“Pilot’s board green,” Lee said. “Emergency disconnect on your mark, Captain.”

“Captain to crew, take stations for emergency undock maneuver, and report” Ky said. She watched the lights blink on, section by section reporting them secure.

At sixty-seven seconds the comdesk lit up. “Stationmaster to Glennys Jones. What do you think you’re doing?”

“Stationmaster, this is Captain Vatta commanding Glennys Jones… We are preparing to undock.” That was obvious. She watched the chronometer’s numbers tick over.

“You don’t have permission. You don’t have clearance. There are other vessels in the vicinity…”

“Then I suggest you provide information on their whereabouts and courses via Traffic Control, and restore communication with this vessel.”

“You will stay where you are; you will cease and desist any attempt to undock; you will shut down your drive—”

“We are going to undock,” Ky said. “It’s not safe to stay here, and you’ve cut us off from critical data.”

“If you continue, we will consider that proof of hostile intent—your weapons—”

“I register formal complaint, under Article 389.4 of the Intersteller Commercial Code,” Ky said. Invoking that article meant that automatic recording of her message would go into the most secure storage on the station, unalterable by the station staff. She wished she’d thought of it sooner. “Vatta Transport, Ltd., cargo ship Glennys Jones, outbound from Sabine Prime, with a cargo of agricultural equipment purchased from FarmPower, invoice number 893547699, on contract with Belinta Economic Development Bureau. This ship was refused access to critical ship components for repair on the grounds that it was in clandestine relationship with Sabine Secundus. This ship has just been accused by the stationmaster of carrying illicit weaponry. No prior inquiry was made, no investigation was pursued, and no official of the station contacted the captain to ascertain the truth. Now the stationmaster has stated that this ship’s undocking will be interpreted as a hostile act. This is in violation of the Commercial Code; Vatta Transport, Ltd., requests a formal inquiry into this matter at the earliest possible date. I formally deny the charges that have been made.”

“You Slotter Key types are all pirates,” snarled the stationmaster. That, too, would go into the sealed record, and ought to make for an interesting hearing in a few years, whenever the circuit court got to it.

Ky glanced over at Lee and held up her hands, folding down one finger at a time. At the last, he touched the controls for emergency disconnect boosters and Glennys Jones popped out of her docking slot like soap out of a wet hand. As they cleared the station’s hull, the scans came alive. They weren’t the only ones who’d left in a hurry. At least three shuttles were nuzzling the shuttle bays, and two more hung at a little distance, one of them fairly close to Glennys Jones. Larger ships were pulling Gs to get away. Ky said nothing; pilots didn’t need distractions in crowded space. She widened scan. The radiation signatures of the ansible explosions made two very bright flares on her scan, with the red icons that meant “Danger.” And something else.

“That does it, Vatta,” said someone from the station. “You’ll never dock here again.”

“That’s the truth,” Ky said, cold prickles racing each other up her spine. “You’ve got more problems than me… Check your deep scan.” Warships, two of them. Not with the Sabine Prime star-and-mountain icon, either. Sabine didn’t have much of a space navy anyway; they patrolled system space for pirates with stubby maneuverable little ships that mounted only a pair of ship-to-ship missiles. The ships on scan were much larger, and probably much better armed. They might be ISC come to find out what happened to their ansibles, but even ISC couldn’t get someone here that fast. Probably. Which meant they were most likely someone very nasty indeed. She glanced at Lee, who was clearly still concentrating on nearby traffic.

Silence, anyway, from the station; that light disappeared from the board.

“Riel,” Ky said. “We have a problem.”

“Naw… Lee can clear that shuttle easily, doesn’t even need insystem…”

“Deep scan. Warships. Get us away from the station, Riel. I’ll look for cover. Sheryl, you concentrate on avoiding collisions.”

She had the nav charts up on her board now and tried to think like a cadet with a tac problem in class, and not a cargo captain in an unarmed ship in a war zone. What did the enemy know, and what did she know? The warships had no downjump haze around their icons; they had been in the system—she checked the backtrace—four hours. Jumped in at low relative vee above the ecliptic. Two small jumps to place them where they were, in the classic “attack and blockade a planet” configuration. They would have had time to locate and identify all the ships at the station, which meant that just putting a planet between them and Glennys Jones wouldn’t accomplish anything.

The thing was… it wasn’t a tactical problem in class, it was real life. And she was a captain, with all a captain’s responsibilities… just not the kind of ship she’d ever thought of having. No weapons. Commercial-grade shielding only. A cloud of “if only” hovered over her: if only she’d just done the expected thing… if only she’d had the ship repaired at Belinta before coming here… if only she’d called home before the ansibles were blown…

No time for that. Riel, after one startled glance at the deep scan, reached over and switched the insystem drive from standby to engage.

“Lee, I’ll take over now. I can’t push the old lady up fast,” he said toKy.“She’ll gut-choke on us. I’ll have to ease into it.”

“Do what you can,” Ky said. Had those warships blown the ansibles? Her scan data weren’t good enough to backtrack the ships’ movements, but it was a reasonable guess. The station should be able to figure it out, if that did any good. Whose warships were they? Not Prime’s, and not Slotter Key’s… and anyone else probably wasn’t a friend.

She had the comdesk open wide, ready to pick up anyone’s transmission… Something squealed, and a spike ran up the visual display.

“What was that?” Lee asked.

“Batch-pod,” Ky said. Military used them, to send messages out of a system with no ansible. Their endim transition produced a characteristic squeal and blip. So someone—probably the warships—had sent information to someone outside the system. More warships? Invaders? Not pirates; pirates didn’t have this kind of resource base. At least not near Slotter Key. Someone hired by Secundus, was the most likely answer. So—who were they talking to, with a batch-pod?

She should have read up more on Sabine’s history and political setup. Hadn’t she heard the stories? Hadn’t she grown up knowing that a trader captain must know what was going on, or else?

And now she was here and it wasn’t a story.

Glennys Jones, easing up to her insystem cruising velocity at the modest acceleration her aging frame would endure, moved far more slowly than Ky wanted, opening distance from the station. Ky called up the supplementary military/mercenary database, searching for the icons the warships projected. There it was. Mackensee Military Assistance Corporation. The listing described it as “a consultancy service,” but farther in Ky found a paragraph describing “additional services which may extend to the provision of personnel and matériel when employer resources are insufficient to the accomplishment of specific goals outlined in the contract…”

Mercenaries indeed. It was heartening to notice that the mercenaries stated as policy that they did not take contracts involving “actions defined as piracy under the Interstellar Uniform Commercial Code” but less heartening to note the exceptions from that code permitted “in time of war or insurrection.” Those exceptions permitted civilian ships to be boarded and inspected, though no personnel were supposed to be harmed and no cargo taken… though again with exceptions. “Except in cases where the civilian ships are deemed to be carrying matériel of military significance…”