“The hell,” someone said—a Firenze. “I don’t want it! Built by Alpha repair shops from a stolen blueprint? She can’t even get out of system!”
“Who do you think should run it?” someone else shouted. “You already said our routes are only good for scrubs like us. You got another big Family out there itching for an upgrade, to take what this station has gone bust tryin’ to build?”
Neihart lifted a calm hand. “You’re Alpha merchanters. You should have Rights. In every sense. You should own her. . . . If it’s a merchant ship.”
The whole room fell silent. Ross propped his chin on his hand, trying not to make a fist. The Neihart captain’s proposition was an event horizon. Believe it even a little, and you slipped right over the edge into a whole lot of trouble.
“They won’t do that.” That was Firenze’s captain, Giovanna Galli. “Ever.”
“You deserve a lot better than you’re getting,” Neihart said.
“You can tell Pell and your friends not to worry. That ship won’t survive jump,” Qarib helm called out. “We let those sim-trained fools shadow our boards on a milk-run. They’re hopeless. They parked the ship in the core of Bryant’s Star—thanks be to God that that was not the board that brought us in.”
Neihart said quietly, “The first FTL crew was sim-trained.”
“Scary damned business, too,” Fallan muttered, in Ross’s hearing. “But yeah, they sure were.”
“Aurora,” JR Neihart said. “First FTL. Following the robot probe. Cloned-men running her, monofocused, cold as machines themselves. But give ’em credit, Cyteen did it. Right down the path the probe pioneered. And if they’d popped into Mariner’s sun on that first run, I’m sure Cyteen had backups ready. They’d have tried again, until they got it right. For all anyone knows, the ship that made it wasn’t the first to try.”
Cloned-men. Infallible procedure. Infallible memory. Azi.
“But I’ll tell you something,” Neihart said then. “With all their money, with all their resources, Cyteen didn’t go on to create a merchant fleet of their own, never even thought of competing with us. Cyteen decided it was smarter, politically and economically, to convert the pushers and let the Families do what they’ve done for centuries now, sim-training for the FTLs during the stand-down for build, but with the background of generations of experience, and trading with every station regardless of politics. Even Cyteen respects the Families. Even Cyteen understands the economy of doing that. The purpose-builts at Cyteen, at Pell, at Venture have all been handed over to the Families, asking only a certain loyalty—but not exclusivity. Exactly the contract between the first pushers and their star-stations and Sol. The stations maintain, the stations supply, the ships carry goods. Alpha used to honor her ships and take pride in their upkeep . . . but what’s Alpha done for you lately?”
“Don’t blame Abrezio!” someone said. “He didn’t decide on that ship up there.”
Damn, Ross thought. Don’t say it. Don’t blame the EC and bring the blue-coats in.
“No . . . he didn’t,” Neihart said. “As always, Alpha’s fate was in the hands of whatever committee on Earth thought it made sense to build Rights. Some committee decided to build a ship that could have given you one longhauler and made trade with the Beyond viable, that could have made one or more ship Families wealthy . . . then they gave it a minimum of cargo room, turned it over to a bunch of sim-trained stationers? Take a look at our ship, which is a merchanter. Take a look at Rights’ design. I’m telling you, Rights was never meant for cargo, never meant for a Family. Never meant for commerce.”
Someone from the door shouted: “That what your crystal ball says?”
Julio Hernandez lifted a silencing hand. “Known fact, Finity? Or speculation?”
“Have I been inside her? Have I seen orders? No. But history and what we do know are more than enough for concern. Fact: the First Stars have an economic problem that reflects clear back to Sol. Fact: the EC has been bleeding funds into the First Stars for centuries. They can’t be happy about that.”
“The First Stars,” Galli said. “That’s not what you call us. That’s not what the Farther Stars call us. They call us the Hinder Stars. They call themselves the Beyond. Beyond us. Beyond any care of us.”
“You’re right,” Neihart said, again not what anybody expected. “You’re absolutely right. They don’t care. But fact is, you and the Beyond have a joint problem. You think your problems will be solved when Sol breaks out. That you’ll have direct access to the Sol market. Become the ships that ply the Sol-Alpha route, bringing Sol goods back into the market with a vengeance. But that’s not likely, is it? Not with what’s building up there on A-mast. Not with the precedent it sets and with Sol sitting on who knows how many more, some of which likely are designed for cargo.”
There was quiet, deathly quiet.
“The EC really only has two—peaceful—choices at this point,” Neihart said. “And you tell me which is likely. If they’re going to maintain the control they’ve always claimed was theirs by right of original construction—they can break out in force, with station-born crews, to reach the profitable stars, to bypass their loyal ships and hand those lucrative routes over to hired crew, with the vast bulk of profit going straight into the EC coffers . . . or they can cut the cord, relinquish all control, and let Alpha link up to Pell. I wonder which one they have in mind.”
It was a cold, cold picture Finity’s captain painted. There was a thin murmur of comment throughout the bar, crew talking among themselves.
“If the EC finds the jump points, if they manage to sim-train crews . . . what are the odds they’re going to give a damn then about the futures of all of you? The question, of course, is who does own the ships and stations? And more to the point . . . who has the right to ply the trade routes?”
Damn, Ross thought. There was no question of a station having its own ships, let alone using the power of a planet to back some esoteric interest. He’d never personally thought too much into Galway’s future. It had never looked that good, where things were going, unless Sol did break through and make Alpha the gateway Alpha had been, back in the pusher days. They had a lot to gain from that—he’d always thought.
Things would be good when that happened, he’d always thought. He believed it, at his most optimistic. If not for him, then for his children. Or grandchildren.
But what if Neihart was right? What if, back at Sol, the EC was building a whole fleet of these mega-ships designed to enter the market and out-compete smaller ships, the moment that FTL future arrived?
“You think they’d do that?” he said quietly to Fallan. “You think they’d pay us off like that?”
“Ross, lad, the man’s sayin’ somethin’ true.”
Ross turned back to Neihart just as Neihart’s gaze passed over him. He’d swear it paused for an instant on Fallan—maybe knowing what Fallan was, or who he was.
“There’s a memory on Finity,” Neihart said, just before his gaze moved on, “passed down from Gaia’s first run, a story you probably know. Gaia’s crew had just made the first-ever manned mission to another star, pushing the core of what would become Alpha Station, a core built at Sol to be ready to go into operation the instant it was put into orbit around the star. Gaia’s first crew founded this station. They coined the term pusher-ship. And when they got back to Sol, there was a crew trained and waiting to take over Gaia. It wasn’t a surprise. They knew Sol intended to hand Gaia to another crew, and have that first Gaia crew live out their lives on Earth, as heroes, of course, supported by all of Earth. Earth and Sol Station thought that was a fine and proper thing to do. But by the time they got back, the crew had different notions. The crew had gotten out of sync with Earth-time. They’d spent all those years as alone as crew could be, connected to Sol by the Stream, communications always years out of date, but connected to each other aboard in a closeness that had beco
me family. There’d been no way to anticipate how the trip would change them. So Gaia’s first crew said no. There’d be no change of crew. They wouldn’t even open the hatch until there was an agreement that Gaia belonged to her crew forever. She swore she’d go where Sol needed, haul whatever cargo Sol gave them, but she’d make her own law and solve her own problems. And when Sol tried to talk them out of that ownership clause, when Sol talked about money, and rewards, Gaia’s crew insisted that all they wanted was provision and maintenance for their ship, to be kept up to whatever the technical standard would become, and to set out again. And Sol agreed. That was the compact Sol made with the first deep spacers.
“The pushers that followed all asked no more, no less—because they all discovered the same truth: our ships are home. And by the time those first few trips are made we’re fundamentally different, differences that grow with each passing generation—time lag fits us into our own universe, our own sense of what’s important. Not as fast now as in the days of the pushers, but we’re still fundamentally different from stationers. And . . . something those of us who serve the Beyond have realized . . . we’re valuable. Ship-born Families know things. We know how to trade with stations that aren’t like each other, and that, plainly, don’t like each other much. How do we do that? We do that by being—best case scenario—sixty-three Families that trade honestly and don’t give a damn whether our next port of call likes our last one. We’ve had to make a forceful point of it now and again, but we maintain that principle, and so do you. We don’t give a damn about stationer quarrels—and stations’ accepting that fact has created peaceful commerce. It means you don’t have a Cyteen mega-ship pushing in at, say, Venture, using the power of a planet to play havoc with the market there. We don’t have some fuss between Cyteen crew and Mariner crew touching off some corporation on Pell. Peace exists because stations can’t touch each other, except through us, and we don’t take sides.
“Stationers can be as weird and as different as they like. They can have their quarrels. The Families have very simple interests: the safety of our ships, ownership of our ships, our freedom to go where and when we decide to go—and the peace we enforce simply by the exercise of our freedom.”
Peace—existing because of the ships. That was a strange way of looking at a ship’s function. Peace wasn’t an issue, here in the First Stars . . .
He thought of that ship on A-mast.
Yet.
“The EC,” Neihart said, “has never grasped the situation out here. The EC hasn’t figured out that you here today, the very Families that have kept their stations alive, are on the verge of economic ruin. They don’t see that their program has worked incredible hardship on this station—but more to the point, they’re not set up to care. They answer to their member corporations. They promise things they can’t deliver, but they can pass the blame out here and nobody back on Earth can check the facts. If they had good sense, if they gave a damn about the people living on the stations they claim they own, they’d have built more pushers. They’d have sent out probes seeking jump points. They’d have poured all their resources into repairing and modernizing your ships, to expand Alpha’s commerce, to compete in the Beyond, to join the trade rather than try to dictate its future. They could have done all that. But they haven’t. Why? Because they’re obsessed with control. Never mind the fact they don’t own Pell or any of the stations beyond, not even by their own definitions. The last core built at Sol was Venture’s. They actually don’t own Venture anymore, but they haven’t figured that out yet. For reasons which are frankly beyond my personal ability to understand, they evidently can’t comprehend that they could have a profitable trade with Pell and the Beyond—once they get there—if only they’d give up this notion that everything in space belongs to them. Even now there’s no damn reason that four more pushers, even before they find a viable FTL route, couldn’t bring Sol peaceably and profitably into commerce for which Alpha could be the gateway. A constant stream of Sol exotics could revitalize these oldest stations.”
God, Ross thought, how many times had that come up during his lifetime? Two ships. Two shipments. Ten damn years apart. Even without the diversion of those shipments to Rights, what they’d carried historically to Venture didn’t begin to compete in the market Finity implied was arising out beyond Venture. With four more pushers . . . ten, twenty, coming in a year apart . . .
“They can’t seem to grasp why, if Alpha merchanters had a longhauler that worked, they’d be welcome at Pell, welcome at Cyteen, that they’d be welcome in the trade. The obvious answer to the problem, if somehow the EC could be made to understand it, is to hand Rights over to the Rodriguezes, or the Monahans, or the Gallis or the Rahmans, who could actually run her—once they put a meaningful cargo hold on her. If we were able to make that clear, if we were able to make them understand—but they’ve never listened, never truly tried to understand.”
The bar had gotten quiet, and into that silence, James Robert said quietly:
“We need the power to make them listen.”
Now a solid murmur broke out at every table, and Ross, with Fallan and Niall near him—tried to keep silent. To listen. To not get caught up in the rampant speculation, the growing lists of pros and cons and what-the-hell’s-Finity-saying?
He was bridge crew, youngest, not quite seated, but bridge crew. He was supposed to maintain a steady calm—but he didn’t feel calm. He looked at JR Neihart with no less envy—but now with questions roiling in him that were answerless, because no matter the answers station could offer, so long as that ship was being built as she was, there were just—no choices. No other place to be. No other rules available. No other future.
Alpha spacers had been hanging on for years, taking what they could get, and knowing that the whole system of trade was changing, and knowing, knowing that station couldn’t bring them into that new era with Rights sucking up every resource. Year after year, from when he’d been a junior-junior, they’d been building that ship. All the funds, all the materials pushed out from Sol or brought in from Bryant’s went to Rights. Alpha crews had muttered at it, sworn at Rights from time to time, laughed at Rights when it made its aborted run. They’d had dark thoughts that Abrezio must be lining his pockets in the process—but where could he go to spend it all? There was certainly no visible evidence of luxury living. They passed from anger at Abrezio to anger at the managers Sol sent them.
That Rights and her hire-on crew would perform as advertised to do—nobody believed that any longer. They’d seen how well sim-training worked. They’d heard how her crew had failed on Qarib.
And yet, JR reminded them, the first FTL crews had all been sim-trained, human beings, even if they were azi. The real breakthrough was the tech itself. Using that tech . . . If you were willing to lose multiple ships and lose multiple crews, you could figure it out. Eventually.
Expendable people. Limitless resources. The only place other than Cyteen that had truly unlimited resources—including people—was Sol system.
JR was right: it was crazy that Rights should be this kind of priority at Alpha . . . unless there was some plan the EC wasn’t talking about, like Sol being close to making the breakout people had been speculating on forever. Maybe it was trying. Maybe they were desperate enough they could send an endless stream of ships until one got through . . .
And there was that other point he’d made, the same observation Fallon had made only hours ago: blue-coats were in greater and greater evidence on the Strip, markedly so in the last few sleepovers. How many? How many had been hired and trained to fill a ship not designed for cargo? They had no idea. But if Rights did get to Bryant’s, if it moved to try to lay down EC law in some station Pell-ward of here, there was sure to be trouble.
Peace, JR had said, existed because the Families were the buffer.
Peace . . . existed because . . .
Red flashers started rotating in the ceiling.
Somebody banged a mug on the bar hard, repeatedly, and a Santiago jumped up atop the bar, scrambling to her feet, shouting, “EC’s shutting us down! Blue-coats! They’re shutting the doors!”
“The hell!” somebody up front shouted. “They got no right!”
“Stow the chains!”
“Run for it!” It was a Galway voice, Pardee’s, and nerves reacted—Ross found himself moving. Niall and Fallan and the rest moved—no blue-coat was going to lay hands on critical crew of any ship. Niall led the way to the fire door.
Santiago crew came over the row of tables from the front, eight of them, cutting them off, and then jammed up in the aisle as others did the same. Ross left Mary T and Ashlan, went over the next table, knocking two beer mugs to the floor as he went, but a press of bodies blocked that row, too, half the red-dyed, overcrowded room all trying for the side exit, and by now the klaxon sounded: doors were closing, mechanical, unstoppable.
“Well, this is a mess.” Ross turned to Mary T and Ashlan, on the other side of the table. Mary T was holding her arm, looking pained. “You all right, Mary?”
“I’ll live.”
The doors had all shut, trapping a good many people in the bar. Niall and Fallan and Pardee had got out.
Some, however, hadn’t even tried for the doors. JR Neihart was up at the bar with a number of Finity crew. The two bartenders and the wait staff were there. So were a number of other outsiders, one with a captain’s gold tabs, another with the compass rose and 1 of a first-seat navigator. Then there was a straggle of Santiagos, several Qaribs, and a handful of Firenzes, people Ross knew at least by sight.
The frenzy was over. Everyone stranded inside was calm, quiet. Usually the doors would have re-opened by now, at least one door would, and the blue-coats would be taking names. The doors stayed shut.
Which made him wonder what was happening on the far side of the doors.
“Kettle of fish he’s raised,” Ashlan said. “Station’s upset.”
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