Their expertise lay impossibly far away, in time and space; she had no connection there anymore, even if the ansibles hadn’t been out… but she did, she remembered.

The card that had come with the ship model from MacRobert… what was it he’d written? “If you ever need to let us know about something, remember that dragons breathe fire.”

But she wasn’t a dragon, and Glennys Jones wasn’t a dragon-class cruiser. Of course… Mac knew that. Mac knew… and somehow he’d given her a way to get their attention. Now she regretted the resentment that had kept her from plugging away at the mystery hidden in the instructions… some kind of recognition code, probably, if only she understood it. Not advanced communication devices; she was sure that the model wasn’t a compact ansible, for instance… but why?

Why was she sure? Would she know a compact military-grade ansible if she had one in her hands?

“Captain—” Lee was pointing to the comdesk when Ky shook herself out of her thoughts. A light had come on: incoming message.

“Captain Vatta, Glennys Jones,” she said.

“Glennys Jones, this is the Mackensee Military Assistance Corporation ship Victor. Does your ship have active gravity controls?”

“Yes,” Ky said, through a throat gone suddenly tight and dry. “Confirm active gravity controls.”

A long wait… minutes crawled past, each seeming years long, before a reply came through. Unboosted communication, then:

“Glennys Jones cease boost, repeat, cease boost. Transmit cargo manifest, personnel manifest, vessel’s operational status on this channel within one standard hour. Crew personal effects need not be enumerated but all weapons must be listed. Personnel manifest to include full name, state of origin, current citizenship, age, sex, occupation. Operational status to include systems status. Prepare for inspection. Acknowledge.”

“They’re going to board us?” Lee said; he sounded scared. Ky was glad someone else had voiced that fear.

“Maybe… maybe not.” Easier to be calm when she had someone else to be calm for. “They might just do an external inspection.” Unlikely but it was a chance.

“What can we do?” Lee asked. His voice was still tense, pitched higher than usual.

“Right now, what we’re told,” Ky said. “Cut the boost—we wanted to do that anyway. We can’t fight, we can’t run, and it won’t do us any good to argue.” She thumbed the transmitter. “ Glennys Jones acknowledges: cut boost to zero accel, cargo and crew manifest, and ship operational status to be transmitted this channel within one hour.”

No immediate answer, of course. She looked at longscan again. There—one of the warships’ icons appeared next to one of the larger merchanters.

“Gary, I need the cargo manifest and an annotated crew list, including our four newbies—and check if anyone has anything a military boarding team might consider a weapon.”

“A good team could consider a pillow a weapon,”Garysaid. He sounded more grumpy than scared, but his expression was worried.

“Be serious. The kind of thing they’ll be upset about if we don’t declare it. Firearms, knives, that kind of thing.” Vatta Transport, like Slotter Key generally, had a relaxed attitude toward personal weapons. Crew were not supposed to take weapons off the ship onto foreign soil—which included orbital stations—but they could have anything on board which fit into their personal space.

“Ten minutes,”Garysaid. Ky turned toQuincy.

“You heard them. I need whatever they will consider relevant operational status.”

“Right. Fifteen minutes. I need to be sure I list all the warts.”

The lists, when completed, came toKy.She looked them over… a sad little list it seemed now. A crew of seeming nonentities, all from Slotter Key, with a boring utilitarian cargo, on a ship that could serve as a textbook example of antiquated, inefficient, and scrapworthy. “Weapons” included Mehar’s two pistol bows, twenty-three personal knives—mostly small folding pocketknives like Gary’s—and nine kitchen knives, from paring to chopping. Ky wondered about that—the mercenaries hadn’t said to include kitchen cutlery in the list but the big butcher knife would certainly kill someone.

She sent the lists off in good time, and turned on the intercom.

“We’ve received communication from Mackensee,” she told the crew. “As some of you already know, we’ve cut acceleration on their orders, and sent off cargo and crew manifest. They said prepare for inspection, so I expect that when they get around to it, they’ll come out here and look us over. They may board the ship to check our actual cargo against the manifest. Keep in mind that they have the guns and we don’t—we will comply with their orders until further notice.”

She wondered if she should have included the last three words.

“If any of you have any personal weapons which you failed to tell your section head about, do it immediately. I can think of few things that would anger a military commander more than finding concealed weapons.”

An hour later, she got her answer from the mercenaries: “Folding knives under six centimeters in length are of no concern, nor is kitchen cutlery. You will receive specific instructions for inspection.”

Riel had relieved Lee, and they had all eaten a sketchy meal, when the icon of a Mackensee warship appeared only a few hundred kilometers away. Near-scan bleeped a mass-proximity warning as the comdesk lit again. Ky nodded to Riel, who damped the warning siren.

“Glennys Jones, acknowledge.”

“Glennys Jones,” Ky said, dry-mouthed again; her heart raced in her chest. “This is Captain Vatta.”

“This is Mackensee ship Victor. We will be doing an exterior inspection prior to boarding. Lock down your controls; we don’t want accidents.”

Ky nodded to Riel, who pulled the safety cover over the controls and latched it.

“Controls locked,” she said.

“Describe your personnel vacuum lock.”

“It’s an emergency escape lock that provides access to an escape passage leading from the stern to crew quarters. Capacity is four.” Ky added the schematics to her voice message and heard a grunt from the other end.

“How old is this tub, anyway? That design’s ancient.”

“Keel laid eighty-seven years ago, refits in ’04 and ’38, last drive replacement in ’43.”

“What’s your normal personnel access?”

“The dockside forward, but it only opens to equal pressure within a few millibars.”

“All right. Here’s what you’re going to do. We do our exterior inspection. Meantime, get your crew assembled—do you even have a space big enough?”

“Crew rec, just barely.”

“Fine. Get them in there except for bridge watch; you can have one com tech—do you have a com tech?”

“Not separately, no, sir.”

“Well, someone to handle communications, and your pilot on watch. They’re to sit quiet, hands off the controls, and wait. The rest of the crew, unlock personnel lockers for inspection, unlock all hatches, drawers, everything. Put all personal weapons except small pocket knives in the galley—you do have a galley, right? You listed kitchen cutlery—”

“We have a galley, yes.”

“Lay out all the weapons in the galley. Unlock, but leave closed, the food storage units. Now—your cargo holds are aired up or vacuum?”

“Aired up,” Ky said.

“Are your cargo loading hatches vacuum capable?”

“Only one of them,” Ky said. “And they’re small, compared to modern ships.”

“Umm… our exterior scans are showing that. And you claim your FTL drive is nonfunctional. About time to scrap that old crock.”

Not now, she hoped. Not right this moment with them inside of it.

“Now for you—I am speaking to Captain K. Vatta, right?”

“Yes,” Ky said. Cold sweat ran down her backbone.

“You will proceed alone down the escape passage to the lock. You will not wear protective gear. You will tab in on the hardwire ship com, and wait for the signal from the boarding party; the code IDing our boarding party will be blackfish. You will operate the lock for our boarding personnel. Following their entrance, you will obey the orders of their commanding officer. If you disobey, your ship is toast. Got that?”