“What do you mean, not our ID?”

“It says we’re the Mist Harbor, serial number XWT–34–693, out of Broadman’s Station. I’d guess that scumsucker changed the ID so when he put the part back in, no one would find us.”

“And nobody will recognize us for who we are, unless we can change it back.” Ky looked at Sawvert and Corson. “Can you change it back?”

“What he probably did,” Corson said, “was change out the chip. That’s what he did on the other—” He stopped; Ky suspected that her own face had the same expression as Sawvert’s, a mix of horror and fury. “It’s not my fault; I didn’t want to do it,” he said in a rush. “It was Paison—he was the captain, I had to—”

“Did you know he’d changed out the chip on this one?” Ky asked.

“No—I swear I didn’t. I didn’t even know he had one with him; I wouldn’t have thought he could, with the mercs just about pushing us out of our ship and into their shuttle.” He swallowed. “Do you have a spare ship chip? I can change it back.”

“I don’t know,” Ky said. She’d not ever thought about it. Beacons came with ships, already sealed…

“There’s a chip,” Sawvert said, pointing to a little piece in the box. “Where’d you get this, anyway?”

“I don’t know if it’s ours,” Ky said, about the chip. But if it came from MacRobert, what would it be? Maybe a generic Vatta ID? Maybe Slotter Key spaceforce? “In the meantime, Corson, since you seem to know so much about how Paison operated, what would he have done to our insystem drive?”

“I don’t know anything about drives,” Corson said. “I really don’t.”

“Even a fake ID ought to get someone’s attention,” Sawvert said. “And if I can fix your transmitter—”

“That would certainly help,” Ky said. “I’m not at all sure what this chip is—it was in this box of model parts, as you can see—so I’m reluctant to put it in. At least this way someone can get us on scan. Give us a way to talk to them, and we’ll be a lot better off.”

“Who is Mist Harbor?”

The chief scan tech on ISC’s bulbous command ship turned to look at the watch officer. “Dunno. Just showed up, but there’s no downjump signature.”

“Anything running around with no beacon is probably part of the problem,” the watch officer said. “We have a missing ship, and now we have an extra ship—let’s get a distance, heading, and mass reading on that, and see if it answers us. And if we have one ship that’s been running silent, there may be more. How’s the system catalog coming?”

“We have the data from Prime’s orbital station; we’re using that as baseline and plotting against it. So far no anomalies, but we’re only thirty-two percent complete. We wouldn’t have found this ship for another two or three hours. At a rough guess, it’s four to six light-minutes away, judging by signal strength.”

“Commit another two units and speed it up. Do you want Ganges to site some additional spindles for it?”

“That would help,” the scan chief said. “Real-time scans like that would cut it by half, anyway.”

“I’ll talk to ’em,” the watch officer said.

The scan chief turned back to his board, allocated two more computing units to the system catalog, and then increased the power on the active scan beam.

Two hours later, he knew that the Mist Harbor was in the same mass range as the missing Glennys Jones, that she was 6.1 light-minutes away, not under power, and did not answer a hail. The ISC specialty ship Ganges, having dropped four spindle-ansibles in remote reaches of the system, was able to get real-time data from them.

“That’s interesting,” the scan chief said. “Not only is Mist Harbor the same general size as our missing Vatta ship, but there are two other ships out there lying doggo. One’s here”—he pointed, as the watch officer came up beside him—”and one there. I do like that fine-resolution scan we added.”

“A year ago we wouldn’t have spotted them,” the watch officer agreed. “Nice work. I’ll pass the word up… wonder if that is the Glennys Jones and she was captured by the bad guys. Doesn’t look good for Vatta if that’s true.”

“Sir!” One of the junior techs waved for the chief’s attention. “ Mist Harbor’s beacon has gone—no, there it is—look at it—”

The beacon icon blinked on and off, in a rhythm not quite regular.

“Power failure? Fuel expended?”

“No, sir. I’d bet my next raise it’s a signal code of some kind. There are dozens of those blinker codes on various planets. This one’s from—what did the registration say?”

“Assume it’s the Vatta ship, from Slotter Key. Can we translate it?”

“Without translating it, it’s got to mean that their transmission capability is gone, and they’re trying to signal… which still doesn’t tell us who’s in control.”

“At least whoever’s looking knows a ship is here,” Ky said. “They may not care about the Mist Harbor, but they’re bound to care that a ship appeared out of nowhere with no downjump turbulence. Someone will come investigate.”

“In time?” asked Corson. He looked pale.

“We may be very hungry, but we’ll be alive, I’m sure,” Ky said with more certainty than she felt. Her stomach growled.

“What if one of Paison’s ships gets to us first?” he asked.

“Why would they? ISC is here in force; their best move is to lie low or go away quickly.”

“They think Paison’s on this ship; he’s their commander. He’d be trying to rendezvous. When they don’t hear from him, they will come looking.”

“Honor among thieves, eh?” Ky shook her head. “I don’t believe it; I think they’ll run off or stay hidden.”

“You don’t understand how they work,” Corson said.

Ky cocked her head at him. “Are you going to explain, or just complain? Either get busy helping Sawvert fix the transmitter, or I’ll have you escorted back to the others.”

He looked scared, and bent to his work. But a half hour later, he shook his head. “Can’t be done,” he said.

“He’s right,” Sawvert said. “The problem here is mechanical as well as parts missing. Things have been bent, ripped—”

“So he didn’t plan on using our transmitter,” Ky said. “He was more interested in preventing any of us from calling for help. He did plan on using the beacon. How was he going to signal his other ships?” The answer came to her almost as she asked. “The ship chip change. The signal to his allies is the change in the beacon. They would figure that only he could get it back on, and changed to that ID. So basically—we’ve just been telling them to come and get us.”

“That’s what I meant,” Corson said. “They could be out there right now—”

“We’d see them on scan,” Ky said. “Wouldn’t we?”

“Not if their beacons are off,” Sawvert said. “Though if they’re close enough, we might get them on active. He probably left active scan working, for close maneuvering, and he probably also had a small transmitter on him, for the same purpose. Something that would work within a kilometer or so.”

Ky scrubbed at her head. “We need to let the ISC know who and where we are, and what’s happened. What if we switched the beacon on and off… they’d pay attention to that, surely?”

“So would Paison’s people,” Sawvert said.

“Yes. That’s a risk. But the way I see it, they’re going to be after us anyway. Quincy—”

“Yes, Captain.”

“How well do you know that old code they used in the war? And do you think anyone in the ISC knows it?”

“Probably,” Quincy said sourly. “ISC has a database and a half. But I don’t. Best thing is to just count out letters. They’ve got the processing power to decode something that simple.”

“Again, maybe too late for us. But at least someone will have the facts as we know them. And I can tell Dad to send someone to Belinta with our cargo.”

“Cargo! You’re worried about cargo at a time like this?” Corson looked shocked.

“It’s a contract,” Ky said. “Vatta honors contracts.” She could tell by his face that he had no comprehension at all, but her own crew nodded.