Ky wasn’t sure she could eat anything but the bayhopper goulash was just as good the second time around, and the raw whiskey Pitt encouraged her to sip took the ache out of her body.
“You know, Captain, you’re really wasted on a merchanter,” Pitt said quietly. Ky wasn’t sure how she’d ended up sitting next to Pitt, between her and another mercenary. “I know, the Colonel said you have some kind of promise thing you have to do first, but… you belong with people like us, really, not with people like them—” Her gaze settled on the ones who had dived under the table.
“Not their fault,” Ky said. “They haven’t had the training.” Her blood warmed to the praise, though, and she felt again both the glee and the guilt as the fight replayed in her mind. Pitt, she realized, would not condemn her for what she’d felt when she killed Paison and his mate.
“True but… here’s something I don’t say often, and won’t say again. There’s some born to it, Captain, and you’re one of ’em. I don’t know what happened to get you out of that training, but you’re someone I’d be glad to serve with. And I can’t say more than that.”
“Thanks,” Ky said. She was aware of a floating disconnect between her brain and body, and hoped she wasn’t drunk. Very drunk.
“Cup of black coffee and a good big dessert will cure what ails you,” Pitt said. “We’ll just sit here and talk about nothing much, how’s that?” And for the next hour, Pitt told stories of the Mackensee Military Assistance Corporation, every one of which made Ky homesick for a community she hadn’t had yet. Ky could tell when the alcohol had mostly left her system; she blinked and the lights didn’t flicker. She thanked Pitt and led her crew back to the ship.
And she stared at thebattered circle that had been her class ring and felt nothing but vague anger.
Chapter Twenty-One
FTL sealed unit’s in,” Quincy reported. “Custom Parts had an Ames & Handon 4311b in stock, and that’s better than the one we took out. I’ve checked all the calibration; it looks slick.”
“What’s the damage?” Ky asked.
“Only ten percent higher than before we left, and it’s higher quality. You want it, right?”
“Right,” Ky said. She watched the figuresQuincysent come up on her deskcomp. “And the liner?”
“Got that, too,”Quincysaid, with a hint of smugness. “How’s the relicensing coming along?”
“Paperwork and money,” Ky said. She had her deskcomp set to display the falling balance in their accounts… amazing how fast a lot of money could disappear. She not only had to pay for the registration and the custom ship chip, but for the database search which ensured that no one else had used the name Gary Tobai for a ship. She had to appear in person to take possession of the new ship chip for the beacon, and then spend a sweaty and uncomfortable half hour getting the beacon unit out, seating the new chip, and replacing the unit in its cramped space. A whole new beacon would have cost another 100,000 credits.
Meanwhile, she fended off suggestions from Captain Furman—more like orders than suggestions—that she allow him to audit her books, inspect her ship, check out her financial arrangments with the Sabine branch of Crown & Spears, make arrangements to have the ship scrapped…
“For the last time, no,” Ky said, hanging onto her temper by the merest fingernail. “I am not selling the ship for scrap here. I have a contract to deliver cargo to Belinta, and that’s where I’m going.” And you can’t stop me didn’t quite come out of her mouth.
“But your father—”
“Isn’t here. Doesn’t need to be here. And if he were here, he’d understand my position.”
“He’d understand Vatta Transport’s position. Damn it, Apprentice—”
Her temper snapped. “I’m not an apprentice, Captain Furman. I’m a captain the same as you are. Get that through your fat stupid head, once and for all—”
“You little—!”
She turned off the comunit, shocked at herself—had she really said that to Furman, senior captain of the Vatta fleet? It felt good; it shouldn’t feel good. At least he couldn’t ping her skullphone since she didn’t have an implant. She had the last word.
“How fast can we leave?” she asked Lee, who happened to be on the bridge just then.
“I’ll check, Captain,” he said. In a few moments,Quincyappeared on the bridge.
“You want to leave soon?”Quincyasked.
“Yes,” Ky said. “As soon as we can.”
“Get us clearance, and we’re out of here, ma’am. FTL’s in, all cavitation damage replaced, cargo loaded and balanced, inspace drive refueled, supplies aboard. Unless there’s some niggly paperwork holding us here—”
“There won’t be for long,” Ky said, feeling a wicked delight bubbling up inside her. They would be on their way, and Furman, she had no doubt, would be stuck where he was until it pleased ISC to let him depart. She called the stationmaster, and in less than two hours they had their clearance for departure. She declined a tug, and in another seventeen minutes forty-two seconds the Gary Tobai eased out of its docking bay, maneuvered carefully free of the station and all nearspace traffic, and set a course for the designated jump point.
The ship moved as ponderously as ever; she hadn’t had the money to upgrade the insystem drive. But it was her ship again, with no strangers aboard, no one giving her orders. On the communications board, messages from Furman stacked up—she could see the mounting numbers with their origin codes—but she didn’t care. He couldn’t actually do anything, not without getting permission from the ISC, and right now she had ISC on her side.
As for the military ships, they stayed in tight orbit around both planets. Her new scan showed ships out where the ansibles had been… ISC rebuilding its empire, no doubt.
They could stay there till they rotted, all of them, Sabines, mercenaries, ISC, and all, for all she cared. She was free of that. She grinned to herself. She stayed close to the bridge for the first couple of days, then turned it over to the pilots and navigator. If she was going to be a captain—the kind of captain she wanted to be—she needed to trust her people. And she needed to know a lot of things she still didn’t know, things a captain needed to know.
Without really thinking about it, she fell into a routine similar to that in the Academy, beginning every main shift with an hour of physical conditioning, and taking another exercise period midway through second shift. She had to be fit; she had to be ready for anything.
On the ninth day, they reached the jump point, and she was back on the bridge for endim transition. The ship barely shivered as the new FTL drive flung them into indetermination; all the telltales stabilized at once in the correct configuration. Quincy was on the bridge as well, running calibration estimates—a first run with a new drive always involved some tinkering and tweaking—but from the grin on her old face, all was going well.
As he’d requested, Gerard Vatta had a ping from the watch station as soon as the Sabine ansibles were back up. He beat Stavros to the communications center by a scant minute; he had just made the connection to the Sabine orbital station when he saw Stavros round the corner. His brother came to the boards and picked up his own headset link.
“This is Gerard Vatta,” he said to the com tech on the station. “Patch me through to the Vatta ship Glennys Jones, please.”
“No such ship is docked at the station,” the technician said. “A ship formerly known as the Glennys Jones, but reregistered under the Slotter Key flag as the Gary Tobai was docked here but is no longer here and is outside our range. It may already have left the system.”
The Gary Tobai… Ky would have named the ship for Gary only if Gary had died… and if Gary had died… he had died trying to save her. Gerry squeezed his eyes shut and offered a brief prayer, promising more later.