She came out into the passage feeling wide-awake and hungry again. In the galley, Cal Skeldon was wiping up the sink; she nodded to him as she checked her implant. Riel was off-duty; Lee was sitting the board. Alertly—he noticed the tick at his implant and answered at once.

“Nothing new, Captain.”

“Can I fix you something, Captain?”Calasked. That ingratiating smile again; Ky shook her head.

“I’ll just get some cereal,” she said. Before she could reach for a bowl, he had handed her one, along with a packet of breakfast grains.

“Thanks,” she said, turning away to open the cooler. She found a packet of berries and added them to the bowl, then took out the cream jug. He was still there, clearly ready to do anything she asked. She poured the cream onto the berries and grains, and handed him the cream jug.

“I have to get to the bridge,” she said.

“Of course, Captain,” he said, eyes bright. She would have a talk with Mehar, she decided; this had gone far enough. She took her breakfast up to the bridge. Lee looked up.

“Were you ever planning to wake Sleeping Beauty?” Ky asked. “Or were you waiting for a prince?”

“Gary and Quincy said to let you have at least eight hours,” Lee said. “Was that wrong?”

“No. I just didn’t plan to sleep that long.” Ky sat down in the captain’s seat and turned on the intercom. “Captain’s on the bridge. Section firsts, if you’re finished with that assignment, come on up.” She took a spoonful of berries and cream and grain. “Where are we, Lee? Anything to worry about?”

“No, Captain.” The plot came up on Ky’s desk. “We’re not going to hit anything in this system. Not anything mapped, anyway. The warships have moved in on Sabine Prime; there’s been an engagement of some kind with Prime’s space force, such as it is. They haven’t blown the station yet, though we’re far enough out it could have happened and we wouldn’t have heard.”

“Any sign of ISC?”

“No downjump markers that I can detect. If they’ve come in, they’ve come in with something small, distant, and careful. I wouldn’t know yet if they just arrived across the system, of course.”

Scan-lag was such a pain. It was possible to link ansibles to scan and get an almost-instantaneous scan of an entire system, but that took the ansibles off-line for other uses. Aside from that, they were limited to lightspeed or less. Ky finished her berries and grain, setting the bowl aside just asGary, Mitt, andQuincyappeared.

“I hope you’re all as rested as I am,” Ky said. “What have you got for me? Mitt, you first.”

“Current consumption, we’re good for eighty-seven days.Garyspent all the government letter of credit on supplies, is why it looks so good. Our system’s designed for straight recycling of atmosphere and water; there’s no design capability for onboard food generation.”

“We could modify some of the equipment,”Quincyput in. “But we don’t have seed stock. We’d have to figure out a way to purify and prepare the basic cultures.”

“I can’t really recommend that,” Mitt said. “Unless it’s that or starvation.”

“We’ll hope it’s not,” Ky said. “You, Quincy?”

“Well, the ship’s in pretty good shape, aside from the problems we knew about already. Nothing’s leaking. Nothing’s coming apart under this acceleration. On the other hand, we have to consider insystem drive fuel consumption. Since we can’t jump out of this system with no FTL drive, we need to be able to get back where we came from in order to get that replacement sealed unit.”

“Fuel consumption so far?”

“Seven percent. I know that doesn’t seem like a lot, but it all depends how long this goes on.”

“Gary?”

“Load’s all secure. I’ve been collecting the skills list, like you asked me to. Hand-painting flat-pics seems like a useless sort of thing to mention, but—”

“We don’t know what might be useful,” Ky said. “Let me see here… flower painting, yes. Surf fishing with rod and reel. Once achieved a perfect score in Bzzx—what is that?”

“A gameplayer classic. The one where you shoot little biting things that try to eat your garden plants.”

“Mmm… and designing and hand-sewing festival costumes.” She couldn’t think of anything more boring, herself. And that was Mitt, of all people. “Pistol-bow competition? What’s that?”

“That’s—you know what a crossbow is, right?”

“Ancient weapon, now used in sports. Sure, my brothers had one. They never would let me play with it, and it disappeared about the time Hanar moved out. He used to shoot fish with it, and sometimes rabbits.”

“Pistol bows are much smaller. I asked Mehar about it; she says they even proposed them to Vatta main office as a shipboard security weapon. They won’t penetrate hulls or bulkheads, and they don’t have any combustibles, so they’re legal on most stations. She says they look scary to dockside thieves and they had much less trouble on Palatine when the outside watch carried them.”

“That makes sense. So we have a pistol-bow expert—how many pistol bows do we have?” For a moment she imagined the glorious defense of the ship, her crew with pistol bows against—real riot-control weapons that could rip holes in the ship. Not a good idea.

“Only the two Mehar has—her own personal practice and competition bows.”

Just as well, then. She wouldn’t be tempted. Still, if Mehar could hit something with a pistol bow, she might be good with other weapons. If they happened to find any. She went on with the list. Two who could knit, and one who could crochet. One who could blow glass. Five cross-trained in another ship discipline than that on their primary papers.

Nothing that immediately sparked an idea for how to get out of this mess. Nobody claimed to know how to fashion an ansible out of yarn and some extra carrots, which is what they had most of.

“Well,” she said when she came to the end of the list and found her three section firsts looking at her as if they expected she’d come up with a complete answer. “That’s all very interesting, but I think the next step is to see if the Mackensee folks want to talk to us. I’d like to quit using fuel to go somewhere we don’t want to go, for instance. We’re well out of their way, unless they plan to blow up Sabine Prime itself.”

“Do you think they’ll answer?” askedGary. “If they’re busy fighting—”

“Won’t know until we try,” Ky said. “If they’re too busy they won’t answer, or they’ll tell us to be quiet. I’m going to suggest that we need to reserve fuel for maneuvering. Chances are they don’t know we’ve got this much left.”

Even though she had made the decision, Ky hesitated before trying to contact the mercenaries. They would be busy, probably in the middle of a fight… If she were their commander, how would she react to the interruption from a silly little civilian cargo ship?

It would depend, really. It probably wouldn’t be the first time that a civilian ship asked for further orders or wanted to change the ones it had been given. That must happen several times an operation. So there must be someone monitoring that channel, expecting ships to call in and complain or beg. What happened next would depend on the mercenaries’ protocol for handling such calls, and on her approach to them.

“Was there any com activity on channel seventeen?” she asked Lee.

“I logged some very faint,” Lee said. “It wasn’t for us, all we got was outwash.”

So the others were contacting the mercenaries. And by their plots, they weren’t being blown away instantly. That was something, but was it enough? Ky would have given a lot to ask the advice of experienced spacers, preferably military. Despite the air of distaste which had colored Commander Staller’s comments on mercenaries during their military law course, he had considered mercenaries true military organizations. He would know—any of them might know—what to expect in this situation.