Adelaide Group, when they reached it, lay beyond the usual trade routes Vatta serviced. Its ansibles were functioning, shortening the response time of the local officials and giving Ky access to a business directory for the various settlements. She was startled to find that Crown & Spears had no branch here; she had grown up believing that Crown & Spears was everywhere, like photons and gravity. She looked at the list of other financial institutions and wondered which to choose. Perhaps the locals could give her some advice.

Unlike the other systems Ky had visited, here humans lived only in space, on huge stations positioned near the ring system of a gas giant. Humans was a term of choice in this case, as most were humods whose modifications suited such a life: geeners, in fact, who had been genetically engineered for it from conception—which was entirely artificial. The first face Ky saw on the com screen bulged with what she hoped were implants, the nose was a spongy-looking blob, and the two eyes did not match. She hoped she didn't look as startled as she felt.

Yet their response to the plight of Dryas ' passengers was as warmly human as Gretna's had been cold and inhumane.

"Of course they can come," the system Traffic Officer told Ky. "We've been trading with Polson for over a century. It may be hard for them at first—I'll talk to our medical people, but I'm thinking they'd be best on Tria—it's the station where most lowmod visitors prefer to stay. Give me a few hours and I'll have the Tria Council give you a call."

Ky would not have considered the Polson humods "lowmod," but to other humods maybe they were. She could imagine what the Gretnans would have thought of Adelaide's citizens.

Tria's Councilor Malroy was just as cordial when she called. "We have plenty of room; we'll just shift some of our people to Qadro."

"That's not a problem?"

"No—we have plenty of room and we enjoy moving; it's bred in us. But tell me—we've never heard of the SDR," Malroy said. "Who are you—some kind of mercenaries?"

"No—we're not for hire," Ky said. "We're part of a military force—Space Defense Force—made up of units from worlds that understand the threat is greater than any one system can handle. This particular unit has ships carrying three flags, as our beacons show."

"Ah. We're a bit off the beaten path; we don't hear much. Is the threat really that great? Do you know if any other systems have been attacked?"

"Bissonet fell to these people," Ky said. "Polson as well. Slotter Key was attacked but—at last report—still holding." She was not going to explain all that had happened at Slotter Key. "The Moscoe Confederation—you may have known of Cascadia?—hasn't been attacked yet. But the ansible service—"

"—is down in many places. Yes. We thought maybe it was a natural phenomenon—some kind of flare or something."

"No, it's definitely sabotage, probably by the same group that attacked Bissonet and Slotter Key, though we can't prove it yet. Our unit's main mission—besides fighting the pirates anyplace we find them—is to recruit additional systems to support the SDF. It's going to take a lot of resources to defeat them; they have a solid head start."

"We don't have a space navy, per se," Malroy said. "A lot of our people have private vehicles...we have small insystem search and rescue craft, and some traffic patrol craft, but we haven't had to worry about piracy much...nothing beyond the occasional single idiot who thinks he can rob our miners." From her tone, she thought of pirates as dull-witted ruffians.

"I'm afraid all civilized people are going to find a reason to worry soon," Ky said. "This is no ordinary pirate."

"I don't know how we'd find and train a real deep-space warship," Malroy said. "I suppose we'll need to hire someone...you're not for hire, you say, but if you know how we could...what we could do..."

Go back ten years, twenty years, and start over... but saying that wouldn't help. "You might contact other governments, the ones you can reach," Ky said. "Talk to them, find out what they're doing."

With that conversation over, Ky considered whether—no, when—to call Stella. Stella would be worrying, wondering what had happened since Ky had left Cascadia. When Ky checked the calendar, she was shocked...115 days? A lot had happened, but it hadn't seemed that long. Stella might even think Ky was dead, and she'd probably be as angry about the delay as relieved that Ky was in good health. What had she been doing? Was Vatta Transport making any money yet?

That thought led to the state of their supplies, and Ky decided to wait until she had a shopping list before contacting Stella. A few days' more worry surely wouldn't make Stella's reaction worse. In the few days before they docked at Tria, Ky put together a list of everything her group needed.

"We've got to do something about that air lock damage," Hugh said. "Engineering say they can't do a permanent fix themselves—I see there's a repair yard listed here."

Another money sink, Ky thought. And how long would it take? With no Crown & Spears branch here, with no large stash of valuables...should she try to sell off one of the shipboard ansibles? If only she hadn't been in such a hurry to get away, she might have figured out a way to make the Gretnans pay for the damage they'd done. She'd gotten supplies for the refugees out of them; she could have gotten some sort of reparations. But at the time she'd been so disgusted and angry...

"Contact the others, put together a package, and get estimates, including scheduling," she told Hugh. "With the system ansible working, I can contact Stella. Maybe she can help."

He was back all too soon. As Ky had feared, the estimate for repairing all three ships was more than she had. "They gave us a good deal," Hugh said. "In consideration of our good works, apparently, they cut ten percent off the original."

"I just don't have it," Ky said. No conceivable value of the remaining diamond stash would cover this and the other things they needed. Repairs would have to wait. Her engineers said the patches were holding...they could hold a little longer.

A few days after docking at Tria, Ky was still juggling figures when Malroy called her again. "We have talked more to Dryas ' captain and we have thought about what you said. Though we have no warships to contribute, we know that fleets need supply and other types of ships. We could contribute such a ship—in fact, Dryas ' captain would like to give you Dryas."

Dryas would be filthy, Ky knew, and need a crew, and anyway the refugees needed something to offer in exchange for the help they were getting from Adelaide. What she really wanted was help with the repairs. But a ship was a ship. Maybe she could sell it to pay for repairs, though it didn't seem likely that Adelaide Group had a large market for ships. Maybe Stella would want to take it for Vatta Transport and pay for some of the repairs in return...

Before she could answer, Malroy went on. "We would clean the ship and provision it for you. Dryas ' captain said he would be willing to command, if you were willing to have him. And some of our people have already volunteered for crew."

"That is most kind," Ky said, with an internal sigh. She couldn't sell the ship off if they were doing so much to make it useful for her. "We could definitely use a supply ship, and though I worried about finding a crew, you have solved that problem, too."

"It is no more than your actions deserve," Malroy said. "We were shocked at the perfidy of Gretna Station. We have traded there in the past with no problems, but we will not trade there again."

The other captains were less pleased about the new ship than Ky expected. "We'll have to protect it," Argelos said. "It will slow us down."

"I don't think so," Ky said. "It should make resupply faster. We can send one escort in with it, fill it up, and then transfer goods at safe distances from stations—or in empty systems."

"Maybe," Pettygrew said. "But how will we know none of the crew are Turek's agents? Are you going to vet them all?"

"I'm going to have my security check, yes," Ky said. "We do have to assume that not all volunteers are safe. I understand that."

"Would you like the use of my adviser as well?" Argelos asked. "I don't know who you have, what their background is."

"A former Slotter Key military man with security experience," Ky said. "Backed up by my second in command—you've met him—who has mercenary experience closer to this sector. But if your adviser finally wants to let me know who he is..."

"He's not eager for that, but he wants to be in on any security screening."

"And I would like to contribute someone as well," Pettygrew said. "I believe that we, being from Bissonet, may have some very useful background."

"There is the matter of courtesy," Ky said. "We should be tactful in our investigation. But I believe the locals will understand the need for our caution."

Ky explained their concerns to Malroy, who nodded. "Of course, after the terrible events, you would want to be sure you had no vermin in your system. We will make available space and clerical support, if you need it, for your investigation. Can you give me a list of personnel who will be involved? And you yourself, I would like to meet hand-to-hand."

"Of course, though I can leave the ship only briefly," Ky said.

Malroy was a cheery, round-faced individual with the usual microgravity humodifications: lower limbs ending in branched tentacles, upper limbs divided at the elbow with one pair of hands and another set of tentacles, these specialized for sensation of chemicals, magnetic fields, and other useful bits. In addition, she had an artificial "eye" in her forehead and a cranial crest suggesting a larger and more elaborate implant than those Ky was used to. She met Ky in a lounge designed for transients who were comfortable in higher gravities: though it was less than Ky was used to, she did not bounce off the floor with every step, and her clothes hung where they were supposed to without tugging on the adhesive tabs.

With Malroy was Captain Partsin of Dryas. He still looked gaunt, but less so than he had onscreen when they left Gretna. He strode forward to clasp her hands in his. "My dear Captain Vatta...we had always heard of the honorable Vatta Transport, but truly I never expected that I and so many others would owe our lives to your courage and generosity. My own ship is small, a very tiny gift to repay that generosity, and I would hope that it will enable you to win this war against the pirates. You have my thanks and the thanks of our remaining people. I understand your need to question some of them who wish to serve as crew, but I hope you will understand that they do not have all the documentation that they should, because of the conditions under which we evacuated. Those of my crew I can personally vouch for."

"Thank you," Ky said. "You are certainly more than generous, and I do understand about evacuees...though you know why we must be careful. My second in command, Hugh Pritang, and Gordon Martin, my security chief, will be joined by the security officers of our other ships." She gestured Hugh and Martin forward. "I believe the others will be here shortly. You had an office or other space?" She glanced at Malroy.

"Yes. Would you prefer to wait for the others or come with me now? It is in the same gravity as this."

"I should return to my ship," Ky said. "With all respect, with Hugh here, the captain needs to be aboard."

"Of course."

On the way, Ky stopped in at the local bank Malroy recommended to inquire about financial transfers.

"We have a relationship with Crown & Spears, of course," the manager said. "We respect them highly, and we will be pleased to handle any funds transfers from or to them. The financial ansible here has had no problems in the last twenty years—before that, you'd have to ask my predecessor."

"My cousin is CEO of Vatta Transport," Ky said. "I know our routes never extended this far, but I hope you've heard—"

"Certainly, certainly. Well, I hope to be hearing from you soon, Captain Vatta."

Ky intended to call Stella when she got back to the ship, but the temporal chart revealed that local time on Cascadia Station was 0200; that gave her an excuse to delay another few hours until first-shift, the usual business day. In the meantime, she noted that Cascadia's searchable directory gave both home and office numbers for Stella Vatta; Vatta Transport, Ltd. was listed as well. To save money, she chose the audio-only option.

"Vatta Transport, how may I help you?" said a pleasant voice.

"Ansible call for Stella Vatta from Kylara Vatta," Ky said.

"Just a moment..." A soft tone replaced the receptionist's voice, and then Stella's voice came through.

"Ky! Where are you? Are you all right? What happened? Why aren't you full-band?" Stella sounded as much annoyed as worried.

"I'm in Adelaide Group," Ky said. "It's a long story, but I'm fine, just somewhat short of funds. How are you? And Toby?"

"Things are going well," Stella said, more calmly. "I've established a new headquarters office; we have five ships, now, counting Gary Tobai, which I have out on contract doing insystem runs here. The Kat was able to make contact with our ship on the Garth-Lindheimer run; they've accepted me as CEO, for now, and they'll be contacting all the Vatta ships they cross paths with. It looks like the most damage to Vatta was within five jumps of Slotter Key."

"That's good, I guess," Ky said. "Of course, most of us were within five jumps of Slotter Key."

"We're not making a profit yet," Stella said. "Not from shipping, at least. But it's not a gaping wound in the accounts, either. So what are you doing way over in the Adelaide Group? What happened with those people you were going to...see?" The pause was significant.

"It's a long story, not all good, but I'm alive and the ship is whole. I'm traveling now with two other warships, Sharra's Gift from Slotter Key and Bassoon from Bissonet; we escorted a shipload of refugees from Polson here."

"Refugees? From what?"

"Attack on Polson," Ky said. "Oh, and don't let any of our ships go to Gretna."

A pause while Stella accessed her implant. "Why not? Mildly shady, is what I have in my file. Check all bills, inspect all replacement parts."

"They've gone from mildly shady to inshore piracy and trafficking in human lives," Ky said. "I bought eighteen indentured workers—"

"You bought them? Ky, how could you! That's illegal—and horrible!"

"Not as horrible as what they faced. Bought them and freed them, of course. But that's part of my cash-flow problem. I'm guessing Gretna's economy tanked when the ansibles went out and trade dropped. Whatever the reason, they've gone rogue: they take your money, then try to take your ship and sell you for slaves."

"You're serious..."

"Very. Anyway, they wouldn't even let the refugees have food and air. I forced the Gretnans to provide the necessities, but I couldn't leave the refugees there. So we escorted them here; they said Polson and Adelaide had been trading partners before. Adelaide Group's not on our routes now, but they seem to be good people, so if someone has a hole in the schedule—"

"What do they have to trade?"

"Mostly low-grav manufacturies. Pharma and things like that. Oh, and humod adaptive devices; most of them are serious humods, engineered for low-grav and rapid-change environments; they need assistive devices to function well in what we call normal."

"I'll look into it," Stella said. "Can you zip me their directory?"

"Right away," Ky said. She called it up and sent the compressed version on sub-audio. "How's Toby?" she asked.

"Toby's fine. In fact, Toby's a raving genius. You won't believe what he's come up with."

"He's trained Rascal to do ansible repairs?"

Stella snorted. "Not quite. Better. He's making more of that very interesting cargo we found—"

"The shipboard—"

"Yes," Stella cut in. Ky could hear the irritation in her voice. But it wasn't a secret; the pirates at least knew about shipboard ansibles. Before Ky could say more, Stella went on. "He's already made one, and he's made some...improvements. Apparently all that time he spent with Rafe, he was soaking up everything Rafe told him. That, and native ability. We can certainly market these, if ISC doesn't stop us."

"Or use them as our competitive edge," Ky said. She hoped Stella wouldn't give it all away before they made a profit off it, if Toby really had pulled it off.

"Or use them as our competitive edge, yes," Stella said. "Rascal, by the way, has earned his keep for the rest of his life...Toby's education is taken care of already, and Rascal's picture's all over the place. Apparently he's superfertile with the local female dogs, and they've confirmed pregnancy in one hundred percent of the inseminations."

Ky laughed. "I realize this helps our bottom line, but there's something just a little ridiculous about being saved from financial ruin by a scruffy little dog we pulled out of a trash bin."

"Well, you saved the scruffy little dog," Stella said. "Remember all those fairy tales in our children's books, when the hero was the one who helped the little animal stuck in a trap or whatever?"

Ky started to say that real life wasn't a fairy tale, but refrained. Maybe it was, after all.

"So," Stella went on. "Tell me what's going on with you, besides rescuing some refugees."

"It's been...interesting," Ky said. "We now have a fleet. Well, a small fleet. Multisystem, since Vanguard's now Cascadian registry; there's also one Slotter Key privateer, and one Bissonet former space militia. What he's told me is that while Bissonet always claimed they didn't have privateers, they actually did. They called them militia, though, and their trading capacity was limited."

"Yes, but what happened? You and that Argelos fellow left Cascadia together—"

"Right. Well, you remember that Bissonet was taken—"

"I know that—"

"Argelos had located three Bissonet ships together. They had heard about my idea of combining forces, and they wanted to try it. Originally we had three of them, Argelos and me, a ship from Ciudad, and one from Urgayin, I think it was. We went to an empty system to do some training, which made sense—"

"You were commanding, right?"

"No." Ky sighed. This was going to be difficult. "There were three Bissonet ships, remember? Their senior officer insisted that command belonged with the greatest contribution—in other words, she wanted it. And I agreed, because I cared more about the idea than about the power."

"Mistake, was it?"

"Yes. She may've been good before—one of the other ships claimed she was—but she just didn't know how to command this kind of group. She alienated the man from Ciudad. One of the ships didn't show up—and it turned out to have been a plant, someone working as an agent of the pirates. He told them where we were. Didn't know that at the time, of course. I was worried, but she wasn't. Short form is, they ambushed us, and she didn't have a clue how to get anyone out alive. I'd been discussing it with Argelos, just in case—and we lost the battle but three ships came out whole: mine, Argelos', and one of the Bissonet ships, commanded by a man named Pettygrew."

"Ky...I don't know how to ask this, but...are you sure you know what you're doing?"

"I got three ships out alive when they all thought they were doomed. My tactics. My commands." Ky's throat tightened, thinking of those she hadn't been able to save, and Captain Zavala's courage in coming back to warn them all.

"I believe you. I just...people are going to die, Ky, because of commands you give. Are you ready for that?"

"It's already happened," Ky said. "And I'll never be ready, and I am ready now."

"All right. I'm still terrified, you know. You're the only real Vatta of our generation left, that I know of."

"You are as real a Vatta as I am," Ky said. "And this would be a lot easier if I'd been Osman's daughter, wouldn't it? It fits better."

Stella's voice trembled a little. "Yes...and I guess I have to get over it."

"I guess you do." Time to get back to realities. "I tapped out the Vatta accounts at Gretna; in fact, Crown & Spears gave me a line of credit so the authorities couldn't claim I hadn't paid all the fees they added on at the last moment. I resupplied there, before they tried to get it all back, and we need repairs soon, for the damage done there. You'll have to start linking accounts again."

"Well, if Adelaide Group is as useful as you're saying, I can extend a route there—maybe Gary Tobai. Can you establish a corporate account there before you leave?"

"I set up one for our fleet," Ky said. "I'll have Adelaide Central Bank send you the account information and let them know you want one for Vatta Transport."

"You could contact me using our...uh...family code."

That had to mean by the shipboard ansibles. "Oh. You're right." How to tell Stella that she'd made changes to the shipboard ansibles, that the original settings would be known to the pirates? "I didn't want to use a channel the pirates might pick up on; we modified ours to use different ones, but yours isn't."

"Toby thought of that, too. He said it was something you'd need. Wonder if we have the same new channels..."

How to convey them without risking discovery? Were the pirates monitoring routine ansible transmissions? Or those to a Vatta family member? Ky rummaged through her implant looking for some concealing data that Stella might also have. "Stella, your implant has the list of family birthdays and ceremonies, doesn't it?"

"Yes, why?"

"That channel thing...your mother's, month and day; my oldest brother's year and day."

"Oh! Yes. I'll tell Toby and see if those are the same, and if not, I'm sure he can modify it to fit." A pause, then: "Ky, I'm really relieved to hear from you...I know I behaved badly before you left Cascadia, and then I thought maybe you were throwing yourself into danger because of that—"

"No, Stella, please—it wasn't that."

"We're just—there's so few of us left. And I know I'm doing the right thing with the company, but...Toby is just not enough, if you know what I mean."

"Me, too," Ky said. "Stella, I meant what I said then. To me, you're always family. Always. It doesn't matter how far apart we are."

"Well, before I start sniffling like a kid," Stella said, "I think we should end this conversation. I'll contact you in a few days, if I don't hear from you first, to let you know what I can send. It's such a relief to have real, functioning ansible service!"

"That it is," Ky said. "Later, then."

She arrived on the bridge in time to see the entire bridge crew staring at the external vid monitor. "What in the world is that?" Hugh asked, staring at the screen, where a steel-blue ship with a bright gold stripe down its long axis and some kind of curly gold lettering on the bow was easing toward its docking space. "I'd say a yacht, but it's too big for that."

Ky looked at the message marker coming up on the armrest of her command chair, tapped for access, and grinned.

"It's the Courageous, and its captain says they're Ransome's Rangers," she said. "The other two are the Furious and the Glorious. They want to join up with us." She put up the video they were sending. On the bridge of a ship—presumably the same one—several officers in light-blue-and-gold uniforms with white facings stood watching over the instruments; crew in light blue shipsuits scurried about busily.

"They look like an operetta chorus," Hugh said. "One of those old revivals with the brave young soldier and the pretty dancing girl the prince falls in love with."

"They are a bit gaudy," Ky said. "On the other hand, they are ships. We don't have anything that size or that speed. They've got excellent scan—light on weapons, as you'd expect..."

"Do you really think all of them together could take down one pirate?"

"Possibly," Ky said. "At the least, they might make a pirate die laughing."

"You're actually thinking of signing them on?"

"Not necessarily." From the data they'd sent, she couldn't tell if it was a joke or a serious offer. "I will talk to their commander. Apparently he's filthy rich and organized this bunch all by himself. That alone makes me suspicious, but on the other hand, Vatta used to have dozens of ships and we weren't pirates."

"No, and you weren't dressed up like stage performers and pretending to be pirate hunters, either."

"I'm just going to talk to them, Hugh. Promise."

"Well, be careful. You're taking security, right?"

"Of course."

Their commander was as handsome as his screen image, though his coloring reminded Ky unpleasantly of Gretna. But Theodore Albert Driscoll Ransome was as cheerful and open as the Gretnans had been dour and sly. Tall, his shock of honey-colored hair flopping over one side of his forehead, he moved as flamboyantly as he spoke.

"Captain Vatta! In reality as I live! What an honor to meet the hero of Sabine!" He flung out an arm and bowed low.

Ky had to think hard to figure out what he meant; Sabine was many crises back in her personal accounting. "Oh, that," she said finally.

"Your modesty becomes you, but I insist, it is an honor to meet you at last." He gave a half shrug, and his captain's cape swirled out dramatically. "Together, we shall do wonders; together we shall free the universe of this scourge of pirates."

Together, Ky thought, they could sound like a primary school play.

"We have a long way to go," she said. It sounded flat after the man's flowery language, but she couldn't match his tone even if she'd wanted to. "Are you prepared to stay the distance?"

"Oh, death and glory by all means," he said, grinning. "Trumpets shall sound and if we fall maidens will throw roses on our graves—"

"If we fail, those maidens will be dead or slaves," Ky said. "This is not an operetta."

He blinked. "Well...of course. I understand that. It's only...there's no harm in...in seeing ourselves as heroes, don't you think?"

"There's no harm in it as long as it doesn't affect performance," Ky said.

"Oh, no danger there. No danger at all. My people are more efficient in pursuit of honor than anything else. I chose them for that."

Could anything so handsome, so decorative, so...so enthusiastic...possibly be useful? Ky wondered. Behind her, Martin stirred; she knew without asking what he was thinking of this... popinjay would probably be the kindest term he'd come up with.

"Tell me something about your experience," Ky said.

He smiled broadly and settled himself on the edge of his seat, like a dragonfly about to take off again any moment. "It all started with Grumnos. You won't know Grumnos. It's a moon of one of our gas giants in my home system, and about a century ago the prisoners—it'd been used as convict exile—overthrew the guards and wardens, stole some supply ships, and began preying on commerce in our system. It was more of a nuisance at first—they'd just hold up a ship for ransom, or steal some food, and the government decided that putting it down would cost too much." He gave a dramatic shrug.

"But then it got worse, as rascals always do if you don't nip them in the bud, and about five years ago some of us decided to take care of it ourselves. My friend André and I bought a couple of ships—my Glorious and his Triumphant —hired some mercs for crew, and by the time we were done...well..." he dusted his hands. "No more pirates on Grumnos. And it was a ripping good sport, hunting pirates, we decided. André and I set up the Rangers and invited our friends to fit out their own ships and join us. Our government agreed to pay us a bounty for every pirate ship destroyed. For a while, we had very few outland pirates—I imagine they heard about us..." He smirked; Ky wanted to laugh but didn't. "But then some nasty types showed up, first one and then two. We fought them off, not without casualties. Poor André was killed when a beam took his ship, but I am assured he would have had time to feel nothing, not that fear ever touched that noble heart. But then...then it was I heard about the vast pirate horde assailing distant systems, and it seemed to me the best way to protect my own was to meet them there, at a distance, and with allies whose courage and honor matched our own. I believe you, my lady—Captain Vatta—are such an ally, one I would be proud to die with—"

"I would rather they die," Ky said. "But I thank you for the compliment."

"Our ships are small, but our hearts are great," he went on, gesturing magnificently; Ky still could not think of anything but the more melodramatic stage productions. "You and I together—against the foe!" He looked at her then as if he expected applause for the rhetoric and delivery.

Would he and his ships be any use at all? Surely some use—even if only as scouts or messengers—but what a risk if he proved not to be honest.

"I'm somewhat concerned about the lightness of your ordnance," Ky said. "We expect to be up against groups of the enemy. When you and...er...André fought the pirates, were you using multiship tactics, or...?"

"Well, we did read about standard tactics, of course," Ransome said. His voice sounded calmer now, as if—having delivered his set speeches—he was actually capable of normal conversation. "But as you say, our ships are small—what some space navies called escort size, as you noticed. We don't mount as much ordnance as the standard tactics called for, so we pretty much had to make it up. Our speed's an advantage, and our smaller size means we can do microjumps in and out of FTL closer to large masses than bigger ships. I've installed the best available navigational computers, and our drives—insystem and FTL both—are top of the line, of course."

"I'm sure," Ky said. She wasn't, not until she'd seen the specs. Top of the line in one system might be mediocre in another. "How did you see your contribution to our organization?" she asked.

"Oh, we don't expect to be part of the regular fleet," he said. "We're more suited to independent action, I would think. Can't expect my people to knuckle under to an outsider, y'know."

That didn't sound good. "You would need to train with us to be much use," Ky said. "Wouldn't want to be running into each other, fouling each other's shots, that sort of thing."

"Quite," he said. "I do understand that. I was thinking, size of our ships and all, we could be useful as couriers, as scouts, and in cutting-out expeditions." That was a term Ky had never seen applied to space warfare. The rest was along the lines she'd already thought of.

"Tell you what," she said. "You need to meet my other captains, and I need to meet some more of your people. What you're offering sounds very generous, but you know how it is—people are either going to get along, or not."

"How about a dinner?" he asked. "Or a party?"

"I think we captains should meet first. A quiet dinner, perhaps."

"That would be great...I could host...no, you probably want something on neutral ground, don't you?"

"Adelaide Station has several good restaurants in the standard-gravity sections, and there's always the Captains' Guild," Ky said. "We can reserve a private room—"

"Splendid! I'll tell my fellows. This evening, or is that too soon?"

"Let me check with Captain Argelos and Captain Pettygrew," Ky said. "If their schedules allow, this evening would be fine."


R ansome's fellow captains—introduced by Ransome as Dennis Malachi Quartermaine St. Cyrien commanding the Furious and Allan Desmond Joachim Baskerville commanding the Courageous and—were cut from the same cloth as Ransome, though not quite as flamboyant. All three showed up in formal uniforms, the captains' capes of silk that gave them a fine flair as they moved. They, too, had wealthy families, which came as no surprise. Ky felt old and staid beside them; Argelos and Pettygrew looked like she felt.

"You should've seen him at school," said St. Cyrien. "I remember when we were taking that history class—he took it into his head to learn the fighting styles of every period—"

"Only those with swords," Ransome said. "Much more fun than the others—"

"—and one day when our teachers arrived, he and Des and Hal were on the main stairs, whaling away at each other—"

St. Cyrien started laughing so hard he could barely talk. Baskerville stepped in to finish the story.

"They were afraid the blood was real," he said. "We didn't use actual sharps; our mothers would've killed us. And we aren't stupid. So we'd fixed little squirt bottles of red stuff—food coloring, wasn't it?—on the ends of the blades, so when you made contact it pushed some out. It didn't really look that much like blood, but it was red..."

"It was just a lark," Ransome said. "But we all got detention for it. I had to read some moldering old lecture about the evils of violence and the dangers of glorifying war...not that it had any effect..."

Ky glanced at her captains; they both had the expressions of men caught between horror and amusement, and determined not to show it.

"Not that we think war is good, you understand," St. Cyrien said. "I mean, everyone knows it's bad, and people die and so on. But it's been around for thousands of years, and it's not going away. Might as well be on the side of truth and justice and all that, and go at it with flair, don't you think?"

"Flair is nice. Skill and training are even better," Ky said.

"See?" Ransome said, throwing out his hands to the others. "A lady of intelligence and character as well as beauty." He beamed at her. "We're going to get along splendidly, I can tell. You will be the steadying influence—women always are—and I will be—"

"See here," Pettygrew said suddenly. "Are you serious about anything?"

Ransome's handsome face contracted in an obviously intentional scowl. "I am perfectly serious, sir—Captain Pettygrew—about opposing the scoundrels who now threaten civilization. I am prepared to give my life's blood, if necessary—though I quite agree with Captain Vatta that we would prefer the pirates to die instead of ourselves. No one can be more serious than that."

"How old are you?" asked Captain Argelos. "And how long do you propose to stick with this war? And what does your family think?"

Ransome waved one hand. "My family? They're all quite mad—"

"I can believe that," Pettygrew muttered under his breath.

"They're in the fourth year of their cycle, and you know how that is—or maybe you don't play evolving rings here?"

"Never heard of 'em," Argelos said.

"Oh. Well. They've given up cause and effect for the time being—they're being Irrationalists...that's intentional Irrationalism, not accidental."

"Doesn't this cause...er...problems?"

"Oh, but that's the point, you see. It's part of the doctrine of oppositional intellects. Just as with muscles, where one contracts while another relaxes and stretches, so in our culture we exercise one intellect at a time. In the Irrationalist phase, people are legally mad—Irrationalism is insane, you know—and they all have to wear labels to warn everyone else."

"This is all fascinating," Argelos said. "But what I wanted to know was, what does your family think of your spending the family fortune fitting out ships and going off to war?"

"It isn't the family fortune; it's mine," Ransome said. "Settled on me when I reached majority. And as for the other—they don't think. They are absent from thinking in this phase. I imagine if they transition to Reason while I'm gone, they'll be upset, but since no one can predict how long their Irrationalist phase will last, I don't worry about it."

"It runs in the family," Pettygrew muttered.

"Tell me," Ky said. "Is one of these phases Romanticism?"

"Of course. I've only been a Romantic for two years now, but I can't imagine being anything else."

Dead hovered on the tip of Ky's tongue, but she managed to not say it.

When they were alone again, Argelos shook his head. "I thought you were a loose cannon when we first met," he said to Ky. "I apologize. I've now seen the real thing, and you are a model of discretion and prudence."

Ky laughed. "He's not that bad."

Argelos narrowed his eyes. "You're not going to tell me you find him attractive?"

"Decorative, merely," Ky said. "But there's always been a place in war for the decorative enthusiasts."

"Cannon fodder," Argelos said. "That's their place. And your senior crew would tell you the same. Send them to charge the barricades like the fools they are."

"You're in a mood," Ky said. "Let's talk plans then. How can we use cannon fodder?"

"Why would we even want to? We aren't fighting that kind of war."

"Support is support. Why wouldn't we want them? They'd be useful as couriers, as scouts—"

"They stick out like supernovas," Pettygrew said.

"So? Who's going to suspect that people in gaudy ships with gaudy uniforms are actually connected to a serious military force? Let them stick out. Let them swagger about, show off, all the rest of it. It will divert attention from the rest of us."

"As long as you're not just falling for the shiny prince-figurine—" Argelos said.

"Oh, for—no, I am not 'falling for' him or any of them."

"He is handsome...and you're...uh...of an age—" said Pettygrew, with a glance at Argelos.

"If you say the word 'hormones'—" Ky said. She was furiously angry and moved to laugh at the same time. It was just too ridiculous.

"I didn't. I didn't. It's just—" Pettygrew spread his hands.

"I don't believe this. Just because you're both older, and I'm a young female, you think I'm going to lose my judgment—" She walked on a few paces, trying to regain her equanimity. "It would serve you right if I did fall head over heels for him. And it might make him easier to manage if he thought I had—"

"You wouldn't do that!" Pettygrew sounded shocked.

"Well, thank you for that, anyway. But let me tell you—" She rounded on both of them. "—I would rather do that than act like a silly schoolgirl faced with a storybook prince. Pretending romance is at least a calculated tactic; the real thing is...is stupid."

She whirled and stalked off; the memory of Hal's betrayal rose in her memory like bile. She had done that once: fallen in love with someone as handsome as Ransome, fallen in love with the whole idea of romance, of two hearts beating as one, two lives lived for each other. Not again. Not ever again...and she wasn't going to tell them why, either.

But she would work with Ransome because right now he had ships she needed, and money she needed, and his aims and hers ran side by side.

She came aboard Vanguard in a black mood, not helped by the concerned expressions Hugh and Martin wore when she got to the bridge.

"Don't say a thing," she said. "I can read it on your faces—you think I'm impressed by a pretty face and shiny braid."

"I—"

"No. I just got that from Argelos and Pettygrew. It's not true. I have no interest in Captain Ransome because of his face or his uniform. My interest is military and practical: he has ships we could use, and money we need. We will work with him because we need him, and he, of course, needs us. He can't fight a war with those little ships; he needs to ally with a force that has real muscle."

"We just worried—" Martin began.

Ky rolled her eyes, and he stopped. "I am not a silly schoolgirl. I am not going to go breathless over every handsome face that comes along...and if I were, I'd already have fallen for a lot of men on this ship. You're not the ugliest bunch in the universe."

That got their attention; they both looked startled and then slightly ashamed.

"Now," she said. "Let's think how to use Ransome's Rangers to our best advantage. I'm thinking couriers and scouts. They're so flamboyant, it's a kind of disguise; I'm sure others will see them as we did—rich playboys playing at war. If they connect us, they'll probably think what you did—that I've let my hormones influence my decisions. And though I think they are rich playboys, I also think they are more than that."

"All right," Hugh said. "But can you trust them to follow orders?"

"Probably not," Ky said. "But I don't think it matters. If they're loose cannons, they're still a distraction to the enemy."

"And they'll get killed..."

"Yes, they'll probably get killed and die convinced they're achieving undying glory. That's their problem. If they don't follow orders, I'm not going to worry about their survival rate." Ky cocked her head. "So can you quit worrying about the romantic streak I don't have, and waste no more time on it? We have more important things to worry about."

"I suppose we'd better," Hugh said. Martin still looked shocked, but Hugh grinned at her. "I'm glad to find that my concerns were unwarranted, Captain, and I'm sorry to have doubted your maturity or judgment for even a moment."

"Don't go overboard," Ky said, grinning back, "or I'll begin to wonder about your sincerity. Now. Captain Ransome made an offer, before the other captains came, to help us with supplies. I realize this puts us in his debt, but we need more munitions. Adelaide Group's not known as a big munitions dealer, but I've been poking around. They do have twelve hundred older SS-V-87s, which we could upgrade using components they stock in another department."

"Twelve hundred! And what will that cost?"

"Well below what Gretna would have charged. I think I can get Teddy to buy them—and yes, I may call him Teddy if that gets the job done, and you will just have to bear it."

"For twelve hundred missiles and the components to upgrade, I can bear a lot," Hugh said with a smile.


The new Sub-Rector for Defense, Grace Lane Vatta, climbed out of the official car that had appeared for her precisely at six forty-two, marching up the five steps to the entrance of the Annex and through the tall door that was opened for her. Turn right, MacRobert had said, and go to the left-most security booth.

As if she had been doing it for years, she placed her right palm on the plate and looked into the scanner. The tiny flash hardly registered. A voice said, "Both hands on the plate...," then trailed away; she turned and gave the sentry a frosty glance. He was already red-faced, staring at her arm-bud in its casing.

"Anything else?" Grace Lane Vatta asked.

"Sorry, ma'am," he said. His forehead glistened. "It's just we're supposed to..." He opened the little wicket and let her through. "Third elevator, ma'am. Fifth floor."

She nodded without saying anything and walked through. She knew which elevator, which floor, which door. The other two elevators, she saw as she neared them, had plain metal doors. Hers had the Rectory seal on an outer grille. She slid her keycard through the slot; the grille swung out, blocking anyone else's passage, and the doors opened. Inside, the elevator was carpeted, walls as well as the floor. The rear wall also displayed the Rectory seal.

Her shoes sank into the carpet—ridiculous, she thought, and the former occupant of her office deserved his demotion. Five floors up, the hall to her office was also carpeted. A uniformed guard—some militia unit, she didn't yet know which—stood by her door. He saluted as she approached and flung open her door with a flourish.

"Sub-Rector Vatta!"

Through the open door, she saw five people lined up waiting. "Good morning," she said, walking through, giving a slight nod to the guard at the door. The five before her, three women and two men, were staff inherited from the former Sub-Rector. From their expressions, the carefully blank faces shown to those in authority, they expected to be fired. Some of them, no doubt, would be. Some of them, no doubt, deserved to be. It was her responsibility to be sure that the second group and the first group were the same. All who survived the winnowing would be working for someone else; she didn't want anyone contaminated by the former Sub-Rector on her own staff. MacRobert's dossiers on them had not revealed useful clues.

"We'll meet in the conference room," she said now, turning to the left. The most junior, Esmaila Turnin, scrambled to get to the door before her and open it. Les Vaughn, the most senior, held the others back until she was through, then led them in as they arranged themselves around the polished tik-wood table. Grace took the end seat, settling into the blue leather. Too soft, and the chair sagged back as if expecting her to lounge in it as Selwin had done. Selwin wasn't lounging now; the bastard was awaiting execution, and there was no chair in death row cells.

Her assistants stood behind their chairs, waiting. Grace let them wait a moment, then nodded. "Be seated. We have work to do."

Vaughn had brought in a portfolio and started to open it. Grace held up her hand. "Just a moment. I have seen your dossiers, of course, but I would like to speak with each of you before we begin the day's work."

"Certainly," Vaughn said. He opened his mouth to say more; Grace stopped that with a look.

"Your former boss is on death row," Grace said. Their faces stiffened; that had not yet been released to the press. "You must realize that you, too, are being investigated thoroughly. Such a person—" She put an emphasis on person that denied everything but a genetic connection to humanity. "—such a person will not have worked alone. If you were assisting him in his treason, you will be exposed and tried, do not doubt it. If, on the other hand, you are innocent of any wrongdoing, you should have no concern for your employment."

"Surely you don't think—" That was Armand Politsier, at the far left end of the table. His face had an unhealthy sheen.

"I am not in charge of that investigation," Grace said. "What I think is of no importance to you; what you—any of you—did is all that matters. I believe the new chief of security is quite able to find out without my assistance." The new chief of security, now relieved, perhaps permanently, from his duties at Spaceforce Academy, was happy as a terrier down a rathole.

"Yes...ma' am...," Politsier said. Grace looked at him with distaste. Innocent or guilty—and she would wager a considerable sum on his guilt—he was not a man she would choose to work with.

"Today I will review the current items and my predecessor's minutes on them. I am lunching with the Rector and the President at one; I will require a five-minute warning before it's time to leave, if I become distracted." She would not become distracted, but she could feign distraction and see what happened.

"Yes, ma'am," Vaughn said. "In here, or—"

"In my office," Grace said. Rising from the deeply cushioned chair was awkward, but she made it up without lurching to one side, and the others scrambled out of their seats.

Her private office had windows on two sides, looking out on the perfectly groomed lawns and flowering trees of Government Place. Her desk placed her badly, her back to a window, but this was not a time to show fear of assassination.

Behind her desk was another lushly padded leather chair, this one even more tippy than the one in the conference room. Had Selwin spent all his time reclined and snoozing, perhaps with his feet on this desk with its leather-padded edge? The desk was still arranged as he had left it, functions laid out for the use of both hands. She would have to reprogram it...but first, she found the icon for the chair. Indeed, it was set to FULL RELAX; she tapped the panel until it read FULL UPRIGHT and leaned back cautiously. It held still.

By the time she had the desktop reset, collapsing functions so all could be accessed by her right hand, Vaughn was tapping at her door. He delivered a stack of hardcopy. "The most current items are on top, Sub-Rector," he said. "I wasn't sure how far back—"

"I'm not, either," Grace said. "Selwin appears to have been taking bribes from someone at least two years ago—so I've been informed." Not least by Selwin himself, sweating and shaking in the combined grip of the interrogation drugs and his own fear. But her office staff did not need to know how she knew. "I don't have time to review all that at the moment; the Rector tells me we have other, more immediate crises. But I must know what Selwin was doing in the past half year."

"These cover only the past four weeks," Vaughn said.

"I'll get started, then," Grace said. "Hold any calls; I'll check with you before lunch." She glanced at the top memo.

"Should I bring water or...or anything?" Vaughn asked.

"No, I'm fine," Grace said, not lifting her gaze from the papers. "I'll call if I need anything."

She could imagine what he thought as he quietly shut the door behind him: Silly old woman, appointed here because the new President knew he had to placate the Vatta family. Probably didn't have a clue. Her reputation was decades behind her, unless he'd accessed certain files. She trusted MacRobert to find out if he had done that, in which case...well, to work.

By midday, she had cleared the first stack of paperwork and asked for the next. Selwin might have been up to mischief earlier, but the most recent actions seemed to be more about setting up lunch, dinner, and weekend dates with various friends in the department or in other branches of government. Any wrongdoing would have taken place at those meetings—and the surveillance of those meetings was someone else's to analyze.

At quarter to one, she came out into the reception area. Vaughn looked up from his desk and stood immediately. A door was open to another room beyond, where Grace could see two women at desks. The third, she supposed, was taking an early lunch or off on an errand somewhere.

"Sub-Rector...I didn't know whether to interrupt you, but Security took Armand...uh, Armand Politsier...away a few minutes ago. To help with their inquiries, they said."

She would have to install her own equipment, somehow; she would have liked to watch that. "That's...most unfortunate for him," she said. "One hopes he has not done anything rash."

Vaughn looked worried, as well he might, but nothing in his face or bearing suggested he felt guilty. Hard to imagine the senior assistant not being aware of Selwin's corruption, but perhaps he felt no guilt because he approved. "I don't know of anything, Sub-Rector," he said. "Would you like me to call down and see if your car is waiting?"

It was only a ten- or fifteen-minute walk, but protocol—and MacRobert—insisted that she be transported by official car. Grace bared her teeth in a formal smile. "Thank you," she said. "That will be...appropriate. I am not sure how long I will be with the Rector and the President, and I have a medical appointment to follow; I will continue working on the same files when I return."

"Yes, Sub-Rector," Vaughn said.

Grace switched her mind from office problems to the possibility of assassination on the way through the building, evaluating each component of her journey in those terms and deciding how to respond. When a junior clerk—a mere child, she seemed, all pink cheeks and bright eyes and a fluff of dark hair—flinched away from her in the lower corridor, Grace almost laughed.

Much more fun to be perceived as dangerous than as a dotty old woman. More dangerous, too, but that was part of the fun.

Nonetheless, as she climbed the pinkish steps of the presidential palace, she schooled herself back into the identity that had served her so well the past few decades. Elderly, surely infirm with that missing arm, perhaps a little set in her ways...she was almost giggling by the time she had passed through the various security checkpoints between the entrance and the small dining room where the new President and the Rector of Defense waited for her.

At one glance, she knew they had already disagreed about something. The Rector gave her a look thick with suspicion; the President came forward to greet her.

"Grace—I'm so glad you accepted the appointment. I believe you're just what we need in this difficult time."

"I'm honored," she said. Was her appointment the problem? She had been told the Rector was neutral about it, but the tension in the room didn't feel neutral.

"Let's eat first," the President suggested, waving Grace forward. Erran Kostanyan, she reminded herself. Ten years her junior, he had bowed politely over her hand at any number of official functions, including the dedication of the new Vatta headquarters. Colorless and boring, some said. A good administrator, others said. What mattered now was the perception that Kostanyan had stood aside from political wrangling for decades. Grace wondered. People did not rise to the top of the cream pitcher without intent.

Lunch had been laid out on a buffet along one side: sliced meats, shellfish on a bed of ice, dark and light breads, fruit. Two attendants stood by to pour tea or coffee or water; Grace noticed that no alcoholic beverage was on the buffet, or offered. That was a difference from the former Administration.

For the duration of the meal, custom prevented discussing business. The Rector asked the President how his daughter was liking her university courses, and the conversation stayed on families—good news only—until the attendants removed the plates, laid out desserts on the buffet, and withdrew.

"Donald and I have had several chats since I took office," the President said to Grace. "So now I'd like your opinion. What do you see as our priorities in defense?"

MacRobert had told her this President came to the point quickly; Grace had been thinking about this for days.

"We must have ansible service," she said. "It's not just the isolation from the rest of human space, though that's hurting us economically as well as militarily. It's also a matter of communications within Spaceforce in our own system."

"We need an ISC technical crew to work on the ansibles," the President said. "Without their permission, and their skills—"

"Skills are replicable," Grace said. "I'm sure we have technical brains in government somewhere who could get an ansible up and running."

"But ISC—no one else is allowed to touch their precious ansibles."

"We can't ask their permission, but by the same token they can't tell us no," Grace said. "I don't know why they haven't sent a repair crew, but the fact is, our security and our economy depend on communications. We can't be held hostage like this. What if another attack comes? Without ansible service, we're limited to lightspeed communications in our system, and our space fleets are hours out of touch with the planet."

"But you know what they do to systems that touch their ansibles or their personnel," the Rector said. "We can't risk an ISC invasion—"

"I don't see that as likely," Grace said. "They must be suffering some kind of widespread emergency, or they'd have repaired our ansible before now. After all, one of their ships left here to find out what had happened very shortly after our ansible failed. If it were only a local problem, they could have contacted their headquarters by ansible as soon as they reached the next system...and they've had time to go all the way to Nexus II and come back. That argues for some widespread trouble—perhaps much like ours. We must have communication; the only way to get it is to find out what's wrong with the ansible and repair it."

"We could send out our own scouts," the President said.

"We could, if we wanted to weaken local defenses," the Rector said. "If I weren't concerned about ISC's response, I'd back the Sub-Rector's suggestion—"

"We've been without ansible service for almost a year," Grace said. "We have a legitimate complaint against ISC, for that matter."

"Well, if you're willing to take responsibility—" the Rector began.

"She can't, Donald," the President said. "Responsibility goes up; authority goes down. If I let her do it, it's on my head."

Grace looked at him, surprised. He had a reputation for honesty, but her long experience in undercover work gave her little reason to trust anyone in power. He looked back, lips pressed tight. Then he shrugged.

"You're right, Grace," he said. "The economy's foundering without good communications for our outsystem trade—and even our insystem trade. We have financial assets out of system that we can't use because we have no financial ansible. Our defense is compromised when we can't get immediate response from our outlier platforms and ships. I didn't expect..." He shook his head, clearly changing direction. "I'll authorize an attempt to repair the ansibles, both financial and general communications, with the proviso that we advise ISC as soon as they're online, direct to their headquarters, what we did and why. Acceptable?"

"Acceptable," Grace said.

"I'll draft the order this afternoon; you have my verbal consent to start the operation."

The Rector looked sour but said nothing. "Donald," the President said. "You know we need your expertise, but things have changed. If you can't work with us, I'll accept your resignation."

"I—" The Rector's round face had reddened; Grace looked at him and it paled again. So. Would the President recognize what that meant? Would it matter to him? "I may find," the Rector said, "that the strains of the past few weeks have told on my heart. In that case—"

"In that case I would not presume to place more burdens on you," the President said. "Perhaps you should check with your physicians and let me know—"

"Yes. I'll do that." And with a vicious glance at Grace, the Rector pushed away from the table and left the room.

"Dear me," Grace said, and bent to sip her tea.

"That's going to cause trouble," the President said. "I think perhaps you should return to the Annex."

"By all means," Grace said. She wanted time alone to analyze what had just happened...and she would have time, if she went straight to the Annex now, to dig into different files and see if she could determine why the Rector had chosen to leave. Had he intended this from the beginning?

She had an appointment that afternoon with her rehab team, an appointment she had rescheduled three times already. Her arm-bud's sustaining capsule needed its fluids changed, her doctors insisted. She left the Annex shortly after three, arriving at the clinic by three thirty, and found her doctor pacing the floor.

"I was afraid you'd reschedule again," he said. "And that would not have been good for your arm."

"It doesn't hurt," Grace said.

"It won't hurt until it's too late," he said. He nodded to one of the technicians, who inserted a fine needle through the cap and drew off a sample of fluid. In the analyzer, the fluid produced a series of colored blips, meaningless to Grace.

"Just as I thought," the doctor said. "Electrolytes are borderline. We'll start with a flush. Lie down here."

The flush itself was not unpleasant. Fluid ran out as other fluid ran in; it felt a little cool. The arm-bud looked as if it had grown a couple of centimeters; the doctor confirmed this.

"It's growing normally, but you must make every scheduled visit," he said. "As growth accelerates, there's less margin for error in the chemical milieu. If you want to have a functional arm—"

"Of course I do."

"Then you must cooperate, however busy your schedule. Remember, this is not normal embryonic and fetal development; not only is it a graft onto an adult body, it's being pushed to develop faster, in a less natural environment."

That would serve as a metaphor for her nieces, Grace thought as she was driven back to the Annex. Grafted onto adult responsibilities and pushed to develop faster in a less natural environment. She hoped they were doing as well as her arm-bud.

When she finally got home that night, she found MacRobert waiting for her. He had said he might drop by, but wasn't sure; she was slightly alarmed at how glad she was to see him.

"I thought you might be tired," he said. "How does soup and hot bread sound?"

"Excellent." Grace slipped out of her shoes. "I'm going to go get comfortable."

"It'll be ready when you are," MacRobert promised.

Grace came back to find steaming bowls of soup on the table, and hot bread wrapped in a towel. Custom or no custom, she could not resist telling him about her day, including the meeting with the Rector and President.

"I don't know how to do this," Grace said at the end. She bit off the end of a warm roll.

"Of course you do," MacRobert said. "You've been giving orders for ages."

"Not that," Grace said. "It's finding out who knows what without doing it my way, the back-door way. I need to find reliable communications technicians who might be able to repair the ansibles, and I don't even know whom to ask."

"You asked me," MacRobert said, smiling. "That's a good start."

"That's another thing," Grace said. "This business of coming to you first. I haven't been dependent on a single source of information for...years. It's not that I don't trust you. It's just habit."

"And a very good habit," MacRobert said, nodding. "Just as my telling you you're an extraordinary woman is not flattery. We both know it's true. And we both know that this particular setup is stressful for you...just not as stressful as being shut out. You're not comfortable working out of cover—and neither am I, for that matter. I hadn't realized quite how much I depended on being the invisible—in my own way—senior NCO at the Academy, pulling strings from behind the scenes. You were behind two layers—well, three, if I count the visual one of acting the batty old lady, which you do so well. How many people in Vatta knew?"

"Two. They're both dead." Grace pushed away the rage she still felt at the former President and his minions, and wished she still believed in an afterlife where an angry deity would torment them for eternity.

"Fortunately, you're not," MacRobert said. "And we're both having to cope with coming out into the open where people know who we are, what our jobs are. But not everything."

"Not everything?" Grace said. "When there are people all around, all the time, watching everything I do and no doubt logging it?"

"Not everything." He grinned at her. "An old spook like me isn't going to open up all the files, and neither are you. All we have to do is act the part."

Grace felt her muscles loosening. "So you don't expect—"

"—you to be totally dependent on me? No, of course not. In this case, though, I do have what you need—I know where the best techs are in Spaceforce, and they're almost certainly the best for this particular job. You won't know that one of Spaceforce's clandestine activities was trying to devise an ansible small enough to be carried aboard ship. We suspected that ISC had them—it explained their quick response to threats against the system—and we wanted them. We had a breakthrough shortly before your niece's little difficulty, and I actually sent her some components, just to see what she'd do. She's quite good at tech, when she puts her mind to it."

"Ansibles aboard ships?" Grace wasn't that interested in Ky's former technical ability, but the implications of shipborne ansibles were obvious. "Do you think the ships that attacked us—that disrupted ansible service—had those?"

"Might have, but they definitely weren't ISC. It's possible that someone else was on the same track. And you're right, we have to get ours back up."

"And on our ships," Grace said. "If your research went that far." The concept unfolded in her mind, opening out more and more, revealing infinite possibilities. "And trade—ships could always stay in touch with headquarters, even if they were in systems without ansibles. Do they work in FTL flight?"

"Not that we know of," MacRobert said. "Nothing works in FTL flight; theory says the ship's in a sort of enclosed kernel. Nothing gets in; nothing gets out."

"Too bad," Grace said. "That could be really handy. But how long do you think it'll take to get the system ansibles up? Assuming we find someone who can do it?"

"Days to weeks. We have to get someone there, physically, and then it depends on what's wrong."

"All right," Grace said. "Now for the big question."

"Yes?"

"If the Rector resigns, and the President offers it to me, should I take it?"

"You? In charge of the entire Defense Department? The batty old lady, the auntie who makes fruitcakes stuffed with diamonds?"

Grace felt herself flushing; she wanted to kick him, but he was too far away. He grinned at her.

"Our enemies should be very, very afraid," he said.

"You didn't really answer me," Grace said.

"Grace, I'd have to be crazy to tell you what to do. You'll make whatever decision seems right to you at the time. And it will be."

Eleven days later, MacRobert stopped by her office with the news.

"They're back up," MacRobert said. "It was software after all. The apparent physical damage was all surface stuff, for show."

"ISC's own people sabotaged it?" Stella had gone off with an ISC courier; at the time, she'd thought that was the safest way to get Stella offplanet, but now...

"I don't think so. I think they'd have done a better job of making it look like the main damage. This was mostly to impress flybys, I think, and our people also think it was done from space. Impossible to date it, at this point, but I'd hazard a guess it was the same mission that took out your people on Corleigh. The software end was much more sophisticated, and I'd bet that it did come from somewhere within ISC, a long time before failure. At any rate, our people have both ansibles back up, but not yet patched into the local networks or transmitting readiness. Yes, they managed to block the automatic alert function. We wanted to test the waters, as it were. See what's happening before we broadcast anything."

"You know the President wanted immediate notification of ISC," Grace said.

"He would," MacRobert said. "But this is safer; ISC isn't our enemy." He smiled at her, the smile covering all that had happened in the intervening days. The former Rector, citing reasons of health, had resigned. Grace, with only three days' experience as Sub-Rector, had been named Acting Rector.

"Go on," Grace said. He knew what she most wanted to know, and she was determined not to ask.

"You'll be interested to know that Vatta Transport lists a new headquarters, in the Moscoe Confederation—"

"The idiot tree people!" Grace said. "I was there once—"

"S. Vatta, CEO, the listing says. They're running four ships: Katrine Lamont, Gary Tobai, Marcus Selene, and Mary Alice."

"So Ky decided to work for Stella," Grace said. "That surprises me."

"She isn't listed as captain of any of those ships," MacRobert said, amusement shading his voice. "However, the newsfeeds mention a Ky Vatta who is apparently recruiting for an interstellar military force, who's on a ship called Vanguard that used to belong to—you won't believe this—one Osman Vatta. One of our other privateers is with her—"

"Ky took Osman?" Grace felt her heart stutter and then go on. "Osman Vatta?"

"It says she's on a ship that used to be his. Who is Osman Vatta?"

"The worst piece of slime my family ever had to deal with," Grace said. She could hear the loathing in her voice. "If she's got his ship, she had to kill him to get it." She didn't want to imagine the circumstances that had brought Ky and Osman together, but someday she would have to hear how Ky had bested him. Osman! After all these years, that bastard was finally dead. Surely he was finally dead.

"The news said she claimed the ship was hers by right, that it had been stolen—is that true?"

"Oh, yes," Grace said, remembering those days all too clearly. "The family threw him out, disinherited him. He snatched a ship, one of the new ones, just commissioned. Killed three people getting away, and that's not a tithe of what that man did in his time. And his children—" She stopped just in time. Even MacRobert didn't need to know about Osman's bastard children and what became of them. Of the ones they could find. She hoped that secret would never come out.

"There are rumors, out of the Moscoe Confederation. Apparently one of your captains challenged Ky's identity on the grounds she was really Osman's daughter." MacRobert looked at Grace.

"Ky? Good gracious no. I was there when she was born. She took after her father—after Gerry as he was in his youth—much more than her mother."

"Oh, well, newsfeeds always get things half wrong," MacRobert murmured. "You wouldn't have known of a Captain Furman, would you?"

"Furman? Stick-in-the-mud, dull as lukewarm dishwater. He made a play for...who was it, someone's daughter in the family, and she wasn't about to marry him, especially after he threw up on a carnival ride. When Ky went off on her apprentice voyage, he was her captain; they did not get along. No one really expected they would. Was he the one who challenged her identity? She hadn't changed that much, to my eyes."

"Apparently. He was executed by the Moscoe authorities on grounds of 'intractible rudeness in a court of law.'"

"I wonder what got into him," Grace said. "He was always polite, unctuously so, the times I met him. Made my skin crawl." She shrugged. "Well. I do need to get in touch with Stella, at least, and find out what she's up to."

"As soon as we allow transmissions, whoever's out there will know the ansible's up, and ISC will know someone else worked on it," MacRobert said. "On my end, we'd like to snoop a little longer, and Spaceforce would like time to rearrange the system defense."

"How long is 'a little longer'?" Grace asked. "Not just for me, but all the others who depend on interstellar trade."

"Three days," MacRobert said.

"I suppose I can wait that long," Grace said. "Though knowing my nieces, they can probably manage to get into trouble between now and then."

"I suspect Ky is making trouble for someone else," MacRobert said.

Power flowing through the circuitry of the main ansible created, as power does, a magnetic field...and though the ansible's automatic signal of availability did not come on, that magnetic field attracted a small, unimportant magnet on the ansible platform's outer surface, making another connection, this one visual, completing a pattern that before had seemed to have a gap, a missing paint chip. Far away, the detector planted by ISC on a small chunk of "space debris" matched pattern to pattern every six hours. It had not been noticed by those who did the physical damage, and those who created the software problem knew of its existence, but not its location: such detectors were installed in systems where the platforms had no resident crews.

On its next cycle, it noted the completion of the pattern, stored that information, and attempted to communicate with the ansible. When that proved unsuccessful, it launched a tiny messenger drone preprogrammed to reach ISC's regional headquarters and inform ISC that an ansible out of service was now receiving power but not operating normally.

Spaceforce detected the drone on routine review of the day's surveillance; it had been too small to trigger an alarm at launch, and by the time it was discovered, it had long since gone into FTL flight.

Grace initiated the ansible call to Stella as soon as she'd figured out the temporal differential between Slotter Key and Stella's reported location on Cascadia. If the idiot girl had moved, it would serve her right to be wakened in the middle of the—

"Vatta Transport," said a pleasant female voice, not Stella's. "How may we help you?"

"Grace Vatta for Stella Vatta," Grace said. "This is an ansible call."

"Just a moment," said the same voice.

Then Stella spoke. "I've got it, Gillian, thank you. Aunt Grace? How lovely to hear from you. I didn't realize the Slotter Key ansible was back up."

"Just now, dear," Grace said. "Of course I had to call you first and tell you the good news."

"Yes?"

"We laid the cornerstone of the new building. There've been some changes in government."

"I should hope so," Stella said. "You should know—I've opened an office here. Well, you heard—"

"Yes. An excellent idea, especially since you had communications, I gather."

"Ky said I should. Aunt Grace, there's something—I don't think you know. About me."

Grace squeezed her eyes shut a moment. Had Stella found out? And how? With Osman safely dead, according to report, there should have been no way...

"There's almost nothing about you I don't know," she said. "If you're speaking of the past, that is. Everything in our...um...heritage was part of my brief."

A silence that seemed to stretch as long as the light-years. "You knew," Stella said. Anger edged her voice.

"Not that I thought it mattered," Grace said. "A few shared shreds of genetic material—"

"So I got to find out in open court," Stella said. Her voice had gone cold. "In front of everyone."

Grace had not imagined that; she wanted to know how, but this was a time to listen. "That must have been a shock," she said.

Stella gave a sound that might have started as a laugh. "A shock, yes. You could call it that. All my life I knew who I was, Stella-second-daughter-of-Helen-and-Stavros-Vatta. Blonde because Mother's relatives were blonde. Now I'm Osman Vatta's bastard."

"No," Grace said. "You're Stella Vatta. The Stella Vatta whom everyone has always known...Helen thinks of you as her daughter—"

"Her adopted daughter."

"Her daughter. And so did Stavros. Everything you know about your past is real except for that one thing—where the genes came from."

"And you think that doesn't matter?"

"Not as much as most people think, though your beauty probably came from your biological mother...I must admit, however, that the young Osman was a handsome beast. I mean both those words literally."

"I can't believe—dammit, Aunt Grace—"

"Stella, I'm sorry. It was a horrible way to find out. I did mention to your parents years ago that they might consider telling you about the adoption. But they were concerned to give you a solid background, as much security as they could."

"Because they were afraid Osman's traits would come out in me. And they did."

"Nonsense." Grace put all the force she could into that. "Your fling with the gardener and all the rest of it had nothing to do with Osman. Do you know how many young people, boys and girls both, living in privilege, do something that stupid? And they aren't all Osman's bastards. Osman was cruel; you were just young and stupid."

"Well, that's a comfort." Stella's voice was shaky, but underneath the shakiness Grace heard relief.

"It should be. Stella, you aren't cruel. He is. Was. And I really want to know how that happened."

"No, you don't," Stella said. "It was horrible."

"I'd expect it to be. Osman wouldn't go peacefully. Ky did it?"

"Yes. It's a long story—and I'd better start at the beginning." Stella launched into it, starting with her discovery of Toby Vatta in protective custody, traveling to Lastway where she'd found Ky, the military escort, Ky's insistence on answering an apparent distress call from a Vatta ship.

"She's an idiot," Grace said. "Didn't she realize it could be a trap?"

"Yes—and the Mackensee escort warned her as well. But she had her mind made up." Stella continued with the threats, Ky's response, what had happened, in all the detail she could muster.

Grace found herself wanting to grab both younger women and bash their heads together. Ky should've known better; Stella should have...but then, in the end, she had taken Osman's ship and he was dead, and that was the right outcome even if the means had been...incredibly risky.

"She was covered with blood," Stella said then. "It smelled—I don't want to remember that smell. Or the look in her eyes."

"The look?"

"Ever seen a hawk mantling over its prey, Aunt Grace? Ky was trying to hide it, but she was...excited. Happy. She'd enjoyed killing Osman."

Grace was not surprised, but how to explain this to Stella? "It shocked you," she said.

"I know, it's terrible," Stella said. "I can't bring myself to talk to her about it...it's why I thought she might be Osman's by-blow when Furman said she was."

"And then you found out—how, by the way?"

"There was...tissue...from Osman, on the ship. Genetic analysis said I was very closely related to him, and that he could not have been her father...and that Ky and I could not be first cousins."

"Where is Ky now? Is she still on his ship?"

"Yes, but she's re-registered it as the Vanguard. I talked to her only yesterday; she's somewhere way across space, a system called Adelaide."

"Have you located other Vatta ships? And what happened with Furman?"

"He's dead."

"I know that, but why? What did he do?"

"Among other things, he lied to Vatta for years, Aunt Grace. He was running some kind of scam—we still haven't got it all worked out—and Ky and I both suspect he was somehow connected to Osman."

"Furman? He was lukewarm dishwater when I knew him. The only spark of emotional intensity he ever had—and I'm not sure it was real—was falling in love with that girl. I can't imagine Osman bothering with him any more than she did."

"We think it was her turning him down that drove him to it. But there's evidence of a long-standing plan to sabotage the family, all the while acting as one of our senior captains. He had secret accounts under false names all over the place; he was transporting unlisted cargo. I'll forward what we know to you. I've been too busy to follow up on most of it."

Grace felt stupid. She'd never liked Furman, but she'd never suspected him of anything that bad. He was so efficient, she'd always been told. Always at the top of the list for on-time deliveries, with very low customer complaints. But now he was dead; whatever she'd missed was over and done with.

"So what do you want me to do now, Aunt Grace?" Stella asked. "I've organized an office here, and for the purposes of doing business we've called this Vatta's headquarters—nobody could contact Slotter Key—"

"You did the right thing, Stella," Grace said. "And I suppose you're acting CEO?"

"Well...yes. Ky and I traded back and forth for a while, but she said I'd be better at it, and she wanted to take direct action against those responsible."

"Eventually, you'll need to come back here—when the new building's finished—but for now I think you're quite right to establish a headquarters where we still have ships. You've shown more initiative than the family remaining here..." Should she tell Stella now, or wait for another call, a less emotional call?

"Who's going to be the new real CEO?" Stella asked.

"You're doing the job; as far as my shares are concerned, you are." There: now how would she take it?

"Me?" Stella's voice squeaked, then steadied. "You can't be serious. I'm too young; I don't have the experience—"

"You're getting the experience. How many ships are reporting to you now?"

"Uh...four. No, five. Galloway came in yesterday."

"And you've reestablished contact with insurers?"

"Yes. The rates have gone up, but I've insisted ours be no higher than others. However, two big companies have ceased operations."

"That's understandable. The ships are carrying cargo?"

"Yes. Overall, trade is down, but we're finding routes that work."

"How many employees do you have?"

"Besides security, just two in the office right now—the budget's still really tight."

Grace grinned to herself. Stella, for all her glamour, had always been a tightwad.

"Part of that's the need to help Ky...I never realized how much even one missile cost. And she has more crew on one ship than three tradeships—"

Then again, Stella had definitely learned about the right priorities, if she was funding Ky's war. She was going to be a good CEO. "You remember that meeting right afterward? Just before Gerry died? No one was making sense—"

"You were. And we were all in shock—"

"And too many of them still are. I hadn't realized the extent to which the Vattas with initiative and brains went off in ships, while the ones who stayed here—not the ones who went and came back, but the others—were timid and fog-headed."

"Not Mother!" Stella said, sounding shocked.

"Helen's completely engaged in taking care of Jo's children; she's told me she wants nothing to do with the business. No, that's not being timid or fog-headed, but it's also no help. What I'm getting at is that nobody here has taken over—"

"But you," Stella said. "You have. And you're older. You should be CEO, at least for the transition."

"I have other work now," Grace said. "And I don't mean my work for Vatta. I'm in the government." She almost hoped someone would intercept that message. Let the bad guys ponder the fact that a Vatta was not only alive and thriving, but had power. "You're doing a good job, Stella. I don't know anyone who could have done as well, let alone better. Count on me to back your decisions, if anyone has the gall to criticize."