A tall man with silvery hair, in a captain’s uniform, turned around, glared at the nearest vid pickup and approached it. “I demand that you come down here and straighten this mess out. What did they mean, you had a contract with them?”

Thanks to the earbug’s link to the personnel files, she knew this was Captain Kristoffson of the Empress Rose.

“Captain Kristoffson, I will be speaking to you and the other captains shortly. As you must realize, we have a great deal of work to do to make this ship as comfortable and efficient as possible in the next few hours. Bear with us, please, as we get this done. We should have a meal for you all in about three hours—”

“This is outrageous! This is nothing but a cargo hold! It’s not even warm. You can’t seriously expect us to sleep on the cargo deck in these”—he glared around—”these disgusting bedroll things. I demand a stateroom. Captains of respectable ships do not sleep on the floor…”

Ky’s first impulse to share her cabin with the more senior captains had been quashed by Pitt’s advice, but it would not have survived this.

“Excuse me, Captain Kristoffson, but this is not the time to make complaints. I will consider your complaints later. At the moment, I need you and the other captains to organize the work parties needed to finish making your holds comfortable. I’m sure your personnel would be more comfortable commanded by familiar officers, so I’ve arranged a rota which permits shipmates to work together.”

“Work parties! Passengers don’t work, Vatta—of course, you don’t know about passenger ships—” Her temper rose at the contempt in his voice. She glanced at Riel, who made a rude gesture.

“I’m sure you’re aware that this is not a normal passenger service,” Ky said. “Things are difficult for us all…”

“Not for you, apparently,” he said. “You can loll in whatever passes for luxury on this tub—not that I expect it’s much—”

“Enough,” Ky said, in a voice borrowed from the Commandant. Somewhat to her surprise, it worked—Kristoffson blinked and looked stunned. “I have just returned from having surgery on the mercenary flagship—I was nearly killed when my ship was boarded, and I don’t see any scars on you, sir. Don’t push your luck.”

His mouth had dropped open; now it shut with a snap. “I—I—they didn’t say that—”

“No reason for them to. I’m lucky to be alive and so are you. Let’s keep it that way.”

“But I still think—”

“Captain, as you must realize, this ship is not large enough to give everyone the quarters they deserve, and it would be unfair to play favorites. The working crew will stay in the crew quarters, and the passengers will stay where they’re put. Is that clear?”

“Yes…” His eyes narrowed. “But I still intend to file a complaint. It must break some law for a neutral civilian to sign a contract with a mercenary company.”

“Actually, no,” Ky said. “Most cargo firms sign transport contracts with mercenaries all the time. Section 234.6, Universal Commercial Code. If you were combatants or war matériel, that would be Section 234.7.” She thought of pointing out that he might well have had mercenary officers as passengers when they were on leave or undercover assignment, and thought better of it. Instead she went on, “I realize this has all been a grave inconvenience for you, but we’re all going to have to make the best of it.” She waited a moment for that to sink in, and then repeated. “Captains, please organize your ship’s personnel into working parties. We have been given basic information about the qualifications of passengers; in addition to the work parties dealing with food, sanitation, and maintenance, we may be requesting specific personnel to assist in ship systems areas where the very small existing crew is overloaded.”

Other captains visible in the pickup nodded, but Kristoffson still looked uncooperative. Too bad, Ky thought. She kept the video and audio monitors on, but cut off the intercom to the holds. Instead she called the galley.

“How’s the meal prep going?” she asked.

“We figured out how to keep all the frozen stuff that doesn’t fit in the freezer,” Gary said. He sounded tired; he probably had been up for three shifts running. “We turned the heat off in number three and put it in there. Quincy’s trying to cobble up a cooler for the perishables that won’t fit into storage, and the cooks are using up whatever won’t fit in either.”

“Good,” Ky said. “Questions?”

“Do we try to keep the food sources separate, and feed the different ships’ crews stuff off their own ships?”

“No—too complicated,” Ky said. “I don’t even know if they brought proportional amounts off the various ships.”

“There’s gold-eye raspberries off Empress Rose… I’ve never even tasted one…”

“Enough for everyone?”

“For one meal.”

“Serve ’em up,” Ky said. “If that captain brought ’em for his own special meals, he can just suffer through sharing.”

“Trouble?”

“He’d like to be,” Ky said. “He’s used to being in charge and he thinks being stuck in the cargo hold of a freighter is the worst that can happen.”

“You be careful,” Gary said, his brow furrowed. “We don’t have that fancy medical team to fix you up if anything goes wrong again.”

“I know,” Ky said. She rubbed her neck, which was beginning to hurt. It was probably just tension.

A few minutes later, Beeah brought trays up to the bridge: her tray had a large bowl of gold-eye raspberries, a jug of cream, and some sugar, as well as a hearty sandwich of thin-sliced meats and cheeses. “Gary said you sounded like you needed to eat. Riel, here’s yours, too.”

“I probably do,” Ky said. “I think my last meal was… I don’t even know.”

“The others will be ready on time, Gary says, but how are we going to get them down to the passengers?”

“That’s what the work parties are for,” Ky said, through a mouthful of sandwich. “What is this stuff, anyway? Tastes expensive.”

“From Balknas Brighteyes—they had trays of already-sliced meats in one of the coolers, so we thought better to eat them now. All kinds of stuff I didn’t even recognize, but tasty.”

“Mmm. Soon as I finish this, I’ll go down and meet with the captains, explain the rota I’ve been working on.” Ky gulped down another bite. “I’d better take someone with me, in case that idiot Kristoffson tries anything.”

“The Rose’s captain? What’s he done?”

“Acted like a spoiled brat at summer camp,” Riel answered around his own bite of sandwich. “All huffy and demanding and complaining.”

“Thinks I’ve done something wrong by taking a contract with the mercenaries,” Ky said. “Dad always said passenger carriers were snooty. So I’ll just take someone along… Mehar and her pistol bow, I think.”

The nine captains looked unhappy but said nothing at first as Ky handed out the work party rota. “Right now, only the toilets interface with our environmental system,” she said. “We need to get the showers and the sinks hooked up as well. I know your senior engineers are with you—so we’ll need to get their help to work with my engineering first, Quincy Robin. I understand your schedules were all synched with ours two days ago, is that right?”

They nodded.

“Good,” she said. “That means the meal we’re about to have is second-shift main meal, and—”

“I expect that you will reserve rations from the Empress Rose for Empress Rose personnel,” Kristoffson said. The other captains gave him a look.

“That isn’t possible,” Ky said. “We have limited storage space for perishables. Although we’ve allocated additional cargo space for frozen rations, we’ve combined all the rest in order of use.”

“But our rations are gourmet quality!” Kristoffson said.

“You were planning to feast on fancy stuff and champagne while the rest of us ate sardines and crackers?” That was Captain Lucas, of the Balknas Line cargo ship Balknas Brighteyes. “I hate to disappoint you, but the rations we sent aboard were not so bad that we need your red ripe strawberries or whatever it was.”