“Next scheduled carrier?”
“Not likely. When we were here before I looked that up, and it was four months off the Elaine of Gault. It only feels like four months.”
The com tech waved at her. “Captain, you’ve incoming traffic—”
“Right.” She sat down in her seat and prepared to grill the colonel to find out what he knew. But the face that came up was not Colonel Kalin. The dour, lined face looking back at her belonged to the captain of Katrine Lamont. She knew it all too well. When she’d been an apprentice, shipped out to experience the wonders of space and get her mind off what her mother called “that military nonsense,” Josiah Furman had been the captain of that ship, taking obvious pleasure in putting a Vatta youngling to the nastiest and more boring chores. She’d come back more determined than ever not to be stuck in ordinary civilian transport.
She couldn’t think of anyone—barring her mother—she wanted to see less.
“You’ve made a fine mess of things,” he said. “You weren’t supposed to be anywhere near Sabine… but then you never did follow orders.”
That was unfair, she had followed many orders, many stupid orders, many boring orders. She had followed most orders, including his. She tried not to see the expression on the Mackensee com tech’s face, just as the com tech was very obviously trying not to look at her.
“What did you think you were doing?” he went on, not waiting for an answer, as if he were her actual parent. “First, you make an idiot of yourself at the Academy, and then you can’t even carry out a simple, uncomplicated voyage without getting the entire company in an uproar. Do you have any idea the profits you’re costing us by this?”
It was a pause, if not the pause she wanted. “Trade and profit,” Ky said, fighting to keep her voice even. “Vatta captains are expected to take advantage of opportunities—”
“Experienced captains,” he said. “Captains who know what they’re doing. You—I got pulled off my route, with loss of early-delivery bonuses, just because you couldn’t do what you were told and deliver that useless excuse for a ship to the wrecking yard. Because of you,” he said, and glared at her.
She was tired, hungry, grieving, and this was totally unfair. All those emotions tangled in her throat, and she could say nothing. Had her father told Furman to scold her this way? He hadn’t scolded her about the Academy… Was he angry now?
“My father—,” she finally said.
“Your father told me to come pick up the pieces and be sure you were safe. Pulled me right off my route, told me to skip two destinations. So I have to divert, load up your cargo, load your crew, haul your cargo to Belinta, that armpit of the region, before I can get back to my route, and take you home. My customers will be upset—”
“You can’t do that,” Ky said.
“I don’t want to, but your father said—”
“I mean, you can’t take our cargo to Belinta. We have cargo there, in storage, for Leonora and Lastway.”
“Then it will have to stay there. I am not going to Leonora and Lastway, and neither are you. I’ve seen the reports—Glennys Jones will never make it out of the system. I’ll sell it for scrap here—”
“You will do no such thing,” Ky said. Her jumbled emotions had settled with anger on top, and at that moment she felt she could leap across space and remove his head without a weapon. “With repairs—simple repairs—this ship is quite capable of taking cargo to Belinta and beyond, and that is what I will do. I am in command of this ship, not you.” That last came out weaker than she meant.
“You’re under tow,” Furman said. “You can’t even dock with the station—which, by the way, I understand you left illegally, without permission. Your ID beacon is transmitting the wrong data. They won’t let you dock.” He smirked. On his big, heavy face it looked particularly disgusting.
Ky hadn’t thought of that complication. The moment in which she had elected emergency undock over the possibility of being blown up with the station seemed years in the past. Had it only been a few hands of days?
“It was an emergency situation,” Ky said. “Other ships also broke loose—”
“But not Vatta ships,” he said. “You’ve damaged our reputation, you’ve cost us millions, and now you make excuses—enough of this. Your father sent me out here to take care of things, and that’s what I’m going to do. I’ll sell the ship for scrap, transport your cargo to Belinta and your crew back to a nexus where you can catch a passenger ship home. Get your things and be ready to leave in—”
Ky stabbed at the board and cut the connection before what she thought emerged from her mouth. Her vision hazed.
“That was interesting,” Lee said softly. “He seems to think you’re still a schoolgirl…”
“Apparently,” Ky said. She tried to control her breathing, her face, her voice. It would have been so satisfying to throw something breakable at something immovable.
“Who is that?” asked the Mackensee com tech.
Ky took a deep breath. “He was captain on the ship where I served my junior apprenticeship,” she said. “We did not get along. To be fair, at thirteen I was the typical adolescent brat, and the youngest of my family. I’d been sent off because my parents thought I was spoiled, and they were right. But he… did not help.”
“And they sent him to help you now?” The tech’s face expressed unexpected sympathy.
“Probably he was closest,” Ky said. She hoped that was it. She hoped it wasn’t an unsubtle message from her father that she had screwed up yet again, and worse. “Look,” she said to the tech. “I really need to talk to home—to headquarters—about this. Is there any chance of getting an ansible linkup?”
“Not for another couple of days, they tell me,” the tech said. “What do you think, this guy’s going beyond his orders?”
“I hope so,” Ky said. “And I hope he’s wrong about the station refusing dockage. We have to get in there for resupply and repair.”
“I reckon ISC will have something to say about that,” the tech said.
“ISC—why?”
“When someone messes up their ansibles, they usually hang around and pretty much run things until they find out who did it and punish them. And didn’t you find that out?”
“I found out some,” Ky said cautiously. “Not everything.”
“So ISC ought to be grateful to you,” the tech said. “If they want you to get docking access, you will, whatever poison puss says.”
“I hope so,” Ky said. She sighed. “I wish—” But she couldn’t say that aloud, not in front of her crew or these military types. She wished she was military, where everything was cut-and-dried, open and obvious, simple. Well, except for people like Mandy Rocher. Her mind insisted on dragging up every person she’d found to have hidden motives. “I need to check on something,” she said instead. “If he calls back, don’t accept it.”
“What should I tell him?”
“Tell him I’m not discussing company business over an open line,” Ky said, wishing she’d thought to say that earlier. She left the bridge and went to talk to the passengers. They were feeling well enough to complain about the delay in returning them to their ships.
“I can’t do anything about that,” Ky said. “You know I have no shuttles, and we have no independent power. At least we have adequate food now.”
“That’s all very well, but what about my ship?” one of the captains said. “Is it still in the system? Are my crew all right?”
“I’ll find out,” Ky said, and dashed back to the bridge. With the exception of Empress Rose, all the ships were still in the Sabine system, and crews reported nothing but minor injuries or illnesses. She reported that to her passengers and explained that no, she could not provide them all a secure comlink to their ships, since ISC now controlled all communications and hadn’t put a high priority on their needs.