Tambu drew a long breath before responding.
"Look, Egor," he said gently. "Speaking for a moment as an old friend, you might ease up a little on your crew. If you did, a lot of the problems you're having would never arise."
"Don't tell me how to run my ship! I'm allowed to do things my way as long as it doesn't go against the rules. You just worry about the fleet and keep your bloody hands off my ship!"
"Captain Egor," Tambu replied coldly. "If you wish to retain full responsibility for the running of your ship, I suggest that you be man enough to begin taking full responsibility for solving your own problems instead of whining for me to clean up your messes. Tambu out!"
"But-"
Tambu smashed his fist down on the activator switch, cutting off Egor's response.
A touch at his shoulder made him jump. He had forgotten that Ramona was in the room.
"I'm sorry, Ramona," he sighed, sinking back in his chair. "I didn't think things were going to get that hot."
"How many times do I have to tell you," she said gently, standing behind him to massage his neck and shoulders, "it's Ratso now, not Ramona. You should follow your own rules."
"I don't like the name Ratso," he complained. "I'll use it in formal communications, but privately you'll always be Ramona to me."
"Other crewmen have picked names you don't like, but you use them," she teased.
"I don't sleep with the other members of the force! I just can't accept the idea of sharing a bed with someone called Ratso."
They had drifted into an affair after several months of working together. What began as a shared moment of passion had grown into a gentle and tender partnership which neither of them questioned.
"When are you going to do something about Egor?" she asked absently.
"Egor's one of OUT oldest captains. His seniority gives him certain considerations."
"He's a braggart and a bully. Everyone in the fleet knows that."
"He has an irritating manner," Tambu admitted, "but he's a good man. You've just got to know him before you can see through his bluster."
"If so, you must be the only one who can do it. The other captains are wondering why you don't boot him out, or at least pull his command."
"Look, just drop it, huh?" Tambu winced. "Egor is my problem, so it's up to me to come up" with a solution. Okay?"
"Sure," she shrugged. "Didn't mean to get on your back. Did you get any sleep at all last night?"
"Not much," he sighed, relaxing under her skillful hands. "It seems everyone has decided that the easiest time to get through to me is the middle of the night. Then again, there's all this."
He gestured at the papers on his desk.
"What is all that, anyway?" Ramona asked. "You've been working on it nonstop for a couple of weeks now."
"I've been going over the books checking our cash flow," he explained. "I've got to check the numbers again, but if the preliminary figures hold true, we're going to be out of business by the end of the year."
"Are things that bad?"
"Actually, things are that good." Tambu laughed bitterly. "We're suffering from being too successful. There are only so many pirates for us to capture, and the ones that are left are giving us wide berth. We've been paying the crews out of the treasury for nearly a year now, and we aren't making enough in salvage and reward money to replenish it. In short, our expenses have remained constant while our income has gone down. We're in trouble."
"Actually, our expenses have gone up," Ramona commented thoughtfully. "Now that we're up to twenty-four ships..."
"Twenty-eight."
"Twenty-eight?" she echoed. "Where did the other four ships come from?"
"One captured, three joined." he recited mechanically.
"Joined?" Ramona frowned. "But you can't keep letting new ships into the fleet."
"I thought you were the one who argued for that in the first place," Tambu teased. "Most of the ships in the fleet are joiners."
"At first, yes. But we can't keep expanding if we're running out of money and targets."
"We need the extra ships and the contacts."
"But that just means more..." She broke off and looked at him suspiciously. "You've got a plan, don't you? You always have a plan."
"Not always, but most of the time."
"Well, come on," she prodded, poking him in the ribs. "What is it?"
"Nothing much," he said casually. "Just a complete reformatting of our force."
He paused, as if expecting her to respond enthusiastically. Instead, she gnawed her lip.
"How complete?" she asked warily.
"Well, so far we've been living on rewards and salvage. The books show the flaw in that system--no fighting, no loot. I figure we're ready to move onto the next social stage."
"And that would be... ?"
"That we hire ourselves out as a peacekeeping force. That way we get paid whether there's fighting or not. In fact the less fighting there is, the more we should be paid."
"How do you figure that?"
"Easy," he smiled, "in theory, we'll be paid to keep the trade routes free of pirates. If we botch the job and somebody loses a shipment, we might have to refund part of our fee; but as long as things go smoothly, we get full payment."
"Full payment from who? Refund our fee to who?" Ramona pressed. "Just who are you expecting to foot the bill for all this?"
"The ones who are benefiting from our services. The corporations and the merchants. I still have to figure out how to spread the cost around proportionately but I figure it should be a small percentage of the value of each shipment, to be paid equally by the shipper and the receiver."
"What if they won't pay?" Ramona asked pointedly. "So far they've been getting the service for free."
"If they won't pay, we take our ships away and guard the systems that will pay. When the word gets around that a system is unguarded, the pirates will move in again. Sooner or later, the systems will come around to seeing it our way and will ante up."
"I don't know. It sounds a little too good to be true. I'd like to hear what a couple of the other captains have to say about this."
"I can go you one better than that. You'll have a chance to hear what all the captains have to say about it."
"How so?"
"I'm planning to have a mass meeting of the entire fleet, specifically to get the captains all in one place so I can sell this idea to them all at once. It's a little too big for a unilateral decision."
"And if they don't agree with you?"
"Then I'll resign and let someone else take a shot at running the show." Tambu's tone was light, but his sagging shoulders betrayed the depth of his emotion. "I see it as our only hope for survival, but I can't lead if no one will follow."
"Then it's a unilateral decision," Ramona stated flatly. "No one's going to buck you if you feel that strongly about it."
"Don't be so sure. Sometimes I think some of the captains automatically take the opposite position I do just to be ornery."
"I am sure," Ramona insisted. "And if you don't realize what's going on, it's about time you took another look at things. Sure the captains argue with you, because they know you respect people who think for themselves and speak their minds. You tell each person who signs on this force that you won't tolerate 'yes-men,' and they take it to heart. They'll argue because you tell 'em to, but don't kid yourself into thinking they'll go against you on anything big. You're Tambu, and you call the shots in this outfit. They wouldn't have it any other way."
Tambu stared at the blank viewscreen, avoiding her eyes as he thought.
"I don't know," he sighed finally. "I hope you're wrong, but a lot of what you're saying fits what's been going on. You know what they say about absolute power corrupting absolutely? Well, I'm no different from anybody else. It scares me to think what I'd be like if I let myself believe I've got total control over the force. I mean, even with the ships we have now, without any further expansion, we're strong enough to seize and hold a half dozen systems-not planets, systems. We could do it, and there's not a force in the universe that could stop us."