Alliance Rising

by C. J. Cherryh

  “Mixed blessing,” Fallan said, with a little nod. “It’s the numbers, Ross-lad. The mass shift. Pell was just the beginning. Pell’s Star had resources, but Pell alone couldn’t change the universe. It didn’t have the numbers. On its own, it could only make the whole system richer. But beyond Pell there was Viking, rich with heavies. Then Mariner. And Cyteen . . . hell, Cyteen took a page from Cap’n Pell’s book. A bunch of geeks went and hijacked another station core that was supposed to be Mariner. They stole that core and a pusher, and just kept goin’.”

  “Geeks?”

  “With the souls of pirates,” Fallan said, without explaining. “And that’s when everything began to accelerate. They steal a core, take them a star and the next viable planet with nobody’s permission, then turn about and tell the EC and Pell to go to hell.”

  “So really, it started with Cyteen,” Ross said, but Fallan shook his head.

  “Without Pell doin’ it first, they wouldn’t’ve thought of it, bein’ pirates. Pell, he was an explorer, a colonizer. Those eggheads just wanted to develop their tech without any checks or balances. Pell bein’ there gave them a buffer between them and Sol. Gave them a chance to jack up their birth rate with birth-labs, terrifying every sane person from Mariner to Sol, and then they went and capped it all with a magic pill that keeps the lot of them alive indefinitely. Not content with personal immortality, no, they smuggle rejuv to the highest bidders, who find out the hard way that they got to keep takin’ it or die. And the Cyteeners, they claim—oh so innocent—that only their planet produces the stuff, oh, they’ll try hard to supply it . . . but it’ll cost. So they make themselves richer than God. Then, then, toppin’ all, they go an’ invent FTL and just hand the tech out for free.”

  “Except,” Ross said, “except to Sol.”

  “Oh, they don’t give a damn if Sol’s got the tech. Givin’ it to the stations, however, that skewered Sol good and proper, that did. FTL, free for one and all, and Cyteen’ll even convert the old pushers to FTL for free an’ train the crew while they wait. They have nav charts, also free, that includes everybody but Sol, because there’s Sol—and the EC—way off in all that clutter with no good jump point available. Least so far as Cyteen cared to check. Long as the entire system ran only on pushers, Sol was equal to everybody, and a mite more equal, in their own reckoning. With FTL linking everybody but Sol, Sol was screwed. You think those Cyteen eggheads didn’t see that comin’? Pell now, gotta wonder if they’re not keepin’ us alive as somethin’ of an afterthought, maybe as insurance against Cyteen, seein’ as how gettin’ in bed with pirates can get your throat slit.”

  That was a new slant on what Ross had always thought of as ancient history. A scary one.

  “Or maybe they’re playin’ nice because they’re seein’ pirates on the other side. EC pirates. An’ maybe they just want us on their side when those EC pirates escape their sublight prison.”

  Definitely scary.

  “’Course it could be just because we’re a market.” Fallan gave him a half-wink, seeming to read his mind as Fallan could sometimes do. “So—how does the EC deal with this? Instead of talking to Pell and changin’ its ways, instead of sending us more of the good stuff to trade with Pell and becoming part of what is, the EC pirates in the EC offices on Pell steal the plans for Pell’s top secret mega-ship, then the EC pirates back at Sol order Alpha to use those plans to build them a mega-ship of their own, and to throw all subsequent pusher loads into that damn monster. It’s like they never even considered that Pell might take exception to that theft and cut us off entirely—which they still could—like maybe they don’t care if only Alpha survives and that, only so they finish that damned ship. Early on, maybe they could justify it. Early gossip said those monster ships could maybe one-hop it to Sol, which would make them real tempting to those folks just itchin’ to get out here and get hands-on control. I never saw it, myself. Couldn’t make the numbers work, no matter what. And far as we know now—I was right. But the good ol’ EC just kept buildin’, didn’t they? Even after Finity was operational and her performance numbers became official. They kept building and they’ll keep building, pusher load after pusher load, until that ship runs, and when it does . . .” Fallan shrugged. “We’re killing ourselves here, Ross-me-lad, and for what reason? A ship that, if it ever does jump, could replace the lot of us. A ship that, even if it never leaves dock, has likely already screwed us all. Just by existin’.”

  “What you’re saying is,” Ross said, watching condensation run down the side of his mug and join a set of circles on the scarred countertop, “we stay alive here because of foodstuffs we can only get from Pell—while we build that monster to compete with Pell. You think maybe Pell’s finally out of humor about it and these ships are here to put the lot of us out of business?”

  “Honestly?” Fallan rubbed his chin, took a sip of beer, and stared at the screen. “No. More likely they just want to get a look at that honking great ship up there. Pell’s got to know it’s been crewing-up and making trials. And no way in hell Pell’s not a mite-bit curious about that. Maybe wondering if Sol has finally got a jump-point.”

  Pell definitely had a proprietary connection to that build, however unwillingly, and it was no secret. Those were the stolen plans taking shape.

  Time was, the EC had had offices at all the stations this side of Cyteen, including Pell. Station directors had all been EC-appointed—except for Pell’s, and the stations Pell had built. From the start, in defiance of EC directives, Pell had carried on a highly lucrative business with Cyteen, and it was toward Cyteen Pell looked these days for economic expansion and competition. That was why, when Cyteen built a monster ship, Dublin, at their station, Pell had stripped down old Gaia for her steel and built one to match her: Finity’s End.

  The EC had been upset. Sol read Pell right enough: Pell wasn’t going to turn over that ship or send it where Sol wanted: Pell was in a head-to-head contest with Cyteen, and they weren’t handing this design out for free.

  So early on, before construction of Finity had even begun, the EC office at Pell had gotten their hands on the files, and EC couriers had carried the plans up the line to Alpha. Alpha in turn had transmitted the information via the Stream at light speed to Sol, the way information had to travel that route; and twelve years later, had gotten orders back up the Stream to build the EC’s own mega-ship based on those plans, on a priority above everything. On the next pusher-ship, Andrew Jackson Cruz had arrived, with a pusher-load of materials and a mandate: to make certain The Rights of Man became a reality.

  From the start, the question every Alpha ship had asked was: To what purpose had Alpha been ordered to build such a ship? To haul what? There wasn’t that much trade to move out of here. And most importantly: once that monster did move, where did Alpha’s own ships—small and centuries old, most of them—fit into that economy?

  But then, and like every plan the EC made, that ship had been slow to take shape, waiting on supply from Sol and a lightspeed dataflow that took twelve years to round-trip. Concerns ebbed and ships and stations alike adjusted to the new flow of goods, such as they got from Pell.

  Nobody had been that surprised earlier this year, either, when Rights had failed its first trial. Early apprehensions first that it would jump to Sol and second, that it would drive them all out of business . . . had sunk down to a sigh and a business-as-usual for the EC: grand plan, flawed mess of an execution. Sol’s monster ship would have been a local joke, if it weren’t so disruptive of everything Alpha should be doing. It was a notorious embarrassment clear to Venture.

  But could that ship really worry Pell? Could it give Pell ideas about establishing control here—before it became viable?

  “You think Pell wants their plans back?” Ross said it as a joke.

  “Little late for that, in’t it?”

  “So maybe they’re sending us a repair crew. Might be afraid of a mass
that big popping into their system out of control.”

  A dry laugh. “Possible,” Fallan said. “Anything’s possible. I tell you something. The EC at Sol has always had notions they have a natural-born right to everything out here. And what worries me about that ship up there on A-mast—”

  Fallan stopped there. Some things were dangerous to say, even in Rosie’s.

  But the ambient was noisy, somebody had put the music on, and Fallan went on. “You see all these blue-coats runnin’ around the Strip that weren’t there five years ago? Those stationer hires of Rights aren’t all training for ops crew. They’re enforcer-types. Watch their eyes, note how they look sharper the longer they’ve worn those blue coats. Note how they’re poppin’ into bars and out again on the Strip. Note that batch that was just now in the doorway. And now they aren’t.”

  Ross had noticed that batch looking in and leaving. It was always that way on Alpha. But more so lately.

  “Watching the strangers.”

  “Looking for the strangers on the station, wanting to know where they are, where we are, who’s talking to whom. Watching us. Watching, because that’s what they do.”

  “The blue-coats are still Alpha-born.”

  “Ross, lad, the EC’s stupid, but it’s not asleep. There’s high-level admin come in to build that ship up there. And remember, Sol has the Finity plans same as we do. Original theory was, yeah, a mega-ship could one-hop six, seven lights and it’d get to Sol easy with no jump-point. That’s all slid back to, well, probably not. So what else do they do with it, with no jump-point in that direction? They’re hiring every unemployed stationer who passes the enforcement physical. They’re running sims to train ops crew. That’s maybe a hundred on a ship that big. But how many blue uniforms do we have walking around out there, looking into spacer business?”

  “Too damn many.”

  “Enforcement, is what. A lot of it. Like they’re bracing themselves to hold onto Alpha. Like it was valuable. And maybe they’re seeing a threat.”

  “Those ships?”

  “Maybe something’s heating up. Could be they’re here to offer something. I don’t know. Maybe they want to deal. When the giants want to dance, the likes of us just stands and watches. Stations have their politics. For us, it’s just survival. Some damn bureaucrat comes in with a sweetheart deal, Alpha admin agrees—and we’re not a high consideration. We’re the little folk, we.”

  Scary thought. Venture-Alpha was Galway’s territory, and Galway, though no larger than Little Bear, was the largest ship plying the Venture to Alpha routes, and barely breaking even. Pell-based ships deciding to run that route would cut directly into Galway profits. The three here had already made a minor stir in the luxury market just bringing in flour and oil and a small store of rare earth metals.

  Why? Why, dammit. It didn’t make sense. A huge profit just wasn’t there. Alpha didn’t produce anything but data, science, and basic foodstuffs off its tanks. Its hope was all when Sol breaks out. Alpha-based ships ran the Great Circle routes, to Bryant’s, to Glory, Alpha and Venture. Same rules, same market system, same rights and laws, mostly. They got along, mostly. To have goods to trade, they had to get those from Sol.

  But if Pell wanted to change that . . .

  “What I bet,” Fallan said, “is that station’s not talkin’ because it doesn’t have a plan yet. Something came in on one of those stranger-ship’s feeds that station’s been keepin’ to themselves, and now station’s takin’ their time telling people what’s going on because they don’t friggin’ know what they’re going to do.”

  Ship’s feed. The black boxes that talked, ship to station, the moment a ship docked, station downloading to a departing ship before it left—a comprehensive data-dump in both cases, every tick and blip of information, civil and commercial and operational, discoveries and contracts, actions and intentions, births, deaths, publications, markets, and the state of supply.

  That was one Cyteen rule that had come in with the gift of FTL, no ifs ands or buts. Sped by ships, it was communication faster than the lightspeed Stream that still connected Alpha to Sol, but that no one past Alpha even thought about using anymore. Current prices of goods, as per the ship’s last port, politics, news, entertainment . . . that black box data was a vital part of every ship’s cargo. There were times it was all that paid for fueling and sleepover. A big load of new information . . . getting there first could pay, really pay.

  “Not much they can do, is there?” he asked. “They got to let that ship dock. And they pretty well got to let it suck up the station feed.”

  That was a rule older than anything: a ship came in, you gave it a place to dock. And how did they say no to a fourth ship, when three other outsiders had come in and linked up?

  “Stationer minds. The EC just doesn’t like to admit they’re not in control,” Fallan said, and gave a near-silent rap on the counter, old superstition, older than Fallan himself. “These visitors, they’ll dock and suck up all the data Alpha’ll give ’em in the feed—she can squirm all she likes, but that data will feed out. Then these visitors will kite out to various interested places, but only after sharing what they know. So whatever’s going on out in the Beyond, Pell doesn’t mind us knowing. But maybe the EC does mind sharing what they’ve got. Whatever the first three outsiders brought in—you can bet station’s been digesting that for days, and I’d wager something in there has admin really sweating this incoming rig.”

  A ship couldn’t read its own black box, had no idea what information had streamed into it or out of it. Theoretically the station couldn’t tamper with ships’ black boxes, either, or adjust what import/export and market statistics a station automatically gave out. Station wasn’t supposed to censor elections or published items, either, but that was a big theoretical, in Ross’s own estimation. There wouldn’t possibly be details about Rights floating around in Alpha’s feed—would there?

  New flasher on the largest screen, the EC logo. Special bulletin, the vid said, and this time it went to image, not just a crawl. Thanks to Fallan, they two, Galways, held prime spots at the bar, as tables emptied and fellow Galways and Santiagos and the insystem folk crowded close again.

  Ben Abrezio himself appeared on the screen. Stationmaster. White-haired, ordinary-looking fellow. Executive authority.

  “We regret the need to reposition the two ships. We have confirmed the identity of the incoming ship as Finity’s End, Pell registry.”

  “Oh, my God,” was one murmur from up at the bar.

  And a distinct voice, mid-room: “Bloody. Hell. This is really getting worrisome.”

  Ross’s own heart had skipped a beat. Finity’s End.

  Of all ships, that one.

  He caught a corner-eye look from Fallan, who raised a brow as if to say: Told you so. And Fallan had called it: the outsider visitation was about Rights.

  Finity’s End—the monster hauler built by Pell and handed over to the Neiharts of old Gaia—was a creature of the Farther Stars and the massive payloads that traveled between those stations. A creature the likes of which he’d never expected to set eyes on—except in the form of Alpha’s non-operational copy parked at the top of A-mast.

  “Incoming event vid is released on channel 1, followed by the ship’s first V-dump. Even following that dump, this ship is carrying an abnormally high velocity, but we are assured it is safe, and, in point of fact, normal for this ship. Mind the following vid is nearly four hours old. She will be braking again in ten minutes, which we will broadcast live. She will be arriving at B-13 at shift-change. Starting now we are issuing a station breach alert. All persons should seek a designated shelter within ten minutes. There is no need to run. Go to the nearest available. We are not worried, fellow citizens, but she does not habitually mast-dock, and we’re simply taking sensible precautions. We will have a further statement once she has docked safely.”

  Rosie�
�s was a designated shelter. They were in a place with take-holds and vacuum seals should the station take damage.

  That was saying nothing about their ships docked to the mast that speeding monster was aimed at. Abrezio might have done Qarib and Firenze a favor, moving them out, if a ship large as anything going was coming in too hot . . . a ship built for ring-docking that was going to attempt to dock at B-mast.

  “Station breach, hell.” Ross said. “They friggin’ comin’ in with a mechanical, or what? They can slow the fuck—”

  The screen flashed up, showing a schematic, point of entry, velocity, and timeclock.

  “What the hell?”

  “Godamighty,” somebody said. Which under-described the numbers. Fast didn’t begin to describe it.

  And still another voice:

  “Three, four fuckin’ hours ago—Where are they right now? Station’s known about this for four hours. They knew what was coming in? Why the hell didn’t they tell us?”

  “Shit! That mother’s still haulin’ a quarter C. That’s got to be close! Shit-all!”

  “That V’s not real-time. Three hours ago! Easy!”

  V-dump happened almost immediately on entry on automation and again generally twice more, but that ship had come in beyond hot. He couldn’t believe anything could dump that much, that fast. He hazarded a glance at Fallan, saw Galway’s Nav 1 staring calmly at those numbers, and his heart rate slowed. Fallan felt things in his gut in ways Ross didn’t . . . couldn’t . . . not yet. Fallan had watched it all, could run the jump numbers and place himself at the nav boards without half trying. If Fallan thought it was okay . . .