“Oh!” said the one on the right. His eyes focused on her uniform. “Uh… you’re a merchanter captain? Uh… Vatta Transport?”
“Yes,” Ky said. “Picking up a load of ag machinery.”
“Oh, ag machinery,” said the one on her left with a tone that suggested it might be something else. “Well… did you visit Secundus?”
“No,” Ky said. “FarmPower’s here on Prime.”
“Yes, of course. Of course. Secundus… you heard me say they are pioneers…”
“What made it come to a head now is that the Prime government decided not to open the Tertius mines to investment, but to keep them as a government monopoly. To prevent destabilizing overexploitation, as they put it. Actually, to keep control of the richest mineral deposits in this system and funnel the output to Prime’s industrial backbone—FarmPower among them—and ensure that Secundus keeps buying its… er… ag machinery from Prime’s suppliers.”
“And meanwhile,” the other man said, “Prime’s telling everyone that Secundus is backward and not worth trading with—bunch of ignorant roughs who shoot visitors in the street for no reason.”
“It has happened, Harmy,” the first man said.
“No more often than on Prime,” the other man said. “The case they always cite,” he said to Ky, “was a university student—one of a group—who went to Secundus on break. They went to get drunk and disorderly far from home, if you ask me. Anyway, the young man not only got drunk and disorderly, he pulled a young woman down from a wagon, ripped her clothes half off, and was about to rape her when she shot him. It would have been less trouble overall if she’d killed him, but she shot for deterrence instead, so he was able to come home and tell everyone what unreasonable people there were on Secundus.”
“If they had proper law enforcement,” the first man said, “it would never have happened; a policeman would have stopped him the moment he grabbed her off the wagon.”
“Yes, but there was a reason she shot him. It wasn’t ‘senseless.’ And there are streets in Prime’s cities where you need a team of escorts, not just one.”
“Criminal elements are everywhere.”
“Including in First Families and government bureaus.”
Ky interrupted, sensing another long volley about to begin. “So—Secundus is a pioneer society? How do they think they’ll do in a war against Prime?”
The men stopped, looked at each other, and her, and said simultaneously, “I don’t think I should comment on that.” In eerie synchrony, they opened their workcases and began staring at the little screens.
Ky sat back, thinking, and wondered if either of the men would start a conversation again. She wondered all the way to the orbital station, and they didn’t.
Back aboard her ship, she found her crew hard at work breaking down the ag machinery into components that would fit the odd-sized holds. She nodded at Gary Tobai, and headed for the bridge and its comdesk.
Chapter Seven
No one was sitting at the comdesk board when she got there; with the captain onstation and on the way to the ship, that made sense. They were all busy trying to get the ship loaded.
Ky sat down and inserted her command wand, then entered the string of codes for intersystem ansible access. Whatever had a hair up the rear of the Captains’ Guild wouldn’t affect access from the ship; by law and treaty, all ships were guaranteed such access. While she waited for the connection, she flicked on the nearspace advisory channel.
“—an emergency like this,” she heard. “Unprecedented, we simply have no idea what will happen now…”
That did not sound good. Ky queried her implant, realizing that it had been more silent than usual since she’d entered the diplomatic shuttle. She’d assumed the shuttle had security masks in place, but that shouldn’t have been a problem on the orbital station. The implant fizzed the way it did when it needed an adjustment, then produced a warning symbol, followed by what was obviously an official announcement.
Due to conditions beyond our control, public access to channels is restricted until further notice. We apologize for any inconvenience. Stay tuned for more information as it becomes available. Thank you… Due to conditions beyond our control…
Ky damped the implant and looked at the display on the comdesk. The intersystem access telltale still glowed red, and as she watched it began to blink. After a long moment, it went dark.
“No one ever thought anything like this could happen,” someone on the nearspace advisory channel was saying. “Attack on intersystem ansibles is just… just unthinkable.”
Not really. Ky remembered one of the lectures in Strategic Analysis, in which a discussion of the consequences of successful interdiction of intersystem communication had delved into the reasons someone might do it and the consequences thereof, economic, political, and military. It had happened—far away, and decades past, and those responsible were no longer alive—but it had happened. So some people had thought of it, and presumably also whoever had—her mind came back from that moment of shocklike drift. No ansible meant no message to Vatta Transport, Ltd., and thus no funds, and thus… no repairs for getting her ship safely out of this system before whoever had taken out the ansible decided to attack the orbital station.
A variety of epithets ran through her mind as she felt the goose bumps rise on her skin. This was not a training simulation, a classroom exercise. She was sitting on an unspaceworthy ship at a space station orbiting a world at war, and one side or the other had just demonstrated the ability to mount an attack in space, at the same time neatly cutting off this system from real-time communication with the rest of the universe.
She called up the station display of ship status. The good news was that the display still worked, and purported to be up-to-date. The bad news… ships were already signing up for departure queues, and one—Susie G—had just executed an unapproved emergency disconnect. She didn’t bother to put her name in the queue; Glennys Jones wasn’t going anywhere without her drive repair. She tried for a video access, and to her surprise was able to see a typical newcaster talking away in front of an image of explosion. She turned up the sound on that.
“—No one is believed to have survived the explosion of either ansible platform; the death toll is estimated to be at least seven hundred fifty and could be several times that. InterStellar Communications local office has no comment at this time—” ISC, the monopoly which controlled both communications and financial ansibles across hundreds of systems, would make someone wish they hadn’t done it… They had fought some succesful limited wars to keep local governments from taking over ansible linkages. That response would come far too late to help her, Ky knew. “—Sabine system is now cut off from regular communication with the rest of the universe,” the announcer said. “No word yet that anyone has claimed responsibility, but Sabine Prime’s Solar Royal has accused Secundus rebels.”
At least they had already loaded the supplies for the trip back to Belinta. Ky suspected that prices were going to skyrocket in the next few hours.
She heard someone running along the passage to the bridge; Gary Tobai and Riel Amat burst in. “Ky—Captain—you’re here! You know what’s happened?”
“Some idiot blew the ansibles, yes,” Ky said. “And no, our transfer didn’t come through. It must’ve happened while I was in transit. We’re stuck here on a vulnerable station with a malfunctioning drive. At least we have food, right?”
“Right, Captain. Supplies all loaded. But the drives—”
“I know. And I can’t call home—I could have, if the stupid Captains’ Guild hadn’t refused my credit rating, but they did, and eight hours makes a difference.” Eight hours ago, when the ansible was still working, when those people were still alive… Ky pushed that thought away. “So—what do we have, if anything?”