“If we can make contact and get an ETA for help, I’ll know whether I can treat everyone,” Ky said. “Engineer Chok and Environmental Tech Mehaar will keep an eye on you.”
Chapter Sixteen
Gerard Vatta’s implant bleeped insistently. “Excuse me a moment,” he said to the midweek meeting he was chairing.
“Gerry, it’s Lewis Parmina at ISC.”
His stomach went into free fall. “Yes?”
“Gerry, our people went insystem at Sabine about seven hours ago. And your daughter’s ship is not there anymore.”
“Not there?” He turned away from the table, from the faces that were searching his own for meaning.
“No,” Parmina said. He went on, speaking rapidly. “The story we got from the mercs who came out, and from other civ ships, is that they interned captains and officers on your ship; your daughter was… was fine then. They made a contract with her; we’ve forwarded a copy they showed us to your offices.”
Gerard noted but didn’t comment on that slight hesitation. Alive would have done; fine could be defined variably. Contract—he motioned to one of the assistants hovering around the main table, scribbled New contract, Mackensee & Vatta, just in, bring it. The assistant stepped back with the glazed expression that meant he was querying by implant.
“Apparently they disabled the FTL drive or it wasn’t working or something,” Parmina went on. “So the ship was expected to be insystem on a particular ballistic course. Its beacon was working; they’d loaded additional rations and supplies and so on to cope with the additional passengers. We found the cargo—”
“Cargo?”
“The cargo your ship had been carrying, ag equipment. It was put outside the ship, netted, separately beaconed, with a copy of the relevant contract, because the cargo holds were converted to hold the passengers.”
What the dickens was Ky doing carrying ag equipment, anyway? She’d set off with a cargo of mixed trade goods. One corner of his mind quickly put together a first stop at Belinta, a relatively young colony, and Sabine, known for its ag equipment in this region. He turned back to the table, waved, mouthed Later and left the room, heading for his office.
The rest of his mind stayed with Parmina, absorbing every word, every nuance of tone and expression.
“The contract states she had picked it up on consignment for the Belinta Economic Development Bureau. It was found on the course the mercs told us to check, right where the ship should have been. And the ship wasn’t there. There were old traces of drive usage—apparently she turned on the insystem drive sometime after the mercs departed the system, but without a beacon trace, none of the scans in the system picked it up. We have no idea where she went, or why the beacon didn’t show on anyone’s scan.”
“That can’t be good,” Gerard murmured.
“No… Gerry, I’m sorry. I really hate having to tell you this. If it were my daughter…”
“Don’t apologize,” Gerard said. “I can’t thank you enough for telling me this much. A drive signature—at least that’s not an explosion. I don’t know what it means, but… there’s a chance.”
“We’ll keep looking,” Parmina said. “The primary mission has to be restoring ansible communication and ensuring the security of our people and equipment, but then—”
“Do you have an estimate on that?” Gerard asked.
“We’ll have a skeleton system up, for nonpublic and emergency communications, within another couple of days. Very limited bandwidth. Rebuilding the platforms for full commercial usage will take much longer. How long we won’t know until we examine the wreckage and find out if any of the power units are usable. And we need to find out how it was done—how they destroyed them.”
“But you’re in communication with your people there now?”
“Spike ansible—yes, but we can’t give anyone else access to that. I have put Ky’s name in a priority-one bin, though, Gerry. We’ve also made it clear to Mackensee that your daughter’s welfare is very important to us. If anyone there hears from her—or via any of our ansibles—our security personnel have been directed to pass it straight up to me. You’ll have the news as soon as I do.”
“Thanks, Lew,” Gerard said. “I know you have a lot more on your mind than one little trading ship—”
“The whole Sabine situation is nonstandard enough that I’d be glad of some good neutral input,” Parmina said. “The mercs are upset, the Sabine government is upset, no one’s claiming responsibility for the ansible attack, and now that ship disappearing… It’s not just a simple bit of sabotage anymore. I have my own reasons for wanting to find that ship, as well as our friendship.”
Something in Parmina’s voice left a cold spot, even colder than the rest in Gerard’s gut. “You aren’t thinking… that Ky was involved…?”
“No, no, of course not. I don’t think she blew the ansibles. For one thing, there’s good scan data from before the attack to show that she was docked at Prime’s orbital station. She did undock without permission after the ansibles were hit, but other ships did that, too—the orbital station was the next logical target. But ships don’t just disappear like that, Gerry. You and I both know that ship beacons are sealed systems intended to work unless completely vaporized, and vaporized ships don’t have a drive path signature. Something weird was going on, with her ship as well as the whole system.”
Gerard could think of nothing to say. She had been there, alive after the time when he had feared she was dead. She had been alive until a few days ago, for sure. Now… maybe she was alive, even though the disappearance of her ship—or the malfunction of her ship’s beacon—suggested something very serious had gone wrong.
“Thank you,” he said again, just for something to say.
“I’ll let you know as soon as we hear anything else. As for general business, I’d say it would be safe to schedule deliveries and pickups within seven to ten days. We won’t have public systems back up by then, but surveillance will be full-on. Got to go, Gerry; we’re up to our armpits in alligators.” The line went blank.
“So is she all right?” Stavros was in the doorway.
“I don’t know,” Gerard said. His voice sounded disgustingly normal, he thought. Inside he felt shaky as jelly, but his voice didn’t waver. “That was Lew Parmina at ISC. They’re in the system; they have eyewitness and other records that show she was there, and she was alive and well up to the point where the mercs left the system. She was just coasting along, ballistic, full of passengers, with her cargo netted outside, and then—the beacon went off, there’s insystem drive residue, and she’s nowhere to be found.”
“That doesn’t make sense,” Stavros said, frowning. “If she was being pursued she might wish the beacon were off, but—I don’t have a clue how to turn one off and I doubt she did. And why didn’t she jump out of that mess? She’s got a perfectly good FTL drive—”
“Apparently not,” Gerard said. “I’m not clear on when it was disabled, or by whom, but apparently all she’s got is insystem drive. What she does have is contracts. One with Belinta, to deliver ag equipment—”
“Which explains why she was on Sabine, instead of almost to Lastway,” Stavros put in.
“Yes. The other is with the mercs, for carrying the passengers they assigned her, the officers of the other ships they interned temporarily. We have a copy of that, via the Mackensee Military Assistance Corporation and the ISC; I haven’t looked at it yet.” He checked the latest deliveries, and found it. “Here we are. Standard passenger rates for ten days’ passage on an assigned course which is the same as that which the mercs gave the ISC, and on which the cargo was found.”
“Binding on the firm, then?” Stavros asked.
Gerard winced. If Vatta Transport took over those contracts, it would be an admission that Ky was dead. And yet, their reputation rested on prompt, complete service.