“They do,” Johannson said, without elaborating further.

“Now you need some kind of disturbance,” Ky said. “Something to cover the moments around the hit, give the sniper time to break down the weapon and move out of the range of concern. Lots of ways to do that, but there’s another place your local staff could help. Bet they’ve made friends with people onstation.”

“You do have the main elements,” he said. “But I still see no reason for you to know the specific details. One of the rules you haven’t quoted at me yet is, there’s no such thing as secure communications.”

“You’re right,” Ky said. She didn’t want him to be right. She wanted to see it all, learn it, but in this instance learning could be followed by dying. Though she was paying for them to take the risk, that didn’t justify making it bigger. She left it there, not asking how big a team would go with Rafe to secure evidence and get the ansible working properly again.

Hours crawled by. She didn’t know when to start worrying, when to stop worrying. They were still in close enough to pick up some near-com chatter, but Ky could make little out of it. Ship to ship, the convoy reported in as they cleared local traffic control. Ky, on her own bridge, waited for what she could not really anticipate… except trouble. Going back to sleep was not an option. Instead, she munched on food she barely tasted, and tried to concentrate on the operating manual for the defensive suite.

Finally the READY light on her Mackensee-installed secure com winked; Ky keyed in access. “Got ’im,” was the terse response. “Clean, employee’s agent reports ansible hookups restored, and backfiles accessed. Estimates less than fifteen minutes to open ansible contacts and file dumping.”

“If anyone else has a working ansible,” Ky said. “The backfiles should be interesting, though.”

“We already have someone working on ours,” Johannson said.

Lee turned to her. “Captain, the Lastway ansible reports eight blocks of stored messages for Vatta personnel… haul or wipe?”

“Haul ’em all,” Ky said. “Somewhere in there might be a clue to what exactly is going on.”

Ship chatter rose around them as the Lastway ISC operation opened the equivalent of vast ears and tongue and began responding to everyone. Evidently Vatta messages hadn’t been the only ones sequestered.

“Hailing Vatta ship Gary Tobai, “came from Tendel on Lacewing. “What happened to the ansible? We’ve got a mass of backfile messages.”

“Seems to be working better,” Ky said. “That’s all I know. We picked up eight blocks ourselves.”

“Coincidence bothers me, Captain Vatta.” Tendel’s narrow scarred face tightened. “I prefer no coincidences.”

“Seems a good one, to me,” Ky said. “We leave, things get better. Might mean less trouble ahead.”

“And maybe I don’t need convoy protection.”

“Maybe not. But you signed a contract.”

“So I did. Well, people always said trading with a Vatta you had to watch your credit balance. I wonder if this is happening everywhere or just here?”

“Time will tell,” Ky said.

Ten minutes. Twenty. Ky forced herself not to pace back and forth.

The secure line blinked again. She picked it up. “Yes?”

“Team’s out safely, including your man. Genius with the com stuff, our fellas say. Everyone’s on course; the squad’ll be picked up by our courier.”

Ky went to tell Stella that Rafe was safe. She took along the eight blocks of back messages; some were sure to be proprietary information, and she couldn’t ask anyone else on the ship to go through them.

“How are they sorted?” Stella asked.

“By date, I think,” Ky said. “I haven’t really looked yet, but isn’t that how backfiles are usually organized?”

“We can hope,” Stella said. “Have a spare reader?”

“Use this one,” Ky said, nodding to her desk. “We can isolate it from the rest of the ship.”

“Oh. Of course.” Stella loaded the first cube. “Mmm. I haven’t done the dating conversions yet, but I think this is from before the trouble started, which would mean the ISC manager here was fiddling with Vatta data in preparation… let me see…” She pointed to the screen. “Just the kind of routine notice Vatta HQ sends—sent—every five days to all ports. Corporate news update: no hint of trouble.”

Ky looked at the bulletin, its format familiar to her for years, the linked VT in blue and red, the summary of tons shipped, percent on-time deliveries, percent expedited-shipment bonuses earned, lists of retirements, promotions, new assignments. Her own name leapt out at her: the change in ship name from Glynnis Jones to Gary Tobai as the result of “uncontrolled conditions,” the successful delivery to Belinta, and her promotion from contingent captain to list captain. Had it been her status as contingent captain that had convinced Furman he could order her around in the Sabine mess?

“Successful delivery at Belinta: it must’ve been posted just as I arrived, because trouble started shortly after that. I got a ping from my ship about trouble, and was on an ansible uplink to Vatta headquarters when I lost the connection. That’s when things got really interesting, because a team of assassins came into the Captains’ Guild—”

“You didn’t tell me this before!” Stella said, wide-eyed.

“And we’ve had how much time to chat?” Ky said. “Anyway… it’ll be in my log, the universal date. Let me check.” She pulled out the notebook. “Here—”

“You keep a paper log?”

“Yeah. Anyway, it’s… 13.34.75. What’s the date on that message?”

“It’s 13.32.75. Where would you have been then?”

Ky paged back. “Unloading cargo, Belinta Station. After that I went downplanet hunting cargo; we were headed for Leonora but had another several cubic meters of space. I was trying to come up with enough to finance a refit of the ship; she’d been destined for scrap, originally, but the hull is sound and I thought maybe I could save it.”

“I don’t have a paper log,” Stella went on. “It’s in my implant.” She tapped her head. “Universal time, also 13.34. Odd, really. Even with ansible transmission, how did they set up almost simultaneous attacks light-years apart? Unless they used all local talent… ship schedules just aren’t that precise.”

“We had a course on interstellar terrorism,” Ky said. “A large enough organization, with enough financial support, and enough lead time… and we don’t know how many planned attacks didn’t go off on schedule, because the ansibles went down.”

“Did all ansible traffic at Belinta go down when you were cut off?”

“No. At least, no one said anything. The Slotter Key consul on Belinta told me the Slotter Key ansibles were down, but when we left, Belinta’s seemed to be working fine. It was such a low-traffic system I’m not sure anyone would’ve noticed.”

“Did you call out on it?”

“No, I didn’t. I figured the bad guys knew exactly where we were, and we should get into space, go somewhere else, try to outflank them.”

“I still can’t figure out why anyone would want to do it,” Stella said. “Okay, attack the monopoly, I can see that, but why disrupt all communications? Why not just display the ability and bargain from there?”

“If we knew that, we might know why Vatta was chosen as another target,” Ky said. “Did those ISC couriers tell you that ISC ships were being hit?”

“No—but then they didn’t tell me much. Not even the route we were taking.”

“Which suggests to me they were worried about attack,” Ky said. “I hope Rafe can pry more information out of the local ansible before we clear space. Something about all this just doesn’t make sense. Why Vatta? We’re—we were—important on Slotter Key, and we’re a major shipper, but we’re not the only major shipper, and Pavrati hasn’t been hit that we know of.”

“But we are, after the Sabine thing, known as a friend of ISC,” Stella said. “Even before that, corporately, we’ve supported them in discussions with other shippers. And our unarmed ships travel on scheduled routes, making them easier to find than ISC couriers, which don’t.”