can happen."

"You be careful," Gary said, his brow furrowed. "We don't have that fancy medical team to fix you up if anything goes wrong again."

"I know," Ky said. She rubbed her neck, which was beginning to

hurt. It was probably just tension.

A few minutes later, Beeah brought trays up to the bridge: her tray had a large bowl of gold-eye raspberries, a jug of cream, and some

sugar, as well as a hearty sandwich of thin-sliced meats and cheeses.

"Gary said you sounded like you needed to eat. Riel, here's yours, too."

"I probably do," Ky said. "I think my last meal was... I don't even

know."

"The others will be ready on time, Gary says, but how are we going to get them down to the passengers?"

"That's what the work parties are for," Ky said, through a mouthful

of sandwich. "What is this stuff, anyway? Tastes expensive.""From Balknas Brighteyes -they had trays of already-sliced meats in one of the coolers, so we thought better to eat them now. All kinds of stuff I didn't even recognize, but tasty."

"Mmm. Soon as I finish this, I'll go down and meet with the captains, explain the rota I've been working on." Ky gulped down another bite. "I'd better take someone with me, in case that idiot Kristoffson tries anything."

"The Rose's captain? What's he done?""Acted like a spoiled brat at summer camp," Riel answered around his own bite of sandwich. "All huffy and demanding and complaining."

"Thinks I've done something wrong by taking a contract with the

mercenaries," Ky said. "Dad always said passenger carriers were snooty. So I'll just take someone along... Mehar and her pistol bow, I think."

The nine captains looked unhappy but said nothing at first as Ky handed out the work party rota. "Right now, only the toilets

interface with our environmental system," she said. "We need to get the showers and the sinks hooked up as well. I know your senior engineers are with you-so we'll need to get their help to work with my engineering first, Quincy Robin. I understand your schedules were all synched with ours two days ago, is that right?"

They nodded.

"Good," she said. "That means the meal we're about to have is second-shift main meal, and-""I expect that you will reserve rations from the Empress Rose for Empress Rose personnel," Kristoffson said. The other captains gave him a look.

"That isn't possible," Ky said. "We have limited storage space for perishables. Although we've allocated additional cargo space for frozen rations, we've combined all the rest in order of use."

"But our rations are gourmet quality!" Kristoffson said."You were planning to feast on fancy stuff and champagne while the rest of us ate sardines and crackers?" That was Captain Lucas, of the Balknas Line cargo ship Balknas Brighteyes. "I hate to disappoint you, but the rations we sent aboard were not so bad that we need your red ripe strawberries or whatever it was."

"Gold-eye raspberries," muttered Kristoffson, now red in the face.

Lucas shrugged. "Good enough, but I prefer summerberries from

Winterfast, lightly dusted with cinnamon."

The two men were both looking puffy about the neck, and Ky could have laughed.

"Actually I prefer to find out what Captain Vatta needs from us to

make this as comfortable as possible," said another man-Captain Paison, she saw from the list. A good ten centimeters shorter than Captain Kristoffson, stocky, dark hair graying at the temples, and enough weathering on his skin to show that he didn't spend all his time aboard ship. His ship, the Marie, was about the size of most Vatta transports. "If we haggle too long over kitchen affairs, Captain Vatta-who actually has a ship to command-might just decide to go back to work and ignore us." He winked at Ky.

"But it's-," Kristoffson started. Paison held up his hand and

Kristoffson was quiet.

"Captain Vatta, my two engineering staff are at your disposal.

Perhaps after eating? I'm sure you'd like to get all the plumbing hooked up as soon as possible."

"Yes, I would," Ky said. "You'll all be more comfortable when you have shower facilities and somewhere to wash up your things. As you know, this is a small ship, and this many personnel aboard puts us at the limit of our environmental system. Unfortunately, this means we must ration water use, especially in the first few shifts, to be sure that nothing unbalances the tanks."

"But there are shower units," another captain said.

"Yes, and I assure you I will be as generous as possible with the water allowance. The calculations our engineering staff made support a maximum of three fairly short showers per hour, which works out to one per twenty-four-hour day per person. However, for the first day, as the system adjusts to more throughput, I'm asking you to hold that to one shower per hour down here. My crew is also

restricting use."

"What about cooking and eating?" Paison asked.

"We'll be flash-cleaning cooking and eating utensils, to conserve

water and pressure on the environmental system," Ky said. "Since we're not under boost, we've trailed a Peterton line and that will provide enough extra power to cover it."

"We were told to bring tableware," Kristoffson said. "We were not

told it had to be flash-proof."

Ky was ready to let Kristoffson eat off the deck with his fingers, but she held onto her temper. "I'm sure your company can make a claim against Mackensee for whatever damage is done to your tableware, Captain Kristoffson. My main concern is that everyone on this ship have sufficient food, water, and air to survive until this is over."

The others nodded, as if they agreed this made sense. Kristoffson

looked around for support and found none."Now," Ky said. "The meal's almost ready, in the galley, but we need people to carry it down here. I've assigned that duty first to Marie... so, Captain Paison, could you assemble your work team, please? I'll take them back to the galley with me."

He nodded.

"The rest of you, please speak to your engineering personnel and let them know that after the meal they'll be assisting Quincy Robin in hooking up the rest of the plumbing."

CHAPTER THIRTEEN.

Paison's work party, like Paison himself, seemed sensible and willing; they and Ky's crew managed to get all fifty meals to the passengers in one trip. Predictably, Kristoffson was furious that the golden-eye raspberries were being shared with everyone. Lucas wasn't thrilled with the discovery that his ship's expensive deli cuts were being shared, but it was clear he didn't want to look like Kristoffson, so he claimed he'd told Ky that, of course, all his ship's rations should be shared.

Finally they were all eating, and Ky had time to chat with Quincy about the plumbing work to be done. Quincy and her engineering crew, with the help of the environmental techs, had been working on the backside plumbing, from the environmental system to stubs with a separate set of cutoff controls.

"Thing is," Quincy said, "If they ever forgot and all showered and flushed and washed clothes or whatever at the same time, it definitely could overload the system. We could just hook up one shower, one toilet and one tub, but that would be really inconvenient. What I thought was, we could have it set up so that only two showers could go at once, one in each hold, with a timer on so they couldn't just stand there for an hour."

"I know one who probably would," Ky said, thinking of Kristoffson. "Good thinking, Quincy."

"We could also do a max water flow for the whole system, but that would mean drops in water pressure in every outlet when anyone used anything. So I decided against it. Mitt's added another two

units of culture, so he says in twenty-four to thirty-six hours we should be able to maintain maximum throughput."

"How's it going to work when they leave?" Ky asked. "No-sorry-

I should ask Mitt that."

"Already done," Quincy said, grinning. "Twenty-four to thirty-six hours to cycle down, and then we're back on normal usage."

"So how do you want to organize the work crews?"

"I'll supervise one, and Beeah can supervise the other. Very basic

stuff, just sticking pipes and seals together and then connecting them through the bulkhead to the stubs we have. Shouldn't be more than two hours' work, max."

"Sounds good to me," Ky said. "I'm going to my cabin for a bit-"

"Er... Captain, I'm sorry, but your cabin isn't... exactly what it was. Are you sure you want to do that?"

"Oh." In the flurry of activity, she had managed to forget about

Skeldon's attack. "I still have things I need in there..."