tease him.”

Rafe grinned. “Happens to everyone, one time or another. And you got out of Belinta. So, what else are you bringing to the party?”

“It’s not a party,” Ky said. “I need to talk to my cousin alone, and I don’t want you wandering the ship by yourself. Jim, you’ll stay with Rafe until I come back. And I mean stay with, not just in the same half of the ship.”

“Oh.” Jim looked at Rafe with sudden suspicion.

“I am so misunderstood,” Rafe murmured.

“The misunderstanding, if any, is mutual,” Ky said, trying not to grin. It would not do to let this rascal know he was amusing her.

“Is it?” he said, but then sobered, and nodded with what might be respect. “Perhaps it is, Captain Vatta. I will be good.”

“Excellent,” Ky said. “Jim will show you around; if you decide to ship out with us, you’ll know what you’re getting into. Now you’ll excuse us—Stella, come with me, please.” With a final nod she left them, and Stella trailed after her.

In her own cabin, she gestured Stella to the bunk and sat at the desk herself.

“You’ve changed,” Stella said.

“The last time we met I was what, seventeen?”

“There’s that,” Stella admitted. “But I was worried for you, when I heard about that mess at the Academy. You had always been such a straight arrow.”

“I’ve wanted to thank you for your note,” Ky said. “It did help, especially since I’d just had a stinker of a letter from Hal—from a man I’d known there.”

“Men,” Stella said. “And while we’re on that subject, a word of warning about Rafe—”

“You think I need one?”

“Every woman needs one with him. I’m sure you feel the magnetism—I certainly do—but he’s not a safe ride.”

“I could tell,” Ky said. “But let’s get to business, Stella. You say Auntie Grace sent you—”

Stella sat up straighter. “Yes. Your father tried to call a meeting of the adult Vattas on Slotter Key, after he was hurt—but he collapsed, and Auntie Grace took over. It surprised everyone when she picked me to be her messenger. She knew—well, she’d kind of pushed me into it—that I acted sometimes as a special courier for Vatta. You didn’t know that, I think—”

“No,” Ky said. “I thought—”

“You thought I was flighty Stella, still in disgrace. So did a lot of people, which made my other role more effective. When I traveled, people assumed it was just that idiot Stella wandering around being a tourist.” Stella cocked her head to one side and her expression shifted; she looked the picture of an inexperienced pretty girl.

“Mmm…”

“My father knew, of course. Your father didn’t. That made it awkward sometimes.” Stella had lost the innocent-waif look, and Ky admired the technique. She didn’t seem to move, and yet she changed.

“I can imagine.” Her own father bragging about his practical, sensible, obedient daughter, while her uncle had to pretend that Stella was still a bubblehead.

“Anyway. Auntie Grace downloaded the Vatta command dataset to her own implant. She doesn’t think any of the surviving Vattas offplanet have it, and she wanted you to have it because of your military training.” Stella paused, and when Ky said nothing went on. “Ky, how bad was your head injury? If you’re going to be in command out here, we need to know if you’re capable—”

“I’m capable,” Ky said, and hoped it was true. “Stella, the things that I’ve done after that indicate that I’m functioning just fine. It was bad… they had to do a memory dump off my implant.”

Stella paled. “A memory dump—who did that?”

“Mackensee—a mercenary company. Quite respectable; they’re in the green book. Vatta’s transported them or their cargo more than once. It was an accident, really.” Quickly, Ky gave Stella the bare-bones account of the incident, ending with “And then I woke up, in their sick bay, and all the interesting stuff happened later. So if I could cope with mutinous prisoners and an uncontrollable ship and near starvation, I think that means my brain is working. Right?”

Stella was still pale. “Right,” she said. “I don’t quite understand why you can’t install another implant, though.”

“Their surgeons said I should wait six months to be sure the memory dump and the structural repairs were consolidated and stable. I don’t know the details, but I’d had those years of training without an implant at the Academy, aimed at preparing for just such an emergency. It doesn’t bother me to be without one.”

“I don’t know if the Vatta situation can wait another—what is it, three months more?”

“Less than that by now, I think. But I don’t see why that matters. Unless the command dataset explains who our enemy is and what’s going on, and if it does, our fathers would have been prepared. I don’t need an implant to fight a war.”

Stella shivered. “A war… that’s what Aunt Gracie said. It’s war now, she said, and we need someone with military training to take over. Meaning you.” She shook her head. “I still think you need an implant… wait a minute. You already thought of it as a war? And yourself as fighting it? Without any resources but what you have here?”

Ky shrugged. “Not many options, are there? What was I going to do, run away and hide somewhere? I was sure other Vattas had survived somewhere; we’d need to get together somehow.”

“I suppose… I just didn’t expect you to have worked all that out. Well, then, general—or admiral, or whatever you are—what do we do now?”

Ky was ready for this one. “I find out what you’ve brought besides the dataset, and I see if the dataset can be accessed without an implant. I doubt it has anything really useful to me at this point, but it might. I find out what Rafe’s up to—because I’m sure it’s more than he’s said—and decide whether to take him with us, let him go, or kill him.”

“You’d kill Rafe?”

“If I judged him a danger to the family, of course,” Ky said. She enjoyed the shock on Stella’s face. “It is a war, Stella. We’re already in trouble, already losing, if you look at the numbers. We can’t afford to let anyone, however charming, cause us more damage.”

“Now that’s sensible.” Rafe was at the cabin door, with Jim behind him looking worried. “Captain, you were right—I did underestimate you.”

“And I clearly underestimated you, thinking that Jim could keep you away from my cabin—” She kicked herself mentally for not having closed and locked it.

“We were on our way to the bridge. I merely overheard one sentence of extremely good sense, nothing more, I assure you.” Rafe gave them both a smile of blinding goodwill. “Stella, you are a genius in your way, but your cousin Ky has won my fickle heart…”

“The reverse, however, is not true,” Ky said.

“Of course,” Rafe said. “I would not expect it. I look forward, Captain, to our discussion of partnerships when the time comes.” He turned to Jim. “The bridge, perhaps? And perhaps we should close the hatch, to allow the captain more privacy?”

“Thank you,” Ky said. On the bridge he would find Lee less malleable than Jim. When they were alone again, she said to Stella, “So tell me about Rafe… everything you know.”

“Everything I thought I knew,” Stella said. “I certainly did not know he was Dunbarger’s son. If he is. Though that explains a lot.”

Stella took a deep breath. “It was after that disastrous mess with Jamar, the one I gave the codes to. I’d been stuck at home for months, of course, lectured at by everyone over the age of ten. Stupid Stella, idiot Stella, how could you Stella, didn’t we tell you Stella, and so on and so on. Of course, I was telling myself the same thing. Then Aunt Gracie showed up, shooed everyone away, told me to quit moping and get a hold on myself, and sent me to an old friend of hers over on Cassagar. Find out what you’re good at, Gracie said, because you are a Vatta and therefore you have talents besides looking pretty and attracting bad men.”