"Vatta's War - 03 - Engaging The Enemy" - читать интересную книгу автора (Moon Elizabeth)

"It's a Vatta ship," Ky said. "I'm claiming it as stolen property; shouldn't need to go through the court at all..."
Rafe pursed his lips. "You're not law enforcement; you don't have a right to just grab your own back."
Space law, Ky recalled, had been more arcane and confusing than n-space theory. "I suppose it depends on which jurisdiction we land in...wonder if Osman has a law library in his database anywhere." Her implant queried the ship database, then dug deeper into the relevant sections. Salvage wasn't an option: not with witnesses to the fact that Fair Kaleen hadn't been derelict or abandoned. Reclaiming stolen property...no, Rafe was right. Very few jurisdictions allowed that. In fact, the only legal standing she had was as privateer.
And she still hadn't told Rafe she had that letter of marque. If she stayed on that course, she'd have to tell him eventually, but in the meantime she had another person aboard she trusted more. "Excuse me," she said to Rafe. "I really must get this done." He raised his brows at her, but left quietly.
_______
If she had been legitimate military, and Gordon Martin had been her senior NCO, she'd have known how lucky she was. Now she wondered if he'd be willing to stay with her once he found out.
Martin looked at her with a faint but definite smile. "Privateer, eh? Well, they picked a good one this time."
"I beg your pardon?"
He shifted in his seat. "Ma'am, I did serve on a front-line vessel; we...knew unofficially, I guess you'd say, about the privateer program. Damned foolishness, I thought most of the time, though I'd like to have been assigned to one."
"So you'll stay?"
"Until you throw me off, ma'am. It doesn't bother me. Privateers are official, just about; they do something that needs doing."
"You do know that the government seems not to be happy with the Vatta family at the moment."
He shrugged. "That's politics, Captain. It'll shift back; it always does. Your family's got a good reputation. And I know you."
That took care of one problem, but she had a raft of others, legal and practical. Staying busy might keep her mind off those scenes the implant had made all too memorable. She wanted to go home; she wanted to go home now. Find the surviving members of her family, find out why Slotter Key had turned its back on them. She could not believe the government had caved in for Osman, of all people.
_______
In the dark hours between midnight and dawn, the presidential palace was dark except for the duty rooms: communications, security. The President, in his comfortable bed, had finally fallen asleep; his wife, in the adjoining bedroom, snored loudly, but thick walls and doors muffled those annoying rasps and gurgles.
He woke to the sound of a comunit chime, his heart pounding. Who would call at this hour? No calls should have been passed through; his valet should have woken him...his hand was scrabbling on the bedside console when he realized that it was his internal unit, his skullphone.
"Look under your pillow," a voice whispered. The line went dead.
Every hair on his body stood up; he was drenched in cold sweat. There could be nothing under his pillow-he always turned his pillows before he went to sleep-but he could not ignore that voice. He turned on the light and lifted his pillow.
The data chip, hardly larger than his thumbnail, gave him no clue. It was there, in that place where it could not be, a tiny, shiny, terrifying presence. He had a chip reader in his room, of course, but he felt a great reluctance to use it. What if this wasn't really a data chip, but something else, something explosive? What if it was toxic and had already poisoned him? The sweat trickling down his sides stank...surely he didn't smell that bad all the time.
When he looked around the room, nothing else was out of place. He heard no sound he should not hear, but his heart was pounding so loudly that he could not be sure.
He had to get hold of himself. He had to calm down and think. If he called in the security forces, they would wake up everyone, create a huge mess, and probably not find out anything useful. He knew who was behind this, whether it could be proven or not: Grace Vatta. The old hag was crazy; she'd been in a mental hospital at one time, and they should never have let her out. He just had to find a way to neutralize her.
_______
Gracie Lane Vatta smiled to herself as she watched sweat trickle down the President's face, his ribs, his back. His security should have detected the tap into their own surveillance system years ago, but they hadn't. Now, would he put that chip in the reader, or not? Would he call his security squad? She had plans for each possibility, plans he would find as unsettling as the chip under his pillow. No doubt he would have plans, too, when he calmed down. She knew he was smart enough to suspect her, but she was confident that her plans were better than his plans. She'd had longer to work on them.
A telltale lit on her work board. With one eye on the screen showing the President, Gracie switched that channel to full recording and answered the call. "Found something," a male voice said. Gracie ran the scan through her voice files and her mouth quirked. Master Sergeant MacRobert, Slotter Key Spaceforce Academy. Should she use his name and startle him?
"Identify, please," she said.
"Spaceforce Academy," he said. "I think you know who I am and I'd rather not have my name used. I hear you're looking into the late unpleasantness. In detail."
"Yes."
"That Miznar№ kid who got your youngster in trouble-"
She repressed a gasp. "Yes?"
"He had contact from someone who claimed to be a Vatta. Ever hear of someone named Osman?"
"Osman Vatta, yes." She remembered Osman all too well. She'd tried to convince the Vatta higher-ups at the time to have him killed, but she was fresh out of the asylum and that had led to threats of having her recommitted. If Osman was involved, that explained a lot. Osman had known about the bunkers under corporate headquarters, for instance.
"He is a Vatta?" The voice-MacRobert, no doubt about it-sounded uncertain.
"Unfortunately, yes. A most unpleasant piece of work, and long since kicked out, but a Vatta. So Osman paid the student to get Ky in trouble?"
"What he said was that Osman was sympathetic to the Miznar№ feelings about biomodification, and suggested that Ky, as a Vatta, would be more likely to help him get contact with a cleric so that he could tell his story."
"What is he, stupid? The boy, I mean."
"He's not the brightest cadet we've ever had, but not actually stupid. Inexperienced. Quite genuinely religious, the fervent kind. Osman also told him that Ky wouldn't get in trouble because she was a Vatta."
"So it wasn't malicious on the boy's part?"
"Not against Ky, at least. He was shocked when she disappeared. He claimed she was the only person at the Academy who befriended him and was nice to him."
"How'd you find this out?"
"He...er...didn't graduate." MacRobert's voice was grim now. "No matter what was said, Ky was a popular cadet, and no one else was willing to put the time into this fellow she'd been tutoring. He was pretty much shunned. He...er...committed suicide."
"After telling you all this?"
"No, after writing it all down, as a religious duty. Luckily I got hold of it before a Miznar№ chaplain did. I...er...edited it a bit, but I made a copy. Thought you might want it."
"What I want is some idea of why you're doing this," Grace said. "I suspect you're committing several breaches of regulations-"
"Spaceforce didn't do its job," MacRobert said. "Somebody got to somebody, and I want to know who and how. I think you're likelier to find out."
"We should meet," Grace said.
"No."
She had expected that and had her answer ready. "We need to talk longer and more openly than we can over any com line, no matter how secure. Either you trust me or you don't."
A long pause; then: "Why should I trust you?"
"For the same reason I should trust you," Grace said. "We need each other; it would serve neither of us to harm the other. You care about Spaceforce-"