Victory Conditions by Elizabeth Moon Read Free Book Online Page A

else?”
    “This is wrong, this bit here. You made up blaggorn, didn’t you?”
    “Yes. It’s supposed to mean ‘defeat’—”
    “No, that’s randik. Randik msendim would be losing a bid to another bidder. This bit here means ‘lost too many ships to that…’ I didn’t teach you that word!” Zori’s cheeks reddened.
    “Does it really mean anything?” Toby asked.
    “A very bad word for a woman. Who is she supposed to be?”
    “One of the good-guy captains,” Toby said.
    “Oh, then that’s kobi-parash. Means ‘one of our captains.’ The other is just nasty.”
    The buzzer went off. Zori handed the handcomp back. “I hope my father doesn’t find out you’re writing stories in our trade tongue, Toby. Don’t publish it. ’Specially not with all those really rude words.”
    “I wouldn’t,” Toby said. No doubt now that Zori’s father’s trade tongue was that used by the pirates. He could not doubt Zori…but her father? If Stella’s father could turn out to be Osman Vatta…anyone’s father might be an enemy.

 
    CHAPTER
THREE

    Aboard Vanguard, in FTL Flight
    Ky Vatta reset the controls in Vanguard ’s fully programmable small-arms range and slipped another magazine into her Rossi-Smith. She fired at the lowest of the five targets, something with tentacles. A green light blinked. “Most of the pure target shooting I did was learning to shoot, from my parents.” Another shot, at the next higher, something with teeth; another green light. “Then I did some hunting. Not a lot—and some of it was archery—” Another shot, this time an armored space suit. Another green light. Ky took out the last two targets. “Your turn, Major.”
    Major Douglas shook his head. “No thanks,” he said. “I’m past my peak—another time.”
    Ky nodded, shut down the system, and reset the ventilation.
    “But back to Turek,” Douglas continued. “My guess is that he’ll start going directly for ship manufacturers. He’s got Bissonet; they made their own warships, but not very big ones, and their capacity for their largest ships was limited to only about five a year. You blew a year’s production in one battle.”
    “So he’d be looking for facilities that manufacture large ships in quantity?”
    “Yes. Not many planetary space forces need those. Smaller ships are sufficient for most insystem jobs, handling the kind of pirate incursions most of us saw before Turek. So there hasn’t been a large market for them, and it’s been saturated by just a few manufacturers. I strongly recommend contacting those entities when we come back out of FTL and seeing if they’ve had any thefts, attacks, or even large orders recently.”
    “And recently would be—”
    “Within the past two to three standard years. The big ships take that long to complete.”
    “Some systems might order larger ships now that they’ve seen the menace,” Ky said. “We need a better way of detecting the wrong kind of order, don’t we?”
    “My recommendation would be to see what orders have been made—quantities, payment sources, and so on—and then look for anomalies. The Moscoe Confederation may have useful data.”
    “At some point Turek is going to run out of his own resources. There can’t be enough pirates in the universe to crew hundreds of ships, govern all the territory he’s conquered, do all the mundane chores that a fleet needs done. Who would join forces with someone like that, if they weren’t under direct threat?”
    “A good question,” Douglas said. “I would say criminal organizations, but they’re a minority of the population. They are good at intimidating more people, though. Major political or religious movements?”
    “There’s the anti-humods,” Pitt said.
    “Like the people on Gretna,” Ky said. “But I don’t know how prevalent that view is—the militant side of it, I mean. The anti-humods I grew up with were harmless, just very earnest and ready to explain how the real human race was