“She has to come back to Bryant’s, so we may meet her on the way out. Them and the Browns’ Pixy. Miriam B and Come Lately are still to find. And locally, we still need Galway.”
“Monahan’s still not meeting?”
“We’ve got a contact with them, but the captains are ducking us. Senior captain got swept up in the Critical Mass fracas, and got a see-me from Abrezio, who very probably wasn’t happy. Foodstuffs are high on the list of what they carry, and, yes, we sent a ripple through their local market, but they’d already offloaded and sold, and only had a small ship-owned offering even so, so they have no real complaint. It’s my guess Abrezio put the pressure on, and I haven’t pushed, but I have other routes to reach the senior captain informally, and I’m pretty sure they’ll have heard talk on the Strip by now.”
“No reaction from admin.”
“Nothing,” JR said. “Third day quiet and not a thing. Word’s settled, now. We’ve gotten a few additional questions. We’ve tendered the agreement to Firenze, and we have it signed. Santiago is looking it over and talking to Firenze.”
“Should we give it to Qarib?”
“I’d say go ahead,” JR said. “If admin wants to transmit it all over the station, fine. There’s nothing in it to hide.”
There was an ongoing merchanter action that wasn’t set forward in the contract, except in the clause that agreed not to visit a station under sanction. That was the tough one.
But it was also, as he had explained to the Gallis and the Rodriguezes, the teeth in the organization, the ability to require compliance. First part was getting every single Family ship to agree—no one would have believed two decades ago that it could happen. The sixty-three Families were independent in culture, in many cases using a ship-speak almost incomprehensible to outsiders, except for ops, and maintaining their own customs and rules.
Cohesion? Cooperation?
There were very few points on which they could all agree, but those few were the essentials: ship sovereignty and Family sanctity. Those were in the document, and there was virtual ink on the virtual lines, spreading in all directions.
Would Cyteen someday decide the Families were no longer useful, and begin building competition, and excluding them in some future dispute with Pell? It could happen.
But not if merchanters could slam a no-go down on every single cargo that moved, while carrying them for Pell.
Or vice versa, unlikely as it seemed now. Any station or association that wanted to rough-handle one isolated merchanter was going to find life and supply very—very—difficult.
Chapter 7 Section ii
Third day and Fallan was not only on his feet, he had a rendezvous in the European, best clothes, no visible gel-patch—he’d combed his grey locks sideways—and his best jacket, with a spare Galway patch in the pocket, for a little gift.
Lisa Marie was coming. Jen assured Ross of that, by com: she had left the sleepover and was on her way, not alone. Jen was with her.
Fallan was not on his own, either. Ross was with him.
“Wonder if she’s still pretty,” Fallan said.
“Pretty as you, I reckon, give or take the patch job.”
“Wicked, Ross, wicked. Whatever we are, honest years have made us. That was a time, that Boreale scrap. We laughed, God, we laughed.” A pause. “I am so nervous.”
Their Nav 1 was nervous. Man habitually threw a huge mass of metal from one star to another, played causality catch with gravity wells, and he was nervous.
“Kinda hoped a body grew out of it,” Ross said.
“Nope. Gets worse with age.”
“Look, if you spook out I’ll have to catch you.”
“No, I’ll go, I’ll go. I just hope I don’t offput her.”
There was, in the distance, in the gentle curve of the Strip, a dark-haired girl Ross was fairly sure was Jen, and another figure beside her.
“I think I see them.”
“God.” Fallan fidgeted his jacket straight, checked his pocket, made a pass at his hair.
“You’re fine,” Ross said.
“Can’t match that whiskey. But I got her a thing she can’t get anywhere else.”
“The Galway patch?”
“Oh, we got to trade patches. But a thing I got on Glory.”
“What would that be?”
“Chunk of rock.”
“Well, what kind of rock?”
Fallan took a wrapped object out of his pocket and unfolded the cloth as they walked. It was actually a shimmery, shiny, polished piece of metal and glass, about the size of a bar chit, the surface all marbled and colored, with iridescence in it.
“That there, Ross-me-lad, is a piece of Galileo Station’s shields after EV Lacertae blasted her to hell. Cranky bastard, that star, but producing one pretty piece of glass. There’s still salvage to be had there, but nobody that keen on becoming part of it. You won’t find this on offer at the tourist shop. Guy who collected it in the first place probably risked his life and the guy who traded it to me was probably a thief. They were evacuating the station. Didn’t even bother to mothball her. Wasn’t that much left to mothball. We took fifty-six people out of there.”
“God, you were there?”
“Oh, no, we came in fourteen days after the big blow, and they were damn glad to see us. We didn’t try to handle cargo, Just packed people on and got ’em back to Glory.” Fallan wrapped the piece again and tucked it back in his pocket. “It’s not radioactive, or anything. Had it checked.”
“That’s a long time ago.”
“A real long time ago.”
They were within hail of the Finitys now. Jen gave a little wave. Ross waved back.
Captain Lisa Marie was trim, grey hair short and straight—a grey satin jacket and nothing about her to say she was one of the captains who had scared hell out of Alpha. Her smile, which was all for Fallan as they met, was impish and sweet, both, arms open—no standing on ceremony or rank.
“Fal,” she said, while Ross stood by watching. “Well, look at you. Nav 1. I’m not surprised. I knew you were here. I didn’t look for you to get in a bar fight first off.”
Fallan laughed, she laughed. They hugged each other like long-lost friends.
Ross looked at Jen and offered his hand. “Got a rez for four, separate tables, respectable distance from each other. Dinner?”
She took his hand. “Sure. She gives the orders, but I’m sort of to stay in the neighborhood in case she needs anything.” She grinned. “Look at ’em.”
Chapter 7 Section iii
They had a table a quarter of the restaurant apart from Fallan and Lisa Marie. They splurged a bit on the dinner, the both of them staying off alcohol, being, by that token, both of them on duty.
Niall had said—find out what he could. And, Ross was fairly sure JR Neihart had said the same to Jen. It was only natural.
Meanwhile if there was finding out going on over at that other table, it was a good bet it was more about where have you been and how’s your life and do you remember when?
If, however, they got around to, so what brings you here? they were stepping off the edge into something a little less old friends and right straight on to what are you up to?
“You told your Fourth, I hope, about the doctor’s orders. Two more days.”
“I told her, and she said she got it,” Jen said, and took a bite of her entree, pasta with white sauce and meat and veg. She swallowed, and seemed pleased.
“He’s tough as they come, but some things, dunno, your body just has its limits.” He took a bite of his own. A meat pie. Meat from Sol. Nothing more informative on the menu about it and a lab was undoubtedly involved, but, damn, it was tasty. “I got assigned to him the last two runs, you know, working my way up, shadowing him, before, someday, I get a number. And I swear, he’s been so many places, he just neve
r stops surprising me. Stuff that’s way before Galway. And, I mean, my great-gran’s out of Atlas, but I never heard those things from her.”
“Your grans and mum still with you?”
“Sure are. My mum’s a fitter, third shift.”
“You’re a four-shift operation.”
“We are.” He was glad to say that. Four shifts, when some ships were three or two. They weren’t near in Finity’s class, but they had no shortage of high-level crew, no layabouts, except the youngest and a couple of seniors gone frail and no longer able. He didn’t say that. You couldn’t brag to Finity’s End that you were that good. But they were. When Galway moved, what time you weren’t asleep or on some post or other, you scrubbed, you studied, you stayed with everything going on. Point of pride. And Nav 1.3 trainee wasn’t shabby for a young man. Not at all.
“Lot of sibs?”
“Sister,” he said. “Also a fitter. Works with Mum.”
“I’m an only. One of a kind.” A smile, between bites. It was talk they hadn’t gotten around to on that sleepover night.
“You’re the senior captain’s niece.”
“I am.”
“How is he?”
“Honestly? Kind of sweet. But don’t spread that around. He’d kill me.”
“I got to ask again. What in hell are you up to?”
Eyebrows lifted. “It’s pretty well all over the docks.”
“Well, yes, a story is. That’s what they’re saying. That you’re signing on our ships to some sort of agreement with somebody, that you’re paying repair charges—that you’re charging a fee.”
“Sort of. And not quite. The agreement is among ourselves. All merchanters. We organize a repair fund, available to any ship in need, as an interest-free loan. You have to pay back sooner or later, and the dues we pay is what creates the repair fund. We help each other when we’re in trouble. That’s the deal. Because stations can’t. That’s not the economy anymore.”
“Where do we get the money?”
“Sixty-three families each committing a portion of profit which we don’t bank: everybody just reserves it—we’re not giving stations any funds they can manipulate or hold. Ship gets into trouble the way Firenze has, we get it fixed right. New system seems to be what they need. And they’ll be able to get financially healthy again and pay it back. If they never can—well, we’ll all survive it.”
“That’s crazy.”
Jen shrugged. “Together, all of us everywhere, with our assets, we’re pretty potent. We stay autonomous, we just support the whole system.”
He forgot what he was eating. Swallowed. “I guess it could work. So it’s all true, everything they’re saying.”
“I have no idea what ‘they’ might be saying, really. But that’s the deal. And here’s the further deal. Someday we’re going to have Sol come in here and shake everything up. And the EC’ll try to dictate things. You know they will.”
“They still do,” he said solemnly, and gave his entree a poke. “Every decade or so they send somebody to mess things up.”
“That’ll speed up, won’t it? You know it will. And Sol will give orders. It always has.”
It had gotten serious very suddenly. He looked up into dark eyes. Foreign eyes.
“All right,” Ross said, “plain talk. Question. How do four ships afford to come out here empty?”
“Not empty. We’ve done a little commerce along the way. Enough. It’s not about making money on this trip.”
“So what is it about?”
“Doing while we can do. Before Pell and Cyteen have another spat. Before Sol arrives, having built God knows how many ships and declaring we don’t matter.”
“I don’t think they’ll think that.”
“We’re a way of life, Ross Monahan. And we’re not them. Rights seems to be their design, their notion of interstellar trade. Will they listen to us? They never have.”
He rested his fork beside his plate, stomach just a little upset, conscious of Fallan and Finity’s Fourth over at the distant table, one hand in another, beside the wineglasses. “Will you listen to us, Finity? Seems a good question.”
“We are you.”
“Not so much. Who’s given us a damned thing, while Pell gets rich?”
“That’s the point. We’re proposing to do exactly that, to even out the luck. Who’s given us a damned thing? Who will do it, when Sol shows up?”
“Here, we kind of look forward to that. We don’t look forward to outsider ships showing up to take the routes out from under us.”
“That’s not part of it. Never has been. We’ve got our routes, same as every other ship. We’re all part of a network. Sol breaks out, we’ll want what you bring us, same as now, just a whole lot more. Good for everyone. We hope to make it so Sol’s got no choice but to deal with you and the other Alpha ships.”
“Sol will need us.” He wished that didn’t sound as if he was trying to convince himself. “That ship up on A-mast—it’s to show they’re serious and they’re not out of the picture.”
“Why ever would they spend that much building a ship that doesn’t move?”
“Because they didn’t intend for it not to move. They’ll get it working. Someday.”
“It’s pretty huge, isn’t it? Not the ship. The problem.”
“God.” He picked up his fork. “It’s a good dinner. Let’s enjoy it.”
“Sure.” She picked up hers. “Not here to fight. Really not here to fight. It’s their evening. And Senior Captain told me not to get into business.”
“Business is what you call it.”
“Business is what it is. We have to make ends meet, while stations and planets work it all out. And if Sol brings ships in that want to replace us, we have an issue.”
“Isn’t going to happen.”
“They built Rights here at Alpha. A demonstration of power. You said it.”
“Jen.” He was out of arguments. He was supposed to get information. Niall said it. But she was proposing things that made the evening uncomfortable; and it was Fallan’s evening with Lisa Marie.
Granted Lisa Marie wasn’t arguing the same over there at the other table. Judging by the occasional hand-holding, it didn’t look as if that was the case, but he’d lay odds those two could argue and flirt at the same time.
“Sorry,” Jen said. “Really. Just . . . No, I’m not going to say it. Enough politics.”
Maddening. He wasn’t going to ask. He truly wasn’t going to ask. He finished the entrée, and cast another look at Fallan and Lisa Marie.
Those two were talking to the waiter, signing out on it, by the look of things.
He’d wanted dessert. He’d wanted a better dinner conversation out of Jen. He was not in the best mood—all of which was way under the scale of things wrong in the situation.
Make it so Sol’s got no choice . . . God. What if they’d been bugged? The blue-coats did that sort of thing. Niall’s talk with Abrezio could fix any charges, but not before he and Jen got hauled in for questions. If they dared touch Finity’s crew. Not to mention a Finity captain at the table over there.
The blue-coats hadn’t made any move against Finity’s End, or any of the other three. They wouldn’t. That was power—that size, that number of people physically out on the Strip. Abrezio had to think—that it wouldn’t be a good move, to haul in Finity personnel.
Ross wasn’t sure Niall’s agreement with Abrezio was that much protection to him or Jen.
The protection it afforded couldn’t outlast the hour if Sol did by some miracle drop a ship into Alpha system without warning. That was the cold, small thought—that if that was imminent and Pell somehow knew it and that was why Finity and the others had really come here—
And if those jump-points were found . . . the great someday hope of everybody at Alpha . . . it was all t
oo possible that no agreements would stand, because Abrezio might no longer be in power, leaving the question: would some Sol-born stationmaster do right by the ships who’d remained loyal despite the hardship, or would Sol-built ships replace them before they knew what happened?
All that flashed through his mind in seconds. One card stacked on another. Who he was with, who was with Fallan, what Niall had asked, what Jen was saying, what had happened with the blue-coats. Abrezio calling Niall in to talk deal.
Scared man, Mr. Abrezio. Scared not only of the four visitors, but of blue-coats who had overstepped their bounds and locked down a meeting involving Finity’s Senior Captain.
And that—that just stuck sideways in his mind and jammed up everything else: the realization that once the four strangers left, things weren’t going to be the same as the day before Abrezio’s authority was challenged, and Abrezio and those allied with Abrezio might not be any safer. Abrezio wasn’t the only one running things right now. Rights command, Cruz, and project security, Hewitt, and some of the officers under them had been sent all the way from Sol.
“We’d better pay out,” he said.
“Got it,” Jen said.
“Finity’s not paying our tab.”
“Already done. Fourth Captain has to have an escort. It’s the rules.”
“Hell.”
“Got to go with them,” she said. “Finity’s sleepover. She has to. The—”
“Rules. I get it.” Fallan and Lisa Marie were on their feet, headed down the middle of the restaurant. Ross managed to intercept them, gave a respectful little nod. “Don’t know if this fellow’s told you, Captain . . .”
Fallan caught his arm and pulled him aside. “Two days. I got it. Go on with you.”
“Two days,” he said. “God, do I have to call Niall?”
“Off with you,” Fallan said, let him go, and hitched onto Lisa Marie on his way out.
Jen’s hand slipped onto Ross’s arm. “We’ll tag ’em. Captain knows about the two days. We won’t let any harm happen.”
“How precisely are we going to prevent that?”
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