Iron in the Vela Drift: Wraith of The Brigand

The hull of the Tin Hare sang a single high note as the displacement wave rolled over her port flank, and every loose fitting in the engine room jumped in sympathy. Pell Ostrum braced one grease-dark hand against the overhead conduit and counted the seconds between the flash and the sound. Three. Four. Five. The round had been aimed to miss, which meant whoever had fired it wanted to talk first. That was worse than a clean hit. Clean hits were simple.

On the bridge, Mara Voss had already swung the auxiliary scope to bear. The Drift churned around the Tin Hare in its usual slow gyre of rock dust and dead metal, gray-brown swirls against blacker black, and through the scope's cracked ocular she saw what her naked eye had refused to believe. A frigate, perhaps ninety meters stem to stern, hung at two thousand meters off the starboard bow where no frigate had any business hanging. Its hull was matte, unreflective, the color of old tar. No registration pendant. No transponder squawk. No corporate flag stitched into the fin. Just a hard, clean silhouette and a single gun port still cooling.

"Voss," Tann Yarrow's voice came up the speaking tube from the cargo deck, a rumble that always sounded as if it were climbing out of a bottle. "Voss, the deck just tried to throw me into the number two cradle. What in the seven hells was that?"

"Hold position," she said. "All hands, hold position. Tann, get eyes on the airlock seals. If we lose cabin pressure I want to know before the gauge does."

"Aye, but the gauge already knows, and it's crying about it."

She ignored him and pressed the transmit stud on the open hailer. Static snapped. The Drift ate signals, but short range still cut through.

"Unidentified vessel, this is Captain Mara Voss of the independent hauler Tin Hare. You have fired across my bow in restricted salvage space. Identify yourself and state your intention, or I will treat your next act as hostile."

The scope showed her the frigate's bow plate cycling open. A communications array, thin as a fishbone, extended on a delicate armature and oriented itself toward the Hare with the patience of a cat watching a mouse decide whether to run.

A voice came back. Male. Slow. Every consonant bitten off clean, as if the air between words cost him money.

"Captain Voss. Thank you for your patience. This is the independent frigate Wraith, acting under sealed charter, calling you on the recognized hailer band. I am Captain Sevryn Loke. I have business with your cargo and with one passenger currently listed on your transit log."

She did not like the way he said passenger. Passengers were cargo in Drift law, and cargo had owners.

"You have business with nothing on this deck, Captain Loke. We are registered independent under the Quill Accord, flagged neutral, and operating in declared salvage rights within the perimeter. If your charter wants to talk to me, it can send a courier with papers and wait six days for processing like everyone else."

A pause. The scope showed her the gun port cycling closed. That was not reassuring. Closing a gun meant you were done warning.

"Captain Voss, the courier system is not available to us. Our charter is, I am told, allergic to waiting. I am instructed to make you a generous offer for the contents of your forward hold and to relieve you of the individual I have named. If you refuse, I am instructed to be persuasive in other ways. I would prefer not to be. The offer is genuinely generous."

"Generous from whom?"

"That is not part of the offer."

She thumbed the transmit off and looked at Pell Ostrum, who had climbed the ladder to the bridge in the time it had taken Loke to speak and now stood by the chart console with one hand flat on the plotting surface as if steadying it. His face had the careful blankness she had learned to read as his most dangerous expression.

"Pell."

"I heard." He did not look up. "The forward hold is the Aros Kettle cache. The passenger is Sorc. Both of them came aboard under Quill Accord seal. If he's asking, he already knows that."

"Then he already knows I can't just hand them over."

"He already knows that too."

Tann's voice came up the tube again, closer now, as if he had left his post and climbed halfway to the bridge deck. "Voss, the hull's intact. No breach. But the number two mooring cradle is warped, and if we try to maneuver hard to starboard it's going to shear and drop two tons of scrap on our heads. We can run, but we can't run pretty."

"Understood. Stay on the cradle." She keyed the hailer again. "Captain Loke. I am going to give you an answer you do not want, and then I am going to ask you a question I expect you to answer honestly, because I am told you are a polite man. Here is the answer. No. The contents of my forward hold are under Quill Accord salvage registration and were catalogued by a Dock Marshal forty hours before you decloaked within sensor range. The passenger on my transit log is a protected hire under Drift Labor Convention, and his contract is filed. You cannot buy either of them on this deck. You cannot take either of them by force without making yourself a pirate in the eyes of every chartered salvage operator between here and Meridian. Here is the question. Who sent you?"

Silence on the channel. She counted. The scope showed her Loke's frigate holding steady, its profile unchanging, the fishbone antenna still oriented toward her bridge with insulting patience.

"Your Dock Marshal," Loke said at last, "is dead. Your filing is in the Wraith's hands. Your protected hire is, as of two hours ago, a man without a contract, because the entity that held his contract has been administratively dissolved, and the dissolution is dated before his boarding. So. The offer."

She felt Pell's hand leave the chart console. Felt, rather than saw, him turn toward the communications station. He kept his voice low, meant for her ear, but the bridge was small.

"Mara. If the marshal is dead, the filing is void. If the contract is dissolved, Sorc is a stowaway in the eyes of the Accord. We don't have a leg."

"We have two legs," she said, still watching the scope. "We have the Hare, and we have whatever is in the forward hold that this man is willing to commit a felony to buy."

"Mara."

"Pell."

"That cache is sealed. We don't know what is in it. Kettle sold it to us as a salvage lot, unmarked, unidentified, no manifest, no bill of origin. We accepted it under salvage rights because that is what we do, and because Aros Kettle is not in the habit of selling junk. If Loke is right about the filing, he is also right about the contract, and we are hauling contraband for a dead man."

"Then we are hauling contraband for a dead man," she said. "We have been doing that since before you married Lira, Pell. We have been doing that since before the Hare had a name. We will continue to do that until someone pays us enough to stop, and this man has not offered enough."

She keyed the hailer a third time.

"Captain Loke. I have considered your offer. I find it insufficient. I will now consider it insulting if you do not name your principal. You have one minute. At the end of that minute, I will activate my distress beacon on the Accord emergency band, and I will file a piracy complaint with the first Marshal within range. You have approximately six days to regret that, which is the same six days your courier system requires. We will discuss terms then, over a plate of something hot. Use the time."

She thumbed the transmit off and let her hand drop to her side. On the scope, the Wraith sat motionless. The fishbone antenna had not moved.

"He's thinking," Tann said from the ladder. She had not heard him come up.

"He is not thinking," she said. "He is letting me think he is thinking. There is a difference."

"Then what is he doing?"

"He is waiting for whoever is behind him to tell him what to do."

Pell had moved to the auxiliary plotter and was running the fragmentary registry data they had on file for any vessel matching the Wraith's tonnage and profile. The result was a small black square and the word NONE in clean Drift typeface. He stared at it for a long moment, then looked up at her.

"He is not in any database."

"Which means he paid to not be in any database," she said, "which means he works for someone who can afford to keep a frigate off the books, which means we are out of our weight class, which means we are going to talk our way out of this or we are going to die, and I would prefer not to die today because Lira has a roast in the oven."

"You think I do not know what is in my own oven?"

"I think you know what is in your oven and you think I have forgotten that today is not a day I want to be heroic. So. Roast. Plans. Roast."

The minute was running. She could feel it in her back teeth.

"Captain Voss." Loke's voice returned, unchanged in cadence, as if the minute had not happened at all. "My principal declines to be named at this time. My principal does, however, authorize me to clarify the offer. The contents of your forward hold will be purchased at four times the registered salvage value, to be paid in certified chit drawn on the Meridian Reserve, transferable at any port of consequence. The individual currently on your transit log will be conveyed to a station of his choosing, at no cost to him, with a sealed letter of indemnity guaranteeing no further inquiry into his activities prior to this date. In exchange, you will alter course to the coordinates I will provide, transfer the cargo and the individual under standard vacuum protocol, and accept a non-disclosure clause regarding the contents of the hold and the identity of my principal. You will then proceed on your original heading, and we will not meet again."

"That is a better offer," she admitted. "It is still not an answer."

"It is the only answer I am authorized to give. I am a man who keeps his authorizations in good order. So, I am told, are you."

She glanced at Pell. He gave a small nod that meant I am with you, do what you must. She glanced at Tann. He was leaning against the ladder housing with his arms folded, his face unreadable in the bridge's dim red standby lighting.

"Tann."

"Aye."

"If this goes wrong, what is your honest opinion of our odds?"

"My honest opinion is we are a hauler with a warped cradle and a distress beacon, and he is a frigate with guns and a clean bow. My honest opinion is that if he wanted to kill us, we would be dead, and he is talking, and men who talk when they could shoot are men who need something they cannot get by shooting. So. We are not dead. That is something."

"It is something," she agreed.

She keyed the hailer.

"Captain Loke. I am going to refuse your offer, and I am going to tell you why, and then I am going to make you a counteroffer that I suspect your principal has already anticipated, because men who keep their authorizations in good order tend to work for men who keep their contingencies in good order. Here is why I refuse. The contents of my forward hold were sold to me by a man who is now, I take it, dead. The individual on my transit log was hired by me under a contract that is, I take it, void. If I accept your offer, I am confessing to a crime in front of the man who would profit by prosecuting it, and I am not in the habit of confessing. I am in the habit of making the other fellow confess first. Here is my counteroffer. You will stand down to one thousand meters and hold position while I transmit a copy of this conversation, in full, on the Accord emergency band, addressed to any Marshal within relay range. You will do this because the moment I transmit, your principal's name becomes a matter of public record whether I have it or not, because every operator in the Drift will be looking for the man who fired on a hauler under Quill seal. You will then, at your leisure, name your principal to me, and we will discuss a price that does not require me to perjure myself. Do we have an understanding?"

Silence. Longer this time. The scope showed her the Wraith's bow plate cycling open again, and a second array extending beside the first. She could not read the configuration at this range, but Pell could. He squinted through the auxiliary scope and made a small, unhappy sound in his throat.

"Targeting solution," he said. "He is painting us."

"I see it."

"Mara."

"I see it, Pell."

She waited. The bridge smelled of warm oil and old coolant and the faint, ever-present iron tang of the Drift that never quite left the hull no matter how often they scrubbed it. Tann's breathing was loud in the quiet. Somewhere below, Lira was probably taking the roast out of the oven. Somewhere on the Wraith, a man in a clean uniform was waiting for an answer that his principal had not yet given him.

The channel crackled.

"Captain Voss." Loke's voice, unchanged. "You have made me a counteroffer that my principal has, I confirm, anticipated. He has authorized me to accept, with one amendment. I will stand down to one thousand meters. I will hold position. I will permit your transmission. In exchange, when my principal's name is on your lips, you will hear it from me first, before you hear it from any relay. This is a matter of professional pride. Do we have an understanding?"

Pell's hand was on her shoulder. She did not need to look at him to know what his face was doing.

"We have an understanding, Captain Loke. One thousand meters. Hold position. And when your principal's name crosses your tongue, you will say it clearly, because I am told I have a working-class ear and I do not enjoy asking twice."

"Acknowledged. Standing down. Wraith out."

The targeting solution winked out on Pell's scope. The Wraith's bow plate cycled closed. The frigate began, with the slow grace of a large predator, to edge closer at a distance that was no longer a firing solution and not yet an intimacy.

The Wraith's bow drifted into position at one thousand meters and held there, a dark mote suspended in the Drift's perpetual dusk. From the bridge of the Brass Mercy, the frigate filled a quadrant of the viewscreen, its running lights stuttering in some pattern that the eye could not quite resolve. Sevryn Loke stood at his command podium and watched the targeting return resolve into its new geometry. The reticle tracked a featureless point on the salvage hauler's aft hull. It meant nothing. It was a courtesy. The reticle would track whatever Loke told it to track, and Loke had not yet told it anything worth tracking.

He reached for the comm panel.

"Captain Voss."

The channel opened to a hiss of static and the faint working clatter of a ship whose crew was awake and afraid.

"Captain Loke." Her voice came back unchanged, the working-class Drift drawl flat as a deck plate. "I assume you have brought me the name I asked for."

"I have brought you an answer that I suspect you will find less satisfying." Loke adjusted his cuffs. The gesture was small, precise, and entirely his own. "My principal declines to be named over an open channel that your engineer, who I commend for his restraint, can presumably still hear. He is, however, prepared to make his position clear in terms that will, I hope, render the question academic."

The channel held silence for two breaths. Then Voss spoke.

"Captain Loke, I have been hailed by pirates, by port authority, by the kindly souls who run the Lethnian Combine's satellite office, and once by a young woman who was very sure that she was the second coming of Saint Kira and very unsure of which frequency Saint Kira transmitted on. None of them have ever thought to negotiate with me over a name. So you will forgive me if I take a moment."

"Take whatever moment suits you, Captain. I am at your disposal."

Loke let the silence sit. Across the bridge of the Wraith, the duty officer was watching him with the particular stillness of a man who suspected he was about to learn something he would rather not know. Loke did not return the look. The duty officer's opinion of the moment was not relevant to the moment.

"I will speak plainly," Loke said, "because I find that the people one is most inclined to deceive are the ones one ends up working beside, and I suspect you and I will be working beside one another for some time yet. My principal represents a syndicate. The syndicate has, for reasons that do not concern me and would not interest you if they did, identified the data vault your navigator recovered as an asset of considerable commercial interest. The syndicate wishes to acquire this vault. The syndicate is prepared to compensate your crew in a manner that I will, in due course, describe. And the syndicate would prefer that this transaction occur without the involvement of any third party who might consider themselves entitled to a commission."

He paused to let the shape of it land.

"In plain terms, Captain Voss. The Drift Syndicate will pay your crew the sum of four hundred thousand standard credits upon receipt of the navigation packet your navigator, Mister Quill, provided. The packet will be transmitted to my ship on a frequency of my choosing, after which my principal will confirm receipt, after which I will release your vessel and depart. The vault itself will remain in your possession. You may keep it, sell it, gift it, or use it as a coffee table, and the syndicate will not trouble you further. You will have four hundred thousand credits. Your crew will have a quiet journey home. Your engineer will have his wife."

A long silence answered him. When Voss spoke again, her voice had not changed.

"You are telling me, with great courtesy, that you want me to sell you the navigation data out of a wreck we have not yet boarded, and that you will pay me four hundred thousand credits to do so."

"I am telling you that the syndicate will pay you four hundred thousand credits for your cooperation in a transaction that, if conducted correctly, will leave you richer than you were yesterday and not measurably worse off in any other respect."

"You are also telling me that you will depart, which suggests to me that there is a step in this transaction after the payment."

"The transaction has one step, Captain. The payment, and the departure. I do not see how a step after the departure could be considered a step in the transaction."

"Your syndicate," Voss said, "sounds like an outfit that does not part with four hundred thousand credits without a clear understanding of what it is purchasing."

"My syndicate is an outfit that prefers to keep its motivations to itself, and that respects the right of its counterparties to keep their motivations to themselves in return."

"You have answered my question by not answering it, Captain Loke. I will note that you did so with grace, and I will further note that I do not find it persuasive."

Loke permitted himself a small exhalation through the nose.

"Captain Voss, I am required to be honest with you, because the alternative is that we waste one another's time, and I do not intend to waste yours. The syndicate does not intend to resell this navigation packet to any party of whom you have ever heard. It does intend to use the packet to retrieve the data vault in question. It will then resell the vault, in due course, to the highest bidder. The buyer will not be anyone you know. The buyer will not be anyone your navigator knows. The buyer will not be a buyer whose name would help you, or your engineer, or your deck boss, sleep better at night. The syndicate is, in plain terms, in the business of selling things to people who can afford to buy things, and it does not concern itself with what those people do with the things once they have them."

The channel hissed.

"I am asking you to consider," Loke continued, "whether four hundred thousand credits is a price at which you are prepared to make that consideration. I am not asking you to decide now. I am asking you to consider."

"Captain Loke."

"Captain Voss."

"You have just told me, with admirable economy, that the syndicate you represent intends to retrieve the navigation data from my ship, recover a data vault from a wreck I have not yet boarded, and then sell that vault to an unknown buyer for an unknown purpose, and that you will pay me four hundred thousand credits to look the other way while this is done. You have also told me, by way of an omission I do not for a moment believe was accidental, that the buyer of the vault will be someone whose name would not be reassuring to anyone in this channel. I want you to understand that I have heard every word of what you have said, and that what I have heard is a man describing, in the gentlest possible terms, an arrangement that I find morally objectionable and tactically unsound."

"I would not dream of characterizing your objections, Captain. I would, however, suggest that moral objections are a luxury that crews in your situation are sometimes obliged to defer."

"My situation, Captain Loke, is that I am a salvage hauler with a half-loaded hold and a navigator who has been skimming more from his contract than his contract allows, and that is the most complicated part of my situation. Whatever else becomes of my situation today, I would like to begin from that simpler premise."

"Captain Voss."

"Yes."

"My principal has authorized me to increase the offer. The offer is now five hundred and fifty thousand credits."

"I am going to pretend you did not say that, Captain Loke, because the number you just said is the number that a man says when he has not yet heard the number he is prepared to say, and I would prefer to have that conversation with the man who is prepared to say it. Do you have a number that you believe represents the upper limit of what your principal will authorize?"

"I am not authorized to disclose that number."

"Then I will tell you what number I believe represents the upper limit, and you will not confirm or deny it, and we will both know that the number we have agreed not to discuss is the number that matters. The number is one million two hundred thousand credits."

The duty officer shifted in his seat. Loke did not look at him.

"Captain Voss, that number is not the number we are discussing."

"That number is the number I am discussing, Captain Loke, and you and I both know that your syndicate is not in the business of making offers it cannot improve. I have salvaged half a wrecksite over my career and I have never once been offered a price that the buyer was not prepared to exceed. The only thing that varies is how much the buyer is willing to exceed it by, and how much of that variation the buyer thinks he can keep in his pocket."

"Captain Voss, I am required to inform you that the offer of five hundred and fifty thousand credits is the offer that my principal has authorized, and that I am not in a position to exceed it."

"Then I will tell you what is going to happen, Captain Loke. You are going to stand at that podium of yours, and you are going to feel a great desire to exceed the number your principal authorized. You are going to feel this desire because you are a man who understands, on some level that your principal has not yet authorized you to acknowledge, that the price of this packet is not the price your principal believes it to be. You are going to feel this desire, and you are going to look at your duty officer, and you are going to say to yourself, this is the moment at which I either exceed my authority or I do not. And you are going to exceed your authority, because you are a man who has exceeded his authority before, and you are not the kind of man who repeats himself."

The bridge of the Wraith was very quiet.

"Captain Voss."

"Captain Loke."

"I am required to inform you that the offer of five hundred and fifty thousand credits is the offer that my principal has authorized, and that any number exceeding that figure would exceed the scope of my engagement."

"That is a careful answer, Captain Loke, and I want you to know that I heard every word of it, and that what I heard was a man who did not say no."

"I did not say yes, either."

"No, you did not. You said a number, and you said you were required to say it, and you did not say what would happen if the number were higher. We will sit with that, you and I. We will sit with that for as long as it takes."

Loke straightened the cuffs of his coat. The gesture was small, precise, and gave his hands something to do that was not the thing he wanted to do.

"Captain Voss. The syndicate has authorized me to hold this offer open for thirty minutes. At the expiration of thirty minutes, the offer is rescinded. I am required to inform you that the rescission of the offer will be accompanied by a return to the operational posture this vessel was maintaining when you so graciously accepted my principal's counteroffer."

"You are telling me that in thirty minutes, you will put a gun on my ship again."

"I am telling you that the syndicate will, at that time, resume a posture consistent with the protection of its interests."

"Captain Loke, that is a very polite way of putting a gun on my ship."

"It is the only way I am prepared to put one, Captain. I have a great deal of respect for your position, and I would not dream of phrasing it less politely than the moment requires."

The channel held for a moment. Somewhere behind Voss, in the working quiet of the Brass Mercy's bridge, Loke could hear the faint creak of a man leaning against a console.

"Captain Loke," Voss said, "before the thirty minutes begin, I want you to tell me the name of the man who is going to buy this vault when you retrieve it. I am not asking for a buyer. I am asking for the name of the man who will be in the room when the syndicate decides who to sell to. You know the name. I would like to hear you say it."

The bridge of the Wraith held its breath. The duty officer did not move. The targeting reticle, still tracking a featureless point on the aft hull of the Brass Mercy, ticked once as the salvage hauler shifted slightly on the Drift's slow current.

"I do not have that name, Captain Voss."

"You do."

"I do not. The syndicate's buyers are not disclosed to its operatives. I am an instrument, not a partner. I am told what to acquire. I am not told what becomes of the acquisition after I have acquired it."

"Captain Loke."

"Captain Voss."

"I believe you. I want you to know that I believe you, because I want you to understand that I am not making this demand because I think you are lying to me. I am making this demand because I want you to have a chance to say the name if you have it. You do not have it. So we will proceed without it."

"Proceed how, Captain?"

"Captain Loke, I am going to take the thirty minutes you have offered me. I am going to use them to consult with my crew. I am going to ask my engineer whether he believes five hundred and fifty thousand credits is a price at which a man ought to sell his wife a future. I am going to ask my deck boss whether the Drift Syndicate is a name he recognizes from his years on the lanes. I am going to ask myself whether the price of a navigation packet is a price I am prepared to pay for the privilege of finding out what is in a vault I have not yet boarded."

"And at the expiration of the thirty minutes?"

"At the expiration of the thirty minutes, Captain Loke, I will hail you on this channel, and I will give you an answer that you will find either very welcome or very unwelcome, and in either case I will have given it to you clearly and without games. That is the kind of captain I am. I expect it is the kind of captain you would prefer to deal with."

"Captain Voss, I have dealt with many kinds of captain, and I will not pretend that your kind is not, on balance, the kind I would prefer. You have twenty-nine minutes."

"Then I will use them well, Captain Loke. Brass Mercy out."

The cockpit of the Brass Mercy smelled of coolant and the particular staleness of recycled air that had passed through too many filters. Mara Voss sat in the pilot's chair with her hands loose on the throttles, her face unreadable in the instrument glow. Tann Yarrow stood behind her, one hand on the seatback, his bulk filling the space between the navigation station and the environmental panel. Neither of them had spoken since the channel had closed.

Pell Ostrum's voice came over the internal speaker, quiet and level as ever, with the faint vowels of a northern port town under each consonant. "Mara, I have the trajectory plotted for a jettison-and-burn. If you intend to do something foolish, I would like to know what it is so I can calibrate the inertial dampers for the parts of the ship that matter."

"Pell." Mara did not turn around. "I am going to ask you a question, and I want you to answer it as the engineer of this ship and not as the husband of Lira Ostrum. Can you do that?"

A pause. The faint hiss of the speaker. "I will try."

"If I put the Tin Hare through that collapsing fragment of comet at the four-seven mark, and I time the burn to coincide with the moment of maximum debris occlusion, do we have a chance of reaching the inner belt before Sevryn Loke's sensors can reacquire us?"

Another pause, longer this time. Tann Yarrow shifted his weight, and the deck plating gave a low groan beneath his boots.

"The fragment is rotating at approximately point-three rad per second on an unstable axis," Pell said. "Its debris envelope extends roughly four hundred meters beyond the core. The Tin Hare is a scout skiff with minimal armor and no redundant systems. If you threaded it correctly, the particle density would mask your drive signature for between forty and sixty seconds. After that, you would be in the clear, or you would not be in the clear, and there would be very little middle ground."

"And the chance of threading it correctly?"

"Without a probe run first, I would estimate thirty percent. With a probe run, perhaps fifty. But you do not have time for a probe run, and Sevryn Loke would see the probe."

"I have a probe," Mara said.

Tann's hand tightened on the seatback. "Mara."

"I have a decoy drone in the cargo bay. It is a salvage piece, pulled off a derelict crawler last season, and it has a serviceable drive core. I can load the falsified coordinates onto it, rig a delayed ignition, and jettison it on a reciprocal bearing. Sevryn Loke's sensors will see it, and his automated systems will track it. The Tin Hare will go through the fragment in the opposite direction while his attention is divided."

"You are describing a feint," Pell said.

"I am describing survival."

"You are describing a gamble with a thirty percent success rate using a ship that belongs to this crew and not to you."

"Yes."

The speaker was quiet for a long moment. Then Pell Ostrum said, in the same measured voice he had used to give her the figures, "If you do this, I will not be able to tell Lira. She would want me to talk you out of it, and I would not be able to do it convincingly, and she would know, and she would be frightened. So I will be quiet about it, and I will watch the dampers, and if the ship comes through I will buy you a bottle of the port you like, and if it does not, I will tell her that you were brave and that you were thinking of all of us when you did it."

"Pell."

"Yes, Mara."

"That is the kind of thing I do not want you to say, and the kind of thing I am very glad you said."

"I know."

She reached for the comm toggle, hesitated, and then turned in the chair to look up at Tann. The deck boss's face was a study in the kind of fear that had nowhere to go. His superstition was a real thing, a working man's talisman against the Drift, and what she was proposing would have offended every one of his gods. He believed her anyway. That was the long association, and it was the only thing that made the moment bearable.

"If this goes wrong," she said, "I need you to open a channel to Pell and tell him to seal the engineering bay and ride it out. The Brass Mercy has a better chance of limping back to the lane on its own than it does with a panicked pilot at the helm."

"And if it goes right?"

"Then I will be back inside the hour, and I will buy the bottle myself, and I will sit in the galley and drink it with both of you, and I will complain about the taste the whole time, and you will tell me that I do not appreciate good port, and Pell will agree with you, and we will be three people who have done a stupid thing and lived through it."

Tann's jaw worked. "I do not like this plan."

"I do not like this plan either. I am going to do it anyway."

He nodded once, a short motion, and moved to the cargo manifest terminal. His thick fingers moved over the keys with surprising delicacy as he pulled up the specifications for the salvage drone and began the loading sequence for the falsified coordinates. Mara turned back to the pilot's chair and opened the channel to Sevryn Loke.

The screen resolved into the same image: the narrow face, the steady gaze, the dark uniform. The man did not appear to have moved in the intervening minutes. He inclined his head a fraction when her signal came through.

"Captain Voss. I had begun to wonder if you intended to use the silence as your answer."

"I am not a captain who uses silence as an answer, Captain Loke. I am a captain who uses the time I am given. I have consulted with my crew."

"And?"

"And I am going to open the cargo bay and jettison the falsified coordinates that you have been waiting for me to admit I possess. I am going to do this in a way that allows you to verify that they are, in fact, what you have been asking for, and in a way that allows both our ships to depart this sector without further bloodshed. I would like to propose a verification window of two minutes from the moment of jettison, during which time neither vessel will alter course or open fire."

Sevryn Loke studied her through the screen. The temperature of his regard did not change. "You are proposing to surrender the coordinates."

"I am proposing to let you have the coordinates, which is not the same thing as surrendering them, but the practical effect is the same and we both know it."

"And what will you do, Captain Voss, once the coordinates are in my possession?"

"I will go back to the lane. I will pay off my crew. I will take the contract with the Leaning Wren and I will collect the salvage, and I will spend the next several years thinking very carefully about the kind of captain that I am, and whether I made the right decision tonight. You will go back to the interests that sent you, and you will deliver to them what they sent you for, and you will be paid for your trouble, and the matter will be closed."

He was quiet for a moment. "You understand that I will not be able to guarantee your safe passage once I have the coordinates. The interests I represent will have what they want, but they are not interested in leaving witnesses."

"I am aware of that, Captain Loke. I am asking you to guarantee it anyway, because the alternative is that I do not open the cargo bay, and we both spend the next several hours shooting at each other until one of us runs out of ammunition, and the coordinates in my vault stay in my vault."

"That is a credible threat."

"It is not a threat. It is a description of a likely outcome."

"I see." He folded his hands on the desk before him. The gesture was precise, almost ceremonial. "Very well, Captain Voss. I will accept your proposal. You have two minutes from the moment of jettison. After that, the agreement is at an end, and we are two ships in a contested sector with no further obligations to one another."

"I understand."

"Jettison when you are ready."

She closed the channel. Tann's hands were still on the manifest terminal, but he had stopped typing. He was watching her across the cockpit with the expression of a man waiting for a signal he did not want to receive.

"Now," she said.

He hit the key. In the cargo bay, two decks below, a serviceable drone bearing a falsified set of coordinates began its ignition sequence. The cargo bay doors parted. The drone slipped out into the dark and began to accelerate on a reciprocal bearing, its drive signature flaring against the backdrop of the fragmenting comet.

Mara had the Tin Hare in the launch cradle already. She had not told Tann, because she had not wanted him to have to lie to Pell about what was happening. She hit the launch sequence, and the skiff dropped free of the Brass Mercy like a stone from a sling. The inertial compensators fought her as she pulled the nose around toward the four-seven mark and the collapsing fragment, and the cabin filled with the particular smell of overheated air and a copper tang from the drive that she would remember for the rest of her life.

The fragment filled the forward view. It was not a single piece but a slow explosion of ice and rock that had once been the nucleus of something older than the Drift, and it was coming apart along seams that pulsed with the light of a distant sun. She could see the larger pieces tumbling, could see the smaller debris drifting between them in patterns that seemed, for a moment, almost deliberate.