Daiphur, stand by.
Control two, Daiphur standing by this time. Van turned to Eri. “We’re going to nil gee.”
She had already slipped into the other couch and quickly finished strapping in.
Van brought the fusactors on line, ready to wrench the Daiphur/Joyau out of the lock dampers if necessary.
More than a minute passed, an interval that felt far too long. Van could feel the sweat running down his back, and the air in the cockpit smelled metallic.
Daiphur, sorry. Cleared to delock from charlie five this time. Dampers released. Maintain low-power departure until clear of the amber. Suggest corridor two.
Control, Daiphur, will do. Delocking this time. Van eased the Joyau away from orbit control two, watching the station and the ships in orbit or nearing or departing planetary orbit. He brought up ship gravity to one gee.
He still needed to route funds and messages to his family. From what he’d seen, Sulyn wasn’t going to be safe for them much longer, if it even was now. He looked across at Eri. “Would you set up a comm link to the IIS office in New Oisin, secure?”
“Yes, ser.”
Van checked the systemwide EDI screen. There were only four RSF ships in the entire system. One of the heavy cruisers was off Burke, the largest satellite of Synge, the gas-giant seventh planet. The other was at the other side of the system. Each of the other corvettes was a quarter of the system from the cruisers, so that each ship covered one quadrant—but there were only four ships—the fewest Van had ever seen.
Departure corridor two ran almost directly toward the cruiser off Burke.
For the moment, Van continued piloting the Joyau toward corridor two.
“I have a secure link, ser. But it’s secure only to the office. Beyond that…when they retransmit…”
“I understand.” Van pulsed in the codes to send the message to his fathers, then added his own personal billing information.
I’m sorry this will be quick, he messaged, but I’ve little time. You may recall my last messages. I would urge you, as well as Arturo and Sappho, to follow through on Sappho’s earlier inclination. Material which could expedite that will also be following, through VCA… VCA was the account Van had set up years earlier in order to transfer funds home for investment. Now, the funds transfers would be for a different form of investment, Van hoped. I’m not likely to be easily reached for a time, but consider my recommendation as one that failure to follow could result in a final curtain call for the opera company and its director and his associates.
Van was being oblique, to say the least. He doubted that one message among thousands would be pulled out, but there was always the chance that someone in the IIS office might break in and relay the contents—if they thought they were unduly suspicious. In any case, it was the best he could do on short notice, and it wasn’t as though he hadn’t recommended that his family leave Sulyn before.
He followed the message with the instructions for the funds transfers from his personal accounts. Those would work, because they went through Cambrian Holdings, and the RSF wasn’t about to interfere with a major Coalition financial institution. Not yet, anyway.
Those items completed, Van concentrated on the EDI screen once more, where the RSF cruiser remained on station—not that the scale of the screen would have showed movement, although the relative overlay would have.
Van almost nodded to himself. While the cruiser was not moving toward the departure corridor he’d been assigned, he didn’t like the idea of departing the system in a way that would bring him closer to a ship with that much power. For the time being, he left the Joyau on course until the ship was clear of the amber protective area off Tara. Then he began to incline the departure course of the Joyau “down” from the system ecliptic, but gradually. He didn’t want to alert the RSF—not yet.
Then Van unstrapped and walked back to his stateroom, closing the door behind him but still remaining linked to the ship system.
He stripped off the thin black tunic and undershirt, studying his frame in the mirror.
At first glance, his entire torso looked bruised, but a closer scrutiny revealed that only about a third was purplish. That third was enough to make every movement tentative, and probably would come to hurt more before it hurt less. The nanite bodyshield had kept him from getting killed, but it had exacted a price. He changed into a shipsuit, trying not to wince at every movement.
Next, he fed the datacard with the files he had copied from Vickry’s office into the reader in his stateroom, creating an isolated directory on the system for it. He hurried back to the cockpit. He could read through those files from the command couch, but he didn’t want to leave the cockpit for that long, not in the Tara system.
From the galley, Eri looked out as he left his stateroom. “You will need something to eat.”
“Thank you.” Van settled back into the command couch and, using his implant and access through the shipnet, began to search through the files he’d lifted.
The first two were routine.
The third was not.
…the commanding officer of the RSFS Collyns was informed that a hostile cruiser disguised as the RSFS Fergus would be entering the Scandyan system and that the purpose of that entry would be to break the capital space vessel limitation agreement with the Scandyans, thus forcing the RSF into a position where it would be forced either to withdraw from the Scandyan system or to engage in armed conflict with the Scandyan system. Since such conflict was clearly not in the interests of the RSF, the Collyns
