The Collapsing Empire (The Interdependency #1)(11)

“I’m thinking.”

“I should go,” the assistant purser said. “I mean, I can go. Maybe I should go?”

Kiva sighed and looked down at her conquest. “When are you on duty again?”

“Three hours.”

“Then you stay right here.” She untangled herself from the assistant purser, put on something acceptable for the outside world, and then followed Brennir out of her stateroom and through the ship.

The Yes, Sir, That’s My Baby was a fiver, a ship whose size and design meant that theoretically it could support a full complement of crew from its own resources for roughly five standard years before everything began to go bad, internal biological and support systems began to fail, and the crew collapsed into a brief spasm of unspeakable horror toward each other before the end, as all crews marooned in the vast emptiness of space with no hope of rescue eventually did.

As a practical matter, however, within the Flow streams of the Interdependency, no one human outpost was more than nine months from any other. Fivers and tenners, their larger siblings, typically dedicated enough of themselves to support their crews for a year—a three-month margin for error—and the rest of their space and systems were given over to cargo and, in the case of the Yes, Sir, astroponics, growing the agricultural products that the ship’s owners had a monopoly on and traveled from outpost to outpost to deliver.

The House of Lagos, the owners of the Yes, Sir, had a monopoly on citrus. The entire genus, from root to fruit, from the heirloom species like lemons and oranges to more recent hybrids like gabins, zestfists, and haverfruit. It was the last of these that the Yes, Sir had come to End to do business in—to sell the fruit it had grown and harvested on the trip out to End directly, and to negotiate licensing for local agribusiness to grow it on End on behalf of the Lagos family.

That was the plan, anyway. Except now some asshole customs official was trying to fuck them all.

Kiva entered the Yes, Sir conference room where Captain Tomi Blinnikka, Chief Purser Gazson Magnut, and some miserable shitfuck of an imperial customs official waited. Kiva nodded to Blinnikka and Magnut and took a seat at the table they were at. Blinnikka dismissed Brennir, who slid the door closed behind him as he left.

“All right, what’s the problem?” Kiva said, when Brennir was gone.

“Lady Kiva, I am Inspector Pretan Vanosh, assistant head of imperial customs for End,” the miserable shitfuck began.

“Charmed,” Kiva said, cutting him off. “What’s the problem?”

“The problem is a closterovirus,” Vanosh said. “That’s a type of virus—”

“My family has had the monopoly on citrus fruits for eight hundred years, Mr. Vanosh,” Kiva said. “I know what a closterovirus is. I also know it’s been two hundred years since we’ve had a confirmed case of a citrus closterovirus affecting any of the crops we either sell or license. We genetically engineer our crops for resistance.”

Vanosh smiled thinly and offered up a physical folder to Kiva, who took it. “That clock has been reset, Lady Kiva,” he said. “Nine months ago your sister ship, No, Sir, I Don’t Mean Maybe, arrived with a shipment of grapefruit graft stock that carried a new strain of virus. It spread through your licensed orchards and devastated your client’s crops.”

“All right, but so what?” Kiva said. “If it did happen, and I’m not going to stipulate it did until we have our own people take a look, then we’ll compensate the clients and plow under the orchards. It doesn’t have anything to do with this shipment of haverfruit.”

“It’s not that simple,” Vanosh said. “The virus is cross-compatible with some of End’s local crops, including banu, a staple down there. We’ve had to quarantine entire provinces to halt its spread. Food prices are through the roof. People are concerned about the possibility of famine. The Duke of End was already battling an insurgency. This has made it worse.” Vanosh leaned forward on the table, toward Lagos. “To put it bluntly, Lady Kiva, the House of Lagos has helped to destabilize this entire planet.”

Kiva stared at this official fuckwit in disbelief. “You can’t think we intended—”

Now it was Vanosh’s turn to cut off Lagos. “Lady Kiva, it doesn’t matter what your house intended, what matters is what it did. What it did in this case is pour oil onto a fire. Until this is resolved in a court of law, I’m afraid your trade rights for End are suspended.”

“I don’t know about any of this,” Kiva said.

“Everything about the virus is in the report.”

“Not about the fucking virus. About the destabilization and the famine or any of the rest of that crap. You can’t pin it on us.”

“It’s not all pinned onto your family, Lady Kiva, I assure you. But enough can be pinned to your family to have caused this suspension.”

“Is this is a squeeze?” Kiva asked.

Vanosh blinked. “I beg your pardon?”

“You heard me. Is this a squeeze? Are you hitting us up for a bribe?”

“A bribe?”

“Yes.”

“I’m not sure what part of this discussion suggested to you that I was fishing for a bribe, Lady Kiva.”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake, don’t be coy,” Kiva said, irritably. “Let’s pretend we’re all adults here and we don’t have to get cute about a business transaction. Tell me what you want”—she jabbed a thumb at Magnut, whose expression suggested he couldn’t believe this particular conversation was actually happening—“and Magnut here will take care of the rest.”