“Blips—oh… those. Those are… friends of mine, you might say. It’s why I don’t have to worry about raiders.”

The slightest emphasis on I, the slightest smugness in the tone. “Don’t worry, Kylara, honey, we’ll take good care of you.”

“Will you?” Ky asked, in the mildest tone she could manage. On the scan, the two ships closed distance steadily. It looked as if they had tracked and analyzed her course and were planning to intercept to killing distance. “You didn’t mention your friends before, Cousin. Who are they?”

“My dear, you really do not need to know. It’s better if you don’t. In case—” He paused. She could fill in that blank easily: in case she escaped to tell the tale.

The ansible status light went from steady green to red. So they had blocked the ansible again.

“Told you,” Rafe said softly, just out of pickup range.

“And now the ansible’s not working,” Ky said to Osman. He shrugged.

“These automated ansibles aren’t as reliable, I’ve learned over the years. Were you trying to send a message?”

“Thinking of it,” Ky said. “I guess I’ll have to wait until we get to the next one.”

A stupid exchange; surely he had detected her transmission to the ansible and surely he knew it had succeeded. But in following his misdirection, she might learn something useful.

“Your friends are coming in very fast,” Ky said. “If you hadn’t told me they were your friends, I’d worry about an attack.” They were coming in spread formation, perfect for attacking a single ship and preventing its escape by any sudden maneuver. Not that her ship was capable of much evasive action.

“They’ll take care of us both,” Osman said. “In their way.”

His smile no longer looked open and benign; it had a predatory edge to it. Ky considered the scan before answering. If those were military ships, with high-performance drives—and surely they were at least equivalent—they would be in range for beam weapons within six hours. Was it Osman’s job to keep her calm and ignorant until then, loafing along on a course that made interception and attack easy? Had he done this before, setting up innocent traders for pirate attacks? Had he been involved in the Sabine thing, one of Paison’s allies? And what would he do when he found that her shields held against them?

She smiled into the screen and saw Osman’s expression stiffen before his mouth widened again. “I’m so glad you’re here,” Ky said. “It means a lot to me to have a senior Vatta captain’s advice.”

“My advice? I still say you shouldn’t hurry off to Garth,” he said. “Let us escort you, at least. A convoy would be safer.”

“You won’t have any trouble catching up with us. As you can tell, we have that old-fashioned slow insystem drive. I’m sure you have better.”

“Well, yes, but… you young people are always in such a hurry. Take it from me, haste in dangerous situations can be fatal.”

“So can sitting around waiting to be shot,” Ky said. “Look here, Cousin, I’m glad to have your protection and your company, but I’m not going to take your orders.”

“You are definitely Gerry’s child,” Osman said. “Too bad…”

“Too bad?” Ky’s stomach lurched. Here it came, whatever it was.

“I might have found a use for you,” Osman said in a tone of such fake geniality and regret that Ky wanted to gag. “After all, a daughter of the great Gerard Avondetta Vatta… niece to Stavros, the Vatta CEO… you might have been very useful. But—” His expression hardened. “—but you are just an arrogant spoiled bitch, fit child to the man who cost me my proper life, the life I should have had as a senior Vatta captain.”

He couldn’t resist boasting. She had read that about certain kinds of criminals, but she had never seen it.

“Your father and uncle, the pair of them: stuck-up arrogant prigs that they were, they used me—they ruined me—just to get a step up the corporate ladder. As if they never did anything wrong. As if a Vatta heir weren’t worth twice what some sniveling Engineering apprentice was… stupid slut, I gave her a necklace.” The veins bulged on his forehead, she noticed; the old rage still consumed him. “And now, princess Kylara, Gerry’s precious daughter, I’m going to destroy you. I only wish Gerry were here to see it in the moments before I blew him away.”

“I’m so sorry to disoblige you,” Ky said. Her heart was racing; she hoped he would interpret it as fear. “But I prefer not to be blown away.”

“Prissy-mouth! What you prefer doesn’t matter… you have nothing on that ship to defend yourself with, nothing. Oh, I know you bought a defensive suite at Lastway—we got word of that, no fear. But it’s not worth a minim on a credit, because we have a deal with MilMart: they sell only worthless junk to Vatta, and we don’t destroy them.”

Ky stiffened her face, but too late; he leered at her. “Ah—I see you hadn’t discovered the flaw yet. You will, about the time your ship comes apart around you. Or… I have a better idea. If you’re the honorable sort, like old Gerry, and want to save your crew—or some of them—you can always cut your drive and surrender. I’ll wager they’d rather live than die, and while I won’t promise to make your life pleasant, I have no quarrel with unrelated crew. Unless of course some of them were involved in my embarrassment.” He chuckled. “Go ask them, why don’t you? I can wait.”

Ky cut the connection. Lee stared at her, wide-eyed but silent; Rafe showed no emotion but the pulse beating in his neck.

“That was interesting,” Ky said. Her mouth was dry; her voice not as steady as she wished. “So he’s got a grudge against Vatta because my father threw him out. And he’s sure our defensive suite won’t work. I wonder if that’s even true. I can’t imagine that MilMart’s stayed in business if they’re that easy to bribe.”

“Captain—” That was Quincy, on the ship’s intercom. “We have a problem.”

“What’s that?” Ky asked. Her voice sounded normal again.

“Well… I didn’t spot this at first, but there’s a problem in the defensive suite—not in the scan components, but in the shields.”

“I wonder why the Mackensee scan didn’t pick it up,” Ky said. “They had us arm it and said it looked solid.”

“Yes. I know. I thought that meant it was working, too. But Toby was bored having to watch that miserable pup, and I gave him a stack of instruction cubes to keep him occupied. He went looking for that missing component we replaced from stock, found it, and then thought there was something odd about it. He says it’s not what the manual calls for, and the shields will go on all right but not actually protect against a strong hit.”

“Can it be made to work?”

“Yes, if we have time. Hours. The hardware is mostly okay; the software could be, but the installation instructions we were given were wrong. We need to uninstall the software, replace the nonstandard components of the hardware, then reinstall. Seven hours, probably. I know it took longer last time, but then we were unfamiliar with the equipment.”

A voice in the background. “Not now, Toby,” Quincy said, half into the intercom.

“But—”

“Not now, “Quincy said. Then into the intercom. “I’m thinking at least seven hours.”

They didn’t have seven hours. Not now. Ky tried to think. Shieldless, they were easy prey, as easy as they looked.

“Quincy, where are the other crates from Mackensee, the ones labeled MODEL 87-TR-5003?”

“Number one hold. Why?”

“Because we need them, and we need them now. And the ones I called the odor barriers. Get ’em out, unpack ’em, and call me when you have them laid out on the deck.”

“Let me tell her…” came faintly from the intercom. Toby, of course. Pity for the child who had lost all in his ship at Allway and was probably going to be dead in a few hours gave her patience.

“Let him talk, Quincy,” Ky said. “Go on, Toby.”

“It won’t take that long,” Toby said. “I was going to tell Quincy, but she called you right away. I located the places where the component needs changing and pre-positioned everything. I wouldn’t do it without asking, Captain. I know that would be wrong, but I thought—I thought it would be all right to do that much.”