“We’ve been over this, sir,” Michio Pa, captain of the Connaught, said. “Your ship and its cargo are under conscript order of the Free Navy.”
“Your relief effort bullshit? Belters need supplies, let them buy some. Mine is mine.”
“It’s needed. If you’d cooperated with the order—”
“You shot us! You broke our drive cone!”
“You tried to evade us. Your passengers and crew—”
“Free Navy, my fucking ass! You’re thieves. You’re pirates.”
At her left, Evans—her XO and the most recent addition to her family—grunted like he’d been hit. Michio glanced at him, and his blue eyes were there to meet her. He grinned: white teeth and a too-handsome face. He was pretty, and he knew it. Michio muted her microphone, letting the stream of invective pour from the Hornblower without her, and nodded him on. What is it?
Evans pointed a thumb toward the console. “So angry,” he said. “Like to hurt a poor coyo’s feelings, he goes on like that.”
“Be serious,” Michio said, but through a smile.
“Am serious. Fragé bist.”
“Fragile. You?”
“In my heart,” Evans said, pressing a palm to his sculpted chest. “Little boy, me.”
On the speaker, the owner of the Hornblower had worked himself into a deeper froth. To hear him tell it, Pa was a thief and a whore and the kind of person who didn’t care whose babies died so long as she got her payday. If he was her father, he’d kill her instead of letting her dishonor her family. Evans snickered.
Despite herself, Michio laughed too. “Did you know your accent gets thicker when you flirt?”
“Yeah,” Evans said. “I’m just a complex tissue of affectation and vice. Took your mind off him, though. You were starting to lose your temper.”
“Not done losing it yet,” she said, and turned the mic back to live. “Sir. Sir! Can we at least agree that I’m the pirate who’s offering to lock you in your cabin for the trip to Callisto instead of throwing you into space? Would that be all right?”
There was a moment of stunned silence on the radio, then a roar of incoherent rage that resolved into phrases like drink your fucking Belter blood and kill you if you try. Michio lifted three fingers. Across the command deck, Oksana Busch waved her own hand in acknowledgment and tapped the weapons controls.
The Connaught wasn’t a Belter ship. Not originally. She’d been built by the Martian Congressional Republic Navy, and she’d come equipped with a wide variety of military and technical expert systems. They’d been on it for the better part of a year now, training in secret at first. And then when the day came, leading her into the fray. Now Michio watched her own monitor as the Connaught identified and targeted six places on the floating cargo ship where a stream of PDC fire or a well-placed missile would peel open the hull. The targeting lasers came on, painting the Hornblower. Michio waited. Evans’ smile was a little less certain than it had been. Slaughtering civilians wasn’t his first choice. In fairness, it wasn’t what Michio would have picked either, but the Hornblower wasn’t going to make its journey through the gates and out to whatever alien planet they’d thought to colonize. The negotiation now was only what the terms of that failure would be.
“Want to fire, bossmang?” Busch asked.
“Not yet,” Michio said. “Watch that drive. If they try to burn out of here? Then.”
“They try to burn on that busted cone, we can save the ammunition,” Busch said, derision in her voice.
“There’s people counting on that cargo.”
“Savvy me,” Busch said. Then, a moment later, “They’re still cold.”
The radio clicked, spat. On the other ship, someone was shouting, but not at her. Then there was another voice, then several, each trying to cut above the others. The report of a gun rang out, the sound of the attack pressed thin and nonthreatening by the radio.
A new voice came.
“Connaught? You
there?”
“Still here,” Michio said. “To whom am I speaking, please?”
“Name’s Sergio Plant,” the voice said. “Acting captain of the Hornblower. I’m offering up our surrender. Just no one gets hurt, okay?”
Evans grinned their triumph and relief.