CHAPTER

FOUR

Now that we’re safely back in space,” Ky said to the assembled crew, “you need to know the latest information. You know about the attempted sabotage of this ship, and the attack on me personally.”

“Is it because of the Sabine affair?” Quincy asked.

“I don’t think so,” Ky said. “Not now. Too much is happening. The Slotter Key ansible isn’t functioning—that happened sometime yesterday. I was in contact with Vatta headquarters, and that signal was also cut off, but hours earlier, before the assassins attacked. I don’t know why Vatta would be a target, but apparently we are.”

“What can we do?” asked Mitt.

“The first thing we need to do is figure out what the situation is,” Ky said. “Right now we don’t know if Slotter Key’s ansible platforms were blown, or if there’s another reason their ansible’s offline. We don’t know enough to make a plan. But we do know there’s danger, and being a moving target will make it harder for our enemies to hit us.”

“Move fast, stay alert,” Martin said. The others looked at him. “Makes sense, Captain,” he said.

“Our stated itinerary is Belinta to Leonora to Lastway,” Ky said. “But we have supplies enough to go straight to Lastway—”

“Why go to Lastway at all?” Quincy asked. “Why not head back to Slotter Key, find out what’s really going on?”

“I’d rather stay out of systems with no working ansibles,” Ky said. “We’ve been in that situation before. Not good. Lastway’s remote enough, out on the fringe . . . I’m betting that it’ll have ansible function even if others are shut down. It’s also a high-volume system, plenty of traffic. That could bring us trouble, but it can also bring us news and allies. From there we can hop back to Leonora with their cargo if things settle down.”

“What kind of internal security scans does this ship have?” Martin asked.

“Just the usual for civilian tradeships,” Ky said. “Some of it’s down, too, thanks to the mutiny at Sabine. Video and audio to each compartment, mostly for communication. Why?”

“Someone tried to put explosives aboard—I’d like to be sure nothing else came aboard. No offense intended to your crew, but just in case.”

“Good idea,” Ky said. “You mean check out compartments personally?”

“That, and with some of the kit I brought along.” He patted his tunic.

Ky thought of asking where he’d gotten whatever it was, and decided now was not the time. “Go ahead, then,” she said. “Cargo’s secure; I’ll take the other sections’ reports while you learn where things are.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he said; his arm twitched in what would, Ky knew, have been a salute.

Mitt was halfway through giving his report when muffled thumps made them all look up. The intercom clicked, and Martin’s voice said, “Intruder, cargo hold two. In custody. Request orders.”

“I’m on my way,” Ky said. “Mitt, Beeah, come with me.”

Just inside the open hatch of cargo hold 2, Martin stood guard over a prone figure in rumpled green tunic and kilt whose ankles and wrists had been trussed up with elastic cargo binders. “If you can take charge of him,” Martin said, “I’ll keep looking for any others.”

“Mitt, you stay with him; Beeah, be ready in case Martin needs you.”

It took several hours for Martin to be confident that no other stowaways were hidden away. “And I’m still not one hundred percent sure,” he said. “Just mostly sure.”

By this time, Ky had looked over their prisoner, an unprepossessing youngish man with straggly hair and at least a day’s growth of beard. He had a darkening bruise on one cheekbone. From his clothes, he was a Belinta native, but that was all she could tell.

Martin yanked the man up and propped him against one of the shipping containers. “Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t space you!”

The prisoner’s eyes shifted to Ky’s face. “Please! I didn’t do anything! Don’t let ’im kill me.”

“Didn’t do anything?” Ky said. “You stowed away on my ship. What were you up to? Planting more explosives?”

“No! I swear! Nothing like that.”

“What’s your name, boy?” Martin asked.

“Jim. Jim Hakusar. And I’m not a boy—”

“Really.” In that one word, Ky heard a tone that had turned many a raw recruit into a soldier. Martin turned to her. “Captain, this stowaway claims to be an adult, which means he’s legally yours; it’s up to you. I’ll be glad to get rid of him for you.”

“No! No, please! I—I can do things. I’ll—I can work for you. That’s all I wanted, was a chance—”

“You mean you wanted to be crew?”

“Yes . . . anything to get off Belinta. I can do a lot of things, really I can.”

“Like what?” Martin asked.

“Well, I . . . I can build things. You know, like sheds and fences and that.” Mitt gave a choked laugh; Ky fought down her own laughter. “And I can take care of critters, y’know. Carry feed and clean up . . .” His voice trailed away as he looked around the cargo hold and its obvious lack of wooden sheds, fences, or livestock. “I thought . . . I heard . . . ships grow their own food, right, and that means crops and things and I know how to plant and hoe and—”

“Large ships,” Mitt said. “Large ships grow some of their food in hydroponic gardens. We grow algae in tanks. We don’t use hoes.”

“But this ship is big . . . I saw it on the vidscreen. It’s . . . it’s lots bigger than our house back home; it had room in it for all those tractors and things.” He looked around at the cargo hold. “I mean, look at it. It’s huge.”

“I’m afraid—” Ky began, but he interrupted.

“Please, lady! Please let me work. I’ll work hard, I promise.”

“That’s the captain,” Martin said, with emphasis. “You say ma’am to her.”

“Please . . . ma’am . . .”

Why did it always happen to her? She could just hear what Quincy would say. But Martin’s gaze was direct, steadying.

“If there’s no evidence he was trying to sabotage the ship, I have no reason to space him,” Ky said. “That’ll be your responsibility, Martin—find out. Meanwhile, we’ll confine him—” And where would they confine him? And could he do anything at all useful, or would he be just another mouth to feed?

“I’ll take care of him, ma’am,” Martin said. “Find out what he’s done, what he can do, give him something useful to do.” He reached over and unhooked the cargo ties, then pulled the prisoner to his feet. “Now you listen to me, boy. The captain’s said you live—for now. But you’re under my orders, understand?”

“I—” The prisoner looked at Ky. “Don’t let him hurt me! I’ll do anything you say.”

“What I say is, do what he tells you. And Martin—the ship comes first.”

“Yes, ma’am.” Ky turned away, prepared to ignore whatever Martin did, but his stentorian roar almost made her jump. “Stand up straight, you!” She clamped her jaw on a giggle. She had jumped when MacRobert first roared at their cadet class. She knew within a centimeter what that young man was going to be feeling in the next few hours, and for the first time since she had left, memory of the Academy lightened her heart instead of saddening her.

 

By third shift, Ky felt that the ship was running smoothly. With the help of the rest of the crew, Martin had finished searching the ship to his satisfaction and was sure that no more stowaways were aboard; nor was there any explosive device. The young man had spent hours scrubbing the decks and finally, after a modest meal, had been locked into a closet with a mattress, pillow, and blanket.

“He’ll be a challenge,” Martin reported, with the satisfied tone of someone for whom a challenge was welcome. “Not born on Belinta, but his family moved there when he was a toddler. Poor colonists, out on the frontier. I know the type, ma’am. Brogglers, we call ’em back home, the kind that live off trapping and frog sticking and the like. Thing is, they can make passable workers if you polish ’em up. He can shoot, he tells me. We’ll see about that later.”

“If it saves me scrubbing things,” Alene said, propping her elbows on the table, “I’m all for him.”

“Oh, he’ll scrub,” Martin said. “It’s about all he can do, at this point. Little enough education, and I doubt he paid much attention to the schooling available.”

“We’ll do something about that,” Ky said. “If he’s going to be in my crew, he’s got to be certified.” She looked around at the others who’d gathered in the rec area. “I know—there’s all kinds of trouble going on. But precisely because of that, we need qualified people aboard, not just pot scrubbers. I want him educated at least to basic spacecrew level.”

“We can try,” Quincy said.

“With all the expertise on this ship, we can do more than try,” Ky said.

 

The passage out began smoothly enough. Gordon Martin kept their intruder busy two shifts of the day, with four hours of schooling worked in. Martin seemed to get along well with the rest of the crew, too. The other men joined him for physical training; Ky, who maintained her own training program, found that the women were joining her—not all of them at each session, but even Sheryl, who had claimed to hate exercise, was now using the machines every other day. Ky shared piloting watch-and-watch with Lee. She worried about every blip on the scans, half convinced that marauders were lurking, ready to take out the ship. Each one turned out to be harmless: the Pavrati ship edging in toward Belinta Station, the Belinta ore haulers and service vehicles.

At closest approach, four days out, Gary Tobai and the Pavrati ship passed each other. Ky made a courtesy call to the other ship.

“You might as well skip Leonora,” the Pavrati captain told her. “They’re not letting anyone in. We were coming in from Darttin, headed this way, and they chased us right back out as soon as we’d cleared jump.”

“What—why?”

“Some kind of communications problem, and they’re convinced something like Sabine will happen to them if they let outsiders into the system.”

“They didn’t say what?”

“They didn’t say anything but Go away and tell everyone else to leave us alone. System closed indefinitely, they said. That was three weeks back; we were set up wrong for a direct vector here and had to use an intermediate jump point. They have some hot defensive ships, let me tell you, and acted like they’d just as soon blow us as let us go. But go if you want to—I’m just giving a friendly warning.”

“Thanks,” Ky said. “I appreciate it. Belinta’s still open, as far as I know, but if you’re headed for Slotter Key you may run into trouble. Ansibles down, apparently.”

The Pavrati captain muttered something Ky was just as glad she couldn’t hear. “Damn pirates,” he said then. “Or whoever’s doing this. It’ll be the ruin of trade. We need supplies; I was going to restock at Leonora, but I guess we’ll be satisfied with Belinta cabbage.”

When she’d signed off, Ky said, “Sheryl—make our course for Lastway. Let me know how fast we can make it, too.”

 

“This is a fine mess,” Gerard Avondetta Vatta said. He hurt all over and he looked as bad as he felt—he could see that in the faces around him, and he had no time to deal with his pain or his grief at the many losses. Or to worry about his youngest child, who had just survived a nearly disastrous first voyage. He had to think of the future, what could be salvaged from the bleak reality of loss.

“It is a disgrace.” Gracie Lane Vatta, inimitable and invincible, sat bolt upright in her seat. “I cannot imagine what the government is thinking of, to let such things happen.”

A question Gerard didn’t want to consider yet was just how much the government had been involved. Or part of the government. Or what the disasters still falling on Vatta heads meant to the part of the government he had thought he influenced.

“How’s the roll call going?” he asked his brother’s widow, Helen Stamarkos Vatta. He liked Helen; he respected her abilities, but he could still hardly believe that Stavros was gone, that he would never have that steadying hand on his arm again.

“Two hundred nineteen responses,” Helen said. The dark rings around her eyes were the only sign of grief; those, and the mourning band she wore around her hair. She had lost her husband, her elder daughter, a son. “We know of thirty-seven deaths.”

But there would be more deaths, of that he was sure. The ones he knew were bad enough. His wife, his son, the household staff, the men and women in the office building.

He pushed the memories away. Myris was dead, drowned in the midst of a fireball, her skull crushed by some piece of debris. San was dead, with all but two in the office building. And he still had responsibilities, work to do that could not wait for him to recover either physically—from the burns and broken bones—or emotionally.

The remaining Vatta family members on Slotter Key were all present, crammed into the storm bunker under a tik warehouse now a pile of twisted blackened steel overhead. It was the safest place he could think of, but his skin crawled at the thought that someone else might know of it, and even now might be about to blow them all away.

“What about communications?” he asked.

“The ansible message bins are stuffed,” Helen said. “Timmis Hollander”—the local ISC manager; Gerard knew him well—“doesn’t know why, he claims. I suspect whatever the cause, it’s affecting more than Slotter Key. This list is just the ones who got through before—” She looked at her list. “—before 1453 Capital Standard Time yesterday.”

“All right.” Gerard took a deep breath. It hurt; he struggled not to cough. The family physician wanted him in a hospital, but he wasn’t about to sit still in so obvious a target. “We still have local communications with our remaining people on the mainland. Perry Adair is positioned in this system, not docked at the Slotter Key main station, and nothing has attacked the ship.” He didn’t have to add yet. “We have one remaining shuttle, now docked at the station, under local guard. We have been advised that permission to transit planetside will not be granted at this time.”

“So we’re stuck here,” said Gracie Lane.

“Not . . . completely. Commercial carriers have agreed to transport less . . . er . . . prominent family members to the station for a hefty surcharge.” They would not transport him, or Helen, or any other officer of the company.

“Does anyone know why we were attacked?” Gracie asked. “Other than our being rich and powerful and making a move on Pavrati last year?”

“No,” Gerard said. “No definite indication has come. I suspect that it is not unconnected to the problems ISC is having, since we have long been public in our support of ISC’s monopoly, and opposition to it has been growing for the past few decades.”

“Is it because Kylara got involved with those pirates in the Sabine mess?” she asked, with an unerring instinct for the one thing he did not want to think or talk about.

“She did not get involved, as you put it,” he said. “She had no choice—”

Gracie sniffed. “She doesn’t see choices, that girl. She sees openings.” Then she grinned. “Not a bad way to fight a war, actually.”

Gerard blinked. He remembered suddenly that the scrawny, pestiferous old woman, the bane of the family in some ways, creator of the least edible but most valuable fruitcakes in the universe, was enough older that she had been in the last war. He wasn’t sure as what, but he remembered his father saying something . . . he queried his implant and there it was, her military file. Gracie? Behind the lines? Somehow he had not connected her expertise in surveillance and information collecting—suitable civilian activities for a nosy old lady—with their military equivalents.

“Well, don’t stare like that,” she said, misreading the cause of that stare. “It is a war, isn’t it? We have an enemy, whether we knew it or not. They killed our people, attacked our business and our homes, broke our line of communication. Did it fairly well, you have to give them that . . . we certainly weren’t prepared. But now—it’s a war, and we’d better win it. I do not intend to spend the rest of my days sitting in some smelly, stuffy bunker under the wreck of a tik processing plant.”

“I . . . hadn’t thought of it as war, Gracie,” Gerard said. “I mean . . . of course it was an attack—is an attack—but wars are for . . . for governments.”

“War is war,” Gracie said. “And our government is doing damn-all about it. Just as well young Ky had those years in the Academy, and just as well she didn’t graduate. She couldn’t help us then.”

“She can’t help us now,” Gerard said. “If she’s even still alive.” He wanted to pray that she was, but he had no prayers to speak, not after losing Myris, San, Stavros, the others . . .

“We’ll see,” Gracie said. “I will say, she’s not an idiot.”

That was a concession, considering how she’d spoken of Ky before. Gerard cleared his throat with difficulty, and went on with what he thought the agenda should be.

“The point is, what we have left of Vatta Enterprises is now in serious trouble. Vatta Transport in space is out of communication, except for Perry Adair. Insurance reimbursements on our Slotter Key planetary assets—land, improvements, movable property—will have to be used to cover contractual obligations. If we’re lucky, if they actually pay out in a reasonable amount of time, it won’t exceed contractual obligations. Out of system—as of our last incoming data burst—we have lost insurance coverage on our ships, and as a result we have lost contracts. And as you know, we had purchased fifteen new hulls in the last four years . . . well, now those loans are being called in. Ordinarily, we would be able to cover that. Now . . . we can’t.”

“So . . . you’re talking bankruptcy?” Gracie asked.

“I’m talking ruin,” Gerard said. “You talk about war, and winning . . . Gracie, we have nothing to fight with. We have no money. We have no credit. We have no capital assets with which to make money.”

“Nonsense! We have Vatta ingenuity, Vatta drive—”

“We don’t even know if we have Vattas, other than ourselves,” Gerard said. He pinched the bridge of his nose. “My best estimate, prior to this, is that we’ve lost eighteen percent of our interstellar tonnage—but if we can’t get insurance, and no one trusts us with cargo, that’s eighty-two percent useless and expensive junk. Can we sell the ships? Certainly, at a loss, to our competitors . . . but only if we regain communications with their captains. We don’t have any procedures whereby captains can sell Vatta-owned ships on their own responsibility. And more—the Slotter Key government is distancing itself from our problems, just when we need it. There have been mutters in the Circle that we brought trouble here by being so obvious a target. We have been informed that protecting Vatta interests is a drain on taxpayer resources.”

“We aren’t nearly as conspicuous as some I could name,” Gracie said. “President Varthos—”

“Yes, I agree,” Gerard said, cutting off what he was sure was her usual rant about the President and his family. He himself thought the pink shellstone presidential palace was a bit overdone, but quite attractive in detail. “But the point is that we were attacked and they weren’t, and they don’t want to give us the kind of protection we want—and need—for fear of becoming targets themselves. I’ve tried pointing out that we are also taxpayers, but right now we aren’t likely to be major contributors to anyone’s campaign budget.”

“He’s been got at,” Gracie said.

“Possibly, but it will do no good to say so.” Gerard pinched his nose again. Gracie was so talented at giving headaches—he wished he could sic her on whoever their enemy was. “Here’s what we have to decide. Our private funds are still intact, so far as I know. Banks on Slotter Key haven’t failed, and though there may be problems related to the failure of the financial ansibles, I’m assured that my own accounts, for instance, are available. We here can choose to put our own money back into the company and try to keep Vatta afloat, at least here, or we can take our money and . . . and run, not to put too fine a point on it.”

“How much would we need?” Helen asked.

“I-I’m not entirely sure,” Gerard said. He hated saying that; as CFO, he should be able to give precise figures. But his office, like his home, was a smoking hole in the ground, and he was finding it increasingly hard to think clearly. “More than I have myself, I know that. But I wanted to determine if you were willing, first—”

“I am,” came a voice from the corner. Gerard had almost forgotten Stella Vatta Constantin, Helen and Stavros’ younger daughter. The others turned toward her. “Don’t stare like that,” she said. “I screwed up once . . . just once . . . and you all thought of me as that idiot Stella from then on, right?”

“It’s not that—” Gerard began. Stella interrupted.

“Yes, Uncle Ger, it is. Just as you all thought of Ky as the gullible one. The thing is, I care about this family as much as anyone else. More than some. And I think Ky has more sense than you realize. I’m willing to bet my last credit on Vatta. How about the rest of you?”

“Some of us have families . . .” That was Vasil Turolev, whose Vatta wife and children had survived.

“Some of you are lucky,” Stella said, before Gerard could get his jaw unlocked. “So are you going to kick your luck in the teeth and run away?”

“I have to think about them,” Vasil said. “What will they live on if I do, and it fails?” Vasil’s wife shook his arm and muttered in his ear. When he looked away, she spoke up.

“I’ll put in mine,” she said. “Celia Vatta.”

“Mine, of course,” said Gracie. “Vatta will survive.”

“I certainly hope so,” Gerard said. He did not feel confident at all, and the pain clouded his vision; the stimulant dose he’d talked the doctor into was wearing off. “And we need to decide how to distribute the database we have . . .” His head rolled sideways; he couldn’t point to his implant without moving an arm, which took too much effort. “Stav’s was destroyed; I think mine should be duplicated . . . find Ky . . . tell her . . .” He could not keep his eyes open; the post-stim crash rolled over him, sucked him into darkness.

“Stella, dear, I need to talk to you . . .” Gracie’s voice stabbed his ears even as he drifted off. By the time she lifted his cranial flap and removed his implant, slipping it into the protective case with its nutrient bath, he was unconscious. He did not hear the family disperse, the low-voiced decision to bring a medical team here rather than move him. He did not regain consciousness before the emergency surgery, before his death.

 

Gracie Lane Vatta moved about the kitchen, mixing dried and candied fruits, nuts, flour, sugar in a large bowl, while the kitchen’s owner greased and floured deep pans.

“I can’t believe you’re making fruitcake now!” Stella Vatta Constantin said. The other woman, who had been introduced to her as Louise, glanced up and then continued her work. “People have died, others are dying, and—”

“Stella, I appreciate your sentiments, but if you make me forget the recipe these will be even viler than usual. Put that”—she nodded at the sealed implant case that held Gerard Vatta’s implant—“in one of those insulated bags.”

“You are not going to put it in a fruitcake and bake it! It’ll destroy it!”

“No, it won’t. I’ve done this before. There’s dual protection; the implant case itself is insulated, and the bag will give it another thirty minutes at baking temperatures.” Gracie looked blank, then began dumping spices into the batter. “The thing about fruitcake, Stella, is that no one thinks it’s anything but fruitcake. An aunt’s fruitcake is one of the most innocuous substances in the universe. It fairly reeks of family duty, stuffy traditions. You know about cover. How else could someone carry a highly valuable implant—”

“You’re taking it somewhere?”

“No, my dear. You are.” She glanced at the other woman. “Louise, could I trouble you to fetch the bottle of rum that’s in the guest room, the one I sent Pauli out for earlier?”

“Of course, ma’am.” Louise left the kitchen. Gracie moved closer to Stella.

“Stella, we can’t have just one copy of the command database. I’ve got one now; I’m not giving you one in case . . . in case someone tries to pry into yours. This is for Ky. I’m sure you can find her. She was going to Lastway as a final destination after Belinta. She’ll end up there sometime. But you won’t go directly there. I’ve got a courier drop for you to get to ISC headquarters. You’ll leave tomorrow morning, and you’ll travel as you have before. Legal representative, not family.”

“Right,” Stella said. “With a fruitcake.”

“With several fruitcakes. All reeking of rum.” Gracie finished stirring the batter. “I know I forgot something . . .”

“Vanilla?” Stella asked.

“Vanilla . . . no . . . not in the recipe. Something Gerry said, back at the house. Too much too fast . . . I should’ve been recording . . .” She shook her head. “I hate age. Wisdom—assuming you gain any—is not enough to trade for the youthful ability to stay up two days running and still remember things. Here, put the implant case into this pan; balance it on these little pins. And this little packet in the other. And for goodness’ sake, remember which is which.” The batter slumped into the circular pan, then the rectangular one, filling them, hiding the contents as Gracie nudged it around with a spatula. “Now—into the oven with them.”

Stella put the cake pans into the oven just as Louise returned with the bottle of rum. The three of them sat around the table until the cakes were done and cooling on racks.

“Better get to bed, Stella,” Gracie said. She fought off her own exhaustion. She had things to say to Louise, things to do, secrets still to keep, even from Stella. The girl—woman now—had come a long way. She had proved herself before now. And she was the only one who might—might—be able to do what Gracie considered essential.

In the predawn dark, Stella came back into the kitchen, dressed in the sober business suit that fit her cover story, her golden hair dulled with a rinse and slicked back into an unbecoming knot. Nothing could obscure her cheekbones, but makeup subtly denied the obvious beauty, masking the flawless skin with vague blotchiness. Gracie looked her over carefully. “Good job, my dear,” she said at last.

“Will you be all right, Aunt Grace?” Stella asked.

“Me?” Grace said. She allowed her smile to convey her intent. “Oh, yes, Stella, I will be all right. Very much so.”

Stella’s expression shifted, but she had been well trained; she did not even look at Louise as she said, “Do take care, Aunt Grace; I’ll miss you.”

“And here are your fruitcakes, Stella.”

“Aunt Grace, I don’t really need—”

“Of course you do.” Grace handed her the sack. “And there’s a little something in there for you, too, Stella.” A packet of diamonds, that most useful portable currency. Stella already carried some, in the pocketed camisole under her blouse, but it was impossible to have too many diamonds. “Lunch for your journey.”

“Thank you, Aunt Grace,” Stella said, and hugged her lightly. Then she was gone, and Grace, already packed, left the house by another entrance, to meet another driver. En route to her next destination, she stopped briefly to make a call from a shielded site. Just before dawn was a fine time to wake a traitor, to whisper into his ear, “You will regret this . . .”

 

Gammis Turek read the reports with satisfaction. They had calculated correctly: they had beheaded Vatta Enterprises, and chopped off more than enough limbs. The Slotter Key government had been cooperative in rendering no more aid. What was left of Vatta would be harmless, the disconnected twitching limbs of what had been a formidable creature. They had missed the daughter, but she was a minor target anyway, and she was on a small, slow, unarmed ship. If he wanted her later, he could take her.

He placed the call to the Slotter Key presidential palace, aware that the very existence of the call would puzzle and alarm them.

“You were wise to take my advice,” he said without preamble. “You see how fortunately it turned out.”

“What I see is a big mess,” the voice replied. It did not sound nearly so cowed and compliant as he expected. Gammis scowled.

“It is not your mess,” he said. “It is Vatta’s mess, and they are now helpless to cause us—me or you—any problems.”

“I’m not so sure of that,” the voice said.

Cowards. Timid sheep. Gammis chuckled indulgently. “Their senior officers are all dead. Their headquarters is destroyed. Some of their largest and most profitable ships. They cannot get insurance; their accounts are frozen. What is the problem, then?”

“You missed one.”

“Missed one? I don’t think so. My intelligence reports that their CEO and CFO are both dead, and the entire second level of vice presidents—”

“You missed the old lady. She knows someone got to the government—”

Gammis laughed aloud this time. “Everyone knows someone got to the government. What of it? And what old lady? We have no profiles on old ladies—they can complain all they like.”

“She called me.”

“Oh, for—grow a spine, man. An old lady, some old dowager Vatta, without strength of arms or resources . . . she can whine all she wants. She is toothless.” Gammis closed the connection, shaking his head at the timidity of grounder politicians.