Alliance Rising

by C. J. Cherryh

  And Station had been listening to it all, Every word. Of course it had.

  The shouting had died down to angry cursing. He looked to where Galway crew had been seated.

  “Niall and Fallan got out,” Ross said, looking around. “So did Pardee and Aymes and Aubrey, looks like. God, what a mess.”

  “It wasn’t illegal,” Ashlan said. “It wasn’t illegal, our being here.”

  It was a question: What could station make of it? Fomenting a riot, if station really wanted to make an issue.

  But putting them in one bucket with the outsiders?

  Could get damned ugly on the Strip, if they lumped Alpha crews into the Neiharts’ actions.

  “They’re sure taking their time,” Mary T said.

  Wasn’t the first bar raid for any of them. It happened. Station could be touchy. Usually there was a write-up, sometimes a fine. Usually bystanders got out of it.

  Laying a hefty fine on the outsiders alone, however, might not be what station wanted to do.

  Several minutes went by and still there was no move to open the doors.

  “We could have more than the usual trouble, here,” Ashlan said.

  “Well, hell with it,” Ross said. There was one group intact, over by the bar.

  Finity hadn’t run. Finity’s two senior-most captains and several of her seated crew were calmly ordering drinks, as the red lights kept flashing, which meant it was clearly against the law to serve alcohol. But the bartenders of Critical Mass were quietly drawing beers, and food was arriving from the back. A woman who’d sat on the bar, perhaps for refuge, slid down behind, and got a bottle of wine out of cold storage.

  Well, that was a few more regulations the meeting was breaking

  “What are we going to do?” Ashlan asked. “Ross?”

  Ross shrugged. “Don’t know where’s more interesting now, out on the Strip or in here. Looks like the bar’s still functional. And they’re serving. Hell, if they arrest us, at least the company will be interesting. Wait it out. See what happens. All we can do.”

  Mumtaz and Little Bear captains joined Finity’s. Nomad’s captain had made it out the fire door. So had all the Galways present, except the three of them. There were maybe fifteen, twenty of the Mumtazes, five or so of the Little Bears, and a few of the Nomads. The talk was all casual, nothing of outrage, nothing against the administration.

  Took a while for the lights to go back to normal, and a few minutes more for the main door to open, letting in a good seven or eight blue-coats with tasers at the ready.

  But by that time everybody was seated, with drinks, a few of the Finity crew peacefully playing cards, while the officers stood and chatted.

  Chapter 3

  Section i

  If ever there’d been a wrong man for a job . . .

  Ben Abrezio resisted the temptation to call civil security and remove Enzio Hewitt from any authority involving the Strip, for actions contributory to a riot. A demotion, however, would break the Cruz-Hewitt problem wide open, would be a decade-long issue thrashed out in communication with Sol, and, Hewitt being the later appointee, Hewitt was the one who might still have his backers in office.

  It would be stupid to do it—but, damn, it would feel good.

  There were cameras in the Strip’s bars, shops, and hotel hallways that automatically cut on—for safety and legal purposes—in event of an emergency, such as a takehold order . . . or a mandatory securing of an area. The cameras and microphones in Critical Mass had recorded everything, and what that footage told anyone, anyone with the slightest understanding of the situation, was that the police raid on the meeting in Critical Mass had been a questionable call. Highly questionable. Not so much as a hint of violence had come from the assembly. No advocacy of violence.

  Now, thanks to Hewitt’s order, they had twenty-four individuals detained as participatory in or inciting a riot, and numbers still accumulating for the injured. Unfortunately, as that vid clearly showed, the meeting had been, if not exactly quiet, orderly and completely legal until security, Bellamy Jameson, formerly head of all Alpha security and now under Hewitt’s command on the Strip—had flashed the emergency warning and decided to move in, at which time spacers, already on edge, already distrustful of station security under Hewitt’s rules . . . reacted.

  Two agents had been shoved to the ground and trampled in the side-exit, one with a concussion, and then, masterpiece of planning, Jameson had locked the bar down entirely for three-quarters of an hour, causing even more trouble dockside, as irate Alpha spacers argued with the police and tried to rescue their fellows trapped inside.

  Maybe, maybe Jameson had been smart to focus outrage on those locked doors rather than have a traveling disturbance hit the Strip and gather force as it moved from bar to bar, but if security hadn’t raided the meeting in the first place it wouldn’t have been an issue. He suspected, knowing Jameson, that he’d had a choice in one but not the other. Hewitt had ordered him to move in and he’d done what he could to save a damned mess. Fortunately—thanks, perhaps, to Jameson—they had not had a spacer riot on their hands. Inside, as the footage showed, Finity’s crew had set the tone. Those locked in had relaxed, quieted down, and by the time the doors opened, the people in Crit Mass had been surprisingly cooperative.

  Abrezio didn’t trust the calm that currently lay over the Strip. Not in the least. Hewitt had started something that could flare up again without warning, and he, Ben Abrezio, had to make certain it didn’t.

  Damn Hewitt, who was currently, conveniently, unavailable. They had Captain James Robert Neihart and crew, backed by Xiao Min, Asha Druv and Sanjay Patel, all madder than hell, with an issue, and they had local ships with personnel in lockup that didn’t damned well belong there. Adding to the debacle—that firedoor net had caught local captains Giovanna Galli, Diego Rodriguez, and Niall Monahan, also madder than hell, and worst of all, unjustified use of force had injured no few spacers, one of them elderly, as some fool had tased Galli’s fourth-shift helmsman and caused a pile up right in the doorway.

  Hewitt and his high-handed security rules needed to be put on the next pusher back to his beloved, oh-so-superior Sol-station. God . . . didn’t he wish?

  Was there any justification? Could the meeting have broken up in riot? That hadn’t been anywhere suggested in anything JR Neihart had said, never mind he’d implied a hell of a lot more that wasn’t to Abrezio’s personal liking. But there’d been nothing—absolutely nothing—actionable, however uncomplimentary to the Company . . . which did not administer Pell, which was Finity’s port of registry, and by tradition, Finity’s rules applied inside that bar—so long as there was no abuse of person or bar property.

  Fact was, these ships were outsiders, allowed to dock here, as of course they had to be: a station had never refused docking. Fact also was, Critical Mass was under Finity’s rules. Fact might be that Finity had abused traditional courtesy, that Finity had assembled allies and made fairly inflammatory statements to Alpha’s local haulers, but it wasn’t illegal unless it caused illegal action—which it had not . . . yet.

  Did it warrant careful monitoring? Yes. Did it warrant lockdown? No, dammit. And now he was in the position of having to explain the mess to their elite visitors.

  Annoying truth: the calmest, most dignified of the lot had been Finity’s crew. Untouchable, at least in their own minds. Hewitt’s office had objected to his order to Jameson to stand down, to release the locks and just get names and statements, and not to arrest anybody in the bar. Offenses, Hewitt’s office insisted, had been committed, laws had been broken. And Hewitt’s policy trumped Finity’s rules.

  According to Hewitt’s office, Hewitt himself being . . . unavailable.

  Arguable, to say the least, but more to the point . . . did you charge spacers who’d sat fairly quietly through a now-notorious and inflammatory speech, a bar raid, and the tasing of se
ated crew—with quietly sitting and drinking alcohol under a lockdown? They hadn’t been drunk. And while it was illegal to serve alcohol under those conditions, it was not chargeable against the spacers; it was against the bar owner, who also had a legal responsibility to judge a situation and apply prudent measures.

  Spacers had a keen sense of the ridiculous. And this was way over their tolerance. If he’d allowed Jameson to do as Hewitt had ordered, had he had Jameson issue those citations against the spacers who were remaining calm inside a bar under siege . . . he’d have a real uprising on his hands.

  So what did he do? Fire Jameson? Jameson’s emergency text had been his only warning about Hewitt’s order to move in and arrest those remaining in the bar. Jameson had practically begged him to countermand that order. Jameson was his own appointee. Jameson had been, pre-Hewitt, a decent and compassionate officer. And when the time came to challenge Hewitt, if it came, he’d need a lot more reason than a hazy call on a bar fight, and Jameson was his best bet as an inside witness who might be on his side.

  So . . . what? Apologize to Finity and their allies? That might quiet the noise on the Strip, but locally, among Alpha’s permanent residents, Jameson’s hard line with the supposed threat of riot was already playing well. Somehow, though stationers had no access to the security files, somebody had released vid to the news, vid showing the chaos outside Crit Mass, vid focused on the injured security officers and entirely missing the grey-haired, frail old man now being treated in the infirmary. Thanks to that vid, station sentiment would call Jameson a hero, and Hewitt would take full advantage of it.

  Not exactly a stretch to figure who’d sent that carefully edited vid.

  But the impression had been made and strong police action made citizens feel safe. It advised drunken spacers that rules were rules, and kept problems on the Strip from exiting the Strip.

  Regardless, the Stationmaster’s job was to smooth out the messes others dropped in his lap.

  Apologizing to Finity and their lot might read as good politics on the Strip if he stood Bellamy Jameson down at least long enough to get the problem visitors on their way and clear of Alpha, but that didn’t put the blame where it was due. Explain the situation privately to the outsiders? Hell if he wanted to admit the massive problems lurking beneath the surface in Alpha station admin. Whatever he did now, Hewitt would make the most of it. Lose, lose. For the sake of the permanent citizens’ peace of mind, he had no choice but to back Jameson. Didn’t mean he couldn’t let Jameson know, privately, that he was not happy and that he wanted a call involving any unrest on the Strip, no matter the hour and no matter what Hewitt ordered.

  Before any action was taken.

  Most frustrating of all, after all was said and done, that speech of Neihart’s still didn’t answer what in hell Finity was really up to. It wasn’t casual blather about spacer rights that had Finity calling a formal meeting with other crews, talking about ownership of ships, and stations’ obligations to repair whatever broke down.

  And—dammit—where in hell did Finity’s End come off saying Alpha should do more than any station of its size and resources did nowadays? Sure, he could have tried to redirect some of those resources from Sol, but that would have gotten him kicked out of office and someone else . . . like Cruz . . . put in, which would have meant no resources going to fix the Family ships or the station residencies. As it was, he’d gotten what he could from Venture and fought a running battle with Cruz for allocation of those resources as well. He was not a bad administrator.

  At least one of Alpha’s ships had stood up for him. There was that.

  Dammit, Neihart insisted Pell wasn’t behind his visit, but it increasingly felt like a Konstantin action, right down to the splashy system entry and the subversive, silver-tongued speech in the bar. Emilio Konstantin himself loved a camera. Slick, smooth, never a stumble, never a search for words . . . and this JR Neihart was every bit as good, possibly better. Certainly better looking, if nothing else. It was even possible Konstantin had provided the language. Hell . . . hearing it, he’d almost found himself agreeing with Finity’s captain and feeling he wasn’t remotely the administrator he tried to be.

  But what could Pell gain by agitating Alpha spacers to make a claim the EC would never grant?

  Discontent?

  Disorder?

  Force him into defying the EC?

  Was this the beginning of the end? The someday-payback he’d feared for years? Trade Rights for food to feed his people? For the continued loyalty of Alpha’s spacers?

  Dammit.

  One thing was for damn sure: There was nothing innocuous in the proposals Finity was trying to float out on the Strip. And, God help him, what if the implication was true? What if the EC was building more of these mega-ships in anticipation of a breakout, and training crews to put his spacers out of business?

  Damn. And it all played against those numbers that rested in that floor safe under his desk—it all played against the possibility that that was the real issue . . . that Sol was that close to arriving on the scene.

  Was it possible Hewitt had actually called it correctly? Was a riot against the station and the project Konstantin’s goal in coming here? Local captains demanding Rights in return for perceived neglect?

  Problem was, there wasn’t damn-all he could do to shut Finity up, other than declare martial law and line the Strip with blue-coats. . . . And wouldn’t that win hearts and minds on the Strip?

  Besides, the words had already been said, the ideas planted.

  Maybe he was overreacting. Maybe Pell simply wanted to know whether Rights could be brought into play, and to know what Andy Cruz was able to do. Finity had certainly shown Rights what an experienced crew could do . . . in spectacular and public fashion. That entrance had scared hell out of him and most everybody else on the station. Rights’ morale and the Company’s prestige were affected.

  And wounded pride, especially in a man like Cruz, could result in very stupid actions.

  Was that it? Had Neihart been sent to push his administration to risk that expensive mass of metal in an act of political bravado? Solve the problem in one spectacular demonstration of hubris?

  If only . . . if only . . . security had stayed out of the picture. Let the meeting reach its conclusion. Maybe he’d have a clue what Finity was really up to. He damn sure wouldn’t be facing a meeting with angry ship captains.

  At this point, whatever he did or didn’t do, he looked bad, Cruz looked bad, the EC looked bad, and spacers as a class liked the EC to look bad. Any misstep was an incident to be told and retold as fast and far as FTL ships could travel.

  He’d known, known, dammit, that the decision to build an indisputably company-controlled ship of Finity’s class would cause trouble on a scale impossible to predict. He’d tried to advise against it, when Cruz first arrived, and gotten . . . Hewitt. Earth had never understood why the first pusher crew . . . ancestors of these Neiharts in more ways than blood . . . had refused, after that first voyage, to hand over their ship to a new crew. He knew the passion behind that refusal, having spent his life on a star-station, having dealt directly with spacer crews for over two decades. Cut one and another bled. And the third would come at you bent on mayhem, even if the whole lot had been at loggerheads a minute before.

  The EC had never understood that out here, beyond the reach of anything but pusher-ships, there was Station culture . . . with its own set of ties . . . and there were spacers, with theirs. And if one wanted to refine the issue—there were the First Star stations and there were the Farther Stars, including humanity’s offshoot, Cyteen, and its wild growth. They were all human, but in spite of the DNA . . . the differences became profound. Their respective worlds were contained and isolated from one another. The physical and psychological requirements of their separate worlds, their separate lives, were just . . . different. You had to accept that. Deal with it. B
ecause out here, there was no escape. Stations needed spacers and spacers needed stations.

  In that, he and James Robert Neihart were in complete agreement. And Neihart’s notion that the Family ships provided a buffer between stations was dead on. But all that stood between Alpha and Earth Company headquarters on Earth and on Sol Station were the pusher ships. And he doubted the EC admin had the remotest idea how the pusher crews thought—they’d been caught by total surprise when old Gaia had told them they weren’t giving up their ship to another crew, and the pushers had only gotten stranger over time. Sol Admin found it puzzling enough that they were dealing with two different histories in the two pushers that still served them. Santa Maria had been the ship to discover the terrifying mystery at Beta, and yes, that ship kept extremely close tabs on their people at all times. They believed Cyteen was heading for an alien apocalypse—it was not a topic you ever wanted to mention with them; and during their Alpha layover they usually held at least one lengthy religious service with live candles, which made safety officers nervous. Atlantis, when that pusher was in port, was just, well, there for a party, and breakage happened. Fact was, the two pusher crews lived in utter isolation for a decade at a time, inward-folded, time-dilated, and different.

  Company headquarters didn’t understand such mindsets, and probably wouldn’t give a damn if they did. Not because they were inherently cruel—historically, the EC was a generous employer—but because they were a company. As long as the pushers did their job, just like any of their employees, any idiosyncrasies of behavior during their station time were just something they let Station management handle as delicately as possible—ignoring a few broken rules in the interests of keeping the system going.

  It wasn’t that the EC didn’t understand different cultures and world views. Sol had Earth, historically a mass of conflicting cultures. Sol had Mars colony, mostly research, and the Belters, insystem miners, and Lunabase . . . all . . . all . . . extensions of the Earth Company, the most remote only a few light-hours apart. There were, one understood intellectually, many differing mindsets to be considered, but all interconnected, not just historically but, in the case of the space-based units, by the company itself.