The Collapsing Empire (The Interdependency #1)(53)

Marce smiled at that. I need you to look up someone. A man named Sjo Tinnuin. He crews on the Tell Me Another One. I need you to do it before the Yes, Sir hits the Flow shoal.

All right. Why?

Because he’s heard a rumor about that thing that I’m interested in.

I love it when you’re vague.

Particularly the thing I’m about to deal with. Vague enough?

Perfectly.

Good. It would be helpful to know where he heard the rumor. It’s a very weirdly specific thing to have a rumor about.

I’m on it. How is the ship?

I’m in a bunk the size of a dresser drawer.

Jealous. All I have is my massive bed back at the palace, in a room the size of a small village.

I hate you.

Hate you too, Kristian. Be safe. I’ll ping the ship with a message when I get news.

Thanks— and here Marce almost typed “sis” but stopped and just added a period instead. Then he turned off his tablet, sealed up his bunk, and spent a few minutes in the uncomfortably close dark, having the first twinges of homesickness.





Chapter

11

“You said you wanted to be informed if something unusual happened on our way out from End,” Captain Tomi Blinnikka said, to Kiva. They were two days out from End, and another day out from the Flow shoal that would have them heading toward Hub. Kiva and Blinnikka were in the captain’s private room, off the bridge of the Yes, Sir, along with Chief of Security Nubt Pinton. The room could comfortably fit two people tops, and Pinton was exceedingly large. Kiva felt like she could actually taste his sweat particles.

“What is it?” she asked.

Blinnikka activated a tablet and showed it to Kiva. It featured a live feed of the Yes, Sir’s position in space, along with the logarithmically mapped position of other objects and ships within a light-minute of distance. “We’ve got a ship coming toward us.”

“Toward us? Or toward the shoal?”

“Us. We plotted its course and it’s going to intercept us in about fourteen hours. When we first saw it and saw its course, I made the assumption it was also running to the shoal and just wasn’t paying attention to our position. I boosted our velocity by half a percent, to get us clear of each other. They didn’t respond immediately, but over the last couple of hours they’ve boosted their own velocity to match ours. We’re definitely the targets.”

“So, pirates.”

“Yes.”

“Stupid pirates.” The best time to nab a ship was when it was exiting the Flow, not trying to get to it; inertia would send a target ship into the Flow shoal regardless. Pirate ships were usually relatively small, relatively fast, and almost always local—which is to say, with no equipment to shape a time-space bubble around their ships. If they entered the Flow, they’d die. A pirate attacking an outgoing ship would likely have only a very small window of time to attack successfully, board, unload cargo, and disengage.

“Stupid or they have a plan we don’t understand.”

“We can handle them, right?” The Yes, Sir came with a full complement of defensive weapons, and a small contingent of offensive weapons as well. The offensive weapons were technically illegal for a trade ship to have, but fuck that, when you’re in space, sometimes you have to shoot first and lie about it to a guild inquiry later.

“The ship is too far away to get a good look at its true capabilities, but if the thrust signature is correct, it’s a Winston-class freighter. It’s probably modified all to hell but no matter what they’re still small, which limits their offensive capabilities. We can probably handle them. If their intention is to pirate the ship.”

“What other intention would they have? They want to invite us to tea?”

“We don’t know. Right now our posture is to watch and monitor.”

“You can outrun them to the shoal. Power up now.”

Blinnikka shook his head. “The second we boost velocity more than trivially we give away that we know we’re being tracked. They’ll boost as well, probably to intercept earlier. If we plan to outrun them, we do it as late as possible, and when they’re close enough for us to target with those missiles we’re not supposed to have. But again, that’s if they are attempting the usual piracy.”

Kiva found herself getting irritated. “What the fuck would unusual piracy be in this case?”

“We don’t know, and that’s the point. They’re coming at us from the wrong direction and they wouldn’t have enough time to fully unload even if they didn’t have to burn time fighting us. But they should also know that we don’t have anything worth stealing right now. Pirates have spies at stations, who give them information about ships and their cargo manifests. It’s how they decide who to target. But they wouldn’t even have to be crafty to know that the only cargo we took on at End was people, since we didn’t make a secret of that. And unless they really want haverfruit concentrate, we have nothing of value.”

“They know we have nothing they want or can use and they’re coming at us anyway.”

“Yes. This is what worries me.”

Kiva nodded. “Fine. What’s the second thing?”

“One of our passengers is acting strangely,” Nubt Pinton said.

“All our passengers are rich assholes,” Kiva said. “Acting strangely is part of their so-called charm.”