And all this accumulated discord was parked in his office as a whole new problem arrived—this one from Pell Station, on the far side of EC-controlled space, beyond which, past Pell’s few daughter stations, lay Cyteen, as great a threat to human civilization as any in history. Cyteen, who ran where it liked, did what it liked, and had no love at all for Mother Earth or Sol or anything the Company had to offer. The problems that could be incoming with these Pell-based ships, whose declared business was just trade—were myriad, and on those problems—no, Enzio Hewitt was not the expert.
The very identification of the arriving ship represented a serious concern, all on its own. A damned legend arriving without warning—a ship with which this station and the EC had specific and notorious history. Damn those plans. Damn the EC’s obsession that had turned his entire career into a logistical nightmare. This after a week of outsider arrivals, who declared their business was just trade.
Ben Abrezio poured a short midday Scotch and offered it to Andy Cruz, who declined it, being technically on duty. So was Ben Abrezio on duty, but they were a long way from other authority, and Finity’s last braking had been—
Well, not the final straw, but something damned close. Granted that ship’s bowshock didn’t wreck them all, he’d bet it brought a shitload of other problems to cap a week of coincidental arrivals. At the very least, it meant hundreds more people flooding an already over-taxed station that rarely saw more than two or three ships in port at once. Just recycling was going to be a nightmare. Any ship would be a logistical problem, but to have Finity, of all ships, come crashing in, scaring hell out of him and his station . . .
Not to mention the psychological effects that entry could have on the Rights of Man ops crew, whose confidence might well be the intended target of this entry. A Family crew shoving the reality of their stolen ship design down their sim-trained gullets.
Damned if his nerves hadn’t earned a dram of single malt.
He took up his glass . . . froze at a grunt from Hewitt, who had momentarily found something of greater interest to him than Finity’s telemetry. Abrezio handed the original snifter to Hewitt, poured a second . . . not short . . . for himself, then returned the bottle to the cabinet and thumbed the lock, Hewitt having an unpleasant habit of helping himself to expensive seconds, damn the man.
“I’m going to continue the shelter order until that ship’s done whatever it’s going to do,” Abrezio said. “Where does it think we’re going to put it?”
“No way it goes on A-mast,” Hewitt said. “That lot won’t be allowed anywhere near that ship.”
Idiot.
“Never considered it,” Abrezio said, trying hard not to patronize. “Mass distribution. I’ve ordered the end of B cleared, but can it even dock here?”
“Should be possible,” Cruz said, and, having poured himself a cup of black coffee, continued calmly: “Obviously Rights can. It was in the design, of which that ship out there is the prototype. I’m far more concerned about that approach. It’s not standard by anything we know. Nothing in any of our records supports it. We have no idea what she intends, coming in that close and that fast.”
“That’s obvious,” Hewitt said. “They’re showing out. And since they’ve been so up front with their demonstration, I want that telemetry worked into the sims, thank you very much.”
“If we can,” Cruz said.
“I’m not hearing if. I want the vid preserved, I want the numbers preserved, I want an analysis, and I want Rights crew running the revised sims with the last three hours fresh in their minds. Decision-making on the far side of jump isn’t easy. This is what this design can do, all-out. This is realtime. This is current. This is something we have to match. Something we will match.”
Hewitt tossed back the Scotch as if it was shots on Strip-side, and turned back to the readout.
“I’m sure ops is recording,” Abrezio stared at that screen, watching the numbers, sipping his own glass. “It’s standard procedure.” Hewitt was talking about physics. He was thinking about the psychology of it. The deliberate, potentially debilitating psychology of it. “Hell of a risk, no matter how you look at it.”
“Finity’s End was the first of her kind,” Cruz said. “And they probably still update her manual. Neihart undoubtedly tests her limits regularly, off the record, maybe at unregistered jump-points we’d like to know more about.”
“Outright given a ship like this,” Hewitt said. “What did the Neiharts pay? That’s what I ask. What did they pay?”
“They were Gaia’s crew,” Cruz said with a shrug. “They used Gaia’s core when they built that ship. That name’s downright royalty to this lot.”
“Royalty? Crew that disobeyed orders on its very first mission? Crew that refused to step down and hand the ship back over to the rightful owners? Not my idea of royal blood. And the attitude’s still there, isn’t it?” Hewitt lifted his glass suggestively, Abrezio pretended not to notice, and Hewitt set the glass down with rather more force than necessary. “Back at Sol, they aren’t so reverential about the Neiharts. Tin gods, ship and crew. Besides, these are the whatever-degree grandchildren and genetic amalgamation with God-knows-what ships. Nothing in common with the originals. Nothing.”
Not a fan of the Family ships . . . Hewitt had made that clear within hours of his arrival at Alpha, and Abrezio had learned not to fight it.
But out here, to Family ships and stations alike, it was legend how the first starship crew, more than a quarter of a century on their initial round trip, had defied the birth ban on the way out and then defied the Company order to stand down and surrender Gaia to a new crew when they returned to Sol. The Neiharts—another James Robert Neihart in command—had told the Earth Company go build them another ship. This one was their home and they were keeping it.
Gaia had made the loop back to Alpha, which they’d founded. And kept doing it, decade after decade, Alpha’s first pusher, Alpha’s life source, all those centuries ago, before FTL had come along and changed everything.
“Original crew on the original pusher,” Surprisingly, Cruz stepped in. “This ship—the Neihart name—do matter out here, Mr. Hewitt. It’s something you have yet to fully comprehend, and something you had best keep in mind for as long as that ship is in port.”
Or perhaps not surprisingly. Original. As Cruz himself was “original.” Sol original, descended directly from the first Sol station admin, a fact Cruz managed to drop on anyone he met, and definitely held over Hewitt. That was its own variety of aristocracy—originals traced things like that.
Sol originals got entrusted with important projects. Originals knew other originals, contacts upon contacts, insider ways of getting things done. At least back at Sol.
Coming up through the ranks of Sol Station, Hewitt had been a newcomer, a man without antecedents, pushing himself forward, grabbing every handhold he could get. He’d arrived at Alpha thinking his Sol origins alone would mean something, only to discover it didn’t work here, where everyone had to prove their worth.
And Hewitt’s face said he was not happy with Cruz’s reminder of his less than spectacular connections back at Sol, but for once Hewitt kept quiet.
Abrezio held his own peace. Cruz had it wrong as well.
Time was, original had meant something out here at Alpha. Time was, common stationers, folks who’d come out to Alpha and Glory on the fifteenth, twentieth run—after all the hard and dangerous work was done—had a hard time of it. No one used terms like second class, but it had amounted to the same thing. But that prejudice ennobling the first-arrived had died out long ago. His own ancestry traced back to Abrezios on that same first trip on Gaia. His ancestors had been pioneers in discovery. But generations on, so could everyone else born on Alpha Station these days claim a similar link.
On the other hand, those born out here did maintain a serious reverence for the old pushers, and stations kept th
e ancient bargain with the two pusher-ships that still served, who not only maintained Alpha’s contact with Sol, but with the past as well.
And as the first of all pusher-ships, Gaia was more than just an Original. Far more. The name James Robert Neihart, the captain of the mission that had founded Alpha, happened to be on a plaque in the heart of station ops. On stations from here to Pell, where the old ship had finally been broken down, Gaia and the Neihart name did mean something. A whole lot of Something.
Something Cruz, sitting there all relaxed and expecting his contacts back at Sol to work and his name to mean something wherever he went, would discover soon enough. Cruz would expect a certain acknowledgment from the crew of the incoming ship. Question was whether the high and mighty Neiharts would know who Cruz was, and who his family had been—or give a damn if they did.
“I don’t care who they are,” Hewitt said into the protracted silence. “Doesn’t mean they don’t still owe the station that built that ship and handed it over to them, and that’s Pell. They’re working for the Konstantins, don’t think they aren’t. Here they are, making that splashy entrance, not sending ID for fifteen damn minutes. Sure, they got the attention they wanted. Everybody saw. Everybody watched in awe. This is the revelation. Pell’s challenging us.”
“I don’t doubt that,” Abrezio said. Pell’s very existence challenged everything remotely EC. Pell was where the star-stations had changed. Pell was the first of several stations founded on a breakaway operation, with stealth, ambition, and outright defiance of EC authority. Pell was the point beyond which stationmasters were not EC. Pell had its own Family, the Konstantins, who had run Pell Station from its beginnings, same way the Carnaths and Emorys ran Cyteen.
Attitude. Any and all contact with Pell reeked of it. Attitude that would not change until Sol entered the FTL age and arrived, personally, to inform the Konstantins—and perhaps even Cyteen—there were still older powers in the universe.
A momentous occasion that might be closer than most people thought.
“So?” Cruz said, eyes on the schematic. “You’re going to confront that ship with EC rules? We haven’t pushed points with the first three outsiders to arrive here. I really wouldn’t recommend starting with this one.”
“Hell, yes, they’ll toe the—”
“We’ll deal with them,” Abrezio said. “We’ll need to put a right spin on whatever they want, reassure the citizens. That’s paramount. I’ll call a personnel meeting and brief the departments. I’m assuming at this point that it can and will mast dock and that we’re going to have to accommodate that crew on the Strip. Somehow. I’ve already taken the preliminary steps. We’ll take this unannounced arrival as a diplomatic approach. Maybe a trade opportunity. Regardless, Mr. Hewitt, until something different develops, we will need security to keep a quiet and optimistic profile. No incidents. No incidents with these outsiders. It seems likely Pell is challenging us. So they’ve just put on their show. Fine. We’ll applaud politely and move on. But the fact is, they’ve also just demonstrated to everybody on Alpha what Rights can be once she’s in operation. Perhaps we should thank them as well. Either way, we’ll welcome these visitors same as any ship, and remind them about something they might have forgotten: this is where Sol meets the rest of space, and Pell needs the First Stars on their side as much as they ever did. Otherwise, sooner or later, Pell will find itself face to face with Cyteen expansionism all on their own, and they really won’t want that. It’s even possible these ships are here because Pell sees such a move coming and wants to ensure its position in the human political scheme.”
“You think so?” Clearly Hewitt didn’t believe it.
“Match Cyteen’s manpower? No. Pell can’t. But Sol can. Match Cyteen’s resources? Near-term, yes, Sol can. And damn right Sol will get here, and the game will change. Pell may be thinking of that, too.”
“You go right on kidding yourself.” Hewitt jerked to his feet and headed for the door. “I’m going over to Central Ops and make sure we preserve that data.”
“Do that,” Abrezio said, glad to see the back of him.
Hewitt left. Cruz let go a deep breath, with a glance at the closing door, then said, with clear exasperation, “I’ll take that scotch, now, Stationmaster, if you don’t mind.”
Chapter 1 Section iii
They’d come in fast and deep in the gravity well.
And arriving at zenith of Barnard’s Star, an unstable red dwarf that could choose that moment to misbehave, they’d taken no chances. Finity had a policy—no lingering in the jump zone in such a system, no handoff to next shift until they’d dumped V if there was no traffic restriction. Senior Captain and Helm 1 took her down all the way to a still-brisk traveling speed, flared off more V and crossed an ungodly lot of space doing it.
There was not the development and traffic here at Alpha that there was at Venture, no question of hitting anything on their entry heading, and with each V-dump, they angled toward the only manmade structure there was here at Alpha, until they were on course. They still needed to do another small V-dump, but that was for fourth-shift.
First-shift took over the step-down lounge, a vast long cavern of a compartment where bulkheads and take-holds and net rigging were the decor, and where they could draw breath and get real food, could settle nerves that were still operating at hyperspeeds. Here they could be on call, but with hands off controls. They could watch telemetry and image, now, and get station transmissions.
They had a good view. They’d kept scan and longscan busy from V-dump on, getting the feel of the place, confirming that Alpha was as simple and basic as its reputation. They looked closely, because the whole station was EC-run, and because there was, as expected, the apparent sole occupant of the A-mast, a ship outwardly very like their own—at least in terms of size.
They’d seen that ship before, but only in vids. That ship was one of their problems: the ship and the reasoning under which it had been built. Sol’s attempt to escape its pusher-prison, perhaps. There’d been that extravagant claim of a plus-seven-light jump early in the planning of Finity’s End and Dublin alike. But that had been a bit of over-sell: Finity couldn’t do it, and Captain JR Neihart knew it for a fact. Finity could jump further than other ships—how far they thought it could jump was not information they shared about—but no ship yet built could one-hop it from Alpha to Sol.
Yet Sol kept building its own mega-ship, perhaps refusing to accept reality, perhaps with altered purpose. If escaping the well were their only goal, they could have built that ship at Sol with far less trouble and expense.
That ship out there, constructed from stolen plans, lacked Finity’s extensive post-trial refinements—Pell’s heightened security had made certain of that. JR was relatively sure Alpha was aware now that running a ship this size was no easy walkover. Rumor said the ship had glitched on an easy jump for Bryant’s, and the crew was lucky to be in one piece. It wasn’t worth a laugh: it was too serious a thing, too great a risk of converting ship and personnel into a plasma stream headed nowhere. Or bow-shocking Bryant’s Star into an outburst as extreme energy plowed into that red dwarf sun.
From the moment Cyteen had spread the wealth of FTL for everyone, Sol had had a problem. A big one. Sol was not only an awkward just-out-of-reach gravity well, it had a great abundance of orbiting bodies—too great an abundance. In its multi-billion year career, it had pulled a lot of meaningful mass into its well—a vast cloud of unused and stolen bits that presented a major traffic hazard to any incoming ship.
But sooner or later Sol would find a way, and the decision that made Alpha undertake to build a ship to match Finity’s End was going to play out to its conclusion. Sooner or later, some ship would find a way to Sol. Sooner or later a jump-point would be discovered or some engineer would find some way to tweak the field so a seven-light jump would be possible. Change was the rule, not the exception, when it came to technolog
y.
In the meantime, from reports, the only real use Sol was getting out of the immense build was keeping its nearest stepping-stone running and maintaining a contact with civilization past Alpha. Alpha could reach one other station, Bryant’s, by FTL; it could reach Sol by pusher-ship; and continuing that build provided jobs and kept the Earth Company in touch with points beyond, with EC offices on Bryant’s, Glory, Venture, and marginally on Pell.
So the ship had some function. And if it could solve its problem and go translight, it might be useful locally, but only at the expense of other ships that served the station, which couldn’t make local ships happy. As the extended situation, decades of build, with all available resources being sucked into the project, couldn’t make the station happy. By all reports, the station was neglecting repairs, calling optional items that might impact health and well-being, and was in general on the decline, right along with Glory, off in its own bag-end of nowhere. But—viable or not, building that pilfered ship had provided a lot of jobs, an artificially inflated economy fed by Sol so long as construction lasted. The EC was still big here.
And now, winding down the construction phase, the project was offering other jobs, and handing out uniforms. Training crew—lots of crew—stationer crew—on sims.
That was a problem.
Would it have been better just to have multiple pushers coming with consumable goods, to keep following the age-old EC pattern of paying their stations with vital supply? Sol and its two operating pushers were in direct competition with Pell on that score, and they couldn’t possibly win. One year versus ten years to fill a need—when Pell could manufacture local biostuffs into edibility for humans and have regular shipments moving out to the Hinder Stars and elsewhere. Not the exotic variety of product Sol could provide, but even that was changing. It was amazing what the food engineers could do with what Pell’s world produced. The Hinder Stars, the stars left behind in mankind’s outward push, needed supply Sol was failing to give them. Goods moved. Pell prospered. The Hinder Stars were fed, supplied, and alive.
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