know that you and your daughter are alive?”
“That, sir, is the problem,” said Horacio. “I will be forthright, and leave the decision to your judgment. We were attacked by an Argentine warship. They boarded us without warning, and when I challenged them, they shot at us. My wife--” His voice grew strained again, and began to crack.
Agnarsson winced. There was no doubt what the man was about to say.
“My wife, and my little boy, were gunned down,” he ground out.
“On what cause were you boarded?”
“You will have to ask them,” he snapped, and his red eyes darted angrily. “I left Argentina fifteen years ago. We are not citizens, our home was not under its flag.”
“You moored in territorial waters?” Agnarsson asked.
“No. In the Raft, just as we are now.”
Agnarsson knew that both sides had made threats of interdicting vessels and seasteads in international waters, but this was the first he’d heard of any such action. If true, it was a dramatic escalation of the war. The Plata Raft, like all other high seas traffic, was guaranteed freedom from interference, and there were a lot of other flags flying on those vessels, flags of clades and states alike that would not quietly accept such aggression. It would risk the entry of other parties into the war, a war that was already going against the Argentines. There was only one reason that Agnarsson could think of for them to risk it.
“Mr. Vietes, I have to ask you something in my official capacity as an officer of Atlantic