“Only if they formally rescind it, I’d think,” Lee said. “Not that I’m an expert, either, but surely they’d have to give you notice.”

“And they can’t,” Ky said. “Because their ansible’s blocked.”

To her surprise, Lee looked more excited than afraid. “We aren’t exactly privateer material, though, are we? Did they send you money for a better ship?”

“Not unless it’s hidden in the deodorant I’m supposed to order from a grocer. Why—do you like the idea?”

He didn’t answer that directly, but asked, “So… are you going to do it?”

Her earlier objections to turning pirate came to mind, but—what choice did she have now?

“I’m going to see what’s in the deodorant, anyway,” Ky said. “For the rest, I don’t know.”

“If we had the right ship, it could be fun,” Lee said. Then, at her look, he pulled his face into a frown. “Difficult and dangerous, I know. Not fun in the usual sense, but—more fun than just driving a tradeship back and forth.”

“You were wasted in commercial shipping,” Ky said.

“You, too, Captain.”

“I don’t know… not being shot at for weeks at a time is beginning to look better and better.”

Lee shook his head. “You’d get tired of it.”

“Maybe. Sheryl and Alene and Ted wouldn’t. They hate the excitement, as you call it.”

“Maybe they’ll find another ship. If any ship is safe.”

She looked up Buchert Brothers in the directory. “Restaurant and ship supply, variety and quality at a reasonable price.” That’s what they all said. The list of products looked normal: bulk and packaged staples, brand-name and “private-label” goods, everything from cleaning supplies to “fresh tank-grown fish, alive until harvested.” She compared prices with two other suppliers—about the same. A quick look at their supply situation… she entered an order for cleaning supplies, protein powder in five-kilogram containers, a dozen sets of assorted processor flavors, a set of oven trays, and the specified “odor barriers.”

A few hours later, uncrating the order in the cargo hold, Ky found herself staring at a shape she knew very well. Here was the other—and more expensive—version of the mines she had put a hold on. Smaller, a little lighter, these contained the most sophisticated electronic attack available. Properly set and delivered, they could disable an entire ship’s systems without causing significant structural damage. An excellent choice for piracy—privateering—and she now had six of them.

“My, my, my,” Martin said. “Someone likes you.”

“They did, but I think they don’t now,” Ky said.

“Care to explain?”

“A letter of marque,” Ky said. “The package came while we were otherwise occupied, though at the moment I can’t recall if it was the puppy or the assassins. Anyway, it was signed and authorized well before the attacks on Vatta, and before the government chose to ignore us.”

“Very handy,” Martin said.

Ky closed the crate again. “Put this where we can get at it quickly,” she told Alene. “We’re going to need it once we’re back out there.”

“What is it?” Alene asked.

“Something I’ll tell you all about once we’re in a secure location,” Ky said. Six mines. And she had fifteen with conventional explosives on hold at MilMart. As soon as she had enough money in the account, she’d put a deposit on them.

Toby Randolph Lee Vatta slouched on the hard bunk in the cell. He hadn’t done anything wrong, but here he was in jail. Without any way to communicate to the family, and no explanation why he couldn’t call them.

“Here you are,” one of the guards said. “Lunchtime.” This was the nicest one, Toby thought. He looked like he’d be a good older brother or father or something. For someone who wasn’t a prisoner.

“Thanks,” Toby said, as the guard put the tray on the table.

The guard cocked his head. “You aren’t hungry again?”

“Not really…”

“Thinking about your family?”

“Yes.” How could he not? Ellis Fabery, blown up in dock, with casualties in the thousands because it had taken out a whole sector. Half the crew was Vatta-born, from captain to cargomaster. And Toby hadn’t been aboard to be killed, because he had been rewarded for his spit-clean record the first six months of his apprentice voyage. His cousin Dex, the captain, had let him off the ship to run a simple errand. Take this message over to the bank, bring back the return message, don’t dawdle on the way, act like a grown-up. So he’d been four sectors away, cooling his heels in the bank manager’s waiting room, when the ship blew and the chair shuddered beneath him, and all the intersection seals locked down. When his implant had stabbed him with the burst of static. Sole survivor, so far as they knew. Underaged. Potential target of assassins.

“Nobody likes jail,” the guard said. He sat down on the other end of Toby’s bunk. “But it’s for your own safety.”

They had explained that before, as if he was too stupid to understand the first time. He understood. He just could not figure out a way to deal with it. In all his life he had never been alone among strangers, completely separated from his family or friends.

“I know you’re doing your best,” Toby said. Always be polite to strangers; always be polite to law enforcement. “I just… I just don’t get hungry.” He smiled. “I’m not exercising enough, I guess.”

“You’re losing weight,” the guard said. “We don’t want you to fade away by the time some family show up.”

“They’re coming?” Toby asked. Hope surged; his heart pounded.

“I’m sure they will,” the guard said.

“But you don’t know…”

“No.” The guard sighed. “Look, son. Communications are down everywhere. We sent word; we don’t know if it got through before the ansibles quit working. ISC will fix them eventually, and then someone will come. We just don’t know when. Allray’s a little off the main lines.”

Allray had seemed exotic once. Allray Station had a live display of its indigenous life-forms, the smaller ones. Toby had seen the online pictures; he wanted to see a hextan and a hexbear in real life. Dex had promised him a free afternoon, if all went well, and Anders, in Engineering, had promised to take him to Allray’s open market as well as the life-forms display.

Now all he saw of Allray was this cell and the rooms visible from it. He had a vid setup, and the guards brought him entertainment cubes, but they wouldn’t give him a live outside data line. There were only so many hours of the day he could stand to watch episodes of Lang’s Gang, Beyond the Law, Ghost Ships… He’d never noticed before, but now every explosion, battle, and fight reminded him of his loss. He didn’t complain. What else was there to do? He’d asked about student programs, hoping to bury himself in math homework problems, but it turned out that he was several levels beyond the highest they kept onstation. His big sister Erin had always told him he was too smart for his own good, but he hadn’t imagined the result of racing through his schoolwork would be boredom in a jail cell when he’d done nothing wrong.

“Forensic’s through with their… with the… uh… remains,” the guard said. “Do you have… do you know… what they’d want?”

He hadn’t ever thought, in his darkest adolescent humors, that he’d have to arrange the funerals of his family and other shipmates. The lump in his throat was too big; he couldn’t speak. He shook his head.

“You don’t have any religion or anything?”

The family altar, back home, and the deities he’d been taught to name, now seemed as meaningless as a plastic cube. What good had it done Cousin Dex to adhere to the standards of ethics? What good had it done Hallie and Prin and Veeah to observe the Days of Silence? They were dead, dead for no reason but malice, and no god they prayed to had kept them safe. He could not explain this to the guard, however friendly. He shrugged, instead, blinking back tears.