“This over here is the active shield function,” Quincy said, pointing. “And this is the electronic countermeasures, here.”

“They say the shields are up and look good,” Lee reported from the bridge. “No gaps spotted, but they want me to roll her once to be sure they’ve scanned the entire hull.”

“Go ahead,” Ky said. “Can they tell anything about the ECM stuff?”

Another pause, then Lee said, “No, they say not without launching something at us, and they’d rather not.”

“I feel the same way,” Ky said. “We’ll have to take that part on trust, then. How about power consumption, Quincy?”

“Right on target,” Quincy said. “Our insystem has plenty of reserve power; it’s speed we can’t get out of her.”

“Good job, Quincy,” Ky said. “You and your crew should take a couple of shifts off, except for the usual.”

“Thanks, Captain, we’ll do that. This is a new one for me. Now, can I tell Martin to restow the cargo?”

“Yes—or rather, I’ll speak to him. I think we should keep access open to as much of this as possible, for repair in case of damage.”

“I thought the whole point of this was to prevent any damage,” Quincy said. “You aren’t planning to get into a space battle, are you?”

“Not if I can help it,” Ky said. “But dangerous times… it’s just a precaution.”

Martin and Alene had spent the time it took to install the defensive suite working out the most efficient way to restow the cargo. Ky looked at their figures, and agreed with Martin that the “odor barrier” crates should be readily accessible. She hoped they’d never need those mines, but if they did she wanted them easy to find and use.

Rafe returned to the ship shortly before the transition into FTL flight. Ky and Johannson had agreed that they should first check on an automated ansible in the next system over. The convoy captains accepted the course without comment, except to point out that there was no profit where there could be no trade. Mackensee personnel locked in the jump coordinates in the nav computers of all ships—someone could change it, but that would both break the contract and alert them that the ship was probably part of the conspiracy. Jump insertion went smoothly; they had planned a 13.2-hour jump to the neighborhood of the nearest automated ansible platform.

“I suppose you want me to check out the ansible itself?” Rafe asked. Ky nodded. “And how are you going to explain that one to the ship crews?”

“Your expertise in communications,” Ky said. “They know about some of that already.”

“Yes, but… last time it was just a simple file switch, or close enough they believed it was. This time, I have to get in there and muck with the hardware and the software. All of it proprietary, and how would even a renegade Vatta know that?”

“I’m sure you can come up with something,” Ky said.

He gave her a dark look, then shook his head. “You really are a piece of work, Ky—Captain. You should have been born into a pirate family, not a nice staid bunch of law-abiding traders.”

“As staid as the Dunbargers?” Ky asked.

“A hit, a palpable hit. All right, let’s see. After being booted out of the bosom of your family—our family—I managed to sucker ISC into hiring me for a time, then quit in disgust because they expected me to keep regular hours.” His face settled into a sullen expression that went perfectly with not wanting to work regular hours. “How’s that?”

“That works,” Ky said.

Within hours, that ansible’s message bins were unblocked, and contact restored with Lastway and other working ansibles.

“An easy fix,” Rafe said when he came back aboard. “Just as I said before, it’s a form of sabotage that’s quick, requires no special equipment, and is easy to reverse. Unfortunately, it’s difficult to make impossible, so if the raiders come back, they can undo my fix quickly.”

“Would ISC reimburse you for fixing this, if they knew about it?” Ky asked.

“You want a bonus?”

“I’m thinking of the others in the convoy,” Ky said. “If there’s some profit in stopping to fix ansibles, they’ll be more willing to do more of them.”

“Ah. There might be, but I can’t promise. And calling from here would reveal where we are, which I’d consider a danger.”

“Raiders could follow us by the restoration of access, couldn’t they?”

“Yes… but we might be an ordinary ISC repair crew, too.”

Ky discussed their next destination with her Mackensee liaison. “We’d prefer to clear ansibles between Lastway and our home base,” Johannson said. “Of course, that’s subject to your priorities as long as we’re working for you, but there are several automated ansibles along the way, and some excellent market worlds for the others.”

“Let’s talk to them all,” Ky said. In conference, the other captains agreed.

In the next system, they found not only an automated and nonfunctional ansible, but also a civilian ship whose beacon carried the familiar Vatta tag, moving slowly along far from the ansible, as if transferring between jump points.

“She’s a Vatta ship,” Ky said. “We can’t ignore a Vatta ship.”

“Her beacon says she’s a Vatta ship,” Johannson said. “We could say we were, oh, Fitch’s Rangers… would that make us Fitch’s Rangers?”

“You have a database of ship registries,” Ky said. “What does her beacon ID say?”

“It agrees with the call signal, but that’s just common sense. That doesn’t mean she’s a Vatta ship, or commanded by a legitimate family member. What does your implant—oh, that’s right, you don’t have one.” This time the disapproval in his voice was clear.

“I’ll check with Stella,” Ky said. “She probably has the complete list.”

“She’d better. You hired us to protect you and the others in this convoy. All my instincts say that there’s something wrong here… it’s the classic pirate trick…”

“It’s one ship and she doesn’t scan armed,” Ky said. “You have two armed vessels…”

“Captain Vatta, you may have almost graduated from a military academy, and I will grant that you performed well under pressure at Sabine, but you do not know diddly-squat about threat analysis in real life. What if that ship is mined? What if that ship is stuffed with biologicals that could kill us all? I do not have a full hazmat team aboard, and I do not want to die—or see my people die—because I walked into a trap.”

Ky bit back the angry retort she wanted to make. “I appreciate your concern,” she said instead. “I have no intention of asking your people to risk themselves. But as you recall, contacting and aiding other Vatta family members is high on my priority list. I’ll go myself.”

“Stopping at all is risking us. Doing anything but going back into jump is risking us.” He wiped his forehead, though he wasn’t sweating. “Look… you’re making the classic mistake that bold youngsters make. You overvalue your own resources and you don’t see all the problems. Did you ever read that old chestnut about the young officer trying to interdict a river crossing?”

“The Defense of Duffer’s Drift,” Ky said.

“Yes. The problem is, you don’t get do-overs, in dreams or otherwise. Maybe the farm family really is loyal—but you can’t take the chance. Maybe this ship really is your family’s, and everyone on her is loyal and honest—but you can’t take the chance.”

“Actually I can,” Ky said. “But I see that I can’t ask you to. So you carry on to the next jump point, and I’ll match courses and see what’s what.”

“You have lost your mind,” Johannson said. “We can’t let you do that; we’ve contracted to protect you.”

Ky choked back the You can’t stop me that came automatically and said instead, “Look. We want to unblock this ansible. We’ll just put Rafe on it, get that job done, and give this other ship a call, see what she does, all right?”

“You’re making a mistake.”