The Prey of Pirates

A full hold is a happy hold, as far as Jericho is concerned, and he does not like leaving margin on the table. He has been back aboard the Yasmina for six hours. In that time he has caught a dock clerk double-counting two pallets of protein stock, found the tariff waiver the captain of the freighter Mattin was missing (filed under agricultural equipment, not farm machinery), and talked her into letting him carry her overflow. Cargo value is up fifteen point three percent.

His first mate, Toma, thinks he missed his calling. Jericho says he just needed a break, and neither of them mentions why he left the trade routes or why he has come back.

The Yasmina is old but sound: a port thruster that flutters at low power, a cargo lift that sticks unless you sweet-talk it, a nav computer that has tried to route them through a star only once this month. She also carries something her civilian plating hides.

When a wedge-shaped raider with no transponder falls on the two-ship convoy and starts carving into the Mattin's shields, Jericho routes power to the hidden guns. "Let's show them the margin," he says, and lays a firing solution on the raider's engines. The pirate runs, venting air, and Jericho lets it go; they are traders, not hunters. But the Mattin's captain now knows what the Yasmina really is, and so does whoever was flying that raider. They will remember his ship.