“Insystem’s still fine, so far as I know. But the deepspace is gone—not just the sealed part, but there’s cavitation damage in the linkage—”

“I know,” Ky said.

“And if we try to use it, there’s no telling where we might end up.”

“I understand,” Ky said. “But if the insystem drive is okay, we could get away from this station, which I do not doubt is going to be attacked…”

Amat frowned. “It’s a long way to anywhere else… where would we go?”

“I don’t know. Yet. How are we doing on cargo loading,Gary?”

“It’s coming. Sixty-five percent at the moment. We’d left open space for drives access for repairs—if we block that up—”

Then a repair crew, if she could find one, and if they would extend credit, wouldn’t be able to get at the drives. But the ship without drives was nothing but a target. But the ship without cargo was useless…

Too many variables, too many conflicting priorities.

“How about the four I sent up?” Ky said. “Are they any use?”

“Oh, yes. Good workers, all of them. If we just had the drive in order—”

“Understood.” Ky tried to make her brain work faster. It had to work faster; she had to find a solution to this. And the logical thing to do was try to find a repair yard. “I’m going to see what I can do about the drive problem. I’ll switch our contract to Vatta Limited, and see if that shakes ’em loose, though with war breaking out and the ansibles gone, who knows? See if that drives tech thinks he can install parts if I can just get the parts. We could stand off somewhere on insystem drive, and install the stuff ourselves, maybe.” And if he left her alone for a few minutes, she might be able to think clearly.

She called up the station directory and found the orbital offices of six firms with orbital yards. Helmsward Yard, Ltd., Sabine Systems, and Artco Yards all had aSuperiorrating, but Helmsward had already turned her down for financing. She doubted they would reconsider her application if she now claimed to be operating under Vatta’s umbrella. In fact, in light of the ansible attack, they might think she was trying to misrepresent herself if she changed her story. When she checked the status of the others, Artco had relisted itself Unavailable. She called Sabine Systems, and a nervous-sounding voice on the other end said their chief engineer would have to get back to her.

That left Colley & Co. and Bartlin Brothers, rated Acceptable in the guide, and RealValue Repairs, unrated. She tried Bartlin Brothers; no one answered. Colley & Co.’s com was answered by a man who was both out of breath and annoyed. “Are you kidding?” he said, when she started to say her ship needed repairs, and then he hung up.

Gravity, her father had said, ensures that stuff rolls downhill until it hits bottom, and some psychic gravity was definitely at work here. RealValue Repairs sounded like the kind of place only the desperate approached. The kind of place where they removed parts from the previous repair job, cleaned and polished them, put them in fresh containers, and sold them as new. Where they had more experience in faking and cheating than actually repairing.

But what choice did she have?

Quincy’s call from the drives bay gave her an excuse not to call them. “If you can get us a sealed unit and about ten meters of good-quality liner, we might get this done ourselves,” she said. “It’ll take us longer than a proper yard, but it’s doable.”

The first good news. Things got bad until they started getting better…

“I’ll see what I can do,” Ky said. Maybe RealValue would sell the parts.Quincyshould be able to tell if the sealed unit was really sealed, and there had to be some kind of function test she could apply, short of going into FTL flight… and liner, that was a visual test. She knew how to do that herself. And maybe there were other suppliers… She queried her implant.

The comboard flashed red and a message came up on the screen:

Great. Just great. Now she would have to leave the ship to get any more supplies.

No. She would send someone. She was the captain; she was responsible for them all. She would not leave the ship now, of all times. She calledQuincyagain.

“I need you to go onstation and find us that sealed unit,” she said. “They’ve cut off ship to station communication, except for official contacts. I can’t even get a list of suppliers, but I do have one contact name from before: RealValue Repairs. I don’t want to leave the ship myself—”

“Quite right,”Quincysaid. “And I shouldn’t either. I’ll send one of the junior engineering crew. You do know RealValue has a bad rep.”

“I suspected it; they’re unlisted. But all the others have shut up business—I can’t get through. We can sit here with nothing, or try to get permission to leave the station and go crawling off on insystem—which means we’d have to crawl back in a few weeks—or we find someone to sell us the sealed unit and some liner material. And RealValue is the only name I have.”

“I have a couple others, not repair places but suppliers,”Quincysaid. “I’ll send Beeah. You’ll need to give him the financing options.”

The financing options, which consisted primarily of begging someone to trust that Ky was really Vatta Transport, Ltd.

“Of course,” Ky said. “Send him up and I’ll give him the works.” Since the station/ship commercial channels weren’t working, Ky printed out a hardcopy of her master’s license, her ID, and a statement on the Vatta Transport, Ltd., letterhead which authorized Beeah Chok, engineering second, to make binding legal contracts contingent on her signature.

Beeah showed up on the bridge in a crisp-jacketed Vatta Transport uniform completely unlike his usual working coverall. “Quincysaid I had to look official, Captain,” he said. “With trouble on the docks, I don’t want to get taken in for something.Quincygave me the shopping list—what else do I need?”

“This,” Ky said. “Vatta Transport, Ltd., authorization to purchase, my authorization… and don’t worry about getting the best price. Pick up whatever news you can, and make it snappy. Someone’s going to close down this station soon, one way or the other…”

“Attack a station?” Beeah said, his eyebrows going up.

“Someone attacked ansibles,” Ky said. “I expect an attack here; I would have broken us loose already if we had a working FTL drive.”

“Right,” Beeah said.

“Check the dockside intercom on your way off our patch,” Ky said. “If anything happens, I want to be sure we have that much linkage.”

“Will do,” Beeah said.

She watched him on the monitors as he went; at dockside, he picked up the microphone and spoke.

“You hear me, Captain?”

“Loud and clear, Beeah. What can you see from there?”

“Not much. A lot of empty dockside. Looks like they may’ve closed the big hatches between here and Y-Zone, with just the personnel locks between. That may be why the ship-to-station ordinary linkages are down. That was all optics, probably. See you later, Captain.”

Ky watched him go, chewing her lip. It wasn’t safe. Nothing was safe, right now. ISC would have noticed immediately when their ansibles went down; they would respond, but who knew how long that would take? She and the Glennys Jones and all her crew could disappear into this war, and nobody would ever know what had happened. Her family would wonder…

But they would know, she realized in the next instant. Vatta Transport, Ltd., used the same ISC ansibles as anyone else; Vatta ships had a regular schedule through Sabine. The Sabine ansible would be monitored by someone at Vatta’s home offices, and they might even know already she was here, if that monitoring included a list of ships currently at Sabine’s orbital station.