Chapter Twenty-Two

By the time Rafe reached the bridge, Ky had the scans on full power. The defensive suite had come back on its own when the system resets were complete. She now had exact vectors on the two raiders and the Mackensee ship; the raiders’ icons showed them boosting, but they would still pass near enough to take a shot at her if they were minded to. Fair Kaleen, rolling drunkenly, continued to block them at unpredictable moments, but that was not protection she could count on. At least they were far enough away that they were not in danger of being struck.

“Lee, perhaps you’d go down and show Jim and Toby what controls you need first,” Rafe suggested as he came onto the bridge. “If that’s all right with you, Captain…”

“Yes—unplug your board, Lee, and take it down with you,” Ky suggested. “They know wiring, but they don’t know piloting.”

“I’ll need scan access,” Lee said. “I can’t pilot blind.”

“I understand,” Ky said. “But just give them some hints—make sure they don’t power up the wrong component or something.”

Lee shrugged, unplugged his board, and set off down the passage.

“Thanks,” Rafe said. “Now—we’ll need to set up the visual—”

“You can do visual?”

“Yeah.” Rafe pushed back his helmet, unsealed his suit, and reached inside, wrinkling his nose as he did so. “Bit of a whiff about that suit, Captain, if you don’t mind my mentioning.”

“I know,” Ky said.

“You might want to clean up before the mercs see it.”

“I’m sure they’ve seen worse,” Ky said.

He stopped and looked at her. “Are you performing some religious ritual of self-punishment, or is there something else I don’t know?”

Her patience snapped. “Like perhaps I have not had one second since I got back aboard without something critical for me to do? You, and the others, were all unconscious and all the ship systems were down.”

“Everyone?” His brows went up, and he continued to dig about inside his pressure suit, finally coming up with a length of cord Ky recognized as a connector of some sort. He tucked it into his wristband, then took his helmet all the way off and set it in Lee’s seat. He pushed back his hair, peeled back the flap over his implant access, retrieved the cord, and inserted one end of the connector into the implant orifice. “I didn’t know that.”

“Everyone,” Ky said, fascinated.

Rafe glanced at the scans. “They’re four light-minutes out; you’d have time to clean up now. I’ll call if anything happens.”

This time she felt a wave of exasperation. “Why do you care how I look?”

“First impressions are important in anything,” he said. “Right now you look like a bloodthirsty, violent killer, not a nice sane tradeship captain of good family.”

Ky grinned; she was aware again of those surges of pleasure she’d felt when killing. “I am a bloodthirsty, violent killer. I told you that before.”

“It’s not funny,” Rafe said, shaking his head. “I’m serious. Your mercs weren’t happy with you staying behind in this system anyway. You need them to see you as sane and sensible, which is what you really are.”

It was not the time to make her point, but the words were out of her mouth before she could stop them. “I’m both,” she said. “But your point is taken.” She turned on her heel and headed for her cabin.

Stella was dabbing at blood marks on the carpet; she looked up when Ky came in. “Situation?”

“Improving,” Ky said. “I’m actually going to clean up a bit.”

“Thank you,” Stella said, with feeling. “I’ll go to the galley, then, and start heating some soup or something.” Her nose wrinkled, and she was pale.

Ky started to get out of the pressure suit, then decided it would be easier to clean under the shower. A hard vacuum would have been easiest, but that wasn’t available without going out past Osman’s corpse. The shower sluiced off the worst of the mess on the suit; she cycled it twice, then peeled out of the suit and her shipsuit and ducked through the water. She could still smell Osman’s death, but less. The drying cycle—into a clean shipsuit from her cabin—she looked at the pressure suit with distaste. It was damp from the shower on the outside, and sweaty on the inside. She hung it over her shoulder and made it back to the bridge in five minutes.

Rafe glanced at her and murmured, “Your hair.”

Ky raked at it with her fingers; he winced dramatically but said nothing more about it. Instead, he pointed to the cables he’d attached to the bulkhead outlet, her deskcom’s output, and his implant. “You can use your own com as usual; the video pickup’s just the same. I’ve already entered the initiating codes for the ansible hookup, and the device itself is live right now. I can’t move around much; I need to be attached to the power supply.”

“Right.” Ky sat in her chair, the pressure suit draped across her lap, and glanced at the scan screens. The two raiders were still boosting for jump; the mercenary ship had gained on them. She entered Gloucester’s ansible-access number. Instantly—so it worked!—her com screen lit with the INITIATING CALL icon. She glanced at Rafe; he looked blank and said nothing. She guessed he was monitoring the ansible function.

“Gloucester.” No visual. They should have her visual.

“This is Captain Vatta of Gary Tobai. We have established a secure link now—”

“Captain Vatta.” The screen now showed the Gloucester’s com officer and Lt. Commander Johannson. “What’s your status?”

“We’re repairing some damage,” Ky said. “Ship’s stable at this time, all personnel alive.”

“Do you need immediate assistance?”

“Not immediate,” Ky said. “Fair Kaleen is damaged; I don’t know her crew status. Her captain’s dead—”

“What happened?”

“He had boarded my ship and was setting a mine,” Ky said. “I killed him.” Again that surge of joy she must conceal, stronger now as she had time to reflect on it. “Anyway, Fair Kaleen appears to be tumbling, and if she’s not to be lost, I need a boarding team to go aboard and get her back under control. We don’t have any way to get over there. Then a prize crew—”

“Prize crew.” He scowled at her.

“She was a Vatta ship. She was stolen. I’m taking possession in the name of Vatta Ltd.”

“You do recall the details of our contract, do you not? You agreed not to act on that letter of marque.”

She had forgotten that letter again. “I’m not doing this as a privateer; I’m doing this as Vatta. The ship belongs to Vatta; I’m taking her back.”

“I see.” He did not sound convinced. “Whatever you think, Captain Vatta, this is skirting very close indeed to breach of our agreement. Privateers take prizes. We do not. We will not jeopardize our status as legitimate mercenaries by taking a prize or putting a prize crew aboard. We will, however, board the ship and attempt to stabilize her, and take prisoner anyone on her. If you can then arrange a prize crew out of your own, we will transport them in a pinnace to the other ship. The only reason I agree to that much is the Vatta ID of the ship’s beacon. If a court decides she’s stolen property belonging to your family, that’s different. I reserve judgment. Is that clear?”

“Quite clear,” Ky said. “Thank you.”

“Meanwhile,” he went on, “it seems important to chase these two all the way to jump, if they were involved.”

“They were,” Ky said.

“Ah—also part of the conspiracy against the ansibles, you think?”

“Definitely.”

“Any objection to our taking them out?”

Ky thought of stating the obvious—the two-to-one odds—but refrained. “None at all,” she said.

“We’ll be back in a few hours,” he said. Then the Mackensee ship vanished from scan, only to reappear in a tangled web of uncertainty brackets—VECTOR UNKNOWN, VELOCITY UNKNOWN—that dissolved to show it in the perfect position to fire up the sterns of the fleeing raiders. One blew almost instantly; the second produced a burst of acceleration that—less than a minute later—ended in another explosion.