“For the time it takes them to get here, maybe. Then he’ll betray you, and there won’t be time for talk. How far away are the mercs?”

“Next ansible over, I hope,” Ky said. “But how do you know he’s got one?”

“Captain… let’s go to your cabin.”

“What?”

“I need to speak to you privately,” Rafe said. He was still tense, pale, his eyes locked on hers.

“If you must,” Ky said. She looked at the others. “Call me if anything changes. Make sure everything’s ready.”

“Always,” Quincy said.

Ky led the way to her cabin; Rafe followed her and shut the hatch without asking her.

“What is this about?” Ky asked. “You’re—”

“Just listen,” Rafe said. “I—there’s another new tech I didn’t tell you about.”

“You have a shipboard ansible of your own?” she said. “Or some way to detect ansible activity?”

He tapped his head. “I have one here. Miniaturized, implantable. The power system’s not adequate, so I need to hook into an exterior power source or link to an existing, working ansible.”

Ky blinked. “You have an ansible in your head?”

“Yes. Small, underpowered, but nonetheless workable. Experimental tech, of course. So far as I know the only working model; I got it direct from the lab. You must not tell anyone…”

“I won’t,” Ky said. She was still fascinated. “So that’s how you know he has a shipboard one? How do you know he doesn’t have an implant like you?”

“They smell different,” Rafe said. At her expression he sighed, shook his head. “They had to hook up a lot of weird connections to make it work at all. Humans have a lot of olfactory receptors we don’t really use, apparently tied to the biochemistry of the planet we originated on; they tied the detector function to that. It’s supposed to let me know when I’m in range and could tap power from an ansible, but my brain insists on giving me smells.”

“I hope they’re pleasant,” Ky said. She could not help staring at his skull, every angle she could see. It could not be possible to fit an ansible in there; most of the ones she’d seen—the outsides anyway—were the size of a small ship.

“Memorable is the word I’d choose,” Rafe said. “Whatever on our home planet smelled like that must not have been good for us. At any rate, I know he has a shipboard ansible and that he’s just activated it. Now will you please call the mercs on the system ansible before he blows it or something?”

“You think he’d blow it?”

“He wouldn’t want you calling for help, now would he?”

“I wonder why he doesn’t just use the system ansible, now that we’ve got it unplugged.”

“Because he knows we’d notice that, and he thinks his shipboard ansible can’t be detected. That alone should tell you he’s up to no good.”

“Oh. Right.”

On the bridge, Ky began the setup for an ansible connection and turned on the shipwide intercom. “We have a situation,” she said. “Quincy, bring the defensive suite active. Our friend over there is contacting someone, we don’t know who. Probably not someone we want to know.” The ansible connection winked green, and she entered the Mackensee codes she’d been given. The lightlag to the system ansible seemed interminable; she watched the chronometer ticking off the seconds… outbound signal… inbound signal…

“Trouble, Captain Vatta?” Johannson must’ve been sitting beside the com shack. Ky had never appreciated instantaneous communication so much.

“Possibly,” Ky said. “The ship was Vatta, and the captain… a Vatta troublemaker, apparently. It’s not a threat, but he’s just made an ansible call.”

“Can your agent strip it?”

“No.”

“Advise you go to max power and head for jump point,” Johannson said.

“Right into whoever’s coming in?” Ky asked. “And our insystem’s slow, if you recall.”

“The idea is that they blow by you while they’re still having downjump turbulence fouling their scans. Shortens your vulnerability, though there is a risk. As I said before.”

“And you?”

“We do have responsibilities to the rest of the convoy,” Johannson said. “But I’ll see what I can do.”

Was he really going to leave them hanging out here alone? Or had that been a message designed to confuse an eavesdropper? Ky hoped it was the latter, but he certainly wasn’t going to share his plans over an open ansible connection. That made sense, but it didn’t make Ky happy. She looked at Lee, whose expression was more alert than anxious.

“You heard the man,” she said. “Aim us at the jump point, and pour on the power. Not emergency max—we can’t outrun much of anything, but we can open distance.”

She called back to Fair Kaleen. “Ah… we’re outbound, and I’ve decided on a destination,”

“Wait a minute… that’s sudden. What happened?”

“It was what you said about the humod issue. It just occurred to me that the right market for a third of my cargo is one of the humod worlds. Look at the list. With the ansible here working again, I was able to get a little market data—we’re off for Garth. Coming?”

“But wait—girl—I mean, Captain, sorry—you don’t want to go to Garth—”

“I don’t? Why?”

“Well, just slow down there and we’ll talk about it. You don’t just make decisions on the first bit of info you get off a public board. How do you know it’s accurate?”

“Look,” Ky said, finding it easy to simulate impatience. “We hung around in this system a lot longer than we meant to, waiting for you to match courses and then chatting. No disrespect to an elder Vatta, but if we’re going to rebuild the company, we can’t do it by sitting out here telling family stories. We need to be trading. I may be young and ignorant, but I know that much.”

“Of course we need to be trading,” Osman said. “But rushing into things can get you in worse trouble. How do you know the folks after Vatta won’t be waiting for you in Garth?”

Because they’re on the way here was on the tip of Ky’s tongue, but she said instead, “I don’t. But the only way to find out is to go there. I have some specialized electronics that will suit their humod market… just lying around, they were, and I got them at a good price.”

“But—”

“So are you coming, or shall we meet later somewhere else?” She had half an eye on the ship’s nearscan, which showed the range between them widening more slowly than she’d like.

“I’ll… I’ll have to get my insystem drive up. I’ll follow you.”

“Fine,” Ky said, and flicked off the link.

He’d track her vector and report it, though if the allies he’d called were already in jump, it wouldn’t help them. “Rafe,” she said.

“Yes.” He was close behind her.

“Is there any way at all that ships can communicate between each other while in FTL space?”

“No. Not that I know of, anyway. The advanced tech on the pin ansibles allows a ship in FTL to contact a fixed ansible platform, that’s all.”

“Good.” She flicked on the shipwide com and explained the situation. “What we’re doing is running for the jump point. As soon as we can jump safely, we will. We don’t know where Osman’s allies are, or how fast they can get here. We are fairly sure he has no weapons capable of damaging us, so we’re not in immediate danger.”

“What if they get here before we can jump?” Lee asked. “We’re at least eighteen hours from the jump point. Are the mercs coming?”

“The mercs are not telling me or anyone else what they plan to do, but I’m hoping they’re on their way. We’ll deal with the other if it happens.”

“Why did you even go talk to that old idiot?” Jim asked. He must have been near the Engineering com station. “Wouldn’t it have been smarter to ignore him, like the mercs said?”

“Jim!” Quincy muttered.

“The only way to find out if he was legitimate or not was to talk to him,” Ky said. They were all probably thinking the same thing, but lacked Jim’s brashness.

“But Quincy told you shifts ago. And she told us about him—”