What she needed was a business directory. There: on the menu after the obligatory tourist advertisements. The list of businesses by type. Vertical integration seemed to be the guiding philosophy here, of industry as well as architecture. Her experience in her aunt’s affairs helped her recognize the components of a complete pharmaceutical industry . . . raw materials used to manufacture unit and bulk packaging, labelling, and all the rest, the manufacturing stages for everything from intravenous solution containers to the foam that cushioned the final shipping containers. By the time she called the numbers she thought most likely, she felt she would understand whatever they might say.
“You’re who?” the voice said. Raffa repeated what she had begun to think of as pedigree and show experience: her family name, her sept, her aunt’s authorization to act as her agent. She rather hoped Aunt Marta didn’t ever know how far her authorization had been stretched.
“I went to school with Ottala Morreline,” Raffa added. Surely it couldn’t hurt to claim (honestly) acquaintance with a daughter of the CEO of the company that owned Patchcock.
“You what?” This time the voice fairly squeaked. Raffa frowned. While she doubted that Ottala’s friends visited here frequently, surely being a friend wouldn’t create that level of upset.
“We went to school together,” Raffa said. “The Campbell Academy.” Silly name, really—neither its founders nor anyone else involved had been named Campbell; apparently someone a century or so back had simply liked the name Campbell.
“Ah . . . I see. Well, I suppose—there’s a tour we give visiting . . . er . . . executives. You’d have to present your credentials—”
“I suppose,” Raffa said, with ill-concealed sarcasm, “you’re often annoyed by people impersonating Ottala’s school friends.”
“Pharmaceuticals,” Raffa said, trying to sound vague and ignorant to the bright young man assigned as her tour guide. She had met him in the corporate branch office, where she noticed a large, ungainly, ceramic piece in purples and oranges in the reception area, and a small one full of desk accessories on the receptionist’s desk. Now they were descending into the bowels of a factory, and even here, in odd corners, she’d noticed signs of Venezia’s work. She still thought of it as that, even though she suspected that everything here came from Venezia’s sources in the Guerni Republic. “But there’s lots of kinds, aren’t there?” That sounded really stupid; she wasn’t surprised that her guide gave her a sharp look. “I mean,” she said, trying to make up for it, “I know there’s antibiotics, antivirals, neuroleptics, contraceptives, but the other companies my aunt invested in usually stick to one or two chemical classes. Vertical integration, she says, is very important, from the substrate to the finished product. So ‘pharmaceuticals’ seemed vague.”
“I can’t discuss specific processes, you understand,” her guide said.
“Of course. But in general?”
“Er . . .” He paused, then spouted a long string of chemical syllables that Raffa suspected were faked. She caught “indole” and “pyrimadine” and “something-something-ergic-acid” but none of it sounded like the quick course she’d had from the Guernesi.
“I see,” she said, allowing herself to sound as confused as she felt. “I guess that’s what I’ll tell Aunt Marta, though I never heard of that before.”
“Your aunt’s planning to invest?” he asked, as if surprised.
“Didn’t they tell you, from the head office?” she asked. “I explained—that’s why they sent me on this tour.”
“But this is a family business. The Morrelines—”
“Apparently some family member’s died, and she thought of picking up anything that might be on the market—” Raffa stopped; her guide’s face had gone paper white.
“Died? Who died?”
Raffa shrugged. “I don’t know.” Especially since she’d made it up. The Morrelines were a large family; surely someone had died recently. “Probably a distant cousin or something,” she said. “Aunt Marta didn’t say. She just sent me here to look into things.” That with a bright smile that was supposed to disarm suspicion. But her guide looked away, tension in every line of face and neck.
Chapter Twelve
The more Heris worked with the local government, the more she knew about local resources, the more threatening the situation appeared. The mining colonies, most of them concentrated on the second largest satellite of the larger gas giant, Zalbod, had no defenses at all. Rockhounds, miners who worked the smaller chunks of debris, used little two-to-six-person pods for transportation; nothing could be mounted on them which would affect a ship with shields. There was one antiquated ore-hauler, large enough to mount both screens and weapons if they had had screens and weapons to mount, or if it had had enough powerplant to do more than crawl slowly from one orbital base to another.
“We have to hope someone’s listening back at Sector HQ,” Heris said. She could hope it, but she also knew, from experience, how civilian reports of trouble could end up at the bottom of someone’s stack. She didn’t have the current override codes that might have bumped their report up.
“Where’s Lady Cecelia?” Petris asked.
“At another horse farm, of course. I have no idea how it can take so long to pick out what she wants—particularly since there are genetic surgeons who specialize in equine design—she told me that. But now she’s visiting somebody she calls ‘Marcia and Poots,’ which sounds faintly obscene. She says she expects to be there several weeks, and I’m not to worry. Then she sent all these pictures—” Heris flicked through them on the display. “They’re just horses. Here we are in real danger, and she’s worrying about whether this one’s hocks are wiggly. I love the woman, but really!”
“Captain—” That was Koutsoudas, from the bridge. Heris leapt up.
“Coming now,” she said.
When she arrived, all the ex-military crew were clustered there, around Koutsoudas’s screen. They moved over so that she could see.
“It’s ours,” Koutsoudas said. He didn’t have to; Heris recognized the drive signature herself; she had commanded just such a cruiser. “And . . . another . . .” That, too, was familiar; although cruisers patrolled alone, this would not be a routine patrol. She expected three, cruiser and two patrol ships, and the final signature appeared even as she thought it. A ragged shift out of jump, or appropriate caution, depending on how much trouble the commander had expected to find.
“Find out who’s commanding, when you can,” Heris said. “I’ll let the Xavierans know—” She turned to her own board, and tapped in the code. They’d be relieved to know that the Fleet had finally listened, that help had arrived, that their survival didn’t depend on one armed yacht and its ex-military captain. And if they weren’t relieved enough, she herself was . . . those had been anxious days, wondering who would get here first. She knew her limits, even after roses and bagpipe parades.
“Captain, it’s Commander Garrivay.” Koutsoudas’s expression, which Heris was learning to read, gave some signal she couldn’t yet decode. She tried to remember a Garrivay, and couldn’t dredge up anything but the vague impression of the name on a promotion list years back.
“Which Garrivay?” Maybe the first name would mean something.
“Dekan Garrivay . . . Captain Livadhi had . . . uh . . . served on the same ship with him when they were both jigs. Sir.” Heris gave Koutsoudas a long stare, intended to remind him that she was now his captain, and this was no time to withhold loyalty. Koutsoudas sighed. “Right, Captain Serrano. Dekan Garrivay, in the opinion of Captain Livadhi, would require divine intervention to achieve the moral stature of a child rapist.”