The light was still red. Had she set up the call wrong? She reached out for the hardcopy sheet of directions to check that just as the local system rang. It shouldn’t do that. No local call should come in while the comdesk was set up for intersystem access, even if it was on standby. She picked up the handset anyway.

“Yes?”

“Captain Vatta, our board shows that you are attempting to place an intersystem call…” The voice on the other end did not identify itself.

“Yes, I am,” she said. “Who is this?”

“We require an additional credit deposit for intersystem calls,” the voice said. “Please make arrangements with the desk staff—”

“My credit here is 5A,” Ky said, trying for icy. “That is supposed to cover all services…”

“We have no prior record of your account,” the voice said. “Vatta Transport, Ltd., has a 5A account, but you—”

“We went over this already,” Ky said. “I am Kylara Vatta; my father is Gerard Vatta, CFO of Vatta Transport. You’ve already verified my identification…”

“But you are here as an independent,” the voice said. “We have received information from Helmsward Yard to that effect… I’m afraid we cannot consider your account covered by Vatta Transport, Ltd.’s credit rating. We will expect you to settle your account another way. And in the meantime…”

Rage brought her up off the bed, almost to tiptoe; she clamped her jaw on the words she wanted to say, starting with whatever sneak at Helmsward Yard had called the Captains’ Guild and continuing with the ancestry, present attributes, and probable postlife destination of the person on the line.

“How unfortunate,” she managed at last, in a flat voice. “Since I was in the process of calling home to instruct my father that I would need more funds to secure an investment opportunity. However, I don’t need your equipment to make that call. Excuse me.” She signed off the comdesk, jammed her feet into her shoes, and reached for her cape. She could use the embassy link to the ship, and the ship had its own intersystem link capacity if the consul didn’t feel like trusting her for an intersystem call.

As she stalked past the front desk, the clerk tried to catch her eye; she ignored him and nodded to her escort. “We’re going to the embassy, then back here,” she told him. In the lobby, several captains were gathered around a vidscreen; she saw a swaying mass and smoke rising above it.

Away from the Captains’ Guild, anger drained away as she walked. They were pinheads, and they would regret being pinheads someday, but right now she had to contact her father and arrange a funds transfer. It didn’t matter if she was embarrassed at having to ask. All that really mattered was getting herself and her ship and crew to a safe place. Already things were worse on the street; her escort looked worried as they were jostled by hurrying pedestrians.

“Captain, we should take transport on the way back,” he said, as they neared the embassy.

“Agreed,” Ky said. She had never been in a war, though she’d heard stories, but she could feel the mood of the street.

The guards at the embassy entrance checked her ID carefully, then let her through; a different desk clerk checked them again.

“You were here yesterday,” he said, after consulting a log.

“Yes. But today I need to make an intersystem call to my family, back on Slotter Key.”

“I’m sorry, Captain, but we’re sending out only diplomatic signals now.”

“I suppose I’ll have to go up to the station and link in via my ship then,” Ky said.

“The Captains’ Guild has a secure uplink,” he said.

“But the Captains’ Guild is being sticky about my credit,” she said, wondering if the embassy could help.

“About Vatta credit?” he asked, brows raised.

“Yes. Even though I’m the CFO’s daughter and fly the Vatta flag, because I’m on an independent contract they’re acting as if Vatta won’t cover the bill. I don’t suppose you can get it across to them?”

“Oh, dear,” he said. “This is not a good time, Captain; Secundus has threatened to blockade Prime. My advice to you is to get yourself up to your ship and out in space as fast as you can. Call from there, if you have the time—”

Ky felt cold all over. If the planet were blockaded…

Her implant pinged her. Tobai reporting that the ag machinery had arrived, and the four strays. That was something. But she could not be stuck down here while her ship, cargo, and crew were up there and needed her.

“We could get you onto a diplomatic shuttle to the station,” he said, interrupting her thoughts.

“Thank you,” she said. “When—”

“It leaves in a little less than two hours,” he said. “The next would be tomorrow morning. I know all the commercial shuttles are full. Rats and sinking ships, et cetera.”

“Which bay?” Ky asked.

“Twelve. You’ll need your IDs; I’ll put your name on the list—” He did so as she watched. “Transport from here to the ’port takes at least forty minutes.”

“I have to pick up my duffel at the Captains’ Guild…”

“Best hurry,” he said.

Ky’s escort had caught a short-haul transport; it took them fifteen minutes to get back to the Captains’ Guild. Ky hurried upstairs, stuffed her things into the duffel, checked her account, retrieved the signed agreement from last night about her credit, and went back downstairs. Before the desk manager could open his mouth, she spoke.

“I am checking out. I have your signed agreement from yesterday that you will charge the Vatta Transport account; here is the authorization code again, and the account number. I want a receipt.”

“But—”

“Now,” Ky said. She had no idea what, besides frustration, was in her voice, but he backed up a step.

“Yes, Captain Vatta.” He glanced at the data sheets she’d laid before him, and printed out a hardcopy of the receipt, Charged to Vatta Transport, Ltd. on the last line. “I’ll need your signature…”

Ky scrawled Kylara Vatta, Captain, Vatta Transport, Ltd. on the yellow copy and handed it back.

“Have a good trip,” he said as she turned away. In the lobby, the same cluster of captains was still watching the vidscreen, now showing someone with a strange hat talking at the camera.

Her escort had another transport waiting. “You don’t have to come,” Ky said.

“I do,” he said. “I’m not letting you go alone, not in this. It’s my duty.”

“Very well. Let’s go.”

Traffic to the shuttle port was slow and heavy, but they arrived in time. Ky signed off the escort’s time card at the entrance to Bay Twelve, and slung her duffel over her shoulder. The guards at the gates were thorough with their ID check—as she expected—but she made it onto the shuttle in plenty of time to find a seat and belt in. Like the Vatta private shuttle, the diplomatic shuttle had separate compartments for VIPs and the ravening hordes. Unlike the Vatta shuttles, captains of ships did not count as VIPs, and Ky found herself wedged into a narrow seat between two other Slotter Key citizens who had decided to leave.

“It’s ridiculous,” grumbled the man on her left. “If the government had just opened the Tertius mines to investment—”

“It has nothing to do with Tertius,” said the man on her right. “That’s just a side issue; the real problem is Secundus’ perception that Prime is misrepresenting them to the universe as a backward, violent society—”

“Well, they are—,” said the other man.

“They’re pioneers. Pioneers have to be tough to survive.”

“They don’t have to have a habit of blowing up their neighbors. That’s hardly a survival trait.”

Ky felt like the net in a tennis match. “Excuse me,” she said. “I just got here two days ago, and I have no idea what’s going on.” That wasn’t, strictly speaking, true, but she hoped it would slow down the high-speed volleys.

They both looked at her as if they had not realized there was a human in the seat between them.