Chapter Seventeen

The convoy moved out on a slow arc. No incoming ships had been detected for days, but Mackensee had still advised a careful approach to the jump points. “If there’s trouble, that’s where it will be,” Johannson said. “Ships going for a jump point are usually at max delta vee; they can’t maneuver, and they offer an easy shot. What you want to do is go in slow, in formation, looking tough and preserving your ability to maneuver.” Behind them, another ship left Lastway, but on a vector that gave no concern; it looked to be headed for a different jump point.

Stella, working through the accumulated messages, found that the Lastway ISC manager had been holding up Vatta messages there—or some Vatta messages at least—since the last scheduled Vatta departure, some eight standard months before.

“If any Vatta ship had come through, they’d have been told there was nothing pending,” Stella told Ky. They were working in Ky’s cabin, and the remnants of a hasty meal were stacked on the end of the worktable. “You should have had all this when you arrived. Most of it’s not that important: updates on prices, margins, that kind of thing. The five-day bulletins I’ve put into the database for pattern analysis. Nothing’s shown up yet. I can’t figure out what good it would do to keep a Vatta ship at Lastway out of the Vatta loop, though. When were you originally supposed to arrive at Lastway? Did you have scheduled deliveries?”

“No, nothing with a late penalty, but we did have a tentative schedule. Let me see…” Ky called it up. “That’s interesting—we were originally scheduled to reach Lastway a day or so before the attacks on Vatta started.”

“So you’d have been there, incommunicado, rather than on a live ansible hookup to Slotter Key. Easy meat—no warning. I wonder if they specifically sucked off Vatta messages at the other stations where Vatta was hit?”

“Still doesn’t tell us why Vatta was a target,” Ky said.

“No, but it’s clear the plot was laid before you even went to Sabine,” Stella pointed out. “Then they had to rush assassins to Belinta, or find local talent, before you got back.” She sat back. “What would you have done, Ky, if you’d come out in Belinta local space and been told of the attacks? Would you have docked at Belinta?”

“I don’t know,” Ky said. “I never thought of that… I might have docked at their station, to complete delivery, but I wouldn’t have gone onplanet.”

“They must have been frantic,” Stella said. “Scrambling to adjust to your movements, knowing that you were the most dangerous Vatta to leave alive…”

“Me?” Ky had not considered she might be considered a special threat.

“You. Of course. Not just your military training, and your relationship to your father, but what you’d shown you could do at Sabine. Now… I would wager some of Aunt Grace’s diamonds that you are well above their threat recognition level.”

Ky felt a surge of satisfaction. “I hope so,” she said. “Let them worry.” It was ridiculous, in a way. She still had only the one small, slow, unarmed ship; Mackensee would desert her as soon as they had instructions from their headquarters; the other traders in the convoy were her putative allies only so long as they had Mackensee protection. Even so, imagining an enemy being afraid of her felt good.

“And now that you’re officially a privateer, that’s even more reason for them to worry.”

Ky looked at Stella, startled. “I’m not really. You know that.”

“Remember what the mercs told you?” Stella’s perfect brows arched. “Possession of the letter, whether you use it or not, constitutes presumption of intent.”

“But our enemies won’t know about that,” Ky said. “Will they? And I don’t see that it makes much difference. For all the license the letter gives me to cause mayhem, there’s not much mayhem I can cause with this ship. I’m sure they know about this ship.” She pushed aside the existence of those mines in the cargo holds. “For now, I’m just a trader captain; I’m not ready to hunt anyone down.”

“You’re a trader with two hired warships,” Stella pointed out. “That takes you out of the just-a-trader class right there. You had your mercs go in and kill some crooked ISC employees, and even though that was done with ISC authorization via Rafe, it was still done by your orders.”

Put that way, the raid on the ISC office did sound like the sort of thing privateers were reputed to do.

“Legally, I’m not sure,” Stella went on. “If you hold this commission from Slotter Key, does that mean that anyone contracting with you—for military services anyway—is actually working for Slotter Key?”

Ky stared at her. “That can’t be right.” Dim memories of military law classes cluttered her mind. But they had never studied the legal ramifications of letters of marque, she was sure. “It’s not exactly a commission, anyway. They’re not paying me anything, and they’re not giving me specific orders. I can just trade if I want to…”

“But you don’t want to,” Stella said. “You want to protect and help family members, and you want to find out who attacked us, and you want to take them out. That’s what you said.”

“Yes…”

“I see conflicts of interest, Ky. Mind you, I’m completely in favor of rebuilding Vatta as a trading empire. Locating, helping, protecting our remaining family. Destruction to our enemies, all that. But when I consider this thing—” She nodded at the folder. “—I see problems you may not have considered. You have to decide whether you’re fighting for Vatta or Slotter Key, for instance.”

“Both,” Ky said. “The ISC thing affects both, surely.”

“It does now,” Stella agreed. “In the long run, though, those are two different interests, and you need to know which has priority. So do I.”

“You?”

“I am carrying your father’s implant, remember? The Vatta command dataset. If you consider the recovery of Vatta your first priority, then you are the right person to take possession of it. But if you rank Slotter Key’s interests above Vatta? Then I’m not sure.”

“I suppose you’re glad now that I haven’t put it in,” Ky said, astonishment and confusion putting an edge on her voice.

“Yes,” Stella said calmly. She sat back, folding her arms. “Until I knew about the letter of marque, I had no doubts. Now I do. My interest is entirely family, I assure you. I still believe, like Aunt Gracie, that you are the one person who can help Vatta survive, if it can be done at all. It will take all your ability, though, Ky. If Vatta is not your top priority, we’re doomed.”

“I saw this letter as giving me a better chance to save Vatta,” Ky said slowly. “Not a conflict of interest at all.”

“A tool?”

“Yes. I’ve always thought the interests of Vatta and Slotter Key ran together. Whatever I needed to do to help Vatta would in some way help Slotter Key.” Even as she said it, she realized how naïve it sounded. Certainly the government of Slotter Key had decided that its interests were separate from Vatta’s.

“For now, that may work,” Stella said. “Someday, though, those interests will be in conflict. You need to decide now which has priority, before you have to make that decision in a crisis.”

Quincy’s call to announce that the defensive suite installation was complete came as welcome interruption.

“You managed it without Toby’s help,” Ky said, half joking. Quincy didn’t laugh.

“The boy’s very smart,” she said. “Good with his hands, too. He was helping—it was that dratted dog. But yes, we’ve got it in. Whether or not it works…”

“I’ll tell our escort, and then we’ll test it,” Ky said. She called the bridge and had Lee contact Johannson.

“He says go ahead,” Lee said a few minutes later. “They’ll observe with their scans and let us know if it looks right from the outside.”

“Do the honors, Quincy,” Ky said. Quincy started the initiation sequence, and the defensive suite’s control board lit up, segment after segment showing green telltales.