DAYS 30–36

Exit clearance went as smoothly as Stella has predicted, and then they were in a small, plain departure lounge. Shortly, a dark-skinned, gray-haired woman whose family resemblance to Ky was clear came through the docking tube.

“Ready to board?” she asked. “I’m the captain and first pilot. Ginny Vatta. Second pilot’s Daran Vatta.”

“Yes, thank you,” Rafe said. “I’m Ser Bancroft; this is my assistant, Ser Teague.”

“Come on aboard, then. We’re in the queue, and we might get bumped up one if that oversized hulk of a passenger liner just ahead of us doesn’t get her stragglers on board by the deadline. I hear some of them went off on a bender here and are having to pay fines.”

She led the way through the docking tube, ducked through the hatch into the little ship saying, “Watch your heads,” and a few meters up the narrow passage turned to look at them, pushing open a door. “Here’s your cabin—you’ll be hot-bunking unless one of you sleeps on the floor. Toilet and basin straight across, one for the whole ship. Sponge baths only—we’re limited in water, but it’s not going to be that many days and the air filters are good. There’s one spare seat across from our third crewmember, just forward of the galley; the galley seats two at a time. Crew have priority. There are games on the console, if you like games. For departure, one of you sit with the engineer, one of you in the rack. You’ll likely feel some acceleration in spite of the AG.”

Rafe glanced at Teague. “You take the rack; I’ll sit up.” He followed the captain forward, past the tiny galley with its oven, sink, hotplate, and a table now latched up against the bulkhead. The engineer sat facing aft, watching a bank of displays covered with wiggly lines and symbols Rafe didn’t know. The seat he was given faced forward. Beyond was the pilots’ space, two well-padded couch-seats, arms studded with controls and the entire space in front of them a mass of displays except for a forward screen or window—he couldn’t tell which, from his seat. He fastened the safety harness as Ginny Vatta watched, then she stepped through the opening into the cockpit.

She did not close the hatch between the two compartments, but spoke to the second pilot in a rush of slang that Rafe couldn’t understand. He could see her, or part of her, and leaned out a little in the aisle to see more. Now she had a headset on and talked softly into it. He could make little sense of what he saw on the screen or through the window, until something pale slid by, speeding up as it went, and he realized that they were moving, that the large pale thing was part of the station or another ship docked there. He felt only the same faint vibration he had felt from the moment he stepped on board.

Now the forward screen showed a few lights at a distance he could not estimate, but they moved across the screen slowly. The instruments he could see flickered, displays changing; he thought back to the bridge of Ky’s first ship, the old freighter he’d been on for that hair-raising trip from Lastway to … where had it been? But this was far more complex, and so much smaller.

Something clunked under the deck; his feet felt it.

“Engaging,” the engineer said. Rafe glanced at him. The man was staring at his displays; Rafe tried to see which one he was looking at, but couldn’t. “Ready, Captain.”

“Hold two. Traffic.” The captain’s voice. Another stretch of silence, in which Rafe could hear his own heartbeat. And then: “Engage and go seventy percent.”

“Seventy percent.”

The push came as if someone had shoved the seat into his back. It was like taking off in an airplane, nothing he’d felt before in space. And it went on. And on.

“Eighty,” said the captain.

“Eighty.”

More pressure … was there any artificial gravity compensation? Rafe couldn’t tell. He wasn’t about to black out, he told himself, but he was definitely uncomfortable, and the longer it lasted, the more uncomfortable he felt.

The courier was as quiet inside as any other ship, just the little whish of air from the vents and that one clunk. Even as he thought he would have to say something about the pressure, it disappeared—all the gravity disappeared for a moment, then his hand flopped down onto his lap as the artificial gravity took over.

“Transition successful,” the engineer said. He turned to look at Rafe. “Sorry about the blank moment. We need to get that lad Toby back on this ship to figure out why. The other courier the new system’s on doesn’t do that.”

“We can’t be in FTL already, can we? It took two days, leaving Nexus.”

“That was a standard passenger ship. We do things differently, and yes, we’re in FTL flight. Will be until we’re in Slotter Key space.”

“Right,” Rafe said. He looked back into the cockpit; gray shields covered the window—if it was a window. But Slotter Key all in one jump? Just what had Toby been inventing this time? The captain turned to look at him.

“Orders were to get you to Slotter Key quickest. We’ll come into the Slotter Key jump point in six days, barring a technical problem. If you know how to make tea, make a couple of mugs for the crew.”

“Yes, Sera—Captain—” Rafe said. He could feel her gaze on his back as he took the few steps to the galley. Following the directions on the dispenser was easy; it had been preprogrammed for “Pilot, Second Pilot, Engineer.” Six mugs with the Vatta logo were in the rack above. He filled two for Pilot and Second Pilot and brought them forward.

The captain took hers, sniffed, nodded. “You figured it out.”

“We do have such things on Nexus,” he said.

“I’m sure you do,” she said, with a little emphasis on you. He smiled and handed the second mug to the other pilot, who nodded.

“What about you?” he asked the engineer.

“Not right now,” the man said. “I’ve checks to run. Want to watch?”

“Yes,” Rafe said. Better than sitting still with nothing to do. He followed the engineer back down the passage. Latches he had not noticed opened compartments filled with color-coded tubes or what looked like something from a chemistry lab. Over the course of the next few hours, Rafe realized that the crew did not want him alone in any space but the cramped cabin or the toilet. He could hear Teague snoring away through the door into their cabin, so he followed the engineer around, hampered by his disguise. All the way aft, past the hatch where he’d entered, the engineer lifted a ring in the deck and opened a steep ladder to a lower deck with waist-high tanks and pumps throbbing softly.

“Must I?” Rafe asked. “If you need my help, of course I’m willing, but otherwise—it looks cramped and sounds noisy and I already have a headache.”

“Just for a few minutes,” the man said. “I need to check on three gauges and a circuit; it won’t take long. And the captain doesn’t want you out from under someone’s eye.”

As he’d suspected. Allowing himself a dramatic sigh, Rafe took off his suit jacket, folded it and set it on the deck, and followed the engineer. He recognized some things from Gary Tobai. Pipes, cables, gauges mounted on the bulkheads, which curved here even more obviously than above.

The engineer left him standing by the foot of the ladder and moved first aft, where a housing covered something he didn’t recognize at all—surely not the drives? But where else could they be? The man took a reading from some gauge, then came back past Rafe to look at gauges near the various tanks. He looked at Rafe and smiled. “All nominal,” he said. “The data shows up on the screens in my office up there, but one never knows if someone—something—has foxed the scans. We believe in superfluous work as a preventive of problems.”

“Good thinking,” Rafe said. “You’ve been on a ship before—not just as a passenger,” the man said.

“Yes,” Rafe said. “How did you know?”

“People always ask what things are. You didn’t.”

“I could just be counting the seconds until I can get back upstairs where it’s quieter, given my headache.”

“No. You looked, you recognized, and you stayed out of my way. Care to explain?”

“Not really,” Rafe said. “If Sera Vatta didn’t tell you, then she had a reason. It’s not my place to share information she may not want you to know.”

“You’re saying she knows.”

“Yes,” Rafe said.

“Interesting. We’ll go back up now. I suppose you won’t be offended if I mention that the way your”—he touched his own abdomen—“moved when you came down the ladder, I know it’s not real.”

“Sera Vatta knows that, too,” Rafe said. “But she agreed that my use of a disguised outline was necessary both before I left Cascadia and on arrival at Slotter Key.”

“She didn’t tell us she trusted you.”

“She would have had to tell you why.”

“There’s something about you …”

“Yes. And if you ask my associate, and he is in the mood to cooperate, he will tell you that indeed, there is something about me.”

“Vatta’s had enough trouble,” the man said. “Part of my job is seeing we don’t have more.”

“Good,” Rafe said. “But I’m still not going to tell you all of my—or Sera Vatta’s—secrets. She advised me to put a plug in it until I got to her aunt Grace.” He pulled his shirttails out and began unfastening his shirt. “I will, however, take off this very uncomfortable appliance, since you’ve seen through it.” With the shirt off, the paunch section came loose easily; Rafe pulled the two back sections free, then skinned out of the harness that had held them in place. He put the shirt back on, oversized as it now was, once more hiding the blades in their sheaths. Then he pulled the cheek shapers from his mouth and stuffed them in his trouser pocket.

The man’s eyes widened as the transformation completed. “You’re—”

“Ser Hilarion Bancroft. Says so on my ID. So says my DNA, at the moment.”

“But really—”

“Reality: you don’t want me to cause you or the ship or Vatta trouble. Reality: I don’t want to cause you or the ship or any part of Vatta trouble. I hope to do Vatta a very good service, in fact, but for that I need to be on Slotter Key talking to a different Sera Vatta, whom I’ve yet to meet, but who knows about me in several personas.”

“You don’t want me to tell the captain?”

“I don’t want you to tell anyone on this ship who is a blabber, and I’m hoping that you’re not. I presume the captain had her suspicions or she wouldn’t have had you keep me in sight. And I rather doubt, after all that’s happened in the past few years, that any Vatta captain is a blabber, but I had to mention that. Would you rather I told the captain? Even though Stella told me not to?”

Silence. The engineer looked at him, and Rafe knew he’d arranged his own face into a mildly interested expression.

“Ginny’s solid,” the engineer said finally. “I’m her youngest brother, Pero. I take after my mother’s side; she’s a Pierce. Daran’s her other brother, five years older than me. Best we all know, I’m thinking. How’s your headache?”

“Pounding. I’d really like a mug of tea myself.”

“Go on up, then.”

Rafe gathered up his accessories, pulled open the skin covering the paunch pad, pushed the harness into it, then pressed it closed. Then he tossed the pads up through the hatch to the deck above, went up the ladder much more easily than he’d come down, and picked up the pads and his jacket off the floor while the engineer followed him up and latched the hatch back down. Rafe paused partway to put the pads in the shallow storage locker above the door to his and Teague’s compartment, then went on into the galley and pulled down two mugs, selected a strong black tea for himself, and put his mug in the slot. “You?” he asked Pero.

“I’ll do it.” When Rafe had removed his own mug, now full of steaming tea, Pero made his own selection and pushed his mug into the slot. “If you need any meds for that headache, it’s the left-hand drawer there. All the usual.”

Rafe opened the drawer. Several brands of medications for headache, rhinoviruses, stomachaches, sinus congestion: he chose one he recognized, popped the blister on the card, and drank two orange-and-green tablets with his tea. “I think I’ll go lie down in our compartment,” he said. “If that’s all right with you.”

“Fine. I’ll give the captain the word that you have something to tell her when you’re feeling better.”

Captain Ginny Vatta did not have to be told Rafe’s identity when she saw him in his normal shape, with his face no longer distorted by his disguise. “You!” she said, in almost the same tone as the engineer. “You’re the one who got Stella and Toby off Allray—”

“She could possibly have done that herself, but as she’d taken refuge in my place of business, without knowing it was mine, it seemed wise to come along. There were other complications.”

“And you’re the one Ky—Admiral Vatta—got involved with.”

“Yes.”

“You know she’s—”

“Somewhere on Slotter Key and no one’s found her yet. Yes. That’s part of my mission.”

“Part?”

“Part.” Rafe raised an eyebrow. “Captain, you undoubtedly know many things about me. All you really need to know is that Stella—your CEO—and Ky know me and trust me. In spite of everything.”

“I heard Ky ripped you a new one at a reception after the war.”

“She did. And we made up afterward, which you also know, I’m sure.”

“But nothing came of it.”

“I wouldn’t put it that way,” Rafe said. Those times they’d planned to meet and something had come up. The plan Ky’s trip to Slotter Key had interrupted. “We’re both busy people with a great deal of responsibility; we haven’t been able to get together nearly as much as we would both prefer.”

“Well, then. When we arrive in Slotter Key space, you’ll need to be back in disguise?”

“Ideally, yes. And conveyed to wherever Grace Lane Vatta is.”

“Far be it from me to interfere with anything Gracie has in mind,” the captain said. “Or with Ky’s love life, if she’s still alive to have one. The rules remain the same, though: don’t try anything on this ship without telling me first and asking my permission. Got that?”

“Got it,” Rafe said. Mental fingers tangled behind his back.

“Good,” she said, and stood up. “Now about your associate …”

“Teague,” Rafe said. “He’s an associate of someone I’ve known for years.”

“He’s getting a transform, isn’t he?”

How had she figured that out? He didn’t answer, and she just nodded.

“We’ve had some done, after the big killing,” she said. “Aunt Grace set it up. Trying to save more of the family, make them less obvious. Six months to a year, most of ours, and dead-tired the first quarter year. That’s what I noticed. Young, a little clumsy, and he’s been sleeping hard since he came aboard. You’re tired, too.” No actual question.

Rafe shrugged. “I’ve had a temporary DNA squirt to match my persona’s ID, but it’s mostly that Stella and I stayed up late talking. I’ve done the temps before; they don’t bother me.”

“Ah. Well, then. Anything you need to know about Slotter Key you haven’t already looked up? We have a complete atlas, up to date as of our departure, in the ship’s system, if you want access.”

“I’d like that,” Rafe said. He had not been able to find much on Slotter Key from Nexus, and hadn’t had time in Cascadia. “All we had in our files was outdated political organization and current market analysis.” His headache had vanished.

He spent the next several hours poring over the atlas. Date of first terraforming, continental masses and arrangement—it was old-style terraforming, and some inconvenient continents had been simply blown up in places to create islands instead. Mass extinction, introduction of extra-planet materials to affect chemical ratios, seeding with very basic biologicals to start with, later introductions hundreds, even thousands of years apart. Slotter Key had been someone’s very long-term project, though none of the data suggested whose.

Rafe had never been particularly interested in terraforming processes; he’d always been grateful that someone else had turned hundreds—thousands?—of unsuitable planets into places humans could breathe the air, drink the water, and subsist on the local vegetation and animal life. He’d assumed it was all done by humans—who else would shape planets for human convenience?—but now, faced with the time scales, he wondered. How long had humans been off their original planet? He didn’t know. He’d never cared.

Yet wherever humans had gone in space, they’d found both unsuitable worlds and worlds already stocked with plants and animals from their ancestral home. That now struck him as very, very unlikely. Even more unlikely that someone had done it for later generations without ever coming back to interact with them. The humans he knew weren’t like that. Altruism on that scale was out of character.

Had something happened to them? Or—a cold draft seemed to flow down his back—were they not altruistic at all and coming back at some point to demand payment for the largesse they’d created? Had anyone ever considered that?

He put that thought aside—nothing he could do about it now. The files the captain had left him had things of more immediate interest.

Slotter Key’s current population was just over one billion humans, scattered in a belt of temperate-to-tropical climate around the planet’s equator. Five or six major cities; Port Major was the planetary capital. A dozen or so regions—mostly clusters of islands close together—sent representatives to the planetary Parliament. Remaining continents smaller than those on Nexus, all inhabited but for Miksland, labeled in the atlas as “Terraforming Failure.” What did that even mean? Toxic?

The captain appeared again, pointed to the screen he was looking at. “That’s the closest land to where the shuttle was reported down. Worthless, just rock and ice. Some kind of field that blocks communication. Luckily we don’t need it, so nobody bothers with it. Structural terraforming now would likely cause a catastrophe.”

“Why would anyone destroy a continent anyway?” Rafe asked. “The atlas says—”

“I have no idea,” the captain said, sitting down across the aisle. “All I know is we have more islands and smaller continents than most other planets. Some say it’s good for climate; others that it’s good for biodiversity.” She shrugged. “I’d rather be in space.”

“How far back was it terraformed?” Rafe asked. “Is this atlas accurate?”

“I don’t know that, either. Our real history goes back only five hundred forty-three years; that’s when the first colony ship arrived. We Vattas came later. I guess it looked pretty much then as it does now, except for what we’ve built on it.”

“It’s odd we have no clue who did it, even though these files claim someone understands what was done,” Rafe said. “Nexus has more history than Slotter Key—our schoolbooks say it’s been settled well over a thousand standards. Bigger population, too. Four continents all bigger than what you’ve got.” He looked again. “This Miksland’s likely to be cold even in summer, isn’t it? And what season is it now?”

“Spring where Vatta headquarters is, Port Major. In Miksland it’s winter already and going to get worse. That’s why no one thinks Ky could still be alive. Part of that ocean freezes in winter; a survival raft won’t stand that.”

Rafe repressed a shiver. Here in FTL space, he could not pick up any ansible signal. All he could do was hope that Ky was still alive. He had given up on that hope before, and she had lived. He would hope.