“Yes,” Ky said. “She and Gary—” Her throat closed; she swallowed and went on. “I knew on the way to Sabine. But they thought it was all right.”

“Of course,” her father said. “Trade and profit. I was glad for you; it meant—I thought—that you weren’t completely shattered by what the Academy did.”

“Well… the FTL sealed unit failed on downshift into Sabine—”

“It was supposed to be safe—Quincyswore that ship was safe enough for you—” His voice sounded angry again.

“Not her fault,” Ky said quickly. “Something she couldn’t anticipate. We think it’s because there was no cargo on the way to Sabine—we wanted maximum cubage for the pickup. Cargo mass had been damping what was going wrong. Captain’s decision.”

“All right,” he said.

“So then, I was having trouble getting financing for both the equipment and the repairs, and the political situation was getting worse. I was actually trying to call you when the ansibles went out.”

“You were… good girl!”

He hadn’t realized she’d do the sensible thing? He should have known that… She pushed from her mind the reluctance she’d had to call for help. “I’d have reached you, too, but the Captains’ Guild wouldn’t let me put the call through, because they wouldn’t charge the Vatta account.”

“What!”

“I’d done the Belinta deal as a private contract, not to risk Vatta Transport’s image if something went wrong. Besides, my instructions were to take the ship from Belinta to Leonora to Lastway. I didn’t know if—what would happen if—”

“We have the highest-rated category of account at the Captains’ Guild,” her father growled. “Damn them! They have no reason—didn’t you tell them who you were? Not that it should make a difference… Any Vatta captain should be able to—”

“Dad, I told them who I was, and it made no difference. But a war was starting. Maybe that was it…”

“They’ll hear from me—from us—,” her father said. She could hear his harsh breathing. Then it steadied. “Sorry,Ky.But when I think how scared I—we—were. If we’d gotten that message, at least I’d have known…”

“Well, the excitement all came later,” Ky said. Before he could reply, she told him what had come next—that she had broken the ship free of the station, moved away from the planet to await events, been hailed and then boarded by mercenaries. How much to tell about her injuries? As little as possible; she was fine. She talked quickly, keeping the recital “clean and lean” as she’d been taught at the Academy. The new contract, the arrival of hostages, the mercenaries’ departure, her decision to cut rations, the mutiny.

“That’s whenGarywas killed, right?” her father asked.

“Yes,” Ky said. She wanted—she didn’t want—to tell him the details. If she told it all, what would he think of her, his daughter, his own child who could stand by and see a friend killed, and then kill—not once but repeatedly—herself? She certainly couldn’t tell him about the discovery—at once terrifying and exhilarating—that she had enjoyed killing.

Into that pause he said, “It must have been hard,Ky.I’m sorry you had to face that kind of thing. I’m so glad you lived, that you saved the rest of your crew. I’m so proud of you…”

“Thank you,” Ky said. “I… can’t talk about it right now.”

“I understand,” he said at once. He didn’t understand. He couldn’t understand. She wondered suddenly if he—the big, warm, safe, father she had grown up with—had ever seen anyone die, had ever killed someone. He cleared his throat, signaling a determined change to another topic. “I have to ask—your Aunt Gracie Lane wants to know—if you’ve eaten all the fruitcakes yet.”

Fruitcakes. Aunt Gracie Lane must be the most single-minded person in the entire universe if she knew anything about what had happened and was worrying about those hideous fruitcakes.

“Two of them, Dad,” Ky said. “We shared them out during the—when we were stretching the food supply.”

“You still have the third? You know, it would make her really happy, and get her off my back, if I could assure her that you had finished all three. She keeps after me about it, telling me to remind you to serve them in thin, ladylike slices…”

Ky tried not to roll her eyes, hard as it was. Fruitcakes! “All right. Tell you what—we’ll have it today. As soon as the cargo’s offloaded, I’ll tell the crew we’re having a party and we’ll serve Aunt Gracie’s fruitcake.” Some of them actually liked the horrible stuff.

“Cut it yourself, she tells me,” her father said.

“All right, I’ll cut it myself. And I’m sending you a written report—about Gary’s funeral, and so on, and some paperwork on the contract…”

“That’s fine,” her father said. “Look—I can see by the status line that you’re making this call out of your own pocket, but remember that you’ve got a credit for a call to me anytime.”

“Yes, I will. Thank you.”

“And—when you know what your plans are—please let me know.”

Plans? She had no idea what her plans were; she had cargo for Leonora and Lastway, but most of it was spec.

“I’ll let you know,” she said. “Good-bye, Dad.”

“Farewell, Kylara. You’re always in our hearts.”

Traditional, and she was blinking back tears as she cut the connection.

So now what? The Belinta station cargo handlers were unloading. She could plan the party, and then, next dayshift, go planetside and see… what there was to see.

“It’s not that bad, Ky,” Quincy said, and Alene, Mehar, and Lee nodded. “I’ve always liked fruitcake.”

Ky shrugged. “All right. I wouldn’t make you eat it, but if you want to—and I did promise my father that we’d cut it today.”

She put the fruitcake—even heavier than the first two, she thought—on a cake plate, and got out the cake knife and cake fork, each embossed with the Vatta Transport seal. Before, they had just cut off hunks and weighed them… but now she put the fork into the cake and poked the tip of the knife in. Hard, dense, difficult… the blade slid down, reluctantly it seemed.

And stopped. Ky pressed harder. Nothing happened. She moved the blade over—had Aunt Gracie’s vision failed? Had she put in gravel instead of dried fruits and nuts?—and tried again. This time the tip of the blade wouldn’t go all the way in. Ky wiggled it around, and suddenly it sank to the plate. That slice worked; she moved over, away from the first attempt, and cut and removed a thin sliver, the thickness Auntie Grace would approve.

Brown, speckled with green and red and yellow and something that looked like a dirty piece of glass. Ky poked it with the knife, prodded it loose, and it fell with a faint clink onto the cake plate.

“Oh, a holiday cake!” Mehar said suddenly. “It’s got little presents in it.” She picked up the object, wiped it off with a napkin, and they all stared.

Gleaming, flashing, the faceted object lay in her hand… several carats of blue-white diamond, perfectly cut.

“Holy… whatever,” Mehar breathed. She tipped the stone back onto the plate. The crew froze, staring atKy.

There were, in all, a kilo of diamonds in that fruitcake, most of them over two carats. And a letter, stained by cake batter but quite legible.

The letter said:

Ky stared at the diamonds, then at the faces of her crew.

“What do we do now?”

“Eat the fruitcake,”Quincyadvised, gathering some of thebits and pieces onto her plate. “And tell your aunt it was delicious.”