Engaging the Enemy by Elizabeth Moon
One hundred…more than ample for one of the larger tradeships with full crew…they wouldn’t have to clean up but once a day. Not standard, that.
“I’d like to see it,” Ky said.
“Certainly,” Carson said. “This way…”
The crates were transparent, showing each dish and the cushioning between them. Carson’s stocking ’bot lowered the crates to the floor so that Ky could see the logo on the centers of the plates and bowls. The blue T with the red V overlaid on it showed clear; it looked authentic.
“Eight of the plates are chipped,” Carson said. “So are eleven of the cereal bowls. I said a hundred, but actually there are only eighty-seven mugs. Naturally I would only charge for the items actually here, and with adjustment for poor condition.”
“Naturally,” Ky murmured. What ship had these come from? What captain had wanted to replace company-supplied tableware with something he or she had to pay for? And so much of it? Successful captains often did order tableware with their ship name on it, but usually only in small amounts, for serving customers dinner aboard, for instance. Was it plunder from the attacks on Vatta ships? Could she eat off it, if it had been taken from the dead? Yet she wanted to touch it, return it to the family, almost as if it had been a captured ship. It was part of the way things had been—
“Is this the only set?” she asked as he opened the crate of plates and she took one. It felt solid, reassuring in its sturdy simplicity. The red-and-blue logo was crisp, its colors unfaded.
“No, there are two more, but they’re smaller. We have ten place settings of the old logo, the VTL form, but no provenance for that. It’s been here for years. Then we have five places of the new logo with the name Briar Rose, but the design is blurred, and the paperwork indicates this is why they were sold off. Do you want to see either of those?”
“I’ll take a look at the old logo,” Ky said. She remembered her mother’s silk twill scarf with that design printed in gold and gray on blue, no doubt gone up in smoke with the house. One of the old sets of porcelain at home had the same design, the letters all blue, with gold highlights and gray shadows and a red line. It hadn’t been used on ships for thirty years at least.
The stocking ’bot scurried off to find it. Carson tipped his head to one side. “If you’ll take it off my hands,” he said, “I’ll give it to you at less than the space cost. Nobody wants it; it’s been here for years. I keep telling myself to send it to recycling, but…it’s merchandise.”
The ’bot came back trailed by a single-wheeled crate. Carson touched the top with his thumb, then ran a finger along the seal; it popped open. He lifted out one of the old plates and handed it to Ky. It felt different, lighter; the blue letters were edged with gold on the left and upper margins, and dark gray on the right and lower. A narrow red band bordered the logo. She felt as if she’d had ice poured down her back; her eyes burned. It was the same; it had to be the same. She tapped the plate with her fingernail and Carson nodded as it rang slightly.
“It’s good stuff, and old,” he said. “If it didn’t carry such a well-known logo, I could get a good price for it. Unusual to see that quality shipboard.”
It had not come off a ship, she was sure. The logo, yes, but such porcelain had never been bought for ship duty. It had come from a Vatta home. It had been stolen from a Vatta home.
“What’s your price for this and the big set?” she asked. “Minus any that are chipped, of course.”
The price he named seemed reasonable, but she would have paid more. She went through the motions of inspecting every item, discarding the chipped and crazed, noting the missing, and at the end authorized a draft on her account, and asked about delivery.
“I’ll get this right out to you,” Carson said. “It’s near shift end; it’ll be delivery-free if you can wait until tomorrow, but I’ll have to charge for delivery off-main shift. Have to hire someone.”
Surely Stella wouldn’t turn up in the next twelve hours, and even if she did, she’d need to resupply. Still, Ky wanted to have that china—the old pieces in particular—safely in her possession. “How much would the delivery charge be?” she asked.
“Fifty credits.”
“Send it on over, please,” Ky said. “I’d rather get the galley organized quickly.” With that chore out of the way, Ky called back to the ship. Martin answered, and she told him to expect a delivery of crockery within two hours.
“When will you be back?” he asked. “Rosvirein Traffic Control reports three heavily armed ships just downjumped into the system, and put out an all-ship advisory that these might be pirates. Rosvirein’s insystem defense is on full alert. These ships are days out, but—”
“Coming straight back,” Ky said. “I should be there in an hour or so, assuming we catch the next passenger tram. I’ll call if we don’t. It’s shift change.” Her heart was racing; images of the last time she’d been docked when raiders entered a system came vividly to mind. “I’m going to call the stationmaster, have us put in the queue for departure. If Stella brings Gary Tobai in here, I want to be out there where I can protect her.”
The stationmaster, sounding harried, gave Ky a departure slot six hours away without argument. “If you can’t make it, let me know right away. I’m sure someone else will want your slot.”
By the time they made it back to dockside, shift change had crowded the passages; Ky threaded her way through the traffic, hand near her weapon, and Rafe and Jim on either side. The gate to their dockside was open; she could see someone’s back and a cargo cart stacked with crates. Several of the Gannett family and Martin were near, along with a man in delivery company uniform.
_______
Pietro Duran received his orders in silence. It was the kind of job he hated, high risk and low return. Eventually, something would go wrong, and he’d die, and that would make the boss happy because he had it in for Pietro. And for no reason, really; it wasn’t his fault that Gustaf the baker had decided to spend the last of his savings on a blowout when the diagnosis of incurable degenerative brain disease came through, instead of paying his usual protection money to the Organization.
But the boss refused to understand that, and thought Pietro should have been more persuasive. By then Gustaf was dead, an obvious suicide, and moreover he had left the record of his protection payments in an unencrypted file that the local snakes had discovered. The local snakes had demanded three times their usual payoff to ignore or lose the evidence: that, Pietro knew, was what really made the boss mad. Now Pietro had survived a string of high-risk assignments but the boss still didn’t give up.
Intercepting the package had been no problem. The Organization had a finger in every delivery company on the station. They didn’t steal directly, but it was a handy way to transport prohibited goods from place to place, concealing them in legitimate packages. All Pietro had to do was mention to Giff that he had an interest in packages to a certain destination, and would prefer to make a hand delivery, and Giff alerted him when the next shipment came through.
“It’s kind of rush,” Giff said. “They want immediate delivery, same-day service. Can you manage that? We’re short-staffed today; I’ve got two out with personal problems.”
The right code words. Pietro said “Sure, Giff. I’m offshift now; I’ll come right down. Which pickup?”
They talked a bit more, the usual thing—recognition codes, and so forth, and Pietro turned up at the cargo delivery station in the correct uniform, with an actual delivery service ID. It wasn’t one package, but two: large cartons marked FRAGILE and THIS WAY UP. Pietro checked out a pallet mover, attached the suction pads to the cartons, and transferred them to the pallet mover, entering the correct destination code into the control panel. On some stations, he’d heard, package delivery was completely automated; he wondered what the equivalent of the Organization did there when it needed to intercept packages. They would think of something, he was sure.
Here, packages too heavy to hand-carry had to be a
The manifest, coded into the seal itself, told him that this was “dinnerware, used, sales tax and export tax paid in full” and gave the number of plates, mugs, cups, and so on in each carton. Dinnerware. That made it easy. Inspection required opening both cartons. He ran the tool’s tongue-probe down into the carton: no breakage in the first carton. He resealed that one and opened the second. No breakage here, either. Now—where to put the contact code? It must be accessible to the agent aboard the ship, but he didn’t know that agent’s position in the crew, just a name and flatpic of the face. He could put it on a plate, but some crew didn’t handle plates except to eat off them. He could put it on the carton itself, if the agent handled cargo. At some time or other, almost everyone on a ship did, but would the agent find it before the cartons were unpacked and then recycled?
Both, he decided. He applied one of the several code dots he had to the back of the topmost plate in the second carton and another to the inside of the carton lid, then resealed it with the official tool. Then he walked beside the pallet mover as it moved slowly out into the concourse following the control line laid into the decking and swung left to head for the docking area.
In the bustling cargo center, Pietro had recognized other Organization operatives here and there; they all knew each other and he assumed the others were on assignments, as he was. Other personnel he ignored; the cargo center was always full of spacers and locals both who had come to send or receive packages small enough to use the intrastation cargo lines. He could not possibly keep up with all the ship patches, though he knew most of the stationers’ uniforms.
He did not notice the two spacers who noticed him, and whose quietly skillful movement through the crowds on the concourse kept him unaware that he was being followed.
_______
“That was interesting,” Jon Gannett said. “He just put a telltag on that carton.”
“Two,” Hera Gannett said.
Jon didn’t doubt it. Hera had several unobtrusive humodifications, including a telescopic lens implant in what looked like a normal eye. She couldn’t quite read a telltag at a kilometer, but she could certainly see better than he could at a distance.
“Where’s it going?” he asked.
“Our ship,” Hera said. “That’s a legitimate badge he has, and a legitimate cargo handler’s inspection tool.”
“Something bent,” Jon said.
“Number one-eight-two,” a clerk announced.
“I’ll get it,” Hera said, and moved forward. Jon had ordered a surprise treat for number one battery three days ago, and they were carrying it themselves rather than having it delivered. Old traditions on a new ship, something to connect them to their past and toast the future. Jon kept a casual glance on the fellow now moving slowly away with the pallet mover.
Hera came back with their package.
“He’s headed back,” Jon said, as they moved toward the cargo center exit. “We follow?”
“Should we warn the dock watch?”
“Wasn’t enough for explosives…I think we just follow and keep him contained.” That would be no problem, even if the man was armed—and Jon assumed he was.
The nondescript man in the delivery service uniform took a direct route with no stops or detours: the pallet mover followed its embedded line, and he paced beside it. Jon and Hera moved with the shift-change crowds, steadily and without appearing to watch the pallet or its escort.
“Heads up,” came a voice in his implant. “All crew onstation, return to ship. All crew onstation, return to ship immediately. Acknowledge.”
Jon tapped his station com, a code that meant “on the way.” The captain must have almost everything she wanted aboard already; this pallet they were following might be the last load. Ahead now he could see the fat glowing numbers that designated dock-spaces, and the number for their ship. The pallet mover turned into their dockspace and paused.
Jon and Hera moved up to the dock entrance. Ahead of them, Pod was working dockside security, checking the delivery. He glanced up from running a diagnostic wand down the side of the cartons when Jon moved closer.
“All crew report to First Officer Pritang,” Pod said. All crew was family code for “anything wrong?”
“Go on, Hera,” Jon said. “Tell him we’re back; I’ll hang out with Pod, here.” More family code. Hera’s name plus here in the same utterance meant “the problem’s here.”
Pod continued to wand the pallet mover and its cargo as if unconcerned. Jon flicked him a hand signal, from behind the deliveryman’s back, and a moment later Pod’s wand emitted a high-pitched squeal.
“This stupid thing!” Pod said, shaking the wand. “It does that all the time and there’s never anything—”
Jon had noticed the man stiffening when the wand squealed. His left hand had twitched toward his side…a left-handed shooter? Now, as Pod continued to shake the wand and complain about its frequent malfunctions, the man relaxed slightly.
“I’ll bet it won’t react this time,” Pod said, running the wand down the carton again. Of course it would, Jon knew. But the man was relaxed, not worried now. Probably thinking how to explain the telltags if they were found, probably thinking they wouldn’t be noticed. The wand squealed again.
“I hate those things,” Jon said, moving a little to one side; the man glanced at him, but didn’t seem concerned. He would recognize Jon’s position, but if he was what Jon suspected, he would be sure he could handle it. “Let me try, Pod; maybe I can make it behave.”
Pod handed it over. “I hope so. Martin says open anything that squeals but these are just dishes. They called over a couple of hours ago about ’em. The captain saw ’em packed; there can’t be anything wrong.”
Jon fiddled with the wand controls. “That should do it. I don’t know why we have to use this stuff anyway. We have area scans—” He stepped close to the man to wand the cartons on this side. The man moved away, out of politeness or the desire to keep Jon from coming too close. He seemed to be looking around the docking area.
“You have a crewman named Julio Calixo?” he asked suddenly.
“Julie?” That was Pod. “Sure. Cargo handler.”
“Listen, I know his sister Bea. Think I could speak to him?”
Jon could feel the change in Pod’s alertness from two meters away. He hoped the deliveryman couldn’t.
“Sure, I’ll call,” Pod said. He used the exterior com rather than his implant phone, and without using any family code at all—the person answering must not be one of them—said Julie had a visitor dockside, someone who said they knew his sister.
“His sister Bea,” the man repeated, and Pod added that.
Interesting. Jon recognized a code phrase when he heard it.
“He’s coming out,” Pod said.
While the man’s attention was split between Pod and the gangway, Jon pressed a control and the wand squealed again. “Damn it! I thought I had it fixed.” The man barely glanced his way as Jon shook the wand. So his priority was to meet this person, pass a message? Tell this person where the telltag was? Jon glanced toward the gangway and saw Gordon Martin coming out with Hera.
“Here comes trouble,” he said. “Hera and the big guy.” The deliveryman looked at him. “Sorry—I’m going to have to open the cartons now; he’ll have heard the wand and he has his rules.”
“That the captain?” the deliveryman asked.
“No. That’s the security chief. Captain’s a lady.”
“Got a squealer, eh?” Martin, Jon could tell, scared the deliveryman. “Let’s open ’em up and take a look. You—delivery—let me see your badge.?
“I’m legit,” the man said. “Nothing’s wrong with this cargo; it’s that wand. I checked contents myself at the cargo terminal: nothing broken, nothing prohibited.”
“Looks all right,” Martin said, after a cursory inspection. Jon wasn’t fooled, not when Hera’d had time to tell Martin what they’d seen. He, too, was playing for time.
“It’s the wand,” Pod said. “I told you before it’s broken.”
“Are those my new dishes?” Jon turned to see the captain, the mystery man Rafe, and Jim-the-bonehead in the entrance. Martin didn’t like Rafe, that had been clear from the first day, and Jon already respected Martin enough to take his opinion of Rafe. But at the moment, Rafe and Jim were properly positioned for escorts. Would they recognize that something was wrong here?
“Yes, ma’am,” Jon said.
“Then let’s get them aboard; we’re about to leave,” she said.
“This hasn’t cleared security yet, ma’am,” Martin said. “We’re working on it.”
“We’re in the queue for departure,” she said. That was new; she must have contacted the station authorities on her way back from this shopping trip. Why the hurry, Jon wondered.
“Yes, ma’am. We’ll make it,” Martin said. “Just don’t want any unpleasant surprises. It won’t take long to do a visual on these things.”
“Right,” she said. She moved toward the ship, keeping herself out of all conceivable lines of fire. Jon nodded to himself. She wasn’t going to second-guess her security chief and she didn’t try to micromanage…but she recognized a threat. Rafe had moved to cover her, but Jim still lagged, staring at the carton as if it had snakes in it.
Jon didn’t know Julio Calixo—he didn’t know most of the new hires yet—but he was fairly sure the youngish man who came out of the gangway now and headed toward them was the contact the deliveryman wanted to make.
“Where is Bea?” Calixo said loudly. “She missed Grandma’s birthday party and no one’s heard from her since.”