CHAPTER ELEVEN

Ahead of her, the captain’s trim back moved through the escape access hatch into the ship’s regular passage—blessedly wider—and then toward the rec area where the crew had been told to assemble.

“Tell ’em to sit down on the deck, hands on knees,” Cally said.

The Vatta captain’s voice didn’t shake as she gave the order, even though her biostats were still showing elevated P & R—pulse and respiration. As Cally came into the rec room, the suit’s chemsniffer picked up aromatics it labeled fear—a lot of them, from a lot of people. She was doing a quick count, coming up one short, when the captain said, “Where’s Skeldon?”

Cally’s suit picked up the name, displayed a visual and a note from the crew manifest. Caleb Skeldon, age twenty-four Standard, sex male, height 197 cm, handsome as a storycube hero . . . definitely possible trouble. The suit labeled him threat.

“He was here a second ago,” an older man said. Gary Tobai, the suit matched face to crew manifest. Age seventy-four, sex male, loadmaster, expression worried, no chemscent of aggression. Not a threat. “I turned around, when you said sit down—he was right behind me . . .”

The captain’s chemscent shifted from fear to anger; the suit’s analysis shifted her icon from no threat to possible threat. “Blast it all—what’s he think he’s doing.” She raised her voice. “Skeldon—get back in here and sit down.”

No answer. Cally boosted the suit’s sensors. Down the passage, to port—in some compartment—breath sounds and something rasping on cloth. It would be below the captain’s hearing, but that didn’t mean she didn’t know. She could have set this up. Or it could be a young idiot.

The rest of her team was aboard, eight of them in all. Gil back at the lock, just in case. “Jeff, cover these. Mitch, Grady, Sheila, come with me.” Then, to the captain, “You’re going to lead us to the bridge, Captain, and I suggest you convince your crewman to surrender himself.”

The captain called again. No answer. From the way the others had obeyed her, it wasn’t that she was slack.

“Go on,” Cally said. The captain edged past the close-packed sitters to the passage beyond; Cally followed, weapon ready. “How long has Skeldon been on your crew?” she asked.

“A few days,” the captain said. Annoyance edged her voice. “Four Slotter Key spacers were stranded; the embassy asked us to get them out. He’s the youngest.” And the dumbest, was in the tone of voice.

That made sense. New crew, not yet used to this captain, and the right age to think he should be a hero. Though if the captain had tried to plan an ambush, he was the sort she’d use.

“He have a weapon?” Cally asked the captain.

“Not that he declared,” the captain said. “But then he didn’t tell me he wasn’t going to follow orders, either.” The tone was bitter. The back of her neck had reddened; she was a hot-reactor then. Flushed up when she got angry suddenly.

Cally’s suit picked up the sound of footsteps intended to be soundless. Whoever that was—Skeldon, for a bet—was in a compartment to port; when she boosted the IR sensitivity, she could see the hot footprints going in the hatch ahead of them, none coming back out.

“What’s the next compartment portside—on the left?” she asked. The suit didn’t show any hesitation, any telltales of recognition or readiness, in the captain’s posture or movement.

“My cabin,” the captain said. “Bridge is just ahead, on the right.”

“Stop,” Cally said. The captain stopped, and did not turn around. Another surprise. Most civs did automatically turn to face the person they were talking with. “Where could Skeldon go from where he was? Without our seeing him?”

“The galley, my cabin, the bridge. There’s a maintenance passage, that next hatch on the left, it’s the fast way aft past crew quarters to the hold control nexus.”

“And where do you think he went?”

“Maintenance passage would be my guess,” the captain said. “If he’s scared, trying to hide. The holds are aired up; he might try to get in there and hide. If he went to the bridge, Quincy’d send him back, but I can check—Quincy—did Skeldon come onto the bridge?”

“No, Captain. Is everything all right?” That voice came from a speaker mounted high on the bulkhead, but Cally’s suit also picked up the voice itself, coming from the open hatch to the bridge up forward.

“No. He skedaddled from the rec area, and the boarding party wants him back.”

“Can we turn the bridge monitors back on?” asked the voice from the bridge. “We could find—”

“No live scan,” Cally said. Live scan could give information as well as receive it. “What about your cabin?” she asked the captain.

This time the captain did turn around. “My cabin—why would he? It’s off-limits to crew anyway, and there’s no place to hide in there—it’s a dead end.”

All Cally’s experience told her the captain wasn’t lying. But the hot footprints went into the captain’s cabin. Protocol was, the ship’s captain led the way everywhere they went at first, and took the first shot if things went wrong. Protocol kept them alive—had kept her alive for twenty-eight years and she didn’t plan to die until enjoying a long and luxurious retirement. This captain didn’t deserve what was going to happen, but life wasn’t about what people deserved.

“Well, then,” she said. “Let’s go check out your cabin. Need to see your logbook. We’ll deal with your crewman next.” In the team communication channel, she said, “He’s in the captain’s cabin; she may not know it. We’ll take ’em down as protocol; she’s mine. Grady, he’s yours.” Protocol didn’t require killing her; Cally would make that decision as the action unfolded.

The captain still had that slightly furrowed brow—not the dramatic furrows that meant acting, fake confusion, but the slight wrinkle of real thought. The flush of annoyance had faded—typical of the type, quick anger and quick recovery. She turned and went on up the passage, Cally right behind her, stepping on those hot footprints like she couldn’t see them—which she couldn’t, if she didn’t have IR boost implanted somewhere. Grady moved up beside Cally. As the captain slowed to turn into her cabin, Grady took a long step past her. The captain hesitated, glancing that way.

“Go on,” Cally said.

The captain shrugged, and stepped into her cabin; her head swung to the left as something caught her eye. If she’d known, she would have looked straight or to the other side—Cally had just time for that thought before the wild-eyed young hero leaped forward, shoving the captain aside and aiming a ridiculous little punk pistol at Cally. The round clicked on the field of her helmet even as Grady blew him down with a riot needler. The captain, unprepared for the shove, had stumbled and fallen sideways into the path of the damped round, which still had enough force to do damage; her arm was bleeding. Cally’s swing at the captain connected too late; the suit’s augmented strength gave it the force to fling the captain across the cabin into a locker. The captain made one short cry and then lay still.

From down the passage, loud voices. Of course. “Jeff, keep ’em quiet, keep ’em there. Skeldon attacked with a firearm—I don’t think they knew he had it. He’s dead. Captain’s injured, we’ll render first aid. Sheila, secure the bridge crew.” First thing, keep order. Next thing, did they have one deader or two?

Her suit said the captain had P & R, BP dropping. Cally called up the med subroutines, and moved across the bloody deck—that carpet was going to be harder to clean than proper tiles—to the captain’s unmoving crumpled form. Experience helped. The small-caliber, low-velocity penetration of the damped pistol round in the arm—first-aid stuff, painful but not dangerous, need some rehab, nothing too difficult. IR scan showed heat already in an ankle, probably a sprain, trivial. Head or spinal cord injury was the worst possibility; she’d meant to knock the captain out of the way as gently as possible, but her crewman’s shove had created movement sums that flung her too fast, the wrong way. And she needed her helmet off to find out more. The way she was lying, it could be a broken neck, but the young sometimes had very flexible necks. Best not to move her. Best to call a real medic.

“Pitt to Victor.”

“What’s up, Pitt?”

“Need a medic, possible C-spine injury, not ours. Captain of this tub.”

“Just finish her, why don’t you? We’re in a bind; we don’t have time to play nursemaid to civs.”

Because she was young and maybe dumb but not bad, Cally thought. Because she’d been straight-up about the whole thing, and if all the nineteen hells were coming down on Mackensee, a good deed might make the difference to whatever gods watched over mercenaries. Vatta Transport was, after all, Vatta Transport and this had to be family.

“My call,” she said, which was true. “Send me a medic.” And to her team, “The captain’s injured; I’ve called for a medical team. I’ll talk to the rest of the crew. We’ll want to clean up this mess.” The mess that had been a handsome blond youngster who thought for some reason a punk pistol, a spacer’s bar special, would stand up to military-grade armor and weaponry. He’d probably had a crush on the captain or something; he’d wanted to show off; he’d wanted to protect her. And because of him she was lying there with a hole in her arm and maybe gorked as well.

Cally had her own opinion of young men, having trained a goodly number. Young women could be just as stupid, but unless children were involved they rarely indulged in gratuitous heroics. Gratuitous backbiting was another thing.

She clambered up from that first examination, and thought at the motionless form, “Live, damn it.”

The faces that turned to hers in the crew rec space were all pale; the most senior looked at least ten years older than he had before. Cally undogged her faceplate and ran it back. Let them see a human face—they needed that right now, even though those nearest seemed fixated on her boots and legs. Probably the blood. With the faceplate open, she could smell it.

“I’m Sergeant Pitt,” she said. “Your crewman Skeldon tried to ambush us; he’s dead. Your captain is alive, but injured; I’ve called in a medical team.”

“How bad is she hurt?” asked the old man. Tobai, she reminded herself. “Can’t I go see her?”

“We don’t know yet,” Cally said. “She’s unconscious, and my training is not to move unconscious victi—patients. Tell me about the medical facilities on this ship.”

“Well, we have a medbox for minor emergencies . . .” One medbox. Victor had thirty, a double-row down one side of surgery.

“No regen tanks? No trauma suite?”

“Er . . . no. We don’t—we didn’t—ever need them.” He swallowed, licked his lips. “Please—let me go see her . . .”

“Known her long?” Cally asked.

“Since she was little,” Tobai said. “First time she came aboard ship, with her dad, I was a second-shift cargo handler. Not on this ship, o’ course. She was maybe hip high on him then, trailing her older brother.”

“Good kid?” Cally asked. “Quiet type? Did everything right?” She figured yes, from the contained, controlled emotions the captain had shown.

“Ky?” That got a momentary grin out of him. “I wouldn’t say that, exactly, not the quiet part. Good, yes, but no sugar baby. Honest—sometimes too honest. That’s why—” His mouth snapped shut abruptly, as if he’d almost said something he meant not to.

“I want the medics to see her first,” Cally said, returning to his question. “Best not move her. Best wait a bit. Someone’s with her, monitoring vital signs. Just you sit tight.”

He nodded, mouth clamped on something he didn’t want her to know. And what could that be?

She sent Jeff to check the galley, where—as per orders—the weapons the crew had listed were laid out on the table. He popped the video to her helmet display. Two pistol bows . . . she hadn’t seen pistol bows in a long time . . . some knives, including the obvious kitchen cutlery. All that was by the book. The crew lockers were by the book—no hidden weapons, and only the personal effects you’d expect from experienced crew on a ship they didn’t expect to be on that long. Spare ship suits, a properly primed good quality pressure suit for each, shore clothes, entertainment cubes and disks and viewers and players. Someone was studying for a higher rating in spacedrives and had the study cubes; someone else had yarn and needles and a half-completed sweater. Little keepsakes, not worth much—they’d have the good stuff back home, somewhere in Vatta Transport storage if they had no permanent residence.

None of the crew were trouble but the one who’d died. That made sense.

“Here’s what you’re going to do,” she said, as Gil reported the medics were coming through the lock. “You know your captain’s hurt—you know our medics are coming to work on her. As long as you do what you’re told, she’ll be fine. Cross us up, and she’ll die. Clear?”

They all nodded, looking solemn and worried, just as they should.

“Go back to your compartments and lie down on your bunks. If we need you to do something, you’ll be told. In fact—who’s on galley duty?” She knew that civ cargo ships rotated that, if they were too small to have a permanent crew.

“I am,” came a small voice to one side. Small dark-haired woman. Mehar Mehaar, engineering fifth. Someone raised a hand. Mitt Gossin, environmental section first. So they mixed sections on galley duty . . . interesting. Many ships rotated it by sections. And she wanted the section firsts available.

“Mehar,” she said; the woman startled to find that Cally knew her name. “Mr. Gossin, you’re a section first—you need to stay loose. Mehar, they’ll be sending over ration packs for the boarding party and medics, if the medics stay that long. All you have to do is heat them up. Jeff’s secured your weapons for the time being; you won’t need the kitchen knives. The rest of you, go to your bunks and lie down. We’ll keep you informed.”

They clambered up awkwardly and moved to the side just as the medics came through with their equipment. Cally had already pointed them to the captain’s cabin; they’d had time to replay the vid of the engagement. They didn’t need her crowding that small space. When they’d passed, she went on forward to the bridge.

There she found two more worried faces. “Is she all right?” asked the old woman sitting the comdesk. Quincy Robin, chief of engineering, almost as old as the ship.

“She’s alive,” Cally said. “The medics are with her now.”

“What happened?”

Cally explained briefly. Quincy’s color had come back during that, and now she snorted. “Idiot boys!”

Cally agreed with her but wasn’t going into that. “Understand you’re head of engineering.”

“Yes.”

“You reported no functional FTL drive. How did this ship get here with no functional FTL drive?”

“It failed us coming in,” Quincy said. “I swear I thought it had ten more jumps in it, at least, when we left Slotter Key. But there was a little wobble coming into Belinta, and then it was worse leaving Belinta, and the downjump to Sabine—well, the sealed unit went haywire, and we’ve got cavitation damage downstream . . .”

“Um.” So much for using this ship as a courier, which was what the Old Man had hoped for. Victor carried spare sealed units, but nothing that would fit on this tub.

“We were trying to arrange repairs at the station when you blew the ansibles—” Quincy glared at her. Cally realized that the old woman wasn’t scared. Was that good or not?

“What makes you think we blew the ansibles?” she asked.

“You have the big guns,” Quincy retorted. “Nobody else would blow ansibles.”

Civ thinking. People who have the weapons would use them, never mind why.

“We didn’t blow the ansibles,” Cally said. No reason not to tell them that. No reason not to start setting the record straight. “We don’t want trouble with ISC.”

“Then who did?”

“Don’t know. Not us, that’s all I know. So, your FTL’s out. What about your other systems?”

“Fine so far.” The old woman was still angry. Not scared a bit—well, the old were like that, if they weren’t scared of everything.

 

Ky woke slowly, as from deep sleep. It didn’t feel right. What didn’t feel right, she wasn’t sure at first. A smell . . . not the smell of her cabin. Astringent, even medical. She opened her eyes. Above her, too close, was a shiny curved surface; when she tried to move, her arms bumped into something firm and unyielding.

The curved surface lifted away from her face. Now she could see more—and nothing reassuring. Too far away, now, the overhead with rows of lights; too big, the compartment in which she lay enclosed in something uncomfortably like a coffin. Medbox, her mind told her.

She struggled to put facts together in a string that made sense. Medbox meant injury . . . She had been injured? When? Where? And this place she was in . . . what was it? Where? A face hung over her; she had never seen it before, that she was sure of, if nothing else.

Its expression was serious. The mouth opened.

“Do you know your name?”

Name. What you call yourself, that is your name. Ky fumbled around in a brain that felt like a basket of wool puffs, until a sharp angular fact prodded her inquiry. Name. Your name from him meant my name to me . . . My name is . . . “Kylara Vatta,” she said.

“Ah. And do you know where you are?”

She looked around as far as she could see over the rim of the medbox. For some reason it seemed more like a ship than a hospital onplanet. “I’m in a medbox,” she said. “On a ship? I don’t know for sure.”

“Do you know the date?”

She had no idea. The whole concept of date seemed slippery. “No . . .”

“No matter,” the man said. The knowledge that he was a man and not a woman had slid into her mind without her thinking about it. “What’s the last thing you remember?”

She didn’t remember anything, but she pushed at the gray fuzzballs. Past the screen of her mind ran the equations for calculating oxygen output from a Class III environmental system per square meter of reactive surface—so she recited that, and then the ones for calculating drift on downjump.

“Think of a person,” the man said.

She tried, but couldn’t remember anyone to think of—person meant someone like her, like the man leaning over the medbox. Suddenly a cascade of faces appeared on the screen. Her father, her mother, her brother, her uncle, Cousin Stella, Aunt Gracie Lane, Gaspard, the Commandant, Mandy Rocher . . .

“Ah . . . ,” the man said.

The faces combined in scenes, in actions. Then a white streak blanked out everything for an instant, as if lightning had fired inside her head, and she was abruptly completely awake, oriented, rememoried, and very, very frightened.

She knew what that was. That was a memory module insertion. Someone had her memories on a mod, and they’d just reloaded her brain.

Which meant her brain had been . . . at least stuck in off and at worst completely gorked.

And she knew why.

“That idiot!” she said, meaning Skeldon.

“It was a stupid thing to do,” the man agreed. “I gather you didn’t know about it.”

“No, I didn’t know about it.” Residual fear made her cranky. “I told them—”

“We know that much—it was on your recorder. What I’m asking is, did you know he had that crush on you?”

“No,” Ky said. Then, less willingly, “Not exactly. I knew he was too grateful that we took them aboard, but I thought he’d go for Mehar in the end.”

“The end wasn’t long enough,” the man said. “Here’s the situation: you were knocked cold and got a bullet in the arm. The bullet was no problem; the stray needle we took out of your ankle was no problem either. But the head injury was bad enough that we did a pattern extraction and replacement once we’d stopped the bleeding and controlled swelling.”

“You’re . . . the mercenaries. Mackensee Military Assistance Corporation?”

“Yes. And you’re aboard the Victor, our command ship for this operation, because your ship lacked the right medical facilities.”

“My people?” Ky asked, trying to sit up. The medbox restraints held her back.

“They’re all right so far,” the man said. “Now—before you exit the medbox—I need to do some final tests of function. Just lie quietly and answer my questions.”

She couldn’t do anything else . . . The medbox restraints held her and even if she got her arms loose, she didn’t know how to unlatch a medbox from inside.

“I’m projecting a visual chart above you, and what do you see on line ten?”

Ky read off the symbols. After that came a color vision test, and a test of depth perception, and then pictures of her crew, to see if facial recognition was working. It was.

Finally he unlatched the box, removed the restraints, and helped her sit up. For a moment, she felt dizzy and nauseated, but it passed, and she was simply there, inside a warship’s surgery, sitting on the opened case of a medbox in a row of medboxes, wearing a pale blue shift with MMAC PROPERTY stamped on it. Across the wide compartment was another row of medboxes, six with their status lights on, and down the middle a row of operating tables, shrouded in the hoods that kept them sterile until needed.

“It’s—as big as a hospital,” Ky said. She had not really thought about how much medical treatment a mercenary force might need. For that matter, she hadn’t seen this part of a Slotter Key warship, either.

His lips twitched. “War isn’t a pretty business. We have thirty medboxes, ten operating sets, five regen tanks—and that’s active. We have the stored capacity for field hospitals as well. Now—ready to stand up?”

Ky pushed off the edge of the medbox. Her knees felt rubbery, but she was able to stand.

“Immobilization does that—nothing we’ve come up with prevents at least temporary weakness. Now—I’m sure you’ve got your own medical personnel back home; I’m giving you a cube with details of the treatment you received here, some of which they may want if you need other treatment within the next standard year. Slotter Key does use standard calendar units, doesn’t it?”

“Yes,” Ky said. She focused on the “back home.” If they were giving her medical reports for the doctors back home, surely that meant they weren’t intending to kill her . . .

“Your arm and ankle responded well to the regen tank treatments; you should however do fifteen minutes a day of rehab exercise—the details are on the cube—to regain strength at the maximum rate. Your C-spine injury may cause you some difficulty as you get older; I would advise you to consult your medical personnel about a regen treatment when your neural recovery is complete. We’ve got it stabilized, but I wouldn’t be surprised if there were a little soft-tissue damage which we couldn’t regen because of the primary brain injury.”

“C-spine injury?” Ky said.

“Yes. Luckily, Sergeant Pitt knew enough not to move you until the medics got there. But it’s perfectly stable now.”

Ky resisted the sudden urge to put her hands up and feel around her neck. It didn’t hurt—nothing hurt, really, but the knowledge that she’d been knocked silly and taken off the ship like a bundle of rags . . . she, the captain, who was supposed to ensure the safety of her ship and her people.

“When can I get back to my ship?” she asked.

“I don’t know—after the major talks to you, probably. It’s up to command, not to me. You’re fit for duty, as is. Well, once you get clothes on. I’m afraid your uniform is . . . pretty much gone. Just a moment.” He walked to the far side of the compartment; Ky leaned against the medbox she’d come out of and wondered about the six others with lights on. That was easier than wondering what she was going to do now.

The man came back with a neatly folded bundle; for the first time she noticed what must be a nametag stenciled on his tunic. Dubois.

“Your ship’s sent over a clean uniform. You’ll want to change, and any moment now you’re going to want to use the toilet.”

She did, she realized.

“Right through there: you can also shower, if you like, though the medbox does a sonic clean every four hours. When you’re dressed, come out and you’ll be escorted to the major’s office.”

He did not tell her not to try to escape. She could figure that out for herself, and clearly he knew it. Ky took the bundle and retreated through the door marked STAFF ONLY. Inside she found three shower cubicles, deep sinks, and a row of toilets. Sonic cleaning or no, she wanted a shower and shampoo, and the brisk water washed away another layer of confusion.

When she combed her hair at the mirror above the sinks, she could see nothing of what had happened. Her arm had a puckery scar that looked old, well-healed, but no soreness, even when she raised it high overhead. Her ankle’s scar was smaller, hardly visible. Her hair seemed shorter. She put on her uniform—the alternate one her mother had insisted she buy; it was annoying even now that her mother had been right—thankful that whoever had sent it had included underwear. When she’d pulled on the soft-soled ship boots, she felt much more like herself.

“I meant to tell you,” the medic said, “we don’t extend regen to cosmetic results, but that scar on your arm will respond to about two hours of regen, if you ever want to get rid of it.”

“It’s fine,” Ky said. “Thank you.” She was annoyed with herself that she hadn’t thanked him before.

“Quite all right. It was orders, after all.”

“Thank you anyway,” Ky said firmly. She was in the right about this, at least. “Clearly you—and others in this place—saved my life.”

“You’re welcome,” he said, shrugging as if the thanks made him uncomfortable. “Corporal Conas will take you to see the major,” the man said.

Corporal Conas was waiting, armed. Ky wondered what they thought she could do, that they needed to give her an armed escort, but she walked forward when he gestured.

The major—Harris, his name was—sat behind a desk in a tiny office so bare and tidy that Ky wondered if it was a real working office, or just a place chosen to interview hapless civilians. He did not smile but introduced himself.

“Captain Vatta, we have a problem.”

She knew she had a problem, but not any problem they shared.

“What is that, sir?” The sir came out automatically.

“You’re aware that someone blew the system ansibles . . .”

Someone implied that it wasn’t the mercenaries . . . “Yes . . . ,” Ky said.

“We didn’t do it. We don’t blow ansibles; we don’t want trouble with the ISC any more than anyone else does. Overcharging monopolistic pirates they may be, but what they do is essential, and what they do to people who bother their ansibles is . . . exorbitant.” He paused.

“I see,” Ky said.

“Naturally, everyone thinks we did it,” the major went on. “Warships appear; the ansible platforms blow. Obvious. I’m sure by now the ISC has figured out where we are, and is thinking the same obvious thing. The only party who won’t believe we did it is the party who actually did it, and so far no one has claimed responsibility. It would be far handier if the mercenaries were to blame.”

“I see,” Ky said again. She did, in a way. She had wondered about that; she remembered wondering about that. Why would mercenaries, who depended on ansible communications as much as anyone else, risk the serious and permanent annoyance of the ISC? Control of ansibles was one thing; destruction entirely another.

“We have, besides the operation we were hired to perform, several other tasks now facing us: we need to clear ourselves with the ISC before they come barreling in here and blow us up on spec, and we need to house hostages safely in the meantime, lest we incur judgment for their fates as well. We had hoped to use your ship, the smallest, as a courier to the ISC, but I understand that you have no FTL capability.”

“Right,” Ky said. “And we also have a commitment to deliver agricultural machinery, now in our holds, to Belinta.”

“Neither of which is possible without an FTL drive, isn’t that correct?”

“That is correct, yes, sir.” Ky took a deep breath. “Major Harris, if I may ask, would it be possible to obtain a sealed unit from the repair yards on Sabine Prime’s orbital station?”

“Not now or in the immediate future,” Major Harris said. He did not explain why, and Ky was reluctant to ask. He cocked an eyebrow at her. “You are not acting like most civilian captains, Captain Vatta—most of them try to bluster and scold and command me to do what they want.”

“It’s my first voyage, Major,” she said.

“Um. I suspect it’s more than that. What are you, Slotter Key space service operating undercover?”

Ky felt her eyes widen. “Me? No, sir.”

“You’re very free with your sirs, Captain Vatta. I don’t mind it, but it’s . . . reminiscent of a discipline I’d expect to know better than you. Master Sergeant Pitt remarked on your demeanor as well.”

“Sergeant Pitt?”

“She’s the one who broke your neck, and then called the medics. Not your average civ, she said about you. More like an officer candidate.” He looked at Ky a long moment. “You have something to say, Captain Vatta?”

“Not really, no.” She left the sir off with an effort. “You have an extracted pattern from me and I don’t doubt there was some interrogation while I was in the medbox.”

“And that, too, is not something I would expect a young and inexperienced civ trader to know.” He leaned back, hands behind his head. “Look here, Captain Vatta. It is not our practice to harm neutral civilians, which you clearly are. But we have a proposition for you—a proposition that could work to your advantage later. I am not going to offer that possibility to someone who won’t come straight with me.”

Ky thought about it. It was only her embarrassment, after all; there was no strategic value in his knowing that she had been kicked out of the Academy. “All right,” she said. “I was kicked out of the Slotter Key space academy in my last year.”

“I see.” It was his turn for that noncommital comment. When she said nothing more, he said, “Why?” after waiting a few moments.

“I trusted someone—a junior cadet—and tried to help him out. He lied to me. He just wanted to make trouble for the government, and my ‘help’ gave him that opportunity. It embarrassed the admiral, and . . .” She spread her hands. “I was the handy sacrifice.”

“That’s two young men you’ve trusted unwisely,” the major said. “If I were you, I’d stop doing that.”

Mild as the rebuke was, Ky felt her face going hot. It wasn’t fair; she hadn’t “trusted” Skeldon. She struggled with her emotions. The major went on.

“Just a bit of advice I’d give any young officer. Everyone makes mistakes. But not the same ones over and over.”

“I don’t even like them,” Ky muttered. The major grinned.

“Young men in general, or these young men?”

“These—but they seem so . . . so helpless, sometimes.”

Major Harris laughed aloud, and Ky glared at him. “Sorry,” he said. “But the first thing mercenaries lose is the rescue fantasy thing. My advice is, the next time you see someone you think you need to rescue, walk quickly away on the far side of the street.” Then he sobered. “But that’s not important—it’s your life and not mine, even if it did nearly get you killed and did actually end your military career. What I have to propose now affects both of us.”