Alliance Rising

by C. J. Cherryh

  Rumors aside, there was a current buzz of good times on the Strip. Jobs were on offer, for however long the influx lasted. A few luxuries and some new entertainment had hit the Strip. There was, for stationers, a little stint of better-paying work. Hotels—station officially hated the word sleepovers, but the term was catching on—hotels had called up furloughed personnel from such interim jobs as processing and recycling, operations that typically filled the financial gap for stationers running the Strip’s hotels and bars and shops, the number of which varied with what ships were in port.

  The current bloom of jobs on the Strip had started with the listing of Firenze for repair, which meant a hundred-some of the Galli family resident on the Strip indefinitely. With Little Bear’s arrival, they’d called up more. When the Patels of Mumtaz and the Druvs of Nomad had come in, they’d opened every ordinary hotel on the Strip, unbolted the panels that concealed unused frontages and turned on all the colored lights and vid displays in all the sections of the Strip.

  It was a garish and exciting show. Goods flowed into Alpha from the outsider ships, cheap and flashy things as well as rare tastes and foodstuffs, and the ships’ outsider crew spending scrip freely up and down the Strip was enabling workers to feel unnaturally flush, able to buy some of what was passing into Alpha’s warehouses, even to speculate on cargo to purchase and warehouse, exotics that might ride Atlantis back to Sol, a long-term investment, the sort stationers might make for their kids.

  Souvenir and trinket shops were doing a brisk trade—some souvenirs, like ship patches and sparkling pebbles from Sol, had aged into real value, of interest to these wealthy Farther Stars traders.

  And perhaps more valuable, these outsiders brought rare metals and minerals to back their scrip. For the first time in thirty years, raw materials had arrived not specifically earmarked for Rights, and that was the positive side of the matter. Maybe Rosie would finally get his grey-water plumbing fixed.

  With Finity’s arrival, recycling and some maintenance and manufacturing were going on hiatus, absolutely stripped of workers. It was a wonder, some joked, that the station didn’t wobble on its axis, with so many stationers called over to the Strip side.

  Now the question was, for how long? A typical ship rotation was ten to sixteen days. Travel-worn ships might put in for a bit longer; another might linger for some special problem or wait for a cargo.

  But this confluence of strangers from the Farther Stars? Nobody could predict how long the uncommon traffic would stay at Alpha, or whether—in shopkeepers’ wildest dreams—they might portend a lasting increase in traffic, complete with new trade agreements.

  Some stationers liked that idea. Local ship crews weren’t as happy. As Finity’s End docked with B-mast, a soft, slow and perfect approach, the scuttlebutt was less optimistic where Galway’s crew gathered to watch.

  “They’re here to put the pressure on,” Senior Captain Niall Monahan said, at a back table in Rosie’s, Rosie’s at its most raucous being the most secure place on Alpha’s Strip for ship’s personnel to discuss anything they didn’t want to reach station admin. “Somebody’s got an agenda, haven’t they?”

  A lot of guesses flew about the table, the vast majority involving Pell, and none of the speculation including an offer of softhearted charity from that quarter.

  Galway’s first shift, Ross Monahan among them, held the whole back of the place. The tables were fixed in clamps, as tables were supposed to be, but Rosie’s had this clever arrangement—leaves that locked from table to table to create a meeting spot that let extra chairs jam in tight. Galway’s Family, the Monahans collectively, numbered a hundred twenty-four, and fifteen seats to a shift—working posts and backup. Their first and fourth bridge shifts were crowded at several of Rosie’s tables, with a few from second and third. They were the largest crew of the largest Alpha ship except repair-bound Firenze, whose people held the next-over row of tables.

  Ross sat next to Fallan and sipped Rosie’s pub-brewed beer, watching the largest ship he’d ever seen move in with pin-point accuracy, and asking himself what it would be like to be aboard—to see what her crew had seen, the massive stations, planets with life, stars that weren’t nasty-tempered red. He wondered what the ring-docks were like, that new system of docking that let you walk out a gangway at full G rather than float down the mast; a system designed specifically to keep these so-called longhaulers’ mass off a station’s delicate masts. It was a system Galway had never seen, except under early construction, their last stop at Venture. He’d seen the vids of docks and ships built to carry cargo in monster containers, some complete with temperature and pressure control, that could carry massive amounts of enviro-sensitive cargo. Finity carried those containers in massive braces, loaded by robots. He’d seen the vids, but no vid could capture the sheer size of the ship now coming in to dock.

  He couldn’t imagine the trade that could support one such leviathan, let alone the number of similar ships rumor said were under construction out at Pell. One thing was obvious: the amount of goods that now flowed between stations on the far side of Venture was way beyond Alpha’s traffic. Mind-numbingly beyond it. There were two inhabited planets producing goods out in the Beyond, with huge orbiting facilities to process foodstuffs into edibility. Goods flowed out there, and now Venture, the one station that made Galway’s route viable, was remaking itself to suit that sort of ship. Even Little Bear and Mumtaz, a third the mass of what was incoming, had that weird bow, a jutting structure on the ship’s core stationside of the ship’s own ring—conspicuous on those ordinary ships, greatly altering their profile—not so evident on Finity.

  No matter the size of the ship, the attachment to the ring-docks had to be identical in every way. The same exact structure—with a shape reminiscent of the bow on the ancient sailing ship that was old Argo’s patch—a ship with an eye to find its way. Ships on Earth’s oceans used to have that structure—a ram, meant to kill other ships. Ross had looked that up, back when he was a younger, back when he’d been fascinated with the old pushers and collected all their patches—replicas, except Santa Maria and Atlantis, which were the real thing. They were his two real treasures, those—which were probably worth a bit of cred out in the Farther Stars, where the real thing had never visited.

  Santa Maria’s patch was also a sailing ship, but of a later age of Earth. Atlantis’s was an early spacecraft—winged, for landing on Earth. He’d once thought—at the time he’d been an obnoxious, rebellious younger—that somewhere, someday, he’d trade those special patches, and have ship-cred enough to buy most anything on dockside. He’d wanted a fancier vid player, at the time.

  Later, he’d dreamed of shipping out on Santa Maria and making it back again—magically unchanged. The universe would naturally make an exception in his case, and he wouldn’t get time-lagged from the rest of Galway and everyone he knew. He’d just return to Galway at Alpha and automatically be senior crew on Galway and incredibly swag, exotic, and cool, and the proud owner of a collection of Sol exotics he’d cannily traded his patch collection for. He’d come back to the First Stars with those Sol goods, goods to bolster Galway’s struggling bank account. He’d rejoin his crew. They’d trade those goods all the way to Pell and be rich.

  His mind had run to stupid things like that. But he’d resisted the vid player, and now he had a collection he treasured. He’d stayed put, and grown up, and worked his way to Nav 1.3, which was trainee behind their first shift senior navigator, Fallan, and their number two, Ashlan, which meant he actually never knew when his input to the boards might be what the ship was actually using. But a 1.3 getting closer to the active nav post meant somebody retiring who he dreaded losing, dreaded more and more as he worked beside him, and daily realized just how much he still had to learn. Ship-clock said he was twenty-four, while more decades than that had passed on Alpha. Nav 1, Fallan—Fallan was father, grandfather, great-grandfather—in every sense that mattered.
A spacer rarely knew a biological father: it was all on his mother to figure out, from the sleepovers. No, a spacer picked his own kin, aboard, and his—the man that he had followed about, tagged after until people laughed about it, and Fallan had no choice—his was Fallan. Still was, only now he was half a hand taller than the old man, and hell and away stronger, and looked out for him, Fallan never having figured he’d personally passed biological twenty-one a century and more ago, as stations reckoned time.

  Of course Ross had chosen the Nav track, when he was only shipboard six.

  Of course he studied hard. Fallan wouldn’t take on a fool.

  He’d grown older. He’d seen the economy getting worse.

  And now he sat and watched this foreign giant come into dock at his station, crowding other loyal Alpha ships off the mast, taking up space at his home station. And he was only twenty-four. He couldn’t imagine what Fallan and Niall were feeling. The Farther Stars were changing and moving on, while one after the other the First Star stations shut down, while Sol, the one source of trade that made Alpha . . . special . . . remained just—uneconomical to reach.

  Youthful dreams never truly died. Riches from a sublight trip to Sol had become the constant hope that jump points would be discovered and all the loyal ships would finally have their day. But this thing moving in now threatened everything that was . . . right now. Galway was the best ship Alpha had, damned if he’d count the A-mast ornament, but she wasn’t—not remotely—this.

  And he was, he realized, angry about the injustice of it all. They’d worked as hard. Galway had her own link to the sublighters—old Atlas. Fallan came from there. Galway wasn’t the first of the Alpha purpose-builts: Firenze was that. But they were somebody. They were the best Alpha had. Galway just hadn’t been as lucky, because Alpha hadn’t been as lucky. Alpha wasn’t, and wouldn’t be until Sol entered the FTL picture, a part of that massive flow of goods that made Pell produce a ship like Finity.

  Gaia, on the other hand, was luck incarnate. Oldest of the pushers. First crew to challenge the EC and lay claim to their own ship, and first to lay down the rules as they were. First to carry cargo to Pell. Right place at the right time. Always. Now she had shed her luck on this creature.

  Just wasn’t fair, that. It was never fair.

  “One damn canister,” Captain Niall said glumly, “is about a tenth of our hold. And that ship holds two hundred. But she’s not hauling cans this trip, that’s what I’m hearing.”

  “Just the fancy stuff,” Fallan said. “Warm storage, inside. And who affords that, here?”

  “You don’t want a taste for it,” Pru said, Com 1.2. “You’ll remember it forever. Unfortunately, silly stationers will buy. And it makes what we’ve got not-good.”

  “That’s a gloomy outlook,” Ashlan said.

  “Had Cyteen wine once. Ever after, I can’t drink a red without knowing it’s piss-poor. Not a good thing.”

  “But you had it once,” Ashlan said. “Isn’t there that?”

  “Is,” Pru said. “But I can’t help it. I don’t drink red anymore.”

  Ross thought, I’d rather have it once. I’d want to have had it once. He looked at the vid in the bar, which had gotten uncharacteristically quiet.

  Finity’s End, the screen sidebar said, Origin: Pell via Venture via Bryant’s. Destination: Pell via Bryant’s via Venture.

  Cargo: foodstuffs, dry goods, liquor, works of art, rare earths, metals, pharmaceuticals . . .

  Details followed. But they’d seen those long since: flour, sugar, various chemicals useful in synth and printing and fabricating . . . the list was long. The market had already taken the arrival into account. Speculators were definitely at work. Galway had already sold their cargo—a good thing, since a supply of metals was going to drive prices down.

  There was that one good fortune. For them.

  Santiago, still in negotiations, was downright panicking.

  Galway ought to be giving the board call: they were loaded and they’d been due to undock and leave for Bryant’s in two days, except that station ops had frozen everybody in place, thanks to that monster.

  So now they were stuck, bleeding money on dockside, until ops gave the all-clear. They were being careful with the finance. They’d be doubling up in sleepover rooms, and living on bar food to keep the bottom line in the black: that was the order, given the unexpected hold. On the one hand they ached to be underway, and on the other—damned if they didn’t want to know what was going on here before they moved out, and what they might run into at Bryant’s, which had already had a visitation from these ships, if one could believe the listings. Bryant’s was in the same situation as Alpha, resource and manpower poor, while, next station up the chain and also a recipient of a visit, Venture, with unlimited local supply of materials and direct trade with Pell, was soon to have a ring-dock capability, same as Pell, same as Mariner. And Cyteen, and all its stations, presumably.

  Ring docks and canisters. A ship that could carry multiple times what Galway could stuff in her hold. Four ships that would, eventually, head back to Bryant’s and Venture, carrying trade goods from Alpha.

  Galway’s goods. Galway’s trade. Galway sat loaded now, so this run was sure; but Santiago wasn’t. They had to be sweating. And who knew for the run back from Bryant’s?

  Should they undock soonest, once they could undock, and beat these ships getting back to Bryant’s, then sell their cargo first of any ship—?

  But Bryant’s would already know these ships had come here and might hold out for a bargain price, leaving them to stack up dock charges far worse there than Alpha’s.

  Dammit. Just . . . dammit.

  Chapter 2

  Section i

  Finity’s End was firmly in lock, her crew exiting via the personnel lift—three hundred eighty-four of them—all Neiharts, to Ben Abrezio’s information, ranging in age down to six months, shiptime, and requiring, Finity’s com officer said, the best single hotel available for all aboard, quiet corridors and 1 g for all.

  They had room, all of it 1 g, but the logistics would be tricky. Spacers were territorial. They wanted their own space for their own people, and, like a dinner party, if you seated the wrong two people together, it could ruin the whole evening.

  Arguments among spacers notoriously could get violent, and tempers were already hot.

  The hotels on the Strip were like a layered sandwich set on edge, one behind the other, most-used nearest the strip, second and third level reserved for mechanicals and storage, warehouses and emergency shelter. They had already opened all the regular hotels to accommodate the three visitors. Only one remained. The farthest-back hotel, the Olympian, was space they only used when Santa Maria or Atlantis was in dock. That hotel had more luxury and it was designed for longer periods of leave, as pushers tended to expect. Finity would have no cause for complaint.

  The problem was, it shared three exit corridors with the Empyrean, the Fortune, and the Argent. It was against policy to mix crews in the same hotel, but exit corridors were common ground, and not uncommonly, if there was trouble, it happened there.

  The Olympian had four other exit corridors serving two other hotels. One was the Opportunity, which served a tag-end of Firenze and Qarib crew—they did get along, if not sharing-meals along. They already had to share those exit corridors with Little Bear, Nomad, and Mumtaz, who had damnwell better play politely, in the fairly luxurious Homeport.

  Rights personnel held the Empyrean, three hundred fifty-nine persons, including officers. Galway had the Fortune, Santiago had the Argent. Encounters were inevitable.

  Abrezio didn’t borrow trouble. But he didn’t beg it, either. He ordered onsite monitoring 24/7 in all corridors, with security backup in four offices adjacent.

  Bars, too, had been assigned. Housekeeping and hospitality, called into service in the Olympian and its two restaurants, would have p
olite little printed chits to put in every room Finity held, offering two free drinks at a specific bar in close proximity to the hotel’s main exit, namely Critical Mass. Those friendly chits were, in post-pusher tradition, a polite indication which of several bars would be considered home turf to a particular ship, and where they had special rights. Critical Mass was waked from three years of slumber, with personnel moved in for however long it took—including a cook. A real chef from the residency sectors.

  Finity wanted the best and Alpha wasn’t reluctant to charge for it.

  Abrezio had had reservations about using the Olympian, which necessarily—last available hotel—had put Finity and Rights sharing one corridor. Hotel corridors could be relatively deserted at certain hours, exactly the right sort of place for trouble to start. Officers visibly posted line-of-sight in that corridor were one precaution Abrezio had ordered.

  Another was advising Andy Cruz to make a firm pronouncement to Rights of Man crew and security personnel that they were to duck trouble even if it was offered. Politics, they were told. It was not the sort of rule Rights was inclined to expect, and it was a sure bet it would upset Cruz, but there was no other place to lodge the Finity crew together . . . and that shared corridor was a way to keep an eye on them.

  Watch them, the word passed through Rights’ personnel. Watch them, watch who they talk to and where they contact each other, and look for any clue what they’re up to. A good number of Rights’ crew were trained law enforcement. They would understand. One could hope they would explain the facts to their shipmates.

  Ships had goods backing their scrip, and this offer of scrip from Finity listed things Alpha wanted. Badly. Robotic haggling had fined down what the scrip would represent, and Finity scrip was assigned a value that would be clear on the plastic cards and pocket chits that station issued, exchange rate specified. There were a lot of chargeable services, from refueling to hotel and meals, entertainment, souvenirs, name it. And the more Finity scrip Alpha could collect, the better.